The Suspicions of Mr Whicher

'horrid children', particularly Saville. The boy had probably told on her: perhaps she was the pincher, or perhaps she was the nursemaid whom Samuel had banned from consorting with her sweetheart in the cottages next to the house. 'She had left in a dreadful rage,' said Samuel. 'She had been excessively insolent.' And deep in the family there was the former servant who had transformed herself into the mistress of the house, the governess who had ensnared the master, coaxed him into betraying his first wife and neglecting his first children.

Female servants could corrupt children as well as their parents. In Governess Life: Its Trials, Duties, and Encouragements, a manual of 1849, Mary Maurice warned that 'frightful instances have been discovered in which she, to whom the care of the young has been entrusted, instead of guarding their minds in innocence and purity, has become their corrupter – she has been the first to lead and to initiate into sin, to suggest and carry on intrigues, and finally to be the instrument of destroying the peace of families'. Forbes Benignus Winslow, an eminent alienist, in 1860 described such women as 'sources of moral contamination and mental deterioration from which the most vigilant parents are not always able to guard their children'.

The prevailing theory about Saville's murder also cast a servant as the serpent in the house. Elizabeth Gough, by this account, lured the father into a betrayal so complete that it ended in his killing his son. In the newspapers, the gap-toothed Gough became an object of sexual fantasy. The reporter for the Western Daily Press found her appearance 'decidedly pleasing, and altogether superior to her station in life'. The Sherborne Journal described her as an 'exceedingly good-looking' young woman, who at night 'lay . . . on a French bedstead without curtains, near the door of the bedroom'. She was dangerously embedded in the family, a step away from the master's quarters.

The detective was another member of the working classes whose pernicious imaginings could sully a middle- class home. Usually, as with the case of Sarah Drake and her dead boy, his investigations were confined to the servants' quarters. Occasionally, as at Road, he ventured upstairs. An article in House-hold Words in 1859 attributed the weaknesses in the police force to the origins of its officers: 'It is never a wise or safe proceeding to put arbitrary authority or power in the hands of the lower-classes.'

The second week of Whicher's investigation had yielded no new evidence at all – only a new idea: a thought about a nightdress.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

WHAT GAMES GOES ON

27–30 July

At eleven o'clock on the morning of Friday, 27 July the magistrates convened at the Temperance Hall for the examination of Constance Kent. Their task was to judge whether she should be sent for trial at a higher court. Twenty-four members of the press were waiting outside. Before the court rose, Whicher spoke in private to Samuel Kent. He told him that he believed him innocent, and was prepared to make a statement to that effect. Kent declined the offer – 'for prudential reasons', said his solicitor. The nuances of the relationships between father, daughter and detective were delicate; it might harm Samuel to seem in league with Constance's accuser.

There were other signs that Whicher was less than sure of succeeding in his case against Constance. That morning he paid a band of workmen to dismantle the water closet in which Saville had been found, and to scour the cesspool and drain. This was a last-ditch attempt to find the missing nightgown or the knife. The search was unsuccessful. Whicher gave the men 6s.6d., with an extra shilling for refreshments.

Constance arrived in Road at 11.30, escorted by the governor of Devizes gaol. After a brief delay to the start of the proceedings, during which she waited in the house of Charles Stokes, the saddler, she approached the hall. 'She was dressed as before,' reported The Times, 'in deep mourning, but wore a thick veil, which screened her countenance from the eager gaze of the majority of the spectators assembled outside.' The veil was understood as a sign of modesty and decorum. For a woman to hide herself, and her family's privacies, was not sinister but seemly. Yet it was also tantalising. In a novel of 1860, A Skeleton in Every House, Waters wrote of 'the dark secrets that palpitate and writhe beneath the flimsy veils'.

'On being brought into the hall,' continued The Times, 'Miss Constance Kent fell into her father's arms, and kissed him. She then took the seat which had been provided for her, and burst into tears.' The Somerset and Wilts Journal had her quivering into the courtroom: she entered 'walking with a faltering step, and going up to her father, gave him a trembling kiss'.

In contrast to her frailty, the crowd was strong and keen. The hall was 'instantly filled', said The Times. The spectators 'came in with a tremendous rush, occupying every available inch', said the Journal. Only half would fit; the rest thronged outside, awaiting news. Three rows of reporters stretched across the room. Their full, verbatim transcripts of the hearing were to be published all over England the next day.

The magistrates sat on their platform, alongside Detectives Whicher and Williamson, Captain Meredith, Superintendent Wolfe and Henry Clark, the magistrates' clerk. It would fall to Clark to examine Constance on behalf of the Bench.

At a table in front of the platform sat Samuel Kent and his solicitor, William Dunn of Frome, and in front of them the barrister hired to defend Constance: Peter Edlin, of Clifton, Bristol. He had a 'glaring eye, distinct utterance, and somewhat cadaverous expression of countenance', reported the Somerset and Wilts Journal.

Constance bent her head forward, and did not move or speak. She sat through the day frozen and bowed. 'The events of the past month had evidently told severely upon her,' said the Somerset and Wilts Journal, 'for in her thin pale face we should scarcely have recognised the robust, deeply complexioned girl of five weeks ago. The same singularly forbidding cast of countenance, however, characterised her features.'

Samuel rested his chin on his hand and stared ahead. He seemed 'much depressed', according to the Bath Express, 'his countenance bearing unmistakeable indications of deep grief . . . Next to the prisoner, himself and Mr Whicher divided the attention of the public.' Not one of these three had a formal part to play in the day's proceedings – they were there to watch and be watched. The law specifically excluded Constance, as the accused, from testifying.

Elizabeth Gough was called first, and the magistrates resumed their examination of the previous Friday. 'She appeared considerably emaciated,' according to the Somerset and Wilts Journal. This paper's reporter seemed to see the female suspects in the case diminishing before his eyes, as if slowly consumed by the public's hunger for the sight of them.

Clark asked Gough about the blanket. 'I did not miss the blanket from the little boy's cot until it was brought in with the body,' she said.

Edlin asked the nursemaid about the relationship between his client and her young half-brother. 'I have never