200 The persistent feeling . . . of the nightdress?'). In The Road Murder: Being a Complete Report and Analysis of the Various Examinations and Opinions of the Press on this Mysterious Tragedy (1860) by A Barrister-at-Law.
200 His colleagues had to conduct . . . leave of absence. From correspondence in HO 45/6970.
201 In the last days of November . . . compact of secrecy'. This letter was not made public until 24 July 1865, when it was published in The Times, but it was dated 23 November 1860. A letter Constance wrote that day has also survived, a note in which she thanks Peter Edlin, her lawyer, for 'the pretty pair of mittens and the scarf that he had given her: they 'will remind me whenever I look at them', she writes, 'of how much I am indebted to the giver'.
CHAPTER 15
207 At the beginning of 1861 . . . failing to examine Samuel. Nor was any importance attached to allegations that the jury had been 'packed' in Samuel's favour. Before the inquest opened James Morgan, the parish constable, and Charles Happerfield, the postmaster, had replaced two of the randomly selected jurors with 'men of judgement'. The two discharged were a tailor (whose wife had asked that he be excused) and William Nutt's father, a shoemaker who lived in the cottages next to Road Hill House. Their replacements were the Reverend Peacock and a prosperous farmer called William Dew, who – like Happerfield – was an activist in the temperance movement.
207 'You talk of the Road murder . . . may be never discovered now.' Letter to W.W.F. de Cerjat in The Letters of Charles Dickens 1859–61 (1997), edited by Madeline House and Graham Storey.
208 Later that month, Samuel applied . . . cannot be acceded to'. From correspondence in HO 45/6970.
209 The Kents instructed . . . dispose of their belongings. Account of the auction from the Somerset and Wilts Journal and the Trow-bridge and North Wilts Advertiser.
211 Over the summer the factory commissioners . . . in the Dee valley. From HO 45/6970. William may have visited Constance in Brittany that summer – according to the Passport Office files, a William Kent was issued with a passport for travel on the Continent on 10 August.
211 For several months . . . unlikely to attract attention. Whicher's name appeared in The Times of 2 March 18 61 when he testified against a man accused of stealing a crate of opium worth ?1,000 from the London Dock Company, but this was a case that had been assigned to him a year earlier. The man he arrested was acquitted. Perhaps the jurors were suspicious of the prosecution witnesses – a convict and an opium dealer. Or perhaps, after the Road Hill case, it was Whicher they mistrusted.
211 Just one was covered in any depth . . . his uncle's will. Whicher obtained the vicar's address by pretending to be a lawyer – the adoption of a false identity was a common if unpopular detective practice. From reports in The Times and a transcript of the trial of James Roe at the Old Court, 21 & 22 August 1861.
212 In the summer of 1861 . . . since Road Hill. Account of the Kingswood murder from MEPO 3/63, the Metropolitan Police file on the case; and reports in The Times, the Daily Telegraph and the Annual Register of 1861.
215 The Kingswood investigation had unfolded . . . a mockery of a detective's skills. Franz's solicitor offered Dickens an article on the mindboggling coincidences of the case (see Dickens' letter to W.H. Wills of 31 August 1861, in The Letters of Charles Dickens). The solicitor's article was published anonymously in All the Year Round the next January.
216 'If I was not the cleverest . . . of their own accord.' From 'Bigamy and Child-Stealing' in Experiences of a Real Detective by Inspector 'F', edited by Waters.
216 'I believe that a chain . . . corrupt testimony.' From 'Circumstantial Evidence' in Experiences of a Real Detective.
216 'The value of the detective . . . what they mean.' In The Female Detective (1864) by Andrew Forrester.
217 This novel, a huge bestseller . . . terrified of exposure. It went into eight editions in three months.
219 'those most mysterious of mysteries . . . London lodgings'. From 'Miss Braddon', an unsigned review in The Nation, 9 November 1865.
219 In 1863 the philosopher Henry Mansel . . . conjured at Road. Sensation literature was 'moulding the minds and forming the tastes and habits of its generation', wrote Mansel, 'by preaching to the nerves'. From an unsigned review in the Quarterly Review of April 1863. For discussions of the sensation novel, see especially Black Swine in the Sewers of Hampstead: Beneath the Surface of Victorian Sensationalism (1988) by Thomas Boyle; Domestic Crime in the Victorian Novel (1989) by Anthea Trodd; From Bow Street to Baker Street: Mystery, Detection and Narrative (1992) by Martin A. Kayman; The Novel and the Police (1988) by
