next year. Eveline, known as Lena, married a doctor in 1888 and had a son and a daughter. Florence never married, and spent her last years living with her niece Olive.
* Henry James's novella was published in 1898, the heyday of the Sherlock Holmes series.
* Whicher's unfolding analysis of the murder was laid out in three reports to Sir Richard Mayne, the Metropolitan Police Commissioner: the first is missing; Whicher wrote the second on 22 July; and he started the third just over a week later. The surviving reports are in the Metropolitan Police file on the Road Hill murder at the National Archives – MEPO 3/61.
* Thirty-two years later, in the Sherlock Holmes short story 'Silver Blaze' (1892), Arthur Conan Doyle referred to 'the curious incident of the dog in the night-time', the curious incident being that the dog did not bark when he encountered an intruder, and the solution to the riddle being that the intruder was known to the dog. But the Road Hill murder, being fact rather than fiction, had messier, more ambiguous clues: the dog did bark on the night of the murder, but not a lot.
* There are many possible causes for this condition, including tumours, hernias, the use of narcotics (such as opium), metabolic imbalance and kidney disease.
* The press reported that Samuel Kent was paid ?800 a year, a figure he did not correct; but the Home Office archives show that his salary was actually only ?350 in 1860. He may also have had a small private income. In
* In his reports to Mayne, Whicher underlined those phrases and sentences that he wished to emphasise. His underlined words are rendered here as italics.
* The abbreviation 'sleuth' was first used as a synonym for 'detective' in the 1870s.
* The biblical text runs: 'And the Lord said unto Cain, Where is Abel thy brother? And he said, I know not: Am I my brother's keeper? And He said, What hast thou done? the voice of thy brother's blood crieth unto me from the ground.'
* According to one implausible rumour, the Kents were illegitimate descendants of the royal family. Reporters occasionally remarked on Constance's resemblance to Queen Victoria.
* A defendant was not allowed to give evidence at his or her own trial until 1898.
* If Eugenia was lying, one wonders about the role played in her life by the family doctor, Mr Gay, to whom she was – at eleven – already betrothed. The surgeon referred to her as his 'little wife', and it was he who examined her body for signs of sexual molestation. Gay observed 'slight marks of violence', he said.
Copyright © 2008 by Kate Summerscale
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ISBN: 978-0-8027-1535-7 (hardcover)
First published in Great Britain by Bloomsbury in 2008
First U.S. edition published by Walker & Company in 2008
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INDEX
Adams, John Couch, 142
Adelphi theatre, 84
Albert, Prince, 217
Alloway, John, 4, 9–10, 12, 18
Alresford, 265
