Missing Susan

child in the crib blanket and carries it out of the house.” She flipped through her notes again. “Which is why the housemaid found the door ajar at five A.M.! And then to make it look like an outside killing, he cut the baby’s throat.”

“Murderers have done that sort of thing,” Rowan remarked. “In the 1970s the Green Beret doctor Jeffrey MacDonald killed his wife in an argument, and then murdered his two toddlers to make it appear that a band of drug-crazed hippies had killed the family.”

Momentarily distracted from the Road Hill murder, Elizabeth smiled. “Any band of hippies that would kill two babies and a pregnant woman, and then leave a husky Green Beret soldier with only a scratch, would have to be on a ton of drugs. I don’t think there’s that much stupidity in the world.”

“No, but he nearly got away with it. It took ten years to get the civilian trial that convicted him. And Samuel Kent got away with it, too, didn’t he? He was an upstanding man, well-to-do, and obviously sane. Although people did suspect him, they were finally persuaded to believe the confession of an unbalanced adolescent.”

Rowan pointed to Elizabeth’s newly purchased crime book. “Did you find a transcript of Constance’s confession in there?”

“I remember seeing it,” she said, leafing through the pages. “Here it is. Shall I read it? Okay, this is in 1865, after she’s confessed to her half brother’s murder, and everybody wants to know why she did it. Her lawyer, Mr. Coleridge, asks the court’s permission to say two things on Constance’s behalf:

“ ‘First, solemnly in the presence of Almighty God, she wishes me to say that the guilt is hers alone, and that her father and others who have so long suffered most unjust and cruel suspicion are wholly and absolutely innocent-’” With a thoughtful expression Elizabeth looked up from the book. “You think that’s why she confessed, don’t you? Because suspicion was still lingering over the household, perhaps damaging her father’s career. The tension of continuing scandal was probably very hard for a young girl to bear. Maybe she thought she had the least to lose.”

“And the second part of her statement?”

Elizabeth ran her finger down the page. “Here it is. ‘Secondly, she was not driven to this act, as has been asserted, by unkind treatment at home, as she met with nothing there but tender and forbearing love…’ What a crock! So she supposedly had no motive at all for killing her young half brother? Just a whim, huh?”

“So she would have us believe,” said Rowan in a carefully neutral voice. “Let me see the book. I’ve been told by a fellow crime buff, a Mr. O’Connor, that we will find her explanation of the crime most informative.” He skimmed the pages of the chapter on Constance Kent, paying special attention to the blocks of print in smaller typeface, denoting a quotation from court documents or other primary sources. “This must be it,” he said. “Dr. John Charles Bucknill, the physician who examined Constance by order of the government to determine whether she was of sound mind, published an account of her confession in several newspapers, supposedly at the prisoner’s request.” Rowan considered. “Well, perhaps she did ask him to publish it. If her intention was to divert suspicion from the rest of the family, she would need to convince as many people as possible of her own guilt.”

Elizabeth frowned. “Go on. How does she say she did it?”

Rowan adjusted his glasses and began to read in carefully measured tones. “ ‘A few days before the murder she obtained possession of a razor from the green case in her father’s wardrobe, and secreted it. This was the sole instrument which she used. She also secreted a candle with matches, by placing them in the corner of the closet in the garden, where the murder was committed.’ ”

Elizabeth looked up sharply. “It was not!” she declared. “The police investigation said that the child was smothered in his own bed! The throat-cutting was postmortem. Why should she lie about that?”

“Why indeed,” murmured Rowan. “Let us continue. ‘On the night of the murder she undressed herself and went to bed, because she expected that her sisters would visit her room. She lay awake, watching, until she thought that the household were all asleep, and soon after midnight she left her bedroom and went downstairs and opened the drawing room door and the window shutters.’ ”

“How very premeditated!” said Elizabeth sarcastically. “Why, there’s mafia hit men who are less thorough than that. And this is a sixteen-year-old planning to kill a baby for no particular reason. Sure!”

Without comment, Rowan resumed the narrative. “ ‘She then went up into the nursery, withdrew the blanket from between the sheet and the counterpane, and placed it on the side of the cot. She then took the child from his bed and carried him downstairs through the drawing room.’ ”

Elizabeth interrupted again. “What about the suffocation?”

“She seems unaware of that detail, doesn’t she? Where was I?-‘Having the child in one arm, she raised the drawing room window with the other hand, went round the house and into the closet, lighted the candle and placed it on the seat of the closet, the child being wrapped in the blanket and still sleeping, and while the child was in this position, she inflicted the wound in his throat. She says that she thought the blood would never come-’”

“It wouldn’t if he was already dead,” said Elizabeth. She looked thoughtful. “But she says nothing of having smothered him in his bed.”

“No,” Rowan agreed, “in fact, she says that the child was not killed, so she thrust the razor into its left side, and put the body, with the blanket round it, into the vault.”

“What?” cried Elizabeth. “She claims that she stabbed Savile with the razor? I’d like to have seen her try that!”

“Yes, it is hard to stab someone with the blunt tip of a straight razor, isn’t it? Slashing, yes. But puncture wound? No, I wouldn’t have thought so.”

“Well, this is rubbish,” Elizabeth declared. “If I were going to confess to a crime, I believe I’d endeavor to know more about the circumstances than this poor girl did.”

“Perhaps she was doing her best,” Rowan pointed out. “Some of it may even be true. If the child had been killed in the nursery, she could have carried him down as she described and inflicted the postmortem injuries to divert suspicion from the household. And I suppose that such an act might prey on her young mind as much as an actual murder.”

Elizabeth was silent for a few minutes, contemplating the evidence. “She had no reason to lie,” she said at last. “If she was admitting to murder, she might as well tell how it really happened. Since she got it wrong, we can assume that it was because she didn’t know what actually occurred on the night of the murder. She was taking the blame for somebody else.” She sighed. “You’re right, Rowan. Your version is the only one that makes sense. Daddy is fooling around with the nursemaid, when the child wakes up and starts to cry. In trying to hush the boy, Mr. Kent accidentally smothers him, and then-perhaps with Constance’s help-he takes the child to the privy and cuts its throat to make the killing look like an outside job. Constance may be guilty as an accessory after the fact, but she didn’t kill the child. Why didn’t the authorities realize it at the time?”

“It was an unsolved case of four years’ standing,” Rowan reminded her. “I don’t suppose they wanted to look a gift horse in the mouth. I myself think that there was a certain amount of religious hysteria involved in her confession. Since the crime, Constance had been living at Brighton in a religious institution, and it was to the minister in charge that she first confessed. Why not? The crime had blighted her life anyway. What marriage prospects would she have with her family under perpetual suspicion of butchery? And what else could she hope for in that era? Not a job as a governess, surely?” He smiled at the absurdity of it.

Elizabeth took back the crime book and turned to the end of the chapter. “What happened to Constance? It says here that at her trial she was condemned to death, but that sentence was commuted to life imprisonment. I wonder how Mr. Kent felt about that.”

“A regrettable but necessary sacrifice,” said Rowan, in his best imitation of a Victorian patriarch.

“She served twenty years, then was released from prison. Oh, damn! This book says that no one is certain what became of her after that. That’s not fair! I want to know.” She looked suspiciously at the guide. “You know, don’t you?”

Rowan shook his head. “No, but I suspect that the answer is known these days. Scholars of Victorian crimes are like bloodhounds, and that’s just the sort of puzzle that would send them off baying through the courthouses on three continents.”

“I don’t have time to do that,” said Elizabeth, frowning.

“Here,” said Rowan. “Give me one of those mawkish postcards you’re always buying. Yes, that one of Glastonbury will do.” He pulled out his fountain pen and wrote on the back in his nearly legible scrawl: