And so on and so forth. The entry goes on to list the tenants' various holdings, mentions the fact that the manor had a mill-some distance from the present village if it was a water-mill, we would think!-and notes that the value of the property had dropped since it was valued in the reign of Edward the Confessor, although how that value was arrived at seems to be speculative.
The historians tell us no more of Hill until the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, when the property came into the hands of a wealthy clothier from Somerset, who built the present Hill Manor House. It is a moderate-sized mansion erected in pleasant, mellow, Cotswold stone. It came into the hands of Mrs Kempson's grandfather by purchase towards the end of last century. The original gatehouse fell into disrepair and was demolished in 1906 to make way for a lodge which, owing to the shortage of domestic staff, is now untenanted, and past which it seems probable that Miss Patterson strayed on the night of her death.
The main feature of the mansion is a magnificent oak staircase leading up to the principal rooms. These rooms themselves, with their decorated plaster ceilings and Tudor fireplaces, are, we understand, show pieces. It was in the largest and grandest of these rooms, known as the grand salon, that the ill-fated young and attractive Merle Patterson was disporting herself shortly before her tragic and horrible death.
There is no legend of the customary 'grey lady' who haunts so many sixteenth- and seventeenth-century manor houses, but if we were inclined to superstition (and who is not?) we might be forgiven if we fancied we met a 'glimmering girl', as W. B. Yeats expresses it, flitting about the grounds of Hill Manor House. The police have not yet decided exactly where Merle Patterson and Mr Ward were actually done to death (it now seems unlikely that these spots were Lovers' Lane and the cottage), or what sudden panic caused the murderer to throw what seems to have been his bloody (we use the word in its Shakespearian sense-i.e. 'What bloody man is that?' Macbeth, Act I Sc. 2) his bloody weapon into the sheepwash.
Did someone who has not come forward, but who could be, perhaps, the only person on earth who could help the police with their enquiries, did someone actually surprise the murderer just as he had concluded one or other of his devilish machinations? If so, we would remind this person of his civic duties and beg him to be manly and courageous enough to come forward and tell what he knows.
If there is such a man (or woman, for the matter of that) he is assured of complete police protection from the instant he decides to open his mouth. The murderer has struck twice. It should be a matter of conscience to someone, somewhere, to come forward and help to make sure that he does not strike again.
Post Scriptum
Your correspondent has just heard that after diligent and patient search for clues, the police have come to the conclusion that Miss Patterson was enticed or forced into the disused lodge at Hill Manor House and done to death there. The public, needless to say, are rigidly excluded from the grounds.
Part Two
Verdict
Chapter 12
Mrs Lestrange Bradley Takes A Hand
Well might I say with the Apostle, 'The former treatise have I made, O Theophilus,' for I have kept you informed to some extent, my dear Sir Walter, of what has been happening during the past weeks at the Oxfordshire village of Hill. However, it now seems possible and desirable to furnish you with a fuller and more connected narrative of events, if only to clarify my own mind by airing my theories concerning their import.
As you know, I was called to Hill Manor House in my professional capacity by Mrs Kempson, in order to examine and report upon the mental state of a man who claimed to be her brother. As you also know, she then cancelled the appointment on the score of his disappearance.
Well, he has turned up again, not quick but dead. His body has been dug up from the floor of a derelict cottage by the village idiot. As though the murder of Merle Patterson, whose body, you will remember, was found near the sheepwash at the end of the village, were not sufficiently mysterious, we now have this bizarre occurrence to add to the tally.
The inquest on Miss Patterson resulted in a verdict of murder by person or persons unknown, although the police, acting somewhat precipitately, had arrested a gypsy named Bellamy Smith for the crime. They were obliged to release him, however, as, thanks to two intelligent young children and their uncle, Bellamy was able to prove a complete alibi. The contention of the police that he had suffered a torn ear in his struggle with the girl was shown to be mistaken. His earring had been dragged out during a scuffle with some drunken louts in a wrestling booth at the annual fair.
There has been considerable speculation as to what the girl was doing down at the sheepwash at all so late at night, and still in her fancy dress, but, since the release of the gypsy, the police believe that she was not killed where she was found. They think she was murdered very much nearer the manor house, probably inside a deserted lodge in the grounds, and are busily searching for any clues which will prove this. It is a tenable hypothesis and seems to fit in with the facts so far as we know them, but they are merely skeletal and inconclusive.
Whether the two murders are connected in any way seems doubtful. The police are inclined to think that we have a homicidal maniac roaming the neighbourhood and Mrs
