Read The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher: A Shocking Murder And The Undoing Of A Great Victorian Detective for Free Online

'There was blood upon it, which appeared to be recently there,' Foley said. 'It was still fluid . . . The blood had penetrated the flannel, but it appeared to have dropped so gently that it had congealed drop by drop as it fell.'
    Late in the morning two professional men, acquaintances of Samuel Kent, arrived from Trowbridge to offer their services: Joseph Stapleton, a surgeon, and Rowland Rodway, a solicitor. Stapleton, who lived in the centre of Trowbridge with his wife and brother, was a certifying surgeon to several of the factories that Kent supervised. He assessed whether workers, particularly children, were fit enough to work in the mills, and reported on any injuries that befell them. (The following year Stapleton was to publish the first book about the murder at Road Hill House, which became the principal source for many accounts of the case.) Rodway was a widower with a son of twenty-one. He said he found Samuel in a 'state of grief and horror . . . agitation and distress', insisting that he wanted to telegraph at once for a London detective, 'before any traces of the crime could disappear or be removed'. Superintendent Foley resisted the suggestion - it could cause difficulty and disappointment, he said - and instead sent to Trowbridge for a woman to search the female servants. He expressed 'some hesitation in intruding on the family privacy', according to Rodway, 'and in adopting those measures of surveillance which the case required'. Samuel told Rodway to tell Foley that he must 'not feel under the slightest restraint'.
    Foley then put on his spectacles, got down on his hands and knees, and, he said, looked 'minutely at every step and every spot' between the nursery and the front and back doors. 'I viewed the posts, the sides of the stairs and passage, and even the grass minutely, the gravel and steps in front of the door, and the matting in the hall, and I could see nothing.'
    In the afternoon Foley interviewed Gough in the dining room, in the presence of Stapleton and Rodway. She appeared tired, Stapleton said, but her answers were simple and consistent. She seemed 'a person of considerable intelligence'. Rodway, too, found that she answered questions 'frankly and fully, and without embarrassment'. When Foley asked her if she had any suspicions about who had killed Saville, she said she had not.
    Samuel Kent asked Rodway whether he would represent him at the inquest. The solicitor replied that it might look bad, because it could suggest that Samuel was himself a suspect. Samuel later said he was prompted to ask for Rodway's help not on his own account, but to protect William, about whom rumours were circulating in the village: 'I did not know what might transpire there, as it was reported my son William had committed the murder.'
    Benger and a group of other men emptied the ten-foot vault beneath the privy. When only six or eight inches of water remained they felt carefully with their hands all along the bottom, but found nothing. Fricker, the plumber and glazier, offered to examine the pipes, and went to the kitchen to fetch a candle. He met Elizabeth Gough, who asked him why he wanted a light. To check the cistern, he explained. She said she was sure he would find nothing there.
    Several more police officers turned up at Road Hill House in the course of the day, as well as Eliza Dallimore, the 'searcher' employed by the police to examine the bodies and belongings of female suspects. Mrs Dallimore was married to William, one of the constables already on the premises. She took Gough to the nursery.
    'What do you want with me?' Gough asked her.
    'You must undress yourself,' Mrs Dallimore replied.
    'I cannot,' said the nursemaid. Mrs Dallimore insisted that she must, and led her to the adjacent dressing room.
    'Well, nurse,' said the searcher as Gough took off her clothes, 'this is a very shocking thing about the murder.'
    'Yes, it is.'
    'Can you give any account of it, do you think?'
    Gough reiterated that at