Murder most foul

Picture the scene: 30 June 1860, a summer night in the small Wilshire village of Road. On a hill, a handsome Georgian manor is set among the trees. Inside, Mr and Mrs Kent, and their three children sleep soundly on the first floor. On the floor above, Mr Kent’s four children from his first marriage slumber, as do the housemaid and cook. The attractive nursemaid sleeps on the floor below, the nursery just a few steps from Mr Kent’s bedroom.

In the morning Francis Saville, the youngest child, a happy blond boy of three years old, is missing. As the panicked family and villagers search the grounds, a grisly discovery is made – the boy’s body shoved into the filth of the outside privy, his throat slit and a stab wound in his chest. The house has been locked up all night and the evidence points to just one conclusion – someone in the house is responsible. Time to call in London’s most famous detective, the inimitable Jack Whicher.
It sounds like the plot of a Sunday afternoon murder mystery, but this case, explored in Kate Summerscale’s The Suspicions of Mr Whicher or The Murder at Road Hill House, is a true story.
“I came across the story in an old anthology of Victorian crime, published in 1890 and I was amazed I’d never heard of it before,” she explains. “The crime itself is such a wild story and the family story was much more shocking than anything I’d read in a Victorian novel.”
“I was gripped by that, but the thing that made me feel I could write a book about it was Inspector Whicher. I became fascinated by his story, his investigation and what happened to him afterwards.”
That the crime disappeared from history is somewhat of a mystery in itself. The hunt for the Road Hill killer was the biggest new story of the day; Whicher is the prototype of the detective in early crime novels such as those by Wilkie Collins; and the Road Hill House case influenced the conventions of much of the genre – the isolated house; an inside job; bungling local police; a famous detective; false suspects; and the twist in the plot.
Whicher’s successes made him famous but he was a divisive figure. The Victorians were uneasy with the idea of a plain-clothed detective force, and their desire for law and order conflicted with the desire for privacy, an argument that is still hotly debated in today’s England of CCTVs and surveillance.
“The first policemen had to wear their uniforms at all times so that there was absolute clarity about who was an agent of the state,” Summerscale says. “The detective force was introduced very discreetly. There were only eight men to begin with and their existence was only revealed once they started to become successful. There was always an ambivalence about them – they were heroic but they were regarded as dangerous because they were in disguise, sort of invisible.”
“I was fascinated by the way detection had become invented and established at the same time that the idea of the nuclear family and the sanctity of the domestic space was really taking hold. The detectives were agents of surveillance that arrived at the time that the English were getting obsessive about their privacy.”
Although still very much a stratified society, class distinctions were beginning to blur in Victorian England and the Road Hill case highlights the concomitant tensions of this. The force was drawn from the working class and social distinctions hampered the investigations to a large extent. Whether through fear of causing offence or through a disinclination to believe that a member of the family could be to blame, the police were anxious to pin the blame on one of the servants.
“The local police’s discretion meant that they didn’t really interview the family in any depth,” Kate explains, “they didn’t search for evidence very thoroughly; and by the time Jack Whicher came down from London, the culprit or culprits had had a fortnight in which to dispose of the evidence and get their stories straight.”
“Whicher himself behaved as if class was not an issue. He interviewed all the witnesses he wanted; he searched through the private drawers that he wished, including the underwear drawers of the ladies of the house; and he came to his conclusions and he was punished very severely for that boldness.”
Hounded in the press and even in the House of Commons, the Road Hill case ruined Whicher’s reputation and his career.
“He was seen as a very odious figure who had come up with these grotesque fantasies about the murder of the little boy and ruined the reputation of the family and contributed to their grief. He was later vindicated, but I got the feeling he was made a scapegoat for everyone’s fascination with the case.”

The Suspicions of Mr Whicher or The Murder at Road Hill House is published by Bloomsbury