At a quarter or twenty minutes to seven, the nurse went into Mrs. Kent’s room. Supposing that Mrs. Kent had both Mary Amelia and Francis, her object was to ask for one of them so that she might dress it. She knocked twice on the door but obtained no answer, and in view of Mrs. Kent’s condition thought it better to disturb her no further. However, she made another attempt at a quarter-past seven, when she found Mrs. Kent dressed in her dressing-gown. On that occasion Mrs. Kent told her that she had not seen the child. The nurse then went upstairs to the second floor to make inquiries of Mary Ann and Elizabeth. At the time of Constance Kent’s appearance before the magistrates, the nurse gave the following evidence upon this point:
Miss Constance slept in a room which is between where her two sisters sleep and where the cook and housemaid sleep. The partition between them is very thin. You can even hear a paper rustling in either room. When I went to inquire of the Misses Kent the prisoner came to the door. I observed nothing unusual in her manner at the time.1
Meanwhile the housemaid had made a significant discovery. This is best described in her own words.1
On Friday evening I fastened the door and shutters in the drawing-room as usual. I am positive that I did so. I have no doubt in the matter whatever. The shutters fasten with iron bars and each has two brass bolts besides. That was all made secure on Friday evening. The door has a bolt and a lock and I bolted it and turned the key of the lock, so that anyone coming from the house would have the power of unfastening the door and windows and anyone coming in from the outside must smash the windows and then would not be able to open the shutters without using a centre bit or making a hole in the shutters. On Friday evening I retired to bed about a quarter to eleven and rose about five minutes past six on Saturday morning. Mr. Kent was the last person who went to bed that evening. He is in the habit of staying till the last.
When I came down in the morning, I saw that the drawing-room door was a little open, the bolt was back and the lock turned. There was no displacement of the furniture in the room. Of the windows, the lower shutters were open, the bolts being back and the window slightly open. There was no blood, footmarks or displacement in the room.
Search within the house having proved unavailing, the alarm was given. Mr. Kent himself took horse and started for Trowbridge, some five miles away, to inform the superintendent of police. The neighbours were called in to assist the search. Two of these found the missing child. His body was in the earth-closet beside the shrubbery. The throat had been cut, almost severing the head from the body, and there was a deep wound in the breast. The body was wrapped in a bloodstained blanket which had been taken from its cot. Mr. Kent was recalled and a doctor was summoned. On his arrival he, Dr. Parsons, saw that the child had been dead at least five hours. The consensus of medical opinion subsequently agreed that death must have taken place about 1 a.m. on Saturday morning.
The investigation into the crime was at first carried out without the slightest attempt at method. Mr. Henry Rhodes, in his Some Persons Unknown1 says:
In this affair, the search seems to have been carried out with great negligence and indiscriminately by the police and the neighbours, while the interrogation of the members of the family left a great deal to be desired. Scientific methods, whether in the matter of taking evidence or in the discovery of clues, were not then popular.
This was no exaggeration. The local constable, though an early visitor to the scene, took no steps to preserve such clues as might exist. He seems to have departed almost immediately to inform his superiors. Meanwhile, the excited villagers took every advantage of their opportunity. To quote a contemporary account1:
The house and premises were then minutely searched. Male and female searchers in the course of the day examined every individual and every room, box and water-closet about the place, emptied the earth-closet and scoured the vicinity, but without finding any knife or garment stained with blood, or any article to afford the least clue, except a piece of flannel apparently worn as a chest protector which was underneath the child’s body stained with blood.
It was hardly to be expected that the zeal of these amateurs should be rewarded by success.
The inquest was held upon the following Monday. The foreman of the jury was a local parson, a close friend of Mr. Kent and his family. He seems to have done his best to shield the family from any breath of the suspicions which had already been aroused. The coroner seems to have sympathized with his attitude. No member of the family was called upon to give evidence until a protest was made by a majority of the jury. The coroner reluctantly acceded to their request. He said:
I must say, I do not see what end will be answered by it. They will only confirm what we have already heard and say they know no more about it. But it is the wish of the majority of the jury, it must be done.
The jury then requested that Constance and William Kent might be examined. The evidence given by Constance Kent on this occasion will be considered later. The coroner then recommended the jury to record a verdict of murder by some person or persons unknown. The majority of the jurymen were not inclined to accept this advice, but were over-ruled by their foreman. This verdict was actually returned after the inquest had lasted five hours—an hour and a half of which, it is stated, were spent by the jury in examining the body.
The next step in the investigation of the crime was an inquiry by the Trowbridge Bench, which had for its ostensible purpose the examination of witnesses. This inquiry opened on July 9th and was continued at intervals until the 27th. During this period one of the magistrates approached the Home Secretary and, as a result, Inspector Whicher, an officer of Scotland Yard, was sent to Road to assist in the investigations.
Whicher was an extremely able man. He did not arrive on the scene until a fortnight after the crime had been committed, but he set to work methodically to examine such clues as still remained. As a result he accumulated evidence which seemed to him to point to Constance Kent as the culprit. At his instance she was arrested. After being in custody for a week, she appeared before the magistrate and was triumphantly acquitted. Local opinion was not favourable to Whicher. In its eyes Constance Kent had been martyred in the cause of officialdom. Loud applause greeted the announcement of the chairman of the Bench that the prisoner should be released on her father becoming bound for her on £200, to appear when called upon.
Whicher returned to London to be overwhelmed with censure for arresting an innocent girl. But none the less he remained convinced of her guilt. On November 23rd of the same year he wrote to the Chief Superintendent of the Bristol police upon the subject. In the course of this letter he said:
Now, in my opinion, if there was ever one man to be pitied or who has been more calumniated than another, that unfortunate man is Mr. Kent. It was bad enough to have his darling child cruelly murdered, but to be branded as the murderer is far worse, and, according to the present state of public opinion, he will be so branded till the day of his death unless a confession is made by the person whom I firmly believe committed the deed. I have little doubt that the confession would have been made if Miss Constance had been remanded for another week.
The next sensation connected with the case was an extraordinary one. An unemployed mason who eventually gave his name as John Edmond Gagg, accosted a railway policeman at Wolverton station in Buckinghamshire and confessed to the crime. He was taken to Trowbridge and there examined by the magistrate. Short examination showed that never in his life had he been to Road and that he was many miles away at the commission of the crime.
The next step was the opening of an inquiry by Mr. Slack, a solicitor practising in Bath. Mr. Slack refused to divulge by which authority he acted. All he would say was that “those who instructed him had the authority by the Home Office for so doing.” His inquiry opened on September 17th and, apparently as the result of