osprey_archer (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
osprey_archer) wrote2012-06-03 10:43 pm
osprey_archer) wrote2012-06-03 10:43 pm
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The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher
I swooped through Kate Summerscale’s The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher: A Shocking Murder and the Undoing of a Great Victorian Detective in a couple of late nights. Being the account of a real-life unsolved locked-house murder, this is not the best book to read late at night, but the book is so admirably paced and the story so compelling that I simply had to keep going.
Compelling though the book is, it’s also frustrating. This is not Summerscale’s fault, except insofar as she chose an inherently frustrating topic. Three-year-old Francis Saville Kent was murdered by a member of his family in the wee hours of the morning, and while his half-sister Constance later confessed to the deed - and got twenty years in prison for it - her confession is sufficiently riddled in implausibilities that the murder is still hazed in mystery. Could she have carried a nearly-four-year-old boy as far as she said she carried him? Without waking him up? And the razor she claims to have used couldn’t have made some of the wounds on his body.
And most important, why did she do it? She claimed that it was to get revenge against her stepmother, who had supplanted Constance’s own mother in Mr. Kent’s affections before the first Mrs. Kent died. An understandable motive, as far as it goes. But there’s little sense of Constance’s inner life - she didn’t keep a diary, or write revealing letters - so the question can’t really be answered.
This is why detective fiction is often so much more satisfying than detective fact.
On a different note, I want more Detective Jack Whicher. Possibly a whole television series based on the life of Detective Jack Whicher - come on, BBC! You know everyone loves a Victorian detective!
Plus, his first name is Jack, which makes him automatically extra-awesome.
Whicher was one of the first Scotland Yard detectives. Before the Kent case wrecked his reputation - the papers didn’t take kindly to a lower-class upstart accusing a gently bred young lady of murder - he had a fascinating career. He investigated the most mysterious mid-century murders, and went to Poland to advise the Russian government how to set up a detective force. THINK OF THE ESPIONAGE PLOTS, BBC.
Compelling though the book is, it’s also frustrating. This is not Summerscale’s fault, except insofar as she chose an inherently frustrating topic. Three-year-old Francis Saville Kent was murdered by a member of his family in the wee hours of the morning, and while his half-sister Constance later confessed to the deed - and got twenty years in prison for it - her confession is sufficiently riddled in implausibilities that the murder is still hazed in mystery. Could she have carried a nearly-four-year-old boy as far as she said she carried him? Without waking him up? And the razor she claims to have used couldn’t have made some of the wounds on his body.
And most important, why did she do it? She claimed that it was to get revenge against her stepmother, who had supplanted Constance’s own mother in Mr. Kent’s affections before the first Mrs. Kent died. An understandable motive, as far as it goes. But there’s little sense of Constance’s inner life - she didn’t keep a diary, or write revealing letters - so the question can’t really be answered.
This is why detective fiction is often so much more satisfying than detective fact.
On a different note, I want more Detective Jack Whicher. Possibly a whole television series based on the life of Detective Jack Whicher - come on, BBC! You know everyone loves a Victorian detective!
Plus, his first name is Jack, which makes him automatically extra-awesome.
Whicher was one of the first Scotland Yard detectives. Before the Kent case wrecked his reputation - the papers didn’t take kindly to a lower-class upstart accusing a gently bred young lady of murder - he had a fascinating career. He investigated the most mysterious mid-century murders, and went to Poland to advise the Russian government how to set up a detective force. THINK OF THE ESPIONAGE PLOTS, BBC.
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