“Yes. Why didn’t she do that? Why would anybody kill a child in a nursery with two other children and the nursemaid present? Why would Mr. Kent do it?”
The guide contrived to look innocent. “Why would he be there in the first place?” he said casually.
Elizabeth narrowed her eyes. “Well, he fooled around with the first nursemaid, didn’t he? We know he did, because he took her for carriage rides while the first Mrs. Kent languished in her bedroom. And when his first wife died, he married the nursemaid! Mary Pratt, who was baby Savile’s mother. So you think he was up to his old tricks again?”
“I can see how it might be habit forming,” said Rowan, thinking of various escapades on his boat.
“Okay.” Elizabeth nodded, following the sequence now. “Mary Pratt Kent is asleep. Samuel gets up and goes into the nursery to fool around with the new nursemaid Elizabeth Gough. Baby Savile wakes up and sees them. Perhaps he starts to cry, which might wake the household-and then their little tryst will be discovered.” She was staring off into an expanse of blue sky, picturing the scene in the dark nursery at Road Hill House. “Samuel Kent just wants the child to shut up. He tries to make him stop crying, but he doesn’t know anything about child care or he’s too excited to be cautious, so he slams the baby’s face into its mattress and holds it. A little too hard, a little too long.”
“It wouldn’t take much,” Rowan pointed out. “Children are more fragile than adults. A minute. Not much more.”
Elizabeth shuddered. “The child suddenly goes limp and he realizes he’s killed it. Elizabeth Gough knows, though, doesn’t she?”
“Yes, but what can she do? It’s 1865. If she admits she was having it off with her employer, her character is ruined and she’ll never get a husband or another job. She might even be charged as an accessory to the murder.”
“And instead of thinking about his poor dead son, Samuel Kent worries about his own reputation. He wraps the child in the crib blanket and carries it out of the house.” She flipped through her notes again. “Which is why the housemaid found the door ajar at five A.M.! And then to make it look like an outside killing, he cut the baby’s throat.”
“Murderers have done that sort of thing,” Rowan remarked. “In the 1970s the Green Beret doctor Jeffrey MacDonald killed his wife in an argument, and then murdered his two toddlers to make it appear that a band of drug-crazed hippies had killed the family.”
Momentarily distracted from the Road Hill murder, Elizabeth smiled. “Any band of hippies that would kill two babies and a pregnant woman, and then leave a husky Green Beret soldier with only a scratch, would have to be on a ton of drugs. I don’t think there’s that much stupidity in the world.”
“No, but he nearly got away with it. It took ten years to get the civilian trial that convicted him. And Samuel Kent got away with it, too, didn’t he? He was an upstanding man, well-to-do, and obviously sane. Although people did suspect him, they were finally persuaded to believe the confession of an unbalanced adolescent.”
Rowan pointed to Elizabeth’s newly purchased crime book. “Did you find a transcript of Constance’s confession in there?”
“I remember seeing it,” she said, leafing through the pages. “Here it is. Shall I read it? Okay, this is in 1865, after she’s confessed to her half brother’s murder, and everybody wants to know why she did it. Her lawyer, Mr. Coleridge, asks the court’s permission to say two things on Constance’s behalf:
“ ‘First, solemnly in the presence of Almighty God, she wishes me to say that the guilt is hers alone, and that her father and others who have so long suffered most unjust and cruel suspicion are wholly and absolutely innocent-’” With a thoughtful expression Elizabeth looked up from the book. “You think that’s why she confessed, don’t you? Because suspicion was still lingering over the household, perhaps damaging her father’s career. The tension of continuing scandal was probably very hard for a young girl to bear. Maybe she thought she had the least to lose.”
“And the second part of her statement?”
Elizabeth ran her finger down the page. “Here it is. ‘Secondly, she was not driven to this act, as has been asserted, by unkind treatment at home, as she met with nothing there but tender and forbearing love…’ What a crock! So she supposedly had no motive at all for killing her young half brother? Just a whim, huh?”
“So she would have us believe,” said Rowan in a carefully neutral voice. “Let me see the book. I’ve been told by a fellow crime buff, a Mr. O’Connor, that we will find her explanation of the crime most informative.” He skimmed the pages of the chapter on Constance Kent, paying special attention to the blocks of print in smaller typeface, denoting a quotation from court documents or other primary sources. “This must be it,” he said. “Dr. John Charles Bucknill, the physician who examined Constance by order of the government to determine whether she was of sound mind, published an account of her confession in several newspapers, supposedly at the prisoner’s request.” Rowan considered. “Well, perhaps she did ask him to publish it. If her intention was to divert suspicion from the rest of the family, she would need to convince as many people as possible of her own guilt.”
Elizabeth frowned. “Go on. How does she say she did it?”
Rowan adjusted his glasses and began to read in carefully measured tones. “ ‘A few days before the murder she obtained possession of a razor from the green case in her father’s wardrobe, and secreted it. This was the sole instrument which she used. She also secreted a candle with matches, by placing them in the corner of the closet in the garden, where the murder was committed.’ ”
Elizabeth looked up sharply. “It was not!” she declared. “The police investigation said that the child was smothered in his own bed! The throat-cutting was postmortem. Why should she lie about that?”
“Why indeed,” murmured Rowan. “Let us continue. ‘On the night of the murder she undressed herself and went to bed, because she expected that her sisters would visit her room. She lay awake, watching, until she thought that the household were all asleep, and soon after midnight she left her bedroom and went downstairs and opened the drawing room door and the window shutters.’ ”
“How very premeditated!” said Elizabeth sarcastically. “Why, there’s mafia hit men who are less thorough than that. And this is a sixteen-year-old planning to kill a baby for no particular reason. Sure!”
Without comment, Rowan resumed the narrative. “ ‘She then went up into the nursery, withdrew the blanket from between the sheet and the counterpane, and placed it on the side of the cot. She then took the child from his bed and carried him downstairs through the drawing room.’ ”
Elizabeth interrupted again. “What about the suffocation?”
“She seems unaware of that detail, doesn’t she? Where was I?-‘Having the child in one arm, she raised the drawing room window with the other hand, went round the house and into the closet, lighted the candle and placed it on the seat of the closet, the child being wrapped in the blanket and still sleeping, and while the child was in this position, she inflicted the wound in his throat. She says that she thought the blood would never come-’”
“It wouldn’t if he was already dead,” said Elizabeth. She looked thoughtful. “But she says nothing of having smothered him in his bed.”
“No,” Rowan agreed, “in fact, she says that the child was not killed, so she thrust the razor into its left side, and put the body, with the blanket round it, into the vault.”
“What?” cried Elizabeth. “She claims that she stabbed Savile with the razor? I’d like to have seen her try that!”