Superintendent Foley watched over the body in the laundry. Towards evening, he reported, Elizabeth Gough came in and kissed her former charge on the hand. Before the superintendent went home he asked for something to eat or drink: 'I scarce wet my lips or ate a mouthful all day.' Samuel poured him a glass of port wine and water.
The life of the house went on. Holcombe cut the grass on the lawn with the mowing machine. Cox and Kerslake made the beds. As was her custom on a Saturday evening, Cox took a clean nightdress from Constance's room to air before the kitchen fire. Constance's linen was easily distinguished from that of her sisters, said Cox, because it was 'of a very coarse texture'. Her nightdresses had 'plain frills', while Mary Ann's had lace and Elizabeth's embroidery.
On Saturday night the older girls slept apart: Elizabeth went downstairs to share her stepmother's bed, 'as papa stayed up' till morning, and Constance joined Mary Ann, 'for the sake of company'. Elizabeth Gough, after helping Mrs Kent and Mary Amelia dress for bed, went upstairs to sleep in Cox and Kerslake's room. Eveline, presumably, was wheeled into her parents' bedroom, leaving the nursery empty; and only William went to bed alone.
Foley watched over Saville's corpse again the next day. All the Misses Kent came to kiss the boy's body, as did Elizabeth Gough. Afterwards the nursemaid told Mrs Kent that she had kissed 'the poor little child'. According to one report, Mrs Kent said that Gough 'appeared very sorry and cried because he was dead'; but according to another, she said that Gough 'frequently spoke of him with sorrow and affection, but I did not see her cry'. The female suspects in the case were constantly scrutinised for kisses and tears, the tokens of innocence.
On Sunday night Constance slept alone. William locked his door 'from fear'.
3
SHALL NOT GOD SEARCH THIS OUT?
2–14 July
On Monday, 2 July 1860, after months of wind and rain, the season turned: 'there is, after all, some chance of our having a taste of summer', reported the Bristol Daily Post. At 10 a.m. the coroner for Wiltshire, George Sylvester of Trowbridge, opened the inquiry into Saville Kent's death. As was customary, he convened the inquest in the village's main public house, the Red Lion inn. A long, low stone building with a wide doorway, the Red Lion sat at the dip in the centre of the village, where Upper Street and Lower Street converged. Both of these roads – lined with old cottages – led up towards Road Hill, the summit of which was half a mile from the pub.
Among the ten jurors were the innkeeper of the Red Lion, a butcher, two farmers, a shoemaker, a stonemason, a millwright and the registrar for local births and deaths. Most of them lived either in Upper Street or Lower Street. The Reverend Peacock was foreman. Rowland Rodway, despite his misgivings, watched the proceedings on Samuel Kent's behalf.
The jury followed the coroner to Road Hill House to look at Saville's body in the laundry room. Superintendent Foley let them in. The corpse was that of a 'pretty little boy', reported the Bath Chronicle, 'but it presented a horrible spectacle, from its hideous, gaping wounds which gave it a ghastly appearance; still, the child's face wore a placid, innocent expression'. The jurors also inspected the drawing room, the nursery, the master bedroom, the privy and the grounds. As they left to return to the Red Lion an hour and a half later, Foley asked the coroner which members of the house-hold would be required as witnesses. Just the housemaid, who had fastened the windows, said the coroner, and the nursemaid, who had charge of the boy when he was abducted.
Sarah Cox and Elizabeth Gough headed down to the Red Lion together. Cox had sorted the week's washing into two large baskets, which she left in a lumber room for the laundress, Hester Holley. Before noon Mrs Holley and her youngest daughter, Martha, collected the baskets and carried them back to their cottage. They also took with them the laundry book, in which Mary Ann Kent had listed each item placed in the baskets. (Mary Ann's stained nightdress, which had been in the custody of Eliza Dallimore, the policeman's wife, was returned to her the same morning.)
As soon as Mrs Holley got home, within five minutes, she and all three of her daughters (one of them, Jane, the wife of William Nutt) opened the baskets and went through the clothes. 'It was not our custom to open the clothes so soon after receiving them,' said Mrs Holley later. Her reason for doing so was surprising: 'We heard a rumour that a nightdress was missing.' The Holley women discovered that Constance's nightdress, though listed in the book, was not in either of the baskets.
Down in the village the Red Lion had become so crowded with spectators that the coroner decided to move the inquest to the Temperance Hall, which lay a few minutes' walk up Lower Street towards Road Hill House. The hall was 'crammed to suffocation', reported the Trowbridge and North Wilts Advertiser. Foley produced Saville's nightclothes and his blanket, both matted with blood, and passed them to the jury.
Cox and Gough were first to give evidence. Cox described locking the house on Friday night, and finding the drawing-room window open the following morning. Gough gave a detailed account of putting Saville to bed on Friday night, and finding him missing in the morning. She described him as a cheerful, happy, good-tempered child.
The coroner next took evidence from Thomas Benger, who had discovered the body, and Stephen Millet, the butcher. Millet handed over the piece of bloodied newspaper found at the scene, and remarked on the quantity of blood in the privy: 'From my trade as a butcher I am acquainted with the loss of blood from animals when dying.' He estimated he had seen a pint and a half on the privy floor.
'My impression,' said Millet, 'is that the child was held with his legs upwards, and his head hanging down, and his throat cut in that position.' The spectators gasped.
No one could identify the piece of newspaper found by the privy. A reporter suggested that they were fragments of the Morning Star. Cox and Gough testified that Mr Kent did not take that paper: he subscribed to The Times, the Frome Times and the Civil Service Gazette. This suggested – faintly – that an outsider had been at the murder scene.
Joshua Parsons was the next witness. He reported his summons to the house and the conclusions of his post-mortem: Saville had been killed before three in the morning; his throat had been cut and his chest punctured, and he also showed signs of suffocation. Three pints of blood should have come out of the body 'at a gush', he said, but much less had been found.
After Parsons' evidence, the coroner tried to bring the inquest to a close, but the Reverend Peacock, as foreman of the jury, said that his fellow jurors wanted to examine Constance and William Kent. Peacock himself dissented – he felt the family should be left alone – but he was obliged to report that the others were insistent. Some jurors were demanding to interview everyone in the Kent family: 'Try them all; show no respect to one more than to another,' 'Give us the whole.' The villagers, said Stapleton, suspected the coroner of protecting the Kents: 'One law for the rich and another for the poor.' Unwillingly, the coroner agreed that Constance and William be interviewed, but on condition that the examination take place at their home, so as not to 'expose those children to insult'. He was disturbed by the way the pair were 'spoken of loudly in terms of execration, as being the murderers'. The jury returned to the house.
The interviews, which took place in the kitchen, were brief – three or four minutes each.
'I knew nothing whatever of his death, until he was found,' said Constance. 'I know nothing whatever of the murder . . . Everyone was kind to the child.' When asked about Elizabeth Gough, she said, 'I have found the nursemaid generally quiet and attentive, and perform her duties in every respect as could be wished.' According to the Somerset and Wilts Journal, she 'gave evidence in a subdued and audible tone, without betraying any special emotion, her eyes fixed on the ground'.