The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher

"I’ve also written books about a poltergeist in south London, about a scandalous divorce, and about a cross-dressing motorboat racer who ruled an island in the Bahamas and was devoted to a small leather doll. That was my first book, and grew out of an obituary I wrote for the Daily Telegraph , where I used to work. Like many of my books, it originated in old newspapers: I started by reconstructing the subject’s life from yellowing cuttings in the Telegraph’s library. Old newspapers usually provide much more detail than contemporary news reports. I also love reading them for the attitudes they reveal, their different and similar curiosities."

"This is a completely gripping book that looks at a notorious Victorian murder case, often referred to as the Road Hill House case, involving the murder of the young boy, apparently taken from his bed, one night in 1860. A search for the missing boy, the product of his father’s second marriage, results in the discovery of his corpse in an outdoor privy. A central figure is a man named Jonathan Whicher, one of Scotland Yard’s first detectives, who influenced writers like Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins . The book examines the interplay between literature and the historical circumstances of this case. Summerscale writes that the case is modelled on what we think of as the “classic country-house murder,” which is “an assault on propriety, an aggressive exposure of base needs and desires.” This is a template familiar to us through many of the later Golden Age detection fiction books, including the works of Agatha Christie. In other words, there’s a house with secrets; there are a limited number of suspects; there’s the possibility of a Mr. X from the outside; but really, in all likelihood, somebody in the house must be responsible. Support Five Books Five Books interviews are expensive to produce. If you're enjoying this interview, please support us by donating a small amount . Summerscale manages to balance the psychological dynamics of living in a house with many secrets and tensions in the Kent family and the mechanics of the crime solving plot, exactly where are the different members of the household at critical moments. So the story zips along, drawing out the central mystery, without sacrificing psychological depth or historical context. By comparison, Roughead writes a story about the same case focused on Constance Kent (who, spoiler alert, eventually confesses to the murder of her half-brother), and he lets you know right at the beginning of the story that she’s the murderer, simply because he can’t resist a slightly convoluted joke. And, unlike Summerscale, who suggests that she may have been protecting someone else in the family, he doesn’t admit any doubt or uncertainty in the solution. It’s a really interesting question. One of the many terrific features of The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher is that Summerscale points out the influence of this case on Victorian fiction. She notes that some of the relationships in the house seem to influence Dickens later. There are definite echoes: the relationship between Constance and her brother William is much like the siblings in The Mystery of Edwin Drood , and there are a number of features which seem to influence Collins’s The Moonstone as well. There’s no doubt that Dickens and Collins took plot details from sensational true crime cases to put in their novels. But there are also certain themes that have a universality to them and therefore have an appeal that makes for good newspaper fodder. Though there’s no good reason to kill someone, we understand some common motives. For instance, in this book, there are the jealousies at play between the father’s first family and the second with the convenient figure of the governess turned ‘evil’ stepmother. It’s no coincidence that it captures the imagination. “There’s no doubt that Dickens and Collins took plot details from sensational true crime cases to put in their novels.” To a certain extent in these cases, and in the true crime books they spawn, the success in explaining the murder comes from fitting either the perpetrator or the victim—or both—into these readily available tropes, as opposed to seeing them in their particularity."

"Yes, and what I liked about this book—and I guess I read this probably when it came out, around 2009—is that it got to one of the larger questions we’ve talked about: it’s about a mysterious murder that takes place inside a house, but she uses the story to get at broader themes of class and the evolution of modern detection. She also—I felt, wonderfully—used the case to look at the beginning of our fascination with the art of detection. And that reflects my own bias because I’m always interested in the evolution of detection and detectives. One of the fascinating things Summerscale does is document how the case, and the way it was handled by Scotland Yard, influenced so much of the fiction that followed—take Charles Dickens books , for example. So there’s this fascinating interplay between a real crime and how it influences literature and popular culture, which in turn influences how we as humans process real crimes. We think of O J Simpson or other crimes that have these deep cultural resonances, and this was a case like that, obviously set long in the past, that had that kind of resonance and influence. And Summerscale really got at the heart of that. She put the crime in a larger context. Yes, and Summerscale brilliantly uses the tropes of classic detective stories—the hunting for clues and piecing them together—which gives her book a certain kind of pleasure. Many crimes can also tell you something larger about society, and this one got very much at the notion of how feel about the sanctity of our home, because it was a crime committed by someone in the house. And the book also explored our queasiness with detectives, who are seen as these people who have admirable Sherlockian powers. But there’s often, especially back then, a suspicion: ‘Is he a spy?’ ‘Is he prodding into our lives like another intruder in the sanctity of our home’? The main character is someone who certainly arouses many of those admirations and suspicions. It varies so much. It really depends on the individuals developing it—often it demeans the material, and often it elevates it. What’s interesting about Summerscale’s case is that the story of the crime became fused in many ways with mass communication. As technology made printing newspapers and books cheaper in the 19th century, crime became a way to sell newspapers and one of the first forms of very popular literature, like the adventure stories of the Victorian era. What Summerscale does such a good job of is tracing the way this crime captured the popular imagination, and why we are so fascinated with detective stories. They tap into our deepest fear—that some force will rip away our safety and security. And they also deal with our hope that some counter force can come in and resolve the evil or catch the criminal, restoring our sense of security. Of course, the way these crimes are portrayed over time has changed as well—the criminal has often gone from someone who is seen as purely bad to a more complex antihero. Which is interesting given that crime stories, certainly in literature, reflect what’s happening and the mood of the populace of the time. Yes. That’s like the very famous Sherlock Holmes quote. Conan Doyle has Holmes say to Watson that “Life is infinitely stranger than anything which the mind of man could invent”—basically, if you could peer into every house, the stories that come out of them would be more astonishing than anything you could ever invent in fiction. I really believe that is true, and why this genre can be so powerful."