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The Suspicions of Mr Whicher or the Murder at Road Hill House

House of horrors

Kate Summerscale
Bloomsbury, 384pp, £14.99,

Andrew Taylor

Wednesday, 16th April 2008

Andrew Taylor on Kate Summerscale's account of a historical murder

But in this excellent book Summerscale does more: she also examines the impact of the case on Victorian Britain and traces its cultural consequences. Whicher set in train a long line of fictional police detectives, from Sergeant Cuff and Inspector Bucket to Morse and Rebus. The Road House case — the prosperous family, the closed circle of suspects and the country-house setting —- provided the template for the type of detective fiction that dominated the last century and still flourishes.

Summerscale quotes a remark of Chandler’s — that a detective story is a tragedy with a happy ending, since it absolves us of murder; it removes death. But she also observes that Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw ‘runs the detective story backwards, unravelling all its comforts.’ She achieves a similar effect here, for there was nothing remotely comfortable about Saville Kent’s murder. It lent substance to the unsettling notion that no one is safe, even in one’s own home, even in the bosom of one’s own family. Perhaps especially not there. In other words, each of us may be a victim — or indeed a murderer.

Andrew Taylor’s latest novel is Bleeding Heart Square (Michael Joseph, May).

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