On the morning of 30 June 1860, young Francis Saville Kent, not yet four years old, was found to be missing from the family home, Road Hill House, in the village of Road in Wiltshire. A search was mounted, and the child’s body was soon found, wrapped in a blanket from his cot and stuffed into a privy in the grounds of the house. His throat had been cut to the bone by some sharp instrument.

After an inept investigation by the local police, the suspicions of Detective Inspector Jack Whicher of Scotland Yard fixed upon the victim’s half-sister Constance Kent, only sixteen at the time of the murder. Golden Age crime writer John Rhode re-examines the case through original reports and source material.