The Murder At Road Hill House

Shedunnit

Caroline Crampton

Arts, Books

4.9 • 1.4K Ratings

🗓️ 14 July 2021

⏱️ 34 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

This sensational case from 1860 ignited a wave of detective fever that we still haven't recovered from. Thanks to my guest Robin Stevens — you can hear her on two previous episodes of the show, Back to School and Death Sets Sail on the Nile, and her new collection of short stories about schoolgirl detectives Hazel Wong and Daisy Wells is called Once Upon A Crime and comes out in August 2021. We do discuss the outcome of the Road Hill House case, so if you want to read The Suspicions of Mr Whicher or any other account without knowing what happens at the end, do that before you listen to this. My new map and guide, Agatha Christie's England, is available for pre order now in physical form at shedunnitshow.com/map or as an audiobook at shedunnitshow.com/audiomap. Books mentioned and sources used: — The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins — "The Adventure of Silver Blaze" from The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle — Bleak House by Charles Dickens — The Suspicions of Mr Whicher by Kate Summerscale — Clouds of Witness by Dorothy L Sayers — "Constance Kent" by John Rhode in The Anatomy of Murder — "Miss Kent and Major Street: The Case of Constance Kent" by The Passing Tramp NB: Links to Blackwell's are affiliate links, meaning that the podcast receives a small commission when you purchase a book there (the price remains the same for you). Blackwell's is a UK independent bookselling chain that ships internationally at no extra charge. Thanks to today’s sponsors: — Best Fiends, you can download Best Fiends free on the Apple App Store or Google Play. — Girlfriend Collective, get $25 off your $100+ purchase of sustainable, ethically made activewear at girlfriend.com/shedunnit. To be the first to know about future developments with the podcast, sign up for the newsletter at shedunnitshow.com/newsletter. The podcast is on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram as @ShedunnitShow, and you can find it in all major podcast apps. Make sure you’re subscribed so you don’t miss the next episode. Click here to do that now in your app of choice. Find a full transcript of this episode at shedunnitshow.com/themurderatroadhillhousetranscript Music by Audioblocks and Blue Dot Sessions. See shedunnitshow.com/musiccredits for more details. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Why are you listening to his podcast when there are puddles to be jumped in?
0:05.2	Come on, let's get outside and take on autumn.
0:09.4	All the need is a pair of wallys in a pot of patty for low.
0:13.8	It's made with calcium and put them in D for immune support.
0:18.4	My mum says healthy mischief needs healthy bones.
0:23.0	And she knows best most of the time.
0:26.3	Take on autumn with patty for low.
0:34.3	Do you feel an uncomfortable heat at the pit of your stomach?
0:39.1	Is there a nasty thumping at the top of your head?
0:43.4	If there is, then you might have come down with a case of detective fever.
0:49.3	According to Wilkie Collins's 1868 novel The Moon Stone,
0:53.6	these were the symptoms, along with a sudden passion for seeking out knowledge and gathering
0:58.8	clues. This story was a popular early appearance of detection as we know it today in fiction.
1:06.4	It strongly influenced what came next in the genre and was greatly admired by some of the early
1:11.6	20th centuries biggest who done it enthusiast. Dorothy L. Sayers called it probably the very
1:17.9	finest detective story ever written. And T. S. Eliot declared it the first, the longest,
1:24.2	and the best of modern English detective novels. But the ideas and tropes we find in The Moon Stone
1:30.3	didn't appear out of thin air. Collins was drawing both on the real life development of detection
1:36.4	in Britain and on one particular murder case that had gripped the nation just a few years before.
1:42.6	A case that so perfectly contains many of the main features of a golden age detective story
1:49.3	that it's difficult to believe that it even happened outside of a book.
1:54.4	Today, we're exploring what happened at Road Hill House on the 30th of June 1860.
	...

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