They assumed, and wanted to assume, otherwise. Mary was the attraction and they knew it, and crudely expressed it in conversation wherever they were likely to be. In due course one gentleman by the name of Frank, from the Vallis region of Frome, began to take an especial interest in Mary, and, it may be said, she a more common interest in him. But his visits were not veiled in secrecy for neither of them had anything to hide; however it did not take long for the local ladies to find out who he was. They soon learned whence he came, his local interests, his opulence and …that he was married. Moreover, they knew that his wife was stupid and incapable of doing things for herself … a quite unreliable and incompetent person. Since Mary was not wholly welcome in the village, and therefore had little conversation with other people, she had not accumulated these facts. She had never asked Frank if he was married, and he had never thought it necessary to inform her. Although the authorities had registered Frank’s wife as stupid, she was not sufficiently insane to be put away, and neither was she sufficiently deranged to fail to see a change in her husband’s demeanour. She noticed that something had happened in his life that had changed him completely.   He was kinder to her than usual and was more considerate to her than he had been for a long time, as though he was compensating for doing something he shouldn’t… like going out more in the evenings than he had done for many years. He had changed; and she was going to find out the reason and by question and answer she was soon able to put her pieces together. One autumn night, if I remember rightly October 20th, when the rain was beating down and the wind was very strong, Frank, against all reason, decided to go out. Soon after he had gone, his wife, disguising herself, went out into the stormy night also. She walked all the way to Bull’s Green and waited outside Mary’s house in the shelter of an old barn. After an hour or so the front door of Mary’s cottage opened and the old lady saw her husband depart.   This wily woman had gathered her facts correctly! As soon as the horse’s footsteps had died away, she knocked gently on Mary’s door and Mary, assuming for some reason that Frank had returned, opened it only to be confronted with a vicious, stupid woman in the doorway. Early in the morning of Thursday, October 21st, a farmer was riding in the valley below Murtry Hill, just north of Murder Combe, when he saw a lady huddled near some rocks protruding from the hillside. Considering it none of his business he approached her only tentatively until he noticed blood on the rock as well as on the woman’s hair. Leaving caution aside, he dismounted to obtain a closer view and found without doubt, that she had been dead for some time. Very soon a constable and doctor were at the scene. It was also on the same day that Frank, having noticed his wife was missing, reported the loss to the constable at Frome and very soon much to Frank’s amazement, he was being asked to certify the dead woman as his wife. But the constable and the coroner, in charge of the proceedings, were surprised to see in the dead woman’s clenched fist were strands of golden hair and pieces of skin caught in her long fingernails. continue.... back