The Solution: Case WW-2026-002

The Ploughman's Rest, Lower Addersfield, 17th October 1925

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The ornamental pond behind the Ploughman's Rest is ten feet across and eighteen inches deep. A woman could wade through it without wetting her knees. And yet Mrs Constance Gilroy, who had checked the sluice gate at that pond every night for fourteen years, was found face-down in it at dawn, drowned, with bruises on both shoulders from hands that held her under.

Three people were staying at the inn that night. One of them killed her.

Let us consider who did not.

Major Cedric Blakeney had the loudest grievance and the most visible evidence against him. He argued with Mrs Gilroy on Friday afternoon about two hundred pounds she owed him. The barmaid heard it through the serving hatch. His cigarette end was found on the flagstones two yards from the pond. His walking stick was leaning against the rear wall of the inn, not upstairs in his room.

But the Major was drunk. Peggy Shire watched him struggle up the stairs at half past nine, and he was not steady on his feet. He had been at the whisky since four o'clock. His cigarette end was dry on Saturday morning, sheltered beneath the eaves, but the fact that he smokes Player's Navy Cut and admits to smoking by the pond that afternoon accounts for it entirely. The stick was forgotten during the same afternoon visit. And the argument itself, though loud, was the argument of a creditor. He wanted his money. Killing Mrs Gilroy would not return a single penny. It would destroy the debt along with the debtor.

Blakeney is a blusterer and a borrower, not a murderer.

Leonard Hapgood found the body. His coat was damp. He has a previous conviction for assault. He tried to leave the inn on Friday morning without paying his bill, and Mrs Gilroy caught him and threatened to telephone his firm.

But Hapgood's movements are accounted for. The landlord of the Fox and Hounds in Upper Addersfield confirms serving him a pint between nine and ten o'clock. Peggy Shire confirms he came in through the front door at half past ten. Mrs Gilroy did not go out to the pond until quarter to eleven, by which time Hapgood was already upstairs. The front door was locked by Peggy at half past ten. It was still locked on Saturday morning. Whoever went to the pond went out the back door, not the front.

Hapgood's damp coat is explained by his own account. He knelt at the edge of the pond and tried to pull Mrs Gilroy out. The dampness on his sleeves and knees is consistent with reaching into shallow water. His assault conviction, four years old, involved a fist outside a pub in Coventry. It has nothing to do with drowning a woman in a Cotswolds pond.

Which leaves Dorothy Vane.

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The Evidence Chain

Mrs Gilroy went to the pond at her usual time. She checked the sluice gate every night without fail. Her shoes were on the flagstones beside the pond, placed neatly, as was her habit. The brass key to the sluice was in her pocket. She went out willingly. She was not dragged.

Dorothy was not in her bedroom at quarter to eleven. She says she heard the scullery door open and close "at about quarter to eleven" from Room 6 on the second floor. She says she recognised the sound: the heavy thud of the oak door and the brush of the felt draught excluder against the frame. She knew it was her aunt going out to check the sluice.

But Sergeant Poole tested this claim. Constable Garside opened and closed the scullery door three times in the ordinary manner while Poole stood in Room 6 with the bedroom door closed. The sound was not audible. Not once. The thick oak door, the heavy draught excluder, and the intervening floor and ceiling timbers between the scullery and the second-floor room prevent the sound from carrying.

A second test with the bedroom door open produced only a faint sound on one of three attempts. A third test, conducted on the back stairs between the ground and first floors, found the scullery door clearly audible.

Dorothy heard the scullery door because she was not in Room 6. She was on the back stairs, or in the scullery itself, waiting for the sound of her aunt going out to the pond. The back staircase connects Room 6 directly to the scullery without passing through the hallway or any of the guest rooms. She could descend and return without being seen or heard by anyone on the first floor.

The scullery cloth was used in the night. Mrs Gilroy cleaned the scullery and finished the washing up at nine o'clock. She laid the kitchen cloth on the draining board to dry. A cotton cloth on a wooden board in the dry October conditions would have dried within two hours. But the cloth was still damp at ten o'clock on Saturday morning, thirteen hours later. Someone used the cloth much later than nine o'clock. Dorothy dried her hands and forearms on it after holding her aunt under the water.

The diary names her. Mrs Gilroy's desk diary, found in the private sitting room, records the confrontation plainly:

Thursday 16th October: "Checked the spring accounts. Three cheques I did not write. D.'s hand. Thirty-one pounds."

Friday 17th October: "Spoke to D. about the cheques. She says she will repay. I said I must write to the bank and to Marchmont's. She took it badly."

D. is Dorothy. Mrs Gilroy had discovered three forged cheques totalling thirty-one pounds, written in Dorothy's hand on the inn's account during her spring visit. She confronted Dorothy on Friday evening and told her she would write to the bank and to Dorothy's employer at Marchmont's Millinery in Cheltenham. For Dorothy, this meant the loss of her position and possible prosecution for forgery. She could not allow that letter to be written.

The bruising confirms it. Dr Frome noted that the hand span of the bruises on Mrs Gilroy's shoulders measured approximately six inches between thumb and outer finger. He observed that a large man's hands would produce a wider span. The bruising was consistent with a woman's hands, or those of a slight man. Major Blakeney is a large man. Hapgood is of average build. Dorothy Vane is a young woman with hands of exactly the size the bruises suggest.

Dorothy went to the pond in the dark. Her aunt was crouching at the sluice gate with her back to the inn. Dorothy seized her by both shoulders and forced her face-down into the water. Mrs Gilroy's knee struck the stone edge of the pond. She had no time to turn, no time to raise her hands. Eighteen inches of water. It was enough.

Dorothy went back through the scullery door, dried her hands and forearms on the kitchen cloth, climbed the back stairs to Room 6, and got into bed. In the morning she came down to find Peggy Shire shaking in the hallway and Hapgood with a wet coat and a white face. She sat in the kitchen and waited.

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Red Herrings Explained

Blakeney's cigarette end and walking stick: Left during his afternoon visit to the pond at four o'clock. The stick was forgotten. The cigarette was smoked six hours before the murder.

The argument about the two hundred pounds: A financial dispute between a creditor and a debtor, overheard by the barmaid. The language of frustration, not premeditation. And killing Mrs Gilroy would extinguish the debt, not recover it.

Hapgood's damp coat and criminal record: The coat was soaked when he knelt at the pond on Saturday morning and tried to pull Mrs Gilroy out. His assault conviction in Coventry was four years old and unconnected. The Fox and Hounds receipt and Peggy Shire's testimony together account for his movements until half past ten. Mrs Gilroy was still alive after that.

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The Key Inconsistency

"At about quarter to eleven I heard the scullery door open and close. It has a particular sound, that door. A heavy thud, then the draught excluder brushing against the frame. I knew what it was immediately."

Dorothy's statement is the warmest and most detailed of the three. She speaks of her aunt with affection. She describes Mrs Gilroy's nightly habits with the easy familiarity of someone who has watched them many times. She offers to stay, to help, to telephone her employer. She directs suspicion at nobody. She is the grieving niece.

But the sound test destroys it. The thick oak scullery door, closed in the ordinary manner, cannot be heard from Room 6 on the second floor with the bedroom door closed. Constable Garside tested it three times. Not once was it audible. The door, the draught excluder, and the intervening timbers absorb the sound completely.

Dorothy included the detail because she thought it would strengthen her story. A niece who knows her aunt's habits, lying in bed, hearing the familiar sound of the back door, thinking nothing of it. An ordinary domestic detail, too small to question. But she made it too specific. The "heavy thud" and the "draught excluder brushing against the frame" are the sounds of someone who was near the door, not two floors above it. She described what she heard because she was there. She was on the back stairs, or in the scullery, waiting. And when she heard the door, she followed her aunt out into the dark.

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Historical Note

Rural inns in the 1920s were often family operations, run by widows or elderly couples with the help of one or two staff and visiting relatives. When crimes occurred in these settings, investigators tended to focus on outsiders, transient guests, and those with visible grievances. Family members, particularly women, were frequently treated as witnesses and helpers rather than suspects. The social assumption that a niece helping with the accounts was simply a niece helping with the accounts made it easy for domestic motives to go unexamined. Several interwar cases turned on exactly this point: the person closest to the victim, the one providing the most useful testimony, the one whom the police relied upon for the framework of the evening, was the person who had the most to hide.