The Suspicions of Mr Whicher

The Suspicions of Mr Whicher is a 2011 television film made by Hat Trick Productions for ITV. It stars Paddy Considine in the title role of detective inspector Jack Whicher of the Metropolitan Police. It is based on the reallife Constance Kent murder case of 1860 as interpreted by Kate Summerscale in her book The Suspicions of Mr Whicher or The Murder at Road Hill House 2008.

When threeyearold Saville Kent is found murdered in dreadful circumstances at the family home in Wiltshire, Commissioner Mayne Tim PigottSmith sends Scotland Yard detective Inspector Jack Whicher Paddy Considine to investigate the crime. Local Superintendent Foley Tom Georgeson believes that the murder is an inside job, committed by Savilles nurse Elizabeth Gough Kate OFlynn, whom he suspects the child had seen in bed with a man, possibly the childs father, Samuel Kent Peter Capaldi but whom he is forced to release due to lack of evidence.When Whicher arrives, Foley , suspicious of this outsider and his progressive police methods, reluctantly agrees to help. The focus of Whichers investigation is a torn and bloodstained piece from a womans undergarment that had been found during the initial search for the missing boy. Constance Kent Alexandra Roach, Samuel Kents sixteenyearold daughter from his first marriage, claims that one of her three nightgowns had been lost by the laundress. When Dr. Stapleton Ben Miles, the familys doctor tells Whicher that Constance, like her late mother, is mentally unstable and resentful of Saville, her fathers son from his second marriage, she immediately becomes Whichers prime suspect. It is discovered that Constance and her younger brother William SavilleKent Charlie Hiett hate their stepmother Mary Emma Fielding who had in fact been employed as their former nanny, with whom their father had had an affair while their mother was dying. He visits a schoolmate of Constances, Emma Moody, who tells him that Constance enjoyed hurting Saville. As the circumstantial evidence builds Whicher arrests Constance convinced that she has killed her halfbrother out of revenge against her father for his treatment of her mother and his neglect of her and William, but he fails to get a confession from her. At her trial, her lawyer discredits Whichers case by wilfully misrepresenting it. Emma Moody is called as a witness, but she lies and states that Cons

Source: Wikipedia