The Suitor

From the files of Police Detective David Harper: Report: November 24, 1888, Providence, Rhode Island. Regarding the disappearance of the Blakely girl I feel that it is appropriate to document all the evidence in relation to the case. Although this case is regarded as closed and these documents, when filed at the station, will not again see the light of day, I nevertheless feel it prudent to keep a written document of those terrible manuscripts that I had found strewn around Blakely Hall.

From interviewing the various relations and townspeople whom had any considerable amount of contact with Emma Blakely I conclude that she was a sensible, level headed, ambitious young woman whom I deduce could not possibly have given herself over to flights of fancy and silly superstition. Neither do I believe she was hysterical, her diction and language use shows that she was in full control of her own thoughts and actions.

Her disappearance from Blakely Hall, the ancestral home of the Rhode Island Blakelys, still remains a mystery. According to all interviewed she was the one of three people present in the manor at the time of her disappearance. The rest of the family had been visiting relatives in Massachusetts and the young girl had dismissed a handful of servants on the day of her disappearance.

On the deaths, three in total, there is still much speculation as to the identity of the murderer behind those horrific butcheries. The Inspector deemed that a madman had wandered into the house off the moors and, being of an unfit mind, had deigned to massacre the inhabitants. Another theory holds that the young woman herself was somewhat malignant, and devised the papers as an elaborate pardon on her behalf. This detective does not believe either the later or the former theory.

What was curious was the reference in the young woman’s writings to a particular smell. When officers were later brought to Blakely House by the old butler’s request and searched the place they attested that the stately home smelled thoroughly normal. However, when they came upon the three bodies of the murdered servants each officer confesses to smelling a strange smell like that of the wharves curiously mixed with rotten meat.

What transpired over the course of those strange days remains, largely, a mystery. It is true that the papers found strewn around the rooms and corridors of Blakely Hall correspond with the elapsed time period but they were deemed insufficient evidence on which to further the case. Regardless, I have made written copies of all those papers and I enclose them here as follows: