The mystery of the Road murder, which for five years
has per- plexed the police and all who feel an interest in undiscovered crime, has been at last revealed. On Tuesday Miss Constance Kent appeared before Sir Thomas Henry, and surrendered herself as the murderess of her half-brother Francis Saville Kent, a child of four years old. It appears that after her acquittal in 1860 she was sent abroad, but returned two years since to England, and obtained a home in a religious house at Brighton, where she has remained ever since. Her confession of guilt was first made to Mr. Wagner, the well-known Vicar of Brighton, but the idea of a public confession came, he says, from herself. Before the magis- trate she was perfectly calm, and exhibited no trace of that ten- dency to insanity which it is said has been manifest in her mother's family. No motive has yet been assigned either for the murder or the confession, and a part of the public seems inclined to believe that the criminal's belief in her own guilt is a mere delusion. We cannot accept that solution, but it is certain that if the confession is limited, as at present, to a bare statement of the fact, it will be very difficult to obtain evidence sufficient for trial. The father, after living five years under suspicion in order to protect his daughter, cannot be expected to say much, and the nurse, the principal witness, is married, and in Australia.
