The RIDDLE of the BACK STAIRCASE.

[campion]

Having belatedly put my head above the parapet, after a
nudge from Jack Benny's Man Friday, I shall be glad to put into the chamber(pot) my considerations on the matter of the back staircase, which is situate in the 'Back kitchen', Den, or as Jeremy refers to it, the Laundryroom.
  I will be grateful for advice/correction and empathy from The Hon Gringo, and the Ladies Tyler and Maggie, in particular. I respectfully request silence  from mat on this matter.
  This staircase has caused me some consternation viZzz:-
     a) In jeremy's rough sketch of the ground plan of WHF, drawn in the police car, it appears as a spiral stair to the upstairs office
      b) In the EP plans,drawn for the Trial,  this stair is omitted - I always wondered why.
      c) Hartley, H, or was it The Jam, produced an architectural elevation of the stair, showing it leading to the Upstairs Office.
    Apparently there is no connection from the Upstairs Office to the rest of the upstairs at WHF.

   Now, at Daybreak or Dawn!,  say 5.45am Collins,  possibly by means of a mirror, saw a female, through the Laundryroom window, adjacent to the back door. It was surreptitiously arranged for Jeremy to be taken to the village to make IMO an unnecessary phonecall. With Jeremy out of earshot, the asault could be made on the door. It is  a possibility that Sheila was some how injured in this process.
    It is my contention that Sheila had been imprisoned in the back kitchen, by persons unknown. The back door had no key in it, thus preventing Sheila opening it, The door to the kitchen was blocked by the armchair wedged against it, with the deceased Nevill having been placed in it. Similarly the door to the upstairs office was found to be blocked, with the key on the far side, or by being barricaded.
   If this proved to be the case, then how could whomever had blocked up the door have  got to the master bedroom, to be seen as a 'trick of light' to Bews, Myall, and Jeremy , for them to take refuge behind the antiquated churnstand, which has since been demolished?
    I have some, perhaps ingenious or indeed convoluted solutions, but it would be fair to say that the murderer(s) knew a few secrets to the layout of WHF.
     Don't forget Jeremy had a perfect alibi- being with 3 Policemen!!!





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[-Harters-]

What on Earth are you going on about? 

The stairs go up to the office upstairs, there is a door from the upstairs office into another small room, from this small room there is a door into a bathroom, from this bathroom there is a door onto the main house landing.
From the main house landing it leads into all other upstairs rooms with the exception of the box room between the master bedroom and the twins room.

The door between the bathroom and the small room could be bolted from the bathroom side, it appears from police witness statements that the bolts were in place.

Clear as mud? 

[-Harters-]

It was a plan and not an elevation by the way.

[guest154]

  I will be grateful for advice/correction and empathy from The Hon Gringo, and the Ladies Tyler and Maggie, in particular. I respectfully request silence  from mat on this matter.
 

What the heck? 
If you want advice from only your friends then don't post on a public message board and do it via pm!

Hartley seems to think you're wrong any way.

[-Harters-]

What the heck? 
If you want advice from only your friends then don't post on a public message board and do it via pm!

Hartley seems to think you're wrong any way.

Some people are eccentric, some people try to be eccentric and some people have eccentricity thrust upon them, usually in cahoots with a snide remark or two. 

[guest154]

Some people are eccentric, some people try to be eccentric and some people have eccentricity thrust upon them, usually in cahoots with a snide remark or two. 

and some people.......are nutters. 

[-Harters-]

and some people.......are nutters.

Well yes, there is that of course. 

[guest154]

Having belatedly put my head above the parapet, after a
nudge from Jack Benny's Man Friday, I shall be glad to put into the chamber(pot) my considerations on the matter of the back staircase, which is situate in the 'Back kitchen', Den, or as Jeremy refers to it, the Laundryroom.
 

What have you been smoking? 

   It is  a possibility that Sheila was some how injured in this process.
   

You mean shot, right? Because Sheila had no other injuries.

    It is my contention that Sheila had been imprisoned in the back kitchen, by persons unknown. The back door had no key in it, thus preventing Sheila opening it,

And this person left WHF how? 

     Don't forget Jeremy had a perfect alibi- being with 3 Policemen!!!

How is that an alibi? It is an alibi that he was standing outside the house - but not that he didn't kill anyone. With no time of death you can not tell how long those inside had been dead, so could have been dead inside WHF the entire time Bamber was outside with the police.

[-Harters-]

You don't do requests then Mat? 

[mertol22]

No one knew for sure the people inside were all dead, death has to be confirmed.

[guest154]

You don't do requests then Mat? 

Nope. Haha, I'm not going to ignore something and not question it when it doesn't make sense. Excluding me - how mean!   

No one knew for sure the people inside were all dead, death has to be confirmed.

Which it was.

[-Harters-]

No one knew for sure the people inside were all dead, death has to be confirmed.

I think that's what the whole firearms raid team followed by five certifications by Dr Craig was all about.

Wasn't it?   

[campion]

  Thankyou for your observations The Jam.
  From your explanation it does appear to be a somewhat tortuos route.
  I find it strange that this arrangement was not drawn up for, or alluded to at the Trial.
   Will you kindly draw up a plan of this part of WHF to make things clear for us plebs?

[-Harters-]

  Thankyou for your observations The Jam.
  From your explanation it does appear to be a somewhat tortuos route.
  I find it strange that this arrangement was not drawn up for, or alluded to at the Trial.
   Will you kindly draw up a plan of this part of WHF to make things clear for us plebs?

The trouble is Campion, you are really quite insulting with many of your posts, so much in fact that I usually tend to completely ignore you, as you are of course well aware. With that in mind, I'm sure that you will forgive me for not being too enthusiastic about assisting you in understanding the layout any more than I already have.

Sorry. 

[mike tesko]

When members of the raid team went into the premises, they were limited to parts of the farmhouse, upstairs and downstairs, because direct access to the main kitchen was immediately impossible due to the fact that the body of Ralp Bamber was slumped in a large wooden chair directly behind the internal kitchen door. This delayed entry into the main kitchen for several minutes. It was because this kitchen door was blocked off that the raid team were forced to concentrate on the only other rooms inside the farmhouse on this side of that blocked door. This included the so called back kitchen, the downstairs office, and up a set of stairs in the direction of Ralph Bambers office, and a storeroom with a locked door which had to be smashed open. The funny thing was is that the door which had to be smashed open had a key in the lock, but the key was in place on the inside of the room, a key which had been turned into the locked position. Once police smashed this door open, they were puzzle to find no-one inside it. However, in the ceiling space of this room, was a loft trap door which afforded acces to a loft space, in particular, to an unlocked roof window which gave access to the roof/farmhouse, depending whether a person intended to get into the building or out. The presence of the key in the lock on the inside of the door of the aforementionrd room, means that at some point before police smashed this door open, a person had entered this room, and locked it from the inside, climbed up into the loft by removing the loft cover, replaced the loft cover and left the premises by climbing out onto the roof above.

The police later searched the loft, but this was not done until the rest of the house had been searched...

The police were prevented from searching other room upstairs on the other side of the farmhouse, because they couldn't find a door to open which led them there. So they had to go back down the set of stairs and force open the internal kitchen door by gradually applying pressure to the door in question, which sent the body of Ralph Bamber crashing to the kitchen floor, partly resting upon the wooden chair his body had been sat upon. This explains why Ralphs body ended up on the kitchen floor in the crime scene photograpgs, albeit the police placed his head into a coal bucket with a view of trying to restrict the amount of blood spillage on the kitchen floor..

Later when police got upstairs they found a bolted panel in the bathroom which gave access to the other part of the farmhouse where Ralph Bambers office was located...