A6 Rebooted

[Herlock Sholmes]

This is very remiss of Stickier for not mentioning Usher's hand.

On p191 of his book Paul Foot clarifies the matter about the withered hand or arm.....

Thanks SH, I’ll have a look in Foot’s book when I get chance as I don’t have it with me at the moment. My Stickler book is the Kindle version.

[NickB]

Yeah it's William Usher - withered hand; Peter Stringer - false arm.

[Herlock Sholmes]

Yeah it's William Usher - withered hand; Peter Stringer - false arm.

What’s weird about the Stickler book is that when I searched ‘Usher’ I only got 2 responses.

‘It is almost certain that at some time he deposited his suitcase with William Usher at the left luggage office at Lime Street station, but neither occurred on Tuesday, 22 August.’

and

‘It could have been on this occasion that he spoke to Kempt and Usher.’

So if these are the only two mentions that means he doesn’t mention Usher’s withered hand or even give him any introduction. He just drops his name into the story twice and moves on.

[Herlock Sholmes]

What’s weird about the Stickler book is that when I searched ‘Usher’ I only got 2 responses.

‘It is almost certain that at some time he deposited his suitcase with William Usher at the left luggage office at Lime Street station, but neither occurred on Tuesday, 22 August.’

and

‘It could have been on this occasion that he spoke to Kempt and Usher.’

So if these are the only two mentions that means he doesn’t mention Usher’s withered hand or even give him any introduction. He just drops his name into the story twice and moves on.

I’ve just come to this:

“He now claimed that he had never mentioned the word ‘arm’ – his solicitor must have written it down incorrectly – but instead he had said ‘hand’.”

No mention of Usher though.

[Herlock Sholmes]

Well I just finished the Stickler book and I’ve been thinking about how I view the case in general. It’s certainly an intriguing one - but was Hanratty guilty? I certainly couldn’t come down on either side with absolute confidence but I’d have to swing the balance in favour of guilty. There’s no point on me giving the arguments for guilt because you all know them far better than I do. But…for me there is definitely room for doubt. Plenty that is unanswered. Maybe if I read the other new book my opinion might skew in the other direction and I wouldn’t bet any money on my getting the verdict correct. As a comparison, I can’t be sure that my opinion on the Wallace case is correct but I’m far more confident of Wallace’s guilt than I am of Hanratty’s.