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Monday 15 May 2017

Who killed Phyllis Dimmock?

Who killed Phyllis Dimmock? Given the circumstances of her life and subsequent death it seems most likely that Phyllis Dimmock was killed by one of many male acquaintances in a fit of jealous rage. The one person we can certainly exclude from consideration is her husband Bertram Shaw, since, as the police established back in 1907, he was in a railway dining car thundering through the countryside some distance from London at the time of his wife's death. The fact that the rooms at St Paul's Road had been ransacked, and that the victim's postcard collection was disarranged, leading to the obvious conclusion that the murderer was searching for something, and that something being most likely the postcard from Bruges that led the police to Robert Wood in the first place. This would limit the range of suspects to either Robert Wood himself (seeking to remove an incriminating piece of evidence) or, alternatively, someone else who knew of its existence and was seeking to divert the police's attention by laying a false trail, such as Robert Percival Roberts, his apparently secure alibi notwithstanding. Most commentators have this concluded that the most likely culprit was indeed Robert Wood, even if there appears to have been insufficient evidence to actually convict him of the crime.

 Robert Wood was bit of a cad and a liar, but that doesn't make him a murderer. Someone wanted  something from those albums, but there was another suspect who was away from town, and could well of sent, the postcard collecting, Emily Dimmock, a message that could accuse him of the crime if discovered.

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