Free GREAT UNSOLVED CRIMES (True Crime) by Rodney Castleden

with Amy: Mrs Odingsell and Mrs Owen.
    Mrs Odingsell was described as ‘the widow that liveth with Antony Forster’. She seems to have been Antony Forster’s housekeeper. She was also the aunt of Richard Verney, who had been Dudley’s page and was still devoted to serving Dudley’s interests. It is probable that either Richard Verney or his hireling was the murderer. Verney had been summoned by Dudley in the previous April, when there were rumours that there was a plot to poison Amy. Verney had been for some reason unable to travel to see Dudley, and wrote him a letter of apology, adding that he would ‘always be to my best power advanced in any your affair or commandment where opportunity offereth.’ It may have been no more than elegant politeness, but he was saying that he would do anything to help Dudley.
    A document of unknown provenance says: ‘Sir Richard Verney who, by commandment, remained with her [Amy] that day alone, with one man only, and had sent away perforce all her servants from her, to a market two miles off, he, I say, with this man, can tell how she died.’ The writer of the pamphlet said that the other man in question was killed in prison, where he was sent for some other crime, because he threatened to tell what happened. Verney himself did not live very long. He died in London after a period raving about devils. Verney’s presence at Cumnor Hall would have aroused no suspicion. Accompanied by a friend, he was simply calling on his aunt at Cumnor Hall one Sunday. Mrs Odingsell wanted to stay in the house, even though there was a fair that day at Abingdon. It was Our Lady’s Fair, and Amy made a point of sending all the servants to it.
    One theory is that Amy used the fair as a pretext to get the house to herself, so that she could commit suicide by throwing herself down the stairs. But she did not in the end have the house entirely to herself. When Mrs Odingsell protested that she should not go to the fair but stay to be with her, Amy answered that ‘Mrs Owen could bear her company at dinner.’
    Mrs Owen was either the widow of Dr Owen the royal physician who had been the previous tenant, or his daughter-in-law. She was occupying some of the rooms at Cumnor Hall, which was still regarded as the family house in spite of its being let to the Forsters. Maybe Amy wanted the house emptied so that she could have a confidential conversation over supper with the one person she trusted, someone who was outside the circle of friends and retainers attached to or appointed by her untrustworthy husband. Mrs Odingsell herself may have been an accomplice to the murder. Her motive in wanting to remain in the house may have been to preoccupy Mrs Owen while her nephew and his friend killed Amy. Mrs Odingsell seems to have been successful in isolating Mrs Owen, because the body was not found until late evening when the servants returned from the fair. The murder probably happened much earlier in the day and the body was arranged in the position at the foot of the flight of stairs where the servants were to find it. Mrs Odingsell may only have needed to say to Mrs Owen that Amy had decided to go to the fair herself and that would been enough to confine Mrs Owen to her rooms.
    The layout of Cumnor Hall was unusual. When it had become a private house earlier in the sixteenth century, several doors in the sanatorium had been sealed up. It was said that on some pretext Amy was persuaded to exchange her usual bedroom for one that had one of these blocked doorways at the head of the bed. It was easy to disguise or conceal doors at this time as it was common to cover walls with tapestries and other hangings. Amy was unaware that there was a secret door behind her bed. It was easy for her murderer to enter the room without her knowing, come up behind her and strangle or smother her before she knew what was happening. Significantly, in the aftermath of Amy’s death, Dudley gave huge grants of land to Forster in as many