Case file
Frank Mercer
Hale’s uncle, his mother’s brother
| Home | Wychley, Kent |
|---|---|
| Trade | Carpenter |
| Charged | Never |
| Cleared | Never |
Frank Mercer was a carpenter in the Kentish village of Wychley. In the autumn of 1962 the village post office burned down, and two policemen came to his sister’s house to ask where he had been that night. A seven-year-old boy listened from the top of the stairs.
Frank was never charged. He was never cleared either. He lived another thirty years in Wychley, and in all that time nobody forgot, and nobody asked him again.
Edmund Hale became a policeman partly to find out what the men in the front room had known. He has found out a great many things since. Not that. Yet.