COUNTY CURMUDGEON: Coffee, murder and mysteries

The Loch Ness Monster (made up by the Scottish Tourist Board), the Bermuda Triangle (statistically far safer than other sea areas with as much air and maritime traffic) and whoever thought Ed Miliband was an electoral plus for Labour.

Browsing the internet I discovered a real mystery much closer to home!

Ada Constance Kent was a former actress, who had appeared in both films and on stage, and who retired from London to a cottage near Whalebone Corner in Fingringhoe.

In 1939 she simply vanished.

The door to the cottage was found unlocked.

A supper tray, with the remains of a meal, was on the dining table. A copy of Romeo & Juliet was found open in a chair near the fireplace, her coat was still on the hook.

Despite extensive police enquiries no trace of her was ever found. There were no signs of a struggle.

Then suddenly, in April 1949, there was a mysterious deposit of cash to her bank account.

At the bank’s request, the Police returned to the cottage and found laying, among years of undisturbed dust, a skeleton.

Friends say the cottage had last been inspected in 1942 and no skeleton was there then.

The police report said the cottage looked like it had not been touched in a decade.

A Scotland Yard forensic report stated the skeleton was male. He was never identified.

And Ms Kent was never found.

This case was obviously not a highpoint in the annals of crime detection.

Now there are a couple of things to bear in mind.

As this is on the internet it could be complete and utter hogwash.

One version I read had the skeleton laying next to the kitchen table with a bottle of poison next to it.

Another had the skeleton in bed.

You have to be suspicious of anything you read on the internet.

There are malicious lies, unintentional misinformation and an awful lot of stuf, normally about conspiracies, by people you are glad not to live next door to.

But thankfully, Curmudgeon has a real life Colchester mysteries to solve.

Admittedly, it is not up there with skeletons, missing actresses or even what most of the exhibits at Firstsite actually mean but it has been bugging me!

Why are the trash bins in the Costa Coffee drive-thru in Stanway designed for giants?

They have been placed about seven foot up the lampposts meaning you have to get out of your car and reach up to put rubbish in them, unless you are a Harlem Globetrotter.

Answers on a postcard please!

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