The Case of Charles Dexter Ward Episode 1/Transcript

{{Transcript|header| Scene: Mystery Machine Recording Studio {{Transcript }} {{Transcript|header| Scene: Ward House}} {{Transcript The room is empty. It's pretty big. There's not much light because this side of the house is shaded by a big old tree. There's a fireplace, but no furniture. That's all been cleared out, I guess. Maybe sold. But there's a smell like someone recently lit a fire in the grate which it doesn't look like they have. [There is a sound of a door slamming. Kennedy jumps and calls out in surprise.] Oooh! }} {{Transcript }} {{Transcript }} {{Transcript|header| Scene: The Café}} {{Transcript }} {{Transcript }} {{Transcript }}
 * speak = Kennedy
 * text = Sylvester told me that Charles's room was the second on the right of the stairs. And I wanted to take a look at it, even though I didn't really think it would yield any clues.
 * speak = Kennedy
 * text = Okay, this is quite weird.
 * speak = Sylvester
 * text = You okay?
 * speak = Kennedy
 * text = Yeah, I the wind just must have caught the door and it made me jump. Sorry.
 * speak = Kennedy
 * text = I don't know what made that door slam. Maybe it was the wind. But when I heard the noise and I turned around I could swear there was someone there. A man standing behind the door with his back to the wall, just staring at me.
 * speak = Matthew
 * text = Wow. So you really think there was something there?
 * speak = Kennedy
 * text = No, of course not. I mean, it seemed real in the moment.

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 * speak = Matthew
 * text = Context: you're hearing me and Kennedy in the café across the road from the Mystery Machine studio.

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 * speak = Kennedy
 * text = It was a trick of the light or a shadow cast by something going by.

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 * speak = Matthew
 * text = We tend to do a lot of our catch-ups and stuff there, especially when we're still figuring out stories.

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 * speak = Matthew
 * text = Is this going to be a ghost story, do you think?
 * speak = Kennedy
 * text = It's not a ghost story.

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 * speak = Matthew
 * text = And we always record these meetings because, well, because I suppose we pretty much record everything.

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 * speak = Kennedy
 * text = Charles Dexter Ward is a weird character. I don't know what happened to him, but there's something there. Something more than him just being a troubled kid.
 * speak = Matthew
 * text =I think the books are interesting.
 * speak = Kennedy
 * text =The books are definitely interesting.
 * speak = Matthew
 * text ="The books" refers to a recording Kennedy played me a few minutes earlier of her visit to the library at Charles Ward's school. Kennedy thought you might be able to get an insight into Charles by looking at what books he signed out from the school library. This is the recording I just listened to.

{{Transcript|header|Scene: The Library}} {{Transcript }} {{Transcript }} {{Transcript }} {{Transcript }} {{Transcript }} {{Transcript }} {{Transcript }} {{Transcript }} {{Transcript }} {{Transcript }} {{Transcript }} {{Transcript }} {{Transcript }} {{Transcript }} {{Transcript }} {{Transcript }} {{Transcript }} {{Transcript }} {{Transcript }} {{Transcript }} {{Transcript }} {{Transcript }} {{Transcript }} {{Transcript }} {{Transcript }} {{Transcript }} {{Transcript }} {{Transcript }} {{Transcript }} {{Transcript }} {{Transcript }} {{Transcript }} {{Transcript know, but we weren't sure we had enough leads to set a Mystery Machine story in motion. So I called up an old contact to see if there was any way I could get to talk to Dr. Willett in Broadmoore. }} {{Transcript }} {{Transcript }} {{Transcript }} {{Transcript }} {{Transcript }} {{Transcript }} {{Transcript }} {{Transcript }} {{Transcript }} {{Transcript }} {{Transcript }} {{Transcript }} {{Transcript }} {{Transcript }} {{Transcript }} {{Transcript }} {{Transcript }} {{Transcript }} {{Transcript }} {{Transcript }} {{Transcript }} {{Transcript }} {{Transcript }} {{Transcript }} {{Transcript }} {{Transcript }} {{Transcript }} {{Transcript }} {{Transcript }} {{Transcript }} {{Transcript }} {{Transcript }} {{Transcript }} {{Transcript }} {{Transcript }} {{Transcript }} {{Transcript }} {{Transcript }} {{Transcript }} {{Transcript }} {{Transcript }} {{Transcript }} {{Transcript At this point, we were pretty sure we had a story worth investigating. But two days after Kennedy and I had that conversation in a café, we discovered we were into the weirdest story we'd ever heard. But we're going to save that for next time. This is the Mystery Machine. It's always stranger than you think. }} {{Transcript|end}}
 * speak = Kennedy
 * text = So I'm here in the library of the school that Charles Ward was in up until 10th grade.
 * speak = George
 * text = You don't have to whisper.
 * speak = Kennedy
 * text = Hi.
 * speak = George
 * text = Hello. Are you Miss Fisher?
 * speak = Kennedy
 * text = Kennedy. Hi. Mr. Shepley?
 * speak = George
 * text = George.
 * speak = Kennedy
 * text = And you're the librarian here at -.
 * speak = George
 * text = Yeah, I don't think we're meant to be identifying the school.
 * speak = Kennedy
 * text = No, sure. So you know why I'm here?
 * speak = George
 * text = I do. And I think this is going to be interesting.
 * speak = Kennedy
 * text = Oh?
 * speak = George
 * text = Yeah, I dug around in the archives, which is something I have always wanted to say, but what I actually mean is I did a search on "Ward, Charles Dexter" on the library computer system.
 * speak = Kennedy
 * text = The first thing is more "Buffy", isn't it?
 * speak = George
 * text = Well, it's funny you should say that because the list of books I found was actually very "Buffy" indeed. Well, kind of "Evil Willow".
 * speak = Kennedy
 * text = Oh, really?
 * speak = George
 * text = Okay, here we go. And before anyone gets the wrong idea, I should point out that we have a lending arrangement with the municipal library here in Providence, and they in turn can order books in. I wouldn't want anyone to think we actually have these books on the shelves of the school library.
 * speak = Kennedy
 * text = Turba Philosophorum, The Key of Wisdom, The Complete Mystical Records of Dr John Dee, The Book of Thoth, Enochian Magick. Wow, this list.
 * speak = George
 * text = Goes on and on, doesn't it? You can't fault the boy's appetite for reading.
 * speak = Kennedy
 * text = And he was allowed to check these books out of the school library at age 14, 15?
 * speak = George
 * text = Okay, I think it's important to note that I was not the librarian at the time and with respect to my predecessor, I would have taken a very different view on the matter. What do you think happened? About the disappearance?
 * speak = Kennedy
 * text = I have no idea. Do you?
 * speak = George
 * text = I took an interest after you called and I saw this list. I looked up Charles Ward. I confess I didn't know the story before. It's pretty strange. It seems to be you know, something that did jump out at me. And I don't mean to derail what you're doing or derail away. Okay, so, Charles Ward left the school in 2007. The records refer to it as a mutual arrangement, which basically means the school called his parents and said, “Don't send your kid here anymore.”
 * speak = Kennedy
 * text = Yeah, I got that much.
 * speak = George
 * text = So then I wanted to see where he went after that, but he didn't transfer to a different school.
 * speak = Kennedy
 * text = No, he had a private tutor.
 * speak = George
 * text = Yeah. Do you know who that was?
 * speak = Kennedy
 * text = Yes. Barbara Sayers. I'm going to see her tomorrow morning.
 * speak = George
 * text = Okay...
 * speak = Kennedy
 * text = What?
 * speak = George
 * text = Could you do me a favour? You give me a call when you've spoken to her?
 * speak = Kennedy
 * text = Sure. Why?
 * speak = George
 * text = Just indulge me.
 * speak = Matthew
 * text = So while Kennedy had been out in the States digging around in the Charles Dexter Ward story, I've been here trying to figure out what Dr. Willett had been doing in London. I managed to put together a biography of Willett's, which we'll get to soon, but I couldn't figure out what brought in here. Had his experiences with Charles Ward sent him off the rails or was his trip to London completely unrelated to Ward's disappearance? And then there's obviously the murder of Lucy Hawthorne. Was that in any way connected? Or was it just the most bizarre coincidence? At this point we still didn't know if we had anything. The Charles Ward story could be interesting but it could equally just be "disturbed kid gets into the occult and goes crazy." And the disappearance could be well, I don't
 * speak = Contact
 * text = Not a chance.
 * speak = Matthew
 * text = Really? What if I wrote a letter to the warden?
 * speak = Contact
 * text = You can write all the letters you want, there's no way anyone's letting some ex-columnist with a podcast talk to a paranoid schizophrenic in Maximum Security. It's an interesting story though.
 * speak = Matthew
 * text = We don't even know if it is a story yet.
 * speak = Contact
 * text = But Willett is a story. I'd advise you to tread a little carefully there.
 * speak = Matthew
 * text = Really, why?
 * speak = Contact
 * text = Because of Lucy Hawthorne?
 * speak = Matthew
 * text = The murder victim. What about it?
 * speak = Contact
 * text = You don't have researchers or anything.
 * speak = Matthew
 * text = We have an investigator.
 * speak = Contact
 * text = I like her voice.
 * speak = Matthew
 * text = She's been off looking at the American angle.
 * speak = Contact
 * text = Well, I don't know anything about that. But if you want to do something with it, look at Lucy Hawthorne.
 * speak = Matthew
 * text = What am I looking for?
 * speak = Contact
 * text = You can't back this up with paperwork. But as I understand it, Lucy Hawthorne was pretty well connected.
 * speak = Matthew
 * text = Okay, I can look into that. But I thought that Willett's attack on her was random.
 * speak = Contact
 * text = Right.
 * speak = Matthew
 * text = No?
 * speak = Contact
 * text = Well, I'm sure that's what you thought. Listen, I don't know. Maybe it was rumours which I'm not about to repeat on tape. But I'd look into it.
 * speak = Kennedy
 * text = And?
 * speak = Matthew
 * text = Well, I looked at Lucy Hawthorne's close family and there's nothing remarkable there. Home Counties, middle class parents, divorced when she was a teenager. Her mum moved abroad. Dad died a couple years ago. Heart attack. He's had a couple already, nothing unusual about it.
 * speak = Kennedy
 * text = So how old was Lucy? I don't even know.
 * speak = Matthew
 * text = She was 28.
 * speak = Kennedy
 * text = And what did she do?
 * speak = Matthew
 * text = She was a journalist.
 * speak = Kennedy
 * text = Okay, that's something.
 * speak = Matthew
 * text = It's not. She reviewed computer games.
 * speak = Kennedy
 * text = How did she afford to live in Highgate?
 * speak = Matthew
 * text = Well, I wondered that - but it wasn't really Highgate. She had the ground floor flat in a house off the Archway Road.
 * speak = Kennedy
 * text = Okay. Well, I'm not seeing anything.
 * speak = Matthew
 * text = Me neither. Until I found out that the grandparents on her mother's side are called Tillinghast.
 * speak = Kennedy
 * text = Well, that's a name(!)
 * speak = Matthew
 * text = Isn't it? The grandfather's name is Godfrey if you believe that.
 * speak = Kennedy
 * text = Godfrey Tillinghast. I'm guessing there's not a lot of those on Google.
 * speak = Matthew
 * text = No. There's one. And I suspect this is the reason my contact said to tread carefully. So Godfrey Tillinghast, he was Cabinet Secretary from 2008 to 2016.
 * speak = Kennedy
 * text = And Cabinet Secretary is...?
 * speak = Matthew
 * text = The head of the civil service. Some people would argue it's the most powerful position in the country. There are the people you elect, and then there are the people who actually run things. And Sir Godfrey Tillinghast was in charge of them. He's retired now, but one assumes he still has a fair amount of influence.
 * speak = Kennedy
 * text = And it's definitely him?
 * speak = Matthew
 * text = Yeah. He and his wife Karen have one daughter, Emma. And Emma is Lucy Hawthorne's mother. So on the one hand, maybe that explains why Dr Willett's trial and sentencing happened so fast.
 * speak = Kennedy
 * text = And on the other hand?
 * speak = Matthew
 * text = Well, my contact seems to think there was something more there. certainly interesting. Lucy Hawthorne was very well connected, but I can't see how it's relevant.
 * speak = Kennedy
 * text = Unless she wasn't randomly chosen as a victim.
 * speak = Matthew
 * text = And that's one of many questions we're going to be tackling moving forward. Did Dr. Willett deliberately target the granddaughter of a senior civil servant? If so, why? And does it have anything to do with the disappearance of Charles Dexter Ward?

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