Why?

"The strange affair at Dunmore had been something we both looked at in a casual way, individually, for some years. However, it was the return of one of the nurses, who had attended the crippled William McClintock, during that fateful summer of 1938, which finally compelled us to join forces, in a bid to solve the mystery, once and for all.

As it turned out, the mystery became even more puzzling.

Instead of closure, we found ourselves in a maze, where at each turn, just when we thought we had found the way out, our route was blocked by yet another twist in the story. As one door was opened to us, another was closed and it eventually became apparent that some of these closures were no co-incidences.

It was almost like an Agatha Christie mystery and soon we were amazed to discover that the famous crime writer was, in fact, related to the McClintocks and had visited their home at Dunmore in the late 1920s and early ’30s.

Did she have an uncanny connection to the tragic events of 1938?

It has been a fascinating journey, which has taken us throughout Ireland, England and France and, with the advances in internet and e-mail facility, our correspondence has reached many other countries, as far afield as America, Pakistan, India and Australia. We would not have believed that it would take us almost 20 years of research. If we had, we might never have begun, but once we had set out on this journey, we found that the story was much as Churchill had once described Russia: “It is a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma”.

Perhaps, we told ourselves, we could reveal the enigma, unwrap the mystery and finally solve the riddle."

Frank McGurk and Ken McCormack.