Double murder mystery at country house

AN ELDERLY mother and her daughter have been found stabbed to death outside their remote country house near Wisbech, in Cambridgeshire. Constance Sheridan and her daughter Janice were murdered at the home they shared.

Detectives were yesterday investigating the double murder of the women, who were in their seventies and forties. The bodies were found at their house, Zealmyre, on Sunday lunchtime by a neighbour, who alerted the police.

One body was lying to the side of the turn of the century brick-built two-bedroom house, a mile and a half down a remote track called The Pingle in the isolated village of Upwell.

The second body was at the front of the house the two women have shared for the last ten years. Police officers erected tents over the areas where the bodies were found while a Home Office pathologist, Dr David Harrison, and forensic scientists began their investigation. Post-mortem examinations were due to be carried out yesterday afternoon at the James Paget Hospital in Gorleston. Norfolk Police refused to comment on the case.

Bernard Morton, 77, a local farmer and parish councillor, said: "Janice Sheridan would always be seen walking the whippets she bred down The Pingle. It was a full-time occupation. There were between six and seven dogs in the house and another six or seven in the kennels outside. She bred and showed them." Janice Sheridan had been publicly opposing plans for travellers to move into the village and had expressed an interest in becoming a parish councillor herself.

Mr Morton's wife Elsie, 76, said: "It's a bit of a blow. It's one of those things you just don't expect to happen in your village. I used to say hello to her when she was out walking the dogs, but I never knew her mother."

A neighbour, who asked not to be identified, said the two women had lived there for about ten years. "They kept themselves to themselves very much. They used to come out of the house to walk their dogs, but they didn't mix," she said.