Cold case files - The Riddle Case

[wickywackywoo2001]

No: HPFGUIDX 106980

I was watching "Cold Case Files" on TV this evening, and it struck me
that to the police, the Riddle murders ARE a cold case - an unsolved,
50-year old triple homicide.  The Muggle world will probably never
find out what happened, but maybe we could play detective and try to
open the file again.

I noticed one or two little details in re-reading the opening chapter
of GoF, and maybe someone with a bit more knowledge of upper-class
British traditions of 2 generations ago could fill in a few details.

1.  The Riddles had servants, at least 3: a cook, a maid, and Frank
the gardener.  This was either during the last year or two of WWII
(Frank had been injured and returned home) or shortly after.  Now, I
thought that WWII really brought to a close the "Upstairs, Downstairs"
kind of life of a family with domestic servants.  Yet the Riddles
still employed a staff, so it seems to me they must have been QUITE rich.

2.  The maid found them in the morning, in the drawing room, still
dressed in their dinner clothes.  So they still followed the
old-fashioned tradition of dressing for dinner.  Does anyone know
about what time dinner would have been served in that era?  And what
was the usual pattern:  people would dress, then go down and eat
dinner, then...go to the drawing room?  Was that normal?  Or would
they go out, or go to bed?  Would one change clothes again after
dinner, or stay in the same clothes until bedtime?  Was the drawing
room like a family room, where a family normally would gather after
dinner, or was it the "best" room, for entertaining guests?

3.  The cook must have cooked the dinner, and I suppose also cleaned
up after.  So there was no one else eating with the Riddles, or she
would have known.  And nothing unusual happened while the servants
were around.

4.  The house wasn't broken in to.  Either the murderer got in with a
key (as Frank is accused of doing), or else got in by magic (the
police wouldn't know that was a possibility), or was admitted by the
Riddles.  

5.  Is it just accidental that the cook says that Frank could have
crept into the house "while we was all sleeping..."?  Is "we" the
servants, or the village?  Did the servants sleep in the house, or did
they come and go every day?  If they were IN the house, then three
murders took place without anyone hearing any disturbance.  The cook
assumes it's because they were all asleep, but why were all 3 Riddles
up so late, fully dressed, in the drawing room instead of going to bed
like the rest of the household?  Did they have an appointment, perhaps?

Wanda