Stilleto had come up trumps.

The service papers he'd dug out for me from the vaults of the National Archive had answered one question right away.

Bertie McCallion's wounding at Messines explained why he had been unaware of Amanda's murder. The troops had been 'locked down' prior to the battle and he must have gone through the days before and after the attack blissfully unaware of her death.

With a magnifiying glass I deciphered the scrawl which passed for notes on the document. I was hoping for another link between the Mudcaster man and the poor Belgian girl.

And I found it. Don't you just love military record keeping?

"At Hospital No. 7 (Rouen). Seen by Major Dennis Broomfield, Corps of Military Police. NFA."

Give me an infantryman and I'll have a good stab at tracking him down. I can even do a half decent write-up about his unit and what he may have been doing in any given time period. It's hard work and it takes time. But as research goes, it's like throwing buns to a bear, as me old dad said.

But take me out of the cosiness of the PBI and I'm a fish out of water.

Which is why I resorted to the good old forum .. again. And, you know what, there's always someone who comes through.

Ken Lees, it turned out, was a bit of an expert on military police matters in World War One. Well, someone has to do it.

In August 1914, there were 761 Military Police available for service. The huge number of troops and vehicles on the roads of Flanders created the traffic control role of the Military Police essential to the smooth running of operations.

They were also responsible for marshalling POWs and directing stragglers back to their units.

At the Battle of Neuve Chapelle in 1915, the MPs handled 1687 POWs in the three days of fighting, proving beyond doubt their usefulness on a modern battlefield. Captain Straughan, APM at Poperinghe, Belgium devised a one-way traffic signalling system using red & green flags during the day and red & green lamps at night.

It was said of the Military Police that “in the battle zone, where they did their duty in exposed positions under heavy fire and suffered severe casualties, they solved an important part of the problem of traffic control by preventing the unavoidable congestion of troops and transport on roads in the vicinity of active operations, from degenerating in confusion”.

The Military Police served as part of the Army of Occupation in Germany (which included an early form of the Special Investigations Branch – the SIB), and on 27th February 1926, the MMP and MFP were amalgamated to form the Corps of Military Police. Between 1918-39, Military Police saw worldwide service from Ireland during the struggle leading to partition, to the insurrections in Palestine.

"Great stuff, " I posted, after seeing Ken's initial reply. "But where would I get record of individual investigations? If they exist."

I truly expected the dead end to be more or less final, so I was well chuffed when Ken asked me for a name. Where there's a name, there's a trail.

And guess what? Major Dennis Broomfield turned out to be the pioneer of the Special Investigation Branch ... and it seemed he had visited a hospital in Rouen to investigate a murder.