But the questioning intensified; there was so much material detail in the house – men’s mud-stained shoes, a package of bloodstained linen in paper, and then the fact of the locked bedroom where his mother slept. Ball said that she always locked the room if she left the house. The door of that room was forced open, and from the scene the police saw there, some developments were significant. The details of the room were very significant: an electric fire was burning and there was a clear reason for that, because there was a patch of wet on a carpet. The two really telling details in the bedroom were that a rug was missing, and then the first fact to create definite suspicion in the minds of the detectives, the clothes in the wardrobe were the ones Edward Ball had told them his mother had been wearing when he last saw her.

It was in Ball’s interests to try to fabricate a scenario which would suggest a possible case of suicide. By being sure that she would not try to take her life, he had planted a suggestion. Then, no doubt using his acting talents, he said that ‘She’s a great fighter, with all her troubles.’ But the investigation intensified, with Ball in centre stage; there were lots of minor details about his actions over the previous few days that led to suspicion, such as cuts on his arms and a deep cut on a thumb. He had also been seen leaving the house carrying a suitcase. But there was indeed blood everywhere when it came to his own clothes, and police checks on him had led to the discovery that he had been to a local chemist to try to get stain-removing chemical substances. The following searches for clues and hunt for bloodstains, now that the line of thought was clear - that Mrs Ball had been killed at home – led to a list of detected stains, on stairs, walls, bed, carpets, clothes and bed linen. The pressure was on the young man, and arguably a letter found containing harsh words to him from his mother seemed to confirm the hidden nature of the relationship. She had written: ‘I want you to understand that if you stay here tonight I am going to Mrs Allen. You did the usual dirty trick. Coming in at 12 o’clock last night; it has upset me. I am three hours late for my work, but what can I expect?’

It was not long before Ball realised that he had to find an explanation for the blood and he returned to the suicide tale, saying he had come home and found her body in bed, her throat cut. His vain argument for all this was that he had been concerned at her good name, as suicide was of course a crime as well as a sin at that time. But things came to a head when Ball, watched by a constable, went upstairs and then tried to take his own life. Launching himself out of a window two storeys high. He survived, though very severely injured. Suicide notes were found on him, including the statement: ‘The events of the last two days have been unbearable and I claim the right to take my own life.’

He was charged with murder. When arrested by Superintendent Dunleavy, Ball said, ‘I do not feel like saying anything at the moment.’ He was in hospital at Richmond for the court; George Cussen, senior District Justice, stood at the head of the bed, and the registrar sat by a small table. Justice Cussen granted a remand of a week and he asked for a full medical report on Ball. The prisoner had a broken arm and also his neck was fractured, so he could not be mobbed for some time.

By 26 March the trial at the Dublin District Court could proceed, and by that time Ball had been mobbed to Mountjoy Prison. The defence stated Balls case as one of his having acted desperately after the alleged suicide of his mother; he was sticking to the story he had told at home when faced with the bloodied clothes and furniture. His counsel said that Ball had been asked by his mother to protect her if ever she did ‘anything stupid’ and so when he found her body, he took it by car to Shankill and then dumped it in the sea.

On the other hand, prosecution said that the relations between mother and son during some months of the previous year had been ‘extremely unhappy and of a distressing nature’.

Mr Justice Hanna, presiding, heard evidence that Mrs Ball used to scream at her son and she was described as being ‘highly strung’. To back up the suicide case, the father, Dr Ball, said that ever since their marriage in 1902 his wife had suicidal tendencies and that there had been suicides in her family history. Edward was following in that line of illness, said his father. It was going to be difficult to build a case of matricide. But there were four pints of blood on the carpet and even blood on an axe out in a garden shed. But there was no body found, so everything was theoretical at the first stage. But the strongest evidence against Ball was from a pathologist, Dr John McGrath, who said that the death was not suicide. A hatchet had been used on her head and hair; had she cut her throat while on the carpet, where the highest concentration of blood was found, there was no way she could have got herself back into bed.

Against the matricide theory was the solid defence position, supported by expert witnesses from the field of psychiatry, who stated that Ball was mentally abnormal. The diagnosis was that he had dementia praecox. This was seen at the time as something related not only to a mental illness but to a related condition of ‘moral deficiency’. That explained his lack of emotion at his mother’s death and also his extraordinary ability in carrying her out in the rug and then driving her out to Shankill to throw her into the sea.

The search for a body went on, and that entailed trying to ascertain where her body would have gone with the knowledge of the tidal flows from that beach. Experts came in to help, and police threw two oil drums in the sea at Shankill: one came to the coast in Wales and the other in Wicklow. The puzzle was turning into a mystery, but at the core of it all was the issue of insanity.

Looking at the case today, what stands out in the circumstances we have is that there was a process of careful action by Ball, a steady elimination of evidence being the intention, but what he did fell far short of that. The stages he went through in trying to hide all the blood and the various pieces of material evidence suggest careful, intended decision, by a rational mind. The pathology makes it clear that suicide was very unlikely. On top of that, it does seem highly probable, bearing in mind the statements of the maids at the house about Mrs Ball’s cruelty and harshness to her son, that it would be highly likely that we have a case of ‘the worm turning’ here.

The defence of insanity had always been problematical in the courts. The definite case in terms of the provision of some kind of legal touchstone was the ‘McNaughten Rules’, referring to the case of Daniel McNaughten who had tried to assassinate Robert Peel in 1843 and had only succeeded in killing his secretary. McNaughten was classified as insane and escaped the noose. Would the same apply to Edward Ball? This was all about proving that a killer at the time of taking a life was suffering from an abnormality of mind.

The jury in Ball’s case had to consider this, and with no concept of ‘diminished responsibility’ (that came in 1957 with the Homicide Act). They found him guilty but insane. It was clear that he would have to be kept for life in a mental hospital for the criminally insane. Of course, there was no body available, so that added another dimension of confusion. Add to that the aspects of sympathy for the young man – his attempted suicide and his general nature as a suppressed, failed artist who had only bit parts on the Dublin stage – and the decision is understandable. With the man’s thespian activities in mind, it has to be said that Brian Marriner’s perception in his book, Missing Bodies, that Ball played in a production of Crime and Punishment in 1935, and in that story, an old pawnbroker (a woman) is killed – by a young man wielding an axe.