At precisely 10.30pm, Fanny Smith and Alice Stammers locked the front door of the fruit shop at number Three, Commerce Place, and pulled down the shutters.

With business over for the day the two women went upstairs to their living quarters as they did each night and settled down to their supper they would come back down later to clear up.

Like so many of the residents of Garnant, neither Fanny nor Alice were natives.

Fanny Mansfield had been born in Bath in 1869 and at the age of 25 was whisked of her feet by a smooth-talking travelling fruit salesman from Wolverhampton by the name of William Henry Smith.

They married in the summer of 1894 and in little over a year, a son Raymond - was born.

All was not well with their new-born however and Raymond was classed as paralysed at birth quite possibly a Victorian diagnosis for cerebral palsy.

For a time at least and quite possibly because of Raymonds condition - the Smith family settled in Bristol. William continued his life as a commercial travelling salesman while Fanny remained at home with Raymond and Phillip, the familys latest addition, who arrived in the early months of 1901.

The Smith family had also gained another albeit unofficial - member by the time Phillip had been born. The couple had taken on a general maid to help relieve the pressure on Fanny while William was on the road.

Alice Stammers was Londoner, born in 1888, and by 1901 was already becoming a fixture in the Smith household. She would remain at Fannys side until the death of her employer in 1950.

By 1911, William too had tired of the life of a travelling salesman and, with Fanny, Phillip and Alice, had set up in business running a fruit shop in Sale, Cheshire. Raymond meanwhile had made a patient at a residential school for epileptic children close by at Nether Alderley, Cheshire.

Life in the north of England did not go especially well for the Smiths however and by the middle of the decade they had returned to Bristol. Raymond died in the city aged 23 in 1918.

Soon after the death of their eldest son, the Smith moved on once more, taking up the tenancy of a vacant shop in the village of Garnant, Carmarthenshire. Alice would help out in the shop as well as with the domestic chores of the household.

Once the two women had lock up the shop and gone upstairs, they settled down to eat in a room at the rear of the first floor of Number Four, Commerce Place.

The room overlooked the rear of the row and beyond towards Arcade Terrace and further still to the Amman Tin Works.

As they sat and ate their meal they heard not a sound nor saw any movement at the rear of Commerce Place.

They heard no barking dogs, no shouts, no awful screams, nor did they see a soul escaping from the rear of Star Stores next door.

To find out more about the unsolved murder of Thomas Thomas in Garnant, Carmarthenshire, visit: murderatthestar.wordpress.com

A little after 10pm, but certainly before 10.30pm, Anne Jeffreys opened the back door of Commerce House and let out Spot the family dog.

The rear of Commerce Place was quiet and Mrs Jeffreys noted nothing untoward before returning indoors while Spot went about his business.

Within minutes however, the peace was shattered.

Spot barked furiously, Mrs Jeffreys said in her statement.

As everything was so quiet outside I shouted to the dog: Whats the matter boy?

The 61-year-old was alone in the house, but was not one to be shaken easily.

It was Anne who, on July 13, 1895, had reached agreement with land-owner Lord Dynevor and finally signed the lease for the vacant plot that would one day house the shops of Commerce Place.

The lease remained in Annes name until she signed it over to her husband Morgan on August 29, 1903, and it was Anne who would remain the named defendant in the 20-year-old legal dispute with the Dynevor Estate which saw the Jeffreys family refuse to pay a penny in a rent until ordered to do so after a bitter High Court battle with Walter FitzUryan Rice, the seventh Baron Dynevor, in July 1915.

She went to the door to see what had so riled the dog, but could see nothing out of the ordinary in the darkness.

I could see nothing so I called the dog to come in, she said.

Spot then came in, so I forgot everything about it.

To find out more about the unsolved murder of Thomas Thomas in Garnant, Carmarthenshire, visit: murderatthestar.wordpress.com

I first became interested in the murder of Thomas Thomas at the Garnant branch of Star Stores after reading the excellent A Long Time Between Murders by Owen Harries in American Scholar magazine.

As a freelance journalist based in south Wales with an unhealthy interest in historic crime, the brutal killing of the timid half-deaf shopkeeper instantly caught my attention - not least because my discovery of the article occurred less than a month before the 93^rdanniversary of the incident and the village of Garnant lies within the area covered by the South Wales Guardian, a weekly newspaper for which I regularly work.

A retelling of the murder to coincide with the anniversary seemed a straightforward and obvious feature idea, so I put together a piece of 600 or 700 words on the crime; the only still-unsolved murder to have taken place within the Amman Valley.

Often in such cases, that would have been enough. However, the case of Thomas Thomas intrigued me. The more I looked, the more the murder hooked me.

The story of the murder at the Star had previously appeared in a number of places not least Dave Michaels excellent Cwmamman History website. However, its various incarnations including my original - are all based on the same two reports from the Amman Valley Chronicle the local newspaper of the time. Everything currently accepted regarding the killing comes from the Chronicles contemporary report and the coverage of the inquest into Thomas Thomas death a few weeks later.

While it is true that both editions of the Chronicle dedicated an unprecedented amount of news space to the reports of each, neither could offer a complete insight into what had taken place and the subsequent investigation.

What struck me most about these reports was the number of clear contradictions they contained particularly between comments made by individuals to the newspaper in the days immediately after the event and the testimony offered by those same people at the court hearing.

Therefore, I kept digging. Soon after publication of the original article I came to realise that the story I had written for the local weekly, while covering all the key elements of the crime and adhering to the accepted version of events, omitted as much as it included.

As my collected files began to mount I decided that the murder of Thomas Thomas deserved far more than just a single-page feature some 93 years after his death.

It also became clear that the events of that fateful night in February 1921 were not merely the story of one doomed individual, but the story of a village, a community and perhaps even the story of Wales during a period which shaped and defined the nation for generations to come.

No one ever stood trial for the murder of Thomas Thomas, but the whisperers and gossip-mongers of the village settled as they always must on a culprit. With the passing of the years the guilt of that one man has entered into valley folklore as all but fact.

My research, while still far from complete, has led me to one undeniable truth: the rumour mill was almost certainly wrong.

To find out more, visit my blog; murderatthestar.wordpress.com