News of Bathurst's disappearance had not reached…
December 1809 CE
In December Bathurst's father, the Bishop of Norwich, hd received a summons from the Foreign Secretary, Richard Wellesley, to attend him at Apsley House, where Wellesley had informed the Bishop of his son's disappearance.
Bathurst's wife Phillida had immediately left for Germany to search for her husband, accompanied by the explorer Heinrich Röntgen.
They had arrived at Perleberg to find that the authorities had been looking into the affair and that a Captain von Klitzing had been put in charge of the investigation.
After Captain Klitzing was notified of Bathurst's disappearance, he had taken immediate steps to mobilize his troops and had conducted a vigorous search, apparently working on the initial assumption that the missing man had vanished of his own accord.
On the 26th the river Stepenitz was dragged, and civilian officials ordered a second search of the village.
On November 27, 1809, the Englishman's valuable fur coat—worth two hundred or three hundred Prussian thalers—had been discovered hidden in an outhouse owned by a family named Schmidt.
Then, on December 16, two old women out scavenging in the woods near Quitzow, three miles north of Perleberg, had come across Bathurst's pantaloons.
Investigation had quickly revealed that one August Schmidt had been working as hostler in the courtyard of the White Swan on the night Bathurst disappeared.
Frau Kestern, a woman employed at the German Coffee House, will testify years later that immediately after Bathurst had visited the establishment, Auguste Schmidt had come in, asked her where the visitor had gone, then hastened after him and (she supposed) taken some opportunity to destroy him.
A reward of five hundred thalers is offered for any news and money is paid to members of the local police to expedite matters.
This, however, causes the waters to be muddied as many false reports and offers of information were made by people seeking a share of the reward.