It also explained the bed sores. He had been on his back for the whole time.
'He kept him drugged and sedated for all that time?
But he held Perry for little more than a day, and Darbyshire for only a couple of hours.'
Foster shrugged. 'Perhaps the day he kidnapped him was the only day he could get to Cheshire. Maybe his job, or something else, keeps him in London most of the time.' Foster knew he was getting somewhere.
'Or his job took him to Cheshire on that day and he thought he'd take his chance.'
Nigel was silent, staring at the giant screen of his microfilm reader as if hypnotized.
'What have you got so far?' Foster asked him.
Nigel, still looking at the reader, scrunched up his face in response.
'Nothing much different to what we know. Not about the killings, at least.'
Foster felt a flicker of anger. Nigel had told him that The Times would prove to be the best source of a reliable day-by-day narrative of the killings and their aftermath.
'There is one thing, though. The Times, which usually kept itself above the fray, wrote three leaders castigating the pohce, including one on the day of Fairbairn's arrest. These killings were big news. Questions were even asked in the House of Commons about the pohce investigation. Also, the man they arrested is described in one report here as a "lunatic".'
Foster couldn't see the significance. The guy had slaughtered five people in two weeks. That was hardly the behaviour of the sane.
'They had a very different way of classifying mental illness back then,' Nigel continued. 'From 1871
onwards, census returns recorded if someone was a lunatic, an imbecile or an idiot. The latter meant someone was classed as congenitally mad. An imbecile was someone who was judged to have been sane once but had become insane. A lunatic was prone to losing his or her reason but had moments of clarity. That covered a multitude of conditions.
New mothers, for example. Back then, post-natal depression was considered a sign of lunacy.'
'So what you're saying, Nigel, is that this guy might have been mentally unstable, but it doesn't mean he was psychotic, or schizophrenic?' Heather said.
'No, he could just have been a bit odd. An eccentric'
'Did they let lunatics stand trial back then?' Foster asked.
'Certainly. You'd have to be well and truly off your rocker to be declared too insane to stand trial. The Victorians believed in crime and punishment with few exceptions.'
'Find out whether this guy stood trial. If he did, what happened to him, everything. I also need to find out where Saunders Road is. If it still exists . . .'
Heather interrupted to get his attention. 'I looked it up on Streetmap on the Internet. There is no Saunders Road in wio or wi 1.'
'Shit,' Foster said.
'The local library should know,' Nigel suggested.
'The newspaper report mentioned that the road was being built,' Foster added. 'It also said it was in Notting Dale, by the railway track. That means it must have been on the border of Kensington and Chelsea with Hammersmith and Fulham. You know what runs through there now, don't you? The West way -- a motorway. You telling me he's going to throw a body out of a car on one of London's busiest roads?'
'An underpass runs beneath it,' Heather volunteered.
A
darkened underpass. That would be too obvious, Foster thought. Nothing this guy did was obvious.
He needed to be out there, moving the investigation on, not stuck in a room reading, flicking through old newspapers.
'Heather and I are going to the library, then. We'll see where this road was exactly. Nigel, you stay here and find out whether Eke Fairbairn was tried,' he said.
12
Nigel enjoyed the sense of being alone with the information.
Foster and Heather had barely spoken over the past couple of hours, but the sighing detective was a large, distracting presence; he made a simple act such as turning a page sound symphonic. Now the room was empty, and the only noise was the buzz of the strip light above his head. Nigel felt he could roll back the years and build a complete picture of the events that followed the 'Kensington Horrors'.
He had asked for the News of the World reel to be brought to him, so that he could soak up every nuance and detail, the more salacious the better, and immerse himself in the case.
The picture swiftly became clear. The accused was a simple giant, 'nearer seven feet than six'. Nigel knew this would have marked him out as extraordinary in a time when the average size was about a foot shorter than the present day. The man was itinerant, travelling the country in search of work, as many of his class did, transported by the booming railways. The press had used this common fact to imply shiftiness, as if there were sinister reasons behind Fairbairn's many travels. One interview with a Liverpudlian, a native of the city where Fairbairn had worked on the docks for less than a year, said that he had been hounded from his job by colleagues.
'He weren't right,' was the damning verdict.
There was no shortage of neighbours to echo that view. Fairbairn kept himself to himself, he didn't mix, he barely spoke. Each character quirk was taken and finessed to insinuate a loner, a crank, a nut. Even more damning was the fact he was known to frequent local pubs, an insignificant nugget the News of the World regarded as important enough to mention in every update on the investigation.
On 5 th May Fairbairn, now almost universally known as 'The Giant', appeared at the Old Bailey.
He loped to the dock and spent the whole proceedings fixing his focus on the floor. 'Not once did he raise his baleful gaze from his boots,' The Times reporter noted. 'Not even when his name was called, nor even when his fateful plea of Not Guilty was recorded.'
Two weeks later, on 19th May -- the wheels of justice were not slow to turn in the nineteenth century -- the trial began. The court was teeming, the best seats bought by the upper classes in search of low class thrills. When Fairbairn took his place in court, high-pitched gasps broke the expectant hush. Most of them emanated from wealthy women in the ringside seats. This being the judicial equivalent of opening night, they were dressed in their best -- hats and all.
One reporter noted the rustle as one after the other they produced fans to cool themselves: 'Such was the crush around the venerable court that gathering breath was a trial.' The same reporter noticed the mixture of distasteful and admiring looks directed towards the defendant, which accompanied the furious fanning.
Those in the cheap seats were less demure. Cries of 'Hang, you bastard!' and 'Let him dangle!' led to at least four men being ejected, a scene described by the man from The Times as 'a sordid kerfuffle'. Through it it all Fairbairn's gaze never once lifted from his feet. Instead of the giant man who had appeared at the arraignment, Fairbairn seemed to have been physically altered by his ordeal. His shoulders slumped, he had lost weight, he winced when he moved, and one arm remained seemingly immobile at his side. 'Never has a sorrier, more pathetic creature answered such a grave charge,' The Times opined.
Nigel noted with interest the fact that Fairbairn was being charged with only two of the Kensington killings, presumably for lack of evidence regarding the other three. He recorded this in his notepad, knowing that it might be something to pursue later.
The two he was answering were the first and third killings, just over a week apart.
The case was prosecuted by Mr John J. Dart, QC, MP who, from the transcript provided by one of the newspapers, was not going to allow the opportunities afforded by such a stage to be squandered. There was no physical description of the barrister, but Nigel pictured a portly, pompous politico, florid features glowing under his white wig as he preened on the floor of the packed courthouse. He opened by asking the jury to strike from their minds all that had been written about the case, which would be decided on the known facts.