Equinox

Chapter 22

After two unsuccessful attempts to telephone Philip, Laura remembered that he had told her that he was going to London to see about a possible commission to do the photographs for a book about Tasmania. He would be staying in London overnight.

Back in Woodstock, she went through the books in Philip's library to see if she could find anything on the murders of 1851. But there was absolutely nothing and an Internet search proved equally fruitless. That evening she stayed on the sofa with Jo, watching TV and eating chocolates.

Next morning Laura was returning from a long walk in the woods near the house when she saw a car pull into Philip's driveway. She had hired a new vehicle the previous evening and was vaguely surprised that the company was delivering when they'd said they would. Half an hour later she was on the road to Oxford and keying in the number of Philip's mobile.

'Where are you?' she asked excitedly.

'Just coming into Oxford on the M40 — why?'

'I need to see you a.s.a.p.'

'Well, I've got to drop off a couple of discs at the station. I'm late with them already. I was going to go straight home, but do you want to meet for a coffee?'

'Sounds good. Where?'

'How about Isabella's on Ship Street off Cornmarket?'

'OK. How soon can you get there?'

'Look, give me half an hour — no, forty-five minutes.'

Laura glanced at her watch. It was approaching quarter to nine. 'OK, see you at 9.30.' And she snapped the phone shut.

Isabella's was a tiny, seriously understated coffee shop on one of the quieter roads off the pedestrian thoroughfare of Cornmarket Street in the centre of Oxford. It consisted of fewer than a dozen little tables and the decor was drab and faded, but Philip liked the owner, Isabella Frascante, a middle-aged Italian widow who was always friendly and welcoming and made, he believed, the best espresso in the Home Counties.

Laura was there ten minutes early and saw Philip pass the window and walk in. They had the place to themselves and as Philip sat down the owner saw him and beamed.

'The usual, please, Isabella,' he said and leaned back in the chair.

'How was it?' Laura asked.

'What?'

'You got the job?'

'Oh, maybe. I hope so. They're supposed to be e-mailing me about it this afternoon. So, what's new with you?'

'I went to see James Lightman, but he wasn't much help, unfortunately. I think we have to get hold of some more information on the 1851 murders. But where would you begin to find out about a series of murders in this city over a hundred and fifty years ago? The newspapers of the day?'

'I guess,' Philip replied. Isabella arrived with the coffee and Philip took a sip. 'Bloody excellent. I've got to get her to tell me her secret some day,' he whispered as she walked away.

'Hah! The secret is that she's Italian, Philip. A pasty Brit with no culinary skills like you is hardly going to match up, now, are you?'

Philip laughed off the insult. Taking another mouthful, he smacked his lips.

'So,' Laura said. 'Newspapers?'

'Not sure there was a local paper in Oxford in 1851.'

'There must have been, Philip. This place is built on paper.'

'Yeah, books, Laura, books. Newspapers would have been considered vulgar.'

'By the university, maybe. But other people lived here then, remember, just like they do now' She rolled her eyes.

'OK,' Philip replied. 'We can find out at the library. Local history section. If there was a contemporary report on the murders it will be there, probably on microfiche.'

'Cool. Let's go, then.' Laura was out of her chair and ignoring Philip's protests. 'Goddamn it, man, put it in a take-out cup. It can't be that special. And for Christ's sake wipe your mouth!'

It turned out that there had been three local newspapers in Oxford in 1851. Jackson's Oxford Journal was the most popular and the oldest, having been published since 1753. The other two, the Oxford University Herald and the Oxford Chronicle and Berks and Bucks Gazette were relative newcomers.

'Looks like you were wrong, Philip. Not one but three vulgar newspapers,' Laura noted.

'I stand corrected.'

'How do we access the archives?'

'Look in the library catalogue,' Philip replied. He moved the mouse to flick back to the file manager.

'The library has everything catalogued by decade. Then we'll have to search by newspapers and journals.'

A few more clicks and they had opened the file for 1850–1860. A couple more and they had the newspaper catalogue on the screen. 'Now we do a search by keywords. You don't have names, I suppose?'

Laura shook her head.

'OK. Well, that makes it harder. But we could try putting in 'murder', I guess, see what happens.' There were 1819 entries. Laura groaned.

'Don't be so impatient. Refine the search,' Philip said.

'Try "serial killer".'

'The expression didn't exist then.'

Laura was trying to recall what she had read two mornings earlier. 'The website I mentioned talked of three women being killed and mutilated during the summer of 1851'

'OK, let's refine the search with "young woman".'

Philip pressed 'enter' and a new screen appeared. 'Three hundred and forty-two entries containing the words "murder" and "young woman". Better, but not good.'

'OK, refine the search again with "mutilation". That should definitely narrow things down,' Laura pulled her chair closer to the screen.

Philip tapped the keys and the list changed. This time there were seventeen entries that included the words 'murder', 'young woman' and 'mutilation'.

'Now we're getting somewhere,' Laura said.

The records were on microfiche. Philip noted the catalogue numbers and they joined the queue for the harassed librarian at the main desk. It took twenty minutes for them to find the films, learn how to use the machine and to feed the first roll of microfiche into the viewer.

The first reference was from Jackson's Oxford Journal and was dated 16 June 1851. It gave few details.

The next reference came from the Oxford Chronicle of 18 June. This reported the same story but with a little elaboration. In this article the woman had reportedly been found in a 'state of undress' in a barn in Headington, and she had died from unspecified knife wounds, her body 'horribly mutilated.'

The next three were reports from the trio of Oxford papers and all from the same day, 24 June. A second murder had been committed, and the killer had followed a slightly different MO. A young couple had been found dead in a field north of the city. They had been left naked, and the woman's body had, according to the Oxford University Herald , been 'cruelly disfigured'.

By the day after the third incident on 9 July, it had become the biggest story in Oxford for years; the reporting was now extensive and the innate gentlemanly restraint of the journalism had become tinged with what was, for the time, an unseemly overexcitement. An editorial in the Oxford Chronicle of 10 July read:

With the latest report yesterday of a further abhorrent murder, in this instance a young woman in the neighbourhood of Forest Hill on the road to London, considerable fears are growing that the Police Force are facing unprecedented difficulties in elucidating the factors behind the succession of vile murders that have plagued our city and its environs since the death of a young woman on 16^th June. Whilst commending the skill and dedication of the officers leading the investigation, we feel that it is our duty to highlight the natural anxieties of all the people of Oxford. The police have of course noted that all those murdered have been young people, the eldest being just twenty-one; and in one case the obscenity involved an unchaperoned couple meeting illicitly. It is also a matter of public knowledge that with this second incident the young man was a university student, that the man's body was unmolested after the murderer had dispatched him, but that the unfortunate young ladies, were, in each case, killed by knife, before being mutilated in the most foul manner.

Sources, which it is our duty and obligation to withhold, have divulged the fact that a suspect was apprehended at the scene of the latest atrocity and subsequently questioned. So there remains hope, and we all pray that this latest development may speed the police to an early resolution to this most horrendous series of crimes, thus removing inordinate fear from all who live within these city walls. In this cause, the Chronicle, and, I feel confident in believing, the great majority of our readers, will support the officers of the Police Force with wholehearted enthusiasm.

'Positively tabloid,' Philip said as he and Laura finished reading the piece.

For the next hour they ploughed through every report they had found from the catalogue.

Either through fear of offending their readership or because details were never revealed by the police, all three newspapers were short on explicit detail. Phrases like 'horrible mutilation', 'devilish disfigurement' and 'cruel abuse' littered the accounts. But what interested Laura and Philip most was the story of the suspect picked up at the scene of the Forest Hill murder.

Nathaniel Milliner was what the politically incorrect journalists of the time referred to as an

'imbecile'. He was fifteen but could speak only with a severe slur, he walked with a limp and his back was deformed. He was the son of a professor of medicine, John Milliner, who had steadfastly refused to put his son into an institution. After hours of interrogation the police had finally accepted the boy's claim that he had merely stumbled upon the dead bodies while he had been out near Forest Hill flying a kite. They had no evidence with which to convict Nathaniel and it seemed clear that Professor Milliner, who was one of the most important figures within the academic community, had protected his son during the investigation in the same way that he had for fifteen years protected him from the prejudices of Victorian society.

Two of the three Oxford papers had remained sceptical and it was clear from almost all the reports in the Chronicle and the Herald that the editors had wanted to see Nathaniel swing. Only Jackson's Oxford Journal reported the events in a balanced fashion and refused to come out against the boy. Then, suddenly, the whole pace of the story changed. A week after the Forest Hill murder, the police arrested a man named Patrick Fitzgerald, an Irish labourer who was working on the construction of a new canal in Oxford. Two witnesses came forward to say they had seen him at the first two murder scenes just before the bodies were found. Another, an anonymous workmate, told police that Fitzgerald had been 'stinking drunk' in a pub called the Ferret and Fox close to the canal excavation site, and that late on the night of the double murder he had, according to a report in the Chronicle , confessed to him: 'I have blood on my hands, so much blood.'

Fitzgerald's trial began on 9 August. After just two court appearances the jury was unanimous in finding him guilty. He was hanged on 12 August.

'Frustrating,' Laura said. 'The murders sound identical to the recent killings, but there are no details; without those it could all just be a coincidence.'

'But it must be significant that the murders stopped after the police caught this Fitzgerald character.'

'Yeah, but what evidence were they working on? What do you think about Nathaniel Milliner?' Laura asked.

'He could have been a complete innocent. The police obviously concluded he was and they hanged the labourer. But it all seems a bit too neat to me.'

'Why?'

'The witnesses suddenly coming out of the woodwork and claiming to have seen Fitzgerald near the scenes of the murders just before the bodies were found. The victims had probably been dead for hours before they were discovered; it proves nothing.'

'Yeah, but the guy had been at both the first two murder scenes, hadn't he?' 'So they claim.'

'And this workmate. People can say some pretty wild things when they're drunk. Means nothing.'

'We would certainly need a little more precise evidence to bring a conviction today,' Philip said.

'And have you noticed?' Laura asked. 'These reports say almost nothing about the killings. There're no details here. It smells bad, you know?'

Philip nodded.

'God, it really is frustrating. There must be more on these murders.'

'Maybe, but I doubt you'll unearth any more detail than you have here.'

They fell silent for a moment and Laura looked at the screen where the last report was still on display. Then, suddenly, she said: 'What about police records? Surely there must be an official report on the murders?'

'From 1851?'

'Well, why not?'

'I suppose it's possible. It wouldn't be here in Oxford, though. The police station was rebuilt in the 1950s, and with the amount of paper that place gets through each year I can't imagine they keep records more than ten years, at most.'

'But the records must go somewhere.'

'Yes, they do,' Philip replied. 'The Public Records Office in Kew.'

'Would they be computerised?' 'I doubt it.'

Laura was about to reply when her phone bleeped. Looking at the screen she saw that she had an SMS. 'It's from Charlie,' she said. 'He says he has some new information on the manuscript. Wants to meet us at his shop at four o'clock today.'