Case File
31
The Man Who Walked Out
Days after Jonathan Fairhurst, a wealthy Manchester merchant with warehouses in Spitalfields, strolled into Haslingden Police Station and confessed to two murders, he walked out again, protected by money, friends and a retraction. Detective Constable Mallory, sick with fury at his superiors, resolves to break the case open even at the cost of his career. Sergeant Edmund Cryer must decide whether to restrain him or stand beside him.
Every time he shut his eyes he was back in the front office at Haslingden, with the gas hissing in its bracket and the stove ticking, watching a man in an astrakhan collar stroll across the boards as though he owned the building and the street outside it. Jonathan Fairhurst. Gold chain, gloves of soft grey kid, boots that had never touched a Rossendale cobble in anger. He had given the names of Sarah Whittaker and Mary Ashworth as a man might read out items from a bill of lading.
He had smiled while he did it. That was what Mallory could not put down. The smile was calm and almost kind, the smile of a man who has already seen the end of the play and knows he is in the stalls.
Then he had walked out into the dusk, and nobody stopped him.
Mallory had stood at the window and watched a hired cab take him up toward the railway station, the lamplighter touching his pole to each lamp as it passed, as though nothing in the world had been disturbed. Behind him, the inspector was already turning the confession over in his hands as if it were hot. Within the hour it had become a "gentleman's unfortunate excitement." By the next morning it was a matter for "discretion." By the third, a Manchester solicitor in a black coat had been seen in the Superintendent's room, and a letter had arrived on thick cream paper, and the whole business had closed like a mill gate at the end of the shift.
Mallory walked the length of Prinny Lane that evening with his collar up against the sleet, and stopped where he always stopped. The wall was dark and the ditch ran loud. Somewhere beyond the mill chimneys the name of Spitalfields kept turning in his head: the warehouses there, the lodging-houses, the long money that ran from London silk to Manchester cotton and left every hand it passed through a little cleaner than it found it.
Fairhurst had known things. He had known what no newspaper had printed, that Sarah's clogs were still on her feet, that a button had been torn from Mary's boot and never found. Mallory had written every word down himself, with a hand that would not stay steady. Yet the inspector had called it nerves.
His anger had long since gone past heat. It was cold and hard now, like iron left out all night on the moor.
He thought of Sergeant Cryer, and the anger sharpened. Cryer, who was supposed to see what others missed. Mallory waited for him to speak. Cryer had only nodded, said nothing, and gone to his desk. Was that what a sergeant was for, to nod? Was that what the inspector was for, and the Superintendent, and the Chief Constable who dined so comfortably with men like Fairhurst? Every one of them had read the confession and found a reason not to believe it. Every one of them would sleep tonight.
He would not.
By the time he reached the foot of Tor Hill he had decided. It came without drama, as such decisions do. He would go to Manchester on his own time, in his own coat, and walk the warehouse district until someone talked. He would find the coachman, the clerk, the porter, whoever had carried Fairhurst's bags. He would put the pieces on the Superintendent's desk, one by one, until the man could no longer look away.
If they dismissed him for it, let them. A uniform could be handed back. Two dead women could not be handed back to anyone.
Mallory stood a while under the black shoulder of the hill, where Mary Ashworth had lain in the cold. Then he turned toward the lights of the town and the late train, and he did not look round.
From Cryer’s journal
Mallory thinks I did nothing, and I let him think it, which was unkind and perhaps necessary. A man cannot fight if he believes the whole house is against him, but neither should he stand alone. His anger was the truest thing in that station this week. I have told him so, and told him also that the Superintendent will remember his insolence for ten years. He said he could bear it. I believe him. Two women lay in the cold while gentlemen wrote careful letters, and it was a constable with worn boots who would not let it rest. I have known worse reasons to wear the uniform.
COPYRIGHT & FICTION DISCLAIMER
© Gaslight Murders. All rights reserved.
This case file is a work of historical fiction created for entertainment and storytelling purposes. While certain locations, historical periods, events and social conditions may be inspired by real history, the characters, investigations, dialogue, crimes and circumstances depicted within this story are fictional unless otherwise clearly stated.
Edmund Cryer and the wider Gaslight Murders universe are original fictional creations. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, or to actual events, is purely coincidental unless specifically acknowledged.
This story may contain themes and subject matter reflective of the historical period in which it is set, including crime, death and other disturbing events.
No part of this case file may be reproduced, copied, distributed or republished without prior written permission from Gaslight Murders, except where permitted by applicable copyright law.
← View All Case Files