Arthur & George

George

The month the persecutions stop marks the twentieth anniversary of Shapurji Edalji's appointment to Great Wyrley; it is followed by the twentieth – no, the twenty-first – Christmas celebrated at the Vicarage. Maud receives a tapestry bookmark, Horace his own copy of Father's Lectures on St Paul's Epistle to the Galatians, George a sepia print of Mr Holman Hunt's The Light of the World with the suggestion that he might hang it on the wall of his office. George thanks his parents, but can well imagine what the senior partners would think: that an articled clerk of only two years' standing, who is trusted to do little more than write out documents in fair copy, is hardly entitled to make decisions about furnishing; further, that clients come to a solicitor for a specific kind of guidance, and might well find Mr Hunt's advertisement for a different kind distracting.

As the first months of the new year pass, the curtains are parted each morning with the increased certainty that there will be nothing but God's shining dew upon the lawn; and the postman's arrival no longer causes alarm. The Vicar begins to repeat that they have been tested with fire, and their faith in the Lord has helped them endure this trial. Maud, fragile and pious, has been kept in as much ignorance as possible; Horace, now a sturdy and straightforward sixteen-year-old, knows more, and will privately confess to George that in his view the old method of an eye for an eye is an unimprovable system of justice, and that if he ever catches anyone tossing dead blackbirds over the hedge, he will wring their necks in person.

George does not, as his parents believe, have his own office at Sangster, Vickery amp; Speight. He has a stool and a high-top desk in an uncarpeted corner where the access of the sun's rays depends upon the goodwill of a distant skylight. He does not yet possess a fob watch, let alone his own set of law books. But he has a proper hat, a three-and-six-penny bowler from Fenton's in Grange Street. And though his bed remains a mere three yards from Father's, he feels the beginnings of independent life stirring within him. He has even made the acquaintance of two articled clerks from neighbouring practices. Greenway and Stentson, who are slightly older, took him one lunchtime to a public house where he briefly pretended to enjoy the horrible sour beer he paid for.

During his year at Mason College, George paid little attention to the great city he found himself in. He felt it only as a barricade of noise and bustle lying between the station and his books; in truth, it frightened him. But now he begins to feel more at ease with the place, and more curious about it. If he is not crushed by its vigour and energy, perhaps he will one day become part of it himself.

He begins to read up on the city. At first he finds it rather stodgy stuff, about cutlers and smiths and metal manufacture; next come the Civil War and the Plague, the steam engine and the Lunar Society, the Church and King Riots, the Chartist upheavals. But then, little more than a decade ago, Birmingham begins to shake itself into modern municipal life, and suddenly George feels he is reading about real things, relevant things. He is tormented to realize that he could have been present at one of Birmingham 's greatest moments: the day in 1887 when Her Majesty laid the foundation stone of the Victoria Law Courts. And thereafter, the city has arrived in a great rush of new buildings and institutions: the General Hospital, the Chamber of Arbitration, the meat market. Money is currently being raised to establish a university; there is a plan to build a new Temperance Hall, and serious talk that Birmingham might soon become a bishopric, no longer under the see of Worcester.

On that day of Queen Victoria 's visit, 500,000 people came to greet her, and despite the vast crowd there were neither disturbances nor casualties. George is impressed, yet also not surprised. The general opinion is that cities are violent, overcrowded places, while the countryside is calm and peaceable. His own experience is to the contrary: the country is turbulent and primitive, while the city is where life becomes orderly and modern. Of course Birmingham is not without crime and vice and discord – else there would be less of a living for solicitors – but it seems to George that human conduct is more rational here, and more obedient to the law: more civil.

George finds something both serious and comforting in his daily transit into the city. There is a journey, there is a destination: this is how he has been taught to understand life. At home, the destination is the Kingdom of Heaven; at the office, the destination is justice, that is to say, a successful outcome for your client; but both journeys are full of forking paths and booby traps laid by the opponent. The railway suggests how it ought to be, how it could be: a smooth ride to a terminus on evenly spaced rails and according to an agreed timetable, with passengers divided among first-, second- and third-class carriages.

Perhaps this is why George feels quietly enraged when anyone seeks to harm the railway. There are youths – men, perhaps – who take knives and razors to the leather window straps; who senselessly attack the picture frames above the seats; who loiter on footbridges and try to drop bricks into the locomotive's chimney. This is all incomprehensible to George. It may seem a harmless game to place a penny on the rail and see it flattened to twice its diameter by a passing express; but George regards it as a slippery slope which leads to train wrecking.

Such actions are naturally covered by the criminal law. George finds himself increasingly preoccupied by the civil connection between passengers and the railway company. A passenger buys a ticket, and at that moment, with consideration given and received, a contract springs into being. But ask that passenger what kind of contract he or she has entered into, what obligations are laid upon the parties, what claim for compensation might be pursued against the railway company in case of lateness, breakdown or accident, and answer would come there none. This may not be the passenger's fault: the ticket alludes to a contract, but its detailed terms are only displayed at certain main-line stations and at the offices of the railway company – and what busy traveller has the time to make a diversion and examine them? Even so, George marvels at how the British, who gave railways to the world, treat them as a mere means of convenient transport, rather than as an intense nexus of multiple rights and responsibilities.

He decides to appoint Horace and Maud as the Man and Woman on the Clapham Omnibus – or, in the present instance, the Man and Woman on the Walsall, Cannock amp; Rugeley Train. He is allowed to use the schoolroom as his law court. He sits his brother and sister at desks and presents them with a case he has recently come across in the foreign law reports.

'Once upon a time,' he begins, walking up and down in a way that seems necessary to the story, 'there was a very fat Frenchman called Payelle, who weighed twenty-five stones.'

Horace starts giggling. George frowns at his brother and grips his lapels like a barrister. 'No laughter in court,' he insists. He proceeds. 'Monsieur Payelle bought a third-class ticket on a French train.'

'Where was he going?' asks Maud.

'It doesn't matter where he was going.'

'Why was he so fat?' demands Horace. This ad hoc jury seems to believe it may ask questions whenever it likes.

'I don't know. He must have been even greedier than you. In fact, he was so greedy that when the train pulled in, he found he couldn't get through the door of a third-class carriage.' Horace starts tittering at the idea. 'So next he tried a second-class carriage, but he was too fat to get into that as well. So then he tried a first-class carriage-'

'And he was too fat to get into that too!' Horace shouts, as if it were the conclusion to a joke.

'No, members of the jury, he found that this door was indeed wide enough. So he took a seat, and the train set off for – for wherever it was going. After a while the ticket collector came along, examined his ticket, and asked for the difference between the third-class fare and the first-class fare. Monsieur Payelle refused to pay. The railway company sued Payelle. Now, do you see the problem?'

'The problem is he was too fat,' says Horace, and starts giggling again.

'He didn't have enough money to pay,' says Maud. 'Poor man.'

'No, neither of those is the problem. He had money enough to pay, but he refused to. Let me explain. Counsel for Payelle argued that he had fulfilled his legal requirements by buying a ticket, and it was the company's fault if all the train doors were too narrow for him except the first-class ones. The company argued that if he was too fat to get into one kind of compartment, then he should take a ticket for the sort of compartment he could get into. What do you think?'

Horace is quite firm. 'If he went into a first-class compartment, then he has to pay for going into it. It stands to reason. He shouldn't have eaten so much cake. It's not the railway's fault if he's too fat.'

Maud tends to side with the underdog, and decides that a fat Frenchman comes into this category. 'It's not his fault he's fat,' she begins. 'It might be a disease. Or he may have lost his mother and got so sad he ate too much. Or – any reason. It wasn't as if he was making someone get out of their seat and go into a third-class compartment instead.'

'The court was not told the reasons for his size.'

'Then the law is an ass,' says Horace, who has recently learned the phrase.

'Had he ever done it before?' asks Maud.

'Now that's an excellent point,' says George, nodding like a judge. 'It goes to the question of intent. Either he knew from previous experience that he was too fat to enter a third-class compartment and bought a ticket despite this knowledge, or he bought a ticket in the honest belief that he could indeed fit through the door.'

'Well, which is it?' asks Horace, impatiently.

'I don't know. It doesn't say in the report.'

'So what's the answer?'

'Well, the answer here is a divided jury – one for each party. You'll have to argue it out between you.'

'I'm not going to argue with Maud,' says Horace. 'She's a girl. What's the real answer?'

'Oh, the Correctional Court at Lille found for the railway company. Payelle had to reimburse them.'

'I won!' shouts Horace. 'Maud got it wrong.'

'No one got it wrong,' George replies. 'The case could have gone either way. That's why things go to court in the first place.'

'I still won,' says Horace.

George is pleased. He has engaged the interest of his junior jury, and on succeeding Saturday afternoons he presents them with new cases and problems. Do passengers in a full compartment have the right to hold the door closed against those on the platform seeking to enter? Is there any legal difference between finding someone's pocketbook on the seat, and finding a loose coin under the cushion? What should happen if you take the last train home and it fails to stop at your station, thereby obliging you to walk five miles back in the rain?

When he finds his jurors' attention waning, George diverts them with interesting facts and odd cases. He tells them, for instance, about dogs in Belgium. In England the regulations state that dogs have to be muzzled and put in the van; whereas in Belgium a dog may have the status of a passenger so long as it has a ticket. He cites the case of a hunting man who took his retriever on a train and sued when it was ejected from the seat beside him in favour of a human being. The court – to Horace's delight and to Maud's dissatisfaction – found for the plaintiff, a ruling which meant that from now on if five men and their five dogs were to occupy a ten-seated compartment in Belgium, and all ten were the bearers of tickets, that compartment would legally be classified as full.

Horace and Maud are surprised by George. In the schoolroom there is a new authority about him; but also, a kind of lightness, as if he is on the verge of telling a joke, something he has never done to their knowledge. George, in return, finds his jury useful to him. Horace arrives quickly at blunt positions – usually in favour of the railway company – from which he will not be budged. Maud takes longer to make up her mind, asks the more pertinent questions, and sympathizes with every inconvenience that might befall a passenger. Though his siblings hardly amount to a cross-section of the travelling public, they are typical, George thinks, in their almost complete ignorance of their rights.

Arthur

He had brought detectivism up to date. He had rid it of the slow-thinking representatives of the old school, those ordinary mortals who gained applause for deciphering palpable clues laid right across their path. In their place he had put a cool, calculating figure who could see the clue to a murder in a ball of worsted, and certain conviction in a saucer of milk.

Holmes provided Arthur with sudden fame and – something the England captaincy would never have done – money. He bought a decent-sized house in South Norwood, whose deep walled garden had room for a tennis ground. He put his grandfather's bust in the entrance hall and lodged his Arctic trophies on top of a bookcase. He found an office for Wood, who seemed to have attached himself as permanent staff. Lottie had returned from working as a governess in Portugal and Connie, despite being the decorative one, was proving an invaluable hand at the typewriter. He had acquired a machine in Southsea but never managed to manipulate it with success himself. He was more dextrous with the tandem bicycle he pedalled with Touie. When she became pregnant again, he exchanged it for a tricycle, driven by masculine power alone. On fine afternoons he would project them on thirty-mile missions across the Surrey hills.

He became accustomed to success, to being recognized and inspected; also to the various pleasures and embarrassments of the newspaper interview.

'It says you are a happy, genial, homely man.' Touie was smiling back at the magazine. 'Tall, broad-shouldered and with a hand that grips you heartily, and, in its sincerity of welcome, hurts.'

'Who is that?'

'The Strand Magazine.'

'Ah. Mr How, as I recall. Not one of nature's sportsmen, I suspected at the time. The paw of a poodle. What does he say of you, my dear?'

'He says… Oh, I cannot read it.'

'I insist. You know how I love to see you blush.'

'He says… I am "a most charming woman".' And, on cue, she blushed, and hurriedly changed the subject. 'Mr How says, that "Dr Doyle invariably conceives the end of his story first, and writes up to it". You never told me that, Arthur.'

'Did I not? Perhaps because it is as plain as a packstaff. How can you make sense of the beginning unless you know the ending? It's entirely logical when you reflect upon it. What else does our friend have to say for himself?'

'That your ideas come to you at all manner of times – when out walking, cricketing, tricycling, or playing tennis. Is that the case, Arthur? Does that account for your occasional absent-mindedness on the court?'

'I might have been putting on the dog a little.'

'And look – here is little Mary standing on this very chair.'

Arthur leaned over. 'Engraved from one of my photographs – there, you see. I made sure they put my name underneath.'

Arthur had become a face in literary circles. He counted Jerome and Barrie as friends; had met Meredith and Wells. He had dined with Oscar Wilde, finding him thoroughly civil and agreeable, not least because the fellow had read and admired his Micah Clarke. Arthur now reckoned he would run Holmes for not more than two years – three at most, before killing him off. Then he would concentrate on historical novels, which he had always known were the best of him.

He was proud of what he had done so far. He wondered if he would have been prouder had he fulfilled Partridge's prophecy and captained England at cricket. It was quite clear this would never happen. He was a decent right-hand bat, and could bowl slows with a flight that puzzled some. He might make a good all-round MCC man, but his final ambition was now more modest – to have his name inscribed in the pages of Wisden.

Touie bore him a son, Alleyne Kingsley. He had always dreamed of filling a house up with his family. But poor Annette had died out in Portugal; while the Mam was as stubborn as ever, preferring to stick in her cottage on that fellow's estate. Still, he had sisters, children, wife; and his brother Innes was not far away at Woolwich, preparing for an army life. Arthur was the breadwinner, and a head of the family who enjoyed dispensing largesse and blank cheques. Once a year he did it formally, dressing as Father Christmas.

He knew the proper order should have been: wife, children, sisters. How long had they been married – seven, eight years? Touie was all anyone could possibly want in a wife. She was indeed a most charming woman, as The Strand Magazine had noted. She was calm and had grown competent; she had given him a son and daughter. She believed in his writing down to the last adjective, and supported all his ventures. He fancied Norway; they went to Norway. He fancied dinner parties; she organized them to his taste. He had married her for better for worse, for richer for poorer. So far there had been no worse, and no poorer.

And yet. It was different now, if he was honest with himself. When they had met, he had been young, awkward and unknown; she had loved him, and never complained. Now he was still young, but successful and famous; he could keep a table of Savile Club wits interested by the hour. He had found his feet, and – partly thanks to marriage – his brain. His success was the deserved result of hard work, but those themselves unfamiliar with success imagined it the end of the story. Arthur was not yet ready for the end of his own story. If life was a chivalric quest, then he had rescued the fair Touie, he had conquered the city, and been rewarded with gold. But there were years to go before he was prepared to accept a role as wise elder to the tribe. What did a knight errant do when he came home to a wife and two children in South Norwood?

Well, perhaps it was not such a difficult question. He protected them, behaved honourably, and taught his children the proper code of living. He might depart on further quests, though obviously not quests which involved the saving of other maidens. There would be plenty of challenges in his writing, in society, travel, politics. Who knew in what direction his sudden energies would take him? He would always give Touie whatever attention and comfort she could need; he would never cause her a moment's unhappiness.

And yet.

George

Greenway and Stentson tend to hang about together, but this does not bother George. At lunchtime he has no desire for the tavern, preferring to sit under a tree in St Philip's Place and eat the sandwiches his mother has prepared. He likes it when they ask him to explain some aspect of conveyancing, but is often puzzled by the way they go off into secretive spurts about horses and betting offices, girls and dance-halls. They are also currently obsessed with Bechuana Land, whose chiefs are on an official visit to Birmingham.

Besides, when he does hang about with them, they like to question a fellow and tease him.

'George, where do you come from?'

'Great Wyrley.'

'No, where do you really come from?'

George ponders this. 'The Vicarage,' he replies, and the dogs laugh.

'Have you got a girl, George?'

'I beg your pardon?'

'Some legal definition you don't understand in the question?'

'Well, I just think a chap should mind his own business.'

'Hoity-toity, George.'

It is a subject to which Greenway and Stentson are tenaciously and hilariously attached.

'Is she a stunner, George?'

'Does she look like Marie Lloyd?'

When George does not reply, they put their heads together, tip their hats at an angle, and serenade him. The-boy-I-love-sits-up-in-the-ga-ll-ery.'

'Go on, George, tell us her name.'

'Go on, George, tell us her name.'

After a few weeks of this, George can take no more. If that's what they want, that's what they can have. 'Her name's Dora Charlesworth,' he says suddenly.

'Dora Charlesworth,' they repeat. 'Dora Charlesworth. Dora Charlesworth?' They make it sound increasingly improbable.

'She's Harry Charlesworth's sister. He's my friend.'

He thinks this will shut them up, but it only seems to encourage them.

'What's the colour of her hair?'

'Have you kissed her, George?'

'Where does she come from?'

'No, where does she really come from?'

'Are you making her a Valentine?'

They never seem to tire of the subject.

'I say, George, there's one question we have to ask you about Dora. Is she a darkie?'

'She's English, just like me.'

'Just like you, George? Just like you?'

'When can we meet her?'

'I bet she's a Bechuana girl.'

'Shall we send a private detective to investigate? What about that fellow some of the divorce firms use? Goes into hotel rooms and catches the husband with the maid? Wouldn't want to get caught like that, George, would you?'

George decides that what he has done, or has allowed to happen, isn't really lying; it is just letting them believe what they want to believe, which is different. Happily, they live on the other side of Birmingham, so each time George's train pulls out from New Street, he is leaving that particular story behind.

On the morning of February 13th, Greenway and Stentson are in skittish mood, though George never discovers why. They have just posted a Valentine addressed to Miss Dora Charlesworth, Great Wyrley, Staffordshire. This sets off considerable puzzlement in the postman, and even more in Harry Charlesworth, who has always longed for a sister.

George sits on the train, his newspaper unfolded across his knee. His briefcase is on the higher, and wider, of the two string racks above his head; his bowler on the lower, narrower one, which is reserved for hats, umbrellas, sticks and small parcels. He thinks about the journey everyone has to make in life. Father's, for instance, began in distant Bombay, at the far end of one of the bubbling bloodlines of Empire. There he was brought up, and was converted to Christianity. There he wrote a grammar of the Gujerati language which funded his passage to England. He studied at St Augustine 's College, Canterbury, was ordained a priest by Bishop Macarness, and then served as a curate in Liverpool before finding his parish at Wyrley. That is a great journey by any reckoning; and his own, George thinks, will doubtless not be so extensive. Perhaps it will more closely resemble Mother's: from Scotland, where she was born, to Shropshire, where her father was Vicar of Ketley for thirty-nine years, and then to nearby Staffordshire, where her husband, if God spares him, may prove equally long-serving. Will Birmingham turn out to be George's final destination, or just a staging post? He cannot as yet tell.

George is beginning to think of himself less as a villager with a season ticket and more as a prospective citizen of Birmingham. As a sign of this new status, he decides to grow a moustache. It takes far longer than he imagines, allowing Greenway and Stentson to ask repeatedly if he would like them to club together and buy him a bottle of hair tonic. When the growth finally covers the full breadth of his upper lip, they begin calling him a Manchoo.

When they tire of this joke, they find another.

'I say, Stentson, do you know who George reminds me of?'

'Give a chap a clue.'

'Well, where did he go to school?'

'George, where did you go to school?'

'You know very well, Stentson.'

'Tell me all the same, George.'

George lifts his head from the Land Transfer Act 1897 and its consequences for wills of realty. 'Rugeley.'

'Think about it, Stentson.'

'Rugeley. Now I'm getting there. Hang on – could it be William Palmer-'

'The Rugeley Poisoner! Exactly.'

'Where did he go to school, George?'

'You know very well, you fellows.'

'Did they give everyone poisoning lessons there? Or just the clever boys?'

Palmer had killed his wife and brother after insuring them heavily; then a bookmaker to whom he was in debt. There may have been other victims, but the police contented themselves with exhuming only the next-of-kin. The evidence was enough to ensure the Poisoner a public execution in Stafford before a crowd of fifty thousand.

'Did he have a moustache like George's?'

'Just like George's.'

'You don't know anything about him, Greenway.'

'I know he went to your school. Was he on the Honours Board? Famous alumnus and all that?'

George pretends to put his thumbs in his ears.

'Actually, the thing about the Poisoner, Stentson, is that he was devilish clever. The prosecution was completely unable to establish what kind of poison he'd used.'

'Devilish clever. Do you think he was an Oriental gentleman, this Palmer?'

'Might have been from Bechuana Land. You can't always tell from someone's name, can you, George?'

'And did you hear that afterwards Rugeley sent a deputation to Lord Palmerston in Downing Street? They wanted to change the name of their town because of the disgrace the Poisoner had brought upon it. The PM thought about their request for a moment and replied, "What name do you propose – Palmerstown?"'

There is a silence. 'I don't follow you.'

'No, not Palmerston. Pal-mers-town.'

'Ah! Now that's very amusing, Greenway.'

'Even our Manchoo friend is laughing. Underneath his moustache.'

For once, George has had enough. 'Roll up your sleeve, Greenway.'

Greenway smirks. 'What for? Are you going to give me a Chinese burn?'

'Roll up your sleeve.'

George then does the same, and holds his forearm next to that of Greenway, who is just back from a fortnight sunning himself at Aberystwyth. Their skins are the same colour. Greenway is unabashed, and waits for George to comment; but George feels he has made his point, and starts putting the link back through his cuff.

'What was that about?' Stentson asks.

'I think George is trying to prove I'm a poisoner too.'

Arthur

They had taken Connie on a European tour. She was a robust girl, the only woman on the Norway crossing who wasn't prostrate with seasickness. Such imperviousness made other female sufferers irritated. Perhaps her sturdy beauty irritated them too: Jerome said that Connie could have posed for Brünnhilde. During that tour Arthur discovered that his sister, with her light dancing step, and her chestnut hair worn down her back like the cable of a man-o'-war, attracted the most unsuitable men: lotharios, card-sharps, oleaginous divorcees. Arthur had almost been obliged to raise his stick to some of them.

Back home, she seemed at last to have fixed her eye on a presentable fellow: Ernest William Hornung, twenty-six years old, tall, dapper, asthmatic, a decent wicketkeeper and occasional spin bowler; well-mannered, if liable to talk a streak if in the least encouraged. Arthur recognized that he would find it difficult to approve of anyone who attached themselves to either Lottie or Connie; but in any case, it was his duty as head of the family to cross-examine his sister.

'Hornung. What is he, this Hornung? Half Mongol, half Slav, by the sound of him. Could you not find someone wholly British?'

'He was born in Middlesbrough, Arthur. His father is a solicitor. He went to Uppingham.'

'There's something odd about him. I can sniff it.'

'He lived in Australia for three years. Because of his asthma. Perhaps what you can sniff are the gum trees.'

Arthur suppressed a laugh. Connie was the sister who most stood up to him; he loved Lottie more, but Connie was the one who liked to pull him up and surprise him. Thank God she had not married Waller. And the same went, a fortiori, for Lottie.

'And what does he do, this fellow from Middlesbrough?'

'He is a writer. Like you, Arthur.'

'Never heard of him.'

'He has written a dozen novels.'

'A dozen! But he's just a young pup.' An industrious pup, at least.

'I can lend you one if you wish to judge him that way. I have Under Two Skies and The Boss of Taroomba. Many of them are set in Australia, and I find them very accomplished.'

'Do you just, Connie?'

'But he realizes that it is difficult to make a living from writing novels, and so he works also as a journalist.'

'Well, it is a name that sticks,' Arthur grunted. He gave Connie permission to introduce the fellow into the household. For the moment he would give him the benefit of the doubt by not reading any of his books.

Spring was early that year, and the tennis ground was marked out by the end of April. From his study Arthur would hear the distant pop of racquet on ball, and the familiar irritating cry made by a female missing an easy shot. Later, he would wander out and there would be Connie in flowing skirts and Willie Hornung in straw hat and peg-topped white flannels. He noted the way Hornung did not give her any easy points, but at the same time held back from a full weight of shot. He approved: that was how a man ought to play a girl.

Touie sat to one side in a deckchair, warmed less by the frail sun of early summer than by the heat of young love. Their laughing chatter across the net and their shyness with one another afterwards seemed to delight her, and Arthur therefore decided to be won over. In truth, he rather liked the role of grudging paterfamilias. And Hornung was proving himself a witty fellow at times. Perhaps too witty, but that could be ascribed to youth. What was that first jest of his? Yes, Arthur had been reading the sporting pages, and remarked upon a story in which a runner was credited with completing the hundred yards in a mere ten seconds.

'What do you make of that, Mr Hornung?'

And Hornung had replied, quick as a flash, 'It must be a sprinter's error.'

That August, Arthur was invited to lecture in Switzerland; Touie was still a little weak from the birth of Kingsley, but naturally accompanied him. They visited the Reichenbach Falls, splendid yet terrifying, and a worthy tomb for Holmes. The fellow was rapidly turning into an old man of the sea, clinging round his neck. Now, with the help of an arch-villain, he would shrug his burden off.

At the end of September, Arthur was walking Connie up the aisle, she pulling back on his arm for striking too military a pace. As he handed her over symbolically at the altar, he knew he should be proud and happy for her. But amid all the orange blossom and backslapping and jokes about bowling maidens over, he felt his dream of an ever-increasing family around him taking a knock.

Ten days later, he learned that his father had died in a Dumfries lunatic asylum. Epilepsy was given as the cause. Arthur had not visited him in years, and did not attend the funeral; none of the family did. Charles Doyle had let down the Mam and condemned his children to genteel poverty. He had been weak and unmanly, incapable of winning his fight against liquor. Fight? He had barely raised his gloves at the demon. Excuses were occasionally made for him, but Arthur did not find the claim of an artistic temperament persuasive. That was just self-indulgence and self-exculpation. It was perfectly possible to be an artist, yet also to be robust and responsible.

Touie developed a persistent autumn cough, and complained of pains in her side. Arthur judged the symptoms insignificant, but eventually called in Dalton, the local practitioner. It was strange to find himself transformed from doctor to mere patient's husband; strange to wait downstairs while somewhere above his head his fate was being decided. The bedroom door was closed for a long time, and Dalton emerged with a face as dismal as it was familiar: Arthur had worn it himself all too many times.

'Her lungs are gravely affected. There is every sign of rapid consumption. Given her condition and family history…' Dr Dalton did not need to continue, except to add, 'You will want a second opinion.'

Not just a second, but the best. Douglas Powell, consulting physician at the Brompton Hospital for Consumption and Diseases of the Chest, came down to South Norwood the following Saturday. A pale, ascetic man, clean-shaved and correct, Powell regretfully confirmed the diagnosis.

'You are, I believe, a medical man, Mr Doyle?'

'I rebuke myself for my inattention.'

'The pulmonary system was not your speciality?'

'The eye.'

'Then you should not rebuke yourself.'

'No, the more so. I had eyes, and did not see. I did not spot the accursed microbe. I did not pay her enough attention. I was too busy with my own… success.'

'But you were an eye doctor.'

'Three years ago I went to Berlin to report on Koch's findings – supposed findings – about this very disease. I wrote about it for Stead, in the Review of Reviews.'

'I see.'

'And yet I did not recognize a case of galloping consumption in my own wife. Worse, I let her join me in activities which will have made it worse. We tricycled in every weather, we travelled to cold climates, she followed me in outdoor sports…'

'On the other hand,' said Powell, and the words briefly lifted Arthur's spirits, 'in my view there are promising signs of fibroid growth around the seat of the disease. And the other lung has enlarged somewhat to compensate. But that is the best I can say.'

'I do not accept it!' Arthur whispered the words because he could not bellow them at the top of his voice.

Powell took no offence. He was accustomed to pronouncing the gentlest, courtliest sentence of death, and familiar with the ways it took those affected. 'Of course. If you would like the name-'

'No. I accept what you have told me. But I do not accept what you have not told me. You would give her a matter of months.'

'You know as well as I do, Mr Doyle, how impossible it is to predict-'

'I know as well as you do, Dr Powell, the words we use to give hope to our patients and those near to them. I also know the words we hear within ourselves as we seek to raise their spirits. About three months.'

'Yes, in my view.'

'Then again, I say, I do not accept it. When I see the Devil, I fight him. Wherever we need to go, whatever I need to spend, he shall not have her.'

'I wish you every good fortune,' replied Powell, 'and remain at your service. There are, however, two things I am obliged to say. They may be unnecessary, but I am duty-bound. I trust you will not take offence.'

Arthur stiffened his back, a soldier ready for orders.

'You have, I believe, children?'

'Two, a boy and a girl. Aged one and four.'

'There is, you must understand, no possibility-'

'I understand.'

'I am not talking of her ability to conceive-'

'Mr Powell, I am not a fool. And neither am I a brute.'

'These things have to be made crystal clear, you must understand. The second matter is perhaps less obvious. It is the effect – the likely effect – on the patient. On Mrs Doyle.'

'Yes?'

'In our experience, consumption is different from other wasting diseases. On the whole, the patient suffers very little pain. Often the disease will proceed with less inconvenience than a toothache or an indigestion. But what sets it apart is the effect upon the mental processes. The patient is often very optimistic.'

'You mean light-headed? Delirious?'

'No, I mean optimistic. Tranquil and cheerful, I would say.'

'On account of the drugs you prescribe?'

'Not at all. It is in the nature of the disease. Regardless of how aware the patient is of the seriousness of her case.'

'Well, that is a great relief to me.'

'Yes, it may be so at first, Mr Doyle.'

'What do you mean by that?'

'I mean that when a patient does not suffer and does not complain and remains cheerful in the face of grave illness, then the suffering and the complaining has to be done by someone.'

'You do not know me, sir.'

'That is true. But I wish you the necessary courage nonetheless.'

For better, for worse; for richer, for poorer. He had forgotten: in sickness and in health.

The lunatic asylum sent Arthur his father's sketchbooks. Charles Doyle's last years had been miserable, as he lay unvisited at his grim final address; but he did not die mad. That much was clear: he had continued to paint watercolours and to draw; also to keep a diary. It now struck Arthur that his father had been a considerable artist, undervalued by his peers, worthy indeed of a posthumous exhibition in Edinburgh – perhaps even in London. Arthur could not help reflecting on the contrast in their fates: while the son was enjoying the embrace of fame and society, his abandoned father knew only the occasional embrace of the straitjacket. Arthur felt no guilt – just the beginnings of filial compassion. And there was one sentence in his father's diary which would drag at any son's heart. 'I believe,' he had written, 'I am branded as mad solely from the Scotch Misconception of Jokes.'

In December of that year, Holmes fell to his death in the arms of Moriarty; both of them propelled downwards by an impatient authorial hand. The London newspapers had contained no obituaries of Charles Doyle, but were full of protest and dismay at the death of a non-existent consulting detective whose popularity had begun to embarrass and even disgust his creator. It seemed to Arthur that the world was running mad: his father was fresh in the ground, and his wife condemned, but young City men were apparently tying crepe bands to their hats in mourning for Mr Sherlock Holmes.

Another event took place during this morbid year's end. A month after his father's death, Arthur applied to join the Society for Psychical Research.

George

In the Solicitors' Final Examinations George receives Second Class Honours, and is awarded a Bronze Medal by the Birmingham Law Society. He opens an office at 54 Newhall Street with the initial promise of some overflow work from Sangster, Vickery amp; Speight. He is twenty-three, and the world is changing for him.

Despite being a child of the Vicarage, despite a lifetime of filial attention to the pulpit of St Mark's, George has often felt that he does not understand the Bible. Not all of it, all of the time; indeed, not enough of it, enough of the time. There has always been some leap to be made, from fact to faith, from knowledge to understanding, of which he has proved incapable. This makes him feel a sham. The tenets of the Church of England have increasingly become a distant given. He does not sense them as close truths, or see them working from day to day, from moment to moment. Naturally, he does not tell his parents this.

At school, additional stories and explanations of life were put before him. This is what science says; this is what history says; this is what literature says… George became adept at answering examination questions on these subjects, even if they had no real vivacity in his mind. But now he has discovered the law, and the world is beginning finally to make sense. Hitherto invisible connections – between people, between things, between ideas and principles – are gradually revealing themselves.

For instance, he is on the train between Bloxwich and Birchills, looking out of the window at a hedgerow. He sees not what his fellow passengers would see – a few intertwined bushes blown by the wind, home to some nesting birds – but instead a formal boundary between owners of land, a delineation settled by contract or long usage, something active, something liable to promote either amity or dispute. At the Vicarage, he looks at the maid scrubbing the kitchen table, and instead of a coarse and clumsy girl likely to misplace his books, he sees a contract of employment and a duty of care, a complicated and delicate tying together, backed by centuries of case law, all of it unfamiliar to the parties concerned.

He feels confident and happy with the law. There is a great deal of textual exegesis, of explaining how words can and do mean different things; and there are almost as many books of commentary on the law as there are on the Bible. But at the end there is not that further leap to be made. At the end, you have an agreement, a decision to be obeyed, an understanding of what something means. There is a journey from confusion to clarity. A drunken mariner writes his last will and testament on an ostrich egg; the mariner drowns, the egg survives, whereupon the law brings coherence and fairness to his sea-washed words.

Other young men divide their lives between work and pleasure; indeed, spend the former dreaming of the latter. George finds that the law provides him with both. He has no need or desire to take part in sports, to go boating, to attend the theatre; he has no interest in alcohol or gourmandising, or in horses racing one another; he has little desire to travel. He has his practice, and then, for pleasure, he has railway law. It is astonishing that the tens of thousands who travel daily by train have no useful pocket explicator to help them determine their rights vis-a-vis the railway company. He has written to Messrs Effingham Wilson, publishers of the ' Wilson 's Legal Handy Books' series, and on the basis of a sample chapter they have accepted his proposal.

George has been brought up to believe in hard work, honesty, thrift, charity and love of family; also to believe that virtue is its own reward. Further, as the eldest child, he is expected to set an example to Horace and Maud. George increasingly realizes that, while his parents love their three children equally, it is on him that expectation weighs the heaviest. Maud is always likely to be a source of concern. Horace, while in all respects a thoroughly decent fellow, has never been cut out for a scholar. He has left home and, with help from a cousin of Mother's, managed to enter the Civil Service at the lowest clerical level.

Still, there are moments when George catches himself envying Horace, who now lives in diggings in Manchester, and occasionally sends a cheery postcard from a seaside resort. There are also moments when he wishes that Dora Charlesworth really did exist. But he knows no girls. None comes to the house; Maud has no female friends he might practise acquaintance on. Greenway and Stentson liked to boast experience in such matters, but George was often dubious of their claims, and is glad to have left those two behind. When he sits on his bench in St Philip's Place eating his sandwiches, he glances admiringly at young women who pass; sometimes he will remember a face, and have yearnings for it at night, while his father growls and snuffles a few feet away. George is familiar with the sins of the flesh, as listed in Galatians, chapter five – they begin with Adultery, Fornication, Uncleanness and Lasciviousness. But he does not believe his own quiet hankerings qualify under either of the last two heads.

One day he will be married. He will acquire not just a fob watch but a junior partner, and perhaps an articled clerk, and after that a wife, young children, and a house to whose purchase he has brought all his conveyancing skills. He already imagines himself discussing, over luncheon, the Sale of Goods Act 1893 with the senior partners of other Birmingham practices. They listen respectfully to his summary of how the Act is being interpreted, and cry 'Good old George!' when he reaches for the bill. He is not sure exactly how you get to there from here: whether you acquire a wife and then a house, or a house and then a wife. But he imagines it all happening, by some as yet unrevealed process. Both acquisitions will depend upon his leaving Wyrley, of course. He does not ask his father about this. Nor does he ask him why he still locks the bedroom door at night.

When Horace left home, George hoped he might move into the empty room. The small desk fitted up for him in Father's study when he first went to Mason College was no longer adequate. He imagined Horace's room with his bed in it, his desk in it; he imagined privacy. But when he put his request to Mother, she gently explained that Maud was now judged strong enough to sleep by herself, and George wouldn't want to deprive her of that chance, would he? It was now too late, he realized, to put in evidence Father's snoring, which had got worse and sometimes kept him awake. So he continues to work and sleep within touching distance of his father. However, he is awarded a small table next to his desk, on which to place extra books.

He still retains the habit, which has now grown into a necessity, of walking the lanes for an hour or so after he gets back from the office. It is one detail of his life in which he will not be ruled. He keeps a pair of old boots by the back door, and rain or shine, hail or snow, George takes his walk. He ignores the landscape, which does not interest him; nor do the bulky, bellowing animals it contains. As for the humans, he will occasionally think he recognizes someone from the village school in Mr Bostock's day, but he is never quite sure. No doubt the farm boys have now grown into farm-hands, and the miners' sons are down the pit themselves. Some days George gives a kind of half-greeting, a sideways raising of the head, to everyone he meets; at other times he greets no one, even if he remembers having acknowledged them the day before.

His walk is delayed one evening by the sight of a small parcel on the kitchen table. From its size and weight, and the London postmark, he knows immediately what it contains. He wants to delay the moment for as long as possible. He unknots the string and carefully rolls it round his fingers. He removes the waxed brown paper and smooths it out for reuse. Maud is by now thoroughly excited, and even Mother shows a little impatience. He opens the book to its title page:

RAILWAY LAW

For

THE "MAN IN THE TRAIN"

CHIEFLY INTENDED AS A GUIDE FOR THE

TRAVELLING PUBLIC ON ALL POINTS LIKELY TO

ARISE IN CONNECTION WITH THE RAILWAYS

BY

GEORGE E.T. EDALJI

Solicitor

Second Class Honours, Solicitors' Final Examination, November, 1898;

Birmingham Law Society's Bronze Medallist, 1898

LONDON

EFFINGHAM WILSON

ROYAL EXCHANGE

1901

( Entered at Stationers' Hall )

He turns to the Contents. Bye-Laws and Their Validity. Season Tickets. Unpunctuality of Trains, etc. Luggage. The Carriage of Cycles. Accidents. Some Miscellaneous Points. He shows Maud the cases they considered in the schoolroom with Horace. Here is the one about fat Monsieur Payelle; and here the one about Belgians and their dogs.

This is, he realizes, the proudest day of his life; and over supper it is clear that his parents allow a certain amount of pride to be justifiable and Christian. He has studied and passed his examinations. He has set up his own office, and now shown himself an authority upon an aspect of the law which is of practical help to many people. He is on his way: that journey in life is now truly beginning.

He goes to Horniman amp; Co to get some flyers printed. He discusses layout and typeface and print run with Mr Horniman himself, as one professional to another. A week later he is the owner of four hundred advertisements for his book. He leaves three hundred in his office, not wishing to appear vainglorious, and takes a hundred home. The order form invites interested purchasers to send a Postal Order for 2/3 – the 3d to cover postage – to 54 Newhall Street, Birmingham. He gives handfuls of the flyer to his parents, with instructions that they press them upon likely looking Men and Women 'In the Train'. Next morning he gives three to the stationmaster at Great Wyrley amp; Churchbridge, and distributes others to respectable fellow passengers.

Arthur

They put the furniture into store and left the children with Mrs Hawkins. From the fog and damp of London to the clean, dry chill of Davos, where Touie was installed at the Kurhaus Hotel under a pile of blankets. As Dr Powell had predicted, the disease brought with it a strange optimism; and this, combined with Touie's placid nature, made her not just stoical but actively cheerful. It was perfectly clear that she had been transformed within a few weeks from wife and companion to invalid and dependant; but she did not fret at her condition, let alone rage as Arthur would have done. He did the raging for both of them, in silence, by himself. He also concealed his blacker feelings. Each uncomplaining cough sent a pain, not through her, but through him; she brought up a little blood, he brought up gouts of guilt.

Whatever his fault, whatever his negligence, it was done, and there was only one course of action: a violent attack on the accursed microbe which was intending to consume her vitals. And when his presence was not required, only one course of distraction: violent exercise. He had brought his Norwegian skis to Davos, and took instruction in their use from two brothers called Branger. When their pupil's skill began to match his brute determination, they took him on the ascent of the Jacobshorn; at the summit he turned, and saw far below him the flags of the town being lowered in acclamation. Later that winter the Brangers led him over the 9,000-foot Furka Pass. They set off at four in the morning and arrived in Arosa by noon, Arthur thus becoming the first Englishman to cross an Alpine pass on skis. At their hotel in Arosa, Tobias Branger registered the three of them. Next to Arthur's name, in the space for Profession, he wrote: Sportesmann.

With Alpine air, the best doctors, and money, with Lottie's nursing help and Arthur's tenacity in wrestling down the Devil, Touie's condition stabilized, then began to improve. By the late spring, she was judged strong enough to come back to England, allowing Arthur to depart for an American publication tour. The following winter they returned to Davos. That initial sentence of three months had been overturned; every doctor agreed that the patient's health was somewhat more secure. The next winter they spent in the desert outside Cairo at the Mena House Hotel, a low white building with the Pyramids looming behind. Arthur was irritated by the brittle air; but soothed by billiards, tennis and golf. He foresaw a life of annual winter exiles, each a little longer than the previous one, until… No, he must not let himself think beyond the spring, beyond the summer. At least he could still manage to write during this jerky existence of hotels and steamers and trains. And when he couldn't write he went out into the desert and whacked a golf ball as far as it would fly. The whole course was in effect nothing but one vast sand-hole; wherever you landed, you were in it. This, it seemed, was what his life had become.

Back in England, however, he ran into Grant Allen: like Arthur a novelist, and like Touie a consumptive. Allen assured him that the disease could be resisted without recourse to exile, and offered himself as living proof. The solution lay in his postal address: Hindhead, Surrey. A village on the Portsmouth road, almost halfway, as it happened, between Southsea and London. More to the point, a spot with its own private climate. It was high up, sheltered from the winds, dry, full of fir trees and sandy soil. They called it the Little Switzerland of Surrey.

Arthur was immediately convinced. He thrived on action, on having an urgent plan to implement; he loathed waiting, and feared the passivity of exile. Hindhead was the answer. Land must be bought, a house designed. He found four acres, wooded and secluded, where the ground dropped away into a small valley. Gibbet Hill and the Devil's Punchbowl were close at hand, Hankley Golf Course five miles away. Ideas came to him in a rush. There must be a billiards room, and a tennis ground, and stables; quarters for Lottie, and perhaps Mrs Hawkins, and of course Woodie, who had now signed up for the duration. The house must be impressive yet welcoming: a famous writer's house, but also a family house and an invalid's house. It must be full of light, and Touie's room must have the best view. Every door must have a push-pull knob, as Arthur had once tried to calculate the amount of time lost to the human race in turning the conventional kind. It would be quite feasible for the house to have its own electricity plant; and given that he had now attained a certain eminence, it would not be inappropriate to have his family arms in stained glass.

Arthur sketched a ground plan and handed the work over to an architect. Not just any architect, but Stanley Ball, his old telepathic friend from Southsea. Those early experiments now struck him as appropriate training. He would be taking Touie to Davos again, and would communicate with Ball by letter and, if necessary, telegram. But who knew what architectural shapes might not flit sympathetically between their brains, while their bodies were hundreds of miles apart?

His stained-glass window would rise to the full height of a double-storey hallway. At the top the rose of England and the thistle of Scotland would flank the entwined initials ACD. Below there would be three rows of heraldic shields. First rank: Purcell of Foulkes Rath, Pack of Kilkenny, Mahon of Cheverney. Second rank: Percy of Northumberland, Butler of Ormonde, Colclough of Tintern. And at eye level: Conan of Brittany (Per fess Argent and Gules a lion rampant counterchanged), Hawkins of Devonshire (for Touie) and then the Doyle arms: three stags' heads and the red hand of Ulster. The true Doyle motto was Fortitudine Vincit; but here, beneath the shield, he placed a variant – Patientia Vincit. This is what the house would proclaim, to all the world and to the accursed microbe: with patience he conquers.

Stanley Ball and his builders saw little but impatience. Arthur, having set up headquarters at a nearby hotel, would constantly drive over and badger them. But at last the house took recognizable shape: a long, barn-like structure, red-bricked, tile-hung, heavy-gabled, lying across the neck of the valley. Arthur stood on his newly laid terrace and cast an inspecting eye on the broad lawn, recently rolled and seeded. Beyond it the ground fell away in an ever narrowing V to where the woods took over. There was something wild and magical about the view: from the first moment Arthur had found it evocative of some German folk tale. He thought he would plant rhododendrons.

On the day the hall window was hoisted into place, he took Touie with him to witness the unveiling. She stood before it, her eye passing over the colours and the names, then coming to rest on the house's motto.

'The Mam will be pleased,' he observed. Only the slight pause before her smile made him realize something might be awry.

'You are right,' he said immediately, though she had still not uttered a word. How could he have been such a dunderhead? To put up a tribute to your own illustrious ancestry and forget your very mother's family? For a moment he thought of ordering the workmen to take the whole damn window down. Later, after guilty reflection, he commissioned a second, more modest window for the turning of the stair. Its central panel would hold the overlooked arms and name: Foley of Worcestershire.

He decided to call the house Undershaw, after the hanging grove of trees beneath which it lay. The name would give this modern construction a fine old Anglo-Saxon resonance. Here life might continue as before, if cautiously and within limits.

Life. How easily everyone, including himself, said the word. Life must go on, everyone routinely agreed. And yet how few asked what it was, and why it was, and if it was the only life or the mere amphitheatre to something quite different. Arthur was frequently baffled by the complacency with which people went on with… with what they insouciantly called their lives, as if both the word and the thing made perfect sense to them.

His old Southsea friend General Drayson had become convinced of the spiritualist argument after his dead brother spoke to him at a séance. Thereafter, the astronomer maintained that the continuance of life after death was not just a supposition but a provable fact. Arthur had politely demurred at the time; even so, his list of Books To Be Read that year included seventy-four on the subject of Spiritualism. He had despatched them all, noting down sentences and maxims which impressed him. Like this from Hellenbach: 'There is a scepticism which surpasses in imbecility the obtuseness of a clodhopper.'

Until Touie's illness announced itself, he had everything the world assumed necessary to make a man contented. And yet he could never quite shake off the feeling that all he had achieved was just a trivial and specious beginning; that he was made for something else. But what might that something else be? He returned to a study of the world's religions, but could no more get into any of them than he could into a boy's suit. He joined the Rationalist Association, and found their work necessary, but essentially destructive and therefore sterile. The demolition of antique faiths had been fundamental to human advancement; but now that those old buildings had been levelled, where was man to find shelter in this blasted landscape? How could anyone glibly decide that the history of what the species had for millennia agreed to call the soul was now at an end? Human beings would continue to develop, and therefore whatever was inside them must also develop. Even a clodhopping sceptic could surely see that.

Outside Cairo, while Touie was breathing deep the desert air, Arthur had read histories of Egyptian civilization and visited the tombs of the pharaohs. He concluded that while the ancient Egyptians had indubitably raised the arts and sciences to a new level, their reasoning power was in many ways contemptible. Especially in their attitude to death. The notion that the dead body, an old, outworn greatcoat which once briefly wrapped the soul, should be preserved at any cost was not just risible; it was the last word in materialism. As for those baskets of provisions placed in the tomb to feed the soul upon its journey: how could a people of such sophistication be so emasculated in their minds? Faith endorsed by materialism: a double curse. And the same curse blighted every subsequent nation and civilization that came under the rule of a priesthood.

Back in Southsea, he had not found General Drayson's arguments sufficient. But now psychic phenomena were being vouched for by scientists of high distinction and manifest probity, like William Crookes, Oliver Lodge and Alfred Russel Wallace. Such names meant that the men who best understood the natural world – the great physicists and biologists – had also become our guides to the supernatural world.

Take Wallace. The co-discoverer of the modern theory of evolution, the man who stood at Darwin 's side when they jointly announced the idea of natural selection to the Linnaean Society. The fearful and the unimaginative had concluded that Wallace and Darwin had delivered us into a godless and mechanistic universe, had left us alone upon the darkling plain. But consider what Wallace himself believed. This greatest of modern men maintained that natural selection accounted only for the development of the human body, and that the process of evolution must at some point have been supplemented by a supernatural intervention, when the spirit's flame was inserted into the rough developing animal. Who dared claim now that science was the enemy of the soul?

George amp; Arthur

It was a cold, clear February night, with half a moon and a heavenful of stars. In the distance the head gear of Wyrley Colliery stood out faintly against the sky. Close by was the farm belonging to Joseph Holmes: house, barn, outbuildings, with not a light showing in any of them. Humans were sleeping and the birds had not yet woken.

But the horse was awake as the man came through a gap in the hedge on the far side of the field. He was carrying a feed-bag over his arm. As soon as he became aware that the horse had noticed his presence, he stopped and began to talk very quietly. The words themselves were a gabble of nonsense; it was the tone, calming and intimate, that mattered. After a few minutes, the man slowly began to advance. When he had made a few paces, the horse shook its head, and its mane was a brief blur. At this, the man stopped again.

He continued his gabble of nonsense, however, and continued looking straight towards the horse. Beneath his feet the ground was solid after nights of frost, and his boots left no print on the soil. He advanced slowly, a few yards at a time, stopping at the least sign of restiveness from the horse. At all times he made his presence evident, holding himself as tall as possible. The feed-bag over his arm was an unimportant detail. What mattered were the quiet persistence of the voice, the certainty of the approach, the directness of the gaze, the gentleness of the mastery.

It took him twenty minutes to cross the field in this way. Now he stood only a few yards distant, head on to the horse. Still he made no sudden move, but continued as before, murmuring, gazing, standing straight, waiting. Eventually, what he had been expecting took place: the horse, reluctantly at first, but then unequivocally, lowered its head.

The man, even now, made no sudden reach. He let a minute or two pass, then crossed the final yards and hung the feed-bag gently round the horse's neck. The animal kept its head lowered as the man proceeded to stroke it, murmuring all the while. He stroked its mane, its flank, its back; sometimes he just rested his hand against the warm skin, making sure that contact between the two of them was never broken.

Still stroking and murmuring, the man slipped the feed-bag from the horse's neck and slung it over his shoulder. Still stroking and murmuring, the man then felt inside his coat. Still stroking and murmuring, one arm across the horse's back, he reached underneath to its belly.

The horse barely gave a start; the man at last ceased his gabble of nonsense, and in the new silence he made his way, at a deliberate pace, back towards the gap in the hedge.

Each morning George takes the first train of the day into Birmingham. He knows the timetable by heart, and loves it. Wyrley amp; Churchbridge 7.39. Bloxwich 7.48. Birchills 7.53. Walsall 7.58. Birmingham New Street 8.35. He no longer feels the need to hide behind his newspaper; indeed, from time to time he suspects that some of his fellow passengers are aware that he is the author of Railway Law for the 'Man in the Train' (237 copies sold). He greets ticket collectors and stationmasters and they return his salute. He has a respectable moustache, a briefcase, a modest fob chain, and his bowler has been augmented by a straw hat for summer use. He also has an umbrella. He is rather proud of this last possession, often taking it with him in defiance of the barometer.

On the train he reads the newspaper and tries to develop views on what is happening in the world. Last month there was an important speech at the new Birmingham Town Hall by Mr Chamberlain about the colonies and preferential tariffs. George's position – though as yet no one has asked for his opinion on the matter – is one of cautious endorsement. Next month Lord Roberts of Kandahar is due to receive the freedom of the city, an honour with which no reasonable man could possibly quarrel.

His paper tells him other news, more local, more trivial: another animal has been mutilated in the Wyrley area. George wonders briefly which part of the criminal law covers this sort of activity: would it be destruction of property under the Theft Act, or might there be some relevant statute covering one or other particular species of animal involved? He is glad he works in Birmingham, and it will only be a matter of time before he lives there too. He knows he must make the decision; he must stand up to Father's frowns and Mother's tears and Maud's silent yet more insidious dismay. Each morning, as fields dotted with livestock give way to well-ordered suburbs, George feels a perceptible lift in his spirits. Father told him years ago that farm boys and farmhands were the humble whom God loved and who would inherit the earth. Well, only some of them, he thinks, and not according to any rules of probate that he is familiar with.

There are often schoolboys on the train, at least until Walsall, where they alight for the Grammar School. Their presence and their uniforms occasionally remind George of the dreadful time he was accused of stealing the school's key. But that was all years ago, and most of the boys are quite respectful. There is a group who are sometimes in his carriage, and by overhearing he learns their names: Page, Harrison, Greatorex, Stanley, Ferriday, Quibell. He is even on nodding terms with them, after three or four years.

Most of his days at 54 Newhall Street are spent in conveyancing – work he has seen described by one superior legal expert as 'void of imagination and the free play of thought'. This disparagement does not bother George in the slightest; to him such work is precise, responsible and necessary. He has also drawn up a few wills, and recently begun to obtain clients as a result of his Railway Law. Cases involving lost luggage, or unreasonably delayed trains; and one in which a lady slipped and sprained her wrist on Snow Hill station after a railway employee carelessly spilt oil near a locomotive. He has also handled several running-down cases. It appears that the chances of a citizen of Birmingham being struck by a bicycle, horse, motor car, tram or even train are considerably higher than he would ever have anticipated. Perhaps George Edalji, solicitor-at-law, will become known as the man to call in when the human body is surprised by a reckless means of transportation.

George's train home from New Street leaves at 5.25. On the return journey, there are rarely schoolboys. Instead, there is sometimes a larger and more loutish element whom George views with distaste. Remarks are occasionally passed in his direction which are quite unnecessary: about bleach, and his mother forgetting the carbolic, and enquiries about whether he has been down the mine that day. Mostly he ignores such words, though if a young rough chooses to make himself especially offensive, George might be obliged to remind him who he is dealing with. He is not physically brave, but at such times he feels surprisingly calm. He knows the laws of England, and knows he can count on their support.

Birmingham New Street 5.25. Walsall 5.55. This train does not stop at Birchills, for reasons George has never been able to ascertain. Then it is Bloxwich 6.02, Wyrley amp; Churchbridge 6.09. At 6.10 he nods to Mr Merriman the stationmaster – a moment that often reminds him of His Honour Judge Bacon's 1899 ruling in the Bloomsbury County Court on the illegal retention of expired season tickets – and positions his umbrella over his left wrist for the walk back to the Vicarage.

Campbell

Since his appointment to the Staffordshire Constabulary two years previously, Inspector Campbell had met Captain Anson on several occasions, but never before been summoned to Green Hall. The Chief Constable's house lay on the outskirts of town, among the water meadows on the farther side of the River Sow, and was reputed to be the largest residence between Stafford and Shugborough. As he walked up the gravel drive off the Lichfield Road and the size of the Hall gradually revealed itself, Campbell found himself wondering how big Shugborough must be. That was in the possession of Captain Anson's elder brother. The Chief Constable, being merely a second son, was obliged to content himself with this modest white-painted mansion: three storeys high, seven or eight windows wide, with a daunting entrance porch supported by four pillars. Over to the right there was a terrace and a sunken rose garden, with beyond it a summer house and a tennis ground.

Campbell took all this in without breaking stride. When the parlourmaid admitted him, he tried to suspend his natural professional habits: working out the likely probity and income of the occupants, and committing to memory items worth stealing – in some cases, items perhaps already stolen. Deliberately incurious, he was nonetheless aware of polished mahogany, white panelled walls, an extravagant hall stand, and to his right a staircase with curious twisted balusters.

He was shown into a room directly to the left of the front door. Anson's study, by the look of it: two high leather chairs on either side of the fireplace, and above it the looming head of a dead elk, or moose. Something antlered anyway; Campbell did not hunt, nor did he aspire to. He was a Birmingham man who had reluctantly applied for transfer when his wife grew sick of the city and longed for the slowness and space of her childhood. Fifteen miles or so, but to Campbell it felt like exile in another land. The local gentry ignored you; the farmers kept to themselves; the miners and ironworkers were a rough lot even by slum standards. Any vague notions that the countryside was romantic were swiftly extinguished. And people out here seemed to dislike the police even more than they did in the city. He'd lost count of the times he'd been made to feel superfluous. A crime might have been committed and even reported, but its victims had a way of letting you know that they preferred their own notion of justice to any purveyed by an inspector whose three-piece suit and bowler hat still smelt of Brummagem.

Anson bustled in, shook hands and seated his visitor. He was a small, compact man in his middle forties, with a double-breasted suit and the neatest moustache Campbell had ever seen: its sides seemed to be mere extensions of his nose, and the whole fitted the triangulation of his upper lip as if bought from a catalogue after precise measurement. His tie was held in place with a gold pin in the shape of the Stafford knot. This proclaimed what everyone already knew: that Captain the Honourable George Augustus Anson, Chief Constable since 1888, Deputy Lieutenant of the county since 1900, was a Staffordshire man through and through. Campbell, being one of the newer breed of professional policemen, did not see why the head of the Constabulary should be the only amateur in the force; but then much in the functioning of society appeared to him arbitrary, based more on antique prejudice than modern sense. Still, Anson was respected by those who worked under him; he was known as a man who backed his officers.

' Campbell, you will have guessed why I asked you to come.'

'I assume the mutilations, sir.'

'Indeed. How many have we now had?'

Campbell had rehearsed this part, but even so reached for his notebook.

'February second, valuable horse belonging to Mr Joseph Holmes. April second, cob belonging to Mr Thomas ripped in exactly the same fashion. May fourth, a cow of Mrs Bungay's similarly treated. Two weeks later, May eighteenth, a horse of Mr Badger's terribly mutilated, and also five sheep on the same night. And then last week, June sixth, two cows belonging to Mr Lockyer.'

'All at night?'

'All at night.'

'Any discernible pattern to events?'

'All the attacks happened within a three-mile radius of Wyrley. And… I don't know if it's a pattern, but they all occurred in the first week of the month. Except for those of May eighteenth, which didn't.' Campbell was aware of Anson's eye on him, and hurried on. 'The method of ripping is, however, largely consistent from attack to attack.'

'Consistently disgusting, no doubt.'

Campbell looked at the Chief Constable, unsure if he did, or didn't, want the details. He took silence for regretful assent.

'They were ripped under the belly. Crosswise, and generally in a single cut. The cows… the cows also had their udders mutilated. And there was damage inflicted upon… upon their sexual parts, sir.'

'It beggars belief, Campbell, doesn't it? Such senseless cruelty to defenceless beasts?'

Campbell pretended to himself that they were not sitting beneath the glassy eye and severed head of the elk or moose. 'Yes, sir.'

'So we are looking for some maniac with a knife.'

'Probably not a knife, sir. I spoke to the veterinary surgeon who attended the later mutilations – Mr Holmes' horse was treated as an isolated incident at the time – and he was puzzled as to the instrument used. It must have been very sharp, but on the other hand it cut into the skin and the first layer of muscle and no further.'

'So why not a knife?'

'Because a knife – a butcher's knife, say – would have gone deeper. At some point, anyway. A knife would have opened up the guts. None of the animals was actually killed in the attacks. Not at the time. They either bled to death or were in such a state when found that they had to be put down.'

'So if not a knife?'

'Something that cuts easily but shallowly. Like a razor. But with more strength than a razor. It could be a tool from the leather trade. Or a farm instrument of some kind. I would assume the man was accustomed to handling animals.'

'Man or men. A vile individual, or a gang of vile individuals. And a vile crime. Have you come across it before?'

'Not in Birmingham, sir.'

'No, indeed.' Anson gave a wan smile and fell briefly silent. Campbell allowed himself to think about the police horses in the Stafford stables: how alert and responsive they were, how warm and smelly and almost furry in their hairiness; how they twitched their ears and put their heads down at you; how they blew through their noses in a way that reminded him of a boiling kettle. What species of human could wish such an animal harm?

'Superintendent Barrett remembers a case some years ago of a wretch who fell into debt and killed his own horse for the insurance. But a murderous spree like this… it seems so foreign. In Ireland, of course, the midnight houghing of the landlord's cattle is practically part of the social calendar. But then, little would ever surprise me of a Fenian.'

'Yes, sir.'

'It must be brought to a swift end. These outrages are blackening the reputation of the entire county.'

'Yes, the newspapers-'

'I do not give a fig about the newspapers, Campbell. I care about the honour of Staffordshire. I do not want it deemed the haunt of savages.'

'No, sir.' But the Inspector thought the Chief Constable must be aware of certain recent editorials, none of them complimentary, and some of them personal.

'I would suggest you look into the history of crime in Great Wyrley and its environs in the last years. There have been some… peculiar goings-on. And I suggest you work with those who know the area best. There's a very sound Sergeant, can't remember his name. Large, red-faced fellow…'

'Upton, sir?'

' Upton, that's it. He's a man who keeps his ear close to the ground.'

'Very well, sir.'

'And I am also drafting in twenty special constables. They can report to Sergeant Parsons.'

'Twenty!'

'Twenty, and damn the expense. It'll come out of my own pocket if necessary. I want a constable under every hedge and behind every bush until this man is caught.'

Campbell was not concerned about the expense. He wondered how you disguised the presence of twenty special constables in an area where the least rumour travelled quicker than the telegraph. Twenty specials, most of them unfamiliar with the territory, against a local man who might just choose to stay at home and laugh at them. And in any case, how many animals could twenty constables protect? Forty, sixty, eighty? And how many animals were there in the district? Hundreds, probably thousands.

'Any further questions?'

'No, sir. Except… if I may ask a non-professional question?'

'Go ahead.'

'The porch outside. With the pillars. Do they have a name? The style, I mean?'

Anson looked as if this was the most extraordinary question a serving officer had ever asked. 'Pillars? I wouldn't have the slightest idea. It's the sort of thing my wife would know.'

In the next days, Campbell reviewed the history of crime in Great Wyrley and its immediate purlieus. He found it much as he would have expected. A certain amount of theft, mostly of livestock; various cases of assault; some vagrancy and public drunkenness; one attempted suicide; a girl sentenced for writing abuse on farm buildings; five cases of arson; threatening letters and unsolicited goods received at Wyrley Vicarage; one indecent assault and two indecent behaviours. There had been no previous attacks on animals in the last ten years, as far as he could discover.

Nor could Sergeant Upton, who had policed the district for twice that time, recall any. But the question did remind him of a farmer, now passed on to a better world – unless, sir, it turned out to be a worse one – who was suspected of loving his goose too much, if you catch my meaning. Campbell cut off this parish-pump tittle-tattle; he had quickly marked Upton as someone left over from the time when Constabularies were happy to recruit almost anyone except the obviously halt, lame and half-witted. You might consult Upton about local rumours and grudges, but would hardly trust his hand upon a Bible.

'So, you worked it out then, sir?' the Sergeant wheezed at him.

'Is there something specific you have to tell me, Upton?'

'I wouldn't say that. But takes one to know one. Set one to catch one. I'm sure you'll get there in the end, Inspector. What with you being an Inspector from Birmingham. Oh yes, you'll get there in the end.'

Upton struck him as a mixture of sly ingratiation and vague obstructiveness. Some of the farm-hands were exactly the same. Campbell felt more at ease with Birmingham thieves, who at least lied to you directly.

On the morning of June 27th, the Inspector was called to the Quinton Colliery, where two of the company's valuable horses had been ripped during the night. One had bled to death, and the other, a mare which had suffered additional mutilation, was in the process of being destroyed. The veterinary surgeon confirmed that the same instrument – or, at least, one with precisely the same effects – had been used as before.

Two days later, Sergeant Parsons brought Campbell a letter addressed to 'The Sergeant, Police Station, Hednesford, Staffordshire.' It had been posted from Walsall, and was signed by one William Greatorex.

I have got a dare-devil face and can run well, and when they formed that gang at Wyrley they got me to join. I knew all about horses and beasts and how to catch them best. They said they would do me if I funked it, so I did, and caught them both lying down at ten minutes to three, and they roused up; and then I caught each under the belly, but they didn't spurt much blood, and one ran away, but the other fell. Now I'll tell you who are in the gang, but you can't prove it without me. There is one named Shipton from Wyrley, and a porter they call Lee, and he's had to stay away, and there's Edalji the lawyer. Now I haven't told you who is at the back of them all, and I shan't unless you promise to do nothing at me. It is not true we always do it when the moon is young, and the one Edalji killed on April 11 was full moon. I've never been locked up yet, and I don't think any of the others have, except the Captain, so I guess they'll get off light.

Campbell reread the letter. I caught each under the belly, but they didn't spurt much blood, and one ran away, but the other fell. This all sounded knowledgeable; but any number of people could have examined the dead animals. After the last two cases, the police had to mount guard and turn away sightseers until the surgeon had done his work. Still, ten minutes to three… there was a strange precision about it.

'Do we know this Greatorex?'

'I take him to be the son of Mr Greatorex of Littleworth Farm.'

'Any dealings? Any reason for him to write to Sergeant Robinson at Hednesford?'

'None at all.'

'And what do you make of this moon business?'

Sergeant Parsons was a stocky, black-haired fellow with a tendency to move his lips while thinking. 'That's what some people have been saying. The new moon, pagan rites and such like. I wouldn't know. But I do know there was no animal killed on April 11th. Not within a week of that date, if I'm not mistaken.'

'You're not.' Parsons was much more to the Inspector's taste than someone like Upton. He was the next generation on, and better trained; not quick, but thoughtful.

William Greatorex proved to be a fourteen-year-old schoolboy whose handwriting in no way matched the letter. He had never heard of Lee or Shipton, but admitted knowing Edalji, who was sometimes on the same train in the mornings. He had never been to the police station at Hednesford, and did not know the name of the Sergeant who kept it.

Parsons and five special constables searched Littleworth Farm and its outbuildings, but found nothing preternaturally sharp, or spotted with blood, or recently wiped clean. As they left, Campbell asked the Sergeant what he knew about George Edalji.

'Well, sir, he's Indian, isn't he? Half Indian, that is. Little fellow. A bit odd-looking. Lawyer, lives at home, goes up to Birmingham every day. Doesn't exactly involve himself in village life, if you understand me.'

'So not known to go round in a gang?'

'Far from it.'

'Any friends?'

'Not known for it. They're a close family. Something wrong with the sister, I think. Invalid, simple-minded, something. And they say he walks the lanes every evening. Not that he's got a dog or anything. There was a campaign against the family a few years back.'

'I saw it in the day-book. Any reason for that?'

'Who can tell? There was some… ill feeling when the Vicar was first given the living. People saying they didn't want a black man in the pulpit telling them what sinners they were, that sort of thing. But this was donkey's years ago. I'm chapel myself. We're more welcoming, in my opinion.'

'This fellow – the son – does he look like a horse-ripper to you?'

Parsons chewed his lips before replying. 'Inspector, let me put it this way. After you've served around here as long as I have, you'll find that no one looks like anything. Or, for that matter, not like anything. Do you follow?'

George

The postman shows George the official marking on the envelope: POSTAGE DEFICIENT. The letter has come from Walsall; his name and office address are written in a clear and decent hand, so George decides to liberate the item. It costs him twopence, twice the overlooked postage. He is pleased when he recognizes the contents: an order form for Railway Law. But there is no cheque or postal order accompanying it. The sender has asked for three hundred copies, and filled in his name as Beelzebub.

Three days later, the letters begin again. The same sort of letters; libellous, blasphemous, lunatic. They come to his office, which he feels as an insolent intrusion: this is where he is safe, and respected, where life is orderly. Instinctively he throws the first one away; then puts the rest in a bottom drawer to keep as evidence. George is no longer the anxious adolescent of the earlier persecutions; he is a person of substance now, a solicitor of four years' standing. He is well capable of ignoring such things if he chooses, or of dealing with them appropriately. And the Birmingham police are doubtless more efficient and modern than the Staffordshire Constabulary.

One evening, just after 6.10, George has returned his season ticket to his pocket and is placing his umbrella over his forearm when he becomes aware of a figure falling into step beside him.

'Keeping well, are we, young sir?'

It is Upton, fatter and more red-faced than all those years ago, and probably more stupid too. George does not break stride.

'Good evening,' he replies briskly.

'Enjoying life, are we? Sleeping well?'

At one time George might have felt alarmed, or stopped to await Upton 's point. But he is no longer like that.

'Not sleepwalking, anyway, I hope.' George consciously increases his pace, so that the Sergeant is now obliged to puff and pant to keep up. 'Only, you see, we've flooded the district with specials. Flooded it. So even for a so-li-ci-tor to sleepwalk, oh yes, that would be a bad idea.' Without pausing in his step, George casts a scornful glance in the direction of the empty, blustering fool. 'Oh yes, a so-li-ci-tor. I hope you're finding it useful, young sir. Forewarned is forearmed as they say, unless it be the other way round.'

George does not tell his parents about the incident. There is a more immediate concern: the afternoon post has brought a letter from Cannock in familiar handwriting. It is addressed to George and signed 'A Lover of Justice':

I do not know you, but have sometimes seen you on the railway, and do not expect I would like you much if I did know you, as I do not like natives. But I think everyone ought to have fair treatment, and that is why I write to you, because I do not think you have anything to do with the horrid crimes that everyone talks about. The people all said it must be you, because they do not think you are a right sort, and you would like to do them. So the police got watching you, but they could not see anything, and now they are watching someone else… If another horse is murdered they will say it is you, so go away for your holiday, and be away when the next case happens. The police say it will come at the end of the month like the last one. Go away before that.

George is quite calm. 'Libel,' he says. 'Indeed, prima facie I would judge it a criminal libel.'

'It's starting again,' says his mother, and he can tell she is on the edge of tears. 'It's all starting again. They'll never go away until they have us out.'

' Charlotte,' says Shapurji firmly, 'there is no question of that. We shall never leave the Vicarage until we go to rest with Uncle Compson. If it is the Lord's will that we suffer on our journey there, it is not for us to question the Lord.'

Nowadays, there are moments when George finds himself close to questioning the Lord. For instance: why should his mother, who is virtue incarnate and who succours the poor and sickly of the parish, have to suffer in this way? And if, as his father maintains, the Lord is responsible for everything, then the Lord is responsible for the Staffordshire Constabulary and its notorious incompetence. But George cannot say this; increasingly, there are things he cannot even hint.

He is also beginning to realize that he understands the world a little better than his parents. He may be only twenty-seven, but the working life of a Birmingham solicitor offers insights into human nature which may be unavailable to a country Vicar. So when his father suggests complaining once more to the Chief Constable, George disagrees. Anson was against them on the previous occasion; the man to address is the Inspector charged with the investigation.

'I shall write to him,' says Shapurji.

'No, Father, I think that is my task. And I shall go to see him by myself. If we both went, he might feel it as a delegation.'

The Vicar is taken aback, but pleased. He likes these assertions of manliness in his son, and lets him have his way.

George writes to request an interview – preferably not at the Vicarage but at a police station of the Inspector's choice. This strikes Campbell as a little strange. He nominates Hednesford, and asks Sergeant Parsons to attend.

'Thank you for seeing me, Inspector. I am grateful for your time. I have three items on my agenda. But first, I would like you to accept this.'

Campbell is a ginger-haired, camel-headed, long-backed man of about forty, who seems even taller sitting down than standing up. He reaches across the table and examines his present: a copy of Railway Law for the 'Man in the Train'. He flicks slowly through a few pages.

'The two hundred and thirty-eighth copy,' says George. It comes out sounding vainer than he means.

'Very kind of you, sir, but I'm afraid police regulations forbid the accepting of gifts from the general public.' Campbell slides the book back across the desk.

'Oh it's hardly a bribe, Inspector,' says George lightly. 'Can you not regard it as… an addition to the library?'

'The library. Do we have a library, Sergeant?'

'Well, we could always start one, sir.'

'Then in that case, Mr Edalji, count me grateful.'

George half-wonders if they are making fun of him.

'It is pronounced Aydlji. Not Ee-dal-ji.'

'Aydlji.' The Inspector makes a rough stab, and pulls a face. 'If you don't mind, I'll settle for calling you Sir.'

George clears his throat. 'The first item on the agenda is this.' He produces the letter from 'A Lover of Justice'. 'There have been five others addressed to my place of business.'

Campbell reads it, passes it to the Sergeant, takes it back, reads it again. He wonders if this is a letter of denunciation or support. Or the former disguised as the latter. If it is a denunciation, why would anyone bring it to the police? If it is support, then why bring it unless you have already been accused? Campbell finds George's motive almost as interesting as the letter itself.

'Any idea who it's from?'

'It's unsigned.'

'I can see that, sir. May I ask if you intend to take the fellow's advice? Go away for your holiday?'

'Really, Inspector, that seems to be getting hold of the wrong end of the stick. Do you not regard this letter as a criminal libel?'

'I don't know sir, to be honest. It's lawyers like yourself that decide what's the law and what isn't. From a police point of view, I would say someone was having a lark at your expense.'

'A lark? Do you not think that if this letter were broadcast, with the allegation he pretends to be denying, that I would not be in danger from local farm-hands and miners?'

'I don't know, sir. All I can say is, I can't remember an anonymous letter giving rise to an assault in this district since I've been here. Can you, Parsons?' The Sergeant shakes his head. 'Now what do you make of this phrase, towards the middle… they do not think you are a right sort?'

'What do you make of it yourself?'

'Well, you see, it's not anything that's ever been said to me.'

'Very well, Inspector, what I "make" of it is that it is almost certainly a reference to the fact that my father is of Parsee origin.'

'Yes, I suppose it could refer to that.' Campbell bends his ginger head over the letter again, as if scrutinizing it for further meaning. He is trying to make his mind up about this man and his grievance; whether he is a straightforward complainant, or something more complicated.

'Could? Could? What else might it mean?'

'Well, it might mean that you don't fit in.'

'You mean, I do not play in the Great Wyrley cricket team?'

'Do you not, sir?'

George can feel his exasperation rising. 'Nor for that matter do I patronize public houses.'

'Do you not, sir?'

'Nor for that matter do I smoke tobacco.'

'Do you not, sir? Well, we'll have to wait and ask the letter writer what he meant by it. If and when we catch him. You said there was something else?'

The second item on George's agenda is to register a complaint against Sergeant Upton, both for his manner and his insinuations. Except that, when repeated back by the Inspector, they somehow cease to be insinuations. Campbell turns them into the plodding remarks of a not very bright member of the Constabulary to a rather pompous and oversensitive complainant.

George is now in some disarray. He came expecting gratitude for the book, shock at the letter, interest in his predicament. The Inspector has been correct, yet slow; his studied politeness strikes George as a kind of rudeness. Well, he must press on to his third item nevertheless.

'I have a suggestion. For your enquiry.' George pauses, as he planned to, in order to command their full attention. 'Bloodhounds.'

'I beg your pardon?'

'Bloodhounds. They have, as I am sure you are aware, an excellent sense of smell. Were you to acquire a pair of trained bloodhounds, they would surely lead you from the scene of the next mutilation directly to the criminal. They can follow a scent with uncanny precision, and in this district there are no large streams or rivers into which the criminal might wade to confuse them.'

The Staffordshire Constabulary appears unused to practical suggestions from members of the public.

'Bloodhounds,' Campbell repeats. 'Indeed, a pair of them. It sounds like something out of a shilling shocker. "Mr Holmes, they were the footprints of a gigantic hound!"' Then Parsons starts chuckling, and Campbell does not order him to be silent.

It has all gone horribly wrong, especially this last part, which George has thought up on his own account, and not even discussed with Father. He is downcast. As he leaves the station, the two policemen stand on the step watching him go. He hears the Sergeant observe, in a voice that carries, 'Maybe we could keep the bloodhounds in the library.'

The words seem to accompany him all the way back to the Vicarage, where he gives his parents an abbreviated account of the meeting. He decides that if the police decline his suggestions, he will help them even so. He places an advertisement in the Lichfield Mercury and other newspapers describing the renewed campaign of letters, and offering a reward of £25 to be paid in the event of criminal conviction. He remembers that his father's advertisement all those years ago merely had an inflammatory effect; but he hopes that this time the offer of money will produce results. He states that he is a solicitor-at-law.

Campbell

Five days later, the Inspector was summoned back to Green Hall. This time he found himself less shy of looking around. He noticed a long-case clock displaying the cycles of the moon, a mezzotint of a biblical scene, a fading Turkey rug, and a fireplace crammed with logs in anticipation of autumn. In the study he was less alarmed by the glassy-eyed moose, and registered leather-bound volumes of The Field and Punch. The sideboard held a large stuffed fish in a glass case, and a three-decanter tantalus.

Captain Anson waved Campbell to a chair and remained standing himself: a trick of small men in the presence of taller ones, as the Inspector well knew. But he had no time to reflect on the stratagems of authority. The mood this time was not genial.

'Our man has now started taunting us. These Greatorex letters. How many have we had so far?'

'Five, sir.'

'And this came for Mr Rowley at Bridgetown station last evening.' Anson put on his spectacles and began to read:

Sir, A party whose initials you'll guess will be bringing a new hook home by the train from Walsall on Wednesday night, and he will have it in his special pocket under his coat, and if you or your pals can get his coat pulled aside a bit you'll get sight of it, as it's an inch and a half longer than the one he threw out of sight when he heard someone a sloping it after him this morning. He will come by that after five or six, or if he don't come home tomorrow he is sure on Thursday, and you have made a mistake not keeping all the plain clothes men at hand. You sent them away too soon. Why, just think, he did it close where two of them were hiding only a few days gone by. But sir, he has got eagle eyes, and his ears is as sharp as a razor, and he is as fleet of foot as a fox, and as noiseless, and he crawls up on all fours to the poor beasts, and fondles them a bit, and then he pulls his hook smart across 'em, and out their entrails fly, before they guess they are hurt. You want 100 detectives, to run him in red-handed, because he is so fly, and knows every nook and corner. You know who it is, and I can prove it; but until £100 reward is offered for a conviction, I shan't split no more.

Anson looked at Campbell, inviting comment. 'None of my men saw anything thrown away, sir. And nothing resembling a hook has been found. He may or may not mutilate animals like that, but the entrails do not fly out, as we know. Do you want me to watch the Walsall trains?'

'I hardly think that after this letter some fellow is going to turn up in a long overcoat in the middle of summer, inviting to be searched.'

'No, sir. Do you think the £100 requested is a deliberate response to the lawyer's offer of a reward?'

'Possibly. That was a gross piece of impertinence.' Anson paused, and picked another sheet of paper from his desk. 'But the other letter – to Sergeant Robinson at Hednesford – is worse. Well, judge for yourself.' Anson handed it over.

There will be merry times at Wyrley in November, when they start on little girls, for they will do twenty wenches like the horses before next March. Don't think you are likely to catch them cutting the beasts; they are too quiet, and lie low for hours, till your men have gone… Mr Edalji, him they said was locked up, is going to Brum on Sunday night to see the Captain, near Northfield, about how it's to be carried on with so many detectives about, and I believe they are going to do some cows in the daytime instead of at night… I think they are going to kill beasts nearer here soon, and I know Cross Keys Farm and West Cannock Farm are the first two on the list… You bloated blackguard, I will shoot you with your father's gun through your thick head if you come in my way or go sneaking to any of my pals.

'That's bad, sir. That's very bad. This'd better not get out. There'll be panic in every village. Twenty wenches… People are worried enough for their livestock as it is.'

'You have children, Campbell?'

'A boy. And a little girl.'

'Yes. The only good thing in this letter is the threat to shoot Sergeant Robinson.'

'That's a good thing, sir?'

'Oh, maybe not for Sergeant Robinson himself. But it means our man has overstepped himself. Threatening to murder a police officer. Put that on the indictment and we'll be able to get penal servitude for life.'

If we can find the letter writer, thought Campbell. ' Northfield, Hednesford, Walsall – he's trying to send us in all directions.'

'No doubt. Inspector, let me summarize, if you have no objection, and you tell me if you disagree with my thinking.'

'Yes, sir.'

'Now, you are a capable officer – no, don't disagree already.' Anson gave the slightest smile he had in his repertoire. 'You are a very capable officer. But this investigation is now three and a half months old, including three weeks with twenty specials under your command. No one has been charged, no one arrested, no one even seriously taken aside and looked over. And the mutilations have continued. Agreed?'

'Agreed, sir.'

'Local cooperation, which I am aware you compare unfavourably with what you experienced in the great city of Birmingham, has been better than usual. There is, for once, a wider interest than normal in aiding the Constabulary. But the best suspicions we have obtained so far have come in anonymous denunciations. This mysterious "Captain", for example, who lives so inconveniently on the other side of Birmingham. Should we be tempted by him? I think not. What possible interest might some Captain miles away have in mutilating animals belonging to people he has never met? Though it would be poor detective work not to take a visit to Northfield.'

'Agreed.'

'So we are looking for local people, as we have always assumed. Or a local person. I favour the notion of more than one. Three or four, perhaps. It makes more sense. I would imagine one letter writer, one postboy to travel to different towns, one person skilled at handling animals, and one planner to guide them all. A gang, in other words. Whose members have no love for the police. Indeed, take pleasure in trying to mislead us. Who like to boast.

'They name names to confuse us. Of course. But even so, one name comes up again and again. Edalji. Edalji who is going to meet the Captain. Edalji who they said was locked up. Edalji the lawyer is in the gang. I have always had my suspicions, but so far have felt it proper to keep them to myself. I told you to look up the files. There was a campaign of letter-writing before, mainly against the father. Pranks, hoaxes, petty theft. We nearly got him at the time. Eventually I gave the Vicar a pretty heavy warning that we knew who was behind it, and not long afterwards it stopped. QED, you might say, though regrettably not enough to convict. Still, if he didn't own up, at least I put a stop to it. For – what? – seven, eight years.

'Now it's started again, and in the same place. And Edalji's name keeps coming up. That first Greatorex letter mentions three names, but the only one of them the lad himself knows is Edalji. Therefore, Edalji knows Greatorex. And he did the same the first time round – included himself in the denunciations. Only this time he's older, and not satisfied with catching blackbirds and wringing their necks. This time he's after bigger things, literally. Cows, horses. And not being much of a physical specimen himself, he recruits others to help him do the work. And now he's raising the stakes, and threatens us with twenty wenches. Twenty wenches, Campbell.'

'Indeed, sir. You will allow me to put one or two questions?'

'I will.'

'For a start, why should he denounce himself?'

'To put us off the scent. He deliberately includes his own name in lists of people we know can have nothing to do with the matter.'

'So he also offers a reward for his own capture?'

'That way he knows there will be no one to claim it but himself.' Anson gave a dry chuckle, but the joke seemed lost on Campbell. 'And of course, it's a further provocation to the police. Look how the Constabulary blunders about, while a poor honest citizen has to offer his own tin to clear up crime. Come to think of it, that advertisement might be construed as a libel on the force…'

'But – excuse me, sir – why should a Birmingham solicitor assemble a gang of local roughs in order to mutilate animals?'

'You've met him, Campbell. How did he strike you?'

The Inspector reviewed his impressions. 'Intelligent. Nervous. Rather eager to please at first. Then a little quick to take offence. He offered us some advice and we didn't seem keen on it. Suggested we try using bloodhounds.'

'Bloodhounds? You're sure he didn't say native trackers?'

'No, sir, bloodhounds. The odd thing was, listening to his voice – it was an educated voice, a lawyer's voice – I found myself thinking at one point, if you shut your eyes, you'd think him an Englishman.'

'Whereas if you left them open, you wouldn't exactly mistake him for a member of the Brigade of Guards?'

'You could put it that way, sir.'

'Yes. It sounds as if – eyes open or eyes shut – your impression was of someone who feels himself superior. How might I put it? Someone who thinks he belongs to a higher caste?'

'Possibly. But why should such a person wish to rip horses? Rather than prove he's clever and superior by, say, embezzling large sums of money?'

'Who's to say he isn't up to that as well? Frankly, Campbell, the why interests me much less than the how and the when and the what.'

'Yes, sir. But if you're asking me to arrest this fellow, it might help to have a clue as to his motive.'

Anson disliked this sort of question, which in his view was nowadays asked far too frequently in police work. There was a passion for delving into the mind of the criminal. What you did was catch a fellow, arrest him, charge him, and get him sent away for a few years, the more the merrier. It was of little interest to probe the mental functionings of a malefactor as he discharged his pistol or smashed in your window. The Chief Constable was about to say as much when Campbell prompted him.

'We can, after all, rule out profit as a motive. It is not as if he were destroying his own property with a view to making some claim against the insurance.'

'A man who sets fire to his neighbour's rick does not do so for profit. He does it out of malice. He does it for the pleasure of seeing flames in the sky and fear on people's faces. In Edalji's case there might be some deep hatred of animals. You will doubtless enquire into that. Or if there is some pattern in the timing of the attacks, if most of them happen at the start of the month, there might be some sacrificial principle involved. Perhaps the mysterious instrument we are seeking is a ritual knife of Indian origin. A kukri or something. Edalji's father is a Parsee, I understand. Do they not worship fire?'

Campbell acknowledged that professional methods had so far turned up nothing; but was unwilling to see them replaced by such loose speculation. And if Parsees worshipped fire, then would you not expect the man to be committing arson?

'By the way, I am not asking you to arrest the lawyer.'

'No, sir?'

'No. What I am asking – ordering – you to do is concentrate your resources on him. Watch the Vicarage discreetly in the day, have him followed to the station, assign a man to Birmingham – in case he is lunching with the mysterious Captain – and then cover the house entirely after dark. Have it so that he cannot step out of the back door and spit without hitting a special constable. He will do something, I know he will do something.'

George

George attempts to continue his life as normal: this is, after all, his right as a freeborn Englishman. But it is difficult when you feel yourself spied upon; when dark figures trespass the Vicarage grounds at night; when things have to be kept from Maud and even, at times, from Mother. Prayers are uttered as forcefully as ever by Father, and repeated as anxiously by the womenfolk. George feels himself ever less confident of the Lord's protection. The one moment in the day he considers himself safe is when his father locks the bedroom door.

At times he wants to pull back the curtains, throw open the window, and hurl sarcastic words at the watchers he knows are out there. What a ludicrous squandering of public money, he thinks. To his surprise, he finds that he is becoming the owner of a temper. To his further surprise, it makes him feel rather grown up. One evening, he is tramping the lanes as usual and there is a special constable trailing a distance behind him. George does a sudden about-face and accosts his pursuer, a foxy-faced man in a tweed suit who looks as if he would be more at home in a low public house.

'Can I help you with your route?' George asks, barely holding on to politeness.

'I can look after myself, thank you.'

'You're not from hereabouts?'

' Walsall, since you ask.'

'This is not the way to Walsall. Why are you walking the lanes of Great Wyrley at this time of day?'

'I might very well ask you the same question.'

This is one insolent fellow, thinks George. 'You are following me on the instructions of Inspector Campbell. It's perfectly obvious. Do you take me for an idiot? The only point of interest is whether Campbell ordered you to make yourself visible at all times, in which case your behaviour may amount to obstruction of the public thoroughfare, or whether he instructed you to remain concealed, in which case you are an entirely incompetent special constable.'

The fellow just gives a grin. 'That's between him and me, wouldn't you say?'

'I would say this, my good man,' – and the anger is now as strong as sin – 'you and your sort are a considerable waste of the public budget. You have been clambering over the village for weeks and have nothing, absolutely nothing, to show for it.'

The constable simply grins once more. 'Softly, softly,' he says.

That suppertime, the Vicar suggests that George take Maud to Aberystwyth for a day's outing. His tone is that of a command, but George flatly refuses: he has too much work, and no desire for a holiday. He does not budge until Maud joins in the plea, then accedes reluctantly. On the Tuesday, they are away from dawn until late at night. The sun shines; the train journey – all 124 miles by the GWR – is pleasant and without mishap; brother and sister feel an unwonted sense of freedom. They walk the seafront, inspect the facade of University College, and stroll to the end of the pier (admission, 2d). It is a beautiful August day with a gentle wind, and they are absolutely agreed that they do not want to take a pleasure boat around the bay; nor will they join the crouching pebble-pickers on the beach. Instead, they take the tramway from the north end of the promenade up to Cliff Gardens on Constitution Hill. As the tram ascends, and afterwards descends, they have a fine retrospect of the town and of Cardigan Bay. Everyone they talk to in the resort is civil, including the uniformed policeman who advises the Belle Vue Hotel for lunch, or the Waterloo if they are strictly temperance. Over roast chicken and apple pie they discuss safe topics, like Horace and Great-Aunt Stoneham, and the people at other tables. After lunch they climb to the Castle, which George describes good-humouredly as an offence under the Sale of Goods Act, consisting as it does of only a few ruined towers and fragments. A passer-by points out, over there, just to the left of Constitution Hill, the peak of Snowdon. Maud is delighted, but George cannot make it out at all. One day, she promises, she will buy him a pair of binoculars. On the train home she asks if the Aberystwyth tramway would be governed by the same laws as the railway; then pleads with George to set her another conundrum, as he used to do in the schoolroom. He does his best, because he loves his sister, who for once is looking almost joyful; but his heart is not in it.

The next day, a postcard is delivered to Newhall Street. It is a vile effusion accusing him of having guilty relations with a woman in Cannock: 'Sir. Do you think it seemly for one in your position to be having connection with ____________________ ____________________'s sister every night seeing she is going to marry Frank Smith the Socialist?' Needless to say, he has heard of neither party. He looks at the postmark: Wolverhampton 12.30 p.m. Aug 4, 1903. This disgusting libel was being thought up just as he and Maud were sitting down to lunch at the Belle Vue Hotel.

The postcard throws him into envious thoughts of Horace, now a happy-go-lucky penpusher with the Income Tax in Manchester. Horace seems to glide through life unscathed; he goes from day to day, his ambition amounting to no more than a slow climb of the ladder, his contentment deriving from female companionship, about which he drops unsubtle hints. Most of all, Horace has escaped Great Wyrley. George as never before feels it a curse to be the first-born, and to have expectations placed upon him; also a curse to have been given more intelligence and less self-confidence than his brother. Horace has every reason to doubt himself, but doesn't; George, despite his academic success and professional qualifications, is blighted by shyness. When he is behind a desk, explaining the law, he can be clear and even assertive. But he has no ability to talk lightly or superficially; he does not know how to put people at their ease; he is aware that some consider him odd-looking.

On Monday 17th August 1903, George takes the 7.39 to New Street, as normal; he returns by the 5.25, as normal, reaching the Vicarage shortly before half past six. He works for a while, then puts on a coat and walks to see the bootmaker, Mr John Hands. He returns to the Vicarage just before 9.30, eats supper, and retires to the room where he sleeps with his father. The Vicarage doors are locked and bolted, the bedroom door is locked, and George sleeps as interruptedly as he has done in recent weeks. The next morning he is awake at 6, the bedroom door is unlocked at 6.40, and he catches the 7.39 to New Street.

He does not realize that these are the last normal twenty-four hours of his life.

Campbell

It rained heavily on the night of the 17th, with the wind coming in squalls. But by dawn it had cleared, and as the miners set off for the early shift at Great Wyrley Colliery there was a freshness in the air that comes after summer rain. A pit lad named Henry Garrett was passing a field on his way to work when he noticed one of the Colliery's ponies in a state of distress. Drawing nearer, he saw that it was barely able to stand, and dropping blood fast.

The lad's cries brought a group of miners squelching across the field to examine the lengthy cut across the pony's abdomen, and the churned mud beneath it spotted with red. Within the hour Campbell had arrived with half a dozen specials, and Mr Lewis the veterinary surgeon had been sent for. Campbell asked who had been responsible for patrolling this sector. PC Cooper replied that he had passed the field at about eleven o'clock, and the animal had appeared to be all right. But the night was dark, and he had not got close to the pony.

It was the eighth case in six months, and the sixteenth animal to be mutilated. Campbell thought a little about the pony, and the affection even the roughest miners often displayed towards such beasts; he thought a little about Captain Anson and his concern for the honour of Staffordshire; but what was most in his head as he looked at the oozing slash and watched the pony stagger was the letter the Chief Constable had shown him. There will be merry times at Wyrley in November, he recalled. And then: for they will do twenty wenches like the horses before next March. And two other words: little girls.

Campbell was a capable officer, as Anson had said; he was dutiful and level-headed. He did not have preconceptions about a criminal type; nor was he given to over-hasty theorizing or self-indulgent intuition. Even so: the field in which the outrage had occurred lay directly between the Colliery and Wyrley. If you drew a straight line from the field to the village, the first house you would come to was the Vicarage. Common logic, as well as the Chief Constable, argued for a visit.

'Anyone here watching the Vicarage last night?' Constable Judd identified himself, and talked rather too much about the devilish weather and the rain getting in his eyes, which may have meant that he had spent half the night sheltering under a tree. Campbell did not imagine policemen to be free of human failings. But in any case, Judd had seen no one come and no one go; the lights had been turned out at half past ten, as they invariably were. Still, it had been a wild old night of it, Inspector…

Campbell looked at the time: 7.15. He sent Markew, who knew the solicitor, to detain him at the station. He told Cooper and Judd to wait for the surgeon and keep away gawpers, then led Parsons and the remaining specials by the most direct route to the Vicarage. There were a couple of hedges to squeeze through, and the railway to cross by a subterranean passage, but they managed it without difficulty in under fifteen minutes. Well before eight o'clock Campbell had posted a constable at each corner of the house while he and Parsons made the knocker thunder. It was not just the twenty wenches; there was also the threat to shoot Robinson in the head with somebody's gun.

The maid showed the two policemen into the kitchen, where the Vicar's wife and daughter were finishing breakfast. To Parsons' eye the mother looked scared and the half-caste daughter sickly.

'I should like to speak to your son George.' The Vicar's wife was thin and slightly built; most of her hair had gone white. She spoke quietly, with a pronounced Scottish accent. 'He has already left for his office. He takes the seven thirty-nine. He is a solicitor in Birmingham.'

'I am aware of that, Madam. Then I must ask you to show me his clothing. All his clothing, without exception.'

'Maud, go and fetch your father.'

Parsons asked with a mere turn of the head whether he should follow the girl, but Campbell indicated not. A minute or so later the Vicar appeared: a short, powerful, light-skinned fellow with none of the oddities of his son. White-haired, but good-looking in a Hindoo sort of a way, Campbell thought.

The Inspector repeated his request.

'I must ask you what the subject of your inquiry is, and whether you have a search warrant.'

'A pit pony has been found…' Campbell hesitated briefly, given the presence of women, '… in a field nearby… someone has injured it.'

'And you suspect my son George of the deed.'

The mother put an arm around her daughter.

'Let us say that it would be very helpful to exclude him from the investigation if possible.' That old lie, Campbell thought, almost ashamed of bringing it out again.

'But you do not have a search warrant?'

'Not with me at the moment, sir.'

'Very well. Charlotte, show him George's clothes.'

'Thank you. And you will not object, I take it, if I ask my constables to search the house and the immediate grounds.'

'Not if it helps exclude my son from your investigation.'

So far, so good, thought Campbell. In the slums of Birmingham, he'd have had the father going for him with a poker, the mother bawling, and the daughter trying to scratch his eyes out. Though in some ways that was easier, being almost an admission of guilt.

Campbell told his men to look out for any knives or razors, agricultural or horticultural implements that might have been used in the attack, then went upstairs with Parsons. The lawyer's clothing was laid out on a bed, including, as had been requested, shirts and underlinen. It appeared clean, and dry to the touch.

'This is all his clothing?'

The mother paused before answering. 'Yes,' she said. And then, after a few seconds, 'Apart from what he has on.'

Well of course, thought Parsons, I didn't believe he went to work naked. What a queer statement. 'I need to see his knife,' he said casually.

'His knife?' She looked at him wonderingly. 'You mean, the knife he eats with?'

'No, his knife. Every young man has a knife.'

'My son is a solicitor,' said the Vicar rather sharply. 'He works in an office. He does not sit around whittling sticks.'

'I do not know how many times I have been told that your son is a solicitor. I am well aware of that. As I am of the fact that every young man has a knife.'

After some whispering, the daughter went away and returned with a short, stubby item which she handed over defiantly. 'This is his botany spud,' she said.

Campbell saw at a glance that the item could not possibly have inflicted the sort of damage he had recently witnessed. Nevertheless, he pretended to considerable interest, taking the spud over to the window and turning it in the light.

'We've found these, sir.' A constable was holding out a case containing four razors. One of them seemed to be wet. Another had red stains on the back.

'Those are my razors,' said the Vicar quickly.

'One of them is wet.'

'No doubt because I shaved myself with it barely an hour ago.'

'And your son – what does he shave with?'

There was a pause. 'One of these.'

'Ah. So they are not, strictly speaking, your razors, sir?'

'On the contrary. This has always been my set of razors. I have owned them for twenty years or more, and when it became time for my son to shave, I allowed him to use one.'

'Which he still does?'

'Yes.'

'You do not trust him with razors of his own?'

'He does not need razors of his own.'

'Now why should he not be allowed razors of his own?' Campbell aired it as a half-question, waiting to see if anyone chose to pick it up. No, he thought not. There was something slightly queer about the family, not that he could put his finger on it. They weren't being uncooperative; but at the same time he felt them less than straightforward.

'He was out last night, your son.'

'Yes.'

'How long for?'

'I'm not really sure. An hour, perhaps more. Charlotte?'

Again, the wife seemed to take an unconscionable time considering a simple question. 'One and a half, one and three-quarters,' she finally whispered.

Time enough and plenty to get to the field and back, as Campbell had just proved. 'And when would this be?'

'Between about eight and nine thirty,' answered the Vicar, even though Parsons' question had been addressed to his wife. 'He went to the bootmaker.'

'No, I meant after that.'

'After that, no.'

'But I asked if he went out in the night and you said that he did.'

'No, Inspector, you asked if he went out last night, not in the night.'

Campbell nodded. He was no fool, this clergyman. 'Well, I should like to see his boots.'

'His boots?'

'Yes, the boots he went out in. And show me which trousers he was wearing.'

These were dry, but now that Campbell looked at them again, he saw black mud around the bottoms. The boots, when produced, were also encrusted with mud, and were still damp.

'I found this too, sir,' said the Sergeant who brought the boots. 'Feels damp to me.' He handed over a blue serge coat.

'Where did you find this?' The Inspector passed his hand over the coat. 'Yes, it's damp.'

'Hanging by the back door just above the boots.'

'Let me feel that,' said the Vicar. He ran a hand down a sleeve and said, 'It's dry.'

'It's damp,' repeated Campbell, thinking, And what's more, I'm a policeman. 'So who does this belong to?'

'To George.'

'To George? I asked you to show me all his clothing. Without exception.'

'We did' – the mother this time. 'All this is what I think of as his clothing. That's just an old house-coat he never wears.'

'Never?'

'Never.'

'Does anyone else wear it?'

'No.'

'How very mysterious. A coat that nobody wears yet which hangs usefully by the back door. Let me start again. This is your son's coat. When did he last wear it?'

The parents looked at one another. Eventually the mother said, 'I have no idea. It is too shabby for him to go out in, and he has no cause to wear it in the house. Perhaps he wore it for gardening.'

'Now let me see,' said Campbell, holding the coat to the window. 'Yes, there's a hair here. And… another. And… yes, another. Parsons?'

The Sergeant took a look and nodded.

'Let me see, Inspector.' The Vicar was allowed to inspect the coat. 'That's not a hair. I don't see any hairs.'

Now mother and daughter joined in, tugging at the blue serge, like in a bazaar. He waved them away and laid the coat on a table. 'There,' he said, pointing at the most obvious hair.

'That's a roving,' said the daughter. 'It's not a hair, it's a roving.'

'What's a roving?'

'A thread, a loose thread. Anyone can see that, anyone who's ever sewn anything.'

Campbell had never sewn in his life, but he could recognize panic in a young woman's voice.

'And look at these stains, Sergeant.' On the right sleeve there were two separate patches, one whitish, one darkish. Neither he nor Parsons spoke, but they were each thinking the same. Whitish, the pony's saliva; darkish, the pony's blood.

'I told you, it's just his old house-coat. He would never go out in it. Certainly not to the bootmaker's.'

'Then why is it damp?'

'It's not damp.'

The daughter came up with another explanation useful to her brother. 'Perhaps it just feels damp to you because it was hanging by the back door.'

Unimpressed, Campbell gathered up the coat, the boots, the trousers and other clothing identified as having been worn the previous evening; he also took the razors. The family was instructed not to make contact with George until given police permission. He stationed one man outside the Vicarage, and ordered the others to quarter the grounds. Then he returned with Parsons to the field, where Mr Lewis had completed his examination and sought leave to destroy the pony. The surgeon's report would be with Campbell the following day. The Inspector asked him to cut a piece of skin from the dead animal. PC Cooper was to take this, along with the clothes, to Dr Butter in Cannock.

At Wyrley station Markew reported that the lawyer had curtly refused his request to wait. Campbell and Parsons therefore took the first available train – the 9.53 – into Birmingham.

'Strange family,' said the Inspector, as they were crossing the canal between Bloxwich and Walsall.

'Very strange.' The Sergeant chewed his lip for a while. 'If you don't mind my saying, sir, they seemed honest enough in themselves.'

'I know what you mean. It's something the criminal classes would do well to study.'

'What's that, sir?'

'Lying no more than you need to.'

'That'll be the day.' Parsons chuckled. 'Still, you have to feel sorry for them, in a way. Happening to that sort of family. A black sheep, if you'll pardon the expression.'

'I certainly will.'

Shortly after eleven o'clock the two policemen presented themselves at 54 Newhall Street. It was a small, two-room office, with a woman secretary guarding the solicitor's door. George Edalji sat passively behind his desk, looking ill.

Campbell, alert for any sudden movement from the man, said, 'We don't want to search you here, but you must let me have your pistol.'

Edalji looked at him blankly. 'I have no pistol.'

'What's that, then?' The Inspector gestured at a long, shiny object on the desk before him.

The solicitor sounded intensely weary as he spoke. 'That, Inspector, is the key to the door of a railway carriage.'

'Just joking,' Campbell replied. But he was thinking: keys. The key to Walsall School all those years ago, and now here's another one. There's something very queer about this fellow.

'I use it as a paperweight,' the lawyer explained. 'As you might have cause to recall, I am an authority on railway law.'

Campbell nodded. Then he cautioned the man and arrested him. In a cab on the way to the Newton Street lockup, Edalji said to the officers, 'I am not surprised at this. I have been expecting it for some time.'

Campbell glanced at Parsons, who made a contemporaneous note of these words.

George

At Newton Street they took away his money, his watch and a small pocket knife. They also attempted to take his handkerchief, in case he sought to strangle himself. George protested that it was quite inadequate to such a purpose, and was allowed to keep it.

They put him in a light, clean cell for an hour, then took him by the 12.40 from New Street to Cannock. 1.08 depart Walsall, George thought. Birchills 1.12. Bloxwich 1.16. Wyrley amp; Churchbridge 1.24. Cannock 1.29. The two policemen said they would not restrain him on the journey, for which George was grateful. Even so, when the train pulled in to Wyrley, he lowered his head and raised a hand to his cheek in case Mr Merriman or the porter spotted the Sergeant's uniform and spread the news.

At Cannock he was driven in a trap to the police station. There his height was measured and his particulars taken. His clothing was examined for bloodstains. An officer asked him to remove his cuffs and then inspected his wristbands. He said, 'Did you wear this shirt in the field last night? You must have changed it. There's no blood on it.'

George did not answer. He saw no point in doing so. If he replied No to the question, the officer would come back with, 'So you admit being in the field last night. What shirt did you wear?' George felt that he had been entirely cooperative so far; he would henceforth give sufficient answers to questions that were necessary and not leading.

They put him in a tiny cell with little light and less air, and which smelt of a public convenience. It lacked even water for washing purposes. They had taken his watch but he imagined it to be about half past two. A fortnight ago, he thought, just a fortnight ago, Maud and I had finished our roast chicken and apple pie at the Belle Vue, and were walking along Marine Terrace towards the Castle Grounds, where I made a light remark about the Sale of Goods Act and a passer-by attempted to point out Snowdon. Now he sat on a low bed in a police cell, taking the shortest breaths he could, and waiting for the next thing to happen. After a couple of hours he was brought to the interview room where Campbell and Parsons awaited him.

'So, Mr Edalji, you know what we're here for.'

'I know what you're here for. And it's Aydlji, not Ee-dal-ji.'

Campbell ignored this. He thought: I'll call you what I like from now on, Mr Solicitor. 'And you understand your legal rights?'

'I think I do, Inspector. I understand the rules of police procedure. I understand the laws of evidence, and the right of the accused to remain silent. I understand the redress available in cases of wrongful arrest and false imprisonment. I understand, for that matter, the laws of defamation. And I also know how soon you must charge me, and how soon after that you must bring me before the magistrates.'

Campbell had been expecting some show of defiance; although not of the normal kind, which often required a sergeant and several constables to subdue.

'Well, that makes it easier for us too. You'll doubtless inform us if we step out of line. So, you know why you're here.'

'I am here because you have arrested me.'

'Mr Edalji, there's no point in being clever with me. I've dealt with far harder cases than you. Now, tell me why you're here.'

'Inspector, I do not intend to answer the sort of general remarks you doubtless employ when seeking to gull common criminals. Nor do I intend to respond if you set off on what our judiciary would dismiss as a fishing expedition. I shall answer, as truthfully as I can, any specific and relevant questions you choose to ask.'

'That's very good of you. Then tell me about the Captain.'

'What Captain?'

'You tell me.'

'I don't know anyone called the Captain. Unless you mean Captain Anson.'

'Don't try impertinence with me, George. We know you visit the Captain at Northfield.'

'I have never been to Northfield in my life, as far as I am aware. On what dates am I supposed to have visited Northfield?'

'Tell me about the Great Wyrley gang.'

'The Great Wyrley gang? Now you are talking like a shilling shocker, Inspector. I have never heard anyone speak of such a gang.'

'When did you meet Shipton?'

'I know no one called Shipton.'

'When did you meet Lee the porter?'

'The porter? A station porter, do you mean?'

'Let's call him a station porter, if that's what you're telling me.'

'I know no porters called Lee. Though for all I know I may have greeted porters not knowing their names, and one of them might have been called Lee. The porter at Wyrley amp; Churchbridge is called Janes.'

'When did you meet William Greatorex?'

'I know no one… Greatorex? That boy on the train? The one who goes to Walsall Grammar School? What's he got to do with this?'

'You tell me.'

Silence.

'So are Shipton and Lee members of the Great Wyrley gang?'

'Inspector, my answer to that is fully implied in my previous answers. Please do not insult my intelligence.'

'Your intelligence is important to you, isn't it, Mr Edalji?'

Silence.

'It's important to you to be more intelligent than other people, isn't it?'

Silence.

'And to demonstrate that greater intelligence.'

Silence.

'Are you the Captain?'

Silence.

'Tell me exactly what your movements were yesterday.'

'Yesterday. I went to work as usual. I was at my office at Newhall Street all day, except for when I ate my sandwiches in St Philip's Place. I returned as usual, about six thirty. I transacted some business-'

'What business?'

'Some legal business I had brought from the office. The conveyancing of a small property.'

'And then?'

'Then I left the house and walked to see Mr Hands the bootmaker.'

'Why?'

'Because he is making me a pair of boots.'

'Is Hands in on this too?'

Silence.

'And?'

'And I talked to him while he made a fitting. Then I walked around for a while. Then I returned shortly before nine thirty for my supper.'

'Where did you walk?'

'Around. Around the lanes. I walk every day. I never really pay attention.'

'So you walked over towards the Colliery?'

'No, I don't think so.'

'Come on, George, you can do better than this. You said you walked in every direction but you didn't remember which. One of the directions from Wyrley is towards the Colliery. Why wouldn't you walk in that direction?'

'If you will give me a moment.' George pressed his fingers to his forehead. 'I remember now. I walked along the road to Churchbridge. Then I turned right towards Watling Street Road, then to Walk Mill, then along the road as far as Green's farm.'

Campbell thought this very impressive for someone who didn't remember where he walked. 'And who did you meet at Green's farm?'

'No one. I didn't go in. I don't know those people.'

'And who did you meet on your walk?'

'Mr Hands.'

'No. You met Mr Hands before your walk.'

'I'm not sure. Did you not have one of your special constables following me? You need only consult the man to get a full account of my movements.'

'Oh, I will, I will. And not just him either. So then you had your supper. And then you went out again.'

'No. After supper I went to bed.'

'And then got up later and went out?'

'No, I have told you when I went out.'

'What were you wearing?'

'What was I wearing? Boots, trousers, jacket, overcoat.'

'What sort of coat?'

'Blue serge.'

'The one that hangs by the kitchen door where you leave your boots?'

George frowned. 'No, that's an old house-coat. I wore one I keep on the hall stand.'

'Then why was your coat by the back door damp?'

'I have no idea. I haven't touched that coat for weeks, if not months.'

'You wore it last night. We can prove it.'

'Then this is clearly a matter for the court.'

'The clothes you were wearing last night had animal hairs on them.'

'That's not possible.'

'Are you calling your mother a liar?'

Silence.

'We asked your mother to show us the clothes you were wearing last night. She did so. Some of them had animal hairs on them. How do you explain that?'

'Well, I do live in the country, Inspector. For my sins.'

'For your sins? But you don't milk cows and shoe horses, do you?'

'That is self-evident. Perhaps I leaned on a gate into a field which had cows in it.'

'It rained last night and your boots were wet this morning.'

Silence.

'That is a question, Mr Edalji.'

'No, Inspector, that is a tendentious statement. You have examined my boots. If they were wet, it does not surprise me. The lanes are wet at this time of year.'

'But the fields are wetter, and it rained last night.'

Silence.

'So you are denying that you left the Vicarage between the hours of 9.30 p.m. and daybreak?'

'Later than daybreak. I leave the house at 7.20.'

'But you cannot possibly prove that.'

'On the contrary. My father and I sleep in the same room. Each night he locks the door.'

The Inspector stopped in his tracks. He looked across at Parsons, who was still writing the last words down. He'd heard some jerry-built alibis in his time, but really… 'I'm sorry, but could you repeat what you just said?'

'My father and I sleep in the same room. Each night he locks the door.'

'How long has this… arrangement been going on?'

'Since I was ten.'

'And you are now?'

'Twenty-seven.'

'I see.' Campbell doesn't see at all. 'And your father – when he locks the door – you know where he puts the key?'

'He doesn't put it anywhere. He leaves it in the lock.'

'So it is perfectly easy for you to leave the room?'

'I have no need to leave the room.'

'Call of nature?'

'There is a pot beneath my bed. But I never use it.'

'Never?'

'Never.'

'Very well. The key is always in the lock. So you would not have to go hunting for it?'

'My father is a very light sleeper, and is currently suffering from lumbago. He wakes very easily. The key makes a very loud squeak when it turns.'

It was all Campbell could do not to laugh in the man's face. Who did he take them for?

'That all seems remarkably convenient, if you don't mind my saying, sir. Have you never thought of oiling the lock?'

Silence.

'How many razors do you own?'

'How many razors? I don't own a razor.'

'But you do shave, I presume?'

'I shave with one of my father's.'

'Why are you not trusted with your own razor?'

Silence.

'How old are you, Mr Edalji?'

'I have already answered that question three times today. I suggest you consult your notes.'

'A twenty-seven-year-old man who is not allowed a razor and is locked in his bedroom every night by his father who is a light sleeper. You realize what an exceptionally rare individual you are?'

Silence.

'Exceptionally rare, I'd say. And… tell me about animals.'

'That's not a question, that's a fishing expedition.' George realized the incongruity of his reply, and couldn't help smiling.

'My apologies.' The Inspector was becoming increasingly riled. He'd gone easy on the man so far. Well, it wouldn't take much to turn a conceited lawyer into a snivelling schoolboy. 'Here is a question, then. What do you think about animals? Do you like them?'

'What do I think about animals? Do I like them? No, generally, I do not like them.'

'I might have guessed that.'

'No, Inspector, let me explain.' George had sensed a hardening in Campbell 's attitude, and thought it good tactics to relax his rules of engagement. 'When I was four, I was taken to see a cow. It soiled itself. That is almost my first memory.'

'Of a cow soiling itself?'

'Yes. I think from that day I have distrusted animals.'

'Distrusted?'

'Yes. What they might do. They are unreliable.'

'I see. And that is your first memory, you say?'

'Yes.'

'And since then you have distrusted animals. All animals.'

'Well, not the cat we have at home. Or Aunt Stoneham's dog. I am very fond of them.'

'I see. But large animals. Like cows.'

'Yes.'

'Horses?'

'Horses are unreliable, yes.'

'Sheep?'

'Sheep are just stupid.'

'Blackbirds?' asks Sergeant Parsons. It is the first word he has spoken.

'Blackbirds are not animals.'

'Monkeys?'

'There are no monkeys in Staffordshire.'

'Quite sure of that, are we?'

George feels his anger rising. He deliberately waits before replying. 'Inspector, may I say that your Sergeant's tactics are quite misconceived.'

'Oh, I don't think that was tactics, Mr Edalji. Sergeant Parsons is a good friend of Sergeant Robinson at Hednesford. Someone has threatened to shoot Sergeant Robinson in the head.'

Silence.

'Someone has also threatened to slice up twenty wenches in the village where you live.'

Silence.

'Well, he doesn't seem shocked by either of those statements, Sergeant. They can't have come as much of a surprise, then.'

Silence. George thought: it was a mistake to give him anything. Anything that isn't a straight answer to a straight question is giving him something. So don't.

The Inspector consulted a notebook in front of him. 'When we arrested you, you said, "I am not surprised at this. I have been expecting it for some time." What did you mean by that?'

'I meant what I said.'

'Well, let me tell you what I understood by what you said, and what the Sergeant understood by what you said, and what the man on the Clapham Omnibus would understand by it. That at last you have been caught, and that you are rather relieved to be caught.'

Silence.

'So why do you think you are here?'

Silence.

'Perhaps you think it's because your father is a Hindoo.'

'My father is actually a Parsee.'

'Your boots have mud on them.'

Silence.

'Your razor has blood on it.'

Silence.

'Your coat has horse hairs on it.'

Silence.

'You were not surprised to be arrested.'

Silence.

'I don't think any of that has anything to do with whether your father is a Hindoo or a Parsee or a Hottentot.'

Silence.

'Well, he seems to have run out of words, Sergeant. He must be saving them for the Cannock magistrates.'

George was taken back to his cell where a plate of cold mess awaited him. He ignored it. Every twenty minutes, he heard the scrape of the spy hole; every hour – or so he guessed – the door was unlocked and a constable inspected him.

On his second visit, the policeman, evidently speaking to a script, said, 'Well, Mr Edalji, I'm sorry to see you here, but how did you manage to slip by all our chaps? What time did you put the horse through it?'

George had never met the constable before, so the expression of sympathy made little impact, and did not draw any reply.

An hour later, the policeman said, 'My advice, sir, frankly, is to give the show away. Because if you don't, someone else is bound to.'

On the fourth visit, George asked if these constant checks would continue through the night.

'Orders is orders.'

'And your orders are to keep me awake?'

'Oh no, sir. Our orders is to keep you alive. It's my neck if you do any harm to yourself.' George realized that no protest of his could stop the hourly interruptions. The constable continued, 'Of course, it would be easier for all concerned, yourself included, if you were to commit yourself.'

'Commit myself? Where to?'

The constable shuffled slightly. 'To a place of safety.'

'Oh, I see,' said George, his temper suddenly returning. 'You want me to say I am loony.' He used the word deliberately, in the full memory of his father's disapproval.

'It's often easier on the family all round. Think about it, sir. Think about how it will affect your parents. I understand they're a bit elderly.'

The cell door closed. George lay on his bed too exhausted and angry to sleep. His mind raced to the Vicarage, to the knock on the door and the house full of policemen. His father, his mother, Maud. His office at Newhall Street, now locked and deserted, his secretary sent home until further notice. His brother Horace opening a newspaper the next morning. His fellow solicitors in Birmingham telephoning one another with the news.

But beneath the exhaustion, the anger and the fear, George discovered another emotion: relief. It had come at last to this: then so much the better. There had been little he could do against the hoaxers and persecutors and writers of anonymous filth; and not much more when the police were blundering away – except offer them sensible advice they had contemptuously refused. But those tormenters and these blunderers had delivered him to a place of safety: to his second home, the laws of England. He knew where he was now. Though his work rarely took him to a courtroom, he knew it as part of his natural territory. He had sat in on cases enough times to have seen members of the public, dry-mouthed with panic, scarcely able to give evidence when faced with the solemn splendour of the law. He had seen policemen, at first all brass buttons and self-assurance, be reduced to lying fools by a half-decent defence counsel. And he had observed – no, not just observed, sensed, almost been able to touch – those unseen, unbreakable strands which linked everyone whose business was the law. Judges, magistrates, barristers, solicitors, clerks, ushers: this was their kingdom, where they spoke to one another in a lingua franca others could often barely comprehend.

Of course it would not get as far as judges and barristers. The police had no evidence against him, and he had the clearest proof of an alibi it was possible to have. A clergyman of the Church of England would swear on the Holy Bible that his son had been fast asleep in a locked bedroom at the time when the crime was being committed. Whereupon the magistrates would take one look at each other and not even bother to retire. Inspector Campbell would be on the receiving end of a sharp rebuke and that would be that. Naturally, he needed to engage the right solicitor, and he thought Mr Litchfield Meek the man for the job. Case dismissed, costs awarded, released without a stain on his character, police heavily criticized.

No, he was getting light-headed. He was also jumping much too far ahead, like some naive member of the public. He must never stop thinking like a solicitor. He must anticipate what the police might allege, what his solicitor would need to know, what the court would admit. He must remember, with absolute certainty, where he was, what he did and said, and who said what to him, throughout the whole period of alleged criminal activity.

He went through the last two days systematically, preparing himself to prove beyond reasonable doubt the simplest and least controversial event. He listed the witnesses he might need: his secretary, Mr Hands the bootmaker, Mr Merriman the stationmaster. Anyone who saw him do anything. Like Markew. If Merriman was unable to corroborate the fact that he had taken the 7.39 to Birmingham, then he knew whom to call. George had been standing on the platform when Joseph Markew accosted him and suggested he took a later train as Inspector Campbell wished to speak to him. Markew was a former police constable who currently kept an inn; it was entirely possible that he had been signed up as a special, but he did not say as much. George had asked what Campbell wanted, but Markew said he did not know. George had been deciding what to do, and also wondering what his fellow passengers were making of the exchange, when Markew had adopted a hectoring tone and said something like – no, not like, for the exact words now came back to George. Markew had said, 'Oh, come on, Mr Edalji, can't you give yourself a holiday for a single day?' And George had thought, actually, my good man, I took a holiday a fortnight ago this very day, I went to Aberystwyth with my sister, but if it is to be a question of holidays then I shall take my own advice, or that of my father, above that of the Staffordshire Constabulary, whose behaviour in recent weeks has hardly been marked by the greatest civility. So he had explained that urgent business awaited him at Newhall Street, and when the 7.39 drew in, left Markew on the platform.

George went through other exchanges, even the most trivial, with the same scrupulousness. Eventually, he slept; or rather, he became less aware of the peephole's scrape and the constable's intrusions. In the morning, he was brought a bucket of water, a lump of mottled soap, and a bit of rag to serve as a towel. He was allowed to see his father, who had brought him breakfast from the Vicarage. He was also allowed to write two brief letters, explaining to clients why there would have to be some delay in their immediate business.

An hour or so later, two constables arrived to take him to the magistrates' court. While waiting to set off, they ignored him and talked over the top of his head about a case that evidently interested them much more than his. It concerned the mysterious disappearance of a lady surgeon in London.

'Five foot ten and all.'

'Not too hard to spot, then.'

'You'd think, wouldn't you?'

They walked him the hundred and fifty yards from the police station, through crowds whose mood appeared to be mainly one of curiosity. There was an old woman shouting incoherent abuse at one point, but she was taken away. At the court Mr Litchfield Meek was waiting for him: a solicitor of the old school, lean and white-haired, known equally for his courtesy and his obduracy. Unlike George, he did not expect a summary dismissal of the case.

The magistrates appeared: Mr J. Williamson, Mr J.T. Hatton and Colonel R.S. Williamson. George Ernest Thompson Edalji was charged with unlawfully and maliciously wounding a horse, the property of the Great Wyrley Colliery Company, on August 17th. A plea of not guilty was entered, and Inspector Campbell was called to present the police evidence. He described being summoned to a field near the Colliery at about 7 a.m. and finding a distressed pony which subsequently had to be shot. He went from the field to the prisoner's house, where he found a jacket with bloodstains on the cuffs, whitish saliva stains on the sleeves, and hairs on the sleeves and breast. There was a waistcoat with a saliva patch. The pocket of the jacket contained a handkerchief marked SE with a brownish stain in one corner, which might have been blood. He then went with Sergeant Parsons to the prisoner's place of business in Birmingham, arrested him, and brought him to Cannock for interrogation. The prisoner denied that the clothing described to him had been what he was wearing the previous night; but on being told that his mother had confirmed this to be the case, had admitted the fact. Then he was asked about the hairs on his clothing. At first he denied there were any, but then suggested he might have picked them up by leaning on a gate.

George looked across at Mr Meek: this was hardly the tenor of his conversation with the Inspector yesterday afternoon. But Mr Meek was not interested in catching his client's eye. Instead he got to his feet and asked Campbell a few questions, all of which seemed to George innocuous, if not positively friendly.

Then Mr Meek called the Reverend Shapurji Edalji, described as 'a clerk in holy orders'. George watched his father outline, in a precise way but with rather long pauses, the sleeping arrangements at the Vicarage; how he always locked the bedroom door; how the key was hard to turn, and squeaked; how he was a very light sleeper, who in recent months had been plagued with lumbago, and would certainly have woken had the key been turned; how in any case he had not slept beyond five in the morning.

Superintendent Barrett, a plump man with a short white beard, his cap held against the swell of his belly, told the court that the Chief Constable had instructed him to object to bail. After a brief consultation, the magistrates remanded the prisoner to appear before them again the following Monday, when arguments for bail would be heard. In the meantime he would be transferred to Stafford Gaol. And that was that. Mr Meek promised to visit George the next day, probably in the afternoon. George asked him to bring a Birmingham paper. He would need to know what his colleagues were being told. He preferred the Gazette, but the Post would suffice.

At Stafford Gaol they asked what religion he belonged to, and also whether he could read and write. Then he was told to strip naked and instructed to place himself in a humiliating posture. He was taken to see the Governor, Captain Synge, who told him he would be housed in the hospital wing until a cell became available. Then his privileges as a prisoner on remand were explained: he would be allowed to wear his own clothes, to take exercise, to write letters, to receive newspapers and magazines. He would be allowed private conversations with his solicitor, which would be observed by a warder from behind a glass door. All other meetings would be supervised.

George had been arrested in his light summer suit, his only headgear a straw hat. He requested permission to send for a change of clothing. This, he was told, was against the regulations. It was a privilege for a prisoner on remand to retain his own clothes; but this should not be understood as conveying the right to build up a private wardrobe in his cell.

THE GREAT WYRLEY SENSATION, George read the next afternoon. VICAR'S SON IN COURT. 'The sensation which the arrest caused throughout the Cannock Chase district was evidenced by the large crowds which yesterday frequented the roads leading to the Great Wyrley Vicarage, where the accused man resided, and the Police Court and Police Station, Cannock.' George was dismayed at the idea of the Vicarage being besieged. 'The police were allowed to search without warrant. So far as can be ascertained at present the result of the search is a quantity of bloodstained apparel, a number of razors, and a pair of boots, the latter found in a field close to the scene of the last mutilation.'

'Found in a field,' he repeated to Mr Meek. 'Found in a field? Has someone been putting my boots in a field? Quantity of blood-stained apparel? Quantity?'

Meek seemed astonishingly calm about all this. No, he did not intend to ask the police about the supposed discovery of a pair of boots in a field. No, he did not propose asking the Birmingham Daily Gazette to publish a retraction concerning the amount of bloodstained clothing.

'If I may make a suggestion, Mr Edalji.'

'Of course.'

'I have, as you may imagine, had many clients in positions similar to yours, and they mostly insist upon reading the newspaper accounts of their case. It sometimes makes them a trifle over-heated. When this occurs, I always advise them to read the next column along. It often seems to help.'

'The next column along?' George shifted his gaze two inches to the left. MISSING LADY DOCTOR was the heading. And beneath it: NO CLUE TO MISS HICKMAN.

'Read it aloud,' said Mr Meek.

'"No clue as to the disappearance of Miss Sophie Frances Hickman, a lady surgeon at the Royal Free Hospital, has yet emerged…"'

Meek made George read the whole column to him. He listened attentively, sighing and shaking his head, even sucking in his breath from time to time.

'But Mr Meek,' said George at the end, 'how am I to tell if any of this is true either, given what they say about me?'

'That is rather my point.'

'Even so…' George's eyes were reverting magnetically to his own column. 'Even so. "The accused man, as his name implies, is of Eastern origin." They make me sound like a Chinaman.'

'I promise you, Mr Edalji, if ever they say you are a Chinaman, I'll have a quiet word with the editor.'

The following Monday, George was taken from Stafford back to Cannock. This time the crowd on the way to court seemed more turbulent. Men ran alongside the cab, jumping up and peering in; some thumped on the doors and waved sticks in the air. George grew alarmed; but the escorting constables acted as if it were all quite normal.

This time Captain Anson was in court; George became aware of a neat, authoritative figure staring fiercely at him. The magistrates announced that they would require three separate sureties, given the gravity of the charge. George's father doubted he could find so many. The magistrates therefore adjourned to Penkridge that day week.

At Penkridge the magistrates specified their bail terms further. The sureties required were as follows: £200 from George, £100 each from his father and mother, and a further £100 from a third party. But this was four sureties, not the three they had announced at Cannock. George felt it was all a charade. Not waiting for Mr Meek, he stood up himself.

'I do not desire bail,' he told the magistrates. 'I have had several offers, but I prefer not to have bail.'

Committal proceedings were then set for the following Thursday, September 3rd, at Cannock. On the Tuesday Mr Meek came to see him with bad news.

'They are adding a second charge, that of threatening to murder Sergeant Robinson at Hednesford by shooting him.'

'Have they found a gun next to my boots in the field?' asked George incredulously. 'Shooting him? Shooting Sergeant Robinson? I've never touched a gun in my life, and I've never to my knowledge laid eyes on Sergeant Robinson. Mr Meek, have they taken leave of their senses? What on earth can it possibly mean?'

'What it means,' replied Mr Meek, as if his client's outburst had been a simple, measured question, 'What it means is that the magistrates are certain to commit. However weak the evidence, it's most unlikely they could now discharge.'

Later, George sat on his bed in the hospital wing. Disbelief still burned in him like an ailment. How could they do this to him? How could they think that? How could they begin to believe that? George was so new to feeling anger that he did not know against whom to direct it – Campbell, Parsons, Anson, the police solicitor, the magistrates? Well, the magistrates would do for a start. Meek said they were certain to commit – as if they had no mental capacity, as if they were glove puppets or automata. But then, what were magistrates anyway? They scarcely qualified as members of the legal profession. Most were just self-important amateurs dressed in a little brief authority.

He felt thrilled by his contemptuous words, and then immediate shame at his own excitement. This was why wrath was a sin: it led to untruth. The magistrates at Cannock were doubtless no better and no worse than magistrates anywhere else; nor could he remember them uttering a word from which he could fairly dissent. And the more he thought of them, the more his professional self began taking over again. Incredulity weakened to mere vivid disappointment, and then to a resigned practicality. It was clearly much better that his case went to a higher court. Barristers and graver surroundings were required to deliver the proper justice and the proper rebuke. Cannock magistrates' court was quite the wrong setting. For a start, it was scarcely bigger than the schoolroom at the Vicarage. There was not even a proper dock: prisoners were obliged to sit on a chair in the middle of the court.

This was where he was placed on the morning of September 3rd; he felt himself observed from all quarters, uncertain whether his position made him look more like the classroom scholar or its dunce. Inspector Campbell gave evidence at length, but departed little from what he had previously said. The first new police testimony came from Constable Cooper, who described how in the hours after the discovery of the injured animal he had taken possession of one of the prisoner's boots, which had a peculiarly worn-down heel. This he had compared with footprints in the field where the pony was found, and also with marks close to a wooden footbridge near the Vicarage. He had pressed Mr Edalji's boot-heel down into the wet earth and found, when he withdrew the boot, that the prints matched.

Sergeant Parsons then agreed that he was in charge of the band of twenty special constables deployed to pursue the gang of mutilators. He told how a search of Edalji's bedroom had disclosed a case of four razors. One of them had wet, brown stains on it, and one or two hairs adhering to the blade. The Sergeant had pointed this out to Edalji's father, who had commenced wiping the blade with his thumb.

'That's not true!' shouted the Vicar, rising to his feet.

'You must not interrupt,' said Inspector Campbell, before the magistrates could respond.

Sergeant Parsons continued with his evidence, and described the moment when the prisoner was put into the Newton Street lock-up in Birmingham. Edalji had turned to him and said, 'This is a bit of Mr Loxton's work, I suppose. I'll make him sit up before I am done.'

The next morning, the Birmingham Daily Gazette wrote of George:

He is 28 years of age but looks younger. He was dressed in a shrunken black and white check suit, and there was little of the typical solicitor in his swarthy face, with its full, dark eyes, prominent mouth, and small round chin. His appearance is essentially Oriental in its stolidity, no sign of emotion escaping him beyond a faint smile as the extraordinary story of the prosecution unfolded. His aged Hindoo father and his white-haired English mother were in court, and followed the proceedings with pathetic interest.

'I am twenty-eight but look younger,' he remarked to Mr Meek. 'Perhaps that is because I am twenty-seven. My mother is not English, she is Scottish. My father is not a Hindoo.'

'I warned you against reading the newspapers.'

'But he is not a Hindoo.'

'It's near enough for the Gazette.'

'But Mr Meek, what if I said you were a Welshman?'

'I would not hold you inaccurate, as my mother had Welsh blood.'

'Or an Irishman?'

Mr Meek smiled back at him, unoffended, perhaps even looking a little Irish.

'Or a Frenchman?'

'Now there, sir, you go too far. There you provoke me.'

'And I am stolid,' George continued, looking down at the Gazette again. 'Isn't that a good thing to be? Isn't stolid what a typical solicitor is meant to be? And yet I am not a typical solicitor. I am a typical Oriental, whatever that means. Whatever I am, I am typical, isn't that it? If I were excitable, I would still be a typical Oriental, wouldn't I?'

'Stolid is good, Mr Edalji. And at least they didn't call you inscrutable. Or wily.'

'What would that signify?'

'Oh, full of devilish low cunning. We like to avoid devilish. Also diabolical. The defence will settle for stolid.'

George smiled at his solicitor. 'I do apologize, Mr Meek. And I thank you for your good sense. I am likely to need more of it, I fear.'

On the second day of the proceedings, William Greatorex, a fourteen-year-old scholar of Walsall Grammar School, gave evidence. Numerous letters written over his signature were read out in court. He denied both authorship and knowledge of them, and could even show that he had been in the Isle of Man when two of them had been posted. He said that it was his custom to take the train every morning from Hednesford to Walsall, where he was at school. Other boys who generally travelled with him were Westwood Stanley, son of the well-known miners' agent; Quibell, son of the Vicar of Hednesford; Page, Harrison and Ferriday. The names of all these boys were mentioned in the letters which had just been read out.

Greatorex stated that he had known Mr Edalji by sight for three or four years. 'He has often travelled to Walsall in the same compartment as us boys. Quite a dozen times, I should think.' He was asked when was the last time the prisoner had travelled with him. 'The morning after two of Mr Blewitt's horses were killed. It was June 30, I think. We could see the horses lying in the field as we went by in the train.' The witness was asked if Mr Edalji had said anything to him that morning. 'Yes, he asked me if the horses that had been killed belonged to Blewitt. Then he looked out of the window.' The witness was asked if there had been any previous conversation with the prisoner about the maimings. 'No, no, never,' he replied.

Thomas Henry Gurrin agreed that he was a handwriting expert of many years' standing. He gave his report on the letters that had been read out in court. In the disguised writing he found a number of peculiarities very strongly marked. Exactly the same peculiarities were found in the letters of Mr Edalji, which had been handed to him for comparison.

Dr Butter, the police surgeon, who had examined the stains on Edalji's clothing, stated that he had performed tests which revealed traces of mammalian blood. On the coat and waistcoat he found twenty-nine short, brown hairs. These he compared with hairs on the skin of a Colliery pony maimed the evening before Mr Edalji was arrested. Under the microscope they were found to be similar.

Mr Gripton, who was keeping company with a young lady near Coppice Lane, Great Wyrley, on the night in question, gave evidence that he saw Mr Edalji, and passed him at about nine o'clock. Mr Gripton was not quite certain of the spot.

'Well,' asked the police solicitor, 'give us the name of the nearest public house to the place you saw him.'

'The old police station,' replied Mr Gripton cheerily.

The police sternly stopped the laughter which greeted this remark.

Miss Biddle, who wished to make it clear that she was engaged to Mr Gripton, had also seen Mr Edalji; so had a number of other witnesses.

Details of the mutilation were given: the wound to the Colliery Company's pony was described as being of fifteen inches in length.

The prisoner's father, the Hindoo Vicar of Great Wyrley, also gave evidence.

The prisoner stated: 'I am perfectly innocent of the charge, and reserve my defence.'

On Friday 4th September, George Edalji was committed for trial at the Stafford Court of Quarter Sessions on two counts. Next morning, he read in the Birmingham Daily Gazette:

Edalji looked fresh and cheerful, and, sitting in his chair in the middle of the court, he conversed briskly with his solicitor with a keen discrimination of evidence, proceeding from thorough legal training. Mostly, however, he sat with arms folded and legs crossed, watching the witnesses with stolid interest, one boot raised and exhibiting plainly to the spectator the curious wearing down of one heel, which is one of the strongest links in the chain of circumstantial evidence against him.

George was glad still to be regarded as stolid, and wondered if he could effect a change of footwear before the Court of Quarter Sessions.

He also noted another newspaper's description of William Greatorex as 'a healthy young English boy, with a frank, sunburnt face, and a pleasing manner'.

Mr Litchfield Meek was confident of an eventual acquittal.

Miss Sophie Frances Hickman, the lady surgeon, was still missing.

George

George spent the six weeks between the committal proceedings and the Quarter Sessions in the hospital wing of Stafford Gaol. He was not discontented; he thought it the correct decision to refuse bail. He could hardly have carried on his business with such charges hanging over him; and while he missed his family, he judged it best for all of them that he stayed in safe custody. That report of crowds besieging the Vicarage had alarmed him; and he remembered fists pounding on the cab doors as he was driven to court in Cannock. He would not be able to count himself safe if such hotheads sought him out among the lanes of Great Wyrley.

But there was another reason why he preferred to be in prison. Everyone knew where he was; every moment of the day he was spied upon and accounted for. So if a further outrage occurred, the whole pattern of events would be shown to have nothing to do with him. And were the first charge against him found untenable, then the second one – the ludicrous proposition that he had threatened to murder a man he had never met – would also have to be withdrawn. It was strange to find himself, a solicitor-at-law, actually hoping for another animal to be maimed; but a further crime seemed to him the speediest way to freedom.

Still, even if the case came to trial, there could be no doubt over the outcome. He had regained both his composure and his optimism; he did not have to play-act either with Mr Meek or with his parents. He could already imagine the headlines. GREAT WYRLEY MAN CLEARED. SHAMEFUL PROSECUTION OF LOCAL SOLICITOR. POLICE WITNESSES DECLARED INCOMPETENT. Perhaps even CHIEF CONSTABLE RESIGNS.

Mr Meek had more or less convinced him that it mattered little how the newspapers depicted him. It seemed to matter even less on September 21st, when a horse at the farm belonging to Mr Green was found ripped and disembowelled. George greeted the news with a kind of cautious exultation. He could hear keys turning in locks, could smell the early-morning air, and his mother's powder when he embraced her.

'Now this proves I am innocent, Mr Meek.'

'Not exactly, Mr Edalji. I don't think we can go quite that far.'

'But here I am in prison…'

'Which only goes to prove, in the court's view, that you are and must be entirely innocent of mutilating Mr Green's horse.'

'No, it proves there was a pattern to events, before and after the Colliery pony, which has now been shown to have absolutely nothing to do with me.'

'I know that, Mr Edalji.' The solicitor rested his chin on his fist.

'But?'

'But I always find it useful in these moments to imagine what the prosecution might say in the circumstances.'

'And what might they possibly say?'

'Well, on the night of August 17th, as I remember, when the defendant was walking from the bootmaker, he went as far as Mr Green's farm.'

'Yes, I did.'

'Mr Green is the defendant's neighbour.'

'That is true.'

'So what could be of greater benefit to the defendant in his present circumstances than for a horse to be mutilated even closer to the Vicarage than in any other previous incident?'

Litchfield Meek watched George work this out.

'You mean that after getting myself arrested by writing anonymous letters denouncing myself for crimes I did not commit, I then incite someone else to commit another crime in order to exculpate me?'

'That's about the long and the short of it, Mr Edalji.'

'It's utterly ridiculous. And I don't even know Green.'

'I'm just telling you how the prosecution might choose to see it. If they had the mind.'

'Which they doubtless will. But the police must at least hunt the criminal, mustn't they? The newspapers hint quite openly that this throws doubt on the prosecution case. If they found the man, and he confessed to the string of crimes, then that would be my freedom?'

'If that were to happen, Mr Edalji, then yes, I would agree.'

'I see.'

'And there's another development. Does the name Darby mean anything to you? Captain Darby?'

'Darby. Darby. I don't think so. Inspector Campbell asked me about someone called the Captain. Perhaps this is him. Why?'

'More letters have been sent. To all and sundry it appears. One even to the Home Secretary. All signed "Darby, Captain of the Wyrley Gang". Saying how the maimings are going to continue.' Mr Meek saw the look in George's eye. 'But no, Mr Edalji, this only means that the prosecution must accept you almost certainly didn't write them.'

'You seem determined to discourage me this morning, Mr Meek.'

'That is not my intention. But you must accept we are going to trial. And with that in mind we have secured the services of Mr Vachell.'

'Oh, that's excellent news.'

'He will not, I think, let us down. And Mr Gaudy will be at his side.'

'And for the prosecution?'

'Mr Disturnal, I'm afraid. And Mr Harrison.'

'Is Disturnal bad for us?'

'To be honest with you, I would have preferred another.'

'Mr Meek, now it is my turn to put heart into you. A barrister, however competent, cannot make bricks without straw.'

Litchfield Meek gave George a worldly smile. 'In my years in the courts, Mr Edalji, I've seen bricks made from all sorts of materials. Some you didn't even know existed. Lack of straw will be no hardship to Mr Disturnal.'

Despite this approaching threat, George spent the remaining weeks at Stafford Gaol in a tranquil state of mind. He was treated respectfully and there was an order to his days. He received newspapers and mail; he prepared for the trial with Mr Meek; he awaited developments in the Green case; and he was allowed books. His father had brought him a Bible, his mother a one-volume Shakespeare and a one-volume Tennyson. He read the latter two; then, out of idleness, some shilling shockers which a warder passed on to him. The fellow also lent him a tattered cheap edition of The Hound of the Baskervilles. George judged it excellent.

He opened the newspaper each morning with less apprehension, given that his own name had temporarily vanished from its pages. Instead, he learned with interest that there were new Cabinet appointments in London; that Dr Elgar's latest oratorio had been performed at the Birmingham musical festival; that Buffalo Bill was on a tour of England.

A week before the trial, George met Mr Vachell, a cheerful and corpulent barrister with twenty years' service on the Midland Circuit.

'How do you judge my case, Mr Vachell?'

'I judge it well, Mr Edalji, very well. That is to say, I consider the prosecution scandalous and largely devoid of merit. Of course I shall not say so. I shall merely concentrate on what seem to me to be the strong points of your case.'

'And what, to you, do they seem to be?'

'I would put it like this, Mr Edalji.' The barrister gave him a smile which was almost a grin. 'There is no evidence that you committed this crime. There is no motive for you committing this crime. And there was no opportunity for you to commit this crime. I shall wrap it up a little for the judge and jury. But that will be the essence of my case.'

'It is perhaps a pity,' put in Mr Meek, 'that we are in Court B.' His tone punctured George's temporary elation.

'Why is that a pity?'

'Court A is run by Lord Hatherton. Who at least has legal training.'

'You mean I am to be judged by someone who doesn't know the law?'

Mr Vachell intervened. 'Don't alarm him, Mr Meek. I've been before both courts in my time. Who do we get in Court B?'

'Sir Reginald Hardy.'

Mr Vachell's expression did not flicker. 'Perfectly all right. In some ways I consider it an advantage not to be governed by some stickler who aspires to the High Court. You can get away with a little more. Not pulled up so often for meretricious demonstrations of procedural knowledge. On the whole, an advantage to the defence, I'd say.'

George sensed that Mr Meek did not agree; but he was impressed by Mr Vachell, whether the barrister was being altogether sincere or not.

'Gentlemen, I do have one request.' Mr Meek and Mr Vachell briefly caught one another's eye. 'It is about my name. It is Aydlji. Aydlji. Mr Meek pronounces it more or less correctly, but I should have mentioned the matter earlier to you, Mr Vachell. The police, it seems to me, have always gone out of their way to ignore any correction I have offered them. Might I suggest that Mr Vachell makes an announcement at the beginning of the case as to how to pronounce my name. To tell that court that it is not Ee-dal-jee but Aydlji.'

The barrister gave the solicitor an instructing nod, and Mr Meek replied.

'George, how can I best put this? Of course it's your name, and of course Mr Vachell and I shall endeavour to pronounce it correctly. When we are here with you. But in court… in court… I think the argument would be: when in Rome. We would get off on the wrong foot with Sir Reginald Hardy if we made such an announcement. We are unlikely to succeed in giving pronunciation lessons to the police. And as for Mr Disturnal, I suspect he would greatly enjoy the confusion.'

George looked at the two men. 'I am not sure I follow you.'

'What I'm saying, George, is that we should acknowledge the court's right to decide a prisoner's name. It's not written down anywhere, but that's more or less the fact of the matter. What you call mispronouncing, I would call… making you more English.'

George took a breath. 'And less Oriental?'

'Less Oriental, yes, George.'

'Then I would ask you both kindly to mispronounce my name on all occasions, so that I may get used to it.'

The trial was set to begin on October 20th. On the 19th, four young boys playing near the Sidmouth plantation in Richmond Park came upon a body in an advanced state of decomposition. It proved to be that of Miss Sophie Frances Hickman, the lady doctor from the Royal Free Hospital. Like George, she had been in her late twenties. And, he reflected, she was only one column away.

On the morning of October 20th, 1903, George was brought from Stafford Gaol to Shire Hall. He was taken to the basement and shown the holding cell where prisoners were usually placed. As a privilege, he would be allowed to occupy a large, low-ceilinged room with a deal table and a fireplace; here, under the eye of Constable Dubbs, he would be able to confer with Mr Meek. He sat at the table for twenty minutes while Dubbs, a muscular officer with a chin-strap beard and a gloomy air, firmly avoided his eye. Then, at a signal, George was led through dim, winding passages and past inadequate gas lamps to a door giving on to the foot of a narrow staircase. Dubbs gave him a gentle shove, and he climbed up towards light and noise. As he emerged into the view of Court B, noise became silence. George stood self-consciously in the dock, an actor propelled unwillingly on stage through a trapdoor.

Then, before the Assistant Chairman Sir Reginald Hardy, two flanking magistrates, Captain Anson, the properly sworn members of an English jury, representatives of the Press, representatives of the public, and three members of his family, the indictment was read. George Ernest Thompson Edalji was charged with wounding a horse, the property of the Great Wyrley Colliery Company, on the 17th or 18th September; also with sending a letter, on or about 11th July, to Sergeant Robinson at Cannock, threatening to kill him.

Mr Disturnal was a tall, sleek figure, with a swift manner to him. After a brief opening speech, he called Inspector Campbell, and the whole story began again: the discovery of the mutilated pony, the search of the Vicarage, the bloodstained clothing, the hairs on the coat, the anonymous letters, the prisoner's arrest and subsequent statements. It was just a story, George knew, something made up from scraps and coincidences and hypotheses; he knew too that he was innocent; but something about the repetition of the story by an authority in wig and gown made it take on extra plausibility.

George thought Campbell's evidence was finished, when Mr Disturnal produced his first surprise.

'Inspector Campbell, before we conclude, there is a matter of great public anxiety, about which you are, I think, able to enlighten us. On September 21st, I understand, a horse was found maimed at the farm of a Mr Green.'

'That is correct, sir.'

'Mr Green's farm is very close to the Vicarage of Great Wyrley?'

'It is.'

'And the police have conducted an investigation into this outrage?'

'Indeed. As a matter of urgency and priority.'

'And has this investigation been successful?'

'Yes it has, sir.'

Mr Disturnal hardly needed the elaborate pause he now threw in; the whole courtroom was waiting like an open-mouthed child.

'And will you tell the court the result of your investigation?'

'John Harry Green, who is the son of the farmer on whose land the outrage took place, and who is a Yeomanry trooper of the age of nineteen, has admitted committing the action against his own horse. He has signed a confession to this effect.'

'He admitted full and sole responsibility?'

'He did.'

'And you questioned him about any possible connection between this outrage and previous ones in the district?'

'Yes, we did. Extensively, sir.'

'And what did he state?'

'That this was an isolated occurrence.'

'And did your investigations confirm that the outrage at Green's farm had absolutely nothing to do with any other outrage in the vicinity?'

'They did.'

'No connection at all?'

'No connection at all, sir.'

'And is John Harry Green in court today?'

'Yes, he is, sir.'

George, like everyone else in the crowded court, started looking around for a nineteen-year-old trooper who admitted mutilating his own horse without apparently supplying the police with any good reason for having done so. But at that moment, Sir Reginald Hardy decided that it was time for his luncheon.

Mr Meek's first duties were with Mr Vachell; only then did he come to the room where George was held during adjournments. His demeanour was lugubrious.

'Mr Meek, you did warn us about Disturnal. We knew to expect something. And at least we shall be able to have a go at Green this afternoon.'

The solicitor shook his head grimly. 'Not a chance of it.'

'Why not?'

'Because he's their witness. If they don't put him up, we can't cross-examine him. And we can't take the risk of calling him blind as we don't know what he might say. It could be devastating. Yet they produce him in court so it looks as if they're being open with everyone. It's clever. It's typical Disturnal. I should have thought of it, but I didn't know anything about this confession. It's bad.'

George felt it only his duty to cheer his solicitor up. 'I can see it's frustrating, Mr Meek, but is there any real harm? Green said – and the police said – it had nothing to do with any other outrage.'

'That's just the point. It's not what they say – it's how it looks. Why should a man disembowel a horse – his own horse – for no apparent reason? Answer: to help out a friend and neighbour charged with a similar offence.'

'But he's not my friend. I doubt I would even recognize him.'

'Yes, I know. And when we take the considerable risk of putting you in the box, you will tell Mr Vachell that. But it's bound to look as if you're denying an allegation that hasn't in fact been made. It's clever. Mr Vachell will assail the Inspector this afternoon, but I don't think we should be optimistic.'

'Mr Meek, I could not help noticing that in Campbell's evidence he said that the clothing of mine he found – the coat I hadn't worn for weeks – was wet. He said wet twice. At Cannock he merely called it damp.'

Meek gave a soft smile. 'It's a pleasure to work with you, Mr Edalji. It's the sort of thing we notice but tend not to mention to the client in case it dispirits him. The police will be making a few more adjustments of the kind, I don't doubt.'

That afternoon Mr Vachell got little of value from the Inspector, who knew his way round a witness box. During their first encounter at Hednesford police station, Campbell had struck George as rather slow-minded and vaguely impertinent. At Newhall Street and at Cannock, he had been more alert and openly hostile, if not always coherent of thought. Now his manner was measured and sombre, while his height and his uniform seemed to impart logic as well as authority. George reflected that if his story was subtly changing around him, then so too were some of the characters.

Mr Vachell had more success with PC Cooper, who described, as he had done at the magistrates' court, his matching of George's boot-heel to the prints in the mud.

'Constable Cooper,' Mr Vachell began, 'may I enquire who gave you the instruction to proceed as you did?'

'I'm not quite sure, sir. I think it was the Inspector, but it might have been Sergeant Parsons.'

'And where precisely were you told to look?'

'Anywhere on the route the culprit might have taken between the field and the Vicarage.'

'Assuming the culprit came from the Vicarage? And was returning there?'

'Yes, sir.'

'Anywhere?'

'Anywhere, sir.' Cooper looked no more than about twenty to George's eye: a red-eared, awkward boy trying to imitate the confidence of his superiors.

'And did you assume the culprit, as you refer to him, took the most direct route?'

'Yes, I suppose I did, sir. It's what they usually do when leaving the scene of the crime.'

'I see, Constable. So you did not look anywhere other than on a direct route?'

'No, sir.'

'And how long did your search last?'

'An hour or more, I would estimate.'

'And at what time did it take place?'

'I suppose I started looking at nine thirty, more or less.'

'And the pony was discovered at six thirty, approximately?'

'Yes, sir.'

'Three hours previously. In the course of which time anyone could have walked across that route. Miners on the way to the Colliery, sightseers brought by news of the outrage. Policemen, indeed.'

'That's possible, sir.'

'And who accompanied you, Constable?'

'I was on my own.'

'I see. And you found a few heelmarks which in your opinion matched the boot you held in your hand.'

'Yes, sir.'

'And then you went back and reported your discovery?'

'Yes, sir.'

'And then what happened?'

'What do you mean, sir?'

George was pleased to observe a slight change in Cooper's tone; as if he knew he were being led somewhere but could not yet make out the destination.

'I mean, Constable, what happened after you reported what you had found?'

'I was put to searching the grounds of the Vicarage, sir.'

'I see. But at some point, Constable, you went back and showed someone of higher rank the marks you had discovered.'

'Yes, sir.'

'And when would that be?'

'In the middle of the afternoon.'

'In the middle of the afternoon. By which you mean, three o'clock, four o'clock?'

'Around then, sir.'

'I see.' Mr Vachell frowned and gave himself rather theatrically to reflection, in George's view. 'Six hours later, in other words.'

'Yes, sir.'

'During which time the area was guarded and cordoned off to prevent further trampling?'

'Not exactly.'

'Not exactly. Does that mean yes or no, Officer?'

'No, sir.'

'Now, I understand that it is often normal procedure in such cases to take a plaster of Paris cast of the heelmarks in question. Can you tell me whether this was done?'

'No, sir, it wasn't.'

'I understand that another technique would be to photograph such marks. Was that done?'

'No, sir.'

'I understand that another technique is to dig up the relevant piece of turf and bring it for forensic analysis. Was that done?'

'No, sir. The ground was too soft.'

'How long have you been a police constable, Mr Cooper?'

'Fifteen months.'

'Fifteen months. Thank you very much.'

George felt like cheering. He looked across at Mr Vachell, as he had done before, but failed to catch his eye. Perhaps this was court etiquette; or perhaps Mr Vachell was just thinking about the next witness.

The rest of the afternoon seemed to go well. A number of the anonymous letters were read out, and it was clear to George that nobody in his right mind could possibly imagine he might have written them. The one he had given Campbell, for instance, from the 'Lover of Justice': 'George Edalji – I do not know you, but have sometimes seen you on the railway, and do not expect I would like you much if I did know you, as I do not like natives.' How on earth could he have written that? It was followed by an even more grotesque attribution of authorship. A letter was read out describing the behaviour of the so-called 'Wyrley Gang', which might have come from the cheapest novel: 'They all take a fearful oath of secrecy, and repeat it after the Captain, and each says, "May I be struck dead if I ever split."' George thought he could rely on the jury to work out that this was not how solicitors expressed themselves.

Mr Hodson, the general dealer, gave evidence that he had seen George on his way to Mr Hands of Bridgetown, and that the solicitor was wearing his old house-coat. But then Mr Hands himself, who had been with George for half an hour or so, asserted that his client had not been wearing the said coat. Two other witnesses reported seeing him, but were unable to remember his garments.

'I feel they're shifting their ground,' said Mr Meek after the court had risen for the day. 'I sense they're up to something.'

'What kind of something?' asked George.

'At Cannock their case was that you went to the field during your walk before dinner. That was why they called so many witnesses who had seen you out and about. That canoodling couple, do you remember? They haven't been put up this time, and they're not the only ones. The other thing is that at the committal the only date mentioned was the 17th. Now the indictment reads the 17th or the 18th. So they're hedging their bets. I sense they're moving to the nighttime option. They might have something we don't know about.'

'Mr Meek, it doesn't matter which they go for, or why they go for it. If they want the evening, they haven't a single witness who saw me anywhere near the field. And if they want the night, they have my father's evidence to contend with.'

Mr Meek ignored his client and continued thinking aloud. 'Of course, they don't have to go for one or the other. They can merely suggest possibilities to the jury. But they put more stress on the bootmarks this time. And the bootmarks only come into play if they go for the second option, because of the rain in the night. And if your house-coat has moved from damp to wet, that also confirms my supposition.'

'So much the better,' said George. 'There was nothing left of Constable Cooper after Mr Vachell had finished with him this afternoon. And if Mr Disturnal wants to continue with that line, he will have to claim that a clergyman of the Church of England is not telling the truth.'

'Mr Edalji, if I may… You must not see it all as so clear-cut.'

'But it is clear-cut.'

'Would you say that your father is robust? From a mental point of view, I mean?'

'He's the robustest man I know. Why do you ask?'

'I suspect he will need to be.'

'You will be surprised how robust Hindoos can turn out to be.'

'And your mother? And your sister?'

The morning of the second day began with the testimony of Joseph Markew, innkeeper and former police constable. He described being sent by Inspector Campbell to Great Wyrley amp; Churchbridge railway station, and how the prisoner had declined his request to take a later train.

'Did he tell you,' asked Mr Disturnal, 'what business was so important that it required him to ignore the urgent request of a police inspector?'

'No, sir.'

'Did you repeat your request?'

'I did, sir. I suggested that he might take a day's holiday for once. But he refused to change his mind.'

'I see. And Mr Markew, did something happen at this point?'

'Yes, sir. A man on the platform came up and said he'd heard another horse had been ripped that night.'

'And when the man said this, where were you looking?'

'I was looking the prisoner full in the face.'

'And would you describe his reaction to the court.'

'Yes, sir. He smiled.'

'He smiled. He smiled at the news that another horse had been ripped. Are you sure of that, Mr Markew?'

'Oh yes, sir. Perfectly sure. He smiled.'

George thought: but that isn't true. I know it isn't true. Mr Vachell must prove it isn't true.

Mr Vachell knew better than to attack the statement directly. He concentrated instead on the identity of the man who had allegedly come up to Markew and George. Where had he come from, what kind of man was he, where did he go to? (And, by implication, why was he not in court?) Mr Vachell managed to express, by hints and pauses and finally by direct statement, considerable astonishment that a publican and former policeman, with the widest acquaintance across the district, should be unable to identify the useful yet mysterious stranger who might be able to corroborate his fanciful and tendentious claim. But this was as far as the defence could get with Markew.

Mr Disturnal then had Sergeant Parsons repeat the prisoner's remarks about expecting his arrest, and his alleged statement at the Birmingham lock-up about making Mr Loxton sit up before he had done. No one attempted to explain who the said Loxton might be. Another member of the Wyrley gang? A policeman George was also threatening to shoot? The name was left hanging, for the jury to make of it what they might. A Constable Meredith, whose face and name George did not recall, cited something harmless George had said to him about bail, but managed to make it sound incriminating. Then William Greatorex, the healthy young English boy with the pleasing manner, repeated his story of George looking out of the carriage window and showing unaccountable interest in Mr Blewitt's dead horses.

Mr Lewis, the veterinary surgeon, described the condition of the Colliery pony, the manner in which it was dropping blood, the length and nature of the wound, and the regrettable necessity to shoot the animal. He was asked by Mr Disturnal what conclusions he might be able to draw as to the time the mutilation had taken place. Mr Lewis declared that in his professional opinion the injury had been inflicted within six hours of his examining the pony. In other words, not earlier than two thirty in the morning of the 18th.

This felt to George like the first good news of the day. The argument about which clothes he had been wearing on his visit to the bootmaker's was now quite irrelevant. The prosecution had just closed off one of its own avenues. They had boxed themselves in.

But if so, it did not show in Mr Disturnal's demeanour. His whole attitude implied that some initial ambiguity in the case had now been cleared up thanks to diligent work by police and prosecution. We no longer allege that at some point in a twelve-hour period… we are now able to allege that it was very close to two thirty in the morning when… And somehow Mr Disturnal made this growing precision imply an equally increasing confidence that the prisoner in the dock was there for the reasons stated in the indictment.

The last part of the day was given up to Thomas Henry Gurrin, who agreed to the description of himself as an orthographical expert with nineteen years' experience in the identification of feigned and anonymous handwriting. He confirmed that he had frequently been engaged by the Home Office, and that his most recent professional appearance had been as a witness in the Meat Farm murder trial. George did not know what he expected an orthographical expert to look like; perhaps dry and scholarly, with a voice like a scratchy pen. Mr Gurrin, with his ruddy face and mutton-chop whiskers, could have been the brother of Mr Greensill, the butcher in Wyrley.

Regardless of physiognomy, Mr Gurrin then took over the court. Specimens of George's handwriting were produced in enlarged photographic form. Specimens of the anonymous letters were also produced in enlarged photographic form. Original documents were described and passed across to members of the jury, who took what seemed to George an interminable time examining them, constantly breaking off to stare lengthily at the prisoner. Certain characteristic loops and hooks and crossings were indicated by Mr Gurrin with a wooden pointer; and somehow description moved to inference, then to theoretical probability and then to absolute certainty. It was, finally, Mr Gurrin's considered professional and expert opinion that the prisoner was as responsible for the anonymous letters as he was for those manifestly in his own hand over his own signature.

'All of these letters?' asked Mr Disturnal, waving his hand around the court, which seemed to have been turned into a scriptorium.

'No, sir, not all.'

'There are some which in your opinion were not written by the prisoner?'

'Yes, sir.'

'How many of them?'

'One, sir.'

Mr Gurrin indicated the single letter whose authorship he did not ascribe to George. An exception, George realized, which had the effect of endorsing Gurrin's assertions about all the others. It was a piece of slyness disguised as caution.

Mr Vachell then spent some time on the difference between personal opinion and scientific proof, between thinking something and knowing it; but Mr Gurrin showed himself an adamantine witness. He had been in this position many times before. Mr Vachell was not the first defence counsel to suggest that his procedures were no more rigorous than those of a crystal-gazer, a thought-reader or a spiritualist medium.

Afterwards, Mr Meek assured George that the second day was often the worst for the defence; but that the third, when they presented their own evidence, would be the best. George hoped so; he was struggling with the sense that, slowly yet irrevocably, his story was being taken away from him. He feared that by the time the defence case was put, it would be too late. People – and in particular, the jury – would respond by thinking, But no, we've already been told what happened. Why should we change our minds now?

The next morning, he obediently practised Mr Meek's patent method of putting his own case into perspective. MURDER AT MIDNIGHT. CANALSIDE TRAGEDY IN BIRMINGHAM. TWO BARGEMEN ARRESTED. For once, the ploy failed to have its usual effect. He moved across the page to TIPTON LOVE TRAGEDY, about some poor devil who for the love of a bad woman ended up throwing himself into the canal. But the stories failed to engage him, and his eye kept being drawn back to the headlines. He found himself resenting the fact that a squalid canalside murder was a TRAGEDY, and a miserable suicide was also a TRAGEDY. Whereas his own case had remained, from the beginning, an OUTRAGE.

And then, almost to his relief, he found LADY DOCTOR'S DEATH. He felt it almost a social duty to keep up with Miss Hickman, whose decomposing body was still withholding its secrets. She had been his companion in misfortune since the committal proceedings began. Yesterday, according to the Post, a medical knife or lancet had been discovered near the Sidmouth plantation in Richmond Park. The newspaper surmised that it had fallen out of the woman's clothing while her body was being moved. George wondered how credible this was. You found the corpse of a missing lady surgeon, and as you moved it, things dropped from the pockets and you did not even notice? George was not sure he would believe this if he were on the coroner's jury.

The Post further suggested that the knife or lancet had been the property of the deceased, and that it might have been used to sever an artery, thus causing her to bleed to death. In other words, a suicide, and another TRAGEDY. Well, thought George, that was one possible explanation. Although if Wyrley Vicarage were in Surrey rather than Staffordshire, the police would construct a more convincing theory: that the Vicar's son had broken out of a locked room, acquired a lancet he had never seen before in his life, followed the poor woman until she reached the plantation, and then, lacking any conceivable motive, slaughtered her.

This slug of bitterness revived him. And picturing his own fantastical appearance in the Hickman case also reminded him of the assurance Mr Vachell had given him at their first conference. My defence, Mr Edalji? Merely that there is no evidence that you committed the crime, no motive for you to have done so, and no opportunity. Of course I shall wrap it up for the judge and jury, but that will be the essence of my case.

First, however, there was Dr Butter's evidence to deal with. Dr Butter was not like Mr Gurrin, who appeared to George a charlatan posing as a professional. The police surgeon was a grey-haired gentleman, calm and cautious, who came from a world of test tubes and microscopes, who dealt only in specifics. He explained to Mr Disturnal his procedures when examining the razors, the jacket, the waistcoat, the boots, the trousers, the house-coat. He described the various stains found on various garments, and identified which could be classified as mammalian blood. He had counted the hairs picked from the sleeve and left breast of the jacket: there were twenty-nine of them in total, all short and red-coloured. He had compared them with the hairs on a piece of skin cut from the dead Colliery pony. These were also short and red-coloured. He had examined them under the microscope and pronounced them to be 'similar in length, colour and structure'.

Mr Vachell's technique with Dr Butter was to grant both his competence and his knowledge full respect, and then attempt to turn them to the defence's advantage. He drew attention to the whitish stains on the jacket which the police had concluded were the saliva and foam from the wounded animal. Was there any confirmation of this from Dr Butter's scientific analysis?

'No.'

'What, in your view, did the stains consist of?'

'Starch.'

'And how might such residues come to be on clothing, in your experience?'

'Most probably, I would say, they were residues of bread and milk from breakfast.'

At which point George heard a noise whose existence he had almost forgotten: laughter. There was laughter in court at the idea of bread and milk. It seemed to him the sound of sanity. He looked across at the jury as the public hilarity continued. One or two of them were smiling, but most had retained sober countenances. George judged all this a heartening sign.

Mr Vachell now moved on to the bloodstains on the sleeve of the defendant's jacket.

'You say these stains are of mammalian blood?'

'Yes.'

'There is no possible doubt about that, Dr Butter?'

'None at all.'

'I see. Now, Dr Butter, a horse is a mammal?'

'Indeed.'

'So is a pig, a sheep, a dog, a cow?'

'Certainly.'

'Indeed, everything in the animal kingdom that is not a bird, a fish or a reptile may be classified as a mammal?'

'Yes.'

'You and I are mammals, and so are members of the jury?'

'Certainly.'

'So, Dr Butter, when you say that the blood is mammalian, you are merely saying that it could belong to any of the above-mentioned species?'

'That is true.'

'You do not for a moment claim that you are showing, or would be capable of showing, that the small spots of blood on the defendant's jacket came from a horse or pony?'

'It would not be possible to make such a claim, no.'

'And is it possible to tell from examination the age of bloodstains? Could you say, for instance, that this stain was produced today, this one yesterday, this one a week ago, this one several months ago?'

'Well, if it is still wet-'

'Were any of the bloodstains on George Edalji's jacket wet when you examined them?'

'No.'

'They were dry?'

'Yes.'

'So on your own evidence, they could have been there for days, weeks, even months?'

'That is the case.'

'And is it possible to tell from a bloodstain whether it has been produced by blood from a living animal or a dead one?'

'No.'

'Or indeed from a joint of meat?'

'That neither.'

'So, Dr Butter, you cannot, by examining bloodstains, distinguish between those caused by a man mutilating a horse and those which might have landed on his clothes several months previously when, say, he was carving the Sunday roast – or indeed, consuming it?'

'I would have to agree.'

'And can you remind the court how many bloodstains you found on the cuff of Mr Edalji's jacket?'

'Two.'

'And I believe you said that each was the size of a threepenny bit?'

'I did.'

'Dr Butter, if you were to rip a horse so violently that it was bleeding to death and had to be shot, do you imagine that you could do so while leaving scarcely more blood on your clothes than might be found if you were a careless eater?'

'I would not wish to speculate-'

'And I certainly shall not press you to do so, Dr Butter. I certainly shall not press you.'

Buoyant from this exchange, Mr Vachell opened the case for the defence with a short statement, then called George Ernest Thompson Edalji.

'He stepped briskly round from the dock and faced the crowded court with perfect composure.' This was what George read the next day in the Birmingham Daily Post, and it was a sentence which would always make him feel proud. No matter what lies had been told, no matter the whispering campaign, the slurs on his ancestry, the deliberate distortions of the police and of other witnesses, he would, and did, face his accusers with perfect composure.

Mr Vachell began by taking his client through his precise movements on the evening of the 17th. Both of them knew this was strictly unnecessary, given the effect of Mr Lewis's evidence on the known timing of events. But Mr Vachell wanted to accustom the jury to the sound of George's voice and the trustworthiness of his evidence. It was barely six years since defendants had been allowed to give evidence, and putting your client into the box was still regarded as a dangerous novelty.

So the visit to Mr Hands the bootmaker was recounted again, and that evening's route traced for the jury – though in response to an earlier hint from Mr Vachell, George did not mention going as far as the Green farm. Then he described the family dinner, the sleeping arrangements, the locked bedroom door, his rising, breakfast and departure for the station.

'Now, at the station, do you recall speaking to Mr Joseph Markew?'

'Yes, indeed. I was standing on the platform waiting for my usual train – the 7.39 – when he accosted me.'

'Do you recall what he said?'

'Yes, he said that he had a message from Inspector Campbell. I was to miss my train and wait at the station until such time as he could speak to me. But it was more Markew's tone of voice that I recall.'

'How would you describe that tone of voice?'

'Well, it was very rude. As if he was giving me an order, or passing one on with as little civility as possible. I asked what the Inspector wished to see me about, and Markew said he did not know and would not tell me anyway.'

'Did he identify himself as a special constable?'

'No.'

'So you saw no reason not to go to work?'

'Indeed, I had pressing business at my office, and I told him so. Then his manner changed. He became ingratiating and suggested that I might for once in my life take a day's holiday.'

'And how did you react to that?'

'I thought he did not have the slightest idea what being a solicitor consisted of, and what the responsibilities of the profession are. It is not like being a publican and taking the day off and getting someone else to draw the beer.'

'Indeed not. And at this point did a man come up to you with the news that another horse had been ripped in the district?'

'What man?'

'I refer to Mr Markew's evidence, in which he said that a man came up to the two of you and reported that a horse had been ripped.'

'That is quite untrue. No man came up to us.'

'And then you took your train?'

'There was no reason supplied why I should not.'

'So there is no question of your smiling at the news that an animal had been mutilated?'

'No question at all. No man came up to us. And I would hardly smile at such a matter. The only time I might have smiled was when Markew suggested I take a holiday. He is well known in the village as a layabout, so the suggestion fitted easily in his mouth.'

'I see. Now, moving on to a little later in the morning, when Inspector Campbell and Sergeant Parsons came to your office and arrested you. On the way to the lock-up, they allege that you said, "I am not surprised at this. I have been expecting it for some time." Did you say those words?'

'Yes, I did.'

'Will you explain what you meant by them?'

'Certainly. There had been a campaign of rumour against me for some time. I had received anonymous letters, which I had shown to the police. It was quite evident that they were following my movements and watching the Vicarage. Comments made to me by a policeman indicated that they had an animus against me. And there had even been a rumour a week or two earlier that I had been arrested. The police seemed determined to prove something against me. So, no, I was not surprised.'

Mr Vachell next put to him the supposed remark about the mysterious Mr Loxton; George denied both making the statement, and ever having known anyone called Loxton.

'Let us turn to another statement you are alleged to have made. At the Cannock magistrates' court, you were offered bail, which you refused. Will you tell the court why?'

'Certainly. The terms were extremely onerous, not just on myself but on my family. Besides, I was in the prison hospital at the time, and being comfortably treated. I was content to remain there until my trial.'

'I see. Police Constable Meredith has given evidence that while you were in custody, you said to him, "I won't have bail, and when the next horse is ripped it will not be by me." Did you say those words?'

'Yes.'

'And what did you mean by them?'

'Merely what I said. There had been attacks on animals for weeks and months before my arrest, and because they had nothing to do with me, I expected them to continue. And if they did, that would prove the matter.'

'You see, Mr Edalji, it has been suggested, and will doubtless be suggested again, that there was a sinister reason why you refused bail. The supposition is that the Great Wyrley Gang, whose existence is constantly alluded to but entirely unproven, was to come to your rescue by deliberately mutilating another animal to demonstrate your innocence.'

'All I can say in reply is that if I had been clever enough to think up such a cunning plan, then I would also have been clever enough not to confess it in advance to a police constable.'

'Indeed, Mr Edalji, indeed.'

Mr Disturnal, as George had expected, was sarcastic and disrespectful in cross-examination. He asked George to explain many things he had already explained, solely in order to exhibit a theatrical disbelief. His strategy was designed to show that the prisoner was extremely cunning and devious, yet constantly incriminating himself. George knew that he must leave Mr Vachell to point this out. He must not allow himself to be provoked; he must take his time in answering; he must be stolid.

Of course Mr Disturnal did not fail to bring up the fact that George had walked as far as Mr Green's farm on the evening of the 17th, and allowed himself to wonder why this might have slipped George's mind while giving evidence. The prosecuting counsel also showed himself ruthless when it came, as it inevitably did, to the matter of the hairs on George's clothing.

'Mr Edalji, you said in sworn evidence that the hairs on your clothing were acquired by leaning against a gate into a field where cows were paddocked.'

'I said that is possibly how they got there.'

'Yet Dr Butter picked twenty-nine hairs from your clothing, which he then examined under a microscope and found to be identical in length, colour and structure to the hairs of the coat cut from the dead pony.'

'He did not say identical. He said similar.'

'Did he?' Mr Disturnal was briefly disconcerted, and pretended to consult his papers. 'Indeed. "Similar in length, colour and structure." How do you explain this similarity, Mr Edalji?'

'I am unable to. I am not an expert in animal hairs. I am only able to suggest how such hairs might have appeared on my clothing.'

'Length, colour and structure, Mr Edalji. Are you seriously asking the court to believe that the hairs on your coat came from a cow in a paddock, when they had the length, colour and structure belonging to the pony ripped scarcely a mile from your house on the night of the 17th?'

George had no reply to make.

Mr Vachell called Mr Lewis back to the witness box. The police veterinary surgeon repeated his statement that the pony could not, in his view, have been injured before 2.30 a.m. He was then asked what kind of instrument might have inflicted the damage. A curved weapon with concave sides. Did Mr Lewis think the wound could have been made with a domestic razor? No, Mr Lewis did not think the wound could have been made with a razor.

Mr Vachell then called Shapurji Edalji, clerk in holy orders, who repeated his evidence about sleeping arrangements, the door, the key, his lumbago and his time of awakening. George thought his father, for the first time, was beginning to look like an old man. His voice seemed less compelling, his certainties less obviously irrefutable.

George became anxious as Mr Disturnal rose to cross-examine the Vicar of Great Wyrley. The prosecution counsel exuded courtesy, assuring the witness he would not detain him long. This, however, turned out to be a grossly false promise. Mr Disturnal took every tiny detail of George's alibi and held it up before the jury, as if trying to assess for the first time its exact weight and value.

'You lock the bedroom door at night?'

George's father looked surprised to be asked again a question he had already answered. He paused for longer than seemed natural. Then he said, 'I do.'

'And unlock it in the morning?'

Again, an unnatural pause. 'I do.'

'And where do you put the key?'

'The key remains in the lock.'

'You do not hide it?'

The Vicar looked at Mr Disturnal as if at some impertinent schoolboy. 'Why on earth should I hide it?'

'You never hide it? You have never hidden it?'

George's father looked quite puzzled. 'I do not understand why you are asking me that question.'

'I am merely trying to establish if the key is always in the lock.'

'But that is what I said.'

'Always in full view? Never hidden?'

'But that is what I said.'

When George's father had given evidence at Cannock, the questions had been straightforward, and the witness box might as well have been a pulpit, with the Vicar bearing witness to God's very existence. Now, under Mr Disturnal's interrogation, he – and the world with him – was beginning to appear more fallible.

'You have said that the key squeaks as it turns in the lock.'

'Yes.'

'Is this a recent development?'

'Is what a recent development?'

'The key squeaking in the lock.' The prosecuting counsel's attitude was one of helping an old man over a stile. 'Has it always done this?'

'For as long as I can remember.'

Mr Disturnal smiled at the Vicar. George did not like the look of that smile. 'And – in all this time – as long as you can remember – no one has ever thought to oil the lock?'

'No.'

'May I ask you, sir, and this may seem a minor question to you, but I should like your answer nonetheless – why has no one ever oiled the lock?'

'I suppose it has never seemed important.'

'It is not from lack of oil?'

The Vicar unwisely allowed his irritation to show. 'You had better ask my wife about our supplies of oil.'

'I may do so, sir. And, this squeak, how would you describe it?'

'What do you mean? It is a squeak.'

'Is it a loud squeak or a soft squeak? Might it be compared, for instance, to the squeak of a mouse or the creak of a barn door?'

Shapurji Edalji looked as if he had stumbled into a den of triviality. 'I suppose I would characterize it as a loud squeak.'

'All the more surprising, perhaps, that the lock was not oiled. But be that as it may. The key squeaks loudly, once in the evening, once in the morning. And on other occasions?'

'I fail to follow you.'

'I mean, sir, when you or your son leave the bedroom at night.'

'But neither of us ever does.'

'Neither of you ever does. I understand this… sleeping arrangement has been in existence now for sixteen or seventeen years. You are saying that in all this time neither one of you has ever left the bedroom during the night?'

'No.'

'You are quite sure of this?'

Again, there was a long pause, as if the Vicar were running through the years in his head, night by night. 'As sure as I can be.'

'You have a memory of each night?'

'I do not see the point of that question.'

'Sir, I do not ask you to see its point. I merely request that you answer it. Do you have a memory of each night?'

The Vicar looked around the court, as if expecting someone to rescue him from this imbecilic catechism. 'No more than anybody else.'

'Exactly. You have given evidence that you are a light sleeper.'

'Yes, very light. I wake easily.'

'And, sir, you have testified that if the key was turned in the lock, it would wake you up?'

'Yes.'

'Do you not see the contradiction in that statement?'

'No, I do not.' George could see his father becoming flustered. He was not used to having his word challenged, however courteously. He was looking old, and irritable, and less than master of the situation.

'Then let me explain. No one has left the room in seventeen years. So – according to you – no one has ever turned the key while you were asleep. So how can you possibly assert that if the key were turned, it would wake you up?'

'This is angels dancing on pinheads. I mean, obviously, that the slightest noise wakes me.' But he sounded more petulant than authoritative.

'You have never been woken by the sound of the key turning?'

'No.'

'So you cannot swear that you would be woken by that sound?'

'I can only repeat what I have just said. The slightest noise wakes me.'

'But if you have never been woken by the sound of the key turning, is it not entirely possible that the key has been turned and you have not woken?'

'As I say, it has never happened.'

George watched his father as a dutiful, anxious son, but also as a professional solicitor and apprehensive prisoner. His father was not doing well. Mr Disturnal was easing him first one way, then the other.

'Mr Edalji, you stated in your evidence that you woke at five and did not go back to sleep until you and your son rose at six thirty?'

'Are you doubting my word?'

Mr Disturnal did not exhibit pleasure at this response; but George knew that he would be feeling it.

'No, I am merely asking for confirmation of what you have already said.'

'Then I confirm it.'

'You did not, perhaps, fall asleep again between five and six thirty and wake later?'

'I have said not.'

'Do you ever dream that you wake up?'

'I do not follow you.'

'Do you have dreams when you sleep?'

'Yes. Sometimes.'

'And do you sometimes dream that you wake up?'

'I do not know. I cannot remember.'

'But you accept that people do sometimes dream that they wake up?'

'I had never thought about it. It does not seem important to me what other people dream.'

'But you will accept my word that other people do have such dreams?'

The Vicar now looked like some hermit in the desert being led into temptations whose nature he was quite unable to comprehend. 'If you say so.' George was equally baffled by Mr Disturnal's procedure; but soon the prosecutor's intention became clearer.

'So you are as certain as you are reasonably able to be that you were awake between five and six thirty?'

'Yes.'

'And so you are equally certain that you were asleep between the hours of eleven and five?'

'Yes.'

'You do not remember waking in that period?'

George's father looked as if his word were being doubted again.

'No.'

Mr Disturnal nodded. 'So you were asleep at one thirty, for instance. At-' he seemed to pluck the time from the air '- at two thirty, for instance. At three thirty, for instance. Yes, thank you. Now, moving to another matter…'

And so it went, on and on, with George's father turning, before the court's eyes, into a dotard as uncertain as he doubtless was honourable; a man whose peculiar attempts at domestic security could easily have been outwitted by his clever son who, shortly before, had been so confident in the witness box. Or perhaps something even worse: a father who, suspecting his son might possibly have had some involvement in the outrages, was anxiously but incompetently adjusting his evidence as he proceeded.

Next came George's mother, the more nervous for just having witnessed her husband's unprecedented fallibility. After Mr Vachell had taken her through her evidence, Mr Disturnal, with a kind of idle civility, took her through it all again. He seemed only mildly interested in her replies; he was no longer the pitiless prosecutor, but rather the new neighbour dropping in for a polite tea.

'You have always been proud of your son, Mrs Edalji?'

'Oh yes, very proud.'

'And he has always been a clever boy, and a clever young man?'

'Oh, yes, very clever.'

Mr Disturnal made an oleaginous pretence of deep concern for the distress Mrs Edalji must feel at finding herself and her son in their current circumstances.

This was not a question, but George's mother automatically took it as such, and began to praise her son. 'He was always a studious boy. He gained many prizes at school. He studied at Mason College in Birmingham, and was a Law Society medallist. His book on railway law was very well received by many newspapers and law journals. It is published, you know, as one of the Wilson's Legal Handy Books.'

Mr Disturnal encouraged this effusion of maternal pride. He asked if there was anything else she would like to say.

'I would.' Mrs Edalji looked across at her son in the dock. 'He has always been kind and dutiful to us, and from a child he was always kind to any dumb creature. It would have been impossible for him to maim or injure anything, even if we had not known he was not out of the house.'

You would almost have thought Mr Disturnal was himself a son of hers from the way he thanked her; a son, that is, who was deeply indulgent towards the blind good-heartedness and naivety of his old white-headed mother.

Maud was called next, to give her account of the state of George's clothing. Her voice was steady, and her evidence lucid; even so, George felt petrified as Mr Disturnal rose, nodding to himself.

'Your evidence, Miss Edalji, is exactly the same, down to the smallest detail, as that of your parents.'

Maud looked evenly back at him, waiting to see if this was a question, or the precursor to some deadly assault. Whereupon Mr Disturnal, with a sigh, sat down again.

Later, at the deal table in the basement of Shire Hall, George felt exhausted and dispirited. 'Mr Meek, I fear my parents were not good witnesses.'

'I would not say that, Mr Edalji. It is rather the case that the best people are not necessarily the best witnesses. The more scrupulous they are, the more honest, the more they dwell on each word of the question and doubt themselves out of modesty, then the more they can be played with by counsel like Mr Disturnal. This is not the first time it has happened, I can assure you. How can I put it? It's a question of belief. What we believe, why we believe it. From a purely legal point of view, the best witnesses are those whom the jury believes most.'

'In fact, they were bad witnesses.' All through the trial it had been not George's hope but his certainty that his father's evidence would bring him instant vindication. The prosecuting counsel's attack would break against the rock of his father's integrity, and Mr Disturnal would come away like a miscreant parishioner rebuked for idle slander. But the attack had never come, or rather not in the form that George had anticipated; and his father had failed him, had failed to reveal himself as an Olympian deity whose sworn word was irrebuttable. Instead, he had shown himself pedantic, prickly and at times confused. George had wanted to explain to the court that if as a boy he had committed the slightest misdemeanour, his father would have marched him to the police station and demanded exemplary punishment: the higher the duty, the greater the sin. But instead the opposite impression had emerged: that his parents were indulgent fools who could easily be duped. 'They were bad witnesses,' he repeated dismally.

'They spoke the truth,' replied Mr Meek. 'And we should not have expected them to do otherwise, or in a fashion that was not their own. We should trust the jury to be able to see that. Mr Vachell is confident for tomorrow; so must we be.'

And by the next morning, as George was taken from Stafford Gaol to Shire Hall for the last time, as he prepared to hear his story laid out in its final and ever-diverging form, he felt in good heart again. It was Friday 23rd October. By tomorrow he would be back at the Vicarage. On Sunday he would worship again beneath the upturned keel of St Mark's. And on Monday the 7.39 would take him back to Newhall Street, to his desk, his work, his books. He would celebrate his freedom by beginning a subscription to Halsbury's Laws of England.

As he emerged from the narrow staircase into the dock, the courtroom seemed even more crowded than on previous days. The excitement was both palpable and, to George, alarming: it did not feel like the grave anticipation of justice, more like a vulgar theatrical expectation. Mr Vachell looked across and smiled at him, the first time he had made such a gesture openly. George did not know whether to return the greeting in the same fashion, but settled for a slight inclination of the head. He looked across at the jury, twelve good Staffordshire men and true, who from the start had struck him as being of decent and sober mien. He noted the presence of Captain Anson and Inspector Campbell, his twin accusers. Though not his real accusers – they were perhaps out on Cannock Chase, gloating at what they had done, and even now sharpening what in Mr Lewis's view was a curved weapon with concave sides.

At Sir Reginald Hardy's invitation, Mr Vachell began his final address. He asked members of the jury to put aside the sensational aspects of the case – the newspaper headlines, the public hysteria, the rumours and allegations – and concentrate their minds on the simple facts. There was not the slightest evidence to show that George Edalji had left the Vicarage – a building closely watched by the Staffordshire Constabulary for days previously – on the night of the 17th to 18th of August. There was not the slightest evidence to connect him to the crime with which he was charged: the minuscule bloodstains found could have come from any source, and were quite incompatible with the violent damage wreaked upon the Colliery pony; as for the hairs supposedly found upon his clothing, there was a complete discrepancy of evidence, and, even had hairs existed, there were alternative explanations for their presence. Then there were the anonymous letters denouncing George Edalji, which the prosecution maintained had been written by the defendant himself, a ludicrous suggestion quite out of keeping with both logic and the criminal mind; as for Mr Gurrin's testimony, it was no more than a matter of opinion, from which the jury was entitled, and indeed expected, to dissociate itself.

Mr Vachell then dealt with the various innuendos made against his client. His refusal to accept bail had been made out of reasonable, not to say admirable, sentiments: the filial desire to lighten the burden on his frail and elderly parents. Then there was the murky business of John Harry Green to consider. The prosecution had sought to tarnish George Edalji by association; yet not the slightest link had been established between the defendant and Mr Green, whose absence from the witness box spoke volumes. In this, as in other regards, the prosecution case amounted to no more than a thing of shreds and patches, of hints and innuendos and insinuations, none of which connected to one another. 'What have we left,' counsel for the defence asked in peroration, 'what have we left after four days here in this courtroom, except the crumbling, crumpled and shattered theories of the police?'

George was pleased as Mr Vachell regained his seat. It had been clear, well-argued, with no false emotional appeals of the kind some advocates went in for; and it had been most professional – that is to say, George had noted the places where Mr Vachell took more liberties of phrasing and inference than might have been allowed in Court A under Lord Hatherton.

Mr Disturnal was in no hurry; he stood and waited, as if for the effect of Mr Vachell's closing words to dissipate. Then he began to take those shreds and patches alluded to by his adversary, and patiently sewed them back together again, making a cloak to hang round George's shoulders. He asked the jury to consider first the behaviour of the prisoner, and reflect upon whether or not it was that of an innocent man. The refusal to wait for Inspector Campbell and the smile at the railway station; the lack of surprise at his arrest; the question about Blewitt's dead horses; the threat to the mysterious Loxton; the refusal of bail and the confident prediction that the Great Wyrley gang would strike again and effect his liberation. Was this the behaviour of an innocent man, Mr Disturnal asked as he reconnected each of these links for the jury's mind.

The bloodstains; the handwriting; and then the clothing yet again. The prisoner's clothes were wet, his house-coat and boots in particular. The police had stated this, and sworn this. Every policeman who had examined his house-coat had testified that it was wet. If so, and if the police were not completely mistaken – and how could or should they be? – then there was only one possible explanation. George Edalji had, as the prosecution maintained, stealthily crept out of the Vicarage into the stormy night of the 17th to the 18th of August.

But even so, despite the overwhelming evidence of the prisoner's deep involvement in the crime, whether alone or with others, there was, Mr Disturnal admitted, one question that needed to be answered. What had been his motive? It was a question the jury had every right to raise. And Mr Disturnal was there to help with the reply.

'If you are to ask yourselves, as others in the courtroom have done over these past days, But what is the prisoner's motive? Why should an outwardly respectable young man commit such a heinous act? Various explanations might offer themselves to the mind of the reasonable observer. Might the prisoner have been acting out of specific spite and malice? It is possible, though perhaps unlikely, given that far too many victims have been involved in the Great Wyrley Outrages and the campaign of anonymous libel that accompanied it. Could he have acted out of insanity? You might judge so, when faced with the unspeakable barbarity of his actions. And yet this too falls short of an explanation, for the crime was too well planned, and too cleverly executed, for it to have been carried out by someone who was insane. No: we must, I would suggest, look for the motivation in a brain that was not diseased, but rather formed differently from that of ordinary men and women. The motive was not financial gain, or revenge against an individual, but rather a desire for notoriety, a desire for anonymous self-importance, a desire to cheat the police at every turn, a desire to laugh in the face of society, a desire to prove oneself superior. Like you, members of the jury, I have at different moments of the trial, convinced as I am and as you will be of the prisoner's guilt, I have found myself asking, but why, but why? And this is what I would say to that question. It really does seem to point to a person who did these outrages from some diabolical cunning in the corner of his brain.'

George, who had been listening with his head slightly bowed, so as to concentrate on Mr Disturnal's words, realized that the address had come to a close. He looked up, and found the prosector staring dramatically across at him as if, only now, he was finally seeing the prisoner in the full light of truth. The jury, thus authorized by Mr Disturnal, was also openly scrutinizing him; as was Sir Reginald Hardy; as was the whole courtroom, with the exception of his family. Perhaps PC Dubbs and the other constable standing behind him in the dock were even now examining the jacket of his suit for bloodstains.

The Chairman began his summing-up at a quarter to one, referring to the Outrages as 'a blot on the name of the county'. George listened, but was constantly aware that he was being assessed by twelve good men and true for manifestations of diabolical cunning. There was nothing he could do about it, except try to look as stolid as possible. That was how he must appear in the last few minutes before his fate was decided. Be stolid, he told himself, be stolid.

At two o'clock, Sir Reginald sent the jury away and George was taken down to the basement. PC Dubbs stood guard, as he had done for the previous four days, with the slightly embarrassed air of one who knew George was hardly the escaping type. He had treated his prisoner with respect, and never once manhandled him. Given that there was now no chance of his words being misinterpreted, George engaged him in conversation.

'Constable, in your experience, is it a good thing or a bad thing if the jury takes a long time making up its mind?'

Dubbs thought about this for a while. 'In my experience, sir, I'd say it could be either a good thing or a bad thing. One or the other. It depends really.'

'I see,' said George. He did not usually say 'I see', and recognized he must have caught the mannerism from the barristers. 'And in your experience, what if the jury makes its mind up speedily?'

'Ah, now that, sir, that could be either a good thing or a bad thing. It depends on circumstances really.'

George allowed himself a smile, and Dubbs or anyone else could make of it what they would. It seemed to him that if the jury returned quickly, that must – given the gravity of the case and the need for all twelve to agree – be good for him. And a slow return would not be bad either, because the longer they considered the matter, the more its essentials would rise to the surface and the furious distractions of Mr Disturnal would be seen for what they were.

Constable Dubbs seemed as surprised as George when the call came after only forty minutes. They made their last journey together along the dim passages and up the stairs into the dock. At a quarter to three the clerk of the court put to the foreman words long familiar to George.

'Gentlemen of the jury, have you reached a verdict on which you are all agreed?'

'Yes, sir.'

'Do you find the prisoner, George Ernest Thompson Edalji, guilty or not guilty on the charge of maiming a horse, the property of the Great Wyrley Colliery Company?'

'Guilty, sir.'

No, that's wrong, George thought. He looked at the foreman, a white-haired, schoolmasterly fellow with a light Staffordshire accent. You just said the wrong words. Unsay them. You meant to say, Not guilty. That is the correct answer to the question. All this rushed through George's mind, until he realized that the foreman was still on his feet and about to speak. Yes, of course, he was going to correct his mistake.

'The jury, on reaching its verdict, has a recommendation to mercy.'

'On what grounds?' asked Sir Reginald Hardy, peering across at the foreman.

'His position.'

'His personal position?'

'Yes.'

The Chairman and the two other justices retired to consider sentence. George could scarcely look at his family. His mother was pressing a handkerchief to her face; his father staring dully ahead. Maud, whom he had expected to be wailing, surprised him. She had turned her whole body in his direction and was gazing up towards him, gravely, lovingly. He felt that if he could retain that look in his memory, then the worst things might possibly be bearable.

But before he could think further, George was being addressed by the Chairman, who had taken barely a few minutes to make his decision.

'George Edalji, the verdict of the jury is a right one. They have recommended you to mercy in consideration of the position you hold. We have to determine what punishment to award. We have to take into consideration your personal position, and what any punishment means to you. On the other hand, we have to consider the state of the county of Stafford, and of the Great Wyrley district, and the disgrace inflicted on the neighbourhood by this condition of things. Your sentence is one of penal servitude for seven years.'

A kind of under-murmur went through the court, a throaty yet inexpressive noise. George thought: no, seven years, I cannot survive seven years, even Maud's look cannot sustain me that long. Mr Vachell must explain, he must say something in protest.

Instead, it was Mr Disturnal who rose. Now that a conviction had been achieved, it was time for magnanimity. The charge of sending a threatening letter to Sergeant Robinson would not be proceeded with.

'Take him down' – and Constable Dubbs's hand was on his arm, and before he had time for one last exchange of glances with his family, one last look around the light of the courtroom where he had so confidently expected justice to be delivered, he was thrust down through the trapdoor, down into the flickering gaslight of the crepuscular basement. Dubbs explained politely that, given the verdict, he was now required to put the prisoner in the holding cell while awaiting transport to the gaol. George sat there inertly, his mind still in the courtroom, slowly going over the events of the last four days: evidence supplied, answers given in cross-examination, legal tactics. He had no complaints about his solicitor's diligence or his barrister's effectiveness. As for the prosecution: Mr Disturnal had put his case cleverly and antagonistically, but this had been expected; and yes, Mr Meek had been correct about the fellow's skill at making bricks despite the unavailability of straw.

And then his capacity for calm professional analysis ran out. He felt immensely tired and yet also over-excited. His sequential thoughts lost their steady pace; they lurched, they plunged ahead, they followed emotional gravity. It was suddenly borne in upon him that until minutes ago only a few people – mostly policemen, and perhaps some foolishly ignorant members of the public, the sort who would beat on the doors of a passing cab – had actually assumed him guilty. But now – and shame broke over him at the realization – now almost everyone would think him so. Those who read the newspapers, his fellow solicitors in Birmingham, passengers on the morning train to whom he had distributed flyers for Railway Law. Next he started picturing specific individuals who would think him guilty: like Mr Merriman the stationmaster, and Mr Bostock the schoolteacher, and Mr Greensill the butcher who from now on would always remind him of Gurrin the handwriting expert, the man who judged him capable of writing blasphemy and filth. And not just Gurrin – Mr Merriman and Mr Bostock and Mr Greensill would believe that as well as slitting the bellies of animals George was also the author of blasphemy and filth. So would the maid at the Vicarage, and the churchwarden, and so would Harry Charlesworth, whose friendship he had invented. Even Harry's sister Dora – had she existed – would have been revolted by him.

He imagined all these people looking at him – and now they were joined by Mr Hands the bootmaker. Mr Hands would think that George, after having himself expertly fitted for a new pair of boots, had gone calmly home, eaten his supper, deceitfully retired to bed, then crept out, struck across the fields and mutilated a pony. And when George imagined all these witnesses and accusers he felt such a wash of sorrow for himself, and for what had been done to his life, that he wanted to be allowed to stay in this subterranean dimness for ever. But before he could even hold himself at this level of misery, he was swept away again, because of course all these Wyrley folk would not be looking at him in this accusatory way – at least, not for many years. No, they would be looking at his parents: at Father in the pulpit, at Mother as she made her parish rounds; they would be looking at Maud when she entered a shop, at Horace when he came home from Manchester – if he ever came home again, given his brother's downfall. Everyone would look, and point, and say: their son, their brother did the Wyrley Outrages. And he had inflicted this public and continuing humiliation upon his family, who were everything to him. They knew him innocent, but this only doubled his sense of guilt towards them.

They knew him innocent? And then despair bore him down further. They knew him innocent, but how could they stop turning over in their heads what they had seen and heard over the last four days? What if their belief in him began to falter? When they said they knew him innocent, what did that really mean? To know him innocent, they must either have sat up all night and observed him sleep, or else been on watch in the Colliery field when some lunatic farmhand arrived with an evil instrument in his pocket. Only thus could they truly know. So what they did was believe, truly believe. And what if, over time, some words of Mr Disturnal, some assertion of Dr Butter, or some private long-held doubt about George, began to undermine their faith in him?

And this would be another thing he would have done to them. He would have sent them on a dismal journey of self-questioning. Today: we know George and we know him innocent. But perhaps in three months: we think we know George and we believe him innocent. And then in a year: we realize we did not know George, yet we still think him innocent. Who could blame anyone for this declension?

It was not just he who had been sentenced; his family had been too. If he was guilty, then some would conclude that his parents must have perjured themselves. So when the Vicar preached the difference between right and wrong, would his congregation think him either a hypocrite or a dupe? When his mother visited the downtrodden, might they not tell her she would be better off saving her sympathy for her criminal son in his distant gaol? This was another thing he had done: he had sentenced his own parents. Was there no end to these tormented imaginings, to this pitiless moral vortex? He waited for a further descent, a washing-away, a drowning; but then he thought again of Maud. He sat on his hard stool behind iron bars, while somewhere in that gloom Constable Dubbs whistled tunelessly to himself, and he thought of Maud. She was his source of hope, she would keep him from falling. He believed in Maud; he knew she would not falter, because he had seen the look she gave him in court. It was a look that did not need interpretation, that could not be corroded by time or malice; it was a look of love and trust and certainty.

When the crowds outside the courtroom had dispersed, George was taken back to Stafford Gaol. Here he encountered another realignment of his world. Having been in prison since his arrest, George had naturally come to regard himself as a prisoner. But in fact he had been lodged in the best hospital cell; he received newspapers every morning, food from his family, and was allowed to write business letters. Unreflectingly, he had assumed his circumstances to be temporary, attendant, briefly purgatorial.

Now he was truly a prisoner, and to prove it they took his clothes away. In itself this was ironic, since for weeks he had regretted and resented his inappropriate summer suit and otiose straw hat. Had the suit made him look less serious in court, and thus harmed his cause? He could not tell. In any case, suit and hat were taken away, and exchanged for the heavy weight and felty roughness of prison attire. The jacket overhung his shoulders, the trousers bagged at knee and ankle; he did not care. They also gave him a waistcoat, a forage cap and a pair of wife-kickers.

'You'll find it a bit of a shock,' said the warder, bundling up the summer suit. 'But most get used to it. Even people like yourself, if you don't take offence.'

George nodded. He observed, gratefully, that the officer had spoken to him in just the same tone, and with just as much civility, as he had done over the previous eight weeks. This came as a surprise. He had somehow expected to be spat upon and reviled on his return to the gaol, an innocent man now publicly labelled guilty. But perhaps the terrifying change was only in his own mind. The officers' manner remained the same for a simple and dispiriting reason: from the start they had presumed him guilty, and the jury's decision had merely confirmed that presumption.

The next morning, as a favour, he was brought a newspaper, so that he might see, one final time, his life turned into headlines, his story no longer divergent but now consolidated into legal fact, his character no longer of his own authorship but delineated by others.

SEVEN YEARS PENAL SERVITUDE.

WYRLEY CATTLE-KILLER SENTENCED.

PRISONER UNMOVED

Dully, yet automatically, George looked over the rest of the page. The story of Miss Hickman the lady doctor appeared also to have reached its end, subsiding into silence and mystery. George noted that Buffalo Bill, after a London season and a provincial tour lasting 294 days, had concluded his programme at Burton-on-Trent before returning to the United States. And as important to the Gazette as the sentencing of the Wyrley 'cattle-killer' was the story right next to it:

YORKSHIRE RAILWAY SMASH

Two trains wrecked in a tunnel

One killed, 23 injured

BIRMINGHAM MAN'S THRILLING EXPERIENCE

He was held at Stafford for another twelve days, during which time his parents were allowed daily visits. He found this more painful than if he had been hustled into a van and driven to the most distant part of the kingdom. In this long farewelling each of them behaved as if George's current predicament was some bureaucratic error soon to be remedied by an appeal to the appropriate official. The Vicar had received many letters of support and was already talking enthusiastically of a public campaign. To George this zeal seemed to border on hysteria, and its origins to lie in guilt. George did not feel his situation to be temporary, and his father's plans did not bring him any comfort. They seemed more an expression of religious belief than anything else.

After twelve days George was transferred to Lewes. Here he received a new uniform of coarse biscuit-coloured linen. There were two broad vertical stripes up the front and back, and thick, clumsily printed arrows. They gave him ill-fitting knickerbockers, black stockings and boots. A prison officer explained that he was a star man, and therefore would begin his sentence with three months' separate – it might be longer, it wouldn't be shorter. Separate meant solitary confinement. That was what all star men began with. George misunderstood at first: he thought he was being called a star man because his case had attracted notoriety; perhaps the perpetrators of especially heinous crimes were deliberately kept apart from other prisoners, who might vent their anger on a horse-mutilator. But no: a star man was simply the term for a first offender. If you come back, he was told, you will be classed as an intermediary; and if your returns are frequent, as an ordinary or a professional. George said he had no intention of coming back.

He was taken before the Governor, an old military man who surprised him by staring at the name before him and asking politely how it was to be pronounced.

'Aydlji, sir.'

'Ay-dl-ji,' repeated the Governor. 'Not that you'll be much except a number here.'

'No, sir.'

'Church of England, it says.'

'Yes. My father is a Vicar.'

'Indeed. Your mother…' The Governor did not seem to know how to ask the question.

'My mother is Scottish.'

'Ah.'

'My father is a Parsee by birth.'

'Now I'm with you. I was in Bombay in the Eighties. Fine city. You know it well, Ay-dl-ji?'

'I'm afraid I've never left England, sir. Though I have been to Wales.'

'Wales,' said the Governor musingly. 'You're one up on me then. Solicitor, it says.'

'Yes, sir.'

'We've rather a slump in solicitors at the moment.'

'I beg your pardon?'

'Solicitors – we've a slump in 'em at the moment. Normally we have one or two. One year we had more than half a dozen, I recall. But we got rid of our last solicitor a few months ago. Not that you'd have been able to talk to him much. You'll find the rules here are strict, and fully enforced, Mr Ay-dl-ji.'

'Yes, sir.'

'Still, we've got a couple of stockbrokers with us, and a banker as well. I tell people, if you want to see a true cross-section of society, you should visit Lewes Prison.' He was accustomed to saying this, and paused for the usual effect. 'Not that we have any members of the aristocracy, I hasten to add. Or,' – with a glance at George's file – 'any Church of England ministers at present. Though we have had the occasional one. Indecency, that sort of thing.'

'Yes, sir.'

'Now I'm not going to ask exactly what you did, or why you did it, or whether you did it, or whether any petition you might forward to the Home Secretary stands more chance than a mouse with a mongoose, because in my experience all that's a waste of time. You're in prison. Serve your sentence, obey the rules, and you won't get into any further trouble.'

'As a lawyer, I am used to rules.'

George meant this neutrally, but the Governor looked up as if it might have been a piece of insolence. Eventually, he settled for saying, 'Quite.'

There were indeed a large number of rules. George found the prison officers to be decent fellows, yet bound hand and foot by red tape. There was no talking to other prisoners. There was no crossing of legs or folding of arms in chapel. There was a bath once a fortnight, and a search of the prisoner's self and belongings whenever the necessity arose.

On the second day, a warder came into George's cell and asked if he had a bed-rug.

George thought this an unnecessary question. It was perfectly plain that he had a multi-coloured and reasonably heavy bed-rug, which the officer could not miss.

'Yes, I do, thank you very much.'

'What do you mean, thank you very much?' asked the warder with more than a touch of belligerance.

George remembered his police interrogations. Perhaps his tone had been too forward. 'I mean, I do,' he said.

'Then it must be destroyed.'

Now he was completely lost. This was a rule which had not been explained to him. He was careful with his reply, and especially with its tone.

'I do apologize, but I have not been here long. Why should you wish to destroy my bed-rug, which is both a comfort and, I imagine, in the harsher months, a necessity?'

The warder looked at him and slowly began to laugh. He laughed so much that a colleague ducked into the cell to see if he was all right.

'Not bed-rug, number 247, bed-bug.'

George half-smiled in return, uncertain if prisoners were allowed to do so under prison regulations. Perhaps only if granted permission. At any rate, the story passed into prison lore, and followed him down the succeeding months. That Hindoo lived such a sheltered life he didn't even know what a bed-bug was.

He discovered other discomforts instead. There were no proper conveniences, and a lack of privacy when it was most required. Soap was of a very poor quality. There was also an idiotic regulation that all shaving and barbering had to be done in the open air, which resulted in many prisoners – George included – catching colds.

He quickly became accustomed to the altered rhythm of his life. 5.45 rise. 6.15 doors unlocked, slops collected, bedclothes hung up to air. 6.30 tools served round, then work. 7.30 breakfast. 8.15 fold up bedding. 8.35 chapel. 9.05 return. 9.20 go to exercise. 10.30 return. Governor's rounds and other bureaucracy. 12 dinner. 1.30 dinner tins collected, then work. 5.30 supper, then tools collected and put outside for the next day. 8 bed.

Life was harsher and colder and more lonely than he had ever known it; but he was helped by this rigid structure to the day. He had always lived to a strict timetable; also with a heavy workload, whether as schoolboy or solicitor. There had been very few holidays in his life – that outing to Aberystwyth with Maud was a rare exception – and fewer luxuries, except those of the mind and spirit.

'The things star men miss the most,' said the Chaplain, on the first of his weekly visits, 'is the beer. Well, not just the star men. Intermediaries and ordinaries too.'

'Fortunately, I do not drink.'

'And the second thing is the cigarettes.'

'Again, I am lucky in that regard.'

'And the third is the newspapers.'

George nodded. 'That has been a severe deprivation already, I admit. I have been in the habit of reading three papers a day.'

'If there was anything I could do to help…' said the Chaplain. 'But the rules…'

'It is perhaps better to do entirely without something than hope from time to time that you might receive it.'

'I wish others had your attitude. I've seen men go crazy for a cigarette or a drink. And some of them miss their girls terribly. Some of them miss their clothes, some of them miss things they never even knew they were fond of, like the smell outside the back door on a summer's night. Everyone misses something.'

'I am not being complacent,' replied George. 'I am just able to think practically in the matter of newspapers. In other respects I am like everyone else, I am sure.'

'And what do you miss most?'

'Oh,' replied George, 'I miss my life.'

The Chaplain seemed to imagine that George, as the son of a clergyman, would draw his principal comfort and consolation from the practice of his religion. George did not disabuse him, and he attended chapel more willingly than most; but he knelt and sang and prayed in the same spirit as he put out his slops and folded his bedding and worked, as something to help get him through the day. Most of the prisoners went to work in the sheds, where they made mats and baskets; a star man doing three months' separate had to work in his own cell. George was given a board and bundles of heavy yarn. He was shown how to plait the yarn, using the board as a pattern. He produced, slowly and with great effort, oblongs of thick plaited material to a determined size. When he had finished six, they were taken away. Then he started another batch, and another.

After a couple of weeks, he asked a prison officer what the purpose of these shapes might be.

'Oh, you should know, 247, you should know.'

George tried to think where he might have come across such material before. When it was clear he was at a loss, the warder picked up two of the completed oblongs, and pressed them together. Then he held them beneath George's chin. When this gained no response, he put them beneath his own chin and started opening and closing his mouth in a wet and noisy fashion.

George was baffled by this charade. 'I am afraid not.'

'Oh, come on. You can get it.' The warder made noisier and noisier chomping sounds.

'I cannot guess.'

'Horses' nose-bags, 247, horses' nose-bags. Must be congenial, seeing as you're a man familiar with horses.'

George felt a sudden numbness. So he knew; they all knew; they talked and joked about it. 'Am I the only person making these?'

The warder grinned. 'Don't count yourself so special, 247. You're doing the plaiting, you and half a dozen others. Some do the sewing together. Some make the ropes for tying round the horse's head. Some put them all together. And some pack them up for sending off.'

No, he wasn't special. That was his consolation. He was just a prisoner among prisoners, working as they worked, someone whose crime was no more alarming than that of many others, someone who could choose to be well-behaved or badly behaved, but had no choice about his fundamental status. Even being a solicitor here was not unusual, as the Governor had pointed out. He decided to be as normal as it was possible to be, given the circumstances.

When told that he would serve six months' separate rather than just three, George did not complain, or even ask the reason. The truth was, he thought that what newspapers and books referred to as 'the horrors of solitary confinement' were grossly exaggerated. He would rather have too little company than too much of the wrong sort. He was still permitted to exchange words with the warders, the Chaplain, and the Governor on his rounds, even if he did have to wait for them to speak first. He could use his voice in chapel, singing the hymns and joining in the responses. And during exercise, permission was usually given to talk; though finding common ground with the fellow walking beside you was not always straightforward.

There was, furthermore, a capital library at Lewes, and the librarian called twice a week to take away books he had finished with and replenish his shelf. He was allowed to borrow one work of an educational nature and one 'library' book per week. By 'library' book he was to understand anything from a popular novel to a volume of the classics. George set himself to read all the great works of English literature, and the histories of significant nations. He was naturally permitted a Bible in his cell; though he found increasingly that after four hours struggling with board and yarn each afternoon, it was not the cadences of Holy Writ that he yearned for, but the next chapter of Sir Walter Scott. At times, shut in his cell, reading a novel, safe from the rest of the world, his brightly coloured bed-rug catching the corner of his eye, George felt a sense of order that was almost edging towards contentment.

He learned from his father's letters that there had been a public outcry at his verdict. Mr Voules had taken up his case in Truth, and a petition was being raised by Mr R.D. Yelverton, late Chief Justice of the Bahamas, now of Pump Court in the Temple. Signatures were being gathered, and already many solicitors in Birmingham, Dudley and Wolverhampton had given their support. George was touched to discover that the signatories included Greenway and Stentson; they had always been decent dogs, those two. Witnesses were being interviewed, and testimonials to George's character gathered from schoolmasters, professional colleagues, and members of his family. Mr Yelverton had even been in receipt of a letter from Sir George Lewis, the greatest criminal lawyer of the day, expressing his considered opinion that George's conviction was fatally flawed.

It was clear that some official representations had been made on his behalf, because George was allowed to receive more communications regarding his case than would normally have been allowed. He read some of the testimonials. There was a purple carbon copy of a letter from his mother's brother, Uncle Stoneham of The Cottage, Much Wenlock. 'Whenever I have seen or heard of my nephew (until these abominable things were spoken of) I always found him nice and heard of his being nice and clever also.' There was something about the underlining that went straight to George's heart. Not the praise of him, which he found embarrassing, but the underlining. Here it was again. 'I first met Mr Edalji when he had been in orders for five years and had very good testimonials from other clergymen. Our friends at that time too felt as we did that Parsees are a very old and cultivated race, and have many good qualities.' And then again, in a post-scriptum. 'My Father and Mother gave their full consent to the marriage and they were deeply attached to my sister.'

As a son and a prisoner, George could not help being moved to tears by these words; as a lawyer, he doubted how much effect they would have on whichever Home Office functionary might eventually be appointed to review his case. He felt, at the same time, both keenly optimistic and entirely resigned. Part of him wanted to stay in his cell, plaiting nosebags and reading the works of Sir Walter Scott, catching colds when his hair was cut in the freezing courtyard, and hearing the old joke about bed-bugs again. He wanted this because he knew it was likely to be his fate, and the best way to be resigned to your fate was to want it. The other part of him, which wanted to be free tomorrow, which wanted to embrace his mother and sister, which wanted public acknowledgement of the great injustice done him – this was the part he could not give full rein to, since it could end by causing him the most pain.

So he tried to remain stolid when he learned that ten thousand signatures had now been gathered, headed by those of the President of the Incorporated Law Society, of Sir George Lewis, and Sir George Birchwood, K.C.I.E., the high medical authority. Hundreds of solicitors had signed, not just from the Birmingham area; also King's Counsel, Members of Parliament – including those from Staffordshire – and citizens of every political hue. Sworn statements had been gathered from witnesses who had seen workmen and sightseers trampling the ground where subsequently PC Cooper had discovered his bootmarks. Mr Yelverton had also obtained a favourable statement from Mr Edward Sewell, a veterinary surgeon consulted by the prosecution and then not called in evidence. The petition, the statutory declarations and the testimonials together formed 'the Memorials', which were to be addressed to the Home Office.

In February, two things happened. On the 13th of the month, the Cannock Advertiser reported that another animal had been mutilated in exactly the same fashion as in previous outrages. A fortnight later, Mr Yelverton submitted the Memorials to the Home Secretary, Mr Akers-Douglas. George allowed himself the full indulgence of hope. In March two more things happened: the petition was rejected, and George was informed that on completion of his six months' separate, he would be moved to Portland.

He was not told the reason for the transfer, and did not ask. He assumed it was a way of saying: now you will get on and serve your sentence. Since part of him had always expected to do so, part of him – though not a large part – could be philosophical at the news. He told himself that he had exchanged the world of laws for the world of rules, and they were not perhaps so different. Prison was a simpler environment, since rules allowed no latitude for interpretation; but it was likely that the change was less disconcerting to him than to those whose previous existence had always been outside the law.

The cells at Portland did not impress him. They were made of corrugated iron, and to his eye resembled dog-kennels. Ventilation was also poor, and achieved by cutting a hole in the bottom of the door. There were no bells for prisoners, and if you wished to speak to a warder you placed your cap beneath the door. This was also the system by which the roll-call was made. Upon the cry of 'Caps under!' you placed your cap into the ventilation hole. There were four such roll-calls every day, but since counting caps proved less accurate than counting bodies, the laborious process often had to be repeated.

He acquired a new number, D462. The letter indicated his year of conviction. The system had started with the century: 1900 was year A; George had therefore been convicted in year D, 1903. A badge bearing this number, and the prisoner's term of sentence, was worn on the jacket, and also on the cap. Names were used more frequently here than at Lewes, but still you tended to know a man by his badge. So George was D462-7.

There was the usual interview with the Governor. This one, though perfectly civil, was from his first words less encouraging in manner than his colleague at Lewes. 'You should know it is pointless trying to escape. No one has ever escaped from Portland Bill. You will merely lose remission and discover the delights of solitary confinement.'

'I think I am probably the last person in the entire gaol who might try to escape.'

'I have heard that before,' said the Governor. 'Indeed, I have heard everything before.' He looked down at George's file. 'Religion. It says Church of England.'

'Yes, my father-'

'You can't change.'

George did not understand this remark. 'I have no desire to change my religion.'

'Good. Well, you can't anyway. Don't think you can get round the Chaplain. It's a waste of time. Serve your term and obey the warders.'

'That has always been my intention.'

'Then you're either wiser or more foolish than most.' With this enigmatic remark, the Governor waved for George to be taken away.

His cell was smaller and meaner than at Lewes, though he was assured by a warder who had served in the army that it was better than a barracks. Whether this was true, or intended as unverifiable consolation, George had no means of knowing. For the first time in his prison career, his fingerprints were taken. He feared the moment when the doctor assessed his capacity for work. Everyone knew that those sent to Portland were given a pickaxe and ordered to break rocks in a quarry; leg-irons doubtless came into the reckoning as well. But his anxieties turned out to be misconceived: only a small percentage of the prisoners worked in the quarries, and star men were never sent there. Further, George's eyesight meant that he was judged fit only for light work. The doctor also deemed it unsafe for him to go up and down stairs; so he was located to No. 1 Ward on the ground floor.

He worked in his cell. He picked coir for stuffing beds, and hair for stuffing pillows. The coir had to be first combed out on a board, and then picked as fine as thread: only thus, he was told, would it be suitable to make the softest of beds. No proof of this claim was afforded; George never saw the next stage of the process, and his own mattress was definitely not filled with finely picked coir.

Halfway through his first week at Portland, the Chaplain visited him. His jovial manner implied that they were meeting in the vestry at Great Wyrley rather than a dog-kennel with a ventilation hole cut from the bottom of the door.

'Settling in?' he asked cheerily.

'The Governor seems to imagine my only thoughts are of escape.'

'Yes, yes, he says that to everyone. I think he rather enjoys the occasional escape, just between the two of us. The black flag raised, the cannon booming, the barracks turning out. And he always wins the game – he likes that too. No one ever gets off the Bill. If the soldiers don't get them, the citizenry does. There's a five-pound bounty for turning in an escaper, so there's no incentive to look the other way. Then it's a spell of chokey and a loss of remission. Just not worth it.'

'And the other thing the Governor told me was that I am not allowed to change my religion.'

'True enough.'

'But why should I want to?'

'Ah, you're a star man, of course. Don't know the ins and outs yet. You see, Portland has only Protestants and Catholics. About six to one, the ratio. But no Jews at all. If you were a Jew, you'd be sent to Parkhurst.'

'But I'm not a Jew,' said George, rather doggedly.

'No. Indeed not. But if you were an old lag – an ordinary – and you decided that Parkhurst was an easier billet than Portland, you might be released from Portland this year as an ardent member of the Church of England, but by the time the police caught you next time, you might have decided you were a Jew. Then you'd get sent to Parkhurst. But they made it a rule that you can't change your faith in the middle of a sentence. Otherwise prisoners would be coxing-and-boxing every six months, just for something to do.'

'The rabbi at Parkhurst must get some surprises.'

The Chaplain chuckled. 'Strange how a life of crime can turn a man into a Jew.'

George discovered that it was not just Jews who were sent to Parkhurst; invalids and those known to be a little bit off the top were also despatched there. You might not change religion at Portland, but if you broke down physically or mentally, you could be transferred. It was said that some prisoners deliberately put pickaxes through their feet, or pretended to be a little bit off the top – howling like dogs and tearing out their hair in clumps – in an attempt to gain a move. Most of them ended up in chokey instead, a few days' bread and water their only reward.

'Portland is in a most healthy situation,' George wrote to his parents. 'The air is very strong and bracing, and there is not much sickness.' He might as well have been writing a postcard from Aberystwyth. But it was true too, and he must find what comfort he could for them.

He soon grew used to his cramped accommodation and decided that Portland was a better place than Lewes. There was less red tape, and no idiotic regulation about being shaved and barbered in the open air. Also, the rules governing conversation between prisoners were more relaxed. The food was better too. He was able to inform his parents that there was a different dinner every day, and two kinds of soup. The bread was wholemeal – 'Better than baker's bread,' he wrote, not as an attempt to evade censorship or ingratiate himself, but as a true expression of opinion. There were also green vegetables and lettuce. The cocoa was excellent, though the tea was poor stuff. Still, if you did not want tea, you might have porridge or gruel, and it surprised George that many insisted on having inferior tea rather than something more nutritious.

He was able to tell his parents that he had plenty of warm underclothing; also jerseys, leggings and gloves. The library was even better than at Lewes, and the terms of borrowing more generous: he could take out two 'library' books, plus four of an educational nature, every week. All the leading magazines were available in volume form, though both books and journals had been purged of undesirable matter by the prison authorities. George borrowed a history of recent British art, only to discover that all the illustrations of work by Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema had been neatly removed by the official razor. At the front of the volume was the warning written in every book borrowed from the library: 'No turning down of pages.' Underneath it a prison wag had written, 'And no tearing out of pages.'

Hygiene was no better, though no worse, than at Lewes. If you wanted a toothbrush you had to apply to the Governor, who seemed to answer Yes or No according to some private, whimsical system.

One morning, in need of metal polish, George asked a warder if there was any chance of obtaining some Bath-brick.

'Bath-brick, D462!' replied the officer, his eyebrows leaping towards his cap. 'Bath-brick! You'll ruin the firm – you'll be asking for Bath-buns next.'

And that was the end of that.

George picked coir and hair each day; he took exercise as instructed, though with no great zeal; he borrowed his full allowance of books from the library. At Lewes he had become accustomed to eating with only a tin knife and a wooden spoon, and to the fact that the knife was often insufficient against prison beef and mutton. He no longer missed using a fork, any more than he missed newspapers. Indeed, he saw the absence of a daily paper as an advantage: lacking this daily prod from the outside world, he adapted more easily to the passage of time. Such events as occurred in his life now occurred within the prison walls. One morning, an inmate – C183, serving eight years for robbery – managed to climb on to the roof, whence he declared to the world that he was the Son of God. The Chaplain offered to go up a ladder and discuss the theological implications, but the Governor decided it was just another attempt to gain a transfer to Parkhurst. Eventually they starved him down and packed him off to chokey. C183 admitted in the end that he was the son of a potman and not of a carpenter.

After George had been in Portland a few months, there was an escape attempt. Two men – C202 and B178 – managed to hide a crowbar in their cell; they broke through the ceiling, gained the yard with the aid of a rope, and scaled a wall. The next time 'Caps under!' was called, there was hubbub: they were two caps short. There was another cap-count, followed by a count of bodies. The black flag was raised, the cannon fired, and the prisoners locked in for the interim. George did not mind this, even if he failed to share the general excitement, or join in the bet-laying over the outcome.

The two men had a couple of hours' start, but in the judgement of the ordinaries they would be lying low until nightfall, and only then attempt to get off the Bill. But when the dogs were loosed into the prison grounds, B178 was swiftly discovered, sheltering in a workshed and cursing an ankle broken when jumping from a roof. C202 took longer to find. Sentries were posted on all the heights of Chesil Beach; boats were launched in case the escapee had decided to swim for it; soldiers sealed the Weymouth Road. Quarries were scrutinized, and searches conducted of outlying properties. But the soldiers and prison guards did not find C202; he was brought in roped and bound by an innkeeper who had come upon him in his cellar and subdued him with the help of a drayman. The publican insisted on handing him over to the receiving officer at the gaol, and obtaining a promissory note in the sum of £5 for the capture.

The hubbub among the prisoners turned to disappointment, and the searching of cells became more frequent for a while. This was one aspect of life George found more disruptive than at Lewes; not least because the searches were in his case entirely pointless. First would come the order to 'unbutton'; then the officers would 'rub down' the prisoner to make sure nothing was concealed in his clothing. They would feel him all over, and examine his pocket, and even unfold his handkerchief. This was embarrassing for the prisoner, and George thought it must be hateful to the officers, since the clothes of many inmates were dirty and greasy from their work. Some officers were very careful in their searches, while others would not notice if a prisoner had a hammer and chisel concealed about his person.

Then there was 'turn over', which seemed to consist of the systematic wrecking of a cell, the sweeping of books from surfaces, the unmaking of the bed, and the scouring of potential places of concealment which George would never have guessed at. Worst by far, however, was the 'dry bath' search. You were taken to the bathhouse and made to stand on the wooden slats. You removed every stitch of clothing except your shirt. The officers minutely inspected each item. Then you were obliged to undergo humiliations – raising your legs, bending over, opening your mouth, putting out your tongue. Dry searches were sometimes ordered systematically, sometimes on a random basis. George estimated that he suffered this indignity at least as often as other prisoners. Perhaps, when he had expressed his disinclination to escape, they had taken it for a bluff.

And so the months went by, and then the first year, and then much of the second. Every six months his parents made the long journey from Staffordshire, and were allowed to spend an hour with him under the eyes of a guard. These visits were excruciating to George: not because he did not love his parents, but because he hated to see their suffering. His father seemed shrunken nowadays, and his mother could not bring herself to look around at the place where her son was incarcerated. George found it hard to strike the proper tone with them: if he was cheerful, they would think he was putting it on; if gloomy, he would make them gloomier themselves. Instead, he found himself adopting a neutral manner, helpful but inexpressive, like that of a booking office clerk.

Maud was initially judged too sensitive for such visits; but one year she arrived in the place of her mother. She had little chance to say anything, but whenever George glanced across at her, he encountered that steady, intense gaze he remembered from the courtroom at Stafford. It was as if she was trying to give him strength, to convey something from her mind to his mind without the medium of word or gesture. Later, he found himself wondering if he – they – had been wrong about Maud and her supposed frailty.

The Vicar did not notice. He was too busy telling George how, in the light of the change of government – a matter of which George was scarcely aware – the indefatigable Mr Yelverton was renewing his campaign. A fresh series of articles was planned by Mr Voules in Truth; while the Vicar intended issuing a pamphlet of his own about the case. George made a show of being heartened, but privately judged his father's enthusiasm to be foolish. More signatures might be acquired, but the essence of his case would not have changed, so why should officialdom's response change? He, as a lawyer, could see that.

He also knew that the Home Office was flooded with petitions from every gaol in the country. Four thousand Memorials were sent in annually; and a further thousand arrived from other sources on behalf of prisoners. But the Home Office was neither equipped nor empowered to retry a case; it could neither interview witnesses, nor hear counsel. All it could do was examine paperwork and advise the Crown accordingly. This meant that a free pardon was a statistical rarity. It might perhaps be different if there were some court of appeal, able to take a more active part in overturning injustice. But as things stood, the Vicar's belief that a frequent reiteration of innocence, backed up by the power of prayer, would bring about his son's release struck George as naive.

It grieved him to admit the fact, but George found his father's visits unhelpful. They disturbed the orderliness and calm of his life, and without orderliness and calm he did not think he could survive his sentence. Some prisoners counted off each day until their future release; George could only get through prison life by treating it as the only life he had or could ever have. His parents upset this illusion, as did his father's hopeful trust in Mr Yelverton. Perhaps if Maud were allowed to visit him by herself, she would fill him with strength, whereas his parents filled him with anxiety and shame. But he knew this would never be permitted.

The searches continued, the rub-downs and the dry baths. He read more history than he knew existed, had despatched all the classic authors and was now proceeding through the lesser ones. He had also read his way through entire runs of the Cornhill Magazine and the Strand. He was beginning to worry about exhausting the library's resources.

One morning he was taken to the Chaplain's office, photographed in both full face and profile, then instructed to grow a beard. He was told that in three months' time he would be photographed again. George could work out for himself the purpose of this record: it would be there for the police if he gave them future reason to search for him.

He did not like growing a beard. He had worn a moustache since Nature permitted, but had been ordered to shave it off at Lewes. Now he did not enjoy the daily prickle that spread across his cheeks and under his chin; he missed the feel of the razor. Nor did he like the look of himself with a beard: it gave him a criminal mien. There were remarks from the warders about him having a new hiding place. He carried on picking coir and reading Oliver Goldsmith. There were four years of his sentence left.

And then things suddenly became confusing. He was taken to be photographed, both full face and in profile. Then he was sent to be shaved. The barber told him he was lucky not to be in Strangeways, where they would charge him eighteen pence for the service. When he returned to his cell, he was ordered to collect his few belongings together and be ready for a transfer. He was driven to the station and put on a train with an escort. He could scarcely bring himself to look at the countryside, whose existence seemed to mock him, as did every horse and cow within it. He understood how men went mad from missing ordinary things.

When the train reached London, he was put in a cab and driven to Pentonville. There he was told that he was being prepared for discharge. He spent a day locked up by himself – the most miserable day, in retrospect, of his entire three years in gaol. He knew he should be happy; instead, he was as bewildered by his release as he had been by his arrest. Two detectives came and served him with papers; he was ordered to report to Scotland Yard, there to receive further instructions.

At ten thirty on the morning of October 19th, 1906, George Edalji left Pentonville in a cab with a Jew who was also being released. He did not enquire whether the fellow was a real Jew, or just a prison Jew. The cab dropped his fellow passenger at the Jewish Prisoners' Aid Society, and took him on to the Church Army's Aid Society. Prisoners who had joined such societies qualified for a double gratuity upon release. George was handed £2 9s. 10d. Officers of the Society then took him to Scotland Yard, where the terms of his release on licence were explained. He was to supply the address where he would be staying; he was to report once a month to Scotland Yard; and he was to inform them in advance of any plans to leave London.

A newspaper had sent a photographer to Pentonville to obtain a snapshot of George Edalji leaving the prison. By mistake the man photographed a prisoner released half an hour before George; and so the newspaper printed a picture of the wrong man.

From Scotland Yard he was driven to meet his parents.

He was free.

Arthur

And then he meets Jean.

He is a few months short of his thirty-eighth birthday. He is painted that year by Sidney Paget, sitting straight-backed in an upholstered tub chair, frock coat half open, fob chains on show; in his left hand a notebook, in his right a silver propelling pencil. His hair is now receding above the temples, but this loss is made irrelevant by the compensating glory of the moustache: it colonizes his face above and beyond the upper lip and extends in waxed toothpicks out beyond the line of the earlobes. It gives Arthur the commanding air of a military prosecutor; one whose authority is endorsed by the quartered coat of arms in the top corner of the portrait.

Arthur is the first to admit that his knowledge of women is that of a gentleman rather than a cad. There were certain boisterous flirtations in his early life – even an episode which had to do with flying fish. There was Elmore Weldon who, if it was not an ungentlemanly observation, did weigh eleven stone. There is Touie who, over the years, became a companionable sister to him and then, suddenly, an invalid sister. There are, of course, his real sisters. There are the statistics of prostitution which he reads at his club. There are stories told over port which he sometimes declines to hear, stories involving, for instance, private rooms in discreet restaurants. There are the gynaecological cases he has seen, the confinements he has attended, and the cases of disease among Portsmouth sailors and other men of low morals. His understanding of the sexual act is diverse, though related more to its unfortunate consequences than to its joyful preliminaries and processes.

His mother is the only woman to whose governance he is prepared to submit. With other members of the sex he has been, variously, large brother, substitute father, dominant husband, prescribing doctor, generous writer of blank cheques and Father Christmas. He is solidly content with the separation and distinction of the sexes as developed by society in its wisdom through the centuries. He is resolutely against the notion of votes for women: when a man comes home from work, he does not want a politician sitting opposite him at the fireside. Knowing women less, he is able to idealize them more. This is as he thinks it should be.

Jean therefore comes as a shock to him. It is now a long time since he looked at a young woman as young men habitually do. Women – young women – it seems to him, are meant to be unformed; they are malleable, pliant, waiting to be shaped by the impress of the man they marry. They hide themselves; they watch and wait, they indulge in decorous social display (which should always fall short of coquetry) until such time as the man makes apparent his interest, and then his greater interest, and then his especial interest, by which time they are walking alone together, and the families have met, and finally he asks for her hand and sometimes, perhaps, in a last act of concealment, she makes him wait upon her answer. This is how it has all evolved, and social evolution has its laws and its necessities just as biological evolution does. It would not be thus if there were not a very good reason for its being thus.

When he is introduced to Jean – at an afternoon tea party in the house of a prominent London Scotsman, the sort of event he normally avoids – he notices at once that she is a striking young woman. He knows from long experience what to expect: the striking young woman will ask him when he is going to write another Sherlock Holmes story, and did he really die at the Reichenbach Falls, and perhaps it would be better if the consulting detective were to marry, and how did he think up such an idea in the first place? And sometimes he answers with the weariness of a man wearing five overcoats, and sometimes he manages a faint smile and replies, 'Your question, young lady, reminds me why I had the good sense to drop him over the Falls in the first place.'

But Jean does none of this. She does not give an agreeable start at his name, or shyly confess herself a devoted reader. She asks him if he has seen the exhibition of photographs of Dr Nansen's voyage to the far North.

'Not yet. Although I was present at the Albert Hall last month when he lectured to the Royal Geographical Society and received a medal from the Prince of Wales.'

'So was I,' she replies. This is unexpected.

He tells her how, after reading Nansen's account a few years previously of crossing Norway on skis, he acquired a pair of them; how from Davos he skiied the high slopes with the Branger brothers, and how Tobias Branger wrote 'Sportesmann' in the hotel registration book. Then he begins a story, which he often tells as an adjunct to this one, about losing his skis at the top of a snow-face and being obliged to come down without them, and how the strain on the seat of his tweed knickerbockers… and this really is one of his best stories, though perhaps in the present circumstances he will amend the conclusion about being happiest for the rest of the day when standing with his trouser-seat to a wall… but she seems to have stopped paying attention. Taken aback, he pauses.

'I should like to learn to ski,' she says.

This is also unexpected.

'I have excellent balance. I have ridden since I was three.'

Arthur is somewhat piqued at not being allowed to finish his story about tearing his knickerbockers, which includes mimicry of his tailor's assurances about the durability of Harris tweed. So he tells her firmly that it is most unlikely that women – by which he means society women, as opposed to female Swiss peasants – will ever learn to ski, given the physical strength required and the dangers attendant on the activity.

'Oh, I am quite strong,' she replies. 'And I imagine I have better balance than you, given your size. It must be an advantage to have a lower centre of gravity. And being much less heavy, I should not do so much damage were I to fall.'

Had she said 'less heavy' he might have taken offence at such pertness. Because she says 'much less heavy' he bursts out laughing, and promises, one day, to teach her to ski.

'I shall hold you to it,' she replies.

It was all a rather extraordinary encounter, he reflects to himself in the subsequent days. The way she declined to acknowledge his fame as a writer, set the subject of the conversation, interrupted one of his most popular stories, exhibited an ambition some might call unladylike, and laughed – well, as good as laughed – at his size. And yet she managed to do it all lightly, seriously, enchantingly. Arthur congratulates himself on not having taken offence, even if none was intended. He feels something he has not felt for years: the self-satisfaction of the successful flirt. And then he forgets her.

Six weeks later he walks into a musical afternoon and she is singing one of Beethoven's Scottish songs while an earnest little fellow in white tie accompanies her. He finds her voice superb, the pianist mannered and vain. Arthur draws back so that she will not see him observing her. After her recital they meet in the presence of others, and she behaves with the sort of politeness which makes it difficult to judge whether she remembers him or not.

They separate; a few minutes later, with some ghastly cellist groaning away in the background, they meet again, this time alone. She says at once, 'I see I shall have to wait at least nine months.'

'For what?'

'For my skiing lesson. There is no possibility of snow now.'

He does not find this forward, or flirtatious, though he knows he should.

'Are you planning it for Hyde Park?' he asks. 'Or St James's? Or perhaps the slopes of Hampstead Heath?'

'Why not? Wherever you wish. Scotland. Or Norway. Or Switzerland.'

They seem to have passed, without his noticing, through some French windows, across a terrace, and are now standing under that very sun which has long banished all hope of snow. He has never resented a fine day more.

He looks down into her hazel-green eyes. 'Are you flirting with me, young lady?'

She looks straight back at him. 'I am talking to you about skiing.' But those, it feels, are only her nominal words.

'Because if you are, be careful I do not fall in love with you.'

He barely knows what he has said. He half means it entirely and half cannot imagine what has got into him.

'Oh, you are already. In love with me. And I with you. There is no doubt about it. No doubt at all.'

And so it is said. And no more words are needed, or uttered, for a while. All that matters is how he is to see her again, and where, and when, and it must be arranged before someone interrupts them. But he has never been a Lothario or seducer, and never known how to say those things which are necessary to arrive at the stage beyond the one where he currently stands – not really knowing either what that further stage might be, since where he is at the moment appears, in its own way, to be final. All he can feel rising up in his head are difficulties, prohibitions, reasons why they will never meet again, except perhaps decades later, in passing, when they are old and grey and will be able to joke about that ever-remembered moment on someone's sunny lawn. It is impossible for them to meet in a public place, because of her reputation and his fame; impossible for them to meet in a private place because of her reputation and… and all the things that make up his life. He stands there, a man approaching forty, a man secure in his life and famous in the world, and he has become a schoolboy again. He feels as if he has learned the most beautiful love-speech in Shakespeare and now that he needs to recite it his mouth is dry and his memory empty. He also feels as if he has ripped the seat of his tweed knickerbockers and must instantly find a wall against which to set his back.

Yet almost without his being aware of her questions and his answers, it is somehow arranged. And it is not an assignation, or the start of an intrigue, it is merely the next time they will see one another, and in the five days he is obliged to wait he cannot work, and he can barely think, and even if he plays two rounds of golf in one day he finds, in the seconds between addressing the ball and bringing the club-face down against it, that her face has come into his head, and his game that day is all hooks and slices and the endangering of wildlife. When he propels the ball from one sandhole directly into another, he suddenly recalls golfing at the Mena House Hotel, and feeling then that he was in a perpetual bunker. Now he cannot tell whether this is still true, indeed truer than ever, with the sand even deeper and his ball buried invisibly, or whether he is somehow on the green forever.

It is not an assignation, though he finds himself getting out of the cab on the corner of the street. It is not an assignation, though there is a woman of indeterminate age and class who opens the door and disappears. It is not an assignation, though they are at last alone together sitting on a sofa covered in satin brocatelle. It is not an assignation because he tells himself it is not.

He takes her hand and looks at her. Her glance is neither shy nor bold; it is frank and constant. She does not smile. He knows that one or other of them must speak, but seems to have lost his daily familiarity with words. But it does not matter. And then she half-smiles and says, 'I could not wait for the snow.'

'I shall give you snowdrops on every anniversary of the day we met.'

'March the fifteenth,' she says.

'I know. I know because it is engraved upon my heart. If they cut me open they will be able to read that date.'

There is another silence. He sits there, perched on the sofa's edge, longing to concentrate on her words, her face, the date and the thought of snowdrops; but they are all driven out by the awareness that he has the most tremendous cockstand of his entire life. It is not the decorous swelling of a pure-hearted chevalier, it is a thumping and unavoidable presence, something rowdy, something in off the street, something living up to that word cockstand which he has never himself uttered but which is pressingly in his head. His only other thought is a relief that his trousers are loosely cut. He shifts a little to ease the constriction, and in doing so inadvertently moves a few inches closer to her. She is an angel, he thinks, her look so pure, her complexion so fair, but she has taken his movement as a sign that he intends to kiss her, and so is trustingly offering her face to his, and as a gentleman he cannot slight her, and as a man he cannot help himself from kissing her. Being no Lothario or seducer but a burly, honourable man in early middle age leaning awkwardly across a sofa, he tries to think of nothing but love and chivalry as her lips reach towards his moustache and inexpertly seek the mouth beneath it; still holding, but now beginning to crush the hand he has held since the moment he arrived, he becomes aware of a vast and violent leakage taking place inside his trousers. And the groan he gives is almost certainly misconstrued by Miss Jean Leckie, as is the way he suddenly throws himself back from her as if struck by an assegai between the shoulder blades.

An image comes into Arthur's head, an image from decades earlier. Night-time at Stonyhurst, with a Jesuit quietly patrolling the dormitories to prevent beastliness among the boys. It worked. And what he needs now, and for all the time he can foresee, is his own patrolling Jesuit. What happened in that room must never happen again. As a doctor, he might find such a moment of weakness explicable; as an English gentleman, he finds it shameful and perturbing. He does not know whom he has betrayed the most: Jean, Touie or himself. All three to some degree, certainly. And it must never happen again.

It is the suddenness which has undone him; also, the gap between dream and reality. In chivalric romance, the knight loves an impossible object – the wife of his lord, for instance – and performs courageous actions in her name; his valour is matched by his purity. But Jean is less than an impossible object, and Arthur is no obscure gallant or unattached knight. Rather, he is a married man whose chasteness has been imposed upon him for the last three years by physician's orders. He is fifteen – no, sixteen – stone, fit and energetic; and yesterday he discharged into his underlinen.

But now that the dilemma has manifested itself in full clarity and awfulness, Arthur is able to address it. His brain begins to work on the practicalities of love as once it worked on the practicalities of illness. He defines the problem – the problem! the aching, wracking joy and torment! – thus. It is impossible for him not to love Jean; and for her not to love him. It is impossible for him to divorce Touie, the mother of his children, whom he still regards with affection and respect; besides, only a cad would abandon an invalid. Finally, it is impossible to turn the affair into an intrigue by making Jean his mistress. Each of the three parties has his or her honour, even if Touie does not know hers is being considered in absentia. For that is an essential condition: Touie must not know.

The next time he and Jean meet, he takes charge. He must do so: he is the man, he is older; she is a young woman, possibly impetuous, whose reputation must not be tarnished. At first she appears anxious, as if he is going to dismiss her; but when it becomes clear that he is merely organizing the terms of their relationship, she relaxes, and at times appears almost not to be listening. She becomes anxious again when he is stressing how careful they must be.

'But we are allowed to kiss one another?' she asks, as if verifying the terms of a contract she has signed while happily blindfolded.

Her tone makes his heart melt and his brain blur. As confirmation of the contract they kiss. She likes to peck at him rather, with eyes open, in birdlike attacks; he prefers the long adhesion of the lips, with eyes closed. He cannot believe he is kissing someone again, let alone her. He tries to stop himself thinking in what ways it is different from kissing Touie. After a while, however, the perturbance starts up again, and he pulls back.

They are to meet; they are to be alone together for limited periods; they are allowed to kiss; they are not to become carried away. Their situation is intensely dangerous. But again she appears to be only half-listening.

'It is time I left home,' she says. 'I can share a flat with other women. Then you may come and see me freely.'

She is so different from Touie: direct, frank, open-minded. She has treated him from the start as an equal. And she is an equal in terms of their love, of course. But he has the responsibility for them, and for her. He must see that her straightforwardness does not lead her into dishonour.

There are times, in the following weeks, when he even begins to wonder if she was not expecting him to make her his mistress. The eagerness of her kisses, the disappointment at his drawing back; the way she presses herself against him, the sense he sometimes has that she knows precisely what is going through him. And yet he cannot think this. She is not that sort of woman; her lack of false modesty is a sign that she trusts him entirely, and would trust him even if he were not the man of principle that he is.

But it is not enough to solve the practical difficulties of their relationship; he also needs moral approval. Arthur takes the Leeds train from St Pancras in a state of trepidation. The Mam remains his final arbiter. She reads every word he writes before it is published; and she has done the equivalent for his emotional life. Only the Mam can confirm that the course of action he proposes is correct.

At Leeds he takes the Carnforth train, changing at Clapham for Ingleton. She is waiting at the station in her wickerwork pony-and-dog cart; she wears a red coat and the white cotton cap she has taken to affecting in recent years. The two ambling miles in the cart seem interminable to Arthur. The Mam defers constantly to her pony, which is called Mooi, and has its eccentricities, such as a refusal to go past steam engines. This means that roadworks have to be avoided, and each whim of equine inattention flattered. At last, they are inside Masongill Cottage. Arthur immediately tells the Mam everything. Everything, at least, that counts. Everything necessary for her to give him advice on this high and heaven-sent love of his. Everything about the sudden wonder and sudden impossibility of his life. Everything about his feelings, his sense of honour and his sense of guilt. Everything about Jean, her sweetly direct nature, her incisive intelligence, her virtue. Everything. Almost everything.

He backtracks; he starts again; he goes into different detail. He stresses Jean's ancestry, her Scottishness, a lineage designed to seduce any amateur genealogist. Her descent from Malise de Leggy in the thirteenth century, and by another line from Rob Roy himself. Her present condition, living with wealthy parents in Blackheath. The Leckie family, respectable and religious, who made their money in tea. Her age, twenty-one. Her fine mezzo voice, trained in Dresden and soon to be perfected in Florence. Her supreme ability as a horsewoman, which he has yet to witness. Her quickness of sympathy, her sincerity and strength of character. And then her personal appearance, which sends Arthur into rapturous mode. Her slender frame, small hands and feet, dark gold hair, hazel-green eyes, gently elongated face, delicate white complexion.

'You paint a photograph, Arthur.'

'I wish I had one. I asked her, but she says she takes a poor picture. She is reluctant to smile for the camera, because she is self-conscious about her teeth. She told me quite straightforwardly. She considers them oversized. Of course they are nothing of the sort. She is such an angel.'

The Mam, listening to her son's account, does not fail to observe the strange parallel that life has thrown up. For years she was married to a man whom society politely chose to regard as an invalid, whether he was being brought home by cadging cabmen or locked away under the disguise of an epileptic. In his absence and incapacity, she had found comfort in the presence of Bryan Waller. Back then, her sulky, aggressive son had dared to criticize; at times, by silence, almost to impugn her honour. And now her favourite, her most adored child, has in turn discovered that the complications of life do not end at the altar; some might say that this is where they begin.

The Mam listens; she understands; and she condones. What Arthur has done is correct, and consistent with honour. And she would like to know Miss Leckie.

They meet; and the Mam approves, as she approved of Touie back in Southsea days. This is not an unthinking endorsement of an indulged son. In the Mam's view, Touie, pliant and agreeable, was exactly the right wife for an ambitious yet confused young doctor needing acceptance in the kind of society that would provide him with patients. But were Arthur to marry now, he would need someone like Jean, someone with capabilities of her own, and with a clear, forthright nature which at times reminds the Mam a little of herself. Privately, she notes that this is the first intimate woman friend to whom her son has not given a nickname.

A Gower-Bell loudspeaking telephone, shaped like a candlestick, stands on the hall table at Undershaw. It has its own number – Hindhead 237 – and, thanks to Arthur's name and reputation, it does not, as many others do, share a party line with a neighbouring house. Even so, Arthur never uses it to telephone Jean. He cannot imagine working out when Undershaw will be empty of servants, the children at school, Touie resting and Wood off on his walk, and then standing in the hall with lowered voice and his back to the stairs: standing beneath the stained-glass names and shields of his ancestors. He cannot picture himself doing that; it would be proof of intrigue, not so much to anyone who might see him in that posture, but to himself. The telephone is the chosen instrument of the adulterer.

So he communicates by letter, by note, by telegram; he communicates by word and by gift. After a few months Jean is moved to explain that the flat she occupies has only a certain amount of space, and though she shares it with trusted friends, the ring of the delivery boy has become embarrassing. Women who receive large numbers of presents from gentlemen – or, more compromisingly, from one particular gentleman – are assumed to be mistresses; at the very least, potential mistresses. When she points this out, Arthur rebukes himself for a fool.

'Besides,' says Jean, 'I do not need assurances. I am certain of your love.'

On the first anniversary of their meeting, he gives her a single snowdrop. She tells him that this brings her more pleasure than any amount of jewellery or dresses or potted plants or expensive chocolates, or whatever it is that men give to women. She has few material needs, and these are easily met by her allowance. Indeed, the fact of not receiving presents is a way of marking that their relationship is different from the humdrum arrangements of others in the world.

But there is the question of the ring. Arthur wants her to wear something, however discreet, on her finger – it does not matter which – to send him a secret message whenever they are in one another's company. Jean does not favour this idea. Men give rings to three categories of women: wife, mistress, fiancée. She is none of these, and will wear no such ring. She will never be a mistress; Arthur already has a wife; nor is she, can she be, a fiancée. To be a fiancée is to say: I am waiting for his wife to die. There were such understandings between couples, she knew, but that is not to be theirs. Their love is different. It has no past, and no future that can be thought about; it has only the present. Arthur says that in his mind she is his mystical wife. Jean agrees, but says that mystical wives do not wear physical rings.

Naturally, it is the Mam who solves the matter. She invites Jean to Ingleton, suggesting that Arthur come himself the following day. On the evening of Jean's arrival, the Mam has a sudden idea. She takes from the little finger of her left hand a small ring and slips it onto the same finger of Jean's hand. It is a pale cabochon sapphire which once belonged to the Mam's great-aunt.

Jean looks at it, twirls her hand, and promptly removes it. 'I cannot accept jewellery that belongs in your family.'

'My great-aunt gave it to me because she thought it went with my colouring. It did then; but no longer. It goes better with yours. And I think of you as part of the family. I have done so from the first day I met you.'

Jean cannot refuse the Mam; few can. When Arthur arrives, he is theatrically slow to notice the ring; finally, it is pointed out to him. Even then he disguises the pleasure he feels, commenting that it is not very large, and giving the women a chance to laugh at him. Now Jean wears not Arthur's ring but a Doyle ring, and that is just as good; perhaps better. He imagines seeing it against the cloth of a cluttered dining table and the keys of a piano, against the arm of a theatre stall and the reins of a horse. He thinks of it as a symbol of what binds her to him. His mystical wife.

Two white lies are allowed to a gentleman: in order to shield a woman, and to get into a fight when the fight is a rightful one. The white lies Arthur tells Touie are far more numerous than he ever imagined. At the beginning he assumed that somehow, in the bustle of his days and weeks, his ventures and enthusiasms, his sports and travels, the need to tell her lies would not arise. Jean would disappear into the interstices of his calendar. But since she cannot disappear from his heart, she equally cannot disappear from his mind and his conscience. So he finds that every meeting, every plan, every note and every letter sent, every thought of her, is hedged around with lies of one sort or another. Mostly they are lies of omission, though sometimes, necessarily, lies of commission; lies anyway, all of them. And Touie is so utterly trusting; she accepts, she has always accepted, Arthur's sudden changes of plan, his impulses, his decisions to stay or to go. Arthur knows she is without suspicion, and this scrapes at his nerves the more. He cannot imagine how adulterers can live with their consciences; how morally primitive they must be simply to sustain the necessary lying.

But beyond practical difficulty, ethical impasse and sexual frustration, there is something darker, something harder to face directly. The key moments in Arthur's life have always been shadowed by death, and this is another one. The sudden, wondrous love that has arrived can only be consummated and acknowledged to the world if Touie dies. She will die; he knows that, and so does Jean; consumption always claims its victims. But Arthur's determination to fight the Devil has resulted in a ceasefire. Touie's condition is stable; she no longer even needs the cleansing air of Davos. She lives contentedly at Hindhead, grateful for what she has, and exuding the gentle optimism of the consumptive. He cannot wish for her death; equally, he cannot wish for Jean's impossible position to continue without end. If he believed in one of the established religions, he would doubtless put everything in the hands of God; but he cannot do this. Touie must continue to receive the best medical attention and the strongest domestic support in order that Jean's suffering may continue as long as possible. If he takes any action, he is a brute. If he tells Touie, he is a brute. If he breaks off with Jean, he is a brute. If he makes her his mistress, he is a brute. If he does nothing, he is merely a passive, hypocritical brute vainly holding on to as much honour as he can.

Slowly, however, and discreetly, the relationship is acknowledged. Jean is introduced to Lottie. Arthur is introduced to Jean's parents, who give him a pearl and diamond pin-stud for Christmas. Jean is even introduced to Touie's mother, Mrs Hawkins, who accepts the relationship. Connie and Hornung are also apprised, though nowadays they are much taken up with marriage, their son Oscar Arthur, and life in Kensington West. Arthur gives assurances to everyone that Touie will be shielded at all cost from knowledge, pain and dishonour.

There are high-minded declarations, and there is daily reality. Despite family approval, Arthur and Jean are each liable to bouts of low spirits; Jean also becomes prone to migraines. Each feels guilt at having dragged the other into an impossible situation. Honour, like virtue, may be its own reward; but sometimes it does not feel enough. At least, the despair it provokes can be as sharp as any of the exaltation. Arthur prescribes for himself the collected works of Renan. Hard reading, with plenty of golf and cricket, will steady a man, keep him right in body and mind.

But these recourses can only do so much. You can thrash the other side's bowlers to all quarters, then pitch short into their batsmen's ribs; you can take a driver and punish a golf ball into the farthest distance. You cannot keep the thoughts at bay for ever; always the same thoughts, and the same repellent paradoxes. An active man doomed to inactivity; lovers forbidden to love; death which you fear and are ashamed to beckon.

Arthur's cricket season has been going well; scores made and wickets taken are relayed to the Mam with filial pride. She in return continues to give him the benefit of her opinions: about the Dreyfus Case, about the sacerdotal bullies and bigots in the Vatican, about the odious attitude towards France of that dismal paper the Daily Mail. One day, Arthur is playing at Lord's for the MCC. He invites Jean to watch him, and knows, when he comes out to bat, just where in 'A' Enclosure she will be sitting. It is one of those days when the bowlers have no secrets from him; his bat is impregnable, and scarcely registers the impact as he smacks and wheedles the ball around the field. Once or twice he lifts it straight into the crowd, and even has time to make sure beforehand that there is no danger of it dropping near her like a shell. He is jousting in the name of his lady; he should have asked for a favour to wear in his cap.

Between innings, he comes to seek her out. He needs no words of praise – he sees the pride in her eyes. She needs to walk a little after sitting on a slatted bench so long. They take a turn around the ground, behind the stands; beer wafts on the hot air. Amid an idling, anonymous throng they feel more alone together than under the friendliest chaperoning eye at a dinner table. They talk as if they had just met. Arthur says how he wishes he could have worn her favour in his cap. She slips her arm through his and they walk silently on, deep in happiness.

'Hello, there's Willie and Connie.'

It is indeed; coming towards them, also arm in arm. They must have left little Oscar with his nurse back in Kensington. Arthur now feels even prouder of his performance with the bat. Then he becomes aware of something. Willie and Connie are not slowing their pace, and Connie has started looking away, as if the back of the pavilion had become something of irreducible interest. Willie at least does not appear to be denying their existence; but as the couples pass, he raises an eyebrow at his brother-in-law, at Jean, and at their linked arms.

Arthur's bowling after the change of innings is faster and wilder than usual. He takes only a single wicket, thanks to an over-greedy swipe at one of his long-hops. When he is sent to field in the deep, he keeps turning to look for Jean, but she must have moved. He cannot spot Willie and Connie either. His throwing-in causes more alarm to the wicket-keeper than usual, and has him scuttling in all directions.

Afterwards, it is clear that Jean has left. He is now in a state of pure rage. He wants to take a cab straight to Jean's flat, lead her out on to the pavement, put her arm through his, and walk her past Buckingham Palace, Westminster Abbey and the Houses of Parliament. And with him still in his cricket clothes. And shouting, 'I am Arthur Conan Doyle and I am proud to love this woman, Jean Leckie.' He visualizes the scene. When he stops doing so, he thinks he is running mad.

Rage and madness subside, leaving him with a steady, inflexible anger. He takes a shower-bath and changes, all the while swearing internally at Willie Hornung. How dare that asthmatic short-sighted part-time spin bowler raise his bloody eyebrow. At him. At Jean. Hornung, the journalist, the writer of no-account stories about the Australian outback. Totally unheard of until he purloined – with permission – the idea of Holmes and Watson; turned them upside down and made them into a pair of criminals. Arthur let him do it. Even provided the name of his so-called hero, Raffles, as in The Doings of Raffles Haw. Allowed the damned book to be dedicated to him. 'To A.C.D., this form of flattery.'

Gave him more than his best idea, gave him his wife. Literally: walked her up the aisle and handed her over to him. Made them an allowance to get started on. All right, made Connie an allowance, but Willie Hornung didn't say it was a stain on his honour as a man to accept such help, didn't say he'd go out and work harder to keep his young wife, oh no, none of that. And he thinks that gives him the right to raise a priggish eyebrow.

Arthur takes a cab straight from Lord's to Kensington West. Number Nine, Pitt Street. His anger begins to subside as they cross the Harrow Road. In his head he can hear Jean telling him it was all her fault, she was the one who put her arm through his. He knows exactly the tone of self-reproach she will use, and how it will probably drive her into a wretched migraine. All that matters, he tells himself, is to minimize her suffering. His every instinct and his very manliness demand that he break down Hornung's door, drag him on to the pavement, and beat him about the brains with a cricket bat. Yet by the time the cab draws up he knows how he must behave.

He is quite calm as Willie Hornung admits him. 'I have come to see Constance,' he says. Hornung is at least sensible enough not to go in for any damn-fool bluster, or insist on being present himself. Arthur goes upstairs to Connie's sitting room. He explains to her, in straightforward terms, as he has never done – never needed to do – before. About what Touie's illness entails. About his sudden love, his utter love, for Jean. About how that love will remain platonic. Yet how a large side of his life, so long unoccupied, has now been filled. About the strain and depression they both suffer from intermittently. About how Connie only saw them together, obviously in love, because they let their guard down; and how it is a torment never to be able to show their love in front of others. How every smile, every laugh has to be measured and rationed, every companion tested. How Arthur does not think he can survive if his family, who are as dear to him as the world itself, does not understand his plight and support him.

He is playing at Lord's again tomorrow, and he asks, no, he entreats Connie to come, and this time meet Jean properly. It is the only way. What happened today must be set aside, put behind them at once, else it will fester. She will come tomorrow, and have lunch with Jean and know her better. Won't she?

Connie agrees. Willie, as he lets him out, says, 'Arthur, I'm prepared to back your dealings with any woman at sight and without question.' In the cab, Arthur feels as if something terrible has just been averted. He is quite weary, and a little light-headed. He knows he can count on Connie, as he can on all his family. And he is a little ashamed of what he caught himself thinking about Willie Hornung. This damn temper of his is not getting any better. He puts it down to being half Irish. The Scottish half of him has the devil of a job keeping the upper hand.

No, Willie is a fine fellow, who will back him without question. Willie has a good, sharp brain, and is a very decent wicketkeeper. He may dislike golf, but at least gives the best reason Arthur has yet heard for such a prejudice: 'I consider it unsportsmanlike to hit a sitting ball.' That was good. And the one about the sprinter's error. And the one Arthur has spread most widely, which is Willie's assessment of his brother-in-law's consulting detective: 'Though he might be more humble, there is no police like Holmes.' No police like Holmes! Arthur throws himself back against the seat at the memory of the line.

The next morning, as he is preparing to leave for Lord's, a telegram is delivered. Constance Hornung must excuse herself from their lunch engagement today because she has a toothache and is obliged to go to the dentist.

He sends a note to Jean, his apologies to Lord's – 'urgent family business' for once is no euphemism – and takes a cab to Pitt Street. They will be expecting him. They know he is not the man for intrigue or diplomatic silence. You look a fellow in the eye, you speak the truth, and you take the consequences: such is the Doyle creed. Women are allowed different rules, of course – or rather, women seem to have developed different rules for themselves regardless; but even so, he does not think much of emergency dental treatment as an excuse. Its very transparency gets Arthur's dander up. Perhaps she knows this; perhaps it is designed as the plainest rebuke, like that turned-away head of hers. Connie, to her credit, does not palter any more than he does.

He knows he must keep his temper. What matters is first of all Jean, and then the unity of the family. He wonders if Connie has changed Hornung's mind, or Hornung Connie's. 'I'm prepared to back your dealings with any woman at sight and without question.' Nothing equivocal there. But neither had there been about Connie's apparent understanding of his situation. In advance, he searches for reasons. Perhaps Connie has become a respectable married woman rather more quickly than he would have thought possible; perhaps she has always been jealous that Lottie is his favourite sister. As for Hornung: doubtless he is envious of his brother-in-law's fame; or maybe the success of Raffles has gone to his head. Something has sparked this sudden display of independence and rebellion. Well, Arthur will soon find out.

'Connie is upstairs, resting,' says Hornung as he opens the door. Plain enough. So it will be man to man, which is how Arthur prefers it.

Little Willie Hornung is the same height as Arthur, a fact he occasionally forgets. And Hornung in his own house is different from the Hornung of Arthur's furious re-creation; also different from the flattering, eager-to-please Willie who darted across the tennis court at West Norwood and brought bons mots to the table by way of ingratiation. In the front sitting room he indicates a leather armchair, waits for Arthur to be seated, and then remains standing himself. As he speaks, he begins to prance around the room. Nerves, doubtless, but it has the effect of a prosecuting counsel showing off to a non-existent jury.

'Arthur, this is not going to be easy. Connie has told me what you said to her last night, and we have discussed the matter.'

'And you have changed your minds. Or you have changed her mind. Or she yours. Yesterday you said you would back me without question.'

'I know what I said. And it is not a matter of my changing Connie's mind, or her changing mine. We have discussed it, and we are agreed.'

'I congratulate you.'

'Arthur, let me put it this way. Yesterday we spoke to you with our hearts. You know how Connie loves you, how she always has. You know my enormous admiration for you, how proud I am to say that Arthur Conan Doyle is my brother-in-law. That's why we went to Lord's yesterday, to watch you with pride, to support you.'

'Which you have decided no longer to do.'

'But today we are thinking, and speaking, with our heads.'

'And what do your two heads tell you?' Arthur reins his anger back to mere sarcasm. It is the best he can do. He sits four-square in his chair and watches Willie dance and shuffle in front of him, as he dances and shuffles his argument.

'Our heads – our two heads – tell us what our eyes see and our consciences dictate. Your behaviour is… compromising.'

'To whom?'

'To your family. To your wife. To your… lady-friend. To yourself.'

'You do not wish to include the Marylebone Cricket Club as well? And the readers of my books? And the staff of Gamages emporium?'

'Arthur, if you cannot see it, others must point it out to you.'

'Which you seem to be relishing. I thought I had merely acquired a brother-in-law. I did not realize the family had acquired a conscience. I was not aware we needed one. You should get yourself a priest's robe.'

'I do not need a priest's robe to tell me that if you stroll around Lord's with a grin on your face and a woman who is not your wife on your arm, you compromise that wife and your behaviour reflects upon your family.'

'Touie will always be shielded from pain and dishonour. That is my first principle. It will remain so.'

'Who else saw you yesterday apart from us? And what might they conclude?'

'And what did you conclude, you and Constance?'

'That you were extremely reckless. That you did the reputation of the woman on your arm no good. That you compromised your wife. And your family.'

'You are a sudden expert on my family for such a johnny-come-lately.'

'Perhaps because I see more clearly.'

'Perhaps because you have less loyalty. Hornung, I do not pretend the situation is not difficult, damned difficult. There's no denying it. At times it is intolerable. I do not need to rehearse what I said to Connie yesterday. I am doing the best I can, we both are, Jean and I. Our… alliance has been accepted, has been approved by the Mam, by Jean's parents, by Touie's mother, by my brother and sisters. Until yesterday, by you. When have I ever failed in loyalty to any member of my family? And when before have I appealed to them?'

'And if your wife heard of yesterday's behaviour?'

'She will not. She cannot.'

'Arthur. There is always gossip. There is always the tattle of maids and servants. People write anonymous letters. Journalists drop hints in newspapers.'

'Then I shall sue. Or, more likely, I shall knock the fellow down.'

'Which would be a further act of recklessness. Besides, you cannot knock down an anonymous letter.'

'Hornung, this conversation is fruitless. Evidently you grant yourself a higher sense of honour than you do me. If a vacancy occurs as head of the family, I shall consider your application.'

'Quis custodiet, Arthur? Who tells the head of the family he is at fault?'

'Hornung, for the last time. I shall state the matter plainly. I am a man of honour. My name, and the family's name, mean everything to me. Jean Leckie is a woman of the utmost honour, and the utmost virtue. The relationship is platonic. It always will be. I shall remain Touie's husband, and treat her with honour, until the coffin lid closes over one or the other of us.'

Arthur is used to making definitive statements which conclude discussions. He thinks he has made another, but Hornung is still shuffling about like a batsman at the crease.

'It seems to me,' he replies, 'that you attach too much importance to whether these relations are platonic or not. I can't see that it makes much difference. What is the difference?'

Arthur stands up. 'What is the difference?' he bellows. He does not care if his sister is resting, if little Oscar Arthur is taking a nap, if the servant has her ear to the door. 'It's all the difference in the world! It's the difference between innocence and guilt, that's what it is.'

'I disagree, Arthur. There is what you think and what the world thinks. There is what you believe and what the world believes. There is what you know and what the world knows. Honour is not just a matter of internal good feeling, but also of external behaviour.'

'I will not be lectured on the subject of honour,' Arthur roars. 'I will not. I will not. And especially not by a man who writes a thief for a hero.'

He takes his hat from the peg and crushes it down to his ears. Well, that is that, he decides, that is that. The world is either for you or against you. And it makes things clearer, at least, to see how a prissy prosecuting counsel goes about his business.

Despite this disapproval – or perhaps to prove it misconceived – Arthur begins, very cautiously, to introduce Jean into the social life of Undershaw. He has made the acquaintance in London of a charming family called the Leckies, who have a country place in Crowborough; Malcolm Leckie, the son, is a splendid fellow with a sister called – what is it now? And so Jean's name appears in the Undershaw visitors' book, always beside that of her brother or one of her parents. Arthur cannot claim to be entirely at his ease when uttering sentences such as, 'Malcolm Leckie said he might motor over with his sister', but they are sentences that have to be uttered if he is not to go mad. And on these occasions – a large lunch party, a tennis afternoon – he is never entirely sure his behaviour is natural. Has he been over-attentive to Touie, and did she notice? Was he too stiffly correct with Jean, and might she have taken offence? But the problem is his to be borne. Touie never gives an indication that she finds anything amiss. And Jean – bless her – behaves with an ease and decorum which reassures him that nothing will go wrong. She never seeks him out in private, never slips a lover's note into his hand. At times, it is true, he thinks she is making a show of flirting with him. But when he considers it afterwards, he decides that she is deliberately behaving as she would do if they knew one another no better than they were pretending to. Perhaps the best way to show a wife that you have no designs on her husband is to flirt with him in front of her. If so, that is remarkably clever thinking.

And twice a year, they are able to escape to Masongill together. They arrive and leave by separate trains, like weekend guests who just happen to coincide. Arthur stays in his mother's cottage, while Jean is lodged with Mr and Mrs Denny at Parr Bank Farm. On the Saturday they sup at Masongill House. The Mam presides at Waller's table, as she always has, and presumably always will.

Except that things are no longer as simple as they were when the Mam first came here – not that they were ever simple then. For Waller has somehow managed to get himself married. Miss Ada Anderson, a clergyman's daughter from St Andrews, came to Thornton Vicarage as governess, and, so village gossip asserts, instantly set her cap at the master of Masongill House. She succeeded in marrying the man, only to find – and here gossip turned moralizing – that she could not change him. For the new husband had no intention of letting mere matrimony alter the way of life he had established. To be specific: he visits the Mam as often as he ever did; he dines with her en tête-à-tête; and he has a special bell installed at the back door of her cottage, which only he is allowed to ring. The Waller marriage does not bring forth children.

Mrs Waller never sets foot in Masongill Cottage, and absents herself when the Mam comes to sup at the House. If Waller desires that woman to preside, then so be it, but her authority at the table will not be recognized by the mistress of the house. Mrs Waller increasingly busies herself with her Siamese cats and a rose garden laid out with the rigour of a parade ground or vegetable plot. During a brief encounter with Arthur she showed herself both shy and stand-offish: the fact that he came from Edinburgh and she from St Andrews was no ground for intimacy, her manner suggested.

And so the four of them – Waller, the Mam, Arthur and Jean – sit round the supper table together. Food is brought and taken away, glasses shine in the candlelight, the talk is of books, and everyone behaves as if Waller were still a bachelor. From time to time, Arthur's eye is caught by the silhouette of a cat slipping along the wall and keeping well clear of Waller's boot. A sinuous form, easing its way through the shadows, like the memory of a wife discreetly absenting herself. Does every marriage have its own damn secret? Is there never anything straightforward at the heart of it all?

Still, Arthur long ago accepted that Waller would have to be endured. And since he cannot be with Jean all the time, he is content to golf with Waller. For a short and scholarly type, the master of Masongill House has a neat enough game. He lacks distance, of course, but is rather tidier, it has to be admitted, than Arthur, who still tends to despatch the ball in improbable directions. Apart from golf, there is decent shooting to be had in Waller's woods – partridge, grouse and rooks. The two men also go ferreting together. For five shillings the butcher's boy will arrive with his three ferrets and work them all morning to Waller's satisfaction, scaring up the contents of numerous rabbit pies.

But then there are the hours earned by such dutiful endeavour – the hours alone with Jean. They take the Mam's pony-and-dog cart and drive to nearby villages; they explore the range of wold and fell and sudden valleys north of Ingleton. Though Arthur's returns here are never uncomplicated – the taint of kidnap and betrayal will always linger – the role of tourist agent comes to him naturally and full-heartedly. He shows Jean the Twiss Valley and Pecca Falls, the gorge of the Doe and Beezley Falls. He watches her nerveless on a bridge sixty feet above Yew Tree Gorge. They climb Ingleborough together, and he cannot prevent himself feeling how good it is for a man to have a healthy young woman at his side. He is making no comparison, impugning nobody, just grateful that they do not have to make constant frustrating halts and rests. At the top, he plays archaeologist and points out the vestiges of the Brigantian stronghold; then topographer as they look west towards Morecambe, St George's Channel and the Isle of Man, while far to the northwest the Lake mountains and the Cumbrian ranges discreetly show themselves.

Inevitably, there are constraints and awkwardnesses. They may be far from home, but decorum cannot be abandoned; Arthur is, even here, a well-known figure, while the Mam has her position in local society. So a glance is sometimes required to rein in a certain tendency to candour and expressiveness on Jean's part. And though Arthur is more free to articulate his devotion, he cannot always feel as a lover should – like a man freshly invented. They are driving through Thornton one day, Jean's arm resting on his, the sun high in the sky and the prospect of an afternoon alone together, when she says,

'What a pretty church, Arthur. Stop, let us go in.'

He acts deaf for a moment, then replies, rather stiffly, 'It is not so pretty. Only the tower is original. Most of it is no more than thirty years old. It is all specious restoration.'

Jean does not press her interest, deferring to Arthur's gruff judgement as chief tourist agent. He snaps the reins against the idiosyncratic Mooi, and they drive on. It does not seem the moment to tell her that the church was no more than fifteen years restored when he walked down its aisle, a newly married man, with Touie's hand on his arm just where Jean's is now.

His return to Undershaw this time is not without guilt.

Arthur's way of being a father is to leave the children to their mother's care and then descend from time to time with sudden plans and presents. It seems to him that being a father is like being a slightly more responsible brother. You protect your children, you provide for them, you set an example; beyond that, you make them understand what they are, which is children, that is to say imperfect, even defective, adults. Yet he is also a generous man, and does not believe it necessary or morally improving for them to be deprived of what he was deprived of as a boy. At Hindhead, as at Norwood, there is a tennis ground; also a rifle range behind the house, where Kingsley and Mary are encouraged to improve their marksmanship. In the garden he installs a monorail, which skims and swoops through the hollows and rises of his four acres. Driven by electricity and stabilized by gyroscope, the monorail is the transport of the future. His friend Wells is certain of this, and Arthur agrees.

He buys himself a Roc motorbicycle, which proves mightily insubordinate, and which Touie will not allow the children near; then a chain-driven twelve-horse-power Wolseley, which is much applauded and does regular damage to the gateposts. This new motoring machine has rendered his carriage and horses redundant; though when he mentions this obvious fact to the Mam, she is outraged. You cannot put a family crest on a mere machine, she argues, let alone one which suffers the regular indignity of breaking down.

Kingsley and Mary are granted liberties not available to most of their friends. In summer they go barefoot, and may roam anywhere within a five-mile radius of Undershaw as long as they are home for meals, clean and tidy. Arthur has no objection when they make a pet of a hedgehog. On Sundays he will often announce that fresh air is better for the soul than liturgy, and enlist one of them as his caddie; a ride in the high dogcart to Hankley Golf Course, an erratic progress with a heavy golf bag, and then the reward of hot buttered toast in the clubhouse. Their father will readily explain things to them, though not always the things they need or want to know; and he does so from a great height, even when he is on his knees beside them. He encourages self-sufficiency, sports, riding; he gives Kingsley books about great battles in world history, and warns him of the perils of military unpreparedness.

Arthur's forte is solving things, but he cannot solve his children. None of their friends or schoolmates has a private monorail; yet Kingsley, with infuriating politeness, lets slip that it does not go fast enough, and perhaps the carriages should be bigger. Mary, meanwhile, climbs trees in a manner incompatible with female modesty. They are not bad children in any way; as far as he can assess the matter, they are good children. But even when they are well-mannered and properly behaved, what Arthur has not counted on is their relentlessness. It is as if they are always expectant – though of what, he cannot tell, and he doubts they can either. They are expectant of something he cannot provide.

Arthur privately thinks that Touie should have taught them more discipline; but this is a reproach he cannot make, except in the mildest terms. And so the children grow up between his erratic authoritarianism and her benign approving. When Arthur is in residence at Undershaw, he wants to work; and when he stops work, he wants to play golf or cricket, or have a quiet 200-up with Woodie on the billiards table. He has provided the family with comfort, security and money; in exchange he expects peace.

He does not get peace; still less from inside himself. When there is no chance of seeing Jean for a while, he tries to bring her close by doing what she would like doing. Because she is a keen horsewoman, he enlarges his stable at Undershaw from one horse to six, and begins riding to hounds. Because Jean is musical, Arthur decides to learn the banjo, a decision Touie greets with her normal indulgence. Arthur now plays the Bombardon tuba and the banjo, though neither instrument is famed for its ability to accompany a classically trained mezzo-soprano voice. Sometimes he and Jean arrange to read the same book while they are apart – Stevenson, Scott's poems, Meredith; each likes to imagine the other on the same page, sentence, phrase, word, syllable.

Touie's preferred reading is The Imitation of Christ. She has her faith, her children, her comfort, her quiet occupations. Arthur's guilt ensures that he behaves towards her with the utmost consideration and gentleness. Even when her saintly optimism seems to border on a monstrous complacency, and he feels a rage gathering within him, he knows he cannot inflict it upon her. To his shame, he inflicts it upon his children, upon servants, caddies, employees of the railway and idiot journalists. He remains utterly dutiful towards Touie, utterly in love with Jean; yet in other parts of his life he becomes harder and more irritable. Patientia vincit reads the admonition in stained glass. Yet he feels he is growing a stony carapace. His natural expression is turning into a prosecutor's stare. He looks through others accusingly, because he is so used to looking through himself.

He begins to think of himself geometrically, as being located at the centre of a triangle. Its points are the three women of his life, its sides the iron bars of duty. Naturally, he has placed Jean at the apex, with Touie and the Mam at the base. But sometimes the triangle seems to rotate around him, and then his head spins.

Jean never offers the slightest complaint or reproach. She tells him that she cannot, will not, ever love another person; that waiting for him is not a trial but a joy; that she is entirely happy; that their hours together are the central truth of her life.

'My darling,' he says, 'do you think there was ever such a love story as ours since the world began?'

Jean feels her eyes fill with tears. At the same time, she is a little shocked. 'Arthur dearest, it is not a sporting competition.'

He accepts the rebuke. 'Even so, how many people have had their love tested as we have? I should think our case was about unique.'

'Does not every couple think their case unique?'

'It is a common delusion. Whereas with us-'

'Arthur!' Jean does not think boastfulness appropriate to love; she is inclined to find it vulgar.

'Even so,' he persists, 'even so I feel sometimes – no often – that there is a Guardian Spirit watching over us.'

'So do I,' Jean agrees.

Arthur does not find the notion of a Guardian Spirit fanciful, or even a banality. He finds it plausible and real.

Nevertheless, he needs an earthly witness to their love. He needs to offer proof. He takes to forwarding Jean's love letters to the Mam. He does not ask permission, or regard this as breaching a confidence. He needs it to be known that their feelings for one another are still as fresh as ever, and their trials not in vain. He tells the Mam to destroy the letters, and suggests a choice of method. She may either burn them, or – preferably – tear them into tiny pieces and scatter them among the flowers at Masongill Cottage.

Flowers. Each year, without fail, on the 15th of March, Jean receives a single snowdrop with a note from her beloved Arthur. A white flower once a year for Jean, and white lies all the year round for his wife.

And all the time, Arthur's fame increases. He is a clubman, a diner-out, a public figure. He becomes an authority on worlds beyond literature and medicine. He stands for Parliament as a Liberal Unionist in Edinburgh Central, where defeat is tempered by the recognition that much of politics is a mudbath. His views are canvassed, his support counted on. He is popular. He becomes more popular when he reluctantly submits to the joint will of the Mam and the British reading public: he resuscitates Sherlock Holmes and despatches him in the footprints of an enormous hound.

When the South African War breaks out, Arthur volunteers as a medical officer. The Mam does everything to dissuade him: she thinks his large frame a sure target for the Boer bullet; further, she judges the war nothing but a dishonourable scramble for gold. Arthur disagrees. It is his duty to go; he is acknowledged to have the strongest influence over young men – especially young sporting men – of anyone in England bar Kipling. He also thinks that this war is worth a white lie or two: the nation is getting into a fight which is a rightful one.

He leaves Tilbury on the Oriental. He is to be looked after on his adventure by Cleeve, the butler from Undershaw. Jean has filled his cabin with flowers, but will not come to say farewell; she cannot face a parting amid the thronged and thumping cheerfulness of a transport. As the whistle sounds for visitors to leave the ship the Mam bids him a tight-mouthed goodbye.

'I wish Jean had come,' he says, a small boy in a hulking suit.

'She is in the crowd,' the Mam replies. 'Somewhere. Hiding. She could not trust her feelings, she said.'

And with that she goes. Arthur rushes to the rail, furious and impotent; he watches his mother's white cap as if it will lead him to Jean. The gangplank is withdrawn, the ropes unslung; the Oriental pulls away, the hooter bellows and Arthur can see nothing and nobody through his tears. He lies down in his floral, fragrant cabin. The triangle, the triangle with iron bars, whirls inside his head, until it comes to rest with Touie at its apex. Touie, who instantly and devotedly approved this project, like every other he has ever undertaken; Touie, who asked him to write, but only if he has time, and who made no fuss. Dear Touie.

On the voyage out, his mood slowly lifts, as he begins to understand more fully why he has come. As a duty and example, of course; but also for selfish reasons. He has become a pampered and rewarded fellow, who needs some cleansing of the spirit. He has been safe too long, has lost muscle, and requires danger. He has been among women too long, and too confusingly, and yearns for the world of men. When the Oriental docks to take on coal at Cape de Verde, the Middlesex Yeomanry instantly organizes a cricket match on the first piece of flattened ground they can find. Arthur watches the game – against the staff of the telegraph station – with joy in his heart. There are rules for pleasure and rules for work. Rules, orders given and received, and a clear purpose. That is what he has come for.

At Bloemfontein the hospital tents are on the cricket field; the main ward is the pavilion. He sees much death; though more men are lost to enteric than to the Boer bullet. He takes five days' leave to follow the army's advance north, across the Vet river towards Pretoria. On his return, south of Brandfort, his party is stopped by a Basuto on a shaggy mount, who tells them of a British soldier lying wounded at some two hours' distance. They buy the fellow as a guide for a florin. There is a long ride through maize fields then out across the veldt. The wounded Englishman turns out to be a dead Australian: short, muscular, with a yellow waxen face. No. 410, New South Wales Mounted Infantry, now dismounted, his horse and his rifle gone. He has bled to death from a stomach wound. He lies with his pocket watch set up before him; he must have seen his life tick away by the minute. The watch has stopped at one o'clock in the morning. Beside him stands his empty water bottle, with a red ivory chessman balanced on the top of it. The other chessmen – more likely to be loot from a Boer farmstead than a soldier's pastime – are in his haversack. They gather his effects: a bandolier, a stylograph pen, a silk handkerchief, a clasp-knife, the Waterbury watch, plus £2 6s. 6d. in a frayed purse. The sticky body is slung over Arthur's horse, and a swarm of flies attends them on the two-mile ride to the nearest telegraph post. There they leave No. 410, New South Wales Mounted Infantry, for burial.

Arthur has seen all kinds of death in South Africa, but this is the one he will always remember. A fair fight, open air, and a great cause – he can imagine no better death.

On his return, his patriotic accounts of the war bring approval from the highest ranks of society. It is the interregnum between the old Queen's death and the new King's coronation. He is invited to dine with the future Edward VII and seated beside him. It is made clear that a knighthood is on offer in the Coronation Honours List if Dr Conan Doyle would care to accept it.

But Arthur does not care to. A knighthood is the badge of a provincial city mayor. The big men do not accept such baubles. Imagine Rhodes or Kipling or Chamberlain accepting such a thing. Not that he considers himself their equal; but why should his standards be lower than theirs? A knighthood is the sort of thing fellows like Alfred Austin and Hall Caine grab at – if they are lucky enough to be given the chance.

The Mam is both disbelieving and furious. What has it all been for, if not for this? Here is the boy who blazoned cardboard shields in her Edinburgh kitchen, who was taught each step of his ancestry back to the Plantagenets. Here is the man whose carriage harness bears the family crest, whose hallway celebrates his forebears in stained glass. Here is the boy who was taught the rules of chivalry and the man who practises them, who went to South Africa because of the fighting blood in him – the blood of Percy and Pack, Doyle and Conan. How dare he decline to become a knight of the realm, when his whole life has been aimed towards such a consummation?

The Mam bombards him with letters; to every argument, Arthur has a counter-argument. He insists that they drop the matter. The letters cease; he pronounces himself as relieved as Mafeking. And then she arrives at Undershaw. The whole house knows why she has come, this small, white-capped matriarch who is the more dominant for never raising her voice.

She lets him wait. She does not take him aside and suggest a walk. She does not knock on his study door. She leaves him alone for two days, knowing how the wait will operate on his nerves. Then, on the morning of her departure, she stands in the hallway with the light streaming through the glass escutcheons which shamefully omit the Foleys of Worcestershire, and asks a question.

'Has it not occurred to you that to refuse a knighthood would be an insult to the King?'

'I tell you, I cannot do it. As a matter of principle.'

'Well,' she says, looking up at him with those grey eyes which strip him of years and fame. 'If you wish to show your principles by an insult to the King, no doubt you can't.'

And so, with the week-long Coronation bells still echoing, Arthur is herded into a velvet-roped pen at Buckingham Palace. After the ceremony he finds himself next to Professor – now Sir – Oliver Lodge. They might discuss electromagnetic radiation, or the relative motion of matter and ether, or even their shared admiration for the new monarch. Instead, the two new Edwardian knights talk about telepathy, telekinesis and the reliability of mediums. Sir Oliver is convinced that the physical and the psychical are as close as the shared letters of the two words suggest. Indeed, having recently retired as president of the Physical Society, he is now president of the Psychical Society.

They debate the relative merits of Mrs Piper and Eusapia Paladino, and whether Florence Cook is more than just a skilful fraud. Lodge describes attending the Cambridge sittings, at which Paladino was put through her paces, under strictest conditions, in a sequence of nineteen séances. He has seen her produce ectoplasmic forms; also guitars playing themselves as they float through the air. He has watched a jar full of jonquils being conveyed from a table at the far end of the room, and being held, without any palpable means of support, beneath each of the sitters' noses in turn.

'If I were to play devil's advocate, Sir Oliver, and say that conjurers have offered to reproduce her exploits, and in some cases have succeeded in doing so, how would you reply?'

'I would reply that it is indeed possible that Paladino resorts to trickery on occasion. For instance, there are times when the expectation of the sitters is great and the spirits prove unforthcoming. The temptation is plain. But this does not mean that the spirits which do move through her are not genuine and true.' He pauses. 'You know what they say, Doyle, the scoffers? They say: from the study of protoplasm to the study of ectoplasm. And I reply: then remember all those who did not believe in protoplasm at the time.'

Arthur chuckles. 'And may I ask where you currently stand?'

'Where I stand? I have been researching and experimenting for nearly twenty years now. There is still much work to be done. But I would conclude, on the basis of my findings so far, that it is more than possible – indeed probable – that the mind survives the physical dissolution of the body.'

'You give me great heart.'

'We may soon be able to prove,' continues Lodge with a collusive twinkle, 'that it is not just Mr Sherlock Holmes who is able to escape evident and apparent death.'

Arthur smiles politely. That fellow is going to dog him to the gates of St Peter, or whatever the equivalent turns out to be in the new realm that is slowly being made palpable.

There is little far niente in Arthur's life. He is not a man to spend a summer's afternoon in a deckchair with a hat pulled down over his face, listening to the bees bothering the lupins. He would make as hopeless an invalid as Touie makes a successful one. His objection to inactivity is not so much moral – in his view, the Devil makes work for hands both idle and occupied – as temperamental. His life contains great bouts of mental activity, followed by great bouts of physical activity; in between he fits his social and family life, both of which he takes at a lick. He even sleeps as if it were part of life's business, rather than an interlude from it.

So he has few means of recourse when the machine overstrains itself. He is incapable of recuperating with an idle fortnight on the Italian lakes, or even a few days in the potting shed. He plunges instead into moods of depression and lassitude, which he seeks to hide from Touie and Jean. He shares them only with the Mam.

She suspects that he is more than usually troubled when he proposes a visit on his own account, rather than as a way of making a rendezvous with Jean. Arthur takes the 10.40 from St Pancras to Leeds. In the luncheon car, he finds himself thinking, as he increasingly does, about his father. He now acknowledges the harshness of his youthful judgement; perhaps age, or fame, has made him more forgiving. Or is it that there are times when Arthur feels on the edge of nervous collapse himself, when it seems that the normal human condition is to be on the edge of nervous collapse, and that it is mere good fortune, or some quirk of breeding, that keeps anyone from falling? Perhaps if he did not have his mother's blood in him, he might go – might already have gone – the way of Charles Doyle. And now Arthur begins to realize something for the first time: that the Mam has never criticized her husband, before or since his death. She does not need to, some might say. But even so: she, who always speaks her mind, has never been heard to say ill of the man who caused her so much embarrassment and suffering.

It is still light when he arrives at Ingleton. In the early evening they climb up through Bryan Waller's woodland and emerge on to the moor, gently scattering a few wild ponies. The large, erect, tweeded son aims words down at the red coat and neat white cap of his sure-footed mother. From time to time she picks up sticks for the fire. He finds this habit of hers vexing – as if he could not afford to buy her a cord of the finest firewood whenever she needs it.

'You see,' he says, 'there is a path here, and over there is Ingleborough, and we know that if we climb Ingleborough we can see across to Morecambe. And there are rivers whose course we can follow, which always flow in the same direction.'

The Mam does not know what to make of these topographical platitudes. They are most unlike Arthur.

'And were we to miss the path and get lost on the Wolds, we could use a compass and a map, which are easily obtainable. And even at night there are stars.'

'That is all true, Arthur.'

'No, it is banal. It is not worth saying.'

'Then tell me what you wish to say.'

'You brought me up,' he replies. 'There was never a son more devoted to his mother. I say that not as self-praise, merely as a statement of fact. You formed me, you gave me my sense of myself, you gave me my pride and what moral faculties I have. And there is still no son more devoted to his mother.

'I grew up surrounded by sisters. Annette, poor dear Annette, God rest her soul. Lottie, Connie, Ida, Dodo. I love them all in their different ways. I know them inside out. As a young man, I was not unfamiliar with female company. I did not debase myself as many another fellow did, but I was neither an ignoramus nor a prude.

'And yet… and yet I have come to think that women – other women – are like distant lands. Except that when I have been to distant lands – out on the veldt in Africa – I have always been able to find my bearings. Perhaps I am not making sense.'

He stops. He needs a reply. 'We are not so distant, Arthur. We are more like a neighbouring county which you have somehow forgotten to explore. And when you do, you are not sure if the place is much more advanced or much more primitive. Oh yes, I know how some men think. And perhaps it is both and perhaps it is neither. So tell me what you wish to say.'

'Jean is struck down with bouts of low spirits. Perhaps that is not the right way to describe them. It is physical – she has migraines – but it is more a kind of moral depression. She behaves, she talks as if she has done some awful thing. I never love her more than at such moments.' He attempts to take a deep breath of Yorkshire air, but it sounds more like a great sigh. 'And then I fall into black moods myself, but I merely loathe and despise myself for them.'

'And at such times no doubt she loves you just as much.'

'I never tell her. Perhaps she guesses. It is not my way.'

'I would not expect otherwise.'

'I think at times I shall run mad.' He says it calmly but bluntly, like a man giving a weather report. After a few paces, she reaches up and slips her arm through his. It is not one of her gestures, and it takes him by surprise.

'Or if not run mad, die of a stroke. Explode like the boiler of a tramp steamer and just sink beneath the waves with all hands.'

The Mam does not answer. It is not necessary to refuse his simile, or even to ask if he has seen a doctor for chest pains.

'When the fit is on me, I doubt everything. I doubt I ever loved Touie. I doubt I love my children. I doubt my literary capability. I doubt Jean loves me.'

This does call for an answer. 'You do not doubt that you love her?'

'That, never. That, never. Which makes it worse. If I could doubt that, then I could doubt everything and sink happily into misery. No, that is always there, it has me in its monster grip.'

'Jean does love you, Arthur. I am quite certain of it. I know her. And I have read her letters that you send.'

'I think she does. I believe she does. How can 1 know she does? That's the question that tears at me when this mood descends. I think it, I believe it, but how can I ever know it? If only I could prove it, if either of us could prove it.'

They stop at a gate, and look down a tufted slope to the roof and chimneys of Masongill.

'But you are certain of your love for her, just as she is certain of her love for you?'

'Yes, but that is one-sided, that is not knowing, that is not proof.'

'Women often prove their love in a way that has been done many times.'

Arthur darts a glance down at his mother; but she is gazing resolutely ahead. All he can see is a curve of bonnet and the tip of her nose.

'But that is not proof either. That is just being desperate for evidence. If I made Jean my mistress it would not be proof that we loved one another.'

'I agree.'

'It might prove the opposite, that we are weakening in our love. It sometimes seems that honour and dishonour lie so close together, closer than I ever imagined.'

'I never taught you that honour was an easy path. What would it be worth if that was the case? And perhaps proof is impossible anyway. Perhaps the best we can manage is thinking and believing. Perhaps we only truly know in the hereafter.'

'Proof normally depends upon action. What is singular and damnable about our situation is that proof depends upon non-action. Our love is something separate, apart from the world, unknown to it. It is invisible, impalpable to the world, yet to me, to us, utterly visible, utterly palpable. It may not exist in a vacuum, but it does exist in a place where the atmosphere is different: lighter or heavier, I am never sure which. And somewhere outside of time. It has always been like this, from the beginning. That is what we immediately recognized. That we have this rare love, which sustains me – us – utterly.'

'And yet?'

'And yet. I scarcely dare voice the thought. It comes into my head when I am at the lowest. I find myself wondering… I find myself wondering: what if our love is not as I think, is not something existing outside time? What if everything I have believed about it is wrong? What if it is not special in any way, or at least, special only in the fact of being unadvertised and… unconsummated? And what if – what if Touie dies, and Jean and I are free, and our love can finally be advertised and sanctified, and brought out into the world, and what if at this point I discover that time has been quietly doing its work without my noticing, its work of gnawing and corroding and undermining? What if I then discover – what if we then discover – that I do not love her as I thought, or that she does not love me as she thought? What would there be to be done then? What?'

Sensibly, the Mam does not reply.

Arthur confides everything to the Mam: his deepest fears, his greatest elations, and all the intermediate tribulations and joys of the material world. What he can never allude to is his deepening interest in spiritualism, or spiritism as he prefers it. The Mam, having left Catholic Edinburgh behind, has become, by a sheer process of attendance, a member of the Church of England. Three of her children have now been married at St Oswald's: Arthur himself, Ida and Dodo. She is instinctively opposed to the psychic world, which for her represents anarchy and mumbo-jumbo. She holds that people can only come to any understanding of their lives if society makes clear its truths to them; further, that its religious truths must be expressed through an established institution, be it Catholic or Anglican. And then there is the family to consider. Arthur is a knight of the realm; he has lunched and dined with the King; he is a public figure – she repeats back to him his boast that he is second only to Kipling in his influence on the healthy, sporting young men of the country. What if it came out that he was involved in séances and suchlike? It would dish all chance of a peerage.

In vain does he attempt to relate his conversation with Sir Oliver Lodge at Buckingham Palace. Surely the Mam must admit that Lodge is an entirely level-headed and scientifically reputable individual, as is proven by the fact that he has just been appointed first Principal of Birmingham University. But the Mam will not admit anything; in this area she refuses adamantinely to indulge her son.

Arthur fears to bring the matter up with Touie, in case it upsets the preternatural calm of her existence. She has, he knows, a simple trustingness in matters of faith. She presumes that after she dies she will go to a Heaven whose exact nature she cannot describe, and remain there in a condition she cannot imagine, until such time as Arthur comes to join her, followed in due course by their children, whereupon all of them will dwell together in a superior version of Southsea. Arthur thinks it unfair to disturb any of these presumptions.

It is harder still for him that he cannot talk to Jean, with whom he wants to share everything, from the last collar stud to the last semicolon. He has tried, but Jean is suspicious – or perhaps frightened – of anything touching the psychic world. Further, her dislike is expressed in ways Arthur finds untypical of her loving nature.

Once he tries recounting, with some tentativeness and a conscious suppression of zeal, his experience at a séance. Almost at once he notices a look of the sharpest disapproval come over those lovely features.

'What is it, my darling?'

'But Arthur,' she says, 'they are such common people.'

'Who are?'

'Those people. Like gypsy women who sit in fairground booths and tell your fortune with cards and tea leaves. They're just… common.'

Arthur finds such snobbery, especially in one he loves, unacceptable. He wants to say that it is the splendid lower-middle-class folk who have always been the spiritual peers of the nation: you need look no farther than the Puritans, whom many, of course, misprized. He wants to say that around the Sea of Galilee there were doubtless many who judged Our Lord Jesus Christ a little common. The Apostles, like most mediums, had little formal education. Naturally, he says none of this. He feels ashamed of his sudden irritation, and changes the subject.

And so he has to go outside his iron-sided triangle. He does not approach Lottie: he does not want to risk her love in any way, the more so as she helps nurse Touie. Instead, he goes to Connie. Connie, who only the other day, it seems, was wearing her hair down her back like the cable of a man-o'-war and breaking hearts across Continental Europe; Connie, who has settled all too solidly into the role of Kensington mother; Connie, moreover, who dared oppose him that day at Lord's. He has never solved the question of whether Connie changed Hornung's mind, or Hornung Connie's; but whichever way round, he has come to admire her for it.

He visits her one afternoon when Hornung is away; tea is served in her little upstairs sitting room, where once she heard him out about Jean. Strange to realize that his little sister is now nearer forty than thirty. But her age suits her. She is not quite as decorative as she once was, she is large, healthy and good-humoured. Jerome was not wrong to have called her a Brünnhilde when they were in Norway. It is as if, with the years, she has grown more robust in an attempt to counterbalance Hornung's ill-health.

'Connie,' he begins gently, 'Do you ever find yourself wondering what happens after we die?'

She looks at him sharply. Is there bad news about Touie? Is the Mam not well?

'It is a general enquiry,' he adds, sensing her alarm.

'No,' she replies. 'At least, very little. I worry about others dying. Not about myself. I did once, but it changes when you are a mother. I believe in the teachings of the Church. My Church. Our Church. The one you and the Mam left. I haven't the time to believe anything else.'

'Do you fear death?'

Connie reflects on this. She fears Willie's death – she knew the severity of his asthma when she married him, knew he would always be delicate – but that is fearing his absence, and the loss of his companionship. 'I can hardly like the idea,' she replies. 'But I'll cross that bridge when I come to it. You are sure you are not leading up to something?'

Arthur gives a brief shake of the head. 'So your position could be summed up as Wait and See?'

'I suppose so. Why?'

'Dear Connie – your attitude to the eternal is so English.'

'What a strange thought.'

Connie is smiling, and seems unlikely to shy away. Even so, Arthur doesn't know quite how to begin.

'When I was a lad at Stonyhurst, I had a friend called Partridge. He was a little younger than me. A fine catcher in the slips. He liked to bamboozle me with theological argument. He would choose examples of the Church's most illogical doctrines and ask me to justify them.'

'So he was an atheist?'

'Not at all. He was a stronger Catholic than I ever was. But he was trying to convince me of the truths of the Church by arguing against them. It turned out to be a misconceived tactic.'

'I wonder what has become of Partridge.'

Arthur smiles. 'As it happens, he is second cartoonist at Punch.'

He pauses. No, he must go directly at things. That is his way, after all.

'Many people – most people – are terrified of death, Connie. They're not like you in that respect. But they're like you in that they have English attitudes. Wait and see, cross that bridge when they come to it. But why should that reduce the fear? Why should uncertainty not increase it? And what is the point of life unless you know what happens afterwards? How can you make sense of the beginning if you don't know what the ending is?'

Connie wonders where Arthur is heading. She loves her large, generous, rumbustious brother. She thinks of him as Scottish practicality streaked with sudden fire.

'As I say, I believe what my Church teaches,' she replies. 'I see no alternative. Apart from atheism, which is mere emptiness and too depressing for words, and leads to socialism.'

'What do you think of spiritism?'

She knows that Arthur has been dabbling in psychic matters for years now. It is mentioned and half-mentioned behind his back.

'I suppose I mistrust it, Arthur.'

'Why?' He hopes Connie is not also going to prove a snob.

'Because I think it fraudulent.'

'You're right,' he answers, to her surprise. 'Much of it is. True prophets are always outnumbered by false – as Jesus Christ himself was. There is fraud, and trickery, even active criminal behaviour. There are some very dubious fellows muddying the water. Women too, I'm sorry to say.'

'Then that's what I think.'

'And it is not well explained at all. I sometimes think the world is divided into those who have psychic experiences but can't write, and those who can write but have no psychic experiences.'

Connie does not answer; she does not like the logical consequence of this sentence, which is sitting across from her, letting its tea go cold.

'But I said "much of it", Connie. Only "much of it" is fraudulent. If you visit a gold mine, do you find it filled with gold? No. Much of it – most of it – is base metal embedded in rock. You have to search for the gold.'

'I distrust metaphors, Arthur.'

'So do I. So do I. That is why I mistrust faith, which is the biggest metaphor of all. I have done with faith. I can only work with the clear white light of knowledge.'

Connie looks perplexed by this.

'The whole point of psychical research,' he explains, 'is to eliminate and expose fraud and deceit. To leave only what can be scientifically confirmed. If you eliminate the impossible, what is left, however improbable, must be the truth. Spiritism is not asking you to take a leap in the dark, or cross a bridge you have not yet come to.'

'So it is like Theosophy?' Connie is now nearing the extremity of her knowledge.

'Not like Theosophy. In the end, Theosophy is just another faith. As I say, I have done with faith.'

'And with Heaven and Hell?'

'You remember what the Mam told us – "Wear flannel next to your skin, and never believe in eternal punishment."'

'So everyone goes to Heaven? Sinners and the just alike? What incentive-'

Arthur cuts her off. He feels as if he is back arguing about the Tolley. 'Our spirits are not necessarily at peace after we pass over.'

'And God and Jesus? You do not believe in them?'

'Certainly. But not the God and the Jesus who are claimed by a Church which for centuries has been corrupt both spiritually and intellectually. And which demands of its followers the suspension of rational faculties.'

Connie now feels herself getting lost and also wonders if she should take offence. 'So what sort of Jesus do you believe in?'

'If you look at what it actually says in the Bible, if you ignore the way in which the text has been altered and misinterpreted to suit the will of the established Churches, it's quite clear that Jesus was a highly trained psychic or medium. The inner circle of the Apostles, especially Peter, James and John, were clearly chosen for their spiritist capabilities. The "miracles" of the Bible are merely – well, not merely, wholly – examples of Jesus's psychic powers.'

'The raising of Lazarus? The feeding of the five thousand?'

'There are medical mediums who claim to see through the body's walls. There are apport mediums who claim to transport objects through time and space. And Pentecost, when the angel of the Lord came down and they all spoke in tongues. What is that but a séance? It's the most exact description of a séance I've read!'

'So you've become an early Christian, Arthur?'

'Not to mention Joan of Arc. She was clearly a great medium.'

'Her too?'

He suspects she is now mocking him – it would be just like her; and this makes it easier, not harder, for him to explain things.

'Think of it this way, Connie. Imagine there are a hundred mediums at work. Imagine ninety-nine of them are frauds. This means, does it not, that one is true? And if one is true, and the psychic phenomena channelled through that medium are authentic, we have proved our case. We need only prove it once and it is proved for everybody and for all time.'

'Prove what?' Connie has been thrown by her brother's sudden use of 'we'.

'The survival of the spirit after death. One case, and we prove it for all humanity. Let me tell you about something that happened twenty years ago in Melbourne. It was well documented at the time. Two young brothers went out into the bay in their boat with an experienced seaman at the tiller. Sailing conditions were good, but alas they never returned. Their father was a Spiritualist, and after two days with no news he called in a well-known sensitive – that's a medium – to try and trace them. The sensitive was given some of the brothers' belongings, and managed by psychometry to provide an account of their movements. The last he could make out was that their boat was in great difficulty and confusion reigned. It seemed that they were inevitably going to be lost.

'I see that look in your eye, Connie, and I know what you are thinking – that you would not have needed a psychic to tell you that. But wait. Two days later, another séance was held with the same sensitive, and the two lads, who had been trained in spiritual knowledge, came through at once. They apologized to their mother, who had not wanted them to set off, and gave an account of the capsizing and of their death by water. They reported that they were now in exactly the conditions of brightness and happiness that their father's preaching had promised. And they even brought the seaman who had perished with them to say a few words.

'Towards the end of the contact, one of the lads told how the other brother's arm had been torn off by a fish. The medium asked if it had been a shark, and the boy replied that it was not like any shark he had ever seen. Now, all this was written down at the time and some of it published in the newspapers. Mark the sequel. Some weeks later a large shark of a rare deep-sea species, one unfamiliar to the fishermen who caught it, and quite unknown in the waters off Melbourne, was taken some thirty miles away. Inside it was the bone of a human arm. Also, a watch, some coins, and other articles which belonged to the boy.' He paused. 'Now, Connie, what do you make of that?'

Connie reflects for a while. What she makes of it is that her brother is confusing religion with his love of fixing things. He sees a problem – death – and he looks for a way of solving it: such is his nature. She also thinks Arthur's spiritualism is connected, though quite how she cannot work out, with his love of chivalry and romance and the belief in a golden age. But she confines her objections to a narrower basis.

'What I make of it, my dear brother, is that it is a wonderful story, and you are a wonderful storyteller, as we all know. I also think that I was not in Melbourne twenty years ago, and neither were you.'

Arthur does not mind being rebuffed. 'Connie, you are a great rationalist, and that is the first step towards becoming a spiritist.'

'I doubt you will convert me, Arthur.' It seems to Connie that he has just told her a revised version of Jonah and the Whale – though one in which the victims were less fortunate – but that to base any beliefs upon such a story would be as much an act of faith as it was for those who first heard the story of Jonah. At least the Bible is proposing a metaphor. Arthur, because he dislikes metaphor, sees a parable and chooses to take it literally. As if the parable of the Wheat and the Tares were mere horticultural advice.

'Connie, what if someone you knew and loved were to die. And afterwards that person made contact with you, spoke to you, told you something only you knew, some chance intimate detail which could not have been discovered through anyone's trickery?'

'Arthur, I think that is another bridge I shall cross if ever I come to it.'

'Connie, you English Connie. Wait and see, wait and see what turns up. Not for me. I'm all for action now.'

'You always have been, Arthur.'

'We shall be laughed at. It is a great cause, but it will not be a fair fight. You must expect to see your brother laughed at. Still, always remember: one case is all we need. One case and the whole thing is proven. Proven beyond all reasonable doubt. Proven beyond all scientific refutation. Think of that, Connie.'

'Arthur, your tea is now quite cold.'

And so, gradually, the years accrue. It is ten years since Touie fell ill, six since he met Jean. It is eleven years since Touie fell ill, seven since he met Jean. It is twelve years since Touie fell ill, eight since he met Jean. Touie remains cheerful, free of pain, and ignorant, he is sure, of the gentle conspiracy surrounding her. Jean remains in her flat, practises her voice, rides to hounds, makes chaperoned visits to Undershaw and unchaperoned ones to Masongill; she never swerves from insisting that what she has is enough because it is all her heart desires, and she leaves one safe child-bearing year behind her after another. The Mam remains his rock, his confessor, his reassurance. Nothing moves. Perhaps nothing ever will move, until one day the strain attacks his heart and he simply explodes and expires. There is no way out, that is the beastliness of his position; or rather, each beckoning exit is marked Misery. In Lasker's Chess Magazine he reads of a position called Zugzwang, in which the player is unable to move any piece in any direction to any square without making his already imperilled state worse. This is what Arthur's life feels like.

Sir Arthur's life, on the other hand, which is all most people see, is in royal shape. Knight of the realm, friend of the King, champion of the Empire, and Deputy Lieutenant of Surrey. A man constantly in public demand. One year he is asked to judge a Strong Man competition organized by Mr Sandow the bodybuilder at the Albert Hall. He and Lawes the sculptor are the two assessors, with Sandow himself as referee. Eighty competitors display their muscles to a packed hall in batches of ten. Eighty bursting leopardskins are whittled down to twenty-four, to twelve, to six, and then a final three. Those remaining are wonderful specimens, but one is a little short, and another a little clumsy, so they award the title, and with it a valuable gold statue, to a man from Lancashire called Murray. The judges and some chosen company are then rewarded with a late champagne supper. Emerging into the midnight streets, Sir Arthur notices Murray walking ahead of him, the statuette tucked casually beneath one powerful arm. Sir Arthur joins him, congratulates him anew, and, perceiving that he is a very simple country fellow, asks where he is intending to stay the night. Murray confides that he has no money at all, merely his return ticket to Blackburn, and is planning to walk the deserted streets until his train leaves in the morning. So Arthur takes him to Morley's Hotel, and instructs the staff to look after him. The next morning he finds Murray cheerfully holding court from his bed to awed maids and waiters, his award glinting on the pillow beside him. It looks the very picture of a happy outcome, but this is not the image that stays in Sir Arthur's mind. It is that of a man walking ahead of him alone; a man who has won a great prize and been acclaimed, a man with a statuette of gold under his arm and yet no money in his pocket, a man planning to walk the gas-lit streets in solitude until daybreak.

Then there is Conan Doyle's life, which is also in fine fettle. He is too professional and too energetic ever to suffer from writer's block for more than a day or two. He identifies a story, researches and plans it, then writes it out. He is quite clear about the writer's responsibilities: they are firstly, to be intelligible, secondly, to be interesting, and thirdly, to be clever. He knows his own abilities, and he also knows that in the end the reader is king. That is why Mr Sherlock Holmes was brought back to life, allowed to have escaped the Reichenbach Falls thanks to a knowledge of esoteric Japanese wrestling holds and an ability to scramble up sheer rock faces. If the Americans insist on offering five thousand dollars for a mere half-dozen new stories – and in return only for American rights – then what can Dr Conan Doyle do except raise his hands in surrender and allow himself to be manacled to the consulting detective for the foreseeable future? And the fellow has brought other rewards: the University of Edinburgh has made him an Honorary Doctor of Letters. He may never be a big man like Kipling, but as he walked in parade through the city of his birth, he felt at ease in those academic robes; more so, he has to admit, than in the quaint garb of a Deputy Lieutenant of Surrey.

And then there is his fourth life, the one where he is neither Arthur, nor Sir Arthur, nor Dr Conan Doyle; the life in which name is irrelevant, as is wealth and rank and outward display and bodily carapace; the world of the spirit. The sense that he has been born for something else grows with each year. It is not easy; it will never be easy. It is not like signing up for one of the established religions. It is new, and dangerous, and utterly important. If you were to become a Hindoo, it would be regarded by society as an eccentricity rather than a derangement. But if you are prepared to open yourself to the world of Spiritism, then you must also be prepared to endure the jocosities and shallow paradoxes with which the Press misleads the public. Yet what are the scoffers and cynics and penny-a-liners when set beside Crookes and Myers and Lodge and Alfred Russel Wallace?

Science is leading the way, and will bring the scoffers low as it always does. For who would have believed in radio waves? Who would have believed in X-rays? Who would have believed in argon and helium and neon and xenon, all of which have been discovered in the last years? The invisible and the impalpable, which lie just below the surface of the real, just beneath the skin of things, are increasingly being made visible and palpable. The world and its purblind inhabitants are at last learning to see.

Take Crookes. What does Crookes say? 'It is incredible but it is true.' The man whose work in physics and chemistry is everywhere admired for its precision and truth. The man who discovered thallium, who spent years investigating the properties of rarefied gases and rare earths. Who better to pronounce on this equally rarefied world, this new territory inaccessible to duller minds and cabined spirits? It is incredible, but it is true.

And then Touie dies. It is thirteen years since she fell ill, nine since he met Jean. Now, in the springtime of the year 1906, she begins to lapse into mild delirium. Sir Douglas Powell is immediately in attendance; paler, balder, but still the courtliest messenger of death. This time, there is no chance of reprieve, and Arthur must prepare himself for what has been so long foretold. The vigil begins. Undershaw's clattering monorail is stilled, the rifle range placed out of bounds, the tennis net taken down for the season. Touie remains without pain, and easy in her mind, as the spring flowers in her room change to those of early summer. Gradually, she slips into longer periods of delirium. The tubercle has gone to her brain; there is partial paralysis of her left side and half her face. The Imitation of Christ lies unopened; Arthur is in constant attendance.

To the end, she recognizes him. She says, 'Bless you,' and 'Thank you, dear,' and when he raises her in the bed, she murmurs, 'That's the ticket.' As June turns to July, she is clearly dying. On the day itself, Arthur is at her side; Mary and Kingsley watch in awkward fear, half-embarrassed by their mother's paralysed face. In silence they wait. At three in the morning, Touie dies holding Arthur's hand. She is forty-nine, Arthur forty-seven. He is much in her room after her death; standing by her body, he tells himself that he has done his best. He also knows that this abandoned husk, laid out on the bed, is not all there remains of Touie. This white and waxen thing is just something she has left behind.

In the days that follow, Arthur feels, beneath the febrile exaltation of the bereaved, a solid sense of duty performed. Touie is buried as Lady Doyle beneath a marble cross at Grayshott. Messages of sympathy come from the great and the humble; from King and parlourmaid, from his fellow writers and his far-flung readers, from London clubs and imperial outposts. Arthur is at first touched and honoured by the condolences, and then, as they continue, increasingly disturbed. What exactly has he done to deserve such heartfelt sentiments, let alone the assumptions behind them?

These expressions of true feeling make him feel a hypocrite. Touie has been the gentlest companion a man could possibly have. He remembers showing her the military trophies on Clarence Esplanade; he sees her with a ship's biscuit between her lips at the Victualling Yard; he waltzes her round the kitchen table when heavily pregnant with Mary; he whisks her off to frozen Vienna; he tucks a blanket round her in Davos, and waves towards a recumbent figure on an Egyptian hotel verandah before launching a golf ball across the sands towards the nearest Pyramid. He remembers her smile, and her goodness; but he also remembers that it is years since he could put his hand upon his heart and swear that he loved her. Not just since Jean came along, but before that too. He has loved her as best a man can, given that he did not love her.

He knows that he should spend the next days and weeks with his children, because that is what a grieving parent does. Kingsley is thirteen and Mary seventeen: ages which now surprise him. Part of him has frozen time at the day and the year when he met Jean – the day his heart was utterly brought to life, and also placed in a state of suspended animation. He must accustom himself to the notion that his children will soon be adults.

If he needs any confirmation of this, Mary soon provides it. Over tea one afternoon a few days after the funeral, she says to him, in an alarmingly grown-up voice, 'Father, when Mother was dying, she said that you would remarry.'

Arthur almost chokes on his cake. He feels his colour rising, his chest tightening; perhaps this is the seizure he has been half-expecting. 'Did she, by God?' Touie certainly never mentioned the subject to him.

'Yes. No, not exactly. What she said was…' and Mary pauses while her father feels cacophony in his head, turmoil in his guts '… what she said was that I was not to be shocked if you were to remarry, because that is what she would want for you.'

Arthur does not know what to think. Has some trap been laid for him, or does no trap exist? Did Touie after all suspect? Did she confide in their daughter? Was it a general remark, or a specific one? He has lived with so much damned uncertainty over the last nine years that he doubts he can bear any more.

'And did she…' Arthur tries to sound jocular, while realizing that this is not the right tone – but then there is no right tone – 'And did she have any particular candidate in mind?'

'Father!' Mary is evidently shocked by the very notion, as well as by his tone.

The conversation passes to safer ground. But it stays with Arthur through the following days, as he takes flowers to Touie's grave, as he stands, distracted, in her empty room, as he avoids his desk, and finds he cannot face the letters of condolence, the letters of true feeling, which continue to arrive. He has spent nine years protecting Touie from the knowledge of Jean's existence; nine years trying never to give her a moment's unhappiness. But perhaps these two desires are – always were – incompatible. He readily admits that women are not his area of expertise. Does a woman know when you are in love with her? He thinks so, he believes so, he knows so, because that is what Jean recognized, in that sunlit garden, even before he himself was aware of it. And if so, then does a woman know when you are no longer in love with her? And does a woman also know when you are in love with someone else? Nine years ago he devised an elaborate plot to protect Touie, involving all those around her; but perhaps in the end it was only a scheme to protect himself and Jean. Perhaps it was entirely selfish, and Touie saw through its fraudulence; perhaps she knew all along. Mary cannot suspect the full burden of Touie's message about remarrying, but it gets through to Arthur now. Maybe she knew from the start, watched Arthur's squalid rearrangements of the truth from her sickbed, understood and smiled at every mean little lie her husband told her, imagined him downstairs busy at the adulterer's telephone. She would have felt helpless to protest, because she could no longer be a wife to him in the fullest sense. And what if – now his suspicions become darker still – what if she knew about Jean's importance from the start, and went on guessing? What if she found herself obliged to welcome Jean to Undershaw while imagining her Arthur's mistress?

Arthur's mind, being both powerful and intransigent, pursues the matter further. His conversation with Mary has further ramifications than those he first saw. Touie's death, he now realizes, will not put an end to his deceits. For Mary must never be allowed to know that he has been in love with Jean for these past nine long years. Nor must Kingsley. Boys, it is said, often take the betrayal of their mother even harder than girls do.

He imagines finding the right moment, practising the words, then clearing his throat and trying to sound – what? – as if he is barely able himself to credit what he is about to say.

'Mary dear, you know what your mother said before she died? About it being possible that I might one day remarry. Well, I must inform you that, to my own considerable surprise, she is going to be proved right.'

Will he find himself saying words like these? And if so, when? Before the year is out? No, of course not. But next year, the year after? How quickly is the grieving widower allowed to fall in love again? He knows how society feels on the matter, but what do children feel – his children in particular?

And then he imagines Mary's questions. Who is she, Father? Oh, Miss Leckie. I met her when I was quite little, didn't I? And then we kept running into her. And then she started coming to Undershaw. I always thought she would have been married by now. Lucky for you she's still free. How old is she? Thirty-one? So was she on the shelf, Papa? I'm surprised no one would have her. And when did you realize you loved her, Father?

Mary is not a child any more. She may not expect her father to lie, but she will notice the slightest incongruity in his story. What if he blunders? Arthur despises those fellows who are good liars, who organize their emotional lives – their marriages, even – on the basis of what they can get away with, who tell a half-truth here, a full lie there. Arthur has always thundered the importance of truth-telling at his children; now he must play the fullest hypocrite. He must smile, and look shyly pleased, and act surprised, and concoct a mendacious romance about how he came to love Jean Leckie, and tell that lie to his own children, and then maintain it for the rest of his life. And he must ask others to do the same on his behalf.

Jean. Quite properly, she did not come to the funeral; she sent a letter of condolence, and a week or so later Malcolm drove her over from Crowborough. It was not the easiest of meetings. When they arrived, Arthur found he could not embrace her in front of her brother and so, on an instinct, he kissed her hand. It was the wrong gesture – there was something almost facetious about it – and it set a tone of awkwardness that would not go away. She behaved impeccably, as he knew she would; but he was at a loss. When Malcolm tactfully decided to inspect the garden, Arthur found himself casting around hopelessly, expecting guidance. But from whom? From Touie installed behind her tea service? He did not know what to say, and so he used his grief as a disguise for his maladroitness, for his lack of joy at seeing Jean's face. He was glad when Malcolm returned from his bogus horticultural expedition. They left soon afterwards, and Arthur felt wretched.

The triangle within which he has lived – frettingly but safely – for so long is now broken, and the new geometry frightens him. His grieving exaltation fades, and lethargy overtakes him. He wanders the grounds of Undershaw as if they had been laid out by a stranger long ago. He visits his horses, but does not want them saddled. He goes daily to Touie's grave, and returns exhausted. He imagines her comforting him, reassuring him that wherever the truth lies, she has always loved him and now forgives him; but this seems a vain and selfish thing to demand of a dead woman. He sits in his study for long hours, smoking and looking at the glittering, hollow trophies acquired by a sportsman and successful writer. All his baubles seem meaningless beside the fact of Touie's death.

He leaves all his correspondence to Wood. His secretary has long since learned to reproduce his employer's signature, his inscriptions, his turns of phrase, even his opinions. Let him be Sir Arthur Conan Doyle for a while – the name's owner has no desire to be himself. Wood may open everything, and discard or answer as he wishes.

He has no energy; he eats little. To be hungry at such a time would be an obscenity. He lies down; he cannot sleep. He has no symptoms, only a general and intense weakness. He consults his old friend and medical adviser Charles Gibbs, who has attended him since his South African days. Gibbs tells him it is everything and nothing; in other words, it is nerves.

Soon, it is more than nerves. His guts give way. This at least Gibbs can identify, even if there is little he can do about it. Some microbe must have got into his system at Bloemfontein or on the veldt, and it remains there, waiting to break out when he is at his weakest. Gibbs prescribes a sleeping draught. But he can do nothing about the other microbe abroad in his patient's system, which is equally unkillable; the microbe of guilt.

He always imagined that Touie's long illness would somehow prepare him for her death. He always imagined that grief and guilt, if they followed, would be more clear-edged, more defined, more finite. Instead they seem like weather, like clouds constantly re-forming into new shapes, blown by nameless, unidentifiable winds.

He knows he must rouse himself, but feels incapable; after all, this will mean rousing himself to lie again. First, to perpetuate, to make historical, the old lie about his devoted love-marriage to Touie; afterwards, to organize and propagate the new lie, about Jean bringing unexpected solace to a grieving widower's heart. The thought of this new lie disgusts him. In lethargy there is at least truth: exhausted, gut-plagued, dragging from room to room, he is at least misleading no one. Except that he is: his condition is ascribed by everyone merely to grief.

He is a hypocrite; he is a fraud. In some ways, he has always felt a fraud, and the more famous he has become, the more fraudulent he has felt. He is lauded as a great man of the age, but though he takes an active part in the world, his heart feels out of kilter with it. Any normal man of the age would not have scrupled to make Jean his mistress. That is what men did nowadays, even in the highest ranks of society, as he has observed. But his moral life belongs more happily in the fourteenth century. And his spiritual life? Connie judged him an early Christian. He prefers to locate himself in the future. The twenty-first century, the twenty-second? It all depends how quickly slumbering humanity wakes up and learns to use its eyes.

And then his thoughts, already on a downward slope, tumble further. After nine years of wanting – of trying not to admit to wanting – the impossible, he is now free. He could marry Jean tomorrow morning and face only the bickering of village moralists. But wanting the impossible canonizes the wanting. Now that the impossible has become the possible, how much does he want? He cannot even tell this now. It is as if the muscles of the heart, overtaxed for so long, have turned to fraying rubber.

He once heard a story, narrated over port, of a married man who maintained a long-term mistress. This woman was of good social standing, certainly fit to marry him, which is what had always been anticipated and promised. Eventually, the wife died, and within weeks the widower duly remarried. But not his mistress; instead, a young woman of a lower social class whom he had met a few days after the funeral. At the time he had sounded to Arthur like a double cad: cad to the wife, then cad to the mistress.

Now, he realizes how easily such things happen. In the ragged months since Touie's death, he had scarcely entered society, and those to whom he has been introduced have left only the faintest impression. Yet even so – and allowing for the fact that he does not understand the other sex – some of its members were flirting with him. No, that is vulgar and unfair; but certainly, they were looking at him differently, at this famous author, this knight of the realm, who is now a widower. He can well imagine how the fraying rubber might suddenly break, how a young girl's simplicity, or even a coquette's scented smile, might suddenly pierce a heart grown temporarily impervious to a long and secret attachment. He understands the behaviour of the double cad. More than understands: he sees the advantage. If you allow yourself to succumb to such a coup de foudre, then it is, at least, the end to lying: you do not have to produce your long-secret love and introduce her as a new-met companion. You do not have to lie to your children for the rest of your life. As for your new wife: yes, you say, I know how she strikes you, and she could never replace the irreplaceable, but she has brought a little cheer and consolation into my heart. The forgiveness sought might not be immediately forthcoming, but at least the situation would be less complicated.

He sees Jean again, once in company and once alone, and on both occasions the awkwardness between them continues. He finds himself waiting for his heart to pulse again – no, he is instructing his heart to pulse again – and it refuses to do his bidding. He has been so used to forcing his thoughts, to pressing them and directing them where they have to go, that it comes as a shock that he is unable to do the same with the tender emotions. Jean looks as adorable as ever, except that her adorability does not set off the normal response. Some impotence of the heart appears to have struck him.

In the past, Arthur has eased the torments of thought by physical exertion; but he feels no desire to ride, to spar, to strike a ball at cricket, tennis or golf. Perhaps, if he were instantly transported to a high, snow-covered Alpine valley, an icy breeze might disperse the mephitic air which hangs around his soul. But it seems impossible. The person he once was, the Sportesmann who brought his Norwegian skis to Davos and crossed the Furka Pass with the Branger brothers, seems to him long departed, long out of sight on the other side of the mountain.

When, at length, his mind stops descending, when he feels less febrile of mind and gut, he tries to make a clearing in his head, to establish a little area of simple thought. If a man cannot tell what he wants to do, then he must find out what he ought to do. If desire has become complicated, then hold fast to duty. This is what he did with Touie, and what he must now do with Jean. He has loved her hopelessly and hopefully for nine years; such a feeling cannot simply disappear; so he must wait for its return. Until then, he must negotiate the great Grimpen Mire, where green-scummed pits and foul quagmires on every side threaten to pull a man down and swallow him for ever. To plot his course, he must call on everything he has learned up to now. In the Mire, there were hidden signs – bunches of reeds and strategically planted sticks – to guide the initiate to firmer ground; and it is the same when a man is morally lost. The path lies where honour directs. Honour has told him how to behave in the past years; now honour must tell him where he is to head. Honour binds him to Jean, as it bound him to Touie. He cannot tell at this distance if he will ever be truly happy again; but he knows that for him there can be no happiness where honour is absent.

The children are away at school; the house is silent; winds rip the trees bare; November turns to December. He feels a little steadier, as they suggested he would. One morning he wanders into Wood's office to look at his correspondence. On average he gets sixty letters a day. Over the last months Wood has been obliged to develop a system: he answers himself anything that can be dealt with immediately; items requiring Sir Arthur's opinion or decision are placed in a large wooden tray. If, by the end of the week, his employer has not had the heart or stomach to offer any guidance, Wood clears it off as best he can.

Today there is a small package on top of the tray. Arthur half-heartedly slides out the contents. There is a covering letter pinned to a file of cuttings from a newspaper called The Umpire. He has never heard of it. Perhaps it deals with cricket. No, from its pink newsprint he can tell it is a scandal sheet. He glances at the letter's signature. He reads a name that means absolutely nothing to him: George Edalji.