Arthur & George

Arthur amp; George

Ever since Sherlock Holmes solved his first case, requests and demands have been coming in from all over the world. If persons or goods disappear in mysterious circumstances, if the police are more than usually baffled, if justice miscarries, then it appears that mankind's instinct is to appeal to Holmes and his creator. Letters addressed to 221B Baker Street are now automatically returned by the Post Office stamped ADDRESSEE UNKNOWN; those sent to Holmes c/o Sir Arthur are similarly dealt with. Over the years, Alfred Wood has often been struck by the way his employer is simultaneously proud of having created a character in whose true existence readers effortlessly believe, and irritated when they take such belief to its logical conclusion.

Then there are appeals directed to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in propria persona, written on the presumption that anyone with the intelligence and guile to devise such complicated fictional crimes must therefore be equipped to solve real ones. Sir Arthur, if impressed or touched, will sometimes respond, though unfailingly in the negative. He will explain that he is, regrettably, no more a consulting detective than he is an English bowman of the fourteenth century or a debonair cavalry officer under the command of Napoleon Bonaparte.

So Wood has laid out the Edalji dossier with few expectations. Yet on this occasion Sir Arthur is back in his secretary's office within the hour, in mid-expostulation even as he barges through the door.

'It's as plain as a packstaff,' he is saying. 'The fellow's no more guilty than that typewriter of yours. I ask you, Woodie! It's a joke. The case of the locked room in reverse – not how does he get in but how does he get out? It's as shabby as shabby can be.'

Wood has not seen his employer so indignant for months. 'You wish me to reply?'

'Reply? I'm going to do more than reply. I'm going to stir things up. I'm going to knock some heads together. They'll rue the day they let this happen to an innocent man.'

Wood is as yet unsure who 'they' might be, or indeed what 'this' is that has 'happened'. In the supplicant's petition he observed little, apart from a strange surname, to distinguish it from dozens of other supposed miscarriages of justice which Sir Arthur is expected single-handedly to overturn. But Wood does not at this moment care about the rights or wrongs of the Edalji case. He is only relieved that his employer seems, within the hour, to have shrugged off the lethargy and despondence that have afflicted him these past months.

In a covering letter George has explained the anomalous position in which he finds himself. The decision to free him on licence was taken by the previous Home Secretary, Mr Akers-Douglas, and implemented by the present one, Mr Herbert Gladstone; but neither has offered any official explanation of their reasons. George's conviction has not been cancelled, nor has any apology been tendered for his incarceration. One newspaper, doubtless briefed over a complicit luncheon by some nod-and-wink bureaucrat, shamelessly let it be known that the Home Office had no doubt as to the prisoner's guilt, but had released him because three years was considered the appropriate sentence for the crime in question. Sir Reginald Hardy, in deciding upon seven, had shown himself a touch over-zealous in the defence of Staffordshire's honour; and the Home Secretary was merely correcting this fit of enthusiasm.

All of which leaves George in moral despair and practical limbo. Do they think him guilty or not guilty? Are they apologizing for his conviction or reaffirming it? Unless and until the conviction is expunged, it is impossible for him to be readmitted to the Rolls. The Home Office perhaps expects George to display his relief by silence, and his gratitude by slinking away to another profession, preferably in the colonies. Yet George has survived prison only by the thought, the hope, of returning to work – somehow, somewhere – as a solicitor; and his supporters, having come thus far, have no intention of giving up either. One of Mr Yelverton's friends has given George temporary employment in his office as a clerk; but this is no solution. The solution can only come from the Home Office.

Arthur is late for his appointment with George Edalji at the Grand Hotel, Charing Cross; business with his bank has detained him. Now he enters the foyer at speed, and looks around. It is not difficult to spot his waiting guest: the only brown face is sitting about twelve feet away from him in profile. Arthur is about to step across and apologize when something makes him hold back. It is, perhaps, ungentle-manly to observe without permission; but not for nothing was he once the out-patient clerk of Dr Joseph Bell.

So: preliminary inspection reveals that the man he is about to meet is small and slight, of Oriental origin, with hair parted on the left and cropped close; he wears the well-cut, discreet clothing of a provincial solicitor. All indisputably true, but this is hardly like identifying a French polisher or a left-handed cobbler from scratch. Yet still Arthur continues to observe, and is drawn back, not to the Edinburgh of Dr Bell, but to his own years of medical practice. Edalji, like many another man in the foyer, is barricaded between newspaper and high-winged armchair. Yet he is not sitting quite as others do: he holds the paper preternaturally close, and also a touch sideways, setting his head at an angle to the page. Dr Doyle, formerly of Southsea and Devonshire Place, is confident in his diagnosis. Myopia, possibly of quite a high degree. And who knows, perhaps a touch of astigmatism too.

'Mr Edalji.'

The newspaper is not flung down in excitement, but folded carefully. The young man does not leap to his feet and fall on the neck of his potential saviour. On the contrary, he stands up carefully, looks Sir Arthur in the eye, and extends his hand. There is no danger that this man is going to start babbling about Holmes. Instead, he holds himself in wait, polite and self-contained.

They withdraw to an unoccupied writing room, and Sir Arthur is able to examine his new acquaintance more closely. A broad face, fullish lips, a pronounced dimple in the middle of the chin; clean-shaven. For a man who has served three years in Lewes and Portland, and who must have been used to a softer life than most beforehand, he shows few signs of his ordeal. His black hair is shot with grey, but this rather gives him the aspect of a thinking, cultured person. He could very well still be a working solicitor, except that he is not.

'Do you know the exact value of your myopia? Six, seven dioptres? I am only guessing, of course.'

George is startled by this first question. He takes a pair of spectacles from his top pocket and hands them over. Arthur examines them, then turns his attention to the eyes whose defects they correct. These bulge somewhat, and give the solicitor a slightly vacant, staring appearance. Sir Arthur assesses his man with the judgement of a former ophthalmologist; but he is also familiar with the false moral inferences the general public is inclined to draw from ocular singularity.

'I am afraid I have no idea,' says George. 'I have only recently acquired spectacles, and did not enquire about their specifications. Nor do I always remember to wear them.'

'You did not have them as a child?'

'Indeed not. My eyesight was always poor, but when an oculist was consulted in Birmingham, he said it was unwise to prescribe them for a child. And then – well – I became too busy. But since my release I am, unfortunately, less busy.'

'As you explained in your letter. Now, Mr Edalji-'

'It's Aydlji, actually, if you don't mind.' George says this instinctively.

'I apologize.'

'I am used to it. But since it is my name… You see, all Parsee names are stressed on the first syllable.'

Sir Arthur nods. 'Well, Mr Aydlji, I should like you to be professionally examined by Mr Kenneth Scott of Manchester Square.'

'If you say so. But-'

'At my expense, of course.'

'Sir Arthur, I could not-'

'You can, and you will.' He says it softly, and George catches the Scottish burr for the first time. 'You are not employing me as a detective, Mr Edalji. I am offering – offering – my services. And when we have won you not only a free pardon but also a large sum in compensation for your wrongful imprisonment, I may send you Mr Scott's bill. But then again I may not.'

'Sir Arthur, I did not imagine for a moment when I wrote to you-'

'No, and nor did I when I received your letter. But there we are. And here we are.'

'The money is not important. I want my name back again. I want to be readmitted as a solicitor. That is all I want. To be allowed to practise again. To live a quiet, useful life. A normal life.'

'Of course. But I disagree. The money is very important. Not just as compensation for three years of your life. It is also symbolic. The British respect money. If you are given a free pardon, the public will know you are innocent. But if you are given money as well, the public will know you are completely innocent. There is a world of difference. Money will also prove that it is only the corrupt inertia of the Home Office that kept you in prison in the first place.'

George nods slowly to himself as he takes in the argument. Sir Arthur is impressed by the young man. He seems to have a calm and deliberate mind. From his Scottish mother or his clergyman father? Or a benign mixing of the two?

'Sir Arthur, may I ask if you are a Christian?'

Now it is Arthur's turn to be startled. He does not wish to offend this son of the manse, so he replies with his own question. 'Why do you ask?'

'I was brought up, as you know, in the Vicarage. I love and respect my parents, and naturally, when I was young, I shared their beliefs. How could I not? I would never have made a priest myself, but I accepted the teachings of the Bible as the best guide to living a true and honourable life.' He looks at Sir Arthur to see how he is responding; soft eyes and an inclination of the head encourage him. 'I still do think them the best guide. As I think the laws of England are the best guide for how society in general may live a true and honourable life together. But then my… my ordeal began. At first I viewed it all as an unfortunate example of maladministration of the law. The police made a mistake, but it would be corrected by the magistrates. The magistrates made a mistake, but it would be corrected by the Quarter Sessions. The Quarter Sessions made a mistake, but it would be corrected by the Home Office. It will, I hope, still be corrected by the Home Office. It is a matter of great pain and, to say the least, inconvenience, that this has happened, but the process of the law will, in the end, deliver justice. That is what I believed, and what I still believe.

'However, it has been more complicated than I at first realized. I have lived my life within the law – that is to say, taking the law as my guide, while Christianity has been the moral support behind that. For my father, however-' and here George pauses, not, Arthur suspects, because he does not know what he is about to say, but because of its emotional weight – 'my father lives his life wholly within the Christian religion. As you would expect. So for him my ordeal must be comprehensible in those terms. For him there is – there must be – a religious justification for my suffering. He thinks it is God's purpose to strengthen my own faith and to act as an example for others. It is an embarrassment for me to say the word, but he imagines me a martyr.

'My father is elderly now, and becoming frail. Nor would I wish to contradict him. At Lewes and Portland I naturally attended chapel. I still go to church every Sunday. But I cannot claim that my faith has been strengthened by my imprisonment, nor-' he gives a cautious, wry smile – 'nor would my father be able to claim that congregations at St Mark's and neighbouring churches have increased in the last three years.'

Sir Arthur contemplates the odd formality of these opening remarks – as if they have been practised, even over-practised. No, that is too harsh. What else would a man do during three years of prison except turn his life – his messy, inchoate, half-understood life – into something resembling a witness statement?

'Your father, I imagine, would say that martyrs do not choose their lot, and may not even have an understanding of the matter.'

'Perhaps. But what I have just said is actually less than the truth. My incarceration did not strengthen my faith. Quite the contrary. It has, I think, destroyed it. My suffering has been quite purposeless, either for me or as any kind of example to others. Yet when I told my father that you had agreed to see me, his reaction was that it was all part of God's evident purpose in the world. Which is why, Sir Arthur, I asked if you were a Christian.'

'Whether I am or not would not affect your father's argument. God surely chooses any instrument to hand, whether Christian or heathen.'

'True. But you do not have to be soft with me.'

'No. And you will not find me a man to palter, Mr Edalji. For myself, I cannot see how your time in Lewes and Portland, and the loss of your profession and your place in society, can possibly serve God's purpose.'

'My father, you must understand, believes that this new century will bring in a more harmonious commingling of the races than in the past – that this is God's purpose, and I am intended to serve as some kind of messenger. Or victim. Or both.'

'Without in any way criticizing your father,' says Arthur carefully, 'I would have thought that if such had been God's intention, it would have been better served by making sure you had a gloriously successful career as a solicitor, and thus set an example to others for the commingling of the races.'

'You think as I do,' replies George. Arthur likes this answer. Others would have said, 'I agree with you.' But George has said it without vanity. It is simply that Arthur's words have confirmed what he has already thought.

'However, I agree with your father that this new century is likely to bring extraordinary developments in man's spiritual nature. Indeed, I believe that by the time the third millennium begins, the established Churches will have withered, and all the wars and disharmonies their separate existences have brought into the world will also have disappeared.' George is about to protest that this is not what his father means at all; but Sir Arthur is forging on. 'Man is on the verge of elaborating the truths of psychical law as he has for centuries been elaborating the truths of physical law. When these truths come to be accepted, our whole way of living – and dying – will have to be rethought from first principles. We shall believe in more, not less. We shall understand more deeply the processes of life. We shall realize that death is not a door closed in our face, but a door left ajar. And by the time that new millennium begins, I believe we shall have a greater capacity for happiness and fellow-feeling than ever before in mankind's frequently miserable existence.' Sir Arthur suddenly catches himself, an orator on a damn soapbox. 'I apologize. It is a hobby horse. No, it is a great deal more than that. But you did ask.'

'There is no need to apologize.'

'There is. I have allowed us to stray far from the matter in hand. To business again. May I ask if there is anyone you suspect of the crime?'

'Which one?'

'All of them. The persecutions. The forged letters. The rippings – not just of the Colliery pony, but all the others.'

'To be perfectly honest, Sir Arthur, for the last three years I and those who have supported me have been more concerned with proving my innocence than anyone else's guilt.'

'Understandably. But a connection inevitably exists. So is there anyone you might suspect?'

'No. No one. Everything was done anonymously. And I cannot imagine who would take pleasure in mutilating animals.'

'You had enemies in Great Wyrley?'

'Evidently. But unseen ones. I had few acquaintances there, whether friend or foe. We did not go out into local society.'

'Why not?'

'I have only recently begun to understand why not. At the time, as a child, I assumed it to be normal. The truth is, my parents had very little money, and what they had, they spent on their children's education. I did not miss going to other boys' houses. I was a happy child, I think.'

'Yes.' This seems less than the full answer. 'But, I presume, given your father's origins-'

'Sir Arthur, I should like to make one thing quite clear. I do not believe that race prejudice has anything to do with my case.'

'I have to say that you surprise me.'

'My father believes that I would not have suffered as I did if I had been, for instance, the son of Captain Anson. That is certainly true. But in my view the matter is a red herring. Go to Wyrley and ask the villagers if you do not believe me. At all events, if any prejudice exists, it is confined to a very small section of the community. There has been an occasional slight, but what man does not suffer that, in some form or another?'

'I understand your desire not to play the martyr-'

'No, it is not that, Sir Arthur.' George stops, and looks momentarily embarrassed. 'Is that what I should be calling you, by the way?'

'You may call me that. Or Doyle if you prefer.'

'I think I prefer Sir Arthur. As you may imagine, I have thought a great deal about this matter. I was brought up as an Englishman. I went to school, I studied the law, I did my articles, I became a solicitor. Did anyone try to hold me back from this progress? On the contrary. My schoolmasters encouraged me, the partners at Sangster, Vickery amp; Speight took notice of me, my father's congregation uttered words of praise when I qualified. No clients refused my advice at Newhall Street on the grounds of my origin.'

'No, but-'

'Let me continue. There have been, as I said, occasional slights. There were teasings and jokes. I am not so naive as to be unaware that some people look at me differently. But I am a lawyer, Sir Arthur. What evidence do I have that anyone has acted against me because of race prejudice? Sergeant Upton used to try and frighten me, but no doubt he frightened other boys as well. Captain Anson clearly took a dislike to me, without ever having met me. What concerned me more about the police was their lack of competence. For example, they themselves, despite covering the district with special constables, never discovered a single mutilated animal. These events were always reported to them by the farmers, or by men going to work. I was not the only person to conclude that the police were afraid of the so-called Gang, even if they were quite unable to prove its existence.

'So if you are proposing that my ordeal has been caused by race prejudice, then I must ask you for your evidence. I do not recall Mr Disturnal ever alluding to the subject. Or Sir Reginald Hardy. Did the jury find me guilty because of my skin? That is too easy an answer. And I might add that during my years in prison I was fairly treated by the staff and the other inmates.'

'If I may make a suggestion,' replied Sir Arthur. 'Perhaps you should try occasionally not to think like a lawyer. The fact that no evidence of a phenomenon can be adduced does not mean that it does not exist.'

'Agreed.'

'So, when the persecutions began against your family, did you believe – do you believe – you were random victims?'

'Probably not. But others were victims too.'

'Only of the letter writing. None suffered as you did.'

'True. But it would be quite unsound to deduce from this the purpose and motive of those involved. Perhaps my father – who can be severe in person – rebuked some farm boy for stealing apples, or blaspheming.'

'You think something like that to be the start of it?'

'I have no idea. But I will not, I am afraid, stop thinking like a lawyer. It is what I am. And as a lawyer I require evidence.'

'Perhaps others can see what you cannot.'

'No doubt. But it is also a question of what is useful. It is not useful to me as a general principle of life to assume that those with whom I have dealings have a secret dislike of me. And at the present juncture, it is no use imagining that if only the Home Secretary were to become convinced that race prejudice lies at the heart of the case, then I shall have my pardon and the compensation to which you allude. Or perhaps, Sir Arthur, you believe Mr Gladstone himself to be afflicted with that prejudice?'

'I have absolutely no… evidence of that. Indeed, I very much doubt it.'

'Then please let us drop the subject.'

'Very well.' Arthur is impressed by such firmness – indeed, stubbornness. 'I should like to meet your parents. Also your sister. Discreetly, however. My instinct is always to go directly at things, but there are times when tactics and even bluff are necessary. As Lionel Amery likes to say, if you fight with a rhinoceros, you don't want to tie a horn to your nose.' George is baffled by this analogy, but Arthur does not notice. 'I doubt it would help our cause if I were to be seen tramping the district with you or a member of your family. I need a contact, an acquaintance in the village. Perhaps you can suggest one.'

'Harry Charlesworth,' replies George automatically, just as if facing Great-Aunt Stoneham, or Greenway and Stentson. 'Well, we sat next to one another at school. I pretended he was my friend. We were the two clever boys. My father used to rebuke me for not being friendlier with the farm boys, but frankly there was little contact possible. Harry Charlesworth has taken over the running of his father's dairy. He has an honest reputation.'

'You say you had little society with the village?'

'And they little with me. In truth, Sir Arthur, I always intended, after qualifying, to live in Birmingham. I found Wyrley – between ourselves – a dull and backward place. At first I continued living at home, fearing to break the news to my parents, ignoring the village except for necessities. Having boots repaired, for example. And then gradually I found myself, not exactly trapped, but living so much within my family that it was becoming harder and harder to even think of leaving. And I am very attached to my sister Maud. So that was my position until… all that you know was done to me. After I was released from prison, it was naturally impossible for me to return to Staffordshire. So now I am in London. I have lodgings in Mecklenburgh Square, with Miss Goode. My mother was with me in the first weeks after my release. But Father needs her at home. She comes down when she can be spared to see how I am faring. My life-' George pauses for a moment, 'my life, as you can see, is in abeyance.'

Arthur notes again how cautious and exact George is, whether describing large matters or small, emotions or facts. His man is a first-class witness. It is not his fault if he is unable to see what others can. 'Mr Edalji-'

'George, please.' Sir Arthur's pronunciation has been slipping back to Ee-dal-jee, and his new patron must be spared embarrassment.

'You and I, George, you and I, we are… unofficial Englishmen.'

George is taken aback by this remark. He regards Sir Arthur as a very official Englishman indeed: his name, his manner, his fame, his air of being absolutely at ease in this grand London hotel, even down to the time he kept George waiting. If Sir Arthur had not appeared to be part of official England, George would probably not have written to him in the first place. But it seems impolite to question a man's categorization of himself.

Instead, he reflects upon his own status. How is he less than a full Englishman? He is one by birth, by citizenship, by education, by religion, by profession. Does Sir Arthur mean that when they took away his freedom and struck him off the Rolls, they also struck him off the roll of Englishmen? If so, he has no other land. He cannot go back two generations. He can hardly return to India, a place he has never visited and has little desire to.

'Sir Arthur, when my… troubles began, my father would sometimes take me into his study and instruct me about the achievements of famous Parsees. How this one became a successful businessman, that one a Member of Parliament. Once – though I have not the slightest interest in sports – he told me about a Parsee cricket team which had come from Bombay and made a tour of England. Apparently they were the first team from India to visit these shores.'

'1886, I believe. Played about thirty, won only a single match, I'm afraid. Forgive me – in my idle hours I am a student of Wisden. They returned a couple of years later, with better results, I seem to remember.'

'You see, Sir Arthur, you are more knowledgeable than I am. And I am unable to pretend to be something I am not. My father brought me up an Englishman, and he cannot, when things become difficult, attempt to console me with matters he has never previously stressed.'

'Your father came from…?'

'Bombay. He was converted by missionaries. They were Scottish, in fact. As my mother is.'

'I understand your father,' says Sir Arthur. It is a phrase, George realizes, that he has never in his life heard before. 'The truths of one's race and the truths of one's religion do not always lie in the same valley. Sometimes it is necessary to cross a high ridge in winter snow to find the greater truth.'

George ponders this remark as if it is part of a sworn affidavit. 'But then your heart is divided and you are cut off from your people?'

'No – then it is your duty to tell your people about the valley over the ridge. You look back down to the village whence you have come, and you observe that they have dipped the flags in salute, because they imagine that getting to the ridge itself is the triumph. But it is not. And so you raise your ski stick to them and point. Down there, you indicate, down there is the truth, down there in the next valley. Follow me over the ridge.'

George came to the Grand Hotel anticipating a concentrated examination of the evidence in his case. The conversation has taken several unexpected turns. Now he is feeling somewhat lost. Arthur senses a certain dismay in his new young friend. He feels responsible; he has meant to be encouraging. Enough reflection, then; it is time for action. Also, for anger.

'George, those who have supported you so far – Mr Yelverton and all the rest – have done sterling work. They have been utterly diligent and correct. If the British state were a rational institution, you would even now be back at your desk in Newhall Street. But it is not. So my plan is not to repeat the work of Mr Yelverton, to express the same reasonable doubts and make the same reasonable requests. I am going to do something different. I am going to make a great deal of noise. The English – the official English – do not like noise. They think it vulgar; it embarrasses them. But if calm reason has not worked, I shall give them noisy reason. I shall not use the back stairs but the front steps. I shall bang a big drum. I intend to shake more than a few trees, George, and we shall see what rotten fruit falls down.'

Sir Arthur stands to say goodbye. Now he towers over the little law clerk. Yet he has not done this in their conversation. George is surprised that such a famous man can listen as well as fulminate, be gentle as well as forceful. Despite this last declaration, however, he feels the need for some basic verification.

'Sir Arthur, may I ask… to put it simply… you think me innocent?'

Arthur looks down with a clear, steady gaze. 'George, I have read your newspaper articles, and now I have met you in person. So my reply is, No, I do not think you are innocent. No, I do not believe you are innocent. I know you are innocent.' Then he extends a large, athletic hand, toughened by numerous sports of which George is entirely ignorant.

Arthur

Anson

Arthur told the cabby to drop him at the old lock-up next to the White Lion Hotel. The inn lay directly opposite the gates of Green Hall. It was an instinctive tactic, to arrive on foot. Overnight bag in hand, he followed the gently rising drive from the Lichfield Road, trying to make his shoe leather discreet on the gravel. As the house, slantingly lit by the frail late-afternoon sun, became plain before him, he stopped in a tree's shade. Why should the methods of Dr Joseph Bell not persuade architecture to yield secrets, just as physiology did? So: 1820s, he guessed; white stucco; a pseudo-Greek facade; a solid portico with two pairs of unfluted Ionic columns; three windows on either side. Three storeys – and yet to his enquiring eye there was something suspicious about the third. Yes, he would bet Wood a forty-point start that there was not a single attic room behind that row of seven windows: a mere architectural trick to make the house taller and more impressive. Not that this fakery could be blamed on the current occupant. Peering beyond the house, across to the right, Doyle could make out a sunken rose garden, a tennis ground, a summer house flanked by a pair of young grafted hornbeams. What story did it all tell? One of money, breeding, taste, history, power. The family's name had been made in the eighteenth century by Anson the circumnavigator, who had also laid down its first fortune – prize money from the capture of a Spanish galleon. His nephew had been raised to the viscountcy in 1806; promotion to the earldom followed in 1831. If this was the second son's residence, and his elder brother held Shugborough, then the Ansons knew how to foster their inheritance.

A few feet back from a second-floor window, Captain Anson called softly to his wife.

'Blanche, the Great Detective is almost upon us. He is studying the driveway for the footprints of an enormous hound.' Mrs Anson had rarely heard him so skittish. 'Now, when he arrives, you are not to burble about his books.'

'I, burble?' She pretended more offence than she took.

'He has already been burbled at across the length and breadth of the country. His supporters have burbled him to death. We are to be hospitable but not ingratiating.'

Mrs Anson had been married long enough to know that this was a sign of nerves rather than any true apprehension over her behaviour. 'I have ordered clear soup, baked whiting and mutton cutlets.'

'Accompanied by?'

'Brussels sprouts and potato croquets, of course. You did not need to ask. Then semolina soufflé and anchovy eggs.'

'Perfection.'

'For breakfast, would you prefer fried bacon and brawn, or grilled herrings and beef roll?'

'In this weather – the latter, I believe, would suit. And remember, Blanche, no discussion of the case over dinner.'

'That will be no hardship to me, George.'

In any case, Doyle proved himself a punctilious guest, keen to be shown his room, equally keen to descend from it in time for a tour of the grounds before the light faded. As one property owner to another, he showed concern over the frequency with which the River Sow flooded the water meadows, and then asked about the curious earthen mound which lay half-concealed by the summer house. Anson explained that it was an old ice house, now put out of business by refrigeration; he wondered if he might not turn it over to the storage of wine. Next they considered how the turf of the tennis ground was surviving the winter, and jointly regretted the brevity of season that the English climate imposed. Anson accepted Doyle's praise and appreciation, all of which assumed that he was the owner of Green Hall. In truth, he merely leased it; but why should he tell the Great Detective that?

'I see those young hornbeams have been grafted.'

'You do not miss a trick, Doyle,' replied the Chief Constable with a smile. It was the lightest of references to what lay ahead.

'I have had planting years myself.'

At dinner, the Ansons occupied either end of the table, with Doyle granted the view through the central window out on to the dormant rose garden. He showed himself properly attentive to Mrs Anson's questions; at times, she thought, excessively so.

'You are well acquainted with Staffordshire, Sir Arthur?'

'Not as well as I should be. But there is a connection with my father's family. The original Doyle was a cadet-branch of the Staffordshire Doyles, which, as you may know, produced Sir Francis Hastings Doyle and other distinguished men. This cadet took part in the invasion of Ireland and was granted estates in County Wexford.'

Mrs Anson smiled encouragingly, not that it seemed necessary. 'And on your mother's side?'

'Ah, now that is of considerable interest. My mother is great on archaeology, and with the help of Sir Arthur Vicars – the Ulster King of Arms, and himself a relative – has been able to work out her descent over a period of five centuries. It is her boast – our boast – that we have a family tree on which many of the great ones of the earth have roosted. My grandmother's uncle was Sir Denis Pack, who led the Scottish Brigade at Waterloo.'

'Indeed.' Mrs Anson was a firm believer in class, also in its duties and obligations. But it was nature and bearing, rather than documentation, that proved a gentleman.

'However, the real romance of the family is traced from the marriage in the mid-seventeenth century of the Reverend Richard Pack to Mary Percy, heir to the Irish branch of the Percys of Northumberland. From this moment we connect up to three separate marriages with the Plantagenets. One has, therefore, some strange strains in one's blood which are noble in origin, and, one can but hope, are noble in tendency.'

'One can but hope,' repeated Mrs Anson. She herself was the daughter of Mr G. Miller of Brentry, Gloucester, and had little curiosity about her distant ancestors. It seemed to her that if you paid an investigator to elaborate your family tree, you would always end up being connected to some great family. Genealogical detectives did not, on the whole, send in bills attached to confirmation that you were descended from swineherds on one side of the family and pedlars on the other.

'Although,' Sir Arthur continued, 'by the time Katherine Pack – the niece of Sir Denis – was widowed in Edinburgh, the family fortunes had fallen into a parlous condition. Indeed, she was obliged to take in a paying guest. Which was how my father – the paying guest – came to meet my mother.'

'Charming,' commented Mrs Anson. 'Altogether charming. And now you are busy restoring the family fortunes.'

'When I was a small boy, I was much pained by the poverty to which my mother was reduced. I sensed that it was against the grain of her nature. That memory is part of what has always driven me on.'

'Charming,' repeated Mrs Anson, meaning it rather less this time. Noble blood, hard times, restored fortunes. She was happy enough to believe such themes in a library novel, but when confronted by a living version was inclined to find them implausible and sentimental. She wondered how long the family's ascendancy would last this time round. What did they say about quick money? One generation to make it, one to enjoy it, one to lose it.

But Sir Arthur, if more than a touch vainglorious about his ancestry, was a diligent table-companion. He showed abundant appetite, even if he ate without the slightest comment on what was put in front of him. Mrs Anson could not decide whether he believed it vulgar to applaud food, or whether he simply lacked taste buds. Also unmentioned at table were the Edalji case, the state of criminal justice, the administration of Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, and the exploits of Sherlock Holmes. But they managed to steer a course, like three scullers without a cox, Sir Arthur pulling vigorously on one side, and the Ansons dipping their blades sufficiently on the other to keep the boat straight.

The anchovy eggs were despatched, and Blanche Anson could sense male restiveness farther down the table. They were eager for the curtained study, the poked fire, the lit cigar, the glass of brandy, and the opportunity, in as civilized a way as possible, to tear great lumps out of one another. She could scent, above the odours of the table, something primitive and brutal in the air. She rose, and bade the combatants goodnight.

The gentlemen passed into Captain Anson's study, where a fire was in full spate. Doyle took in the glisten of fresh coal in the brass bucket, the polished spines of bound periodicals, a sparkling three-bottle tantalus, the lacquered belly of a bloated fish in a glass case. Everything gleamed: even that pair of antlers from a non-native species – a Scandinavian elk of some kind, he assumed – had attracted the housemaid's attention.

He eased a cigar from the offered box and rolled it between his fingers. Anson passed him a penknife and a box of cigar matches.

'I deprecate the use of the cigar-cutter,' he announced. 'I shall always prefer the nice conduct of the knife.'

Doyle nodded, and bent to his task, then flicked the cut stub into the fire.

'I understand that the advancement of science has now brought us the invention of an electric cigar-lighter?'

'If so, it has not reached Hindhead,' replied Doyle. He declined any billing as the metropolis come to patronize the provinces. But he identified a need in his host to assert mastery in his own study. Well, if so, he would help him.

'The elk,' he proposed, 'is perhaps from Southern Canada?'

'Sweden,' replied the Chief Constable almost too quickly. 'Not a mistake your detective would have made.'

Ah, so we shall have that one first, shall we? Doyle watched Anson light his own cigar. In the match's flare the Stafford knot of his tiepin briefly gleamed.

'Blanche reads your books,' said the Chief Constable, nodding a little, as if this settled the matter. 'She is also very partial to Mrs Braddon.'

Doyle felt a sudden pain, the literary equivalent of gout. And there was a further stab as Anson continued, 'I am more for Stanley Weyman myself.'

'Capital,' Doyle answered. 'Capital.' By which he meant, It is capital that you prefer him as far as I am concerned.

'You see, Doyle – I'm sure you don't mind if I speak frankly? – I may not be what you would call a literary fellow, but as Chief Constable I inevitably take a more professional view of matters than I imagine most of your readers do. That the police officers you introduce into your tales are inadequate to their task is something which is, I quite understand, necessary to the logic of your inventions. How else would your scientific detective shine if not surrounded by boobies?'

It was not worth arguing the toss. 'Boobies' hardly described Lestrade and Gregson and Hopkins and… oh, it wasn't-

'No, I fully understand your reasons, Doyle. But in the real world…'

At this point Doyle more or less stopped listening. In any case, his mind had snagged on the phrase 'the real world'. How easily everyone understood what was real and what was not. The world in which a benighted young solicitor was sentenced to penal servitude in Portland… the world in which Holmes unravelled another mystery beyond the powers of Lestrade and his colleagues… or the world beyond, the world behind the closed door, through which Touie had effortlessly slipped. Some people believed in only one of these worlds, some in two, a few in all three. Why did people imagine that progress consisted of believing in less, rather than believing in more, in opening yourself to more of the universe?

'… which is why, my good fellow, I shall not, without orders from the Home Office, be issuing my inspectors with cocaine syringes and my sergeants and constables with violins.'

Doyle inclined his head, as if acknowledging a palpable hit. But that was enough play-acting and guestliness.

'To the case at hand. You have read my analysis.'

'I have read your… story,' replied Anson. 'A deplorable business, it has to be said. A series of mistakes. It could all have been nipped in the bud so much earlier.'

Anson's candour surprised Doyle. 'I'm glad to hear you say that. Which mistakes did you have in mind?'

'The family's. That's where it all went wrong. The wife's family. What took it into their heads? Whatever took it into their heads? Doyle, really: your niece insists upon marrying a Parsee – can't be persuaded out of it – and what do you do? You give the fellow a living… here. In Great Wyrley. You might as well appoint a Fenian to be Chief Constable of Staffordshire and have done with it.'

'I'm inclined to agree with you,' replied Doyle. 'No doubt his patron sought to demonstrate the universality of the Anglican Church. The Vicar is, in my judgement, both an amiable and a devoted man, who has served the parish to the best of his ability. But the introduction of a coloured clergyman into such a rude and unrefined parish was bound to cause a regrettable situation. It is certainly an experiment that should not be repeated.'

Anson looked across at his guest with sudden respect – even allowing for that gibe about 'rude and unrefined'. There was more common ground here than he had expected. He ought to have known that Sir Arthur was unlikely to prove an out-and-out radical.

'And then to introduce three half-caste children into the neighbourhood.'

'George, Horace and Maud.'

'Three half-caste children,' repeated Anson.

'George, Horace and Maud,' repeated Doyle.

'George, Horace and Maud Ee-dal-jee.'

'You have read my analysis?'

'I have read your… analysis' – Anson decided to concede the word this time – 'and I admire, Sir Arthur, both your tenacity and your passion. I promise to keep your amateur speculations to myself. To broadcast them would do your reputation no good.'

'I think you must allow me to be the judge of that.'

'As you wish, as you wish. Blanche was reading to me the other day. An interview you gave in the Strand some years ago, about your methods. I trust you were not grossly misrepresented?'

'I have no memory of being so. But I am not in the habit of reading through in a spirit of verification.'

'You described how, when you wrote your tales, that it was always the conclusion which first preoccupied you.'

'Beginning with an ending. You cannot know which path to travel unless you first know the destination.'

'Exactly. And you have described in your… analysis how when you met young Edalji for the first time – in the lobby of an hotel, I believe – you observed him for a while, and even before meeting him were convinced of his innocence?'

'Indeed, for the reasons clearly stated.'

'For the reasons clearly felt, I would prefer to say. Everything you have written proceeds from that feeling. Once you became convinced of the wretched youth's innocence, everything fell into place.'

'Whereas once you became convinced of the youth's guilt, everything fell into place.'

'My conclusion was not based upon some intuition in the lobby of an hotel, but upon the consequences of police observations and reports over a number of years.'

'You made the boy a target from the beginning. You wrote threatening him with penal servitude.'

'I tried to warn both the boy and his father of the consequences of persisting in the criminal path on which he had manifestly set out. I am not wrong, I think, to take the view that police work is not just punitive but also prophylactic.'

Doyle nodded at a phrase which had, he suspected, been prepared especially for him. 'You forget that before meeting George I had read his excellent articles in The Umpire.'

'I have yet to meet anyone detained at His Majesty's pleasure who did not have a persuasive explanation of why he was not guilty.'

'In your view George Edalji sent letters denouncing himself?'

'Among a great variety of other letters. Yes.'

'In your view he was the ringleader of a gang who dismembered beasts?'

'Who can tell? Gang is a newspaper word. I have no doubt there were others involved. I also have no doubt that the solicitor was the cleverest of them.'

'In your view, his father, a minister of the Church of England, perjured himself to give his son an alibi?'

'Doyle, a personal question, if I may. Do you have a son?'

'I do. He is fourteen.'

'And if he fell into trouble, you would help him.'

'Yes. But if he committed a crime, I would not perjure myself.'

'But you would still help and protect him, short of that.'

'Yes.'

'Then perhaps, with your imagination, you can picture someone else doing more.'

'I cannot picture a priest of the Church of England placing his hand on the Bible and knowingly committing perjury.'

'Then try to imagine this instead. Imagine a Parsee father putting loyalty to his Parsee family above loyalty to a land not his own, even if it has given him shelter and encouragement. He wants to save his son's skin, Doyle. Skin.'

'And in your view the mother and sister also perjured themselves?'

'Doyle, you keep saying in my view. "My view", as you call it, is the view not just of myself, but of the Staffordshire Constabulary, prosecuting counsel, a properly sworn English jury, and the justices of the Quarter Sessions. I attended every day of the trial, and I can assure you of one thing, which will be painful to you but which you cannot avoid. The jury did not believe the evidence of the Edalji family – certainly not of the father and daughter. The mother's evidence was perhaps less important. That is not something lightly done. An English jury sitting round a table considering its verdict is a solemn business. They weigh evidence. They examine character. They do not sit there waiting for a sign from above like… table-turners at a séance.'

Doyle looked across sharply. Was this a random phrase, or a knowing attempt to unsettle him? Well, it would take more than that.

'We are talking, Anson, not of some butcher's boy, but of a professional Englishman, a solicitor in his late twenties, already known as the author of a book on railway law.'

'Then the greater his misdemeanour. If you imagine the criminal courts entertain only the criminal classes, you are more naive than I took you for. Even authors sometimes stand in the dock, as you must be aware. And the sentence doubtless reflected the gravity of a case in which one sworn to uphold and interpret the law so grievously flouted it.'

'Seven years' penal servitude. Even Wilde only received two.'

'That is why sentencing is for the court, rather than for you or me. I might not have given Edalji less, though I would certainly have given Wilde more. He was thoroughly guilty – and of perjury too.'

'I dined with him once,' said Doyle. Antagonism was now rising like mist from the River Sow, and all his instincts told him to pull back a little. 'It would have been in '89, I think. A golden evening for me. I had expected a monologuist and an egotist, but I found him a gentleman of perfect manners. There were four of us, and though he towered over the other three, he never let it show. Your monologue man, however clever, can never be a gentleman at heart. With Wilde it was give and take, and he had the art of seeming interested in everything that we might say. He had even read my Micah Clarke.

'I recall that we were discussing how the good fortune of friends may sometimes make us strangely discontented. Wilde told us the story of the Devil in the Libyan Desert. Do you know that one? No? Well, the Devil was about his business, going the rounds of his empire, when he came across a number of small fiends tormenting a holy hermit. They were employing temptations and provocations of a routine nature, which the sainted man was resisting without much difficulty. "That is not how it is done," said their Master. "I will show you. Watch carefully." Whereupon the Devil approached the holy hermit from behind, and in a honeyed tone whispered in his ear, "Your brother has just been appointed Bishop of Alexandria." And immediately a scowl of furious jealousy crossed the hermit's face. "That," said the Devil, "is how it is best done."'

Anson joined in Doyle's laughter, though less than full-heartedly. The shallow cynicisms of a metropolitan sodomite were not to his taste. 'Be that as it may,' he said, 'the Devil certainly found Wilde himself easy prey.'

'I must add,' Doyle went on, 'that never in Wilde's conversation did I observe one trace of coarseness of thought, nor could I at that time associate him with such an idea.'

'In other words, a professional gentleman.'

Doyle ignored the gibe. 'I met him again, some years later, in a London street, you know, and he appeared to me to have gone quite mad. He asked if I had gone to see a play of his. I told him regrettably not. "Oh, you must go," he said to me with the gravest of expressions. "It is wonderful! It is genius!" Nothing could have been farther from his previous gentlemanly instincts. I thought at the time, and I still think, that the monstrous development which ruined him was pathological, and that a hospital rather than a police court was the place for its consideration.'

'Your liberalism would empty the gaols,' remarked Anson drily.

'You mistake me, sir. I have twice engaged in the vile business of electioneering, but I am not a party man. I pride myself on being an unofficial Englishman.'

The phrase – which struck Anson as self-satisfied – wafted between them like a skein of cigar smoke. He decided it was time to make a push.

'That young man whose case you have so honourably taken up, Sir Arthur – he is not, I should warn you, entirely what you think. There were various matters which did not come out in court…'

'No doubt for the very good reason that they were forbidden by the rules of evidence. Or else were allegations so flimsy that they would have been destroyed by the defence.'

'Between ourselves, Doyle, there were rumours…'

'There are always rumours.'

'Rumours of gambling debts, rumours of the misuse of clients' funds. You might ask your young friend if, in the months leading up to the case, he was in any serious trouble.'

'I have no intention of doing any such thing.'

Anson rose slowly, walked to his desk, took a key from one drawer, unlocked another, and extracted a folder.

'I show you this in strictest confidence. It is addressed to Sir Benjamin Stone. It was doubtless one of many.'

The letter was dated 29th December 1902. At the top left were printed George Edalji's professional and telegrammic addresses; at the top right, 'Great Wyrley, Walsall'. It did not require testimony from that rogue Gurrin to convince Doyle that the handwriting was George's.

Dear Sir, I am reduced from a fairly comfortable position to absolute poverty, primarily through having had to pay a large sum of money (nearly £220) for a friend for whom I was surety. I borrowed from three moneylenders in the hope of righting myself, but their exorbitant interest only made matters worse, amp; two of them have now presented a bankruptcy petition against me, but are willing to withdraw if I can raise £115 at once. I have no such friends to whom I can appeal, amp; as bankruptcy would ruin me and prevent me practising for a long time during which I should lose all my clients, I am, as a last resource, appealing to a few strangers.

My friends can only find me £30, I have about £21 myself, amp; shall be most thankful for any aid, no matter how small as it will all help me to meet my heavy liability.

Apologizing for troubling you and trusting you may assist me as far as you can.

I am,

Yours respectfully,

G.E. Edalji

Anson watched Doyle as he read the letter. No need to point out that it was written five weeks before the first maiming. The ball was in his court now. Doyle flicked the letter over and reread some of its phrases. Eventually he said,

'You doubtless investigated?'

'Certainly not. This is not a police matter. Begging on the public highway is an offence, but begging among the professional classes is no concern of ours.'

'I see no reference here to gambling debts or misuse of clients' funds.'

'Which would hardly have been the way to Sir Benjamin Stone's heart. Try reading between the lines.'

'I decline to. This seems to me the desperate appeal of an honourable young man let down by his generosity to a friend. The Parsees are known for their charity.'

'Ah, so suddenly he's a Parsee?'

'What do you mean?'

'You cannot have him a professional Englishman one moment and a Parsee the next, just as it suits you. Is it prudent for an honourable young man to pledge such a large sum, and to put himself in the hands of three separate moneylenders? How many solicitors have you known do this? Read between the lines, Doyle. Ask your friend about it.'

'I have no intention of asking him about it. And clearly, he did not go bankrupt.'

'Indeed. I suspect the mother helped out.'

'Or perhaps there were others in Birmingham who showed him the same confidence he had shown the friend for whom he stood surety.'

Anson found Doyle as stubborn as he was naive. 'I applaud your… romantic streak, Sir Arthur. It does you credit. But forgive me if I find it unrealistic. As I do your campaign. Your fellow has been released from prison. He is a free man. What is the point of seeking to whip up popular opinion? You want the Home Office to look at the case again? The Home Office has looked at it countless times. You want a committee? What makes you sure it will give you what you want?'

'We shall get a committee. We shall get a free pardon. We shall get compensation. And furthermore we shall establish the identity of the true criminal in whose place George Edalji has suffered.'

'Oh, that too?' Anson was now becoming seriously irritated. It could so easily have been a pleasant evening: two men of the world, each approaching fifty, one the son of an earl and the other a knight of the realm, both of them, as it happened, Deputy Lieutenants of their respective counties. They had far more in common than was setting them apart… and instead it was turning rancorous.

'Doyle, let me make two points to you, if I may. You clearly imagine that there was some continuous line of persecution stretching back years – the letters, the hoaxes, the mutilations, the additional threats. You further think the police blame all of it on your friend. Whereas you blame all of it on criminals known or unknown, but the same criminals. Where is the logic in either approach? We only charged Edalji with two offences, and the second charge was in any case not proceeded with. I expect he is innocent of numerous matters. A criminal spree such as this rarely has single authorship. He might be the ringleader, he might be a mere follower. He might have seen the effect of an anonymous letter and decided to try it for himself. Might have seen the effect of a hoax and decided to play hoaxer. Heard of a gang cutting animals, and decided to join it.

'My second point is this. In my time I've seen people who were probably guilty found innocent, and people who were probably innocent found guilty. Don't look so surprised. I've known examples of wrongful accusation and wrongful conviction. But in such cases the victim is rarely as straightforward as his defenders would like. For instance, let me make a suggestion. You came across George Edalji for the first time in a hotel foyer. You were late for the meeting, I understand. You saw him in a particular posture, from which you deduced his innocence. Let me put this to you. George Edalji was there before you. He was expecting you. He knew you would observe him. He arranged himself accordingly.'

Doyle did not reply to this, just stuck out his chin and pulled on his cigar. Anson was finding him a damned stubborn fellow, this Scotsman or Irishman or whatever he claimed to be.

'You want him to be completely innocent, don't you? Not just innocent, but completely innocent? In my experience, Doyle, no one is completely innocent. They may be found not guilty, but that's different from being innocent. Almost no one's completely innocent.'

'How about Jesus Christ?'

Oh, for God's sake, thought Anson. And I'm not Pontius Pilate either. 'Well, from a purely legal point of view,' he said in a mild, after-dinner manner, 'you could argue that Our Lord helped bring the prosecution upon Himself.'

Now it was Doyle who felt they were straying from the matter in hand.

'Then let me ask you this. What, in your opinion, really happened?'

Anson laughed, rather too openly. 'That, I'm afraid, is a question from detective fiction. It is what your readers beg, and what you so winningly provide. Tell us what really happened.

'Most crimes, Doyle – almost all crimes, in fact – occur without witnesses. The burglar waits for the house to be empty. The murderer waits until his victim is alone. The man who slashes the horse waits for the cover of night. If there is a witness, it is often an accomplice, another criminal. You catch a criminal, he lies. Always. You separate two accomplices, they tell separate lies. You get one to turn King's evidence, he tells a new sort of lie. The entire resources of the Staffordshire Constabulary could be assigned to a case, and we would never end up knowing what really happened, as you put it. I am not making some philosophical argument, I am being practical. What we know, what we end up knowing, is – enough to secure a conviction. Forgive me for lecturing you about the real world.'

Doyle wondered if he would ever cease being punished for having invented Sherlock Holmes. Corrected, advised, lectured, patronized – when would it ever stop? Still, he must press on. He must keep his temper whatever the provocation.

'But leaving all that aside, Anson. And admitting – as I fear we must admit – that by the end of the evening we may not have shifted one another's position by one jot or one tittle. What I am asking is this. You believe that a respectable young solicitor, having shown no previous sign of a violent nature, suddenly goes out one night and attacks a pit pony in a most wicked and violent fashion. I ask you simply, Why?'

Anson groaned inwardly. Motive. The criminal mind. Here we go again. He rose and refilled their glasses.

'You are the one with the paid imagination, Doyle.'

'Yet I believe him innocent. And am unable to make the leap that you have made. You are not in the witness box. We are two English gentlemen sitting over fine brandy and, if I may say so, even finer cigars, in a handsome house in the middle of this splendid county. Whatever you say will remain within these four walls, I give you my word on that. I merely ask: according to you, Why?'

'Very well. Let us start with known facts. The case of Elizabeth Foster, the maid-of-all-work. Where you allege it all began. Naturally, we looked at the case but there simply wasn't enough evidence to prosecute.'

Doyle looked at the Chief Constable blankly. 'I don't understand. There was a prosecution. She pleaded guilty.'

'There was a private prosecution – by the Vicar. And the girl was bullied by lawyers into pleading guilty. Not the sort of gesture to endear you to your parishioners.'

'So the police failed to support the family even then?'

'Doyle, we prosecute when the evidence is there. As we prosecuted when the solicitor himself was victim of an assault. Ah, I see he didn't tell you that.'

'He does not seek pity.'

'That's by the by.' Anson picked a paper from his file. 'November 1900. Assault by two Wyrley youths. Pushed him through a hedge in Landywood, and one of them also damaged his umbrella. Both pleaded guilty. Fined with costs. Cannock magistrates. You didn't know he'd been there before?'

'May I see that?'

'Afraid not. Police records.'

'Then at least give me the names of those convicted.' When Anson hesitated, he added, 'I can always get my bloodhounds on to the matter.'

Anson, to Doyle's surprise, gave a kind of humorous bark. 'So you're a bloodhound man too? Oh, very well, they were called Walker and Gladwin.' He saw that they meant nothing to Doyle. 'Anyway, we might presume that this was not an isolated occurrence. He was probably assaulted before or after, more mildly perhaps. Doubtless insulted too. The young men of Staffordshire are far from saints.'

'It may surprise you to know that George Edalji specifically rejects race prejudice as the basis of his misfortune.'

'So much the better. Then we may happily leave it on one side.'

'Though of course,' added Doyle, 'I do not agree with his analysis.'

'Well, that is your prerogative,' replied Anson complacently.

'And why is this assault relevant?'

'Because, Doyle, you cannot understand the ending until you know the beginning.' Anson was now starting to enjoy himself. His blows were hitting home, one by one. 'George Edalji had good reason to hate the district of Wyrley. Or thought he did.'

'So he took revenge by killing livestock? Where's the connection?'

'I see you are from the city, Doyle. A cow, a horse, a sheep, a pig is more than livestock. It is livelihood. Call it – an economic target.'

'Can you demonstrate a link between either of George's assailants in Landywood and any of the livestock subsequently mutilated?'

'No, I can't. But you should not expect criminals to follow logic.'

'Not even intelligent ones?'

'Even less so, in my experience. Anyway, we have a young man who is his parents' pet, still stuck at home when his younger brother has flown the coop. A young man with a grudge against the district, to which he feels superior. He finds himself in catastrophic debt. The moneylenders are threatening him with the bankruptcy court, professional ruin is staring him in the face. Everything he has ever worked for in his life is about to disappear…'

'And so?'

'So… perhaps he ran mad like your friend Mr Wilde.'

'Wilde was corrupted by his success, in my view. One may hardly compare the effect of nightly applause in the West End with the critical reception to a treatise on railway law.'

'You said Wilde's case was a pathological development. Why not Edalji's too? I believe the solicitor was at his wits' end for months. The strain must have been considerable, even unbearable. You yourself called his begging letter "desperate". Some pathological development might occur, some tendency to evil in the blood might inevitably emerge.'

'Half his blood is Scottish.'

'Indeed.'

'And the other half is Parsee. The most highly educated and commercially successful of Indian sects.'

'I do not doubt it. They are not called the Jews of Bombay for nothing. And equally I do not doubt that it is the mixing of the blood that is partly the cause of all this.'

'My own blood is mixed Scottish and Irish,' said Doyle. 'Does this make me cut cattle?'

'You make my argument for me. What Englishman – what Scotsman – what half Scotsman – would take a blade to a horse, a cow, a sheep?'

'You forget the miner Farrington, who did just that while George was in prison. But I ask you in return: what Indian would do the same? Do they not venerate cattle as gods there?'

'Indeed. But when the blood is mixed, that is where the trouble starts. An irreconcilable division is set up. Why does human society everywhere abhor the half-caste? Because his soul is torn between the impulse to civilization and the pull of barbarism.'

'And is it the Scottish or the Parsee blood you hold responsible for barbarism?'

'You are facetious, Doyle. You yourself believe in blood. You believe in race. You told me over dinner how your mother had proudly traced her ancestry back five centuries. Forgive me if I misquote you, but I recall that many of the great ones of the earth have roosted in your family tree.'

'You do not misquote me. Are you saying that George Edalji slit the bellies of horses because that's what his ancestors did five centuries ago in Persia or wherever they were then?'

'I have no idea whether barbaric or ritual practices were involved. Perhaps so. It may well be that Edalji himself did not know what impelled him to act as he did. An urge from centuries back, brought to the surface by this sudden and deplorable miscegenation.'

'You truly believe that this is what happened?'

'Something like it, yes.'

'Then what about Horace?'

'Horace?'

'Horace Edalji. Born of the same mixture of bloods. Currently a respected employee of His Majesty's Government. In the tax inspectorate. You are not suggesting Horace was part of the gang?'

'I am not.'

'Why not? He has as good credentials.'

'Again, you are being facetious. Horace Edalji lives in Manchester, for a start. Besides, I am merely proposing that a mixing of the blood produces a tendency, a susceptibility under certain extreme circumstances to revert to barbarism. To be sure, many half-castes live perfectly respectable lives.'

'Unless something triggers them…'

'As the full moon may trigger lunacy in some gypsies and Irish.'

'It has never had that effect on me.'

'Low-born Irish, my dear Doyle. Nothing personal intended.'

'So what is the difference between George and Horace? Why, in your belief, has one resorted to barbarism and the other not – or not as yet?'

'Do you have a brother, Doyle?'

'I do indeed. A younger one. Innes. He's a career officer.'

'Why has he not written detective stories?'

'I am not tonight's theorist.'

'Because circumstances, even between brothers, vary.'

'Again, why not Horace?'

'The evidence has been staring you in the face, Doyle. It was all brought out in court, by the family itself. I'm surprised you overlooked it.'

It was a pity, Doyle thought, that he had not booked into the White Lion Hotel over the road. He might have the need to kick some furniture before the evening was finished.

'Cases like this, which seem baffling as well as repugnant to the outsider often turn, in my experience, on matters which are not discussed in court, for obvious reasons. Matters which are normally confined to the smoking room. But you are, as you have indicated with your tales of Mr Oscar Wilde, a man of the world. You have a medical training too, as I recall. And you have travelled in support of our army in the South African War, I believe.'

'All that is true.' Where was the fellow leading him?

'Your friend Mr Edalji is thirty years old. He is unmarried.'

'As are many young men of his age.'

'And is likely to remain so.'

'Especially given his prison sentence.'

'No, Doyle, that's not the problem. There's always a certain low sort of woman attracted by the whiff of Portland. The hindrance is other. The hindrance is that your man's a goggling half-caste. Not many takers for that, not in Staffordshire.'

'Your point?'

But Anson did not seem especially keen to reach his point.

'The accused, as was noted at the Quarter Sessions, did not have any friends.'

'I thought he was a member of the famous Wyrley Gang?'

Anson ignored this riposte. 'Neither male comrades nor, for that matter, friends of the fairer sex. He has never been seen with a girl on his arm. Not even a parlourmaid.'

'I did not realize you had him followed quite so closely.'

'He does not engage in sporting activities either. Had you noticed that? The great manly English games – cricket, football, golf, tennis, boxing – are all quite foreign to him. Archery,' the Chief Constable added; and then, as an afterthought, 'Gymnastics.'

'You expect a man with a myopia of eight dioptres to enter the boxing ring, otherwise you'll send him to gaol?'

'Ah, his eyesight, the answer to everything.' Anson could feel Doyle's exasperation building, and sought to incite it further. 'Yes, a poor, bookish, solitary boy with bulging eyes.'

'So?'

'You trained, I think, as an ophthalmologist?'

'I had consulting rooms in Devonshire Place for a short while.'

'And did you examine many cases of exophthalmus?'

'Not a great number. To tell the truth, I had few patients. They neglected me to such an extent that I was able to give my time there to literary composition. So their absence was to prove unexpectedly beneficial.'

Anson noted the ritual display of self-satisfaction, but pressed ahead. 'And what condition do you associate with exophthalmus?'

'It sometimes occurs as a consequence of whooping cough. And, of course, as a side-effect of strangulation.'

'Exophthalmus is commonly associated with an unhealthy degree of sexual desire.'

'Balderdash!'

'No doubt, Sir Arthur, your Devonshire Place patients were altogether too refined.'

'It's absurd.' Had they descended into folk traditions and old wives' tales? This from a Chief Constable?

'It is not, of course, an observation that would be put up in evidence. But it is generally reported among those who deal with a certain class of criminal.'

'It's still balderdash.'

'As you wish. Further, we need to consider the curious sleeping arrangements at the Vicarage.'

'Which are absolute proof of the young man's innocence.'

'We have agreed we shall not change each other's minds one jot or one tittle tonight. But even so, let us consider those sleeping arrangements. The boy is – what? ten? – when his little sister falls ill. From that moment, mother and daughter sleep in the same room, while father and elder son also share a common dormitory. Lucky Horace has a room of his own.'

'Are you suggesting – are you suggesting that something dastardly happened in that room?' Where on earth was Anson heading? Was he completely off his head?

'No, Doyle. The opposite. I am absolutely certain that nothing whatever happened in that room. Nothing except sleep and prayers. Nothing happened. Nothing. The dog did not bark, if you will excuse me.'

'Then…?'

'As I said, all the evidence is in front of you. From the age of ten, a boy sleeps in the same locked room as his father. Through the age of puberty and into early manhood, night after night after night. His brother leaves home – and what happens? Does he inherit his brother's bedroom? No, this extraordinary arrangement continues. He is a solitary boy, and then a solitary young man, with a grotesque appearance. He is never seen in the company of the opposite sex. Yet he has, we may presume, normal urges and appetites. And if, despite your scepticism, we believe the evidence of his exophthalmus, he was prey to urges and appetites stronger than customary. We are men, Doyle, who understand this side of things. We are familiar with the perils of adolescence and young manhood. How the choice often lies between carnal self-indulgence which leads to moral and physical enfeeblement, even to criminal behaviour, and a healthy diversion from base urges into manly sporting activities. Edalji, by his circumstances, was happily prevented from taking the former path, and chose not to divert himself with the latter. And while I admit that boxing would hardly have been his forte, there were, for instance, gymnastics, and physical culture, and the new American science of bodybuilding.'

'Are you suggesting that on the night of the outrage there was… some sexual purpose or manifestation?'

'Not directly, no. But you are asking me what I believe happened and why. Let us admit, for the moment, much of what you claim about the young man. He was a good student, a son who honoured his parents, who prayed in his father's church, who did not smoke or drink, who worked hard at his practice. And yet you in return must accept the likelihood of another side to him. How could there not be, given the peculiarity of his breeding, his intense isolation and confinement, his excessive urges? By day he is a diligent member of society. And then by night, every so often, he yields to something barbaric, something buried deep within his dark soul, something even he probably does not understand.'

'It's pure speculation,' said Doyle, though there was something about his voice – something quieter and less confident – that struck Anson.

'You instructed me to speculate. You will admit that I have seen more examples of criminal behaviour and criminal purpose than you. I speculate on that basis. You have insisted on the fact that Edalji is of the professional class. How often, you implicitly asked, did the professional classes commit crimes? More often than you would believe, was my answer. However, I would return the question to you in a different form, Sir Arthur. How often do you find happily married men, whose happiness naturally involves regular sexual fulfilment, committing crimes of a violent and perverted nature? Do we believe that Jack the Ripper was a happily married man?

'No, we do not. I would go further. I would suggest that if a normal healthy man is continually deprived of sexual fulfilment, for whatever reason and under whatever circumstances, it may – I only say may, I put it no stronger – it may begin to affect the cast of his mind. I think this is what happened with Edalji. He felt himself in a terrible cage surrounded by iron bars. When would he ever escape? When would he ever achieve any kind of sexual fulfilment? In my view, a continuous period of sexual frustration, year after year after year, can start to turn a man's mind, Doyle. He can end up worshipping strange gods, and performing strange rites.'

There was no reply from his famous guest. Indeed, Doyle seemed quite puce in the face. Perhaps it was the effect of the brandy. Perhaps for all his worldly airs the man was a prude. Or perhaps – and this seemed the most likely – he saw the overwhelming force of the argument ranged against him. In any case, his eyes were trained on the ashtray as he crushed out the perfectly smokeable length of a very decent cigar. Anson waited, but his guest had now transferred his gaze to the fire, unwilling or unable to reply. Well, that seemed to be the end of that. Time to move to more practical matters.

'I trust you sleep soundly tonight, Doyle. But be warned that some believe Green Hall to be haunted.'

'Really,' came the reply. But Anson could tell Doyle's mind was far away.

'There is supposedly a headless horseman. Also the crunching of coach wheels in the gravel of the drive, and yet no coach. Also the ringing of mysterious bells, and yet no bells have ever been found. Tommyrot, of course, sheer tommyrot.' Anson found himself feeling positively blithe. 'But I doubt you are susceptible to phantoms and zombies and poltergeists.'

'The spirits of the dead do not trouble me,' said Doyle in a flat, tired voice. 'Indeed, I welcome them.'

'Breakfast is at eight, if that suits you.'

As Doyle retired in what Anson took to be defeat, the Chief Constable swept the cigar butts into the fire and watched them briefly flare. When he got to bed, Blanche was still awake, rereading Mrs Braddon. In the side dressing room her husband tossed his jacket across the clothes horse and shouted through to her, 'Sherlock Holmes baffled! Scotland Yard solves mystery!'

'George, don't bellow so.'

Captain Anson came tiptoeing through in his braided dressing gown with a vast grin on his face. 'I do not care if the Great Detective is crouching with his ear to the keyhole. I have taught him a thing or two about the real world tonight.'

Blanche Anson had rarely seen her husband so lightheaded, and decided to confiscate the key to the tantalus for the rest of the week.

Arthur

Arthur's rage had been building since the moment the door of Green Hall closed behind him. The first leg of his journey back to Hindhead did little to alleviate it. The Walsall, Cannock amp; Rugeley line of the London amp; North Western Railway amounted to a constant series of provocations: from Stafford, where George was condemned, through Rugeley where he went to school, Hednesford where he supposedly threatened to shoot Sergeant Robinson in the head, Cannock where those fools of magistrates committed him, Wyrley amp; Churchbridge where it all began, then past fields grazed by what could be Blewitt's livestock, via Walsall where the source of the conspiracy must surely be found, to Birmingham where George had been arrested. Each station on the line had its message, and it was the same message, written by Anson: I and my kind own the land around here, and the people, and the justice.

Jean has never seen Arthur in such a temper. It is mid-afternoon, and he bangs the tea service around as he tells his story.

'And do you know what else he said? He dared to assert that it would do my reputation no good if my… my amateur speculations were to be broadcast. I have not been treated with such condescension since I was an impecunious doctor in Southsea attempting to persuade a rich patient that he was entirely healthy when he insisted on being at death's door.'

'And what did you do? In Southsea, I mean.'

'What did I do? I repeated that he was as fit as a fiddle, he replied that he didn't pay a doctor to tell him that, so I told him to find a different specialist who would diagnose whatever ailment he found it convenient to imagine.'

Jean laughs at the scene, her amusement tinged with a little regret that she was not there, could never have been there. The future lies ahead of them, it is true, but suddenly she minds not having had a little of the past as well.

'So what will you do?'

'I know exactly what I shall do. Anson thinks that I have prepared this report with the intention of sending it to the Home Office, where it will gather dust and be slightingly referred to in some internal review which may finally see the light of day when we are all dead. I have no intention of playing that game. I shall publish my findings as widely as it is possible to do. I thought of it on the train. I shall offer my report to the Daily Telegraph, who I daresay will be happy to print it. But I shall do more than that. I shall ask them to head it "No Copyright", so that other papers – and especially the Midland ones – may reproduce it in extenso and free of charge.'

'Wonderful. And so generous.'

'That's by the by. It's a matter of what's most effective. And furthermore, I shall now make Captain Anson's position in the case, his prejudiced involvement from the very beginning, as clear as a bell. If he wants my amateur speculations on his activities, he shall have them. He shall have them in the libel court if he wishes. And he may very well find that his professional future is not as he imagines after I've finished with him.'

'Arthur, if I may…'

'Yes, my dear?'

'It might be advisable not to turn this into a personal vendetta against Captain Anson.'

'I don't see why not. Much of the evil has its origins with him.'

'I mean, Arthur dear, that you must not let Captain Anson distract you from your primary purpose. Because if he did, then Captain Anson would be the first to be contented.'

Arthur looks at her with pride as well as pleasure. Not just a useful suggestion, but a damned intelligent one into the bargain.

'You are quite right. I shall not scourge Anson more than will serve George's interests. But he shall not remain unscourged either. And I shall put him and his entire police force to shame with the second part of my investigation. Things are becoming clearer as to the culprit, and if I can demonstrate that he was under Anson's nose since the beginning of the affair, and that he did nothing about it, what course will be left to him but resignation? I shall have the Staffordshire Constabulary reorganized from end to end by the time I'm finished with this business. Full steam ahead!'

He notices Jean's smile, which seems to him both admiring and indulgent, a powerful combination.

'And talking of which, my darling, I really do think we should set a wedding date. Otherwise people might take you for an unconscionable flirt.'

'Me, Arthur? Me?'

He chuckles, and reaches for her hand. Full steam ahead, he thinks, otherwise the whole boiler room might just explode.

Back at Undershaw, Arthur took up his pen and settled Anson's hash. That letter to the Vicar – 'I trust to be able to obtain a dose of penal servitude for the offender' – had there ever been such a gross prejudging by a responsible official? Arthur felt his temper rising as he recopied the words; felt also the coolth of Jean's advice. He must do what was most effective for George; he must avoid libel; equally, he must make the verdict on Anson absolute. It had been a long time since he had been so condescended to. Well, Anson would find out what that felt like.

Now, [he began] I have no doubt that Captain Anson was quite honest in his dislike of George Edalji, and unconscious of his own prejudice. It would be folly to think otherwise. But men in his position have no right to such feelings. They are too powerful, others are too weak, and the consequences are too terrible. As I trace the course of events, this dislike of their chief's filtered down until it came to imbue the whole force, and when they had George Edalji they did not give him the most elementary justice.

Before the case, during it, but also afterwards: Anson's arrogance had been as boundless as his prejudice.

I do not know what subsequent reports from Captain Anson prevented justice being done at the Home Office, but this I do know, that instead of leaving the fallen man alone, every possible effort was made after the conviction to blacken his character, and that of his father, so as to frighten off anyone who might be inclined to investigate the case. When Mr Yelverton first took it up, he had a letter over Captain Anson's signature, saying, under date Nov. 8, 1903: 'It is right to tell you that you will find it a simple waste of time to attempt to prove that George Edalji could not, owing to his position and alleged good character, have been guilty of writing offensive and abominable letters. His father is as well aware as I am of his proclivities in the direction of anonymous writing, and several other people have personal knowledge on the same subject.'

Now, both Edalji and his father declare on oath that the former never wrote an anonymous letter in his life, and on being applied to by Mr Yelverton for the names of the 'several other people' no answer was received. Consider that this letter was written immediately after the conviction, and that it was intended to nip in the bud the movement in the direction of mercy. It is certainly a little like kicking a man when he is down.

If that doesn't dish Anson, Arthur thought, nothing will. He imagined newspaper editorials, questions in Parliament, a mealy-mouthed statement from the Home Office, and perhaps a lengthy foreign tour before some comfortable yet distant billet was found for the former Chief Constable. The West Indies might be the place. It would be a sadness for Mrs Anson, whom Arthur had found a spirited table-companion. But she would doubtless survive her husband's rightful humiliation better than George's mother had been able to withstand her son's wrongful humiliation.

The Daily Telegraph published Arthur's findings over two days, the 11th and 12th of January. The newspaper laid it out well, and the compositors were on their best behaviour. Arthur read his words through again, all the way to their thundering conclusion:

The door is shut in our faces. Now we turn to the last tribunal of all, a tribunal which never errs when the facts are fairly laid before them, and we ask the public of Great Britain whether this thing is to go on.

The response to the articles was tremendous. Soon the telegram boy could have found his way to Undershaw blindfold. There was support from Barrie, Meredith, and others in the writing profession. The correspondence page of the Telegraph was filled with debate about George's eyesight and the defence's dereliction in failing to introduce it. George's mother added her own testimony:

I always spoke to the solicitor employed for the defence of the extreme short sight of my son, which has been from a child. I considered that sufficient proof at once, if there had been no other, that he could not have gone to the field, with a so-called 'road' impossible even to people with good sight, at night. I felt this so much that I was distressed that no opportunity was given me when giving evidence to speak on his defective sight. The time allowed me was very short, and I suppose people were tired of the case… My son's sight was always so defective that he bent very close to the paper in writing, and held a book or paper very close to his eyes, and when out walking he did not recognize people easily. When I met him anywhere I always felt I must look for him, not he for me.

Other letters demanded a search for Elizabeth Foster, anatomized the character of Captain Anson, and dilated upon the prevalence of gangs in Staffordshire. One correspondent explained how easily horse hairs might work themselves loose from inside the lining of a coat. There were letters from one of George's fellow passengers on the Wyrley train, from Onlooker of Hampstead NW and from A Friend to Parsees. Mr Aroon Chunder Dutt MD (Cantab.) wished to point out that cattle maiming was a crime entirely foreign to the Eastern nature. Chowry Muthu MD of New Cavendish Street reminded readers that all India was watching the case, and that the name and honour of England were at stake.

Three days after the second Telegraph article appeared, Arthur and Mr Yelverton were received at the Home Office by Mr Gladstone, Sir Mackenzie Chambers and Mr Blackwell. It was agreed that the proceedings should be considered private. The conversation lasted an hour. Afterwards, Sir A. Conan Doyle stated that he and Mr Yelverton had met with a courteous and sympathetic reception, and that he was confident the Home Office would do all it could to clear the matter up.

The waiving of copyright helped spread the story not just to the Midlands, but across the world. Arthur's cuttings agency was overburdened, and he grew used to the repeated headline, which taught him the same verb in many different languages: SHERLOCK HOLMES INVESTIGATES. Expressions of support – and occasional dissent – arrived by every post. Fantastical solutions to the case were proposed: for instance, that the persecution of the Edaljis had been conducted by other Parsees as punishment for Shapurji's apostasy. And of course there was another letter in a handwriting which had now become very familiar:

I know from a detective of Scotland Yard that if you write to Gladstone and say you find Edalji is guilty after all they will make you a lord next year. Is it not better to be a lord than to run the risk of losing kidneys and liver. Think of all the ghoolish murders that are committed why then should you escape?

Arthur noted the spelling mistake, judged that he had got his man on the run, and flipped the page:

The proof of what I tell you is in the writing he put in the papers when they loosed him out of prison where he ought to have been kept along with his dad and all the black and yellow-faced Jews. Nobody could copy his writing like that, you blind fool.

Such crude provocation merely confirmed the need to push forward on all fronts. There must be no slackening of effort. Mr Mitchell wrote to confirm that Milton had indeed been on the syllabus at Walsall School during the period that interested Sir Arthur; though begged to add that the great poet had been taught in the schools of Staffordshire for as long as the oldest master could recall, and indeed was still being taught. Harry Charlesworth reported that he had traced Fred Wynn, once the schoolfellow of the Brookes boy, now a house painter of Cheslyn Hay, and would ask him about Speck. Three days later a telegram with an agreed formula arrived: INVITED DINNER HEDNESFORD TUESDAY CHARLESWORTH STOP.

Harry Charlesworth met Sir Arthur and Mr Wood at Hednesford station and walked them to the Rising Sun public house. In the saloon bar they were introduced to a lanky young man with a celluloid collar and frayed cuffs. There were some whitish stains on one sleeve of his jacket, which Arthur thought unlikely to be either horse's saliva or even bread and milk.

'Tell them what you told me,' said Harry.

Wynn looked at the strangers slowly and tapped his glass. Arthur sent Wood off for the necessary encouragement to their informant's voice box.

'I was at school with Speck,' he began. 'He was always at the bottom of the class. Always in trouble. Set a rick on fire one summer. Liked to chew tobacco. One evening I was on the train with Brookes when Speck came running into the same compartment, straight to the end of the carriage and stuck his head through the window smashing it to bits. Just started laughing at what he'd done. Then we all moved to another carriage.

'A couple of days later some railway police arrived and said we are to be charged with breaking the window. We both said Speck did it, so he had to pay for it, and they caught him cutting the straps of the window as well, and he had to pay for that too. Then Brookes's Pa started getting letters saying Brookes and me had been spitting on an old lady at Walsall Station. He was always in mischief, Speck. Then the school had him taken away. I don't recall he was exactly expelled, but as good as.'

'And what became of him?' asked Arthur.

'A year or two later I heard he'd been sent to sea.'

'To sea? You're sure? Absolutely sure?'

'Well, that's what they said. Anyway, he disappeared.'

'When would this have been?'

'As I say, a year or two later. He probably fired the rick in about '92, I'd say.

'So he would have gone to sea at the end of '95, beginning of '96?'

'That I couldn't say.'

'Roughly?'

'I couldn't say nearer than I've said already.'

'Do you remember which port he departed from?'

Wynn shook his head.

'Or when he returned? If he did return?'

Wynn shook his head again. 'Charlesworth said you'd be interested.' He tapped his glass once more. This time Arthur ignored the gesture.

'I am interested, Mr Wynn, but you'll forgive me if I say there's a problem with your story.'

'Is there just?'

'You went to Walsall School?'

'Yes.'

'And so did Brookes?'

'Yes.'

'And so did Speck?'

'Yes.'

'Then how do you account for the fact that Mr Mitchell, the current Headmaster, assures me that there has been no boy of that name at the school in the past twenty years?'

'Oh, I see,' said Wynn. 'Speck was just what we called him. He was a little fellow, like a speck. That's probably why. No, his real name was Sharp.'

'Sharp?'

'Royden Sharp.'

Arthur picked up Mr Wynn's glass and handed it to his secretary. 'Anything with that, Mr Wynn? A chaser of whisky, perhaps?'

'Now that would be very noble of you, Sir Arthur. Very noble. And I was wondering if in return I might request a favour of you.' He reached down to a small haversack, and Arthur left the Rising Sun with half a dozen narrative sketches of local life – 'I thought of calling them "Vignettes'" – on whose literary merit he had promised to adjudicate.

'Royden Sharp. Now that's a new name in the case. How would we set about tracing him? Any ideas, Harry?'

'Oh yes,' said Harry. 'I didn't want to mention it in front of Wynn in case he drank the house dry. I can give you a lead on him. He used to be the ward of Mr Greatorex.'

'Greatorex!'

'There were two Sharp brothers, Wallie and Royden. One of them was at school with George and me, though I can't remember which at this distance. But Mr Greatorex can tell you about them.'

They took the train two stops back up the line to Wyrley amp; Churchbridge, then walked to Littleworth Farm. Mr and Mrs Greatorex were a comfortable, easy couple in late middle age, hospitable and direct. For once, Arthur felt, it would not be a matter of beer and bootscrapers, of calculating whether the correct price of information was two shillings and threepence or two shillings and fourpence.

'Wallie and Royden Sharp were the sons of my tenant farmer Peter Sharp,' Mr Greatorex began. 'They were rather wild boys. No, that's perhaps unfair. Royden was a wild boy. I remember his father once had to pay for a rick he set on fire. Wallie was more strange than wild.

'Royden was expelled from school – from Walsall. Both boys went there. Royden was idle and destructive, I gathered, though I never had the full story. Peter sent him next to Wisbech School, but that didn't take any better. So he had him apprenticed to a butcher, by the name of Meldon I think, in Cannock. Then, towards the end of '93, I became involved. The boys' father was dying, and he asked me if I would become Royden's trustee. It was the least I could do, and naturally I made what promises I could to Peter. I did my best, but Royden was simply uncontrollable. Nothing but trouble. Thieving, smashing things, lying constantly…

wouldn't stick at any job. In the end I said he had two choices. Either I would stop his allowance and report him to the police, or he could go to sea.'

'We are aware of which alternative he chose.'

'So I got him a passage as an apprentice on the General Roberts, belonging to Lewis Davies amp; Co.'

'This would be when?'

'At the end of 1895. The very end. I think she sailed on the 30th of December.'

'And from which port, Mr Greatorex?' Arthur knew the answer already, but still leaned forward in anticipation.

'Liverpool.'

'And how long did he stay with the General Roberts?'

'Well, for once he stuck at something. He finished his apprenticeship about four years later, and got a third mate's certificate. Then he came home.'

'Does that take us to 1903?'

'No, no. Earlier. '01, I'm sure. But he was only home briefly, Then he got a billet on a cattle boat between Liverpool and America. He served ten months on it. And after that he came home permanently. That would have been in '03.'

'A cattle ship, indeed. And where is he now?'

'In the same house his father had. But he's much changed. He's married, for a start.'

'Did you ever suspect him or his brother of writing the letters in your son's name?'

'No.'

'Why not?'

'There were no grounds. And I would have judged him too idle, and perhaps not imaginative enough.'

'And – let me guess – did they have a younger brother – perhaps a rather foul-mouthed boy, I would guess?'

'No, no. There were just the two of them.'

'Or a young companion of that kind, who was often with them?'

'No. Not at all.'

'I see. And did Royden Sharp resent your trusteeship?'

'Frequently, yes. He didn't understand why I refused to hand over all the money his father had left him. Not that there was much. A fact which made me all the more determined not to let him squander it.'

'The other boy – Wallie – he was the elder?'

'Yes, he'd be about thirty now.'

'So that's the one you were at school with, Harry?' Charlesworth nodded. 'You said he was strange. In what way?'

'Strange. Not quite of this world. I can't be more precise.'

'Any signs of religious mania?'

'Not that I was aware of. He was clever, Wallie. Brainy.'

'Did he study Milton at Walsall School?'

'Not that I was aware of.'

'And after school?'

'He was apprenticed to an electrical engineer for a while.'

'Which would permit him to travel to the neighbouring towns?'

Mr Greatorex looked puzzled by the question. 'Certainly. Like many another man.'

'And… do the brothers still live together?'

'No, Wallie left the country a year or two back.'

'Where did he go?'

'South Africa.'

Arthur turned to his secretary. 'Why is everyone going to South Africa all of a sudden? Would you have an address for him there, Mr Greatorex?'

'I might have done. Except that we heard he died. Recently. November last.'

'Ah. A pity. And the house where they lived together, where Royden still lives…'

'I can take you there.'

'No, not yet. My question is… is it isolated?'

'Fairly. Like many another house.'

'So that you could enter or leave without neighbours observing you?'

'Oh yes.'

'And it is easy of access to the country?'

'Indeed. It backs on to open fields. But so do many houses.'

'Sir Arthur.' It was the first time Mrs Greatorex had spoken. As he turned to her, he noticed that her colour had risen, and she was more agitated that when they arrived. 'You suspect him, don't you? Or both of them?'

'The evidence is accumulating, to say the least, ma'am.'

Arthur prepared himself for some loyal protestation from Mrs Greatorex, a refusal to countenance his suspicions and slanders.

'Then I had better tell you what I know. About three and a half years ago – it was in July, I remember, the July before they arrested George Edalji – I was passing the Sharps' house one afternoon and called in. Wallie was out but Royden was there. We started talking about the maimings – that's what everyone was talking about at the time. After a while Royden went over to a cupboard in the kitchen and showed me – an instrument. Held it in front of me. He said, "This is what they kill the cattle with." It made me feel sick just to look at it, so I told him to put it away. I said, "You don't want them to think you are the man, do you?" And then he put it back in the cupboard.'

'Why didn't you tell me?' asked her husband.

'I thought there were enough rumours flying around without wanting to add to them. And I just wanted to forget the whole incident.'

Arthur contained his reaction and asked neutrally, 'You didn't think of telling the police?'

'No. After I got over the shock I went for a walk and thought about it. And I decided Royden was just boasting. Pretending to know something. He would hardly show me the thing if he'd done it himself, would he? And then he's a lad I've known all my life. He'd been a bit wild, as my husband explained, but since he came back from sea he settled down. He'd got himself engaged and was planning to be married. Well, he is married now. But he was known to the police and I thought that if I went and told them, they'd just make out a case against him whatever the evidence was.'

Yes, thought Arthur; and because of your silence, they went and made a case out against George instead.

'I still don't understand why you didn't tell me,' said Mr Greatorex.

'Because – because you were always harder on the boy than me. And I knew you'd jump to conclusions.'

'Conclusions which would probably have been quite correct,' he replied with a certain tartness.

Arthur pushed on. They could have their marital disagreement later. 'Mrs Greatorex, what sort of an… instrument was it?'

'The blade was about so long.' She gestured: a foot or so, then. 'And it folded into a casing, like a giant pocket knife. It's not a farm instrument. But it was the blade that was the frightening thing. It had a curve in it.'

'You mean, like a scimitar? Or a sickle?'

'No, no, the blade itself was straight, and its edge wasn't sharp at all. But towards the end there was a part that curved outwards, which looked extremely sharp.'

'Could you draw it for us?'

'Certainly.' Mrs Greatorex pulled out a kitchen drawer, and on a piece of lined paper made a confident freehand outline:

'This is blunt, along here, and here as well, where it's straight. And there, where it curves, it's horribly sharp.'

Arthur looked at the others. Mr Greatorex and Harry shook their heads. Alfred Wood turned the drawing round so that it faced him and said, 'Two to one it's a horse lancet. Of the larger sort. I expect he stole it from the cattle ship.'

'You see,' said Mrs Greaterex, 'your friend is jumping to conclusions immediately. Just as the police would have done.'

This time Arthur could not hold back. 'Whereas instead they jumped to conclusions about George Edalji.' Mrs Greatorex's high colour returned at this remark. 'And forgive my asking, ma'am, but did you not think of telling the police about the instrument later – at the time they charged George?'

'I thought about it, yes.'

'But did nothing.'

'Sir Arthur,' replied Mrs Greatorex, 'I do not recall your presence in the district at the time of the maimings. There was widespread hysteria. Rumours about this person and that person. Rumours about a Great Wyrley Gang. Rumours that they were going to move on from animals to young women. Talk about pagan sacrifices. It was all to do with the new moon, some said. Indeed, now I recall, Royden's wife once told me he reacted strangely to the new moon.'

'That's true,' said her husband ruminatively. 'I noticed it too. He used to laugh like a maniac when the moon was new. I thought at first he was just putting it on, but I caught him doing it when no one was about.'

'But don't you see-' Arthur began.

Mrs Greatorex cut him off. 'Laughing is not a crime. Even laughing like a maniac.'

'But didn't you think…?'

'Sir Arthur, I have no great regard for the intelligence or the efficiency of the Staffordshire Constabulary. I think that is one thing we might be agreed upon. And if you are concerned about your young friend's wrongful imprisonment, then I was concerned about the same thing happening to Roy den Sharp. It might not have ended with your friend escaping gaol, but rather with both of them behind bars for belonging to the same gang, whether it existed or not.'

Arthur decided to accept the rebuke. 'And what about the weapon? Did you tell him to destroy it?'

'Certainly not. We haven't mentioned it from that day to this.'

'Then may I ask you, Mrs Greatorex, to continue in that silence for a few days more? And a final question. Do the names Walker or Gladwin mean anything to you – in connection with the Sharps?'

The couple shook their heads.

'Harry?'

'I think I remember Gladwin. Worked for a drayman. Haven't seen him in years, though.'

Harry was told to await instructions, while Arthur and his secretary returned to Birmingham for the night. More convenient accommodation at Cannock had been proposed; but Arthur liked to be confident of a decent glass of burgundy at the end of a hard day's work. Over dinner at the Imperial Family Hotel, he suddenly remembered a phrase from one of the letters. He threw his knife and fork down with a clatter.

'When the ripper was boasting of how nobody could catch him. He wrote, "I am as sharp as sharp can be."'

'"As Sharp as Sharp can be",' repeated Wood.

'Exactly.'

'But who was the foul-mouthed boy?'

'I don't know.' Arthur was rather downcast that this particular intuition had not been confirmed. 'Perhaps a neighbour's boy. Or perhaps one of the Sharps invented him.'

'So what do we do now?'

'We continue.'

'But I thought we'd – you'd – solved it. Royden Sharp is the ripper. Royden Sharp and Wallie Sharp together wrote the letters.'

'I agree, Woodie. Now tell me why it was Royden Sharp.'

Wood answered, counting off his fingers as he did so. 'Because he showed the horse lancet to Mrs Greatorex. Because the wounds the animals suffered, cutting the skin and muscle but not penetrating the gut, could only have been inflicted by such an unusual instrument. Because he had worked as a butcher and also on a cattle ship, and therefore knew about handling animals and cutting them up. Because he could have stolen the lancet from the ship. Because the pattern of the letters and the slashings matches the pattern of his presence and absence from Wyrley. Because there are clear hints in the letters about his movements and activities. Because he has a record of mischief. Because he is affected by the new moon.'

'Excellent, Woodie, excellent. A full case, well presented, and dependent on inference and circumstantial evidence.'

'Oh,' said the secretary, disappointed. 'Have I missed something?'

'No, nothing. Royden Sharp is our man, there's not the slightest doubt about it in my mind. But we need more concrete proof. In particular, we need the horse lancet. We need to secure it. Sharp knows we're in the district, and if he's any sense it will already have been thrown into the deepest lake he knows.'

'And if it hasn't?'

'If it hasn't, then you and Harry Charlesworth are going to stumble across it and secure it.'

'Stumble?'

'Stumble.'

'And secure it?'

'Indeed.'

'Have you any suggestions about our modus operandi?'

'Frankly, I think it would be better if I didn't know too much. But I imagine that it is still the custom in these parts of the country for people to leave their doors unlocked. And if it turns out to be a matter of negotiation, then I would suggest that the sum involved appear in the accounts for Undershaw in whichever column you choose to put it.'

Wood was rather irritated by this high-mindedness. 'Sharp is hardly likely to hand it over if we knock on his door and say, Excuse us, may we please buy the lancet you ripped the animals with, so that we can show it to the police?'

'No, I agree,' said Arthur with a chuckle. 'That would never do. You will need to be more imaginative, the two of you. A little more subtlety. Or, for that matter, a little more directness. One of you might distract him, perhaps in a public house, while the other… She did mention a cupboard in the kitchen, did she not? But really, I must leave it to you.'

'You will stand bail for me if required?'

'I will even give you a character witness.'

Wood shook his head slowly. 'I still can't get over it. This time last night we knew almost nothing. Or rather, we had a few suspicions. Now we know everything. All in a day. Wynn, Greatorex, Mrs Greatorex – and that's it. We may not be able to prove it, but we know it. And all in a day.'

'It's not meant to happen like this,' said Arthur. 'I should know. I've written it enough times. It's not meant to happen by following simple steps. It's meant to seem utterly insoluble right up until the end. And then you unravel the knot with one glorious piece of deduction, something entirely logical yet quite astounding, and then you feel a great sense of triumph.'

'Which you don't?'

'Now? No, I feel almost disappointed. Indeed, I do feel disappointed.'

'Well,' said Wood, 'you must permit a simpler soul a sense of triumph.'

'Willingly.'

Later, when Arthur had smoked his final pipe and turned in, he lay in bed reflecting on this. He had set himself a challenge, and today he had overcome it; yet he felt no exultation. Pride, perhaps, and that certain warmth when you take a rest from labour, but not happiness, let alone triumph.

He remembered the day he had married Touie. He had loved her, of course, and in that early stage doted on her entirely and could not wait for the marriage's consummation. But when they wed, at Thornton-in-Lonsdale with that fellow Waller at his elbow, he had felt a sense of… how could he put it without being disrespectful to her memory? He was happy only insofar as she had looked happy. That was the truth. Of course, later, as little as a day or two later, he began to experience the happiness he had hoped for. But at the moment itself, much less than he had anticipated.

Perhaps this was why, at every turn in his life, he had always sought a new challenge. A new cause, a new campaign – because he was only capable of brief joy at the success of the previous one. At moments like this, he envied Woodie's simplicity; he envied those capable of resting on their laurels. But this had never been his way.

And so, what remained to be done now? The lancet must be secured. A specimen of Royden Sharp's handwriting must be obtained – perhaps from Mr and Mrs Greatorex. He must see if Walker and Gladwin had any further relevance. There was the matter of the woman and child who were attacked. Royden Sharp's scholastic career at Walsall must be investigated. He must try to match Wallie Sharp's movements more specifically to places from which letters had been posted. He must show the horse lancet, once secured, to veterinary surgeons who had attended the injured animals, and ask for their professional evaluation. He must ask George what, if anything, he remembered of the Sharps.

He must write to the Mam. He must write to Jean.

Now that his head was full of tasks, he descended into untroubled sleep.

Back at Undershaw, Arthur felt as he did when nearing the end of a book: most of it was in place, the main thrill of creation was past, now it was just a matter of work, of making the thing as watertight as possible. Over the next days the results of his instructions, queries and proddings began to arrive. The first came in the form of a waxed brown-paper parcel tied with string, like a purchase from Brookes's ironmongery. But he knew what it was before he opened it; he knew from Wood's face.

He unwrapped the parcel, and slowly opened the horse lancet out to its full length. It was a vicious instrument, made the more so by the contrast between the bluntness of the straight section and the honed edge on the lethal curve – which was indeed as sharp as sharp could be.

'Bestial,' said Arthur. 'May I ask-'

But his secretary cut off the enquiry with a shake of the head. Sir Arthur couldn't have it both ways, first not knowing and then choosing to know.

George Edalji wrote to say that he had no memory of the Sharp brothers, either at school or subsequently; nor could he think of a reason why they might bear any animus against himself or his father.

More satisfactory was a letter from Mr Mitchell detailing Royden Sharp's scholastic record:

Xmas, 1890. Lower 1. Order, 23rd out of 23. Very backward and weak. French and Latin not attempted.

Easter, 1891. Lower 1. Order, 20th out of 20. Dull, homework neglected, begins to improve in Drawing.

Midsummer, 1891. Lower 1. Order, 18th out of 18. Beginning to progress, caned for misbehaviour in class, tobacco chewing, prevarication, and nicknaming.

Xmas, 1891. Lower 1. Order, 16th out of 16. Unsatisfactory, often untruthful. Always complaining or being complained of. Detected cheating, and frequently absent without leave. Drawing improved.

Easter, 1892. Form 1. Order, 8th out of 8. Idle and mischievous, caned daily, wrote to father, falsified school-fellows' marks, and lied deliberately about it. Caned 20 times this term.

Midsummer, 1892. Played truant, forged letters and initials, removed by his father.

There we are, thought Arthur: forging, cheating, lying, nicknaming, general mischief. And further, note the date of the expulsion or removal, whichever you prefer: Midsummer 1892. That was when the campaign had begun, against the Edaljis, against Brookes and against Walsall School. Arthur felt his irritation rising – that he could find such things out by a normal process of logical inquiry, whereas those dunderheads… He would like to set the Staffordshire Constabulary up against a wall, from the Chief Constable and Superintendent Barrett through Inspector Campbell and Sergeants Parsons and Upton down to the humblest novice in the force, and ask them a simple question. In December 1892 a large key belonging to Walsall School was stolen from the premises and transported to Great Wyrley. Who might be the more plausible suspect: a boy who a few months previously had been ignominiously removed from the school after a career there of stupidity and malice; or the studious and academically promising son of a Vicar, who had never attended Walsall School, never visited its premises, and bore no more grudge against the establishment than did the Man in the Moon? Answer me that, Chief Constable, Superintendent, Inspector, Sergeant and PC Cooper. Answer me that, you twelve good men and true at the Court of Quarter Sessions.

Harry Charlesworth sent an account of an incident which had taken place in Great Wyrley in the late autumn or early winter of 1903. Mrs Jarius Handley was coming from Wyrley Station one evening, having gone there to buy some papers for sale. She was accompanied by her young daughter. They were accosted in the road by two men. One of them caught the girl by the throat, and held something in his hand which gleamed. Both mother and child screamed, whereupon the man ran away, crying to his comrade who had gone on, 'All right, Jack, I am coming.' The girl declared that her mother had been stopped once before by the same man. He was described as having a round face, no moustache, about 5ft 8ins in height, a dark suit, a shiny peaked cap. This description fitted that of Royden Sharp, who at the time wore a sailor-like costume, which he had subsequently abandoned. It was further suggested that 'Jack' was Jack Hart, a dissolute butcher and known companion of Sharp's. The police had been informed, but there was no arrest made in the case.

Harry added in a post-scriptum that Fred Wynn had been in touch with him again and that in exchange for a pint of stout recalled something which had previously escaped him. When he and Brookes and Speck had all attended Walsall School, one thing generally known about Royden Sharp was that he could not be left in a railway carriage without turning up the cushion and slitting it on the underside with a knife, so as to let the horse hair out. Then he would laugh wildly and turn the cushion back again.

On Friday March 1st, after a six-week delay intended perhaps to show that the Home Secretary was not responding to pressure from any one known source, a Committee of Inquiry was announced. Its purpose was to consider various matters in the Edalji Case which had given rise to public disquiet. The Home Office wished to emphasize, however, that the Committee's deliberations in no wise amounted to a retrial of the case. Witnesses would not be called, nor would Mr Edalji's presence be required. The Committee would examine such materials as were in the possession of the Home Office and adjudicate on certain procedural matters. Sir Arthur Wilson KCIE, the Right Hon. John Lloyd Wharton, Chairman of the Quarter Sessions for the County of Durham, and Sir Albert de Rutzen, the Chief Magistrate in London, would report to Mr Gladstone as speedily as possible.

Arthur decided that these gentlemen should not be left to jaw at one another complacently about 'certain procedural matters'. To his reworked Telegraph articles – which would themselves prove George's innocence – he would append a private memorandum setting out the case against Royden Sharp. He would describe his investigation, summarize his evidence, and list those from whom further testimony might be obtained: specifically the butcher Jack Hart of Bridgetown, and Harry Green, now of South Africa. Also Mrs Royden Sharp, who could confirm the effect of the new moon upon her husband. He would send George a copy of the memorandum, inviting his comments. He would also keep Anson on the hop. Every so often, as he remembered that long wrangle over brandy and cigars, an unstoppable growl would rise in his throat. Their exchange had been noisy but largely futile – like that of two Scandinavian elks locking antlers in the forest. Even so, he had been shocked by the complacency and prejudice of a man who ought to have known better. And then, at the last, for Anson to try scaring him with stories of ghosts. How very little the Chief Constable knew his man. In his study, Arthur took out the horse lancet, opened it up and drew round the blade's outline on a sheet of tracing paper. He would send the drawing – marked 'life size' – to the Chief Constable, asking for his views.

'Well, you have your Committee,' said Wood, as they pulled their cues from the rack that evening.

'I would rather say that they have their Committee.'

'By which you indicate that you are less than satisfied?'

'I have some hope that even these gentlemen cannot fail to acknowledge what is staring them in the face.'

'But?'

'But – you know who Albert de Rutzen is?'

'The Chief Magistrate of London, my newspaper informs me.'

'He is that, he is that. He is also the cousin of Captain Anson.'

George amp; Arthur

George had read the Telegraph articles several times before writing to thank Sir Arthur; and he read them once again before their second meeting at the Grand Hotel, Charing Cross. It was most disconcerting to see oneself described not by some provincial penny-a-liner but by the most famous writer of the day. It made him feel like several overlapping people at the same time: a victim seeking redress; a solicitor facing the highest tribunal in the country; and a character in a novel.

Here was Sir Arthur explaining why he, George, could not possibly have been involved with the supposed band of Wyrley ruffians: 'In the first place, he is a total abstainer, which in itself hardly seems to commend him to such a gang. He does not smoke. He is very shy and nervous. He is a most distinguished student.' This was all true, and yet untrue; flattering, yet unflattering; believable, yet unbelievable. He was not a most distinguished student; merely a good, hardworking one. He had received second-class honours, not first, the bronze medal, not silver or gold, from the Birmingham Law Society. He was certainly a capable solicitor, more so than Greenway or Stentson were likely to become, but he would never be eminent. Equally, he was not, by his own estimation, very shy. And if he had been judged nervous on the basis of that previous meeting at the hotel, then there were mitigating circumstances. He had been sitting in the foyer reading his newspaper, beginning to worry if he were mistaken about the time or even the day, when he had become aware of a large, overcoated figure standing a few yards away and scrutinizing him intently. How would anyone else react to being stared at by a great novelist? George thought this estimation of him as shy and nervous had probably been confirmed, if not propagated, by his parents. He did not know how it was in other families, but at the Vicarage the parental view of children had not evolved at the same speed as the children themselves. George was not just thinking of himself; his parents did not seem to take account of Maud's development, of how she was becoming stronger and more capable. And now that he came to reflect upon it further, he didn't believe he had been so nervous with Sir Arthur. On an occasion far more likely to provoke nerves he faced the crowded court with perfect composure - wasn't that what the Birmingham Daily Post had written?

He did not smoke. This was true. He judged it a pointless, unpleasant and costly habit. But also one unconnected with criminal behaviour. Sherlock Holmes famously smoked a pipe – and Sir Arthur, he understood, did likewise – but this did not make either of them candidates for membership of a gang. It was also true that he was a total abstainer: the consequence of his upbringing, not of some principled act of renunciation. But he acknowledged that any juryman, or any committee, might interpret the fact in more than one way. Abstention could be taken as proof either of moderation or extremity. It might be a sign of a fellow able to control his human urges; or equally of someone who resisted vice in order to concentrate his mind on other, more essential things – someone a touch inhuman, even fanatical.

He in no way minimized the value and quality of Sir Arthur's work. The articles described with rare skill a chain of circumstances which seem so extraordinary that they are far beyond the invention of the writer of fiction. George had read and reread with pride and gratitude such declarations as Until each and all of these questions is settled a dark stain will remain upon the administrative annals of this country. Sir Arthur had promised to make a noise, and the noise he had made had echoed far beyond Staffordshire, far beyond London, far beyond England itself. Without Sir Arthur shaking the trees, as he had put it, the Home Office would almost certainly not have appointed a Committee; though how the Committee itself would respond to the noise and the tree-shaking was another matter. It seemed to George that Sir Arthur had gone very hard on the Home Office's handling of Mr Yelverton's memorial, when he wrote that he cannot imagine anything more absurd and unjust in an Oriental despotism. To denounce someone as despotic might not be the best way to persuade them to be less despotic in the future. And then there was the Statement of the Case against Royden Sharp…

'George! I'm so sorry. We were detained.'

He is standing there, and not alone. There is a handsome young woman beside him; she looks dashing and self-confident in a shade of green George could not possibly name. The sort of colour women knew about. She is smiling a little and extending her hand.

'This is Miss Jean Leckie. We were… shopping.' He sounds uneasy.

'No, Arthur, you were talking.' Her tone is affable yet firm.

'Well, I was talking to a shopkeeper. He had done service in South Africa, and it was only civil to ask him-'

'That is still talking, not shopping.'

George is bewildered by this exchange.

'As you can see, George, we are preparing for marriage.'

'I am very happy to meet you,' says Miss Jean Leckie, smiling more widely, so that George notices she has rather large front teeth. 'And now I must go.' She shakes her head teasingly at Arthur and skips away.

'Marriage,' says Arthur as he sinks into a chair in the writing room. The word barely amounts to a question. Even so, George answers – and with a strange precision.

'It is a condition that I aspire to.'

'Well, it can be a puzzling condition, I warn you. Bliss, of course. But damned puzzling bliss more often than not.'

George nods. He does not agree, while admitting he has little evidence to go on. Certainly he would not describe his parents' marriage as damned puzzling bliss. None of those three words could in any way be reasonably applied to life at the Vicarage.

'To business, anyway.'

They discuss the Telegraph articles, the response they have elicited, the Gladstone Committee, its terms of reference and membership. Arthur wonders if he personally should expose Sir Albert de Rutzen's cousinage, or drop a hint to a newspaper editor at his club, or simply leave the whole matter alone. He looks across at George, expecting an instant opinion. But George does not have an instant opinion. This may be because he is very shy and nervous; or because he is a solicitor; or because he finds it difficult to switch from being Sir Arthur's cause to Sir Arthur's tactical adviser.

'I think Mr Yelverton is perhaps the person to consult on that.'

'But I am consulting you,' replies Arthur, as if George is shilly-shallying.

George's opinion, as far as he can call it one when it feels no more than an instinct, is that the first option would be too provoking, the third too passive, and so on the whole he might be inclined to advise the middle course. Unless, of course… and as he is starting to reconsider, he is aware of Sir Arthur's impatience. This does, admittedly, make him a little nervous.

'I will make one prediction, George. They will not be straightforward about the Committee's report.'

George wonders if Arthur still requires his view of the previous matter. He assumes not. 'But they must publish it.'

'Oh, they must, and they will. But I know how governments operate, especially when they have been embarrassed or shamed. They will hide it away somehow. They will bury it if they can.'

'How could they do that?'

'Well, for a start they could publish it on a Friday afternoon, when people have left for the weekend. Or during the recess. There are all sorts of tricks.'

'But if it is a good report, it will reflect well upon them.'

'It can't be a good report,' says Arthur firmly. 'Not from their point of view. If they confirm your innocence, as they must, it means that the Home Office has for the past three years knowingly obstructed justice despite all the information laid before it. And in the extremely unlikely – I would say impossible – case of them finding you still guilty – which is the only other option – there will be such an almighty stink that careers will be at stake.'

'Yes, I see.'

They have now been talking for half an hour or so, and Arthur is puzzled that George has made no reference at all to his Statement of the Case against Royden Sharp. No, more than puzzled; irritated, on the way to being insulted. It half crosses his mind to ask George about that begging letter he was shown at Green Hall. But no, that would be playing Anson's game for him. Perhaps George just assumes it is up to the host to set the agenda. That must be it.

'So,' he says. 'Royden Sharp.'

'Yes,' replies George. 'I never knew him, as I said when I wrote to you. It must have been his brother I was at school with when I was little. Though I have no memory of him either.'

Arthur nods. Come on, man, is what he thinks. I have not just exonerated you, I have produced the criminal bound hand and foot for arrest and trial. Is this not, at the very least, news to you? Against all his temperament, he waits.

'I am surprised,' George finally says. 'Why should he wish to harm me?'

Arthur does not reply. He has already offered his replies. He thinks it is time George did some work on his own behalf.

'I am aware that you consider race prejudice to be a factor in the case, Sir Arthur. But as I have already said, I cannot agree. Sharp and I do not know one another. To dislike someone you have to know them. And then you find the reason for disliking them. And then, perhaps, if you cannot find a satisfactory reason, you blame your dislike on some oddity of theirs, such as the colour of their skin. But as I say, Sharp does not know me. I have been trying to think of some action of mine that he might have taken as a slight or an injury. Perhaps he is related to someone to whom I gave professional advice…' Arthur does not comment; he thinks that you can only point out the obvious so many times. 'And I do not understand why he should wish to maim cattle and horses in this way. Or why anyone should. Do you, Sir Arthur?'

'As I said in my Statement,' replies Arthur, who is getting more dissatisfied by the minute, 'I suspect that he was strangely affected by the new moon.'

'Possibly,' replies George. 'Though not all the cases took place at the same point on the lunar cycle.'

'That is correct. But most did.'

'Yes.'

'So might you not reasonably conclude that those extraneous mutilations were performed in order deliberately to mislead investigators?'

'Yes, you might.'

'Mr Edalji, I do not appear to have convinced you.'

'Forgive me, Sir Arthur, it is not that I am, or wish to seem, in any way, less than immensely grateful to you. It is, perhaps, that I am a solicitor.'

'True.' Maybe he is being too hard on the fellow. But it is strange: as if he has brought him a bag of gold from the farthest ends of the earth, and received the reply, But frankly, I would have preferred silver.

'The instrument,' says George. 'The horse lancet.'

'Yes?'

'May I ask how you know what it looks like?'

'Indeed. By two methods. First, I asked Mrs Greatorex to draw it for me. Whereupon Mr Wood recognized it as a horse lancet. And secondly-' Arthur leaves a pause for effect, 'I have it in my possession.'

'You have it?'

Arthur nods. 'I could show you it if you like.' George looks alarmed. 'Not here. Don't worry, I haven't brought it with me. It's at Undershaw.'

'May I ask how you obtained it?'

Arthur rubs a finger up the side of his nose. Then he relents. 'Wood and Harry Charlesworth stumbled upon it.'

'Stumbled?'

'It was clear that the weapon had to be secured before Sharp could dispose of it. He knew I was in the district and on his trail. He even started sending me the sort of letters he used to send you. Threatening me with the removal of vital organs. If he had two cerebral hemispheres to rub together, he'd have buried the instrument where no one would find it for a hundred years. So I instructed Wood and Harry to stumble across it.'

'I see.' George feels as he does when a client begins confidentially telling him things no client should ever tell a solicitor, not even his own – especially not his own. 'And have you interviewed Sharp?'

'No. I think that's plain from my Statement.'

'Yes, of course. Forgive me.'

'So, unless you have any objection, I shall include my Statement against Sharp with my other submissions to the Home Office.'

'Sir Arthur, I cannot possibly express the gratitude I feel-'

'I do not want you to. I did not do it for your blasted gratitude, which you have already sufficiently expressed. I did it because you are innocent, and I am ashamed of the way the judicial and bureaucratic machinery of this country operates.'

'Nevertheless, no one else could have done what you have done. And in so comparatively short a time as well.'

He is as good as saying I botched it, thinks Arthur. No, don't be absurd – it's merely that he's far more interested in his own vindication, and in making absolutely sure of that, than in Sharp's prosecution. Which is perfectly understandable. Finish item one before proceeding to item two – what else would you expect of a cautious lawyer? Whereas I attack on all fronts simultaneously. He's just worrying that I might take my eye off the ball.

But later, when they had parted and Arthur sat in a cab on the way to Jean's flat, he began to wonder. What was that dictum? People will forgive you anything except the help you give them? Something like that. And maybe such a response was exaggerated in a case like this. When he had read up about Dreyfus it had struck him that many of those who came to help the Frenchman, who worked for him out of a deep passion, who saw his case not just as a great battle between Truth and Lies, between Justice and Injustice, but as a matter which explained and even defined the country they lived in – that many of them were not at all impressed by Colonel Alfred Dreyfus. They had found him rather a dry stick, cold and correct, and not exactly flowing with the juices of gratitude and human sympathy. Someone had written that the victim was usually not up to the mystique of his own affair. That was a rather French thing to say, but not necessarily wide of the mark.

Or maybe that was just as unfair. When he had first met George Edalji, he had been impressed by how this rather frail and delicate young man could have withstood three years of penal servitude. In his surprise, he had doubtless failed to appreciate what it must have cost George. Perhaps the only way to survive was to concentrate utterly, from dawn to dusk, on the minutiae of your own case, to have nothing else in your head, to have all the facts and arguments marshalled for whenever they might be needed. Only then could you survive monstrous injustice and the squalid reversal in your habits of living. So it might be expecting too much of George Edalji to expect him to react as a free man might. Until he was pardoned and compensated, he could not go back to being the man he had been before.

Save your irritation for others, thought Arthur. George is a good fellow, and an innocent man, but there is no point wishing sanctity upon him. Wanting more gratitude than he can offer is like wanting every reviewer to declare each new book of yours a work of genius. Yes, save your irritation for others. Captain Anson for a start, whose letter this morning contained a fresh piece of insolence: the blunt refusal to admit that the mutilations could have been caused by a horse lancet. And to cap it, the dismissive line, 'What you drew was an ordinary fleam.' Indeed! Arthur had not bothered George with this latest provocation.

And as well as Anson, he was finding himself irritated by Willie Hornung. His brother-in-law had a new joke, which Connie had passed on to him over lunch. 'What do Arthur Conan Doyle and George Edalji have in common?' No? Give up? "Sentences."' Arthur growled to himself. Sentences – he thought that witty? Objectively, Arthur could see that some might find it so. But really… Unless he was beginning to lose his sense of humour. They said it happened to people in middle age. No – poppycock. And now he was starting to irritate himself. Another trait of middle age, no doubt.

George, meanwhile, was still in the writing room at the Grand Hotel. He was in low spirits. He had been disgracefully impolite and ungrateful towards Sir Arthur. And after the months and months of work he had put into the case. George was ashamed of himself. He must write to apologize. And yet… and yet… it would have been dishonest to say more than he did. Or rather, if he had said more, he would have been obliged to be honest.

He had read the Statement of the Case against Royden Sharp that Arthur was sending to the Home Office. He had read it several times, naturally. And each time his impression had hardened. His conclusion – his inevitable, professional conclusion – was that it would not help his own position. Further, his judgement – which he would never have dared utter at their meeting – was that Sir Arthur's case against Sharp strangely resembled the Staffordshire Constabulary's case against himself.

It was based, to begin with, and in exactly the same way, upon the letters. Sir Reginald Hardy had said in his summing-up at Stafford that the person who wrote the letters must also have been the person who maimed the livestock. This connection was explicit, and rightly criticized by Mr Yelverton and those who had taken up his case. Yet here was Sir Arthur making exactly the same connection. The letters were his starting point, and through them he had traced Royden Sharp's hand, and his comings and goings, at every turn. The letters incriminated Sharp, just as they had previously incriminated George. And while it was now concluded that the letters had been deliberately written by Sharp and his brother to pull George into the affair, why could they not equally have been written by someone else to pull Sharp into the affair? If they had been false the first time, why should they be true the second?

Likewise, all Sir Arthur's evidence was circumstantial, and much of it hearsay. A woman and a child were assaulted by someone who might have been Royden Sharp, except that his name had not been raised at the time and no police action had been taken. A statement had been made to Mrs Greatorex three or more years ago, which she had not seen fit to pass on to anyone at the time, but which she now brought up when Royden Sharp's name was mentioned. She also remembered some hearsay – or a piece of washing-line gossip – from Sharp's wife. Royden Sharp had an exceedingly poor scholastic record: yet if that were sufficient proof of criminal intent, the gaols would be full. Royden Sharp was supposed to be strangely influenced by the moon – except on those occasions when he was not. Further, Sharp lived in a house from which it was easy to escape unobserved at night: just like the Vicarage, and any number of other houses in the district.

And if this wasn't enough to make a solicitor's heart sink, there was worse, far worse. Sir Arthur's only piece of solid evidence was the horse lancet, which he had now taken possession of. And what exactly was the legal value of such an item so obtained? A third party, namely Sir Arthur, had incited a fourth party, namely Mr Wood, to enter illegally the property of yet another party, Royden Sharp, and steal an item which he had then transported halfway across the kingdom. It was understandable that he had not handed it over to the Staffordshire Constabulary, but it could have been lodged with a proper legal official. A solicitor-at-law, for instance. Whereas Sir Arthur's actions had contaminated the evidence. Even the police knew that they had to obtain either a search warrant, or the express and unambiguous permission of the householder, before entering premises. George admitted that criminal law was not his speciality, but it seemed to him that Sir Arthur had incited an associate to commit burglary and in the process rendered valueless a vital piece of evidence. And he might even be lucky to escape a charge of conspiracy to commit theft.

This was where Sir Arthur's excess of enthusiasm had led him. And it was all, George decided, the fault of Sherlock Holmes. Sir Arthur had been too influenced by his own creation. Holmes performed his brilliant acts of deduction and then handed villains over to the authorities with their unambiguous guilt written all over them. But Holmes had never once been obliged to stand in the witness box and have his suppositions and intuitions and immaculate theories ground to very fine dust over a period of several hours by the likes of Mr Disturnal. What Sir Arthur had done was the equivalent of go into a field where the criminal's footprints might be found and trample all over it wearing several different pairs of boots. He had, in his eagerness, destroyed the legal case against Royden Sharp even as he was trying to make it. And it was all the fault of Mr Sherlock Holmes.

Arthur amp; George

As he holds a copy of the Report of the Gladstone Committee in his hand, Arthur is relieved that he has twice failed to be elected to Parliament. He need feel no direct shame. This is how they do things, how they bury bad news. They have released the Report without the slightest warning on the Friday before the Whitsun holiday. Who will want to read about a miscarriage of justice while taking the train to the seaside? Who will be available to provide informed comment? Who will care, by the time Whit Sunday and Whit Monday have passed and work begins again? The Edalji Case – wasn't that settled months ago?

George also holds a copy in his hand. He looks at the title page:

PAPERS

relating to the

CASE OF GEORGE EDALJI

presented to both Houses of Parliament by Command of His Majesty

and then, at the bottom:

London: printed for His Majesty's Stationery Office

by Eyre and Spottiswoode,

Printers to the King's Most Excellent Majesty

[Cd. 3503.] Price 1½d. 1907

It sounds substantial, but the price seems to give it away. A penny halfpenny to learn the truth about his case, his life… He opens the pamphlet warily. Four pages of Report, then two brief appendices. A penny halfpenny. His breath is coming short. His life summed up for him yet again. And this time not for readers of the Cannock Chase Courier, the Birmingham Daily Gazette or the Birmingham Daily Post, the Daily Telegraph or The Times, but for both Houses of Parliament and the King's Most Excellent Majesty…

Arthur has taken the Report, unread, to Jean's flat. This is only right. Just as the Report itself is laid before Parliament, so the consequences of his venture should be laid before her. She has taken an interest in the matter which far exceeded his expectations. In truth, he had no expectations at all. But she was always at his side, if not literally, then metaphorically. So she must be there at the conclusion.

George takes a glass of water and sits in an armchair. His mother has returned to Wyrley and he is currently alone in Miss Goode's lodgings, whose address is registered with Scotland Yard. He places a notebook on the arm of the chair, as he does not want to mark the Report itself. Perhaps he is not yet cured of the regulations governing the use of library books in Lewes and Portland. Arthur stands with his back to the fireplace while Jean sews, her head already half-cocked for the extracts Arthur will read to her. She wonders if they should have done more on this day for George Edalji, perhaps invited him for a glass of champagne, except that he does not drink; although since it was only this morning they heard the Report was due to be released…

George Edalji was tried on the charge of feloniously wounding…

'Hah!' says Arthur, barely half a paragraph in. 'Listen to this. The Assistant Chairman of Quarter Sessions, who presided at the trial, when consulted about the conviction, reported that he and his colleagues were strongly of the opinion that the conviction was right. Amateurs. Rank amateurs. Not a lawyer among them. I sometimes feel, my dear Jean, that the entire country is run by amateurs. Listen to them. These circumstances make us hesitate very seriously before expressing dissent from a conviction so arrived at, and so approved.' George is less concerned by this opening; he is enough of a lawyer to know when a however is round the corner. And here it comes – not one, but three of them. However, there was considerable feeling in the neighbourhood of Wyrley at the time; however, the police, so long baffled, were naturally extremely anxious to arrest someone; however, the police had both begun and carried on the investigation for the purpose of finding evidence against Edalji. There, it was said, quite openly and now quite officially. The police were prejudiced against him from the start.

Both Arthur and George read: The case is also one of great inherent difficulty, because there is no possible view that can be taken of it, which does not involve extreme improbabilities. Poppycock, Arthur thinks. What on earth are the extreme improbabilities in George's being innocent? George thinks, this is just an elaborate form of words; they are saying there is no middle ground; which is true, because either I am completely innocent or I am completely guilty, and since there are extreme improbabilities in the prosecution case, therefore it must and will be dismissed.

The defects in the trial… the prosecution case changed in two substantial regards as it went along. Indeed. First in the matter of when the crime was supposed to have been committed. Police evidence inconsistent, and indeed contradictory. Similar discrepancies about the razor… The footprints. We think the value of the footprints as evidence is practically nothing. The razor as weapon. Not very easy to reconcile with the evidence of the veterinary surgeon. The blood not fresh. The hairs. Dr Butter, who is a witness quite above suspicion.

Dr Butter was always the stumbling block, thinks George. But this is very fair so far. Next, the letters. The Greatorex letters are the key, and the jury examined them at length. They considered their verdict for a considerable time, and we think they must be taken to have held that Edalji was the writer of those letters. We have ourselves carefully examined the letters, and compared them with the admitted handwriting of Edalji, and we are not prepared to dissent from the finding at which the jury arrived.

George feels himself going faint. He is only relieved his parents are not with him. He reads the words again, we are not prepared to dissent. They think he wrote the letters! The Committee is telling the world he wrote the Greatorex letters! He takes a gulp of water. He lays the Report down on his knee until he can recover himself.

Arthur, meanwhile, reads on, his anger rising. However, the fact that Edalji wrote the letters doesn't mean he also committed the outrages. 'Oh, that's very white of them,' he exclaims. They are not the letters of a guilty man trying to throw the blame on others. How in the name of all earthly and unearthly powers could they be, Arthur growls to himself, since the man they throw most blame on is George himself. We think it quite likely that they are the letters of an innocent man, but a wrong-headed and malicious man, indulging in a piece of impish mischief, pretending to know what he may know nothing of, in order to puzzle the police, and increase their difficulties in a very difficult investigation.

'Balderdash!' shouts Arthur. 'Bal-der-dash.'

'Arthur.'

'Balderdash, balderdash,' he repeats. 'I have met no one in my entire life who is a more sober and straightforward man than George Edalji. impish mischief - did the fools not read all those testimonials to his character supplied by Yelverton? wrong-headed and malicious man. Is this, this… novella' – he slaps it on the mantelpiece – 'protected by Parliamentary privilege? If not, I'll have them in the libel court. I'll have the lot of them there. I'll fund it myself.'

George feels he is hallucinating. He feels as if the world has gone mad. He is back at Portland having a dry bath. They have ordered him stripped to his shirt, they have made him lift his legs and open his mouth. They have pulled up his tongue and – what's this, D462? What's this you've been hiding under your tongue? I do believe it's a crowbar. Don't you think this is a crowbar the prisoner has hidden under his tongue, officer? We'd better report this to the Governor. You're in serious trouble, D462, I'd better warn you. And you with all your talk about being the last prisoner in the gaol who might want to escape. You with your sainted airs and your library books. We've got your number, George Edalji, and it's D462.

He stops again. Arthur continues. The second defect of the prosecution's case lay in whether or not Edalji was meant to have acted alone; they changed their mind as the evidence suited them. Well, at least the officially appointed dunderheads couldn't miss that. The key question of eyesight. much stress has been laid on this in some of the communications addressed to the Home Office. Yes indeed: stress laid by the leading men of Harley Street and Manchester Square. We have carefully considered the report of the eminent expert who examined Edalji in prison and the opinion of oculists that have been laid before us; and the materials now collected appear to us entirely insufficient to establish the alleged impossibility.

'Imbeciles! entirely insufficient. Dunderheads and imbeciles!'

Jean keeps her head lowered. This was, she remembers, the very starting point of Arthur's campaign: the reason he did not just think George Edalji was innocent, he knew it. How disrespectful can they be, to treat Arthur's work and judgement so lightly!

But he is reading on, rushing ahead as if to forget this point. 'In our opinion, the conviction was unsatisfactory and… we cannot agree with the verdict of the jury. Ha!'

'That means you've won, Arthur. They have cleared his name.'

'Ha!' Arthur does not even acknowledge the interjection. 'Now listen to this. Our view of the case means that it would not have been warranted for the Home Office previously to interfere. Hypocrites. Liars. Wholesale purveyors of whitewash.'

'What does that mean, Arthur?'

'It means, my dearest Jean, that no one has done anything wrong. It means that the great British solution to everything has been applied. Something terrible has happened, but nobody has done anything wrong. It ought to be retrospectively enshrined in the Bill of Rights. Nothing shall be anybody's fault, and especially not ours.'

'But they admit the verdict was wrong.'

'They said that George was innocent, but the fact that he has enjoyed three years of penal servitude is nobody's fault. Time after time the defects were pointed out to the Home Office and time after time the Home Office declined to reconsider. Nobody did anything wrong. Hurrah, hurrah.'

'Arthur, calm down a little, please. Take a little brandy and soda or something. You may even smoke your pipe if you wish.'

'Never in front of a lady.'

'Well, I would happily make an exception. But do calm down a little. And then we shall see how they justify such a statement.'

But George gets there first. suggestions… prerogative of mercy… grant of a free pardon… On the one hand, we think the conviction ought not to have taken place, for the reasons we have stated… total ruin of his professional position and prospects… police supervisions… difficult if not impossible for him to recover anything like the position he has lost. George stops at this moment, and takes a drink of water. He knows that On the one hand is always followed by On the other hand, and is not sure he is able to face what that hand might be.

'On the other hand,' roars Arthur. 'My God, the Home Office will find as many hands as that Indian god, what's his name-'

'Shiva, dear.'

'Shiva, when they want to find a reason why nothing is their fault. On the other hand, being unable to disagree with what we take to be the finding of the jury, that Edalji was the writer of the letters of 1903, we cannot but see that, assuming him to be an innocent man, he has to some extent brought his troubles upon himself. No, no, no no, NO.'

'Arthur, please. People will think we are having an argument.'

'I'm sorry. It's just that… aaah, Appendix One, yes, yes, petitions, reasons why the Home Office never does anything. Appendix Two, let's see how the Solomon of the Home Office thanks the Committee. careful and exhaustive report. Exhaustive! Four whole pages, with not a single mention of Anson or Royden Sharp! Blether… brought his troubles upon himself… blether blether… accept the conclusions… however… exceptional case… I'll say so… permanent disqualifications… Oh, I see, what they're most afraid of is the legal profession, all of which knows this is the greatest miscarriage of justice since, since… yes, so if they allow him to be reinstated… blether, blether… fullest and most anxious considerations… free pardon.'

'Free pardon,' repeats Jean, looking up. So victory is theirs.

'Free pardon,' reads George, aware that there is one sentence of the Report left to come.

'Free pardon,' repeats Arthur. He and George read the last sentence together. 'But I have also come to the conclusion that the case is not one in which any grant of compensation can be made.'

George lays down the Report and puts his head in his hands. Arthur, in a tone of sardonic funereality, reads its final words, 'I am, yours very truly, H.J. Gladstone.'

'Arthur dear, you were rather rushing things towards the end.' She has never seen him in such a mood before; she finds it alarming. She would not like such feelings ever turned against her.

'They should erect new signs at the Home Office. Instead of Entrance and Exit, they should read On the One Hand and On the Other Hand.'

'Arthur, could you try to be a little less obscure and just tell me what this means, exactly.'

'It means, it means, my darling Jean, that this Home Office, this Government, this country, this England of ours has discovered a new legal concept. In the old days, you were either innocent or guilty. If you were not innocent, you were guilty, and if you were not guilty, you were innocent. A simple enough system, tried and tested down many centuries, grasped by judges, juries and the populace at large. As from today, we have a new concept in English law – guilty and innocent. George Edalji is a pioneer in this regard. The only man to be granted a free pardon for a crime he never committed, and yet to be told at the same time that it was quite right he served three years' penal servitude.'

'So it's a compromise?'

'Compromise! No, it's a hypocrisy. It's what this country does best. The bureaucrats and the politicians have spent centuries perfecting it. It's called a Government Report. It's called Blether, it's called-'

'Arthur, light your pipe.'

'Never. I once caught a fellow smoking in front of a lady. I took the pipe from his mouth, snapped it in two and threw the pieces at his feet.'

'But Mr Edalji will be able to return to his work as a solicitor.'

'He will. And every potential client of his who can read a newspaper will think they are consulting a man mad enough to write anonymous letters denouncing himself for a heinous crime which even the Home Secretary and the cousin of the blessed Anson admit he had absolutely nothing to do with.'

'But perhaps it will be forgotten. You said that they were burying bad news by producing it over Whitsun. So perhaps people will only remember that Mr Edalji was granted a free pardon.'

'Not if I have anything to do with it.'

'You mean you are continuing?'

'They haven't seen the back of me yet. I'm not going to let them get away with this. I gave George my word. I gave you my word.'

'No, Arthur. You said what you were going to do, and you did it, and you have obtained a free pardon, and George can go back to work, which is what his mother said was all he wanted. It has been a great success, Arthur.'

'Jean, please stop being reasonable with me.'

'You wish me to be unreasonable with you?'

'I would shed blood to avoid that.'

'On the other hand?' asks Jean teasingly.

'With you,' says Arthur, 'there is no other hand. There is only one hand. It is simple. It is the only thing in my life that ever seems simple. At last. At long last.'

George has no one to console him, no one to tease him, no one to stop the words rolling back and forth in his skull. A wrong-headed and malicious man, indulging in a piece of impish mischief, pretending to know what he may know nothing of, in order to puzzle the police, and increase their difficulties in a very difficult investigation. A judgment presented to both Houses of Parliament and to the King's Most Excellent Majesty.

That evening George was asked by a representative of the Press for his response to the Report. He pronounced himself profoundly dissatisfied with the result. He called it merely a step in the right direction, but the allegation that he had written the Greatorex letters was a slander – an insult… a baseless insinuation, and I shall not rest until it is withdrawn and an apology tendered. Further, no compensation has been offered. They admitted he had been wrongly convicted, so it is only just that I should be compensated for the three years' penal servitude that I suffered. I shall not let matters rest as they are. I want compensation for my wrongs.

Arthur wrote to the Daily Telegraph, calling the Committee's position absolutely illogical and untenable. He asked if anything meaner or more un-English could be imagined than a free pardon without reparation. He offered to demonstrate in half an hour that George Edalji could not have written the anonymous letters. He proposed that since it was unfair to ask the taxpayer to fund George Edalji's compensation, it might well be levied in equal parts from the Staffordshire police, the Quarter Sessions Court and the Home Office, since it is these three groups of men who are guilty among them of this fiasco.

The Vicar of Great Wyrley also wrote to the Daily Telegraph, pointing out that the jury itself had made no pronouncement on the authorship of the letters, and that any false deductions were the fault of Sir Reginald Hardy, who had been rash and illogical enough to tell the jury that he who wrote the letters also committed the crime. A distinguished barrister who had attended the trial had called the Chairman's summing-up a regrettable performance. The Vicar described his son's treatment, by both the police and the Home Office, as most shocking and heartless. As for the conduct and conclusions of the Home Secretary and his Committee: This may be diplomacy, statecraft, but it is not what they would have done if he had been the son of an English squire or an English nobleman.

Also dissatisfied with the Report was Captain Anson. Interviewed by the Staffordshire Sentinel, he replied to criticisms involving the honour of the police. The Committee, in identifying so-called contradictions of evidence, had simply not understood the police case. It was also untrue that the police began from a certainty of Edalji's guilt, and then sought evidence to support that view. On the contrary, Edalji was not suspected until some months after the outrages began. Various persons were indicated as being conceivably implicated in the offences, but were gradually eliminated. Suspicion only finally became excited against Edalji owing to his commonly-talked-of habits of wandering abroad late at night.

This interview was reported in the Daily Telegraph, to which George wrote in rebuttal. The flimsy foundation on which the case against him had been built was now clear. As a fact, he never did once 'wander abroad', and unless returning late from Birmingham or from some evening entertainment in the district, was invariably in by about 9.30. There was no person in the district less likely to be out at night, and apparently the police took seriously something intended as a joke. Further, if he had been out late habitually, this fact would have been known to the large body of police patrolling the district.

It had been a cold and unseasonal Whitsun. A Millionaire's Son had been Killed in a Motor Racing Tragedy while Driving his 200 H.P. Car. Foreign Princes had arrived in Madrid for a Royal Christening. Wine Growers had Rioted in Béziers, where the Town Hall had been Sacked and Burnt by Peasants. But there was nothing – there had now been nothing for years – about Miss Hickman the Lady Doctor.

Sir Arthur offered to fund any libel suit George cared to bring against Captain Anson, the Home Secretary, or members of the Gladstone Committee, either separately or jointly. George, while renewing his expressions of gratitude, politely declined. Such redress as he had just obtained had been achieved thanks to Sir Arthur's commitment, hard work, logic, and love of making a noise. But noise, George thought, was not the best solution to everything. Heat did not always produce light, and noise did not always produce locomotion. The Daily Telegraph was calling for a public inquiry into all aspects of the case; this, in George's view, was what they should now be pressing for. The newspaper had also launched a monetary appeal on his behalf.

Arthur, meanwhile, continued his campaign. No one had taken up his offer to demonstrate in half an hour that George Edalji could not have written the letters – not even Gladstone, who had publicly asserted the contrary. So Arthur would demonstrate the matter to Gladstone, the Committee, Anson, Gurrin and all readers of the Daily Telegraph. He devoted three lengthy articles to the matter, with copious holographic illustration. He demonstrated how the letters were obviously written by someone of an entirely different class to Edalji, a foul-mouthed boor, a blackguard, someone with neither grammar nor decency. He further declared himself personally slighted by the Gladstone Committee, given that in their Report there is not a word which leads me to think that my evidence was considered. In the matter of Edalji's eyesight, the Committee quoted the opinion of some unnamed prison doctor while ignoring the views of fifteen experts, some of them the first oculists in the country, which he had submitted. The members of the Committee had merely added themselves to that long line of policemen, officials and politicians who owed a very abject apology to this ill-used man. But until such an apology was offered, and reparation made, no mutual daubings of complimentary whitewash will ever get them clean.

Throughout May and June there were constant questions in Parliament. Sir Gilbert Parker asked if there were any precedent for compensation not being paid to someone wrongly convicted and subsequently granted a free pardon. Mr Gladstone: 'I know of no analagous case.' Mr Ashley asked if the Home Secretary considered George Edalji to be innocent. Mr Gladstone: 'I can hardly think that is a proper Question to ask me. It is a matter of opinion.' Mr Pike Pease asked what character Mr Edalji had borne in prison. Mr Gladstone: 'His prison character was good.' Mr Mitchell-Thompson asked the Home Secretary to set up a new inquiry to consider the matter of the handwriting. Mr Gladstone declined. Captain Craig asked for any notes taken during the trial for the use of the Court to be laid before Parliament. Mr Gladstone declined. Mr F.E. Smith asked if it was the case that Mr Edalji would have received compensation had it not been for the doubt as to his authorship of the letters. Mr Gladstone: 'I am afraid I am unable to answer that question.' Mr Ashley asked why this man had been released if his innocence was not completely established. Mr Gladstone: 'That is a Question which really does not concern me. The release was consequent on a decision by my predecessor, with which, however, I agree.' Mr Harmood-Banner asked for details of similar outrages against farmstock committed while George Edalji was in prison. Mr Gladstone replied that there had been three in the Great Wyrley neighbourhood, in September 1903, November 1903 and March 1904. Mr F.E. Smith asked in how many cases over the last twenty years compensation had been paid after convictions had been shown to be unsatisfactory, and what amounts were involved. Mr Gladstone replied that there had been twelve such cases in the previous twenty years, two involving substantial sums: 'In one case the sum of £5,000 was paid, and in the other the sum of £1,600 was divided between two persons. In the remaining ten cases the compensation paid varied from £1 to £40.' Mr Pike Pease asked if free pardons were granted in all these cases. Mr Gladstone: 'I am not sure.' Captain Faber asked for all police reports and communications addressed to the Home Office on the subject of the Edalji Case to be printed. Mr Gladstone declined. And finally, on 27th June, Mr Vincent Kennedy asked: 'Is Edalji being thus treated because he is not an Englishman?' In the words of Hansard: '[No answer was returned.]'

Arthur continued to receive anonymous letters and abusive cards, the letters in coarse yellow envelopes gummed up with stamp paper. They were postmarked London NW, but the creases in the documents indicated to him that they may have been carried under cover, or possibly in somebody's pocket – that of a railway guard, for instance – from the Midlands to London for posting. He offered a reward of £20 to anyone who helped trace them back to their writer.

Arthur requested further interviews with the Home Secretary and his Under Secretary Mr Blackwell. In the Daily Telegraph he described being treated with courtesy but also with a chilly want of sympathy. Further, they took an obvious side with impeached officialdom and made him feel a hostile atmosphere around him. There was to be no rise in temperature, no change in atmosphere; the officials regretted that henceforth they would be too occupied with the business of state to afford Sir Arthur Conan Doyle any more of their time.

The Incorporated Law Society voted to restore George Edalji to its Rolls.

The Daily Telegraph paid out the contents of its appeal fund, which amounted to some £300.

Thereafter, with no new events, no disputes, no libel suits, no government action, no further Questions in Parliament, no public inquiry, no apology and no compensation, there was little for the Press to report.

Jean says to Arthur, 'There is one more thing we can do for your friend.'

'What is that, my dear?'

'We can invite him to our wedding.'

Arthur is rather confused by this suggestion. 'But I thought we had decided that only our families and our closest friends would be present?'

'That is the wedding itself, Arthur. Afterwards there is the reception.'

The unofficial Englishman looks at his unofficial fiancée. 'Did anyone ever tell you that apart from being the most adorable of women, you are also pre-eminently wise, and much more able to see what is right and necessary than the poor oaf you will be taking as a husband?'

'I shall be at your side, Arthur, always at your side. And therefore looking in the same direction. Whatever that direction may prove to be.'

George amp; Arthur

As the summer began to pass, as conversation turned to cricket or the Indian crisis, as Scotland Yard no longer required monthly confirmation by registered post of George's address, as the Home Office remained silent, as even the indefatigable Mr Yelverton failed to come up with a new stratagem, as George was informed that an office awaited him at 2 Mecklenburgh Street until such time as he found his own premises, as Sir Arthur's communications diminished to brief notes of encouragement or rage, as his father returned more full-mindedly to parish work, as his mother judged it safe to leave her elder son and only daughter in one another's care, as Captain the Honourable George Anson failed to announce any renewed investigation into the Great Wyrley Outrages despite their now having no official author, as George learned to read a newspaper again without one eye constantly snagging at a mention of his name, as yet another animal was mutilated in the Wyrley district, as interest nevertheless dribbled away and even the anonymous letter writer grew weary of his abuse, George realized that the final, official verdict on his case had been given, and was unlikely ever to be changed.

Innocent yet guilty: so said the Gladstone Committee, and so said the British Government through its Home Secretary. Innocent yet guilty. Innocent yet wrong-headed and malicious. Innocent yet indulging in impish mischief. Innocent yet deliberately seeking to interfere with the proper investigations of the police. Innocent yet bringing his troubles upon himself. Innocent yet undeserving of compensation. Innocent yet undeserving of an apology. Innocent yet fully deserving of three years' penal servitude.

But that was not the only verdict. Much of the Press had been on his side: the Daily Telegraph had called the Committee's and the Home Secretary's position weak, illogical and inconclusive. The public's attitude, as far as he could gauge it, was that he never once had fair play. The legal profession, in great numbers, had supported him. And finally, one of the greatest writers of the age had loudly and continually asserted his innocence. Would these verdicts in time come to outweigh the official one?

George also sought to take a wider view of his own case, and the lessons it contained. If you could not expect the police to be more efficient, or witnesses more honest, then you must at least improve the tribunals where their words were tested. A case like his should never have been conducted by a Chairman with no legal training; you would have to improve the qualifications of those on the bench. And even if the Quarter Sessions and the Assize Courts could be made to function better, there must still be recourse to finer and wiser legal minds: in other words, to a court of appeal. It was an absurdity that the only way to overturn a wrongful conviction such as his was by petitioning the Home Secretary, that petition to arrive with hundreds – no, thousands – of others each year, most of them from manifestly guilty occupants of His Majesty's prisons, who had little better to occupy their time with than confecting memorials for the Home Office. Obviously, futile and frivolous appeals to any new court should be weeded out; but where there had been a serious dispute of law or fact, or where the conduct of the lower court had been prejudicial or incompetent, then a higher court must reconsider the case.

George's father had hinted to him on various occasions that his sufferings had a higher purpose to them. George had never wanted to be a martyr, and still saw no Christian explanation of his travails. But the Beck Case and the Edalji Case had between them produced great stirrings among his profession, and it was entirely possible that he might turn out to have been a kind of martyr after all, if of a simpler, more practical kind – a legal martyr whose sufferings brought about progress in the administration of justice. Nothing, in George's view, could possibly make up for the years stolen in Lewes and Portland, and the year of limbo following his release; and yet, might it not be some consolation if this terrible fracture in his life led to some ultimate good for his profession?

Cautiously, as if aware of the sin of pride, George began to imagine a legal textbook written a hundred years thence. 'The Court of Appeal was originally set up as the result of numerous miscarriages of justice which aroused public discontent. Not the least of these was the Edalji Case, whose details need no longer concern us, but whose victim, it should be noted in passing, was the author of Railway Law for the "Man in the Train", one of the first works to clarify this often confusing subject, and a book which is still referred to…' There were worse fates, George decided, than to be a footnote in legal history.

One morning, a tall oblong card arrived for him. It was printed in silver copperplate hand:

Mr amp; Mrs Leckie

request the pleasure of

Mr George Edalji's

Company

at the Whitehall Rooms

Hotel Metropole

on Wednesday September 18th

at 2.45 o'clock

on the occasion of

the marriage of their daughter

Jean

with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

Glebe House,

Blackheath

R.S.V.P.

George was touched beyond expression. He set the card on his mantelpiece, and replied immediately. The Incorporated Law Society had readmitted him to the Rolls, and now Sir Arthur had readmitted him to human society. Not that he had any social ambitions – not to such high reaches anyway; but he recognized the invitation as a noble and symbolic gesture to one who just a year previously had been keeping himself sane in Portland Gaol with the novels of Tobias Smollett. George thought for a long time as to what might be a suitable wedding present, and eventually decided on well-bound, one-volume editions of Shakespeare and Tennyson.

Arthur is determined to throw any damn reporters off the scent. There is no announcement of where he and Jean are to be married; his wedding-eve dinner at the Gaiety is a discreet affair; and at St Margaret's Westminster the striped awning is put out at the very last minute. Only a few passers-by gather at this drowsy, sun-dusted corner beside the Abbey to see who might be getting married on a discreet Wednesday rather than an ostentatious Saturday.

Arthur wears a frock coat and white waistcoat, with a large white gardenia in his buttonhole. His brother Innes, on special leave from autumn manoeuvres, makes a nervous best man. Cyril Angell, husband of Arthur's youngest sister Dodo, will officiate. The Mam, whose seventieth birthday has recently been celebrated, wears grey brocade; Connie and Willie are there, and Lottie and Ida and Kingsley and Mary. Arthur's dream of gathering his family around him under one roof has never come to pass; but here, for a brief while, they are all assembled. And for once Mr Waller is not of the party.

The chancel is decorated with tall palms; groups of white flowers are arranged at their base. The service is to be fully choral, and Arthur, given his Sunday preference for golf over church, has allowed Jean to choose the hymns: 'Praise the Lord, ye Heavens adore Him' and 'O, Perfect Love, all human thought transcending'. He stands in the front pew, remembering her last words to him. 'I shall not keep you waiting, Arthur. I have made that quite clear to my father.' He knows she will be as good as her word. Some might say that since they have waited ten years for one another, an extra ten or twenty minutes will do no harm, and may even improve the drama of the event. But Jean, to his delight, is quite devoid of that supposedly appealing bridal coquetry. They are to be married at a quarter to three; therefore she will be at the church at a quarter to three. This is a sound basis for a marriage, he thinks. As he stands looking at the altar, he reflects that he does not always understand women, but he recognizes those who play with a straight bat and those who don't.

Jean Leckie arrives on the arm of her father at two forty-five precisely. She is met at the porch by her bridesmaids, Lily Loder-Symonds of spiritualist leanings, and Leslie Rose. Jean's page is Master Bransford Angell, son of Cyril and Dodo, dressed in a blue and cream silk Court suit. Jean's dress, semi-Empire style with a Princess front, is made of ivory silk Spanish lace, its designs outlined with fine pearl embroidery. The underdress is of silver tissue; the train, edged with white crepe de Chine, falls from a chiffon true-lovers' knot caught in with a horseshoe of white heather; the veil is worn over a wreath of orange blossom.

Arthur takes very little of this in as Jean arrives beside him. He is not much of a frock man, and thus perfectly complacent about the superstition that the wedding dress shall remain unglimpsed by the groom until it arrives with the bride. He thinks Jean looks damned handsome, and he has an overall impression of cream and pearls and a long train. The truth is, he would be just as happy to see her in riding clothes. He gives his responses lustily; hers are barely audible.

At the Hotel Metropole there is a grand staircase leading to the Whitehall Rooms. The train is proving an almighty nuisance; the bridesmaids and little Bransford are fussing interminably over it when Arthur becomes impatient. He sweeps his bride from her feet and carries her effortlessly up the stairs. He smells orange blossom, feels the imprint of pearls against his cheek, and hears his bride's quiet laughter for the first time that day. There is a cheer from the marriage party below and a louder, answering cheer from the reception party gathered above.

George is acutely aware that he will know no one there except Sir Arthur, whom he has met only twice, and the bride, who briefly shook his hand at the Grand Hotel, Charing Cross. He very much doubts Mr Yelverton will be invited, let alone Harry Charlesworth. He has handed in his present and declined the alcoholic drinks everyone else is holding. He looks around the Whitehall Rooms: chefs are busying themselves at a long buffet table, the Metropole orchestra is tuning up, and everywhere there are tall palm trees with ferns and foliage and clumps of white flowers at their base. More white flowers decorate the little tables set round the edge of the room.

To George's surprise and considerable relief, people come up and speak to him; they seem to know who he is, and greet him as if they are almost his familiars. Alfred Wood introduces himself, and talks of visiting Wyrley Vicarage and having had the great pleasure of meeting George's family. Mr Jerome the comic writer congratulates him on his successful fight for justice, introduces him to Miss Jerome, and points out other celebrities: J.M. Barrie over there, and Bram Stoker, and Max Pemberton. Sir Gilbert Parker, who has several times embarrassed the Home Secretary in the House of Commons, comes across to shake George's hand. George realizes that all of them are treating him as a deeply wronged man; not one of them looks at him as if he were the private author of a series of insane and obscene letters. There is nothing directly said; just an implicit assumption that he is the sort of fellow who generally understands things in the way they also generally understand things.

While the orchestra plays quietly, three basketfuls of telegrams and cables are brought in, opened, and read out by Sir Arthur's brother. Then there is food, and more champagne than George has ever seen poured in his life, and speeches and toasts, and when the bridegroom gives his speech it contains words which might as well be champagne, for they bubble up into George's brain and make him giddy with excitement.

'… and among us this afternoon I am delighted to welcome my young friend George Edalji. There is no one I am prouder to see here than him…' and faces turn towards George, and smiles are given, and glasses half-raised, and he has no idea where to look, but realizes that it doesn't matter anyway.

Bride and groom take a ceremonial turn on the dance floor, to much happy whooping, and then begin to circulate among their guests, at first together, then separately. George finds himself beside Mr Wood, who is half backed into a palm tree and has ferns up to his knees.

'Sir Arthur always advises concealment,' he says with a wink. Together they look out at the throng.

'A happy day,' George observes.

'And the end of a very long road,' replies Mr Wood.

George does not know what to make of this remark, so contents himself with a nod of agreement. 'Have you worked for Sir Arthur for many years?'

'Southsea, Norwood, Hindhead. Next stop Timbuctoo I shouldn't wonder.'

'Really?' says George. 'Is that the honeymoon destination?'

Mr Wood frowns at this, as if unable to follow the question. He takes another pull at his champagne glass. 'I understand you're keen to get married in general. Sir Arthur thinks you should get married in per-tick-er-ler.' He pronounces this last word with a staccato effect which for some reason amuses him. 'Or is that stating the obvious?'

George feels alarmed by this turn in the conversation, and also somewhat embarrassed. Mr Wood is sliding his forefinger up and down the side of his nose. 'Your sister's the nark,' he adds. 'Couldn't stand up to a pair of part-time consulting detectives.'

'Maud?'

'That's her name. Nice young lady. Quiet, nothing wrong with that. Not that I intend to marry myself, either in general, or in per-tick-er-ler.' He smiles to himself. George decides that Mr Wood is being agreeable rather than malicious. However, he suspects the fellow might be a little inebriated. 'Bit of a palaver, if you ask me. And then there's the expense.' Mr Wood waves his glass at the band, the flowers, the waiters. One of the latter takes his gesture as a command and refills his glass.

George is beginning to wonder where the exchange might lead when he sees, over Mr Wood's shoulder, Lady Conan Doyle bearing down on them.

'Woodie,' she says, and it seems to George that a strange look comes over his companion. But before he can assess it, the secretary has somehow disappeared.

'Mr Edalji,' Lady Conan Doyle pronounces his name with just the right stress, and rests a gloved hand on his forearm. 'I am so pleased you could come.'

George is taken aback: it is not as if he has been obliged to turn down many other engagements to be here.

'I wish you every happiness,' he replies. He looks at her dress. He has never seen anything like it before. None of the Staffordshire villagers his father has married has ever worn a dress remotely like this. He thinks he ought to praise it, but does not know how to do so. But it does not matter, because she is speaking to him again.

'Mr Edalji, I would like to thank you.'

Again, he is taken aback. Have they opened their wedding presents already? Surely not. But what else could she be referring to?

'Well, I wasn't sure what you might require-'

'No,' she says, 'I do not mean that, whatever it might be.' She smiles at him. Her eyes are a sort of grey-green, he thinks, her hair golden. Is he staring at her? 'I mean, it is partly thanks to you that this happy day has occurred when it has and how it has.'

Now George is completely baffled. Further, he is staring, he knows he is.

'I expect we shall be interrupted at any moment, and in any case I was not intending to explain. You may never know what I mean. But I am grateful to you in a way you cannot guess. And so it is quite right that you are here.'

George is still pondering these words as a swirl of noise takes the new Lady Conan Doyle away. I am grateful to you in a way you cannot guess. A few moments later, Sir Arthur shakes his hand, tells him he meant every word of his speech, claps him on the shoulder, and moves on to his next guest. The bride disappears and then reappears in different clothes. A final toast is drunk, glasses are drained, cheers are raised, the couple depart. There is nothing left for George to do except bid farewell to his temporary friends.

The next morning he bought The Times and the Daily Telegraph. One paper listed his name between those of Mr Frank Bullen and Mr Hornung, the other had him between Mr Bullen and Mr Hunter. He discovered that the white flowers he had been unable to identify were called lilium Harrisii. Also that Sir Arthur and Lady Conan Doyle had afterwards left for Paris, en route to Dresden and Venice. 'The bride,' he read, 'travelled in a dress of ivory white cloth, trimmed with white Soutache braid, and having a bodice and sleeves of lace, with cloth over-sleeves. At the back the coat was caught into the waist with gold embroidered buttons. In front, folds of the cloth fell softly at either side of a lace chemisette. The dresses were by Maison Dupree, Lee, B.M.'

He scarcely understood a word of this. It was as mysterious to him as the words the dress's wearer had uttered the day before.

He wondered if he would ever marry himself. In the past, when idly imagining the possibility, the scene would always taken place at St Mark's, his father officiating, his mother gazing at him proudly. He had never been able to picture his bride's face, but that had never bothered him. Since his ordeal, however, the location no longer struck him as plausible, and this seemed to undermine the likelihood of the whole event. He wondered if Maud would ever marry. And Horace? He knew little of his brother's present life. Horace had declined to attend the trial, and had never visited him in gaol. He managed an inappropriate postcard from time to time. Horace had not been home in several years. Perhaps he was married already.

George wondered if he would ever see Sir Arthur and the new Lady Conan Doyle again. He would spend the next months and years attempting to regain in London the sort of life he had once begun to have in Birmingham; while they would go off to whatever existence world-famous authors and their young brides enjoyed. He was not sure how things would go between them if a common cause was lacking. Perhaps this was being over-sensitive on his part, or over-timid. But he tried to imagine visiting them in Sussex, or dining with Sir Arthur at his London club, or receiving them in whatever modest accommodation he might be able to afford. No, that was another implausible scene from a life he would not have. In all probability they would never meet again. Still, for three-quarters of a year their paths had crossed, and if yesterday had marked the end of that crossing point, perhaps George did not mind so very much. Indeed, part of him preferred it that way.