TWO

Beginning with
an Ending

George

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Where was he going?” asks Maud.

“It doesn’t matter where he was going.”

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

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

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

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

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

“He didn’t have enough money to pay,” says Maud. “Poor man.”

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

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

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

“The court was not told the reasons for his size.”

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

“Had he ever done it before?” asks Maud.

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

“Well, which is it?” asks Horace, impatiently.

“I don’t know. It doesn’t say in the report.”

“So what’s the answer?”

“Well, the answer here is a divided jury—one for each party. You’ll have to argue it out between you.”

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

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

“I won!” shouts Horace. “Maud got it wrong.”

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

“I still won,” says Horace.

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

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

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

Arthur

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

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

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

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

“Who is that?”

“The Strand Magazine.”

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

“He says . . . Oh, I cannot read it.”

“I insist. You know how I love to see you blush.”

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

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

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

“I might have been putting on the dog a little.”

“And look—here is little Mary standing on this very chair.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And yet.

George

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

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

“George, where do you come from?”

“Great Wyrley.”

“No, where do you really come from?”

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

“Have you got a girl, George?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Some legal definition you don’t understand in the question?”

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

“Hoity-toity, George.”

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

“Is she a stunner, George?”

“Does she look like Marie Lloyd?”

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

“Go on, George, tell us her name.”

“Go on, George, tell us her name.”

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

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

“She’s Harry Charlesworth’s sister. He’s my friend.”

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

“What’s the colour of her hair?”

“Have you kissed her, George?”

“Where does she come from?”

“No, where does she really come from?”

“Are you making her a Valentine?”

They never seem to tire of the subject.

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

“She’s English, just like me.”

“Just like you, George? Just like you?”

“When can we meet her?”

“I bet she’s a Bechuana girl.”

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

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

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

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

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

When they tire of this joke, they find another.

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

“Give a chap a clue.”

“Well, where did he go to school?”

“George, where did you go to school?”

“You know very well, Stentson.”

“Tell me all the same, George.”

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

“Think about it, Stentson.”

“Rugeley. Now I’m getting there. Hang on—could it be William Palmer—”

“The Rugeley Poisoner! Exactly.”

“Where did he go to school, George?”

“You know very well, you fellows.”

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

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

“Did he have a moustache like George’s?”

“Just like George’s.”

“You don’t know anything about him, Greenway.”

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

George pretends to put his thumbs in his ears.

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

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

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

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

There is a silence. “I don’t follow you.”

“No, not Palmerston. Pal-mers-town.”

“Ah! Now that’s very amusing, Greenway.”

“Even our Manchoo friend is laughing. Underneath his moustache.”

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

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

“Roll up your sleeve.”

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

“What was that about?” Stentson asks.

“I think George is trying to prove I’m a poisoner too.”

Arthur

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

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

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

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

“There’s something odd about him. I can sniff it.”

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

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

“And what does he do, this fellow from Middlesbrough?”

“He is a writer. Like you, Arthur.”

“Never heard of him.”

“He has written a dozen novels.”

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

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

“Do you just, Connie?”

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

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

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

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

“What do you make of that, Mr. Hornung?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“You are, I believe, a medical man, Mr. Doyle?”

“I rebuke myself for my inattention.”

“The pulmonary system was not your speciality?”

“The eye.”

“Then you should not rebuke yourself.”

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

“But you were an eye doctor.”

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

“I see.”

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

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

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

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

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

“You know as well as I do, Mr. Doyle, how impossible it is to predict—”

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

“Yes, in my view.”

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

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

Arthur stiffened his back, a soldier ready for orders.

“You have, I believe, children?”

“Two, a boy and a girl. Aged one and four.”

“There is, you must understand, no possibility—”

“I understand.”

“I am not talking to her ability to conceive—”

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

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

“Yes?”

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

“You mean light-headed? Delirious?”

“No, I mean optimistic. Tranquil and cheerful, I would say.”

“On account of the drugs you prescribe?”

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

“Well, that is a great relief to me.”

“Yes, it may be so at first, Mr. Doyle.”

“What do you mean by that?”

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

“You do not know me, sir.”

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

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

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

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

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

George

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Arthur

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

George & Arthur

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

George

Each morning George takes the first train of the day into Birmingham. He knows the timetable by heart, and loves it. Wyrley & Churchbridge 7:39. Bloxwich 7:48. Birchills 7:53. Walsall 7:58. Birmingham New Street 8:35. He no longer feels the need to hide behind his newspaper; indeed, from time to time he suspects that some of his fellow passengers are aware that he is the author of Railway Law for the “Man in the Train” (237 copies sold). He greets ticket collectors and stationmasters and they return his salute. He has a respectable moustache, a briefcase, a modest fob chain, and his bowler has been augmented by a straw hat for summer use. He also has an umbrella. He is rather proud of this last possession, often taking it with him in defiance of the barometer.

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

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

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

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

George’s train home from New Street leaves at 5:25. On the return journey, there are rarely schoolboys. Instead, there is sometimes a larger and more loutish element whom George views with distaste. Remarks are occasionally passed in his direction which are quite unnecessary: about bleach, and his mother forgetting the carbolic, and enquiries about whether he has been down the mine that day. Mostly he ignores such words, though if a young rough chooses to make himself especially offensive, George might be obliged to remind him who he is dealing with. He is not physically brave, but at such times he feels surprisingly calm. He knows the laws of England, and knows he can count on their support.

Birmingham New Street 5:25. Walsall 5:55. This train does not stop at Birchills, for reasons George has never been able to ascertain. Then it is Bloxwich 6:02, Wyrley & Churchbridge 6:09. At 6:10 he nods to Mr. Merriman the stationmaster—a moment that often reminds him of His Honour Judge Bacon’s 1899 ruling in the Bloomsbury County Court on the illegal retention of expired season tickets—and positions his umbrella over his left wrist for the walk back to the Vicarage.

Campbell

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

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

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

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

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

“I assume the mutilations, sir.”

“Indeed. How many have we now had?”

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

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

“All at night?”

“All at night.”

“Any discernible pattern to events?”

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

“Consistently disgusting, no doubt.”

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

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

“It beggars belief, Campbell, doesn’t it? Such senseless cruelty to defenceless beasts?”

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

“So we are looking for some maniac with a knife.”

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

“So why not a knife?”

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

“So if not a knife?”

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

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

“Not in Birmingham, sir.”

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

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

“Yes, sir.”

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

“Yes, the newspapers—”

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

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

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

“Upton, sir?”

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

“Very well, sir.”

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

“Twenty!”

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

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

“Any further questions?”

“No, sir. Except . . . if I may ask a non-professional question?”

“Go ahead.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Do we know this Greatorex?”

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

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

“None at all.”

“And what do you make of this moon business?”

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

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

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

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

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

“So not known to go round in a gang?”

“Far from it.”

“Any friends?”

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

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

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

“This fellow—the son—does he look like a horse-ripper to you?”

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

George

The postman shows George the official marking on the envelope: POSTAGE DEFICIENT. The letter has come from Walsall; his name and office address are written in a clear and decent hand, so George decides to liberate the item. It costs him twopence, twice the overlooked postage. He is pleased when he recognizes the contents: an order form for Railway Law. But there is no cheque or postal order accompanying it. The sender has asked for 300 copies, and filled in his name as Beelzebub.

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

One evening, just after 6:10, George has returned his season ticket to his pocket and is placing his umbrella over his forearm when he becomes aware of a figure falling into step beside him.

“Keeping well, are we, young sir?”

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

“Good evening,” he replies briskly.

“Enjoying life, are we? Sleeping well?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I shall write to him,” says Shapurji.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“The library. Do we have a library, Sergeant?”

“Well, we could always start one, sir.”

“Then in that case, Mr. Edalji, count me grateful.”

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

“It is pronounced Aydlji. Not Ee-dal-ji.”

“Aydlji.” The Inspector makes a rough stab, and pulls a face. “If you don’t mind, I’ll settle for calling you ‘sir.’ ”

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

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

“Any idea who it’s from?”

“It’s unsigned.”

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

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

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

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

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

“What do you make of it yourself?”

“Well, you see, it’s not anything that’s ever been said to me.”

“Very well, Inspector, what I ‘make’ of it is that it is almost certainly a reference to the fact that my father is of Parsee origin.”

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

“Could? Could? What else might it mean?”

“Well, it might mean that you don’t fit in.”

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

“Do you not, sir?”

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

“Do you not, sir?”

“Nor for that matter do I smoke tobacco.”

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

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

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

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

“I beg your pardon?”

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

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

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

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

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

Campbell

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

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

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

“Five, sir.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“You have children, Campbell?”

“A boy. And a little girl.”

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

“That’s a good thing, sir?”

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

If we can find the letter writer, thought Campbell. “Northfield, Hednesford, Walsall—he’s trying to send us in all directions.”

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

“Yes, sir.”

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

“Agreed, sir.”

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

“Agreed.”

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

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

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

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

“I will.”

“For a start, why should he denounce himself?”

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

“So he also offers a reward for his own capture?”

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

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

“You’ve met him, Campbell. How did he strike you?”

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

“Bloodhounds? You’re sure he didn’t say native trackers?”

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

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

“You could put it that way, sir.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“No, sir?”

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

George

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

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

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

“I can look after myself, thank you.”

“You’re not from hereabouts?”

“Walsall, since you ask.”

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

“I might very well ask you the same question.”

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

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

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

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

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

The next day, a postcard is delivered to Newhall Street. It is a vile effusion accusing him of having guilty relations with a woman in Cannock: “Sir. Do you think it seemly for one in your position to be having connection with ____ ____’s sister every night seeing she is going to marry Frank Smith the Socialist.” Needless to say, he has heard of neither party. He looks at the postmark: Wolverhampton 12:30 p.m. Aug 4, 1903. This disgusting libel was being thought up just as he and Maud were sitting down to lunch at the Belle Vue Hotel.

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

On Monday 17th August 1903, George takes the 7:39 to New Street, as normal; he returns by the 5:25, as normal, reaching the Vicarage shortly before half past six. He works for a while, then puts on a coat and walks to see the bootmaker, Mr. John Hands. He returns to the Vicarage just before 9:30, eats supper, and retires to the room where he sleeps with his father. The Vicarage doors are locked and bolted, the bedroom door is locked, and George sleeps as interruptedly as he has done in recent weeks. The next morning he is awake at 6, the bedroom door is unlocked at 6:40, and he catches the 7:39 to New Street.

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

Campbell

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

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

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

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

“Anyone here watching the Vicarage last night?”

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

Campbell looked at the time: 7:15. He sent Markew, who knew the solicitor, to detain him at the station. He told Cooper and Judd to wait for the surgeon and keep away gawpers, then led Parsons and the remaining specials by the most direct route to the Vicarage. There were a couple of hedges to squeeze through, and the railway to cross by a subterranean passage, but they managed it without difficulty in under fifteen minutes. Well before eight o’clock Campbell had posted a constable at each corner of the house while he and Parsons made the knocker thunder. It was not just the twenty wenches; there was also the threat to shoot Robinson in the head with somebody’s gun.

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

“I should like to speak to your son George.”

The Vicar’s wife was thin and slightly built; most of her hair had gone white. She spoke quietly, with a pronounced Scottish accent. “He has already left for his office. He takes the seven thirty-nine. He is a solicitor in Birmingham.”

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

“Maud, go and fetch your father.”

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

The Inspector repeated his request.

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

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

“And you suspect my son George of the deed.”

The mother put an arm around her daughter.

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

“But you do not have a search warrant?”

“Not with me at the moment, sir.”

“Very well. Charlotte, show him George’s clothes.”

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

“Not if it helps exclude my son from your investigation.”

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

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

“This is all his clothing?”

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

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

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

“No, his knife. Every young man has a knife.”

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

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

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

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

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

“Those are my razors,” said the Vicar quickly.

“One of them is wet.”

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

“And your son—what does he shave with?”

There was a pause. “One of these.”

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

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

“Which he still does?”

“Yes.”

“You do not trust him with razors of his own?”

“He does not need razors of his own.”

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

“He was out last night, your son.”

“Yes.”

“How long for?”

“I’m not really sure. An hour, perhaps more. Charlotte?”

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

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

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

“No, I meant after that.”

“After that, no.”

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

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

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

“His boots?”

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

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

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

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

“Hanging by the back door just above the boots.”

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

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

“To George.”

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

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

“Never?”

“Never.”

“Does anyone else wear it?”

“No.”

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

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

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

The Sergeant took a look and nodded.

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

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

“That’s a roving,” said the daughter. “It’s not a hair, it’s a roving.”

“What’s a roving?”

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

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

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

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

“Then why is it damp?”

“It’s not damp.”

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

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

At Wyrley station Markew reported that the lawyer had curtly refused his request to wait. Campbell and Parsons therefore took the first available train—the 9:53—into Birmingham.

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

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

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

“What’s that, sir?”

“Lying no more than you need to.”

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

“I certainly will.”

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

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

Edalji looked at him blankly. “I have no pistol.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

George

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

They put him in a light, clean cell for an hour, then took him by the 12:40 from New Street to Cannock. Depart Walsall 1:08, George thought. Birchills 1:12. Bloxwich 1:16. Wyrley & Churchbridge 1:24. Cannock 1:29. The two policemen said they would not restrain him on the journey, for which George was grateful. Even so, when the train pulled in to Wyrley, he lowered his head and raised a hand to his cheek in case Mr. Merriman or the porter spotted the Sergeant’s uniform and spread the news.

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

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

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

“So, Mr. Edalji, you know what we’re here for.”

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

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

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

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

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

“I am here because you have arrested me.”

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

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

“That’s very good of you. Then tell me about the Captain.”

“What Captain?”

“You tell me.”

“I don’t know anyone called the Captain. Unless you mean Captain Anson.”

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

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

“Tell me about the Great Wyrley gang.”

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

“When did you meet Shipton?”

“I know no one called Shipton.”

“When did you meet Lee the porter?”

“The porter? A station porter, do you mean?”

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

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

“When did you meet William Greatorex?”

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

“You tell me.”

Silence.

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

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

“Your intelligence is important to you, isn’t it, Mr. Edalji?”

Silence.

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

Silence.

“And to demonstrate that greater intelligence.”

Silence.

“Are you the Captain?”

Silence.

“Tell me exactly what your movements were yesterday.”

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

“What business?”

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

“And then?”

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

“Why?”

“Because he is making me a pair of boots.”

“Is Hands in on this too?”

Silence.

“And?”

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

“Where did you walk?”

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

“So you walked over towards the Colliery?”

“No, I don’t think so.”

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

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

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

“No one. I didn’t go in. I don’t know those people.”

“And who did you meet on your walk?”

“Mr. Hands.”

“No. You met Mr. Hands before your walk.”

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

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

“No. After supper I went to bed.”

“And then got up later and went out?”

“No, I have told you when I went out.”

“What were you wearing?”

“What was I wearing? Boots, trousers, jacket, overcoat.”

“What sort of coat?”

“Blue serge.”

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

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

“Then why was your coat by the back door damp?”

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

“You wore it last night. We can prove it.”

“Then this is clearly a matter for the court.”

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

“That’s not possible.”

“Are you calling your mother a liar?”

Silence.

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

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

“For your sins? But you don’t milk cows and shoe horses, do you?”

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

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

Silence.

“That is a question, Mr. Edalji.”

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

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

Silence.

“So you are denying that you left the Vicarage between the hours of nine thirty p.m. and daybreak?”

“Later than daybreak. I leave the house at seven twenty.”

“But you cannot possibly prove that.”

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

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

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

“How long has this . . . arrangement been going on?”

“Since I was ten.”

“And you are now?”

“Twenty-seven.”

“I see.” Campbell doesn’t see at all. “And your father—when he locks the door—you know where he puts the key?”

“He doesn’t put it anywhere. He leaves it in the lock.”

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

“I have no need to leave the room.”

“Call of nature?”

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

“Never?”

“Never.”

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

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

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

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

Silence.

“How many razors do you own?”

“How many razors? I don’t own a razor.”

“But you do shave, I presume?”

“I shave with one of my father’s.”

“Why are you not trusted with your own razor?”

Silence.

“How old are you, Mr. Edalji?”

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

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

Silence.

“Exceptionally rare, I’d say. And . . . tell me about animals.”

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

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

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

“I might have guessed that.”

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

“Of a cow soiling itself?”

“Yes. I think from that day I have distrusted animals.”

“Distrusted?”

“Yes. What they might do. They are unreliable.”

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

“Yes.”

“And since then you have distrusted animals. All animals.”

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

“I see. But large animals. Like cows.”

“Yes.”

“Horses?”

“Horses are unreliable, yes.”

“Sheep?”

“Sheep are just stupid.”

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

“Blackbirds are not animals.”

“Monkeys?”

“There are no monkeys in Staffordshire.”

“Quite sure of that, are we?”

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

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

Silence.

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

Silence.

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

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

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

“I meant what I said.”

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

Silence.

“So why do you think you are here?”

Silence.

“Perhaps you think it’s because your father is a Hindoo.”

“My father is actually a Parsee.”

“Your boots have mud on them.”

Silence.

“Your razor has blood on it.”

Silence.

“Your coat has horse hairs on it.”

Silence.

“You were not surprised to be arrested.”

Silence.

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

Silence.

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Orders is orders.”

“And your orders are to keep me awake?”

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

“Commit myself? Where to?”

The constable shuffled slightly. “To a place of safety.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

He went through the last two days systematically, preparing himself to prove beyond reasonable doubt the simplest and least controversial event. He listed the witnesses he might need: his secretary, Mr. Hands the bootmaker, Mr. Merriman the stationmaster. Anyone who saw him do anything. Like Markew. If Merriman was unable to corroborate the fact that he had taken the 7:39 to Birmingham, then he knew whom to call. George had been standing on the platform when Joseph Markew accosted him and suggested he take a later train as Inspector Campbell wished to speak to him. Markew was a former police constable who currently kept an inn; it was entirely possible that he had been signed up as a special, but he did not say as much. George had asked what Campbell wanted, but Markew said he did not know. George had been deciding what to do, and also wondering what his fellow passengers were making of the exchange, when Markew had adopted a hectoring tone and said something like—no, not like, for the exact words now came back to George. Markew had said, “Oh, come on, Mr. Edalji, can’t you give yourself a holiday for a single day?” And George had thought, actually, my good man, I took a holiday a fortnight ago this very day, I went to Aberystwyth with my sister, but if it is to be a question of holidays then I shall take my own advice, or that of my father, above that of the Staffordshire Constabulary, whose behaviour in recent weeks has hardly been marked by the greatest civility. So he had explained that urgent business awaited him at Newhall Street, and when the 7:39 drew in, left Markew on the platform.

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

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

“Five foot ten and all.”

“Not too hard to spot, then.”

“You’d think, wouldn’t you?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“If I may make a suggestion, Mr. Edalji.”

“Of course.”

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

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

“Read it aloud,” said Mr. Meek.

“ ‘No clue as to the disappearance of Miss Sophie Frances Hickman, a lady surgeon at the Royal Free Hospital, has yet emerged . . .’ ”

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

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

“That is rather my point.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“That’s not true!” shouted the Vicar, rising to his feet.

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

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

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

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

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

“I warned you against reading the newspapers.”

“But he is not a Hindoo.”

“It’s near enough for the Gazette.”

“But Mr. Meek, what if I said you were a Welshman?”

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

“Or an Irishman?”

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

“Or a Frenchman?”

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

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

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

“What would that signify?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“The old police station,” replied Mr. Gripton cheerily.

The police sternly stopped the laughter which greeted this remark.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mr. Litchfield Meek was confident of an eventual acquittal.

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