Arthur & George

by Julian Barnes

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

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

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

  “Accompanied by?”

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

  “Perfection.”

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

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

  “That will be no hardship to me, George.”

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

  “I see those young hornbeams have been grafted.”

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

  “I have had planting years myself.”

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

  “You are well acquainted with Staffordshire, Sir Arthur?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  “The elk,” he proposed, “is perhaps from Southern Canada?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

  It was not worth arguing the toss. “Boobies” hardly described Lestrade and Gregson and Hopkins and . . . oh, it wasn’t—

  “No, I fully understand your reasons, Doyle. But in the real world . . .”

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

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

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

  “To the case at hand. You have read my analysis.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

  “George, Horace and Maud.”

  “Three half-caste children,” repeated Anson.

  “George, Horace and Maud,” repeated Doyle.

  “George, Horace and Maud Ee-dal-jee.”

  “You have read my analysis?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  “Indeed. For the reasons clearly stated.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  “In your view George Edalji sent letters denouncing himself?”

  “Among a great variety of other letters. Yes.”

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

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

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

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

  “I do. He is fourteen.”

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

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

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

  “Yes.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  “Seven years’ penal servitude. Even Wilde only received two.”

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

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

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

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