“Well, I was talking to a shopkeeper. He had done service in South Africa, and it was only civil to ask him—”
“That is still talking, not shopping.”
George is bewildered by this exchange.
“As you can see, George, we are preparing for marriage.”
“I am very happy to meet you,” says Miss Jean Leckie, smiling more widely, so that George notices she has rather large front teeth. “And now I must go.” She shakes her head teasingly at Arthur and skips away.
“Marriage,” says Arthur as he sinks into a chair in the writing room. The word barely amounts to a question. Even so, George answers—and with a strange precision.
“It is a condition that I aspire to.”
“Well, it can be a puzzling condition, I warn you. Bliss, of course. But damned puzzling bliss more often than not.”
George nods. He does not agree, while admitting he has little evidence to go on. Certainly he would not describe his parents’ marriage as damned puzzling bliss. None of those three words could in any way be reasonably applied to life at the Vicarage.
“To business, anyway.”
They discuss the Telegraph articles, the response they have elicited, the Gladstone Committee, its terms of reference and membership. Arthur wonders if he personally should expose Sir Albert de Rutzen’s cousinage, or drop a hint to a newspaper editor at his club, or simply leave the whole matter alone. He looks across at George, expecting an instant opinion. But George does not have an instant opinion. This may be because he is very shy and nervous; or because he is a solicitor; or because he finds it difficult to switch from being Sir Arthur’s cause to Sir Arthur’s tactical adviser.
“I think Mr. Yelverton is perhaps the person to consult on that.”
“But I am consulting you,” replies Arthur, as if George is shilly-shallying.
George’s opinion, as far as he can call it one when it feels no more than an instinct, is that the first option would be too provoking, the third too passive, and so on the whole he might be inclined to advise the middle course. Unless, of course . . . and as he is starting to reconsider, he is aware of Sir Arthur’s impatience. This does, admittedly, make him a little nervous.
“I will make one prediction, George. They will not be straightforward about the Committee’s report.”
George wonders if Arthur still requires his view of the previous matter. He assumes not. “But they must publish it.”
“Oh, they must, and they will. But I know how governments operate, especially when they have been embarrassed or shamed. They will hide it away somehow. They will bury it if they can.”
“How could they do that?”
“Well, for a start they could publish it on a Friday afternoon, when people have left for the weekend. Or during the recess. There are all sorts of tricks.”
“But if it is a good report, it will reflect well upon them.”
“It can’t be a good report,” says Arthur firmly. “Not from their point of view. If they confirm your innocence, as they must, it means that the Home Office has for the past three years knowingly obstructed justice despite all the information laid before it. And in the extremely unlikely—I would say impossible—case of them finding you still guilty—which is the only other option—there will be such an almighty stink that careers will be at stake.”
“Yes, I see.”
They have now been talking for half an hour or so, and Arthur is puzzled that George has made no reference at all to his Statement of the Case against Royden Sharp. No, more than puzzled; irritated, on the way to being insulted. It half crosses his mind to ask George about that begging letter he was shown at Green Hall. But no, that would be playing Anson’s game for him. Perhaps George just assumes it is up to the host to set the agenda. That must be it.
“So,” he says. “Royden Sharp.”
“Yes,” replies George. “I never knew him, as I said when I wrote to you. It must have been his brother I was at school with when I was little. Though I have no memory of him either.”
Arthur nods. Come on, man, is what he thinks. I have not just exonerated you, I have produced the criminal bound hand and foot for arrest and trial. Is this not, at the very least, news to you? Against all his temperament, he waits.
“I am surprised,” George finally says. “Why should he wish to harm me?”
Arthur does not reply. He has already offered his replies. He thinks it is time George did some work on his own behalf.
“I am aware that you consider race prejudice to be a factor in the case, Sir Arthur. But as I have already said, I cannot agree. Sharp and I do not know one another. To dislike someone you have to know them. And then you find the reason for disliking them. And then, perhaps, if you cannot find a satisfactory reason, you blame your dislike on some oddity of theirs, such as the colour of their skin. But as I say, Sharp does not know me. I have been trying to think of some action of mine that he might have taken as a slight or an injury. Perhaps he is related to someone to whom I gave professional advice . . .” Arthur does not comment; he thinks that you can only point out the obvious so many times. “And I do not understand why he should wish to maim cattle and horses in this way. Or why anyone should. Do you, Sir Arthur?”
“As I said in my Statement,” replies Arthur, who is getting more dissatisfied by the minute, “I suspect that he was strangely affected by the new moon.”
“Possibly,” replies George. “Though not all the cases took place at the same point on the lunar cycle.”
“That is correct. But most did.”
“Yes.”
“So might you not reasonably conclude that those extraneous mutilations were performed in order deliberately to mislead investigators?”
“Yes, you might.”
“Mr. Edalji, I do not appear to have convinced you.”
“Forgive me, Sir Arthur, it is not that I am, or wish to seem, in any way, less than immensely grateful to you. It is, perhaps, that I am a solicitor.”
“True.” Maybe he is being too hard on the fellow. But it is strange: as if he has brought him a bag of gold from the farthest ends of the earth, and received the reply, But frankly, I would have preferred silver.
“The instrument,” says George. “The horse lancet.”
“Yes?”
“May I ask how you know what it looks like?”
“Indeed. By two methods. First, I asked Mrs. Greatorex to draw it for me. Whereupon Mr. Wood recognized it as a horse lancet. And secondly—” Arthur leaves a pause for effect, “I have it in my possession.”
“You have it?”
Arthur nods. “I could show you it if you like.” George looks alarmed. “Not here. Don’t worry, I haven’t brought it with me. It’s at Undershaw.”
“May I ask how you obtained it?”
Arthur rubs a finger up the side of his nose. Then he relents. “Wood and Harry Charlesworth stumbled upon it.”
“Stumbled?”
“It was clear that the weapon had to be secured before Sharp could dispose of it. He knew I was in the district and on his trail. He even started sending me the sort of letters he used to send you. Threatening me with the removal of vital organs. If he had two cerebral hemispheres to rub together, he’d have buried the instrument where no one would find it for a hundred years. So I instructed Wood and Harry to stumble across it.”
“I see.” George feels as he does when a client begins confidentially telling him things no client should ever tell a solicitor, not even his own—especially not his own. “And have you interviewed Sharp?”
“No. I think that’s plain from my Statement.”
“Yes, of course. Forgive me.”
“So, unless you have any objection, I shall include my Statement against Sharp with my other submissions to the Home Office.”
“Sir Arthur, I cannot possibly express the gratitude I feel—”
“I do not want you to. I did not do it for your blasted gratitude, which you have already sufficiently expressed. I did
it because you are innocent, and I am ashamed of the way the judicial and bureaucratic machinery of this country operates.”
“Nevertheless, no one else could have done what you have done. And in so comparatively short a time as well.”
He is as good as saying I botched it, thinks Arthur. No, don’t be absurd—it’s merely that he’s far more interested in his own vindication, and in making absolutely sure of that, than in Sharp’s prosecution. Which is perfectly understandable. Finish item one before proceeding to item two—what else would you expect of a cautious lawyer? Whereas I attack on all fronts simultaneously. He’s just worrying that I might take my eye off the ball.
But later, when they had parted and Arthur sat in a cab on the way to Jean’s flat, he began to wonder. What was that dictum? People will forgive you anything except the help you give them? Something like that. And maybe such a response was exaggerated in a case like this. When he had read up about Dreyfus it had struck him that many of those who came to help the Frenchman, who worked for him out of a deep passion, who saw his case not just as a great battle between Truth and Lies, between Justice and Injustice, but as a matter which explained and even defined the country they lived in—that many of them were not at all impressed by Colonel Alfred Dreyfus. They had found him rather a dry stick, cold and correct, and not exactly flowing with the juices of gratitude and human sympathy. Someone had written that the victim was usually not up to the mystique of his own affair. That was a rather French thing to say, but not necessarily wide of the mark.
Or maybe that was just as unfair. When he had first met George Edalji, he had been impressed by how this rather frail and delicate young man could have withstood three years of penal servitude. In his surprise, he had doubtless failed to appreciate what it must have cost George. Perhaps the only way to survive was to concentrate utterly, from dawn to dusk, on the minutiae of your own case, to have nothing else in your head, to have all the facts and arguments marshalled for whenever they might be needed. Only then could you survive monstrous injustice and the squalid reversal in your habits of living. So it might be expecting too much of George Edalji to expect him to react as a free man might. Until he was pardoned and compensated, he could not go back to being the man he had been before.
Save your irritation for others, thought Arthur. George is a good fellow, and an innocent man, but there is no point wishing sanctity upon him. Wanting more gratitude than he can offer is like wanting every reviewer to declare each new book of yours a work of genius. Yes, save your irritation for others. Captain Anson for a start, whose letter this morning contained a fresh piece of insolence: the blunt refusal to admit that the mutilations could have been caused by a horse lancet. And to cap it, the dismissive line, “What you drew was an ordinary fleam.” Indeed! Arthur had not bothered George with this latest provocation.
And as well as Anson, he was finding himself irritated by Willie Hornung. His brother-in-law had a new joke, which Connie had passed on to him over lunch. “What do Arthur Conan Doyle and George Edalji have in common? No? Give up? ‘Sentences.’ ” Arthur growled to himself. Sentences—he thought that witty? Objectively, Arthur could see that some might find it so. But really . . . Unless he was beginning to lose his sense of humour. They said it happened to people in middle age. No—poppycock. And now he was starting to irritate himself. Another trait of middle age, no doubt.
George, meanwhile, was still in the writing room at the Grand Hotel. He was in low spirits. He had been disgracefully impolite and ungrateful towards Sir Arthur. And after the months and months of work he had put into the case. George was ashamed of himself. He must write to apologize. And yet . . . and yet . . . it would have been dishonest to say more than he did. Or rather, if he had said more, he would have been obliged to be honest.
He had read the Statement of the Case against Royden Sharp that Arthur was sending to the Home Office. He had read it several times, naturally. And each time his impression had hardened. His conclusion—his inevitable, professional conclusion—was that it would not help his own position. Further, his judgement—which he would never have dared utter at their meeting—was that Sir Arthur’s case against Sharp strangely resembled the Staffordshire Constabulary’s case against himself.
It was based, to begin with, and in exactly the same way, upon the letters. Sir Reginald Hardy had said in his summing-up at Stafford that the person who wrote the letters must also have been the person who maimed the livestock. This connection was explicit, and rightly criticized by Mr. Yelverton and those who had taken up his case. Yet here was Sir Arthur making exactly the same connection. The letters were his starting point, and through them he had traced Royden Sharp’s hand, and his comings and goings, at every turn. The letters incriminated Sharp, just as they had previously incriminated George. And while it was now concluded that the letters had been deliberately written by Sharp and his brother to pull George into the affair, why could they not equally have been written by someone else to pull Sharp into the affair? If they had been false the first time, why should they be true the second?
Likewise, all Sir Arthur’s evidence was circumstantial, and much of it hearsay. A woman and a child were assaulted by someone who might have been Royden Sharp, except that his name had not been raised at the time and no police action had been taken. A statement had been made to Mrs. Greatorex three or more years ago, which she had not seen fit to pass on to anyone at the time, but which she now brought up when Royden Sharp’s name was mentioned. She also remembered some hearsay—or a piece of washing line gossip—from Sharp’s wife. Royden Sharp had an exceedingly poor scholastic record: yet if that were sufficient proof of criminal intent, the gaols would be full. Royden Sharp was supposed to be strangely influenced by the moon—except on those occasions when he was not. Further, Sharp lived in a house from which it was easy to escape unobserved at night: just like the Vicarage, and any number of other houses in the district.
And if this wasn’t enough to make a solicitor’s heart sink, there was worse, far worse. Sir Arthur’s only piece of solid evidence was the horse lancet, which he had now taken possession of. And what exactly was the legal value of such an item so obtained? A third party, namely Sir Arthur, had incited a fourth party, namely Mr. Wood, to enter illegally the property of yet another party, Royden Sharp, and steal an item which he had then transported halfway across the kingdom. It was understandable that he had not handed it over to the Staffordshire Constabulary, but it could have been lodged with a proper legal official. A solicitor-at-law, for instance. Whereas Sir Arthur’s actions had contaminated the evidence. Even the police knew that they had to obtain either a search warrant, or the express and unambiguous permission of the householder, before entering premises. George admitted that criminal law was not his speciality, but it seemed to him that Sir Arthur had incited an associate to commit burglary and in the process rendered valueless a vital piece of evidence. And he might even be lucky to escape a charge of conspiracy to commit theft.
This was where Sir Arthur’s excess of enthusiasm had led him. And it was all, George decided, the fault of Sherlock Holmes. Sir Arthur had been too influenced by his own creation. Holmes performed his brilliant acts of deduction and then handed villains over to the authorities with their unambiguous guilt written all over them. But Holmes had never once been obliged to stand in the witness box and have his suppositions and intuitions and immaculate theories ground to very fine dust over a period of several hours by the likes of Mr. Disturnal. What Sir Arthur had done was the equivalent of go into a field where the criminal’s footprints might be found and trample all over it wearing several different pairs of boots. He had, in his eagerness, destroyed the legal case against Royden Sharp even as he was trying to make it. And it was all the fault of Mr. Sherlock Holmes.
Arthur & George
As he holds a copy of the Report of the Gladstone Committee in his hand, Arthur is relieved that he has twice failed to be elected to Parliament. He need feel no direct shame. This is
how they do things, how they bury bad news. They have released the Report without the slightest warning on the Friday before the Whitsun holiday. Who will want to read about a miscarriage of justice while taking the train to the seaside? Who will be available to provide informed comment? Who will care, by the time Whit Sunday and Whit Monday have passed and work begins again? The Edalji Case—wasn’t that settled months ago?
George also holds a copy in his hand. He looks at the title page:
PAPERS
relating to the
CASE OF GEORGE EDALJI
presented to both Houses of Parliament
by Command of His Majesty
and then, at the bottom:
London: printed for His Majesty’s Stationery Office
by Eyre and Spottiswoode,
Printers to the King’s Most Excellent Majesty
[Cd. 3503.] Price 11⁄2d. 1907
It sounds substantial, but the price seems to give it away. A penny halfpenny to learn the truth about his case, his life . . . He opens the pamphlet warily. Four pages of Report, then two brief appendices. A penny halfpenny. His breath is coming short. His life summed up for him yet again. And this time not for readers of the Cannock Chase Courier, the Birmingham Daily Gazette or the Birmingham Daily Post, the Daily Telegraph or The Times, but for both Houses of Parliament and the King’s Most Excellent Majesty . . .
Arthur has taken the Report, unread, to Jean’s flat. This is only right. Just as the Report itself is laid before Parliament, so the consequences of his venture should be laid before her. She has taken an interest in the matter which far exceeded his expectations. In truth, he had no expectations at all. But she was always at his side, if not literally, then metaphorically. So she must be there at the conclusion.
George takes a glass of water and sits in an armchair. His mother has returned to Wyrley and he is currently alone in Miss Goode’s lodgings, whose address is registered with Scotland Yard. He places a notebook on the arm of the chair, as he does not want to mark the Report itself. Perhaps he is not yet cured of the regulations governing the use of library books in Lewes and Portland. Arthur stands with his back to the fireplace while Jean sews, her head already half-cocked for the extracts Arthur will read to her. She wonders if they should have done more on this day for George Edalji, perhaps invited him for a glass of champagne, except that he does not drink; although since it was only this morning they heard the Report was due to be released . . .
Arthur & George Page 41