Arthur and George (18 page)

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.