'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 took 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.