'All of these letters?' asked Mr Disturnal, waving his hand around the court, which seemed to have been turned into a scriptorium.
'No, sir, not all.'
'There are some which in your opinion were not written by the prisoner?'
'Yes, sir.'
'How many of them?'
'One, sir.'
Mr Gurrin indicated the single letter whose authorship he did not ascribe to George. An exception, George realized, which had the effect of endorsing Gurrin's assertions about all the others. It was a piece of slyness disguised as caution.
Mr Vachell then spent some time on the difference between personal opinion and scientific proof, between thinking something and knowing it; but Mr Gurrin showed himself an adamantine witness. He had been in this position many times before. Mr Vachell was not the first defence counsel to suggest that his procedures were no more rigorous than those of a crystal-gazer, a thought-reader or a spiritualist medium.
Afterwards, Mr Meek assured George that the second day was often the worst for the defence; but that the third, when they presented their own evidence, would be the best. George hoped so; he was struggling with the sense that, slowly yet irrevocably, his story was being taken away from him. He feared that by the time the defence case was put, it would be too late. People – and in particular, the jury – would respond by thinking, But no, we've already been told what happened. Why should we change our minds now?
The next morning, he obediently practised Mr Meek's patent method of putting his own case into perspective. MURDER AT MIDNIGHT. CANALSIDE TRAGEDY IN BIRMINGHAM. TWO BARGEMEN ARRESTED. For once, the ploy failed to have its usual effect. He moved across the page to TIPTON LOVE TRAGEDY, about some poor devil who for the love of a bad woman ended up throwing himself into the canal. But the stories failed to engage him, and his eye kept being drawn back to the headlines. He found himself resenting the fact that a squalid canalside murder was a TRAGEDY, and a miserable suicide was also a TRAGEDY. Whereas his own case had remained, from the beginning, an OUTRAGE.
And then, almost to his relief, he found LADY DOCTOR'S DEATH. He felt it almost a social duty to keep up with Miss Hickman, whose decomposing body was still withholding its secrets. She had been his companion in misfortune since the committal proceedings began. Yesterday, according to the Post, a medical knife or lancet had been discovered near the Sidmouth plantation in Richmond Park. The newspaper surmised that it had fallen out of the woman's clothing while her body was being moved. George wondered how credible this was. You found the corpse of a missing lady surgeon, and as you moved it, things dropped from the pockets and you did not even notice? George was not sure he would believe this if he were on the coroner's jury.
The Post further suggested that the knife or lancet had been the property of the deceased, and that it might have been used to sever an artery, thus causing her to bleed to death. In other words, a suicide, and another TRAGEDY. Well, thought George, that was one possible explanation. Although if Wyrley Vicarage were in Surrey rather than Staffordshire, the police would construct a more convincing theory: that the Vicar's son had broken out of a locked room, acquired a lancet he had never seen before in his life, followed the poor woman until she reached the plantation, and then, lacking any conceivable motive, slaughtered her.
This slug of bitterness revived him. And picturing his own fantastical appearance in the Hickman case also reminded him of the assurance Mr Vachell had given him at their first conference. My defence, Mr Edalji? Merely that there is no evidence that you committed the crime, no motive for you to have done so, and no opportunity. Of course I shall wrap it up for the judge and jury, but that will be the essence of my case.
First, however, there was Dr Butter's evidence to deal with. Dr Butter was not like Mr Gurrin, who appeared to George a charlatan posing as a professional. The police surgeon was a grey-haired gentleman, calm and cautious, who came from a world of test tubes and microscopes, who dealt only in specifics. He explained to Mr Disturnal his procedures when examining the razors, the jacket, the waistcoat, the boots, the trousers, the house-coat. He described the various stains found on various garments, and identified which could be classified as mammalian blood. He had counted the hairs picked from the sleeve and left breast of the jacket: there were twenty-nine of them in total, all short and red-coloured. He had compared them with the hairs on a piece of skin cut from the dead Colliery pony. These were also short and red-coloured. He had examined them under the microscope and pronounced them to be 'similar in length, colour and structure'.
Mr Vachell's technique with Dr Butter was to grant both his competence and his knowledge full respect, and then attempt to turn them to the defence's advantage. He drew attention to the whitish stains on the jacket which the police had concluded were the saliva and foam from the wounded animal. Was there any confirmation of this from Dr Butter's scientific analysis?
'No.'
'What, in your view, did the stains consist of?'
'Starch.'
'And how might such residues come to be on clothing, in your experience?'
'Most probably, I would say, they were residues of bread and milk from breakfast.'
At which point George heard a noise whose existence he had almost forgotten: laughter. There was laughter in court at the idea of bread and milk. It seemed to him the sound of sanity. He looked across at the jury as the public hilarity continued. One or two of them were smiling, but most had retained sober countenances. George judged all this a heartening sign.
Mr Vachell now moved on to the bloodstains on the sleeve of the defendant's jacket.
'You say these stains are of mammalian blood?'
'Yes.'
'There is no possible doubt about that, Dr Butter?'
'None at all.'
'I see. Now, Dr Butter, a horse is a mammal?'
'Indeed.'
'So is a pig, a sheep, a dog, a cow?'
'Certainly.'
'Indeed, everything in the animal kingdom that is not a bird, a fish or a reptile may be classified as a mammal?'
'Yes.'
'You and I are mammals, and so are members of the jury?'
'Certainly.'
'So, Dr Butter, when you say that the blood is mammalian, you are merely saying that it could belong to any of the above-mentioned species?'
'That is true.'
'You do not for a moment claim that you are showing, or would be capable of showing, that the small spots of blood on the defendant's jacket came from a horse or pony?'
'It would not be possible to make such a claim, no.'
'And is it possible to tell from examination the age of bloodstains? Could you say, for instance, that this stain was produced today, this one yesterday, this one a week ago, this one several months ago?'
'Well, if it is still wet-'
'Were any of the bloodstains on George Edalji's jacket wet when you examined them?'
'No.'
'They were dry?'
'Yes.'
'So on your own evidence, they could have been there for days, weeks, even months?'
'That is the case.'
'And is it possible to tell from a bloodstain whether it has been produced by blood from a living animal or a dead one?'
'No.'
'Or indeed from a joint of meat?'
'That neither.'
'So, Dr Butter, you cannot, by examining bloodstains, distinguish between those caused by a man mutilating a horse and those which might have landed on his clothes several months previously when, say, he was carving the Sunday roast – or indeed, consuming it?'
'I would have to agree.'
'And can you remind the court how many bloodstains you found on the cuff of Mr Edalji's jacket?'
'Two.'
'And I believe you said that each was the size of a threepenny bit?'
'I did.'
'Dr Butter, if you were to rip a horse so violently that it was bleeding to death and had to be shot, do you imagine that you could do so while leaving scarcely more blood on your clothes than might be found if you were a careless eater?'