The children are away at school; the house is silent; winds rip the trees bare; November turns to December. He feels a little steadier, as they suggested he would. One morning he wanders into Wood's office to look at his correspondence. On average he gets sixty letters a day. Over the last months Wood has been obliged to develop a system: he answers himself anything that can be dealt with immediately; items requiring Sir Arthur's opinion or decision are placed in a large wooden tray. If, by the end of the week, his employer has not had the heart or stomach to offer any guidance, Wood clears it off as best he can.
Today there is a small package on top of the tray. Arthur half-heartedly slides out the contents. There is a covering letter pinned to a file of cuttings from a newspaper called The Umpire. He has never heard of it. Perhaps it deals with cricket. No, from its pink newsprint he can tell it is a scandal sheet. He glances at the letter's signature. He reads a name that means absolutely nothing to him: George Edalji.
THREE Ending with a Beginning
Arthur amp; George
Ever since Sherlock Holmes solved his first case, requests and demands have been coming in from all over the world. If persons or goods disappear in mysterious circumstances, if the police are more than usually baffled, if justice miscarries, then it appears that mankind's instinct is to appeal to Holmes and his creator. Letters addressed to 221B Baker Street are now automatically returned by the Post Office stamped ADDRESSEE UNKNOWN; those sent to Holmes c/o Sir Arthur are similarly dealt with. Over the years, Alfred Wood has often been struck by the way his employer is simultaneously proud of having created a character in whose true existence readers effortlessly believe, and irritated when they take such belief to its logical conclusion.
Then there are appeals directed to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in propria persona, written on the presumption that anyone with the intelligence and guile to devise such complicated fictional crimes must therefore be equipped to solve real ones. Sir Arthur, if impressed or touched, will sometimes respond, though unfailingly in the negative. He will explain that he is, regrettably, no more a consulting detective than he is an English bowman of the fourteenth century or a debonair cavalry officer under the command of Napoleon Bonaparte.
So Wood has laid out the Edalji dossier with few expectations. Yet on this occasion Sir Arthur is back in his secretary's office within the hour, in mid-expostulation even as he barges through the door.
'It's as plain as a packstaff,' he is saying. 'The fellow's no more guilty than that typewriter of yours. I ask you, Woodie! It's a joke. The case of the locked room in reverse – not how does he get in but how does he get out? It's as shabby as shabby can be.'
Wood has not seen his employer so indignant for months. 'You wish me to reply?'
'Reply? I'm going to do more than reply. I'm going to stir things up. I'm going to knock some heads together. They'll rue the day they let this happen to an innocent man.'
Wood is as yet unsure who 'they' might be, or indeed what 'this' is that has 'happened'. In the supplicant's petition he observed little, apart from a strange surname, to distinguish it from dozens of other supposed miscarriages of justice which Sir Arthur is expected single-handedly to overturn. But Wood does not at this moment care about the rights or wrongs of the Edalji case. He is only relieved that his employer seems, within the hour, to have shrugged off the lethargy and despondence that have afflicted him these past months.
In a covering letter George has explained the anomalous position in which he finds himself. The decision to free him on licence was taken by the previous Home Secretary, Mr Akers-Douglas, and implemented by the present one, Mr Herbert Gladstone; but neither has offered any official explanation of their reasons. George's conviction has not been cancelled, nor has any apology been tendered for his incarceration. One newspaper, doubtless briefed over a complicit luncheon by some nod-and-wink bureaucrat, shamelessly let it be known that the Home Office had no doubt as to the prisoner's guilt, but had released him because three years was considered the appropriate sentence for the crime in question. Sir Reginald Hardy, in deciding upon seven, had shown himself a touch over-zealous in the defence of Staffordshire's honour; and the Home Secretary was merely correcting this fit of enthusiasm.
All of which leaves George in moral despair and practical limbo. Do they think him guilty or not guilty? Are they apologizing for his conviction or reaffirming it? Unless and until the conviction is expunged, it is impossible for him to be readmitted to the Rolls. The Home Office perhaps expects George to display his relief by silence, and his gratitude by slinking away to another profession, preferably in the colonies. Yet George has survived prison only by the thought, the hope, of returning to work – somehow, somewhere – as a solicitor; and his supporters, having come thus far, have no intention of giving up either. One of Mr Yelverton's friends has given George temporary employment in his office as a clerk; but this is no solution. The solution can only come from the Home Office.
Arthur is late for his appointment with George Edalji at the Grand Hotel, Charing Cross; business with his bank has detained him. Now he enters the foyer at speed, and looks around. It is not difficult to spot his waiting guest: the only brown face is sitting about twelve feet away from him in profile. Arthur is about to step across and apologize when something makes him hold back. It is, perhaps, ungentle-manly to observe without permission; but not for nothing was he once the out-patient clerk of Dr Joseph Bell.
So: preliminary inspection reveals that the man he is about to meet is small and slight, of Oriental origin, with hair parted on the left and cropped close; he wears the well-cut, discreet clothing of a provincial solicitor. All indisputably true, but this is hardly like identifying a French polisher or a left-handed cobbler from scratch. Yet still Arthur continues to observe, and is drawn back, not to the Edinburgh of Dr Bell, but to his own years of medical practice. Edalji, like many another man in the foyer, is barricaded between newspaper and high-winged armchair. Yet he is not sitting quite as others do: he holds the paper preternaturally close, and also a touch sideways, setting his head at an angle to the page. Dr Doyle, formerly of Southsea and Devonshire Place, is confident in his diagnosis. Myopia, possibly of quite a high degree. And who knows, perhaps a touch of astigmatism too.
'Mr Edalji.'
The newspaper is not flung down in excitement, but folded carefully. The young man does not leap to his feet and fall on the neck of his potential saviour. On the contrary, he stands up carefully, looks Sir Arthur in the eye, and extends his hand. There is no danger that this man is going to start babbling about Holmes. Instead, he holds himself in wait, polite and self-contained.
They withdraw to an unoccupied writing room, and Sir Arthur is able to examine his new acquaintance more closely. A broad face, fullish lips, a pronounced dimple in the middle of the chin; clean-shaven. For a man who has served three years in Lewes and Portland, and who must have been used to a softer life than most beforehand, he shows few signs of his ordeal. His black hair is shot with grey, but this rather gives him the aspect of a thinking, cultured person. He could very well still be a working solicitor, except that he is not.