He had always regarded the game as being, in theory, perfectly made for him. It required a combination of eye, brain and body: apt enough for an ophthalmologist turned writer who still retained his physical vigour. That, at least, was the theory. In practice, golf was always luring you on and then evading you. What a dance she had led him across the globe.
As he drove to the Hankley clubhouse, he remembered the rudimentary links in front of the Mena House Hotel. If you sliced your drive you might find your ball bunkered in the grave of some Rameses or Thothmes of old. One afternoon a passer-by, assessing Arthur's vigorous yet erratic game, had cuttingly remarked that he understood there was a special tax for excavating in Egypt. But even this round had been outdone in oddity by the golf played from Kipling's house in Vermont. It had been Thanksgiving time, with snow already thick on the ground, and a ball was no sooner struck than it became invisible. Happily, one of them – and they still disputed which – had the notion of painting the balls red. The oddity didn't stop there, however, because the snow's icy crust imparted a fantastical run to the slightest decent hit. At one point he and Rudyard had launched their drives on a downward slope; there was no reason for the garish balls ever to stop, and they skidded a full two miles into the Connecticut River. Two miles: that is what he and Rudyard always believed, and damn the scepticism of certain clubhouses.
The coquette was kind to him that day, and he found himself on the eighteenth fairway still in with a chance of breaking 80. If he could get his niblick pitch to within putting distance… As he contemplated the shot, he suddenly became aware that he would not play this course many more times. For the simple reason that he would have to leave Undershaw. Leave Undershaw? Impossible, he answered automatically. Yes, but nevertheless inevitable. He had built the house for Touie, who had been its first and only mistress. How could he bring Jean back there as his bride? It would be not just dishonourable, but positively indecent. It was one thing for Touie, in all her saintliness, to hint that he might marry again; quite another to bring a second wife back to the house, there to enjoy with her the very delights forbidden to him and Touie for every single night of their lives together under that roof.
Of course, it was out of the question. Yet how tactful, and how intelligent, of Jean not to have pointed this out, but to have let him find his own way to that conclusion. She really was an extraordinary woman. And it further touched him that she was involving herself in the Edalji case. It was ungentle-manly to make comparisons, but Touie, while approving his mission, would have been equally happy whether he had failed or succeeded. So, doubtless, would Jean; yet her interest changed matters. It made him determined to succeed for George, for the sake of justice, for – to put it higher still – the honour of his country; but also for his darling girl. It would be a trophy to lay at her feet.
Rampant with these emotions, Arthur charged his first putt fifteen feet past the hole, left the next one six feet short, and managed to miss that too. An 82 instead of a 79: yes indeed, they ought to keep women off the golf course. Not simply off the fairways and putting greens, but out of the heads of the players, otherwise chaos would ensue, as it had just done. Jean had once mooted taking up golf, and at the time he had replied with moderate enthusiasm. But it was clearly a bad idea. It was not just the polling booth from which the fair sex should be barred in the interests of civic harmony.
Back at Undershaw, he found that the afternoon mail had brought a communication from Mr Kenneth Scott of Manchester Square.
'There we have it!' he was shouting as he kicked open Wood's office door. 'There we have it!'
His secretary looked at the paper laid in front of him. He read:
Right eye: 8.75 Diop Spher.
1.75 Diop cylind axis 90°
Left eye: 8.25 Diop Spher.
'You see, I told Scott to paralyse the accommodation with atropine, so that the results were entirely independent of the patient. Just in case somebody tried claiming that George was feigning blindness. This is exactly what I would have hoped for. Rock solid! Incontrovertible!'
'May I ask,' said Wood, who was finding the part of Watson easier that day, 'what exactly it means?'
'It means, it means… in all my years practising as an oculist, I never once remember correcting so high a degree of astygmatic myopia. Here, listen to what Scott writes.' He seized the letter back. '"Like all myopics, Mr Edalji must find it at all times difficult to see clearly any objects more than a few inches off, and in dusk it would be practically impossible for him to find his way about any place with which he was not perfectly familiar."
'In other words, Alfred, in other words, gentlemen of the jury, he's as blind as the proverbial bat. Except of course that the bat would be able to find its way to a field on a dark night, unlike our friend. I know what I shall do. I shall issue a challenge. I shall offer to have glasses made up to this prescription, and if any defender of the police will put them on at night, I will guarantee that he will not be able to make his way from the Vicarage to the field and back in under an hour. I will wager my reputation on that. Why are you looking dubious, gentleman of the jury?'
'I was just listening, Sir Arthur.'
'No, you were looking dubious. I can recognize dubiety when I see it. Come on, give me the obvious question.'
Wood sighed. 'I was only wondering whether George's eyesight might not have deteriorated in the course of three years' penal servitude.'
'Aha! I guessed you might be thinking that. Absolutely not the case. George's blindness is a permanent structural condition. That's official. So it was just as bad in 1903 as it is now. And he didn't even have glasses then. Any further questions?'
'No, Sir Arthur.' Although there was a lurking observation he did not think fit to raise. His employer might indeed never have met with such a degree of astygmatic myopia in all his days as an oculist. On the other hand, Wood had many times heard him regale a dinner table with the story of how he boasted the emptiest waiting room in Devonshire Place, and how his phenomenal lack of patients had given him time to write his books.
'I think I shall ask for three thousand.'
'Three thousand what?'
'Pounds, man, pounds. I base my calculation on the Beck Case.'
Wood's expression was as good as any question.
'The Beck Case, surely you remember the Beck Case? Really not?' Sir Arthur shook his head in mock disapproval. 'Adolf Beck. Of Norwegian origin as I recall. Convicted of frauds against women. They believed him to be an ex-convict by the name of – would you believe it? – John Smith, who had previously served time for similar offences. Beck got seven years' penal servitude. Released on licence about five years ago. Three years on, rearrested again. Convicted again. Judge had misgivings, postponed sentence, and in the meantime who should turn up but the original fraudster Mr Smith. One detail of the case I do recall. How did they know Beck and Smith were not one and the same person? One was circumcised and the other wasn't. On such details does justice sometimes hang.
'Ah. You are looking even more puzzled than at the beginning. Quite understandable. The point. Two points. One, Beck was convicted on the mistaken identification of numerous female witnesses. Ten or eleven of them, in fact. I make no comment. But he was also convicted on the clear evidence of a certain expert in forged and anonymous handwriting. Our old friend Thomas Gurrin. Obliged to present himself to the Beck Committee of Inquiry and admit that his testimony had twice condemned an innocent man. And scarcely a year before this confession of incompetence he had been swearing himself black and blue against George Edalji. In my view he should be barred from the witness box and every case in which he has been involved should be reexamined.