Arthur & George

'For the reasons clearly felt, I would prefer to say. Everything you have written proceeds from that feeling. Once you became convinced of the wretched youth's innocence, everything fell into place.'

'Whereas once you became convinced of the youth's guilt, everything fell into place.'

'My conclusion was not based upon some intuition in the lobby of an hotel, but upon the consequences of police observations and reports over a number of years.'

'You made the boy a target from the beginning. You wrote threatening him with penal servitude.'

'I tried to warn both the boy and his father of the consequences of persisting in the criminal path on which he had manifestly set out. I am not wrong, I think, to take the view that police work is not just punitive but also prophylactic.'

Doyle nodded at a phrase which had, he suspected, been prepared especially for him. 'You forget that before meeting George I had read his excellent articles in The Umpire.'

'I have yet to meet anyone detained at His Majesty's pleasure who did not have a persuasive explanation of why he was not guilty.'

'In your view George Edalji sent letters denouncing himself?'

'Among a great variety of other letters. Yes.'

'In your view he was the ringleader of a gang who dismembered beasts?'

'Who can tell? Gang is a newspaper word. I have no doubt there were others involved. I also have no doubt that the solicitor was the cleverest of them.'

'In your view, his father, a minister of the Church of England, perjured himself to give his son an alibi?'

'Doyle, a personal question, if I may. Do you have a son?'

'I do. He is fourteen.'

'And if he fell into trouble, you would help him.'

'Yes. But if he committed a crime, I would not perjure myself.'

'But you would still help and protect him, short of that.'

'Yes.'

'Then perhaps, with your imagination, you can picture someone else doing more.'

'I cannot picture a priest of the Church of England placing his hand on the Bible and knowingly committing perjury.'

'Then try to imagine this instead. Imagine a Parsee father putting loyalty to his Parsee family above loyalty to a land not his own, even if it has given him shelter and encouragement. He wants to save his son's skin, Doyle. Skin.'

'And in your view the mother and sister also perjured themselves?'

'Doyle, you keep saying in my view. "My view", as you call it, is the view not just of myself, but of the Staffordshire Constabulary, prosecuting counsel, a properly sworn English jury, and the justices of the Quarter Sessions. I attended every day of the trial, and I can assure you of one thing, which will be painful to you but which you cannot avoid. The jury did not believe the evidence of the Edalji family – certainly not of the father and daughter. The mother's evidence was perhaps less important. That is not something lightly done. An English jury sitting round a table considering its verdict is a solemn business. They weigh evidence. They examine character. They do not sit there waiting for a sign from above like… table-turners at a séance.'

Doyle looked across sharply. Was this a random phrase, or a knowing attempt to unsettle him? Well, it would take more than that.

'We are talking, Anson, not of some butcher's boy, but of a professional Englishman, a solicitor in his late twenties, already known as the author of a book on railway law.'

'Then the greater his misdemeanour. If you imagine the criminal courts entertain only the criminal classes, you are more naive than I took you for. Even authors sometimes stand in the dock, as you must be aware. And the sentence doubtless reflected the gravity of a case in which one sworn to uphold and interpret the law so grievously flouted it.'

'Seven years' penal servitude. Even Wilde only received two.'

'That is why sentencing is for the court, rather than for you or me. I might not have given Edalji less, though I would certainly have given Wilde more. He was thoroughly guilty – and of perjury too.'

'I dined with him once,' said Doyle. Antagonism was now rising like mist from the River Sow, and all his instincts told him to pull back a little. 'It would have been in '89, I think. A golden evening for me. I had expected a monologuist and an egotist, but I found him a gentleman of perfect manners. There were four of us, and though he towered over the other three, he never let it show. Your monologue man, however clever, can never be a gentleman at heart. With Wilde it was give and take, and he had the art of seeming interested in everything that we might say. He had even read my Micah Clarke.

'I recall that we were discussing how the good fortune of friends may sometimes make us strangely discontented. Wilde told us the story of the Devil in the Libyan Desert. Do you know that one? No? Well, the Devil was about his business, going the rounds of his empire, when he came across a number of small fiends tormenting a holy hermit. They were employing temptations and provocations of a routine nature, which the sainted man was resisting without much difficulty. "That is not how it is done," said their Master. "I will show you. Watch carefully." Whereupon the Devil approached the holy hermit from behind, and in a honeyed tone whispered in his ear, "Your brother has just been appointed Bishop of Alexandria." And immediately a scowl of furious jealousy crossed the hermit's face. "That," said the Devil, "is how it is best done."'

Anson joined in Doyle's laughter, though less than full-heartedly. The shallow cynicisms of a metropolitan sodomite were not to his taste. 'Be that as it may,' he said, 'the Devil certainly found Wilde himself easy prey.'

'I must add,' Doyle went on, 'that never in Wilde's conversation did I observe one trace of coarseness of thought, nor could I at that time associate him with such an idea.'

'In other words, a professional gentleman.'

Doyle ignored the gibe. 'I met him again, some years later, in a London street, you know, and he appeared to me to have gone quite mad. He asked if I had gone to see a play of his. I told him regrettably not. "Oh, you must go," he said to me with the gravest of expressions. "It is wonderful! It is genius!" Nothing could have been farther from his previous gentlemanly instincts. I thought at the time, and I still think, that the monstrous development which ruined him was pathological, and that a hospital rather than a police court was the place for its consideration.'

'Your liberalism would empty the gaols,' remarked Anson drily.

'You mistake me, sir. I have twice engaged in the vile business of electioneering, but I am not a party man. I pride myself on being an unofficial Englishman.'

The phrase – which struck Anson as self-satisfied – wafted between them like a skein of cigar smoke. He decided it was time to make a push.

'That young man whose case you have so honourably taken up, Sir Arthur – he is not, I should warn you, entirely what you think. There were various matters which did not come out in court…'

'No doubt for the very good reason that they were forbidden by the rules of evidence. Or else were allegations so flimsy that they would have been destroyed by the defence.'

'Between ourselves, Doyle, there were rumours…'

'There are always rumours.'

'Rumours of gambling debts, rumours of the misuse of clients' funds. You might ask your young friend if, in the months leading up to the case, he was in any serious trouble.'

'I have no intention of doing any such thing.'

Anson rose slowly, walked to his desk, took a key from one drawer, unlocked another, and extracted a folder.

'I show you this in strictest confidence. It is addressed to Sir Benjamin Stone. It was doubtless one of many.'

The letter was dated 29th December 1902. At the top left were printed George Edalji's professional and telegrammic addresses; at the top right, 'Great Wyrley, Walsall'. It did not require testimony from that rogue Gurrin to convince Doyle that the handwriting was George's.