Arthur and George (15 page)

“Indeed, sir. You will allow me to put one or two questions?”

“I will.”

“For a start, why should he denounce himself?”

“To put us off the scent. He deliberately includes his own name in lists of people we know can have nothing to do with the matter.”

“So he also offers a reward for his own capture?”

“That way he knows there will be no one to claim it but himself.” Anson gave a dry chuckle, but the joke seemed lost on Campbell. “And of course, it’s a further provocation to the police. Look how the Constabulary blunders about, while a poor honest citizen has to offer his own tin to clear up crime. Come to think of it, that advertisement might be construed as a libel on the force . . .”

“But—excuse me, sir—why should a Birmingham solicitor assemble a gang of local roughs in order to mutilate animals?”

“You’ve met him, Campbell. How did he strike you?”

The Inspector reviewed his impressions. “Intelligent. Nervous. Rather eager to please at first. Then a little quick to take offence. He offered us some advice and we didn’t seem keen on it. Suggested we try using bloodhounds.”

“Bloodhounds? You’re sure he didn’t say native trackers?”

“No, sir, bloodhounds. The odd thing was, listening to his voice—it was an educated voice, a lawyer’s voice—I found myself thinking at one point, if you shut your eyes, you’d think him an Englishman.”

“Whereas if you left them open, you wouldn’t exactly mistake him for a member of the Brigade of Guards?”

“You could put it that way, sir.”

“Yes. It sounds as if—eyes open or eyes shut—your impression was of someone who feels himself superior. How might I put it? Someone who thinks he belongs to a higher caste?”

“Possibly. But why should such a person wish to rip horses? Rather than prove he’s clever and superior by, say, embezzling large sums of money?”

“Who’s to say he isn’t up to that as well? Frankly, Campbell, the why interests me much less than the how and the when and the what.”

“Yes, sir. But if you’re asking me to arrest this fellow, it might help to have a clue as to his motive.”

Anson disliked this sort of question, which in his view was nowadays asked far too frequently in police work. There was a passion for delving into the mind of the criminal. What you did was catch a fellow, arrest him, charge him, and get him sent away for a few years, the more the merrier. It was of little interest to probe the mental functionings of a malefactor as he discharged his pistol or smashed in your window. The Chief Constable was about to say as much when Campbell prompted him.

“We can, after all, rule out profit as a motive. It is not as if he were destroying his own property with a view to making some claim against the insurance.”

“A man who sets fire to his neighbour’s rick does not do so for profit. He does it out of malice. He does it for the pleasure of seeing flames in the sky and fear on people’s faces. In Edalji’s case there might be some deep hatred of animals. You will doubtless enquire into that. Or if there is some pattern in the timing of the attacks, if most of them happen at the start of the month, there might be some sacrificial principle involved. Perhaps the mysterious instrument we are seeking is a ritual knife of Indian origin. A kukri or something. Edalji’s father is a Parsee, I understand. Do they not worship fire?”

Campbell acknowledged that professional methods had so far turned up nothing; but was unwilling to see them replaced by such loose speculation. And if Parsees worshipped fire, then would you not expect the man to be committing arson?

“By the way, I am not asking you to arrest the lawyer.”

“No, sir?”

“No. What I am asking—ordering—you to do is concentrate your resources on him. Watch the Vicarage discreetly in the day, have him followed to the station, assign a man to Birmingham—in case he is lunching with the mysterious Captain—and then cover the house entirely after dark. Have it so that he cannot step out of the back door and spit without hitting a special constable. He will do something, I know he will do something.”

George

George attempts to continue his life as normal: this is, after all, his right as a freeborn Englishman. But it is difficult when you feel yourself spied upon; when dark figures trespass the Vicarage grounds at night; when things have to be kept from Maud and even, at times, from Mother. Prayers are uttered as forcefully as ever by Father, and repeated as anxiously by the womenfolk. George feels himself ever less confident of the Lord’s protection. The one moment in the day he considers himself safe is when his father locks the bedroom door.

At times he wants to pull back the curtains, throw open the window, and hurl sarcastic words at the watchers he knows are out there. What a ludicrous squandering of public money, he thinks. To his surprise, he finds that he is becoming the owner of a temper. To his further surprise, it makes him feel rather grown up. One evening, he is tramping the lanes as usual and there is a special constable trailing a distance behind him. George does a sudden about-face and accosts his pursuer, a foxy-faced man in a tweed suit who looks as if he would be more at home in a low public house.

“Can I help you with your route?” George asks, barely holding on to politeness.

“I can look after myself, thank you.”

“You’re not from hereabouts?”

“Walsall, since you ask.”

“This is not the way to Walsall. Why are you walking the lanes of Great Wyrley at this time of day?”

“I might very well ask you the same question.”

This is one insolent fellow, thinks George. “You are following me on the instructions of Inspector Campbell. It’s perfectly obvious. Do you take me for an idiot? The only point of interest is whether Campbell ordered you to make yourself visible at all times, in which case your behaviour may amount to obstruction of the public thoroughfare, or whether he instructed you to remain concealed, in which case you are an entirely incompetent special constable.”

The fellow just gives a grin. “That’s between him and me, wouldn’t you say?”

“I would say this, my good man”—and the anger is now as strong as sin—“you and your sort are a considerable waste of the public budget. You have been clambering over the village for weeks and have nothing, absolutely nothing, to show for it.”

The constable simply grins once more. “Softly, softly,” he says.

That suppertime, the Vicar suggests that George take Maud to Aberystwyth for a day’s outing. His tone is that of a command, but George flatly refuses: he has too much work, and no desire for a holiday. He does not budge until Maud joins in the plea, then accedes reluctantly. On the Tuesday, they are away from dawn until late at night. The sun shines; the train journey—all 124 miles by the GWR—is pleasant and without mishap; brother and sister feel an unwonted sense of freedom. They walk the seafront, inspect the façade of University College, and stroll to the end of the pier (admission, 2d). It is a beautiful August day with a gentle wind, and they are absolutely agreed that they do not want to take a pleasure boat around the bay; nor will they join the crouching pebble-pickers on the beach. Instead, they take the tramway from the north end of the promenade up to Cliff Gardens on Constitution Hill. As the tram ascends, and afterwards descends, they have a fine retrospect of the town and of Cardigan Bay. Everyone they talk to in the resort is civil, including the uniformed policeman who advises the Belle Vue Hotel for lunch, or the Waterloo if they are strictly temperance. Over roast chicken and apple pie they discuss safe topics, like Horace and Great-Aunt Stoneham, and the people at other tables. After lunch they climb to the Castle, which George describes good-humouredly as an offence under the Sale of Goods Act, consisting as it does of only a few ruined towers and fragments. A passer-by points out, over there, just to the left of Constitution Hill, the peak of Snowdon. Maud is delighted, but George cannot make it out at all. One day, she promises, she will buy him a pair of binoculars. On the train home she asks if the Aberystwyth tramway would be governed by the same laws as the railway; then pleads with George to set her another conundrum, as he used to do in the schoolroom. He does his best, because he loves his sister, who for once is looking almost joyful; but his heart is not in it.

The next day, a postcard is delivered to Newhall Street. It is a vile effusion accusing him of having guilty relations with a woman in Cannock: “Sir. Do you think it seemly for one in your position to be having connection with ____ ____’s sister every night seeing she is going to marry Frank Smith the Socialist.” Needless to say, he has heard of neither party. He looks at the postmark: Wolverhampton 12:30 p.m. Aug 4, 1903. This disgusting libel was being thought up just as he and Maud were sitting down to lunch at the Belle Vue Hotel.

The postcard throws him into envious thoughts of Horace, now a happy-go-lucky penpusher with the Income Tax in Manchester. Horace seems to glide through life unscathed; he goes from day to day, his ambition amounting to no more than a slow climb of the ladder, his contentment deriving from female companionship, about which he drops unsubtle hints. Most of all, Horace has escaped Great Wyrley. George as never before feels it a curse to be the first-born, and to have expectations placed upon him; also a curse to have been given more intelligence and less self-confidence than his brother. Horace has every reason to doubt himself, but doesn’t; George, despite his academic success and professional qualifications, is blighted by shyness. When he is behind a desk, explaining the law, he can be clear and even assertive. But he has no ability to talk lightly or superficially; he does not know how to put people at their ease; he is aware that some consider him odd-looking.

On Monday 17th August 1903, George takes the 7:39 to New Street, as normal; he returns by the 5:25, as normal, reaching the Vicarage shortly before half past six. He works for a while, then puts on a coat and walks to see the bootmaker, Mr. John Hands. He returns to the Vicarage just before 9:30, eats supper, and retires to the room where he sleeps with his father. The Vicarage doors are locked and bolted, the bedroom door is locked, and George sleeps as interruptedly as he has done in recent weeks. The next morning he is awake at 6, the bedroom door is unlocked at 6:40, and he catches the 7:39 to New Street.

He does not realize that these are the last normal twenty-four hours of his life.

Campbell

It rained heavily on the night of the 17th, with the wind coming in squalls. But by dawn it had cleared, and as the miners set off for the early shift at Great Wyrley Colliery there was a freshness in the air that comes after summer rain. A pit lad named Henry Garrett was passing a field on his way to work when he noticed one of the Colliery’s ponies in a state of distress. Drawing nearer, he saw that it was barely able to stand, and dropping blood fast.

The lad’s cries brought a group of miners squelching across the field to examine the lengthy cut across the pony’s abdomen, and the churned mud beneath it spotted with red. Within the hour Campbell had arrived with half a dozen specials, and Mr. Lewis the veterinary surgeon had been sent for. Campbell asked who had been responsible for patrolling this sector. PC Cooper replied that he had passed the field at about eleven o’clock, and the animal had appeared to be all right. But the night was dark, and he had not got close to the pony.

It was the eighth case in six months, and the sixteenth animal to be mutilated. Campbell thought a little about the pony, and the affection even the roughest miners often displayed towards such beasts; he thought a little about Captain Anson and his concern for the honour of Staffordshire; but what was most in his head as he looked at the oozing slash and watched the pony stagger was the letter the Chief Constable had shown him.
There will be merry times at Wyrley in November,
he recalled. And then:
for they will do twenty wenches like the horses before next March.
And two other words:
little girls.

Campbell was a capable officer, as Anson had said; he was dutiful and level-headed. He did not have preconceptions about a criminal type; nor was he given to over-hasty theorizing or self-indulgent intuition. Even so: the field in which the outrage had occurred lay directly between the Colliery and Wyrley. If you drew a straight line from the field to the village, the first house you would come to was the Vicarage. Common logic, as well as the Chief Constable, argued for a visit.

“Anyone here watching the Vicarage last night?”

Constable Judd identified himself, and talked rather too much about the devilish weather and the rain getting in his eyes, which may have meant that he had spent half the night sheltering under a tree. Campbell did not imagine policemen to be free of human failings. But in any case, Judd had seen no one come and no one go; the lights had been turned out at half past ten, as they invariably were. Still, it had been a wild old night of it, Inspector . . .

Campbell looked at the time: 7:15. He sent Markew, who knew the solicitor, to detain him at the station. He told Cooper and Judd to wait for the surgeon and keep away gawpers, then led Parsons and the remaining specials by the most direct route to the Vicarage. There were a couple of hedges to squeeze through, and the railway to cross by a subterranean passage, but they managed it without difficulty in under fifteen minutes. Well before eight o’clock Campbell had posted a constable at each corner of the house while he and Parsons made the knocker thunder. It was not just the twenty wenches; there was also the threat to shoot Robinson in the head with somebody’s gun.

The maid showed the two policemen into the kitchen, where the Vicar’s wife and daughter were finishing breakfast. To Parsons’ eye the mother looked scared and the half-caste daughter sickly.

“I should like to speak to your son George.”

The Vicar’s wife was thin and slightly built; most of her hair had gone white. She spoke quietly, with a pronounced Scottish accent. “He has already left for his office. He takes the seven thirty-nine. He is a solicitor in Birmingham.”

“I am aware of that, Madam. Then I must ask you to show me his clothing. All his clothing, without exception.”