Arthur & George (21 page)

“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?”

“I would not wish to speculate—”

“And I certainly shall not press you to do so, Dr. Butter. I certainly shall not press you.”

Buoyant from this exchange, Mr. Vachell opened the case for the defence with a short statement, then called George Ernest Thompson Edalji.

“He stepped briskly round from the dock and faced the crowded court with perfect composure.” This was what George read the next day in the Birmingham
Daily Post,
and it was a sentence which would always make him feel proud. No matter what lies had been told, no matter the whispering campaign, the slurs on his ancestry, the deliberate distortions of the police and of other witnesses, he would, and did, face his accusers with perfect composure.

Mr. Vachell began by taking his client through his precise movements on the evening of the 17th. Both of them knew this was strictly unnecessary, given the effect of Mr. Lewis’s evidence on the known timing of events. But Mr. Vachell wanted to accustom the jury to the sound of George’s voice and the trustworthiness of his evidence. It was barely six years since defendants had been allowed to give evidence, and putting your client into the box was still regarded as a dangerous novelty.

So the visit to Mr. Hands the bootmaker was recounted again, and that evening’s route traced for the jury—though in response to an earlier hint from Mr. Vachell, George did not mention going as far as the Green farm. Then he described the family dinner, the sleeping arrangements, the locked bedroom door, his rising, breakfast and departure for the station.

“Now, at the station, do you recall speaking to Mr. Joseph Markew?”

“Yes, indeed. I was standing on the platform waiting for my usual train—the 7:39—when he accosted me.”

“Do you recall what he said?”

“Yes, he said that he had a message from Inspector Campbell. I was to miss my train and wait at the station until such time as he could speak to me. But it was more Markew’s tone of voice that I recall.”

“How would you describe that tone of voice?”

“Well, it was very rude. As if he was giving me an order, or passing one on with as little civility as possible. I asked what the Inspector wished to see me about, and Markew said he did not know and would not tell me anyway.”

“Did he identify himself as a special constable?”

“No.”

“So you saw no reason not to go to work?”

“Indeed, I had pressing business at my office, and I told him so. Then his manner changed. He became ingratiating and suggested that I might for once in my life take a day’s holiday.”

“And how did you react to that?”

“I thought he did not have the slightest idea what being a solicitor consisted of, and what the responsibilities of the profession are. It is not like being a publican and taking the day off and getting someone else to draw the beer.”

“Indeed not. And at this point did a man come up to you with the news that another horse had been ripped in the district?”

“What man?”

“I refer to Mr. Markew’s evidence, in which he said that a man came up to the two of you and reported that a horse had been ripped.”

“That is quite untrue. No man came up to us.”

“And then you took your train?”

“There was no reason supplied why I should not.”

“So there is no question of your smiling at the news that an animal had been mutilated?”

“No question at all. No man came up to us. And I would hardly smile at such a matter. The only time I might have smiled was when Markew suggested I take a holiday. He is well known in the village as a layabout, so the suggestion fitted easily in his mouth.”

“I see. Now, moving on to a little later in the morning, when Inspector Campbell and Sergeant Parsons came to your office and arrested you. On the way to the lock-up, they allege that you said, ‘I am not surprised at this. I have been expecting it for some time.’ Did you say those words?”

“Yes, I did.”

“Will you explain what you meant by them?”

“Certainly. There had been a campaign of rumour against me for some time. I had received anonymous letters, which I had shown to the police. It was quite evident that they were following my movements and watching the Vicarage. Comments made to me by a policeman indicated that they had an animus against me. And there had even been a rumour a week or two earlier that I had been arrested. The police seemed determined to prove something against me. So, no, I was not surprised.”

Mr. Vachell next put to him the supposed remark about the mysterious Mr. Loxton; George denied both making the statement, and ever having known anyone called Loxton.

“Let us turn to another statement you are alleged to have made. At the Cannock magistrates’ court, you were offered bail, which you refused. Will you tell the court why?”

“Certainly. The terms were extremely onerous, not just on myself but on my family. Besides, I was in the prison hospital at the time, and being comfortably treated. I was content to remain there until my trial.”

“I see. Police Constable Meredith has given evidence that while you were in custody, you said to him, ‘I won’t have bail, and when the next horse is ripped it will not be by me.’ Did you say those words?”

“Yes.”

“And what did you mean by them?”

“Merely what I said. There had been attacks on animals for weeks and months before my arrest, and because they had nothing to do with me, I expected them to continue. And if they did, that would prove the matter.”

“You see, Mr. Edalji, it has been suggested, and will doubtless be suggested again, that there was a sinister reason why you refused bail. The supposition is that the Great Wyrley Gang, whose existence is constantly alluded to but entirely unproven, was to come to your rescue by deliberately mutilating another animal to demonstrate your innocence.”