“All I can say in reply is that if I had been clever enough to think up such a cunning plan, then I would also have been clever enough not to confess it in advance to a police constable.”
“Indeed, Mr. Edalji, indeed.”
Mr. Disturnal, as George had expected, was sarcastic and disrespectful in cross-examination. He asked George to explain many things he had already explained, solely in order to exhibit a theatrical disbelief. His strategy was designed to show that the prisoner was extremely cunning and devious, yet constantly incriminating himself. George knew that he must leave Mr. Vachell to point this out. He must not allow himself to be provoked; he must take his time in answering; he must be stolid.
Of course Mr. Disturnal did not fail to bring up the fact that George had walked as far as Mr. Green’s farm on the evening of the 17th, and allowed himself to wonder why this might have slipped George’s mind while giving evidence. The prosecuting counsel also showed himself ruthless when it came, as it inevitably did, to the matter of the hairs on George’s clothing.
“Mr. Edalji, you said in sworn evidence that the hairs on your clothing were acquired by leaning against a gate into a field where cows were paddocked.”
“I said that is possibly how they got there.”
“Yet Dr. Butter picked twenty-nine hairs from your clothing, which he then examined under a microscope and found to be identical in length, colour and structure to the hairs of the coat cut from the dead pony.”
“He did not say identical. He said similar.”
“Did he?” Mr. Disturnal was briefly disconcerted, and pretended to consult his papers. “Indeed. ‘Similar in length, colour and structure.’ How do you explain this similarity, Mr. Edalji?”
“I am unable to. I am not an expert in animal hairs. I am only able to suggest how such hairs might have appeared on my clothing.”
“Length, colour and structure, Mr. Edalji. Are you seriously asking the court to believe that the hairs on your coat came from a cow in a paddock, when they had the length, colour and structure belonging to the pony ripped scarcely a mile from your house on the night of the 17th?”
George had no reply to make.
Mr. Vachell called Mr. Lewis back to the witness box. The police veterinary surgeon repeated his statement that the pony could not, in his view, have been injured before 2:30 a.m. He was then asked what kind of instrument might have inflicted the damage. A curved weapon with concave sides. Did Mr. Lewis think the wound could have been made with a domestic razor? No, Mr. Lewis did not think the wound could have been made with a razor.
Mr. Vachell then called Shapurji Edalji, clerk in holy orders, who repeated his evidence about sleeping arrangements, the door, the key, his lumbago and his time of awakening. George thought his father, for the first time, was beginning to look like an old man. His voice seemed less compelling, his certainties less obviously irrefutable.
George became anxious as Mr. Disturnal rose to cross-examine the Vicar of Great Wyrley. The prosecution counsel exuded courtesy, assuring the witness he would not detain him long. This, however, turned out to be a grossly false promise. Mr. Disturnal took every tiny detail of George’s alibi and held it up before the jury, as if trying to assess for the first time its exact weight and value.
“You lock the bedroom door at night?”
George’s father looked surprised to be asked again a question he had already answered. He paused for longer than seemed natural. Then he said, “I do.”
“And unlock it in the morning?”
Again, an unnatural pause. “I do.”
“And where do you put the key?”
“The key remains in the lock.”
“You do not hide it?”
The Vicar looked at Mr. Disturnal as if at some impertinent schoolboy. “Why on earth should I hide it?”
“You never hide it? You have never hidden it?”
George’s father looked quite puzzled. “I do not understand why you are asking me that question.”
“I am merely trying to establish if the key is always in the lock.”
“But that is what I said.”
“Always in full view? Never hidden?”
“But that is what I said.”
When George’s father had given evidence at Cannock, the questions had been straightforward, and the witness box might as well have been a pulpit, with the Vicar bearing witness to God’s very existence. Now, under Mr. Disturnal’s interrogation, he—and the world with him—was beginning to appear more fallible.
“You have said that the key squeaks as it turns in the lock.”
“Yes.”
“Is this a recent development?”
“Is what a recent development?”
“The key squeaking in the lock.” The prosecuting counsel’s attitude was one of helping an old man over a stile. “Has it always done this?”
“For as long as I can remember.”
Mr. Disturnal smiled at the Vicar. George did not like the look of that smile. “And—in all this time—as long as you can remember—no one has ever thought to oil the lock?”
“No.”
“May I ask you, sir, and this may seem a minor question to you, but I should like your answer nonetheless—why has no one ever oiled the lock?”
“I suppose it has never seemed important.”
“It is not from lack of oil?”
The Vicar unwisely allowed his irritation to show. “You had better ask my wife about our supplies of oil.”
“I may do so, sir. And, this squeak, how would you describe it?”
“What do you mean? It is a squeak.”
“Is it a loud squeak or a soft squeak? Might it be compared, for instance, to the squeak of a mouse or the creak of a barn door?”
Shapurji Edalji looked as if he had stumbled into a den of triviality. “I suppose I would characterize it as a loud squeak.”
“All the more surprising, perhaps, that the lock was not oiled. But be that as it may. The key squeaks loudly, once in the evening, once in the morning. And on other occasions?”
“I fail to follow you.”
“I mean, sir, when you or your son leave the bedroom at night.”
“But neither of us ever does.”
“Neither of you ever does. I understand this . . . sleeping arrangement has been in existence now for sixteen or seventeen years. You are saying that in all this time neither one of you has ever left the bedroom during the night?”
“No.”
“You are quite sure of this?”
Again, there was a long pause, as if the Vicar were running through the years in his head, night by night. “As sure as I can be.”
“You have a memory of each night?”
“I do not see the point of that question.”
“Sir, I do not ask you to see its point. I merely request that you answer it. Do you have a memory of each night?”
The Vicar looked around the court, as if expecting someone to rescue him from this imbecilic catechism. “No more than anybody else.”
“Exactly. You have given evidence that you are a light sleeper.”
“Yes, very light. I wake easily.”
“And, sir, you have testified that if the key was turned in the lock, it would wake you up?”
“Yes.”
“Do you not see the contradiction in that statement?”
“No, I do not.” George could see his father becoming flustered. He was not used to having his word challenged, however courteously. He was looking old, and irritable, and less than master of the situation.
“Then let me explain. No one has left the room in seventeen years. So—according to you—no one has ever turned the key while you were asleep. So how can you possibly assert that if the key were turned, it would wake you up?”
“This is angels dancing on pinheads. I mean, obviously, that the slightest noise wakes me.” But he sounded more petulant than authoritative.
“You have never been woken by the sound of the key turning?”
“No.”
“So you cannot swear that you would be woken by that sound?”
“I can only repeat what I have just said. The slightest noise wakes me.”
“But if you have never been woken by the sound of the key turning, is it not entirely possible that the key has been turned and you have not woken?”
“As I say, it has never happened.”
George watched his father as a dutiful, anxious son, but also as a professional solicitor and apprehensive prisoner. His father was not doing well. Mr. Disturnal was easing him first one way, then the other.
“Mr. Edalji, you stated in your evidence that you woke at five and did not go back to sleep until you and your son rose at six thirty?”
“Are you doubting my word?”
Mr. Disturnal did not exhibit pleasure at this response; but George knew that he would be feeling it.
“No, I am merely asking for confirmation of what you have already said.”
“Then I confirm it.”
“You did not, perhaps, fall asleep again between five and six thirty and wake later?”
“I have said not.”
“Do you ever dream that you wake up?”
“I do not follow you.”
“Do you have dreams when you sleep?”
“Yes. Sometimes.”
“And do you sometimes dream that you wake up?”
“I do not know. I cannot remember.”
“But you accept that people do sometimes dream that they wake up?”
“I had never thought about it. It does not seem important to me what other people dream.”
“But you will accept my word that other people do have such dreams?”
The Vicar now looked like some hermit in the desert being led into temptations whose nature he was quite unable to comprehend. “If you say so.” George was equally baffled by Mr. Disturnal’s procedure; but soon the prosecutor’s intention became clearer.
“So you are as certain as you are reasonably able to be that you were awake between five and six thirty?”
“Yes.”
“And so you are equally certain that you were asleep between the hours of eleven and five?”
“Yes.”
“You do not remember waking in that period?”
George’s father looked as if his word were being doubted again.
“No.”
Mr. Disturnal nodded. “So you were asleep at one thirty, for instance. At—” he seemed to pluck the time from the air “—at two thirty, for instance. At three thirty, for instance. Yes, thank you. Now, moving to another matter . . .”
And so it went, on and on, with George’s father turning, before the court’s eyes, into a dotard as uncertain as he doubtless was honourable; a man whose peculiar attempts at domestic security could easily have been outwitted by his clever son who, shortly before, had been so confident in the witness box. Or perhaps something even worse: a father who, suspecting his son might possibly have had some involvement in the outrages, was anxiously but incompetently adjusting his evidence as he proceeded.
Next came George’s mother, the more nervous for just having witnessed her husband’s unprecedented fallibility. After Mr. Vachell had taken her through her evidence, Mr. Disturnal, with a kind of idle civility, took her through it all again. He seemed only mildly interested in her replies; he was no longer the pitiless prosecutor, but rather the new neighbour dropping in for a polite tea.
“You have always been proud of your son, Mrs. Edalji?”
“Oh yes, very proud.”
“And he has always been a clever boy, and a clever young man?”
“Oh, yes, very clever.”
Mr. Disturnal made an oleaginous pretence of deep concern for the distress Mrs. Edalji must feel at finding herself and her son in their current circumstances.
This was not a question, but George’s mother automatically took it as such, and began to praise her son. “He was always a studious boy. He gained many prizes at school. He studied at Mason College in Birmingham, and was a Law Society medallist. His book on railway law was very well received by many newspapers and law journals. It is published, you know, as one of the Wilson’s Legal Handy Books.”
Mr. Disturnal encouraged this effusion of maternal pride. He asked if there was anything else she would like to say.
“I would.” Mrs. Edalji looked across at her son in the dock. “He has always been kind and dutiful to us, and from a child he was always kind to any dumb creature. It would have been impossible for him to maim or injure anything, even if we had not known he was not out of the house.”
You would almost have thought Mr. Disturnal was himself a son of hers from the way he thanked her; a son, that is, who was deeply indulgent towards the blind good-heartedness and naivety of his old white-headed mother.
Maud was called next, to give her account of the state of George’s clothing. Her voice was steady, and her evidence lucid; even so, George felt petrified as Mr. Disturnal rose, nodding to himself.
“Your evidence, Miss Edalji, is exactly the same, down to the smallest detail, as that of your parents.”
Maud looked evenly back at him, waiting to see if this was a question, or the precursor to some deadly assault. Whereupon Mr. Disturnal, with a sigh, sat down again.
Later, at the deal table in the basement of Shire Hall, George felt exhausted and dispirited. “Mr. Meek, I fear my parents were not good witnesses.”
“I would not say that, Mr. Edalji. It is rather the case that the best people are not necessarily the best witnesses. The more scrupulous they are, the more honest, the more they dwell on each word of the question and doubt themselves out of modesty, then the more they can be played with by counsel like Mr. Disturnal. This is not the first time it has happened, I can assure you. How can I put it? It’s a question of belief. What we believe, why we believe it. From a purely legal point of view, the best witnesses are those whom the jury believes most.”
“In fact, they were bad witnesses.” All through the trial it had been not George’s hope but his certainty that his father’s evidence would bring him instant vindication. The prosecuting counsel’s attack would break against the rock of his father’s integrity, and Mr. Disturnal would come away like a miscreant parishioner rebuked for idle slander. But the attack had never come, or rather not in the form that George had anticipated; and his father had failed him, had failed to reveal himself as an Olympian deity whose sworn word was irrebuttable. Instead, he had shown himself pedantic, prickly and at times confused. George had wanted to explain to the court that if as a boy he had committed the slightest misdemeanour, his father would have marched him to the police station and demanded exemplary punishment: the higher the duty, the greater the sin. But instead the opposite impression had emerged: that his parents were indulgent fools who could easily be duped. “They were bad witnesses,” he repeated dismally.