Anson laughed, rather too openly. “That I’m afraid, is a question from detective fiction. It is what your readers beg, and what you so winningly provide.
Tell us what really happened.
“Most crimes, Doyle—almost all crimes, in fact—occur without witnesses. The burglar waits for the house to be empty. The murderer waits until his victim is alone. The man who slashes the horse waits for the cover of night. If there is a witness, it is often an accomplice, another criminal. You catch a criminal, he lies. Always. You separate two accomplices, they tell separate lies. You get one to turn King’s evidence, he tells a new sort of lie. The entire resources of the Staffordshire Constabulary could be assigned to a case, and we would never end up knowing
what really happened,
as you put it. I am not making some philosophical argument, I am being practical. What we know, what we end up knowing, is—enough to secure a conviction. Forgive me for lecturing you about the real world.”
Doyle wondered if he would ever cease being punished for having invented Sherlock Holmes. Corrected, advised, lectured, patronized—when would it ever stop? Still, he must press on. He must keep his temper whatever the provocation.
“But leaving all that aside, Anson. And admitting—as I fear we must admit—that by the end of the evening we may not have shifted one another’s position by one jot or one tittle. What I am asking is this. You believe that a respectable young solicitor, having shown no previous sign of a violent nature, suddenly goes out one night and attacks a pit pony in a most wicked and violent fashion. I ask you simply, Why?”
Anson groaned inwardly. Motive. The criminal mind. Here we go again. He rose and refilled their glasses.
“You are the one with the paid imagination, Doyle.”
“Yet I believe him innocent. And am unable to make the leap that you have made. You are not in the witness box. We are two English gentlemen sitting over fine brandy and, if I may say so, even finer cigars, in a handsome house in the middle of this splendid county. Whatever you say will remain within these four walls, I give you my word on that. I merely ask: according to you, Why?”
“Very well. Let us start with known facts. The case of Elizabeth Foster, the maid-of-all-work. Where you allege it all began. Naturally, we looked at the case but there simply wasn’t enough evidence to prosecute.”
Doyle looked at the Chief Constable blankly. “I don’t understand. There was a prosecution. She pleaded guilty.”
“There was a private prosecution—by the Vicar. And the girl was bullied by lawyers into pleading guilty. Not the sort of gesture to endear you to your parishioners.”
“So the police failed to support the family even then?”
“Doyle, we prosecute when the evidence is there. As we prosecuted when the solicitor himself was victim of an assault. Ah, I see he didn’t tell you that.”
“He does not seek pity.”
“That’s by the by.” Anson picked a paper from his file. “November 1900. Assault by two Wyrley youths. Pushed him through a hedge in Landywood, and one of them also damaged his umbrella. Both pleaded guilty. Fined with costs. Cannock magistrates. You didn’t know he’d been there before?”
“May I see that?”
“Afraid not. Police records.”
“Then at least give me the names of those convicted.” When Anson hesitated, he added, “I can always get my bloodhounds on to the matter.”
Anson, to Doyle’s surprise, gave a kind of humorous bark. “So you’re a bloodhound man too? Oh, very well, they were called Walker and Gladwin.” He saw that they meant nothing to Doyle. “Anyway, we might presume that this was not an isolated occurrence. He was probably assaulted before or after, more mildly perhaps. Doubtless insulted too. The young men of Staffordshire are far from saints.”
“It may surprise you to know that George Edalji specifically rejects race prejudice as the basis of his misfortune.”
“So much the better. Then we may happily leave it on one side.”
“Though of course,” added Doyle, “I do not agree with his analysis.”
“Well, that is your prerogative,” replied Anson complacently.
“And why is this assault relevant?”
“Because, Doyle, you cannot understand the ending until you know the beginning.” Anson was now starting to enjoy himself. His blows were hitting home, one by one. “George Edalji had good reason to hate the district of Wyrley. Or thought he did.”
“So he took revenge by killing livestock? Where’s the connection?”
“I see you are from the city, Doyle. A cow, a horse, a sheep, a pig is more than livestock. It is livelihood. Call it—an economic target.”
“Can you demonstrate a link between either of George’s assailants in Landywood and any of the livestock subsequently mutilated?”
“No, I can’t. But you should not expect criminals to follow logic.”
“Not even intelligent ones?”
“Even less so, in my experience. Anyway, we have a young man who is his parents’ pet, still stuck at home when his younger brother has flown the coop. A young man with a grudge against the district, to which he feels superior. He finds himself in catastrophic debt. The moneylenders are threatening him with the bankruptcy court, professional ruin is staring him in the face. Everything he has ever worked for in his life is about to disappear . . .”
“And so?”
“So . . . perhaps he ran mad like your friend Mr. Wilde.”
“Wilde was corrupted by his success, in my view. One may hardly compare the effect of nightly applause in the West End with the critical reception to a treatise on railway law.”
“You said Wilde’s case was a pathological development. Why not Edalji’s too? I believe the solicitor was at his wits’ end for months. The strain must have been considerable, even unbearable. You yourself called his begging letter ‘desperate.’ Some pathological development might occur, some tendency to evil in the blood might inevitably emerge.”
“Half his blood is Scottish.”
“Indeed.”
“And the other half is Parsee. The most highly educated and commercially successful of Indian sects.”
“I do not doubt it. They are not called the Jews of Bombay for nothing. And equally I do not doubt that it is the mixing of the blood that is partly the cause of all this.”
“My own blood is mixed Scottish and Irish,” said Doyle. “Does this make me cut cattle?”
“You make my argument for me. What Englishman—what Scotsman—what half Scotsman—would take a blade to a horse, a cow, a sheep?”
“You forget the miner Farrington, who did just that while George was in prison. But I ask you in return: what Indian would do the same? Do they not venerate cattle as gods there?”
“Indeed. But when the blood is mixed, that is where the trouble starts. An irreconcilable division is set up. Why does human society everywhere abhor the half-caste? Because his soul is torn between the impulse to civilization and the pull of barbarism.”
“And is it the Scottish or the Parsee blood you hold responsible for barbarism?”
“You are facetious, Doyle. You yourself believe in blood. You believe in race. You told me over dinner how your mother had proudly traced her ancestry back five centuries. Forgive me if I misquote you, but I recall that many of the great ones of the earth have roosted in your family tree.”
“You do not misquote me. Are you saying that George Edalji slit the bellies of horses because that’s what his ancestors did five centuries ago in Persia or wherever they were then?”
“I have no idea whether barbaric or ritual practices were involved. Perhaps so. It may well be that Edalji himself did not know what impelled him to act as he did. An urge from centuries back, brought to the surface by this sudden and deplorable miscegenation.”
“You truly believe that this is what happened?”
“Something like it, yes.”
“Then what about Horace?”
“Horace?”
“Horace Edalji. Born of the same mixture of bloods. Currently a respected employee of His Majesty’s Government. In the tax inspectorate. You are not suggesting Horace was part of the gang?”
“I am not.”
“Why not? He has as good credentials.”
“Again, you are being facetious. Horace Edalji lives in Manchester, for a start. Besides, I am merely proposing that a mixing of the blood produces a tendency, a susceptibility under certain extreme circumstances to revert to barbarism. To be sure, many half-castes live perfectly respectable lives.”
“Unless something triggers them . . .”
“As the full moon may trigger lunacy in some gypsies and Irish.”
“It has never had that effect on me.”
“Low-born Irish, my dear Doyle. Nothing personal intended.”
“So what is the difference between George and Horace? Why, in your belief, has one resorted to barbarism and the other not—or not as yet?”
“Do you have a brother, Doyle?”
“I do indeed. A younger one. Innes. He’s a career officer.”
“Why has he not written detective stories?”
“I am not tonight’s theorist.”
“Because circumstances, even between brothers, vary.”
“Again, why not Horace?”
“The evidence has been staring you in the face, Doyle. It was all brought out in court, by the family itself. I’m surprised you overlooked it.”
It was a pity, Doyle thought, that he had not booked into the White Lion Hotel over the road. He might have the need to kick some furniture before the evening was finished.
“Cases like this, which seem baffling as well as repugnant to the outsider often turn, in my experience, on matters which are not discussed in court, for obvious reasons. Matters which are normally confined to the smoking room. But you are, as you have indicated with your tales of Mr. Oscar Wilde, a man of the world. You have a medical training too, as I recall. And you have travelled in support of our army in the South African War, I believe.”
“All that is true.” Where was the fellow leading him?
“Your friend Mr. Edalji is thirty years old. He is unmarried.”
“As are many young men of his age.”
“And is likely to remain so.”
“Especially given his prison sentence.”
“No, Doyle, that’s not the problem. There’s always a certain low sort of woman attracted by the whiff of Portland. The hindrance is other. The hindrance is that your man’s a goggling half-caste. Not many takers for that, not in Staffordshire.”
“Your point?”
But Anson did not seem especially keen to reach his point.
“The accused, as was noted at the Quarter Sessions, did not have any friends.”
“I thought he was a member of the famous Wyrley Gang?”
Anson ignored this riposte. “Neither male comrades nor, for that matter, friends of the fairer sex. He has never been seen with a girl on his arm. Not even a parlourmaid.”
“I did not realize you had him followed quite so closely.”
“He does not engage in sporting activities either. Had you noticed that? The great manly English games—cricket, football, golf, tennis, boxing—are all quite foreign to him. Archery,” the Chief Constable added; and then, as an afterthought, “Gymnastics.”
“You expect a man with a myopia of eight dioptres to enter the boxing ring, otherwise you’ll send him to gaol?”
“Ah, his eyesight, the answer to everything.” Anson could feel Doyle’s exasperation building, and sought to incite it further. “Yes, a poor, bookish, solitary boy with bulging eyes.”
“So?”
“You trained, I think, as an ophthalmologist?”
“I had consulting rooms in Devonshire Place for a short while.”
“And did you examine many cases of exophthalmus?”
“Not a great number. To tell the truth, I had few patients. They neglected me to such an extent that I was able to give my time there to literary composition. So their absence was to prove unexpectedly beneficial.”
Anson noted the ritual display of self-satisfaction, but pressed ahead. “And what condition do you associate with exophthalmus?”
“It sometimes occurs as a consequence of whooping cough. And, of course, as a side-effect of strangulation.”
“Exophthalmus is commonly associated with an unhealthy degree of sexual desire.”
“Balderdash!”
“No doubt, Sir Arthur, your Devonshire Place patients were altogether too refined.”
“It’s absurd.” Had they descended into folk traditions and old wives’ tales? This from a Chief Constable?
“It is not, of course, an observation that would be put up in evidence. But it is generally reported among those who deal with a certain class of criminal.”
“It’s still balderdash.”
“As you wish. Further, we need to consider the curious sleeping arrangements at the Vicarage.”
“Which are absolute proof of the young man’s innocence.”
“We have agreed we shall not change each other’s minds one jot or one tittle tonight. But even so, let us consider those sleeping arrangements. The boy is—what? ten?—when his little sister falls ill. From that moment, mother and daughter sleep in the same room, while father and elder son also share a common dormitory. Lucky Horace has a room of his own.”
“Are you suggesting—are you suggesting that something dastardly happened in that room?” Where on earth was Anson heading? Was he completely off his head?
“No, Doyle. The opposite. I am absolutely certain that nothing whatever happened in that room. Nothing except sleep and prayers. Nothing happened. Nothing. The dog did not bark, if you will excuse me.”
“Then . . . ?”
“As I said, all the evidence is in front of you. From the age of ten, a boy sleeps in the same locked room as his father. Through the age of puberty and into early manhood, night after night after night. His brother leaves home—and what happens? Does he inherit his brother’s bedroom? No, this extraordinary arrangement continues. He is a solitary boy, and then a solitary young man, with a grotesque appearance. He is never seen in the company of the opposite sex. Yet he has, we may presume, normal urges and appetites. And if, despite your scepticism, we believe the evidence of his exophthalmus, he was prey to urges and appetites stronger than customary. We are men, Doyle, who understand this side of things. We are familiar with the perils of adolescence and young manhood. How the choice often lies between carnal self-indulgence which leads to moral and physical enfeeblement, even to criminal behaviour, and a healthy diversion from base urges into manly sporting activities. Edalji, by his circumstances, was happily prevented from taking the former path, and chose not to divert himself with the latter. And while I admit that boxing would hardly have been his forte, there were, for instance, gymnastics, and physical culture, and the new American science of bodybuilding.”