George Edalji was tried on the charge of feloniously wounding . . .
“Hah!” says Arthur, barely half a paragraph in. “Listen to this. The Assistant Chairman of Quarter Sessions, who presided at the trial, when consulted about the conviction, reported that he and his colleagues were strongly of the opinion that the conviction was right. Amateurs. Rank amateurs. Not a lawyer among them. I sometimes feel, my dear Jean, that the entire country is run by amateurs. Listen to them. These circumstances make us hesitate very seriously before expressing dissent from a conviction so arrived at, and so approved.”
George is less concerned by this opening; he is enough of a lawyer to know when a however is round the corner. And here it comes—not one, but three of them. However, there was considerable feeling in the neighbourhood of Wyrley at the time; however, the police, so long baffled, were naturally extremely anxious to arrest someone; however, the police had both begun and carried on the investigation for the purpose of finding evidence against Edalji. There, it was said, quite openly and now quite officially. The police were prejudiced against him from the start.
Both Arthur and George read: The case is also one of great inherent difficulty, because there is no possible view that can be taken of it, which does not involve extreme improbabilities. Poppycock, Arthur thinks. What on earth are the extreme improbabilities in George’s being innocent? George thinks, This is just an elaborate form of words; they are saying there is no middle ground; which is true, because either I am completely innocent or I am completely guilty, and since there are extreme improbabilities in the prosecution case, therefore it must and will be dismissed.
The defects in the trial . . . the prosecution case changed in two substantial regards as it went along. Indeed. First in the matter of when the crime was supposed to have been committed. Police evidence inconsistent, and indeed contradictory. Similar discrepancies about the razor . . . The footprints. We think the value of the footprints as evidence is practically nothing. The razor as weapon. Not very easy to reconcile with the evidence of the veterinary surgeon. The blood not fresh. The hairs. Dr. Butter, who is a witness quite above suspicion.
Dr. Butter was always the stumbling block, thinks George. But this is very fair so far. Next, the letters. The Greatorex letters are the key, and the jury examined them at length. They considered their verdict for a considerable time, and we think they must be taken to have held that Edalji was the writer of those letters. We have ourselves carefully examined the letters, and compared them with the admitted handwriting of Edalji, and we are not prepared to dissent from the finding at which the jury arrived.
George feels himself going faint. He is only relieved his parents are not with him. He reads the words again. We are not prepared to dissent. They think he wrote the letters! The Committee is telling the world he wrote the Greatorex letters! He takes a gulp of water. He lays the Report down on his knee until he can recover himself.
Arthur, meanwhile, reads on, his anger rising. However, the fact that Edalji wrote the letters doesn’t mean he also committed the outrages. “Oh, that’s very white of them,” he exclaims. They are not the letters of a guilty man trying to throw the blame on others. How in the name of all earthly and unearthly powers could they be, Arthur growls to himself, since the man they throw most blame on is George himself. We think it quite likely that they are the letters of an innocent man, but a wrong-headed and malicious man, indulging in a piece of impish mischief, pretending to know what he may know nothing of, in order to puzzle the police, and increase their difficulties in a very difficult investigation.
“Balderdash!” shouts Arthur. “Bal-der-dash.”
“Arthur.”
“Balderdash, balderdash,” he repeats. “I have met no one in my entire life who is a more sober and straightforward man than George Edalji. Impish mischief—did the fools not read all those testimonials to his character supplied by Yelverton? Wrong-headed and malicious man. Is this, this . . . novella”—he slaps it on the mantelpiece—“protected by Parliamentary privilege? If not, I’ll have them in the libel court. I’ll have the lot of them there. I’ll fund it myself.”
George feels he is hallucinating. He feels as if the world has gone mad. He is back at Portland having a dry bath. They have ordered him stripped to his shirt, they have made him lift his legs and open his mouth. They have pulled up his tongue and—what’s this, D462? What’s this you’ve been hiding under your tongue? I do believe it’s a crowbar. Don’t you think this is a crowbar the prisoner has hidden under his tongue, officer? We’d better report this to the Governor. You’re in serious trouble, D462, I’d better warn you. And you with all your talk about being the last prisoner in the gaol who might want to escape. You with your sainted airs and your library books. We’ve got your number, George Edalji, and it’s D462.
He stops again. Arthur continues. The second defect of the prosecution’s case lay in whether or not Edalji was meant to have acted alone; they changed their mind as the evidence suited them. Well, at least the officially appointed dunderheads couldn’t miss that. The key question of eyesight. Much stress has been laid on this in some of the communications addressed to the Home Office. Yes indeed: stress laid by the leading men of Harley Street and Manchester Square. We have carefully considered the report of the eminent expert who examined Edalji in prison and the opinion of oculists that have been laid before us; and the materials now collected appear to us entirely insufficient to establish the alleged impossibility.
“Imbeciles! Entirely insufficient. Dunderheads and imbeciles!”
Jean keeps her head lowered. This was, she remembers, the very starting point of Arthur’s campaign: the reason he did not just think George Edalji was innocent, he knew it. How disrespectful can they be, to treat Arthur’s work and judgement so lightly!
But he is reading on, rushing ahead as if to forget this point. “In our opinion, the conviction was unsatisfactory and . . . we cannot agree with the verdict of the jury. Ha!”
“That means you’ve won, Arthur. They have cleared his name.”
“Ha!” Arthur does not even acknowledge the interjection. “Now listen to this. Our view of the case means that it would not have been warranted for the Home Office previously to interfere. Hypocrites. Liars. Wholesale purveyors of whitewash.”
“What does that mean, Arthur?”
“It means, my dearest Jean, that no one has done anything wrong. It means that the great British solution to everything has been applied. Something terrible has happened, but nobody has done anything wrong. It ought to be retrospectively enshrined in the Bill of Rights. Nothing shall be anybody’s fault, and especially not ours.”
“But they admit the verdict was wrong.”
“They said that George was innocent, but the fact that he has enjoyed three years of penal servitude is nobody’s fault. Time after time the defects were pointed out to the Home Office and time after time the Home Office declined to reconsider. Nobody did anything wrong. Hurrah, hurrah.”
“Arthur, calm down a little, please. Take a little brandy and soda or something. You may even smoke your pipe if you wish.”
“Never in front of a lady.”
“Well, I would happily make an exception. But do calm down a little. And then we shall see how they justify such a statement.”
But George gets there first. Suggestions . . . prerogative of mercy . . . grant of a free pardon . . . On the one hand, we think the conviction ought not to have taken place, for the reasons we have stated . . . total ruin of his professional position and prospects . . . police supervisions . . . difficult if not impossible for him to recover anything like the position he has lost. George stops at this moment, and takes a drink of water. He knows that on the one hand is always followed by on the other hand, and is not sure he is able to face what that hand might be.
“On the other hand,” roars Arthur. “My God, the Home Office will find as many hands as that Indian god, what’s his name—”
“Shiva, dear.
”
“Shiva, when they want to find a reason why nothing is their fault. On the other hand, being unable to disagree with what we take to be the finding of the jury, that Edalji was the writer of the letters of 1903, we cannot but see that, assuming him to be an innocent man, he has to some extent brought his troubles upon himself. No, no, no no, NO.”
“Arthur, please. People will think we are having an argument.”
“I’m sorry. It’s just that . . . aaah, Appendix One, yes, yes, petitions, reasons why the Home Office never does anything. Appendix Two, let’s see how the Solomon of the Home Office thanks the Committee. Careful and exhaustive report. Exhaustive! Four whole pages, with not a single mention of Anson or Royden Sharp! Blether . . . brought his troubles upon himself . . . blether blether . . . accept the conclusions . . . however . . . exceptional case . . . I’ll say so . . . permanent disqualifications . . . Oh, I see, what they’re most afraid of is the legal profession, all of which knows this is the greatest miscarriage of justice since, since . . . yes, so if they allow him to be reinstated . . . blether, blether . . . fullest and most anxious considerations . . . free pardon.”
“Free pardon,” repeats Jean, looking up. So victory is theirs.
“Free pardon,” reads George, aware that there is one sentence of the Report left to come.
“Free pardon,” repeats Arthur. He and George read the last sentence together. “But I have also come to the conclusion that the case is not one in which any grant of compensation can be made.”
George lays down the Report and puts his head in his hands. Arthur, in a tone of sardonic funereality, reads its final words, “I am, yours very truly, H. J. Gladstone.”
“Arthur dear, you were rather rushing things towards the end.” She has never seen him in such a mood before; she finds it alarming. She would not like such feelings ever turned against her.
“They should erect new signs at the Home Office. Instead of Entrance and Exit, they should read On the One Hand and On the Other Hand.”
“Arthur, could you try to be a little less obscure and just tell me what this means, exactly.”
“It means, it means, my darling Jean, that this Home Office, this Government, this country, this England of ours has discovered a new legal concept. In the old days, you were either innocent or guilty. If you were not innocent, you were guilty, and if you were not guilty, you were innocent. A simple enough system, tried and tested down many centuries, grasped by judges, juries and the populace at large. As from today, we have a new concept in English law—guilty and innocent. George Edalji is a pioneer in this regard. The only man to be granted a free pardon for a crime he never committed, and yet to be told at the same time that it was quite right he served three years’ penal servitude.”
“So it’s a compromise?”
“Compromise! No, it’s a hypocrisy. It’s what this country does best. The bureaucrats and the politicians have spent centuries perfecting it. It’s called a Government Report. It’s called Blether, it’s called—”
“Arthur, light your pipe.”
“Never. I once caught a fellow smoking in front of a lady. I took the pipe from his mouth, snapped it in two and threw the pieces at his feet.”
“But Mr. Edalji will be able to return to his work as a solicitor.”
“He will. And every potential client of his who can read a newspaper will think they are consulting a man mad enough to write anonymous letters denouncing himself for a heinous crime which even the Home Secretary and the cousin of the blessed Anson admit he had absolutely nothing to do with.”
“But perhaps it will be forgotten. You said that they were burying bad news by producing it over Whitsun. So perhaps people will only remember that Mr. Edalji was granted a free pardon.”
“Not if I have anything to do with it.”
“You mean you are continuing?”
“They haven’t seen the back of me yet. I’m not going to let them get away with this. I gave George my word. I gave you my word.”
“No, Arthur. You said what you were going to do, and you did it, and you have obtained a free pardon, and George can go back to work, which is what his mother said was all he wanted. It has been a great success, Arthur.”
“Jean, please stop being reasonable with me.”
“You wish me to be unreasonable with you?”
“I would shed blood to avoid that.”
“On the other hand?” asks Jean teasingly.
“With you,” says Arthur, “there is no other hand. There is only one hand. It is simple. It is the only thing in my life that ever seems simple. At last. At long last.”
George has no one to console him, no one to tease him, no one to stop the words rolling back and forth in his skull. A wrong-headed and malicious man, indulging in a piece of impish mischief, pretending to know what he may know nothing of, in order to puzzle the police, and increase their difficulties in a very difficult investigation. A judgment presented to both Houses of Parliament and to the King’s Most Excellent Majesty.
That evening George was asked by a representative of the Press for his response to the Report. He pronounced himself profoundly dissatisfied with the result. He called it merely a step in the right direction, but the allegation that he had written the Greatorex letters was a slander—an insult . . . a baseless insinuation, and I shall not rest until it is withdrawn and an apology tendered. Further, no compensation has been offered. They admitted he had been wrongly convicted, so it is only just that I should be compensated for the three years’ penal servitude that I suffered. I shall not let matters rest as they are. I want compensation for my wrongs.
Arthur wrote to the Daily Telegraph, calling the Committee’s position absolutely illogical and untenable. He asked if anything meaner or more un-English could be imagined than a free pardon without reparation. He offered to demonstrate in half an hour that George Edalji could not have written the anonymous letters. He proposed that since it was unfair to ask the taxpayer to fund George Edalji’s compensation, it might well be levied in equal parts from the Staffordshire police, the Quarter Sessions Court and the Home Office, since it is these three groups of men who are guilty among them of this fiasco.
The Vicar of Great Wyrley also wrote to the Daily Telegraph, pointing out that the jury itself had made no pronouncement on the authorship of the letters, and that any false deductions were the fault of Sir Reginald Hardy, who had been rash and illogical enough to tell the jury that he who wrote the letters also committed the crime. A distinguished barrister who had attended the trial had called the Chairman’s summing-up a regrettable performance. The Vicar described his son’s treatment, by both the police and the Home Office, as most shocking and heartless. As for the conduct and conclusions of the Home Secretary and his Committee: This may be diplomacy, statecraft, but it is not what they would have done if he had been the son of an English squire or an English nobleman.
Also dissatisfied with the Report was Captain Anson. Interviewed by the Staffordshire Sentinel, he replied to criticisms involving the honour of the police. The Committee, in identifying so-called contradictions of evidence, had simply not understood the police case. It was also untrue that the police began from a certainty of Edalji’s guilt, and then sought evidence to support that view. On the contrary, Edalji was not suspected until some months after the outrages began. Various persons were indicated as being conceivably implicated in the offences, but were gradually eliminated. Suspicion only finally became excited against Edalji owing to his commonly-talked-of habits of wandering abroad late at night.
This interview was reported in the Daily Telegraph, to which George wrote in rebuttal. The flimsy foundation on which the case against him had been built was now clear. As a fact, he never did once “wander abroad,” and unless returning late from Birmingham or from some evening entertainment in the district, was invariably in by about 9:30. There was no person in the district less likely to be out at night, and apparently the police took seriously something
intended as a joke. Further, if he had been out late habitually, this fact would have been known to the large body of police patrolling the district.
It had been a cold and unseasonal Whitsun. A Millionaire’s Son had been Killed in a Motor Racing Tragedy while Driving his 200 H.P. Car. Foreign Princes had arrived in Madrid for a Royal Christening. Wine Growers had Rioted in Béziers, where the Town Hall had been Sacked and Burnt by Peasants. But there was nothing—there had now been nothing for years—about Miss Hickman the Lady Doctor.
Sir Arthur offered to fund any libel suit George cared to bring against Captain Anson, the Home Secretary, or members of the Gladstone Committee, either separately or jointly. George, while renewing his expressions of gratitude, politely declined. Such redress as he had just obtained had been achieved thanks to Sir Arthur’s commitment, hard work, logic, and love of making a noise. But noise, George thought, was not the best solution to everything. Heat did not always produce light, and noise did not always produce locomotion. The Daily Telegraph was calling for a public inquiry into all aspects of the case; this, in George’s view, was what they should now be pressing for. The newspaper had also launched a monetary appeal on his behalf.
Arthur, meanwhile, continued his campaign. No one had taken up his offer to demonstrate in half an hour that George Edalji could not have written the letters—not even Gladstone, who had publicly asserted the contrary. So Arthur would demonstrate the matter to Gladstone, the Committee, Anson, Gurrin and all readers of the Daily Telegraph. He devoted three lengthy articles to the matter, with copious holographic illustration. He demonstrated how the letters were obviously written by someone of an entirely different class to Edalji, a foul-mouthed boor, a blackguard, someone with neither grammar nor decency. He further declared himself personally slighted by the Gladstone Committee, given that in their Report there is not a word which leads me to think that my evidence was considered. In the matter of Edalji’s eyesight, the Committee quoted the opinion of some unnamed prison doctor while ignoring the views of fifteen experts, some of them the first oculists in the country, which he had submitted. The members of the Committee had merely added themselves to that long line of policemen, officials and politicians who owed a very abject apology to this ill-used man. But until such an apology was offered, and reparation made, no mutual daubings of complimentary whitewash will ever get them clean.