The coquette was kind to him that day, and he found himself on the eighteenth fairway still in with a chance of breaking 80. If he could get his niblick pitch to within putting distance… As he contemplated the shot, he suddenly became aware that he would not play this course many more times. For the simple reason that he would have to leave Undershaw. Leave Undershaw? Impossible, he answered automatically. Yes, but nevertheless inevitable. He had built the house for Touie, who had been its first and only mistress. How could he bring Jean back there as his bride? It would be not just dishonourable, but positively indecent. It was one thing for Touie, in all her saintliness, to hint that he might marry again; quite another to bring a second wife back to the house, there to enjoy with her the very delights forbidden to him and Touie for every single night of their lives together under that roof.
Of course, it was out of the question. Yet how tactful, and how intelligent, of Jean not to have pointed this out, but to have let him find his own way to that conclusion. She really was an extraordinary woman. And it further touched him that she was involving herself in the Edalji case. It was ungentle-manly to make comparisons, but Touie, while approving his mission, would have been equally happy whether he had failed or succeeded. So, doubtless, would Jean; yet her interest changed matters. It made him determined to succeed for George, for the sake of justice, for – to put it higher still – the honour of his country; but also for his darling girl. It would be a trophy to lay at her feet.
Rampant with these emotions, Arthur charged his first putt fifteen feet past the hole, left the next one six feet short, and managed to miss that too. An 82 instead of a 79: yes indeed, they ought to keep women off the golf course. Not simply off the fairways and putting greens, but out of the heads of the players, otherwise chaos would ensue, as it had just done. Jean had once mooted taking up golf, and at the time he had replied with moderate enthusiasm. But it was clearly a bad idea. It was not just the polling booth from which the fair sex should be barred in the interests of civic harmony.
Back at Undershaw, he found that the afternoon mail had brought a communication from Mr Kenneth Scott of Manchester Square.
'There we have it!' he was shouting as he kicked open Wood's office door. 'There we have it!'
His secretary looked at the paper laid in front of him. He read:
Right eye: 8.75 Diop Spher.
1.75 Diop cylind axis 90°
Left eye: 8.25 Diop Spher.
'You see, I told Scott to paralyse the accommodation with atropine, so that the results were entirely independent of the patient. Just in case somebody tried claiming that George was feigning blindness. This is exactly what I would have hoped for. Rock solid! Incontrovertible!'
'May I ask,' said Wood, who was finding the part of Watson easier that day, 'what exactly it means?'
'It means, it means… in all my years practising as an oculist, I never once remember correcting so high a degree of astygmatic myopia. Here, listen to what Scott writes.' He seized the letter back. '"Like all myopics, Mr Edalji must find it at all times difficult to see clearly any objects more than a few inches off, and in dusk it would be practically impossible for him to find his way about any place with which he was not perfectly familiar."
'In other words, Alfred, in other words, gentlemen of the jury, he's as blind as the proverbial bat. Except of course that the bat would be able to find its way to a field on a dark night, unlike our friend. I know what I shall do. I shall issue a challenge. I shall offer to have glasses made up to this prescription, and if any defender of the police will put them on at night, I will guarantee that he will not be able to make his way from the Vicarage to the field and back in under an hour. I will wager my reputation on that. Why are you looking dubious, gentleman of the jury?'
'I was just listening, Sir Arthur.'
'No, you were looking dubious. I can recognize dubiety when I see it. Come on, give me the obvious question.'
Wood sighed. 'I was only wondering whether George's eyesight might not have deteriorated in the course of three years' penal servitude.'
'Aha! I guessed you might be thinking that. Absolutely not the case. George's blindness is a permanent structural condition. That's official. So it was just as bad in 1903 as it is now. And he didn't even have glasses then. Any further questions?'
'No, Sir Arthur.' Although there was a lurking observation he did not think fit to raise. His employer might indeed never have met with such a degree of astygmatic myopia in all his days as an oculist. On the other hand, Wood had many times heard him regale a dinner table with the story of how he boasted the emptiest waiting room in Devonshire Place, and how his phenomenal lack of patients had given him time to write his books.
'I think I shall ask for three thousand.'
'Three thousand what?'
'Pounds, man, pounds. I base my calculation on the Beck Case.'
Wood's expression was as good as any question.
'The Beck Case, surely you remember the Beck Case? Really not?' Sir Arthur shook his head in mock disapproval. 'Adolf Beck. Of Norwegian origin as I recall. Convicted of frauds against women. They believed him to be an ex-convict by the name of – would you believe it? – John Smith, who had previously served time for similar offences. Beck got seven years' penal servitude. Released on licence about five years ago. Three years on, rearrested again. Convicted again. Judge had misgivings, postponed sentence, and in the meantime who should turn up but the original fraudster Mr Smith. One detail of the case I do recall. How did they know Beck and Smith were not one and the same person? One was circumcised and the other wasn't. On such details does justice sometimes hang.
'Ah. You are looking even more puzzled than at the beginning. Quite understandable. The point. Two points. One, Beck was convicted on the mistaken identification of numerous female witnesses. Ten or eleven of them, in fact. I make no comment. But he was also convicted on the clear evidence of a certain expert in forged and anonymous handwriting. Our old friend Thomas Gurrin. Obliged to present himself to the Beck Committee of Inquiry and admit that his testimony had twice condemned an innocent man. And scarcely a year before this confession of incompetence he had been swearing himself black and blue against George Edalji. In my view he should be barred from the witness box and every case in which he has been involved should be reexamined.
'Anyway, point two. After the Committee's report, Beck was pardoned and awarded five thousand pounds by the Treasury. Five thousand pounds for five years. You can work out the tariff. I shall be asking for three thousand.'
The campaign was advancing. He would write to Dr Butter requesting an interview; to the Headmaster of Walsall School to enquire about the boy Speck; to Captain Anson for the police records in the case; and to George to check if he had ever had any contentious business in Walsall. He would look up the Beck Report to confirm the extent of Gurrin's humiliation, and formally demand of the Home Secretary a new and final investigation into the entire matter.
He planned to devote the next couple of days to the anonymous letters, trying to make them less anonymous, seeking to progress from graphology to psychology to possible identity. Then he would turn the dossier over to Dr Lindsay Johnson for professional comparison with examples of George's handwriting. Johnson was the top man in Europe, having been called by Maître Labori in the Dreyfus Case. Yes, he thought: by the time I have finished I shall make the Edalji Case into as big a stir as they did with Dreyfus over there in France.
He sat at his desk with the bundles of letters, a magnifying glass, a notebook and his propelling pencil. He took a deep breath and then slowly, cautiously, as if watching for some evil spirit to escape, he undid the ribbons on the Vicar's parcels and the twine on Brookes's. The Vicar's letters were dated in pencil and numbered in order of receipt; those of the ironmonger were in no evident sequence.