Arthur & George

And the doors were still locked, the windows barred, the threads unbroken.
    Podmore had been surprisingly negative about this haunting; he suspected that some associate of their host’s had lain concealed behind the panelling. At the time, Arthur acceded to this view. However, some years later, the house had burned to the ground; and – more significantly still – the skeleton of a child no more than ten years old had been dug up in the garden. For Arthur, this had changed everything. In cases where a young life is violently taken, a store of unused vitality often becomes available. At such times the unknown and the marvellous press upon us from all sides; they loom in fluctuating shapes, warning us of the limitations of what we call matter. This seemed the irrefutable explanation to Arthur; but Podmore had declined to amend his report retrospectively. In fact, the fellow had behaved all along more like a damned materialist sceptic than an expert charged with authenticating psychic phenomena. Still, why concern yourself with the Podmores of this world when you have Crookes and Myers and Lodge and Alfred Russel Wallace? Arthur repeated to himself the formula : it is incredible, but it is true. When he first heard the words, they had sounded like a flexible paradox; now they were hardening into an iron certainty.
    Arthur made his rendezvous with Wood at the Imperial Family Hotel in Temple Street. He was less likely to be recognized here than at the Grand, where he might normally stop. They had to minimize the chance of some teasing headline on the society page of the
Gazette
or the
Post
: WHAT IS SHERLOCK HOLMES UP TO IN BIRMINGHAM?
    Their first foray out to Great Wyrley was planned for late the following afternoon. Profiting from the December dusk, they would make their way to the Vicarage as anonymously as possible, and return to Birmingham as soon as their business was done. Arthur was keen to visit a theatrical costumier and equip himself with a false beard for the expedition; but Wood was discouraging. He thought this would draw more rather than less attention to them; indeed, any visit to a costumier would guarantee unwelcome paragraphs in the local press. A turned-up collar and a muffler, together with a raised newspaper in the train, would be enough to get them unscathed to Wyrley; then they would just stroll along to the Vicarage by the badly lit lane as if –
    ‘As if we are what?’ asked Arthur.
    ‘Do we need to pretend?’ Wood did not understand why his employer was so insistent upon disguise; first material, then psychological. In his view it was an Englishman’s inalienable right to tell others, especially those of a nosy inclination, to mind their own business.
    ‘Certainly. We need it for ourselves. We must think of ourselves as … hmmm … I have it – emissaries from the Church Commissioners, come to respond to the Vicar’s report on the fabric of St Mark’s.’
    ‘It is a relatively new and sturdily built church,’ replied Wood. Then he caught his employer’s glance. ‘Well, if you insist, Sir Arthur.’
    At New Street, late the next afternoon, they chose a carriage which would deposit them, at Wyrley & Churchbridge, as far from the station building as possible. By this stratagem they planned to escape the intrusive gaze of other alighting passengers. But in the event, no one else got off the train, and as a consequence the ecclesiastical imposters received extra scrutiny from the stationmaster. Pulling his muffler defensively up around his moustache, Arthur felt almost larky. You do not know me, he thought, but I know you: Albert Ernest Merriman, the son of Samuel. What an adventure!
    He followed Wood along a darkened lane; at one point they skirted a public house, but the sole sign of activity was a man lolling on the front step, studiously chewing his cap. After eight or nine minutes, with only an occasional gas lamp to trouble them, they came upon the dull bulk of St Mark’s with its high, double-pitched roof. Wood led his employer along its southern wall, so close that Arthur could note the greyish stone streaked with purply-red. As they passed the porch, two buildings came into view some thirty yards beyond the west end of the church: to the right, a schoolroom of dark brick, with a faint diamond pattern picked out in lighter brick; to the left, the more substantial Vicarage. A few moments later, Arthur found himself looking down at the broad doorstep where, fifteen years