Arthur & George

would begin and then give way to another: the effusions of God Satan would be followed on the same page by the rough scrawl and rude drawings – rude in every sense – of the lad. This would strongly suggest that all three of them lived under the same roof. Where might this roof be? Since a number of the letters had been hand-delivered to their victims in Wyrley, it was reasonable to assume a proximity of not much more than a mile or two.
    Next, what sort of roof might shelter three such scribes? Some establishment housing young males of different ages? A cramming school, perhaps? Arthur consulted educational directories, but could find nothing within any plausible distance. Could the malefactors be three clerks in an office, or three assistants in a business? The more he considered the matter, the more he was driven to conclude that they were members of the same family, two older brothers and a younger one. Some of the letters were extremely long, which argued for a household of idlers with time on their hands.
    He needed more specifics. For instance, Walsall School seemed to be a constant factor in the case, yet how important a factor? And then, what about this letter? The religious maniac was quite evidently alluding to Milton.
Paradise Lost
, Book One: the fall of Satan and the burning lake of Hell, which the writer announced as his own final destination. It certainly would be if Arthur had his way. So, here was a further question for the Headmaster: had
Paradise Lost
ever been on the syllabus at the school, if so when, and how many boys had studied it, and did any of them take it especially to heart? Was this clutching at straws, or exploring every possibility? It was hard to tell.
    He read the letters forwards; he read them backwards; he read them in a random sequence; he shuffled them like a pack of cards. And then his eye caught something, and five minutes later he was thumping his secretary’s door back on its hinges.
    ‘Alfred, I congratulate you. You hit the nail squarely on the head.’
    ‘I did?’
    Arthur thrust a letter on to Wood’s desk. ‘Look, there. And there, and there.’ The secretary followed Arthur’s stabbing finger without enlightenment.
    ‘Which nail did I hit?’
    ‘Look, man, there:
boy must be sent away to sea
. And here:
waves come over you
. This is the first Greatorex letter, don’t you see? And here too:
I don’t think they would hang me but send me to sea
.’
    Wood’s expression made it clear that the obvious was escaping him.
    ‘The gap, Woodie, the gap. The seven years. Why the gap, I asked, why the gap? And you replied, Because he wasn’t there. And I said, Where’d he gone, and you replied, Perhaps he’d run away to sea. And this is the first anonymous letter after that seven-year interval. I’ll double-check, but I’ll wager your salary there isn’t a single reference to the sea in all the letters of the earlier persecution.’
    ‘Well,’ said Wood, allowing himself a touch of complacency, ‘it did seem like a possible explanation.’
    ‘And what clinches it, in case you have the slightest doubt,’ – though the secretary, having just been congratulated on his brilliance, was not inclined immediately to doubt it – ‘is where the final hoax came from.’
    ‘You’ll have to remind me, I’m afraid, Sir Arthur.’
    ‘December 1895, remember? An advertisement in a Blackpool newspaper offering the entire contents of the Vicarage for sale by auction.’
    ‘Yes?’
    ‘Come on, man, come on. Blackpool, what is Blackpool? The pleasure resort for Liverpool. That’s where he took ship from, Liverpool. It’s as plain as a packstaff.’
    Alfred Wood was kept busy that afternoon. There was a letter to the Headmaster of Walsall School enquiring about the teaching of Milton; one to Harry Charlesworth instructing him to trace any local inhabitants who had been away to sea between the years 1896 and 1903, and also to trace a boy or man called Speck; and one to Dr Lindsay Johnson requesting an urgent comparison between the letters in the accompanying dossier and those in George Edalji’s hand already supplied. Meanwhile Arthur wrote to the Mam and Jean informing them of his progress in the case.
    The next morning’s post included a letter in a familiar envelope. The postmark was Cannock:
    Honoured Sir,
    A line to tell you we are narks of the detectives and know Edalji killed the horse and wrote those letters. No use trying to lay it on others. It is Edalji