Arthur & George

was far away.
    ‘There is supposedly a headless horseman. Also the crunching of coach wheels in the gravel of the drive, and yet no coach. Also the ringing of mysterious bells, and yet no bells have ever been found. Tommyrot, of course, sheer tommyrot.’ Anson found himself feeling positively blithe. ‘But I doubt you are susceptible to phantoms and zombies and poltergeists.’
    ‘The spirits of the dead do not trouble me,’ said Doyle in a flat, tired voice. ‘Indeed, I welcome them.’
    ‘Breakfast is at eight, if that suits you.’
    As Doyle retired in what Anson took to be defeat, the Chief Constable swept the cigar butts into the fire and watched them briefly flare. When he got to bed, Blanche was still awake, rereading Mrs Braddon. In the side dressing room her husband tossed his jacket across the clothes horse and shouted through to her, ‘Sherlock Holmes baffled! Scotland Yard solves mystery!’
    ‘George, don’t bellow so.’
    Captain Anson came tiptoeing through in his braided dressing gown with a vast grin on his face. ‘I do not care if the Great Detective is crouching with his ear to the keyhole. I have taught him a thing or two about the real world tonight.’
    Blanche Anson had rarely seen her husband so light-headed, and decided to confiscate the key to the tantalus for the rest of the week.

Arthur
    Arthur’s rage had been building since the moment the door of Green Hall closed behind him. The first leg of his journey back to Hindhead did little to alleviate it. The Walsall, Cannock & Rugeley line of the London & North Western Railway amounted to a constant series of provocations: from Stafford, where George was condemned, through Rugeley where he went to school, Hednesford where he supposedly threatened to shoot Sergeant Robinson in the head, Cannock where those fools of magistrates committed him, Wyrley & Churchbridge where it all began, then past fields grazed by what could be Blewitt’s livestock, via Walsall where the source of the conspiracy must surely be found, to Birmingham where George had been arrested. Each station on the line had its message, and it was the same message, written by Anson: I and my kind own the land around here, and the people, and the justice.
    Jean has never seen Arthur in such a temper. It is mid-afternoon, and he bangs the tea service around as he tells his story.
    ‘And do you know what else he said? He dared to assert that it would do my reputation no good if my … my amateur speculations were to be broadcast. I have not been treated with such condescension since I was an impecunious doctor in Southsea attempting to persuade a rich patient that he was entirely healthy when he insisted on being at death’s door.’
    ‘And what did you do? In Southsea, I mean.’
    ‘What did I do? I repeated that he was as fit as a fiddle, he replied that he didn’t pay a doctor to tell him that, so I told him to find a different specialist who would diagnose whatever ailment he found it convenient to imagine.’
    Jean laughs at the scene, her amusement tinged with a little regret that she was not there, could never have been there. The future lies ahead of them, it is true, but suddenly she minds not having had a little of the past as well.
    ‘So what will you do?’
    ‘I know exactly what I shall do. Anson thinks that I have prepared this report with the intention of sending it to the Home Office, where it will gather dust and be slightingly referred to in some internal review which may finally see the light of day when we are all dead. I have no intention of playing that game. I shall publish my findings as widely as it is possible to do. I thought of it on the train. I shall offer my report to the
Daily Telegraph
, who I daresay will be happy to print it. But I shall do more than that. I shall ask them to head it “No Copyright”, so that other papers – and especially the Midland ones – may reproduce it
in extenso
and free of charge.’
    ‘Wonderful. And so generous.’
    ‘That’s by the by. It’s a matter of what’s most effective. And furthermore, I shall now make Captain Anson’s position in the case, his prejudiced involvement from the very beginning, as clear as a bell. If he wants my
amateur speculations
on his activities, he shall have them. He shall have them in the libel court if he wishes. And he may very well find that his professional future is not as he imagines after I’ve finished with him.’
    ‘Arthur, if I may …’
    ‘Yes, my