Arthur & George

to.’
    On the fourth visit, George asked if these constant checks would continue through the night.
    ‘Orders is orders.’
    ‘And your orders are to keep me awake?’
    ‘Oh no, sir. Our orders is to keep you alive. It’s my neck if you do any harm to yourself.’ George realized that no protest of his could stop the hourly interruptions. The constable continued, ‘Of course, it would be easier for all concerned, yourself included, if you were to commit yourself.’
    ‘Commit myself? Where to?’
    The constable shuffled slightly. ‘To a place of safety.’
    ‘Oh, I see,’ said George, his temper suddenly returning. ‘You want me to say I am loony.’ He used the word deliberately, in the full memory of his father’s disapproval.
    ‘It’s often easier on the family all round. Think about it, sir. Think about how it will affect your parents. I understand they’re a bit elderly.’
    The cell door closed. George lay on his bed too exhausted and angry to sleep. His mind raced to the Vicarage, to the knock on the door and the house full of policemen. His father, his mother, Maud. His office at Newhall Street, now locked and deserted, his secretary sent home until further notice. His brother Horace opening a newspaper the next morning. His fellow solicitors in Birmingham telephoning one another with the news.
    But beneath the exhaustion, the anger and the fear, George discovered another emotion: relief. It had come at last to this: then so much the better. There had been little he could do against the hoaxers and persecutors and writers of anonymous filth; and not much more when the police were blundering away – except offer them sensible advice they had contemptuously refused. But those tormenters and these blunderers had delivered him to a place of safety: to his second home, the laws of England. He knew where he was now. Though his work rarely took him to a courtroom, he knew it as part of his natural territory. He had sat in on cases enough times to have seen members of the public, dry-mouthed with panic, scarcely able to give evidence when faced with the solemn splendour of the law. He had seen policemen, at first all brass buttons and self-assurance, be reduced to lying fools by a half-decent defence counsel. And he had observed – no, not just observed, sensed, almost been able to touch – those unseen, unbreakable strands which linked everyone whose business was the law. Judges, magistrates, barristers, solicitors, clerks, ushers: this was their kingdom, where they spoke to one another in a
lingua franca
others could often barely comprehend.
    Of course it would not get as far as judges and barristers. The police had no evidence against him, and he had the clearest proof of an alibi it was possible to have. A clergyman of the Church of England would swear on the Holy Bible that his son had been fast asleep in a locked bedroom at the time when the crime was being committed. Whereupon the magistrates would take one look at each other and not even bother to retire. Inspector Campbell would be on the receiving end of a sharp rebuke and that would be that. Naturally, he needed to engage the right solicitor, and he thought Mr Litchfield Meek the man for the job. Case dismissed, costs awarded, released without a stain on his character, police heavily criticized.
    No, he was getting light-headed. He was also jumping much too far ahead, like some naive member of the public. He must never stop thinking like a solicitor. He must anticipate what the police might allege, what his solicitor would need to know, what the court would admit. He must remember, with absolute certainty, where he was, what he did and said, and who said what to him, throughout the whole period of alleged criminal activity.
    He went through the last two days systematically, preparing himself to prove beyond reasonable doubt the simplest and least controversial event. He listed the witnesses he might need: his secretary, Mr Hands the bootmaker, Mr Merriman the stationmaster. Anyone who saw him do anything. Like Markew. If Merriman was unable to corroborate the fact that he had taken the 7.39 to Birmingham, then he knew whom to call. George had been standing on the platform when Joseph Markew accosted him and suggested he took a later train as Inspector Campbell wished to speak to him. Markew was a former police constable who currently kept an inn; it was entirely possible that he had been signed up as a special, but he did not say as much.