Arthur & George

down to the smallest detail, as that of your parents.’
    Maud looked evenly back at him, waiting to see if this was a question, or the precursor to some deadly assault. Whereupon Mr Disturnal, with a sigh, sat down again.
    Later, at the deal table in the basement of Shire Hall, George felt exhausted and dispirited. ‘Mr Meek, I fear my parents were not good witnesses.’
    ‘I would not say that, Mr Edalji. It is rather the case that the best people are not necessarily the best witnesses. The more scrupulous they are, the more honest, the more they dwell on each word of the question and doubt themselves out of modesty, then the more they can be played with by counsel like Mr Disturnal. This is not the first time it has happened, I can assure you. How can I put it? It’s a question of belief. What we believe, why we believe it. From a purely legal point of view, the best witnesses are those whom the jury believes most.’
    ‘In fact, they were bad witnesses.’ All through the trial it had been not George’s hope but his certainty that his father’s evidence would bring him instant vindication. The prosecuting counsel’s attack would break against the rock of his father’s integrity, and Mr Disturnal would come away like a miscreant parishioner rebuked for idle slander. But the attack had never come, or rather not in the form that George had anticipated; and his father had failed him, had failed to reveal himself as an Olympian deity whose sworn word was irrebuttable . Instead, he had shown himself pedantic, prickly and at times confused. George had wanted to explain to the court that if as a boy he had committed the slightest misdemeanour, his father would have marched him to the police station and demanded exemplary punishment: the higher the duty, the greater the sin. But instead the opposite impression had emerged: that his parents were indulgent fools who could easily be duped. ‘They were bad witnesses,’ he repeated dismally.
    ‘They spoke the truth,’ replied Mr Meek. ‘And we should not have expected them to do otherwise, or in a fashion that was not their own. We should trust the jury to be able to see that. Mr Vachell is confident for tomorrow; so must we be.’
    And by the next morning, as George was taken from Stafford Gaol to Shire Hall for the last time, as he prepared to hear his story laid out in its final and ever-diverging form, he felt in good heart again. It was Friday 23rd October. By tomorrow he would be back at the Vicarage. On Sunday he would worship again beneath the upturned keel of St Mark’s. And on Monday the 7.39 would take him back to Newhall Street, to his desk, his work, his books. He would celebrate his freedom by beginning a subscription to
Halsbury’s Laws of England
.
    As he emerged from the narrow staircase into the dock, the courtroom seemed even more crowded than on previous days. The excitement was both palpable and, to George, alarming: it did not feel like the grave anticipation of justice, more like a vulgar theatrical expectation. Mr Vachell looked across and smiled at him, the first time he had made such a gesture openly. George did not know whether to return the greeting in the same fashion, but settled for a slight inclination of the head. He looked across at the jury, twelve good Staffordshire men and true, who from the start had struck him as being of decent and sober mien. He noted the presence of Captain Anson and Inspector Campbell, his twin accusers. Though not his real accusers – they were perhaps out on Cannock Chase, gloating at what they had done, and even now sharpening what in Mr Lewis’s view was a curved weapon with concave sides.
    At Sir Reginald Hardy’s invitation, Mr Vachell began his final address. He asked members of the jury to put aside the sensational aspects of the case – the newspaper headlines, the public hysteria, the rumours and allegations – and concentrate their minds on the simple facts. There was not the slightest evidence to show that George Edalji had left the Vicarage – a building closely watched by the Staffordshire Constabulary for days previously – on the night of the 17th to 18th of August. There was not the slightest evidence to connect him to the crime with which he was charged: the minuscule bloodstains found could have come from any source, and were quite incompatible with the violent damage wreaked upon the Colliery pony; as for the hairs supposedly found upon his clothing, there was a complete