Arthur & George Read online

  Until Touie’s illness announced itself, he had everything the world assumed necessary to make a man contented. And yet he could never quite shake off the feeling that all he had achieved was just a trivial and specious beginning; that he was made for something else. But what might that something else be? He returned to a study of the world’s religions, but could no more get into any of them than he could into a boy’s suit. He joined the Rationalist Association, and found their work necessary, but essentially destructive and therefore sterile. The demolition of antique faiths had been fundamental to human advancement; but now that those old buildings had been levelled, where was man to find shelter in this blasted landscape? How could anyone glibly decide that the history of what the species had for millennia agreed to call the soul was now at an end? Human beings would continue to develop, and therefore whatever was inside them must also develop. Even a clodhopping sceptic could surely see that.

  Outside Cairo, while Touie was breathing deep the desert air, Arthur had read histories of Egyptian civilization and visited the tombs of the pharaohs. He concluded that while the ancient Egyptians had indubitably raised the arts and sciences to a new level, their reasoning power was in many ways contemptible. Especially in their attitude to death. The notion that the dead body, an old, outworn greatcoat which once briefly wrapped the soul, should be preserved at any cost was not just risible; it was the last word in materialism. As for those baskets of provisions placed in the tomb to feed the soul upon its journey: how could a people of such sophistication be so emasculated in their minds? Faith endorsed by materialism: a double curse. And the same curse blighted every subsequent nation and civilization that came under the rule of a priesthood.

  Back in Southsea, he had not found General Drayson’s arguments sufficient. But now psychic phenomena were being vouched for by scientists of high distinction and manifest probity, like William Crookes, Oliver Lodge and Alfred Russel Wallace. Such names meant that the men who best understood the natural world—the great physicists and biologists—had also become our guides to the supernatural world.

  Take Wallace. The co-discoverer of the modern theory of evolution, the man who stood at Darwin’s side when they jointly announced the idea of natural selection to the Linnaean Society. The fearful and the unimaginative had concluded that Wallace and Darwin had delivered us into a godless and mechanistic universe, had left us alone upon the darkling plain. But consider what Wallace himself believed. This greatest of modern men maintained that natural selection accounted only for the development of the human body, and that the process of evolution must at some point have been supplemented by a supernatural intervention, when the spirit’s flame was inserted into the rough developing animal. Who dared claim now that science was the enemy of the soul?

  George & Arthur

  It was a cold, clear February night, with half a moon and a heavenful of stars. In the distance the head gear of Wyrley Colliery stood out faintly against the sky. Close by was the farm belonging to Joseph Holmes: house, barn, outbuildings, with not a light showing in any of them. Humans were sleeping and the birds had not yet woken.

  But the horse was awake as the man came through a gap in the hedge on the far side of the field. He was carrying a feed-bag over his arm. As soon as he became aware that the horse had noticed his presence, he stopped and began to talk very quietly. The words themselves were a gabble of nonsense; it was the tone, calming and intimate, that mattered. After a few minutes, the man slowly began to advance. When he had made a few paces, the horse shook its head, and its mane was a brief blur. At this, the man stopped again.

  He continued his gabble of nonsense, however, and continued looking straight towards the horse. Beneath his feet the ground was solid after nights of frost, and his boots left no print on the soil. He advanced slowly, a few yards at a time, stopping at the least sign of restiveness from the horse. At all times he made his presence evident, holding himself as tall as possible. The feed-bag over his arm was an unimportant detail. What mattered were the quiet persistence of the voice, the certainty of the approach, the directness of the gaze, the gentleness of the mastery.

  It took him twenty minutes to cross the field in this way. Now he stood only a few yards distant, head on to the horse. Still he made no sudden move, but continued as before, murmuring, gazing, standing straight, waiting. Eventually, what he had been expecting took place: the horse, reluctantly at first, but then unequivocally, lowered its head.

  The man, even now, made no sudden reach. He let a minute or two pass, then crossed the final yards and hung the feed-bag gently round the horse’s neck. The animal kept its head lowered as the man proceeded to stroke it, murmuring all the while. He stroked its mane, its flank, its back; sometimes he just rested his hand against the warm skin, making sure that contact between the two of them was never broken.

  Still stroking and murmuring, the man slipped the feed-bag from the horse’s neck and slung it over his shoulder. Still stroking and murmuring, the man then felt inside his coat. Still stroking and murmuring, one arm across the horse’s back, he reached underneath to its belly.

  The horse barely gave a start; the man at last ceased his gabble of nonsense, and in the new silence he made his way, at a deliberate pace, back towards the gap in the hedge.

  George

  Each morning George takes the first train of the day into Birmingham. He knows the timetable by heart, and loves it. Wyrley & Churchbridge 7:39. Bloxwich 7:48. Birchills 7:53. Walsall 7:58. Birmingham New Street 8:35. He no longer feels the need to hide behind his newspaper; indeed, from time to time he suspects that some of his fellow passengers are aware that he is the author of Railway Law for the “Man in the Train” (237 copies sold). He greets ticket collectors and stationmasters and they return his salute. He has a respectable moustache, a briefcase, a modest fob chain, and his bowler has been augmented by a straw hat for summer use. He also has an umbrella. He is rather proud of this last possession, often taking it with him in defiance of the barometer.

  On the train he reads the newspaper and tries to develop views on what is happening in the world. Last month there was an important speech at the new Birmingham Town Hall by Mr. Chamberlain about the colonies and preferential tariffs. George’s position—though as yet no one has asked for his opinion on the matter—is one of cautious endorsement. Next month Lord Roberts of Kandahar is due to receive the freedom of the city, an honour with which no reasonable man could possibly quarrel.

  His paper tells him other news, more local, more trivial: another animal has been mutilated in the Wyrley area. George wonders briefly which part of the criminal law covers this sort of activity: would it be destruction of property under the Theft Act, or might there be some relevant statute covering one or other particular species of animal involved? He is glad he works in Birmingham, and it will only be a matter of time before he lives there too. He knows he must make the decision; he must stand up to Father’s frowns and Mother’s tears and Maud’s silent yet more insidious dismay. Each morning, as fields dotted with livestock give way to well-ordered suburbs, George feels a perceptible lift in his spirits. Father told him years ago that farm boys and farm-hands were the humble whom God loved and who would inherit the earth. Well, only some of them, he thinks, and not according to any rules of probate that he is familiar with.

  There are often schoolboys on the train, at least until Walsall, where they alight for the Grammar School. Their presence and their uniforms occasionally remind George of the dreadful time he was accused of stealing the school’s key. But that was all years ago, and most of the boys are quite respectful. There is a group who are sometimes in his carriage, and by overhearing he learns their names: Page, Harrison, Greatorex, Stanley, Ferriday, Quibell. He is even on nodding terms with them, after three or four years.

  Most of his days at 54 Newhall Street are spent in conveyancing—work he has seen described by one superior legal expert as “void of imagination and the free play of thought.” This disparagement
does not bother George in the slightest; to him such work is precise, responsible and necessary. He has also drawn up a few wills, and recently begun to obtain clients as a result of his Railway Law. Cases involving lost luggage, or unreasonably delayed trains; and one in which a lady slipped and sprained her wrist on Snow Hill station after a railway employee carelessly spilt oil near a locomotive. He has also handled several running-down cases. It appears that the chances of a citizen of Birmingham being struck by a bicycle, horse, motor car, tram or even train are considerably higher than he would ever have anticipated. Perhaps George Edalji, solicitor-at-law, will become known as the man to call in when the human body is surprised by a reckless means of transportation.

  George’s train home from New Street leaves at 5:25. On the return journey, there are rarely schoolboys. Instead, there is sometimes a larger and more loutish element whom George views with distaste. Remarks are occasionally passed in his direction which are quite unnecessary: about bleach, and his mother forgetting the carbolic, and enquiries about whether he has been down the mine that day. Mostly he ignores such words, though if a young rough chooses to make himself especially offensive, George might be obliged to remind him who he is dealing with. He is not physically brave, but at such times he feels surprisingly calm. He knows the laws of England, and knows he can count on their support.

  Birmingham New Street 5:25. Walsall 5:55. This train does not stop at Birchills, for reasons George has never been able to ascertain. Then it is Bloxwich 6:02, Wyrley & Churchbridge 6:09. At 6:10 he nods to Mr. Merriman the stationmaster—a moment that often reminds him of His Honour Judge Bacon’s 1899 ruling in the Bloomsbury County Court on the illegal retention of expired season tickets—and positions his umbrella over his left wrist for the walk back to the Vicarage.

  Campbell

  Since his appointment to the Staffordshire Constabulary two years previously, Inspector Campbell had met Captain Anson on several occasions, but never before been summoned to Green Hall. The Chief Constable’s house lay on the outskirts of town, among the water meadows on the farther side of the River Sow, and was reputed to be the largest residence between Stafford and Shugborough. As he walked up the gravel drive off the Lichfield Road and the size of the Hall gradually revealed itself, Campbell found himself wondering how big Shugborough must be. That was in the possession of Captain Anson’s elder brother. The Chief Constable, being merely a second son, was obliged to content himself with this modest white-painted mansion: three storeys high, seven or eight windows wide, with a daunting entrance porch supported by four pillars. Over to the right there was a terrace and a sunken rose garden, with beyond it a summer house and a tennis ground.

  Campbell took all this in without breaking stride. When the parlourmaid admitted him, he tried to suspend his natural professional habits: working out the likely probity and income of the occupants, and committing to memory items worth stealing—in some cases, items perhaps already stolen. Deliberately incurious, he was nonetheless aware of polished mahogany, white panelled walls, an extravagant hall stand, and to his right a staircase with curious twisted balusters.

  He was shown into a room directly to the left of the front door. Anson’s study, by the look of it: two high leather chairs on either side of the fireplace, and above it the looming head of a dead elk, or moose. Something antlered anyway; Campbell did not hunt, nor did he aspire to. He was a Birmingham man who had reluctantly applied for transfer when his wife grew sick of the city and longed for the slowness and space of her childhood. Fifteen miles or so, but to Campbell it felt like exile in another land. The local gentry ignored you; the farmers kept to themselves; the miners and ironworkers were a rough lot even by slum standards. Any vague notions that the countryside was romantic were swiftly extinguished. And people out here seemed to dislike the police even more than they did in the city. He’d lost count of the times he’d been made to feel superfluous. A crime might have been committed and even reported, but its victims had a way of letting you know that they preferred their own notion of justice to any purveyed by an inspector whose three-piece suit and bowler hat still smelt of Brummagem.

  Anson bustled in, shook hands and seated his visitor. He was a small, compact man in his middle forties, with a double-breasted suit and the neatest moustache Campbell had ever seen: its sides seemed to be mere extensions of his nose, and the whole fitted the triangulation of his upper lip as if bought from a catalogue after precise measurement. His tie was held in place with a gold pin in the shape of the Stafford knot. This proclaimed what everyone already knew: that Captain the Honourable George Augustus Anson, Chief Constable since 1888, Deputy Lieutenant of the county since 1900, was a Staffordshire man through and through. Campbell, being one of the newer breed of professional policemen, did not see why the head of the Constabulary should be the only amateur in the force; but then much in the functioning of society appeared to him arbitrary, based more on antique prejudice than modern sense. Still, Anson was respected by those who worked under him; he was known as a man who backed his officers.

  “Campbell, you will have guessed why I asked you to come.”

  “I assume the mutilations, sir.”

  “Indeed. How many have we now had?”

  Campbell had rehearsed this part, but even so reached for his notebook.

  “February second, valuable horse belonging to Mr. Joseph Holmes. April second, cob belonging to Mr. Thomas ripped in exactly the same fashion. May fourth, a cow of Mrs. Bungay’s similarly treated. Two weeks later, May eighteenth, a horse of Mr. Badger’s terribly mutilated, and also five sheep on the same night. And then last week, June sixth, two cows belonging to Mr. Lockyer.”

  “All at night?”

  “All at night.”

  “Any discernible pattern to events?”

  “All the attacks happened within a three-mile radius of Wyrley. And . . . I don’t know if it’s a pattern, but they all occurred in the first week of the month. Except for those of May eighteenth, which didn’t.” Campbell was aware of Anson’s eye on him, and hurried on. “The method of ripping is, however, largely consistent from attack to attack.”

  “Consistently disgusting, no doubt.”

  Campbell looked at the Chief Constable, unsure if he did, or didn’t, want the details. He took silence for regretful assent.

  “They were ripped under the belly. Crosswise, and generally in a single cut. The cows . . . the cows also had their udders mutilated. And there was damage inflicted upon . . . upon their sexual parts, sir.”

  “It beggars belief, Campbell, doesn’t it? Such senseless cruelty to defenceless beasts?”

  Campbell pretended to himself that they were not sitting beneath the glassy eye and severed head of the elk or moose. “Yes, sir.”

  “So we are looking for some maniac with a knife.”

  “Probably not a knife, sir. I spoke to the veterinary surgeon who attended the later mutilations—Mr. Holmes’ horse was treated as an isolated incident at the time—and he was puzzled as to the instrument used. It must have been very sharp, but on the other hand it cut into the skin and the first layer of muscle and no further.”

  “So why not a knife?”

  “Because a knife—a butcher’s knife, say—would have gone deeper. At some point, anyway. A knife would have opened up the guts. None of the animals was actually killed in the attacks. Not at the time. They either bled to death or were in such a state when found that they had to be put down.”

  “So if not a knife?”

  “Something that cuts easily but shallowly. Like a razor. But with more strength than a razor. It could be a tool from the leather trade. Or a farm instrument of some kind. I would assume the man was accustomed to handling animals.”

  “Man or men. A vile individual, or a gang of vile individuals. And a vile crime. Have you come across it before?”

  “Not in Birmingham, sir.”

  “No, indeed.” Anson gave a wan smile and fell briefly silent. Campbell allowed himself to thi
nk about the police horses in the Stafford stables: how alert and responsive they were, how warm and smelly and almost furry in their hairiness; how they twitched their ears and put their heads down at you; how they blew through their noses in a way that reminded him of a boiling kettle. What species of human could wish such an animal harm?

  “Superintendant Barrett remembers a case some years ago of a wretch who fell into debt and killed his own horse for the insurance. But a murderous spree like this . . . it seems so foreign. In Ireland, of course, the midnight houghing of the landlord’s cattle is practically part of the social calendar. But then, little would ever surprise me of a Fenian.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “It must be brought to a swift end. These outrages are blackening the reputation of the entire county.”

  “Yes, the newspapers—”

  “I do not give a fig about the newspapers, Campbell. I care about the honour of Staffordshire. I do not want it deemed the haunt of savages.”

  “No, sir.” But the Inspector thought the Chief Constable must be aware of certain recent editorials, none of them complimentary, and some of them personal.

  “I would suggest you look into the history of crime in Great Wyrley and its environs in the last years. There have been some . . . peculiar goings-on. And I suggest you work with those who know the area best. There’s a very sound Sergeant, can’t remember his name. Large, red-faced fellow . . .”

  “Upton, sir?”

  “Upton, that’s it. He’s a man who keeps his ear close to the ground.”

  “Very well, sir.”

  “And I am also drafting in twenty special constables. They can report to Sergeant Parsons.”

  “Twenty!”

  “Twenty, and damn the expense. It’ll come out of my own pocket if necessary. I want a constable under every hedge and behind every bush until this man is caught.”