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.
Each morning George takes the first train of the day into Birmingham. He knows the timetable by heart, and loves it. Wyrley amp; 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 farmhands 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 amp; 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.