George looked across at Mr Meek: this was hardly the tenor of his conversation with the Inspector yesterday afternoon. But Mr Meek was not interested in catching his client's eye. Instead he got to his feet and asked Campbell a few questions, all of which seemed to George innocuous, if not positively friendly.

Then Mr Meek called the Reverend Shapurji Edalji, described as 'a clerk in holy orders'. George watched his father outline, in a precise way but with rather long pauses, the sleeping arrangements at the Vicarage; how he always locked the bedroom door; how the key was hard to turn, and squeaked; how he was a very light sleeper, who in recent months had been plagued with lumbago, and would certainly have woken had the key been turned; how in any case he had not slept beyond five in the morning.

Superintendent Barrett, a plump man with a short white beard, his cap held against the swell of his belly, told the court that the Chief Constable had instructed him to object to bail. After a brief consultation, the magistrates remanded the prisoner to appear before them again the following Monday, when arguments for bail would be heard. In the meantime he would be transferred to Stafford Gaol. And that was that. Mr Meek promised to visit George the next day, probably in the afternoon. George asked him to bring a Birmingham paper. He would need to know what his colleagues were being told. He preferred the Gazette, but the Post would suffice.

At Stafford Gaol they asked what religion he belonged to, and also whether he could read and write. Then he was told to strip naked and instructed to place himself in a humiliating posture. He was taken to see the Governor, Captain Synge, who told him he would be housed in the hospital wing until a cell became available. Then his privileges as a prisoner on remand were explained: he would be allowed to wear his own clothes, to take exercise, to write letters, to receive newspapers and magazines. He would be allowed private conversations with his solicitor, which would be observed by a warder from behind a glass door. All other meetings would be supervised.

George had been arrested in his light summer suit, his only headgear a straw hat. He requested permission to send for a change of clothing. This, he was told, was against the regulations. It was a privilege for a prisoner on remand to retain his own clothes; but this should not be understood as conveying the right to build up a private wardrobe in his cell.

THE GREAT WYRLEY SENSATION, George read the next afternoon. VICAR'S SON IN COURT. 'The sensation which the arrest caused throughout the Cannock Chase district was evidenced by the large crowds which yesterday frequented the roads leading to the Great Wyrley Vicarage, where the accused man resided, and the Police Court and Police Station, Cannock.' George was dismayed at the idea of the Vicarage being besieged. 'The police were allowed to search without warrant. So far as can be ascertained at present the result of the search is a quantity of bloodstained apparel, a number of razors, and a pair of boots, the latter found in a field close to the scene of the last mutilation.'

'Found in a field,' he repeated to Mr Meek. 'Found in a field? Has someone been putting my boots in a field? Quantity of blood-stained apparel? Quantity?'

Meek seemed astonishingly calm about all this. No, he did not intend to ask the police about the supposed discovery of a pair of boots in a field. No, he did not propose asking the Birmingham Daily Gazette to publish a retraction concerning the amount of bloodstained clothing.

'If I may make a suggestion, Mr Edalji.'

'Of course.'

'I have, as you may imagine, had many clients in positions similar to yours, and they mostly insist upon reading the newspaper accounts of their case. It sometimes makes them a trifle over-heated. When this occurs, I always advise them to read the next column along. It often seems to help.'

'The next column along?' George shifted his gaze two inches to the left. MISSING LADY DOCTOR was the heading. And beneath it: NO CLUE TO MISS HICKMAN.

'Read it aloud,' said Mr Meek.

'"No clue as to the disappearance of Miss Sophie Frances Hickman, a lady surgeon at the Royal Free Hospital, has yet emerged…"'

Meek made George read the whole column to him. He listened attentively, sighing and shaking his head, even sucking in his breath from time to time.

'But Mr Meek,' said George at the end, 'how am I to tell if any of this is true either, given what they say about me?'

'That is rather my point.'

'Even so…' George's eyes were reverting magnetically to his own column. 'Even so. "The accused man, as his name implies, is of Eastern origin." They make me sound like a Chinaman.'

'I promise you, Mr Edalji, if ever they say you are a Chinaman, I'll have a quiet word with the editor.'

The following Monday, George was taken from Stafford back to Cannock. This time the crowd on the way to court seemed more turbulent. Men ran alongside the cab, jumping up and peering in; some thumped on the doors and waved sticks in the air. George grew alarmed; but the escorting constables acted as if it were all quite normal.

This time Captain Anson was in court; George became aware of a neat, authoritative figure staring fiercely at him. The magistrates announced that they would require three separate sureties, given the gravity of the charge. George's father doubted he could find so many. The magistrates therefore adjourned to Penkridge that day week.

At Penkridge the magistrates specified their bail terms further. The sureties required were as follows: £200 from George, £100 each from his father and mother, and a further £100 from a third party. But this was four sureties, not the three they had announced at Cannock. George felt it was all a charade. Not waiting for Mr Meek, he stood up himself.

'I do not desire bail,' he told the magistrates. 'I have had several offers, but I prefer not to have bail.'

Committal proceedings were then set for the following Thursday, September 3rd, at Cannock. On the Tuesday Mr Meek came to see him with bad news.

'They are adding a second charge, that of threatening to murder Sergeant Robinson at Hednesford by shooting him.'

'Have they found a gun next to my boots in the field?' asked George incredulously. 'Shooting him? Shooting Sergeant Robinson? I've never touched a gun in my life, and I've never to my knowledge laid eyes on Sergeant Robinson. Mr Meek, have they taken leave of their senses? What on earth can it possibly mean?'

'What it means,' replied Mr Meek, as if his client's outburst had been a simple, measured question, 'What it means is that the magistrates are certain to commit. However weak the evidence, it's most unlikely they could now discharge.'

Later, George sat on his bed in the hospital wing. Disbelief still burned in him like an ailment. How could they do this to him? How could they think that? How could they begin to believe that? George was so new to feeling anger that he did not know against whom to direct it – Campbell, Parsons, Anson, the police solicitor, the magistrates? Well, the magistrates would do for a start. Meek said they were certain to commit – as if they had no mental capacity, as if they were glove puppets or automata. But then, what were magistrates anyway? They scarcely qualified as members of the legal profession. Most were just self-important amateurs dressed in a little brief authority.

He felt thrilled by his contemptuous words, and then immediate shame at his own excitement. This was why wrath was a sin: it led to untruth. The magistrates at Cannock were doubtless no better and no worse than magistrates anywhere else; nor could he remember them uttering a word from which he could fairly dissent. And the more he thought of them, the more his professional self began taking over again. Incredulity weakened to mere vivid disappointment, and then to a resigned practicality. It was clearly much better that his case went to a higher court. Barristers and graver surroundings were required to deliver the proper justice and the proper rebuke. Cannock magistrates' court was quite the wrong setting. For a start, it was scarcely bigger than the schoolroom at the Vicarage. There was not even a proper dock: prisoners were obliged to sit on a chair in the middle of the court.