– more a kind of warning awareness – begins to form in Jean's mind. She has been Arthur's waiting girl since March the fifteenth, 1897; in a few months it will be the tenth anniversary of their meeting. Ten years, ten treasured snowdrops. She would rather wait for Arthur than be contentedly married to any other man on the globe. Yet, having been his waiting girl, she has no desire to be a waiting wife. She imagines them married, and Arthur announcing his impending departure – whether to Stoke Poges or Timbuctoo
– in order to right a great wrong; and she imagines herself replying that she will ask Woodie to arrange their tickets. Their tickets, she will say quietly. She will be at his side. She will travel with him; she will sit in the front row when he gives a lecture; she will smooth his path and make sure of proper service in hotels and trains and liners. She will ride with him flank to flank, if not – given her superior control of a horse – a little ahead. She may even learn golf if he continues golfing. She will not be one of those harridan wives who pursue their mates even to the steps of the club; but she will be there at his side, and she will indicate, by word and constant deed, that this will remain her place until death do them part. This is the kind of wife she intends to be.
Meanwhile, Arthur sat on the Birmingham train, reminding himself of his only previous experience of playing detective. The Society for Psychical Research had asked him to assist in the investigation of a haunted house at Charmouth in Dorsetshire. He had travelled down with Dr Scott and a certain Mr Podmore, a professional skilled in such inquiries. They had taken all the usual steps to outwit fraud: bolting doors and windows, laying worsted threads across the stairs. Then they had sat up with their host for two successive nights. On the first, he had refilled his pipe a lot and fought narcolepsy; but in the middle of the second night, just as they were giving up hope, they were startled – and, for the instant, terrified – by the sound of furniture being violently cudgelled close at hand. The noise appeared to be coming from the kitchen, but when they rushed there the room was empty and everything in its place. They searched the house from cellar to attic, hunting for hidden spaces; they found nothing. And the doors were still locked, the windows barred, the threads unbroken.
Podmore had been surprisingly negative about this haunting; he suspected that some associate of their host's had lain concealed behind the panelling. At the time, Arthur acceded to this view. However, some years later, the house had burned to the ground; and – more significantly still – the skeleton of a child no more than ten years old had been dug up in the garden. For Arthur, this had changed everything. In cases where a young life is violently taken, a store of unused vitality often becomes available. At such times the unknown and the marvellous press upon us from all sides; they loom in fluctuating shapes, warning us of the limitations of what we call matter. This seemed the irrefutable explanation to Arthur; but Podmore had declined to amend his report retrospectively. In fact, the fellow had behaved all along more like a damned materialist sceptic than an expert charged with authenticating psychic phenomena. Still, why concern yourself with the Podmores of this world when you have Crookes and Myers and Lodge and Alfred Russel Wallace? Arthur repeated to himself the formula: it is incredible, but it is true. When he first heard the words, they had sounded like a flexible paradox; now they were hardening into an iron certainty.
Arthur made his rendezvous with Wood at the Imperial Family Hotel in Temple Street. He was less likely to be recognized here than at the Grand, where he might normally stop. They had to minimize the chance of some teasing headline on the society page of the Gazette or the Post: WHAT IS SHERLOCK HOLMES UP TO IN BIRMINGHAM?
Their first foray out to Great Wyrley was planned for late the following afternoon. Profiting from the December dusk, they would make their way to the Vicarage as anonymously as possible, and return to Birmingham as soon as their business was done. Arthur was keen to visit a theatrical costumier and equip himself with a false beard for the expedition; but Wood was discouraging. He thought this would draw more rather than less attention to them; indeed, any visit to a costumier would guarantee unwelcome paragraphs in the local press. A turned-up collar and a muffler, together with a raised newspaper in the train, would be enough to get them unscathed to Wyrley; then they would just stroll along to the Vicarage by the badly lit lane as if -
'As if we are what?' asked Arthur.
'Do we need to pretend?' Wood did not understand why his employer was so insistent upon disguise; first material, then psychological. In his view it was an Englishman's inalienable right to tell others, especially those of a nosy inclination, to mind their own business.
'Certainly. We need it for ourselves. We must think of ourselves as… hmmm… I have it – emissaries from the Church Commissioners, come to respond to the Vicar's report on the fabric of St Mark's.'
'It is a relatively new and sturdily built church,' replied Wood. Then he caught his employer's glance. 'Well, if you insist, Sir Arthur.'
At New Street, late the next afternoon, they chose a carriage which would deposit them, at Wyrley amp; Churchbridge, as far from the station building as possible. By this stratagem they planned to escape the intrusive gaze of other alighting passengers. But in the event, no one else got off the train, and as a consequence the ecclesiastical imposters received extra scrutiny from the stationmaster. Pulling his muffler defensively up around his moustache, Arthur felt almost larky. You do not know me, he thought, but I know you: Albert Ernest Merriman, the son of Samuel. What an adventure!
He followed Wood along a darkened lane; at one point they skirted a public house, but the sole sign of activity was a man lolling on the front step, studiously chewing his cap. After eight or nine minutes, with only an occasional gas lamp to trouble them, they came upon the dull bulk of St Mark's with its high, double-pitched roof. Wood led his employer along its southern wall, so close that Arthur could note the greyish stone streaked with purply-red. As they passed the porch, two buildings came into view some thirty yards beyond the west end of the church: to the right, a schoolroom of dark brick, with a faint diamond pattern picked out in lighter brick; to the left, the more substantial Vicarage. A few moments later, Arthur found himself looking down at the broad doorstep where, fifteen years previously, the key to Walsall School had been laid. As he raised the knocker and calculated how gently he should make it fall, he imagined the more thunderous arrival of Inspector Campbell with his band of specials, and the turmoil it had brought to that quiet household.
The Vicar, his wife and daughter were waiting for them. Sir Arthur could immediately recognize the source of George's simple good manners, and also of his self-containment. The family was glad of his arrival, but not effusive; conscious of his fame, yet not overawed. He was relieved for once to find himself in the presence of three people, none of whom, he was prepared to wager, had ever read a single one of his books.
The Vicar was paler-skinned than his son, with a flat-topped head balding at the front, and a strong, bulldoggy aspect to him. He shared the same mouth with George, but to Arthur's eye looked both more handsome and more Occidental.
Two thick files were produced. Arthur took out an item at random: a letter folded from a single sheet, making four closely written pages.
'My dear Shapurji,' he read, 'I have great pleasure in informing you that it is now our intention to review the persecution of the Vicar!!! (shame of Great Wyrley).' It was a competent hand, he thought, rather than a neat one. '… a certain lunatic asylum not a hundred miles distant from your thrice cursed home… and that you will be forcibly removed in case you give way to any strong expressions of opinion.' No spelling mistakes either, so far. 'I shall send a double number of the most hellish postcards in your name and Charlotte's at the earliest opportunity.' Charlotte was presumably the Vicar's wife. 'Revenge on you and Brookes…' That name was familiar from his researches. '… have sent a letter in his name to the Courier that he will not be responsible for his wife's debts… I repeat that there will be no need for the lunacy act to take you in charge as these persons are sure to have you arrested.' And then, in four descending lines, a mocking farewell: