Arthur noted all this with his silver propelling pencil. He judged the information worth two shillings and threepence. Frederick Brookes did not demur.

Back at the Imperial Family Hotel, Arthur was handed a note from Jean.

My Dearest Arthur,

I write to find out how your great investigations are proceeding. I wish I were by your side as you gather evidence and interview suspects. Everything that you do is as important to me as my own life. I miss your presence but have joy in thinking of what you are seeking to achieve for your young friend. Hasten to report all you have discovered to

Your loving and adoring

Jean

Arthur found himself taken aback. It seemed uncharacteristically direct for a love letter. Perhaps it wasn't a love letter. Yes, of course it was. But somehow different. Well, Jean was different – different from what he had ever known before. She surprised him, even after ten years. He was proud of her, and proud of being surprised.

Later, as Arthur was rereading the note for a final time that night, Alfred Wood lay awake in a smaller bedroom on a higher floor. In the darkness, he could just make out, on his dressing table, the three wrapped parcels sold them by that sly ironmonger. Brookes had also made Sir Arthur pay him a 'deposit' for the loan of the anonymous letters in his possession. Wood had deliberately made no comment either at the time or afterwards, which was probably why his employer had accused him on the train of sulking.

Today his role had been that of assistant investigator: partner, almost friend to Sir Arthur. After supper, on the hotel billiards table, competitiveness had made equals of the two men. Tomorrow, he would revert to his usual position of secretary and amanuensis, taking dictation like any female stenographer. This variety of function and mental register did not bother him. He was devoted to his employer, serving him with diligence and efficiency in whatever capacity was necessary. If Sir Arthur required him to state the obvious, he would do so. If Sir Arthur required him not to state the obvious, he was mute.

He was also expected not to notice the obvious. When a clerk had rushed up to them in the foyer with a letter, he had not noticed the way Sir Arthur's hand trembled as he accepted it, nor the schoolboyish way he stuffed it into his pocket. Nor did he notice his employer's eagerness to get to his room before supper, or his subsequent cheerfulness throughout the meal. It was an important professional skill – to observe without noticing – and over the last years its usefulness had increased.

He thought it might take him a while to adjust himself to Miss Leckie – though he doubted she would still be using her maiden name by the end of the next twelvemonth. He would serve the second Lady Conan Doyle as assiduously as he had served the first one; though with less immediate wholeheartedness. He was not sure how much he liked Jean Leckie. This was, he knew, quite unimportant. You did not, as a schoolmaster, have to like the headmaster's wife. And he would never be required to give his opinion. So it did not matter. But over the eight or nine years she had been coming to Undershaw, he had often caught himself wondering if there was not something a little false about her. At a certain moment she had become aware of his importance in the daily running of Sir Arthur's life; whereupon she made a point of being agreeable to him. More than agreeable. A hand had been placed upon his arm, and she had even, in imitation of Sir Arthur, called him Woodie. He thought this an intimacy she had failed to earn. Even Mrs Doyle – as he always thought of her – would not call him that. Miss Leckie made considerable play of being natural, of seeming at times to be reining in with difficulty a great instinctive warmth; but it struck Wood as being a kind of coquetry. He would lay anyone a hundred-point start that Sir Arthur did not see it as such. His employer liked to maintain that the game of golf was a coquette; though it seemed to Wood that sports played you a lot straighter than most women.

Again, it did not matter. If Sir Arthur got what he wanted, and Jean Leckie did too, and they were happy together, where was the harm? But it made Alfred Wood a little more relieved that he had never himself come near to marrying. He did not see the benefit of the arrangement, except from a hygienic point of view. You married a true woman, and became bored with her; you married a false one, and did not notice rings were being run around you. Those seemed to be the two choices available to a man.

Sir Arthur sometimes accused him of having moods. It was rather, he felt, that he had his silences – and his obvious thoughts. For instance, about Mrs Doyle: about happy Southsea days, busy London ones, and those long sad months at the end. Thoughts too about the future Lady Conan Doyle, and the influence she might have upon Sir Arthur and the household. Thoughts about Kingsley and Mary, and how they would react to a stepmother – or rather, to this particular stepmother. Kingsley would doubtless survive: he had his father's cheerful manliness already. But Wood feared a little for Mary, who was such an awkward, yearning girl.

Well, that would do for tonight. Except: he thought that in the morning he might accidentally leave the bootscraper and the other parcels behind.

At Undershaw, Arthur retreated to his study, filled his pipe and began to consider strategy. It was clear there would have to be a two-pronged attack. The first thrust would establish, once and for all, that George Edalji was innocent; not just wrongly convicted on misleading evidence, but wholly innocent, one-hundred-per-cent innocent. The second thrust would identify the true culprit, oblige the Home Office to admit its errors, and result in a fresh prosecution.

As he set to work, Arthur felt back on familiar ground. It was like starting a book: you had the story but not all of it, most of the characters but not all of them, some but not all of the causal links. You had your beginning, and you had your ending. There would be a great number of topics to be kept in the head at the same time. Some would be in motion, some static; some racing away, others resisting all the mental energy you could throw at them. Well, he was used to that. And so, as with a novel, he tabulated the key matters and annotated them briefly.

1. TRIAL

Yelverton. Use dossier (with perm.), build, sharpen. Cautious – lawyer. Vachell? No – avoid reit. defence case. Pity no official transcript (campaign for this?). Reliable newspaper accounts? (besides Umpire).

Hairs/Butter. W probably right!! Not before (o/wise Edaljis perjurers).ˆ. after. Unintentional, intentional? Who? When? How? Butter?? Interview. Also: hairs found, any latitude/ambiguity? Or must be pony?

Letters. Examine: paper/materials, orthography, style, content, psychology. Gurrin, fraudulence of. Beck case. Propose better expert (good/bad tactic?). Who? Dreyfus fellow? Also: one writer, more? Also, Writer = Ripper? Writer X Ripper? Connection/overlap?

Eyesight. Scott's report. Enough? Others? Mother's evidence. Effect of dark/night on GE's vision?

Green. Who bullied? Who paid? Trace/interview.

Anson. Interview. Prejudice? Evidence w/held? Influence on Constab. See Campbell. Ask for police records?

One of the advantages of celebrity, Arthur admitted, was that his name opened doors. Whether he needed a lepidopterist or an expert on the history of the longbow, a police surgeon or a chief constable, his requests for an interview would normally be smiled upon. It was largely thanks to Holmes – although thanking Holmes did not come easily to Arthur. Little had he known, when he invented the fellow, how his consulting detective would turn into a skeleton key.