Jean is silent. She thinks that the standards set two thousand years ago are true ones which should be obeyed; and that while the brain might develop, and produce all sorts of scientific advances, the soul, which is the spark of the divine, is something quite separate and immutable, and not subject to evolution.

'Do you remember when I judged the Strong Man competition? At the Albert Hall? He was called Murray, the winner. I followed him out into the night. He had a gold statue under his arm, he was the strongest man in Britain. Yet he was lost in the fog…'

No, metaphor was the wrong approach. Metaphors were for the institutional religions. Metaphors paltered.

'What we are doing, Jean, is a simple thing. We are taking the essence of the great religions, which is the life of the spirit, and rendering it more visible and thus more understandable.'

These sound like tempter's words to her, and her tone is crisp. 'By séances and table-turning?'

'Which look strange to the outsider, I freely admit. As the ceremonies of your Church would look strange to a visiting Zoroastrian. The body and blood of Christ on a plate and in a cup – he might think that was sheer hocus-pocus. Religions – all religions – have become mired in ritual and despotism. We do not say, Come and pray in our church and follow our instructions and perhaps one day you will be rewarded in the afterlife. That is like the bargaining of carpet salesmen. Rather, we will show you now, as you live, the reality of certain psychic phenomena, which will prove to you the physical abolition of death.'

'So you do not believe in the resurrection of the body?'

'That we go into the ground and rot, then at some future time are put back together whole? No. The body is a mere husk, a container which we shed. It is true that some souls wander in darkness for a while after death, but that is only because they are unprepared for the transition to the farther side. A true spiritist who understands the process will pass easily and without anguish. And will also be able to communicate more quickly with the world he has left behind.'

'You have witnessed this?'

'Oh yes. And hope to do so more frequently as I understand more.'

A sudden chill goes through Jean. 'You are not, I hope, going to become a medium, dear Arthur.' She has a picture of her beloved husband as an aged huckster going into trances and talking in funny voices. And of the new Lady Doyle being known as a huckster's wife.

'Oh no, I have no such powers. True mediums are very, very rare. They are often simple, humble people. Like Jesus Christ, for instance.'

Jean ignores this comparison. 'And what about morality, Arthur?'

'Morality is unchanged. True morality, that is – which comes from the individual conscience and the love of God.'

'I do not mean for you, Arthur. You know what I mean. If people – ordinary people – do not have the Church to tell them how to behave, then they will relapse into brutish squalor and self-interest.'

'I do not see that as the alternative. Spiritists, true spiritists, are men and women of high moral calibre. I could name you several. And their morality is the higher because they are closer to an understanding of spiritual truth. If the ordinary person to whom you allude were to see proof of the spirit world at first hand, if he were to realize how close it is to us at all times, then brutishness and self-interest will lose their appeal. Make the truth apparent, and morality will take care of itself.'

'Arthur, you are going too fast for me.' More to the point, Jean feels a headache coming on; indeed, she fears, a migraine.

'Of course. We have all our lives ahead of us. And then all of eternity together.'

Jean smiles. She wonders what Touie will be doing for all of the eternity she and Arthur have together. Though of course the same problem will present itself, whether her Church turns out to be telling the truth, or those low-born mediums who so impress her husband-to-be.

Arthur himself is far from getting a headache. Life is on the move again: first the Edalji case, and now Jean's sudden interest in the things beneath that truly matter. He will soon be back to full gusto. On the doorstep he embraces his waiting girl and, for the first time since Touie's death, finds himself reacting like a prospective bridegroom.

Anson

Arthur told the cabby to drop him at the old lock-up next to the White Lion Hotel. The inn lay directly opposite the gates of Green Hall. It was an instinctive tactic, to arrive on foot. Overnight bag in hand, he followed the gently rising drive from the Lichfield Road, trying to make his shoe leather discreet on the gravel. As the house, slantingly lit by the frail late-afternoon sun, became plain before him, he stopped in a tree's shade. Why should the methods of Dr Joseph Bell not persuade architecture to yield secrets, just as physiology did? So: 1820s, he guessed; white stucco; a pseudo-Greek facade; a solid portico with two pairs of unfluted Ionic columns; three windows on either side. Three storeys – and yet to his enquiring eye there was something suspicious about the third. Yes, he would bet Wood a forty-point start that there was not a single attic room behind that row of seven windows: a mere architectural trick to make the house taller and more impressive. Not that this fakery could be blamed on the current occupant. Peering beyond the house, across to the right, Doyle could make out a sunken rose garden, a tennis ground, a summer house flanked by a pair of young grafted hornbeams. What story did it all tell? One of money, breeding, taste, history, power. The family's name had been made in the eighteenth century by Anson the circumnavigator, who had also laid down its first fortune – prize money from the capture of a Spanish galleon. His nephew had been raised to the viscountcy in 1806; promotion to the earldom followed in 1831. If this was the second son's residence, and his elder brother held Shugborough, then the Ansons knew how to foster their inheritance.

A few feet back from a second-floor window, Captain Anson called softly to his wife.

'Blanche, the Great Detective is almost upon us. He is studying the driveway for the footprints of an enormous hound.' Mrs Anson had rarely heard him so skittish. 'Now, when he arrives, you are not to burble about his books.'

'I, burble?' She pretended more offence than she took.

'He has already been burbled at across the length and breadth of the country. His supporters have burbled him to death. We are to be hospitable but not ingratiating.'

Mrs Anson had been married long enough to know that this was a sign of nerves rather than any true apprehension over her behaviour. 'I have ordered clear soup, baked whiting and mutton cutlets.'

'Accompanied by?'

'Brussels sprouts and potato croquets, of course. You did not need to ask. Then semolina soufflé and anchovy eggs.'

'Perfection.'

'For breakfast, would you prefer fried bacon and brawn, or grilled herrings and beef roll?'

'In this weather – the latter, I believe, would suit. And remember, Blanche, no discussion of the case over dinner.'

'That will be no hardship to me, George.'

In any case, Doyle proved himself a punctilious guest, keen to be shown his room, equally keen to descend from it in time for a tour of the grounds before the light faded. As one property owner to another, he showed concern over the frequency with which the River Sow flooded the water meadows, and then asked about the curious earthen mound which lay half-concealed by the summer house. Anson explained that it was an old ice house, now put out of business by refrigeration; he wondered if he might not turn it over to the storage of wine. Next they considered how the turf of the tennis ground was surviving the winter, and jointly regretted the brevity of season that the English climate imposed. Anson accepted Doyle's praise and appreciation, all of which assumed that he was the owner of Green Hall. In truth, he merely leased it; but why should he tell the Great Detective that?