'… which is why, my good fellow, I shall not, without orders from the Home Office, be issuing my inspectors with cocaine syringes and my sergeants and constables with violins.'

Doyle inclined his head, as if acknowledging a palpable hit. But that was enough play-acting and guestliness.

'To the case at hand. You have read my analysis.'

'I have read your… story,' replied Anson. 'A deplorable business, it has to be said. A series of mistakes. It could all have been nipped in the bud so much earlier.'

Anson's candour surprised Doyle. 'I'm glad to hear you say that. Which mistakes did you have in mind?'

'The family's. That's where it all went wrong. The wife's family. What took it into their heads? Whatever took it into their heads? Doyle, really: your niece insists upon marrying a Parsee – can't be persuaded out of it – and what do you do? You give the fellow a living… here. In Great Wyrley. You might as well appoint a Fenian to be Chief Constable of Staffordshire and have done with it.'

'I'm inclined to agree with you,' replied Doyle. 'No doubt his patron sought to demonstrate the universality of the Anglican Church. The Vicar is, in my judgement, both an amiable and a devoted man, who has served the parish to the best of his ability. But the introduction of a coloured clergyman into such a rude and unrefined parish was bound to cause a regrettable situation. It is certainly an experiment that should not be repeated.'

Anson looked across at his guest with sudden respect – even allowing for that gibe about 'rude and unrefined'. There was more common ground here than he had expected. He ought to have known that Sir Arthur was unlikely to prove an out-and-out radical.

'And then to introduce three half-caste children into the neighbourhood.'

'George, Horace and Maud.'

'Three half-caste children,' repeated Anson.

'George, Horace and Maud,' repeated Doyle.

'George, Horace and Maud Ee-dal-jee.'

'You have read my analysis?'

'I have read your… analysis' – Anson decided to concede the word this time – 'and I admire, Sir Arthur, both your tenacity and your passion. I promise to keep your amateur speculations to myself. To broadcast them would do your reputation no good.'

'I think you must allow me to be the judge of that.'

'As you wish, as you wish. Blanche was reading to me the other day. An interview you gave in the Strand some years ago, about your methods. I trust you were not grossly misrepresented?'

'I have no memory of being so. But I am not in the habit of reading through in a spirit of verification.'

'You described how, when you wrote your tales, that it was always the conclusion which first preoccupied you.'

'Beginning with an ending. You cannot know which path to travel unless you first know the destination.'

'Exactly. And you have described in your… analysis how when you met young Edalji for the first time – in the lobby of an hotel, I believe – you observed him for a while, and even before meeting him were convinced of his innocence?'

'Indeed, for the reasons clearly stated.'

'For the reasons clearly felt, I would prefer to say. Everything you have written proceeds from that feeling. Once you became convinced of the wretched youth's innocence, everything fell into place.'

'Whereas once you became convinced of the youth's guilt, everything fell into place.'

'My conclusion was not based upon some intuition in the lobby of an hotel, but upon the consequences of police observations and reports over a number of years.'

'You made the boy a target from the beginning. You wrote threatening him with penal servitude.'

'I tried to warn both the boy and his father of the consequences of persisting in the criminal path on which he had manifestly set out. I am not wrong, I think, to take the view that police work is not just punitive but also prophylactic.'

Doyle nodded at a phrase which had, he suspected, been prepared especially for him. 'You forget that before meeting George I had read his excellent articles in The Umpire.'

'I have yet to meet anyone detained at His Majesty's pleasure who did not have a persuasive explanation of why he was not guilty.'

'In your view George Edalji sent letters denouncing himself?'

'Among a great variety of other letters. Yes.'

'In your view he was the ringleader of a gang who dismembered beasts?'

'Who can tell? Gang is a newspaper word. I have no doubt there were others involved. I also have no doubt that the solicitor was the cleverest of them.'

'In your view, his father, a minister of the Church of England, perjured himself to give his son an alibi?'

'Doyle, a personal question, if I may. Do you have a son?'

'I do. He is fourteen.'

'And if he fell into trouble, you would help him.'

'Yes. But if he committed a crime, I would not perjure myself.'

'But you would still help and protect him, short of that.'

'Yes.'

'Then perhaps, with your imagination, you can picture someone else doing more.'

'I cannot picture a priest of the Church of England placing his hand on the Bible and knowingly committing perjury.'

'Then try to imagine this instead. Imagine a Parsee father putting loyalty to his Parsee family above loyalty to a land not his own, even if it has given him shelter and encouragement. He wants to save his son's skin, Doyle. Skin.'

'And in your view the mother and sister also perjured themselves?'

'Doyle, you keep saying in my view. "My view", as you call it, is the view not just of myself, but of the Staffordshire Constabulary, prosecuting counsel, a properly sworn English jury, and the justices of the Quarter Sessions. I attended every day of the trial, and I can assure you of one thing, which will be painful to you but which you cannot avoid. The jury did not believe the evidence of the Edalji family – certainly not of the father and daughter. The mother's evidence was perhaps less important. That is not something lightly done. An English jury sitting round a table considering its verdict is a solemn business. They weigh evidence. They examine character. They do not sit there waiting for a sign from above like… table-turners at a séance.'

Doyle looked across sharply. Was this a random phrase, or a knowing attempt to unsettle him? Well, it would take more than that.

'We are talking, Anson, not of some butcher's boy, but of a professional Englishman, a solicitor in his late twenties, already known as the author of a book on railway law.'

'Then the greater his misdemeanour. If you imagine the criminal courts entertain only the criminal classes, you are more naive than I took you for. Even authors sometimes stand in the dock, as you must be aware. And the sentence doubtless reflected the gravity of a case in which one sworn to uphold and interpret the law so grievously flouted it.'

'Seven years' penal servitude. Even Wilde only received two.'

'That is why sentencing is for the court, rather than for you or me. I might not have given Edalji less, though I would certainly have given Wilde more. He was thoroughly guilty – and of perjury too.'

'I dined with him once,' said Doyle. Antagonism was now rising like mist from the River Sow, and all his instincts told him to pull back a little. 'It would have been in '89, I think. A golden evening for me. I had expected a monologuist and an egotist, but I found him a gentleman of perfect manners. There were four of us, and though he towered over the other three, he never let it show. Your monologue man, however clever, can never be a gentleman at heart. With Wilde it was give and take, and he had the art of seeming interested in everything that we might say. He had even read my Micah Clarke.

'I recall that we were discussing how the good fortune of friends may sometimes make us strangely discontented. Wilde told us the story of the Devil in the Libyan Desert. Do you know that one? No? Well, the Devil was about his business, going the rounds of his empire, when he came across a number of small fiends tormenting a holy hermit. They were employing temptations and provocations of a routine nature, which the sainted man was resisting without much difficulty. "That is not how it is done," said their Master. "I will show you. Watch carefully." Whereupon the Devil approached the holy hermit from behind, and in a honeyed tone whispered in his ear, "Your brother has just been appointed Bishop of Alexandria." And immediately a scowl of furious jealousy crossed the hermit's face. "That," said the Devil, "is how it is best done."'