'You mean you are continuing?'

'They haven't seen the back of me yet. I'm not going to let them get away with this. I gave George my word. I gave you my word.'

'No, Arthur. You said what you were going to do, and you did it, and you have obtained a free pardon, and George can go back to work, which is what his mother said was all he wanted. It has been a great success, Arthur.'

'Jean, please stop being reasonable with me.'

'You wish me to be unreasonable with you?'

'I would shed blood to avoid that.'

'On the other hand?' asks Jean teasingly.

'With you,' says Arthur, 'there is no other hand. There is only one hand. It is simple. It is the only thing in my life that ever seems simple. At last. At long last.'

George has no one to console him, no one to tease him, no one to stop the words rolling back and forth in his skull. A wrong-headed and malicious man, indulging in a piece of impish mischief, pretending to know what he may know nothing of, in order to puzzle the police, and increase their difficulties in a very difficult investigation. A judgment presented to both Houses of Parliament and to the King's Most Excellent Majesty.

That evening George was asked by a representative of the Press for his response to the Report. He pronounced himself profoundly dissatisfied with the result. He called it merely a step in the right direction, but the allegation that he had written the Greatorex letters was a slander – an insult… a baseless insinuation, and I shall not rest until it is withdrawn and an apology tendered. Further, no compensation has been offered. They admitted he had been wrongly convicted, so it is only just that I should be compensated for the three years' penal servitude that I suffered. I shall not let matters rest as they are. I want compensation for my wrongs.

Arthur wrote to the Daily Telegraph, calling the Committee's position absolutely illogical and untenable. He asked if anything meaner or more un-English could be imagined than a free pardon without reparation. He offered to demonstrate in half an hour that George Edalji could not have written the anonymous letters. He proposed that since it was unfair to ask the taxpayer to fund George Edalji's compensation, it might well be levied in equal parts from the Staffordshire police, the Quarter Sessions Court and the Home Office, since it is these three groups of men who are guilty among them of this fiasco.

The Vicar of Great Wyrley also wrote to the Daily Telegraph, pointing out that the jury itself had made no pronouncement on the authorship of the letters, and that any false deductions were the fault of Sir Reginald Hardy, who had been rash and illogical enough to tell the jury that he who wrote the letters also committed the crime. A distinguished barrister who had attended the trial had called the Chairman's summing-up a regrettable performance. The Vicar described his son's treatment, by both the police and the Home Office, as most shocking and heartless. As for the conduct and conclusions of the Home Secretary and his Committee: This may be diplomacy, statecraft, but it is not what they would have done if he had been the son of an English squire or an English nobleman.

Also dissatisfied with the Report was Captain Anson. Interviewed by the Staffordshire Sentinel, he replied to criticisms involving the honour of the police. The Committee, in identifying so-called contradictions of evidence, had simply not understood the police case. It was also untrue that the police began from a certainty of Edalji's guilt, and then sought evidence to support that view. On the contrary, Edalji was not suspected until some months after the outrages began. Various persons were indicated as being conceivably implicated in the offences, but were gradually eliminated. Suspicion only finally became excited against Edalji owing to his commonly-talked-of habits of wandering abroad late at night.

This interview was reported in the Daily Telegraph, to which George wrote in rebuttal. The flimsy foundation on which the case against him had been built was now clear. As a fact, he never did once 'wander abroad', and unless returning late from Birmingham or from some evening entertainment in the district, was invariably in by about 9.30. There was no person in the district less likely to be out at night, and apparently the police took seriously something intended as a joke. Further, if he had been out late habitually, this fact would have been known to the large body of police patrolling the district.

It had been a cold and unseasonal Whitsun. A Millionaire's Son had been Killed in a Motor Racing Tragedy while Driving his 200 H.P. Car. Foreign Princes had arrived in Madrid for a Royal Christening. Wine Growers had Rioted in Béziers, where the Town Hall had been Sacked and Burnt by Peasants. But there was nothing – there had now been nothing for years – about Miss Hickman the Lady Doctor.

Sir Arthur offered to fund any libel suit George cared to bring against Captain Anson, the Home Secretary, or members of the Gladstone Committee, either separately or jointly. George, while renewing his expressions of gratitude, politely declined. Such redress as he had just obtained had been achieved thanks to Sir Arthur's commitment, hard work, logic, and love of making a noise. But noise, George thought, was not the best solution to everything. Heat did not always produce light, and noise did not always produce locomotion. The Daily Telegraph was calling for a public inquiry into all aspects of the case; this, in George's view, was what they should now be pressing for. The newspaper had also launched a monetary appeal on his behalf.

Arthur, meanwhile, continued his campaign. No one had taken up his offer to demonstrate in half an hour that George Edalji could not have written the letters – not even Gladstone, who had publicly asserted the contrary. So Arthur would demonstrate the matter to Gladstone, the Committee, Anson, Gurrin and all readers of the Daily Telegraph. He devoted three lengthy articles to the matter, with copious holographic illustration. He demonstrated how the letters were obviously written by someone of an entirely different class to Edalji, a foul-mouthed boor, a blackguard, someone with neither grammar nor decency. He further declared himself personally slighted by the Gladstone Committee, given that in their Report there is not a word which leads me to think that my evidence was considered. In the matter of Edalji's eyesight, the Committee quoted the opinion of some unnamed prison doctor while ignoring the views of fifteen experts, some of them the first oculists in the country, which he had submitted. The members of the Committee had merely added themselves to that long line of policemen, officials and politicians who owed a very abject apology to this ill-used man. But until such an apology was offered, and reparation made, no mutual daubings of complimentary whitewash will ever get them clean.

Throughout May and June there were constant questions in Parliament. Sir Gilbert Parker asked if there were any precedent for compensation not being paid to someone wrongly convicted and subsequently granted a free pardon. Mr Gladstone: 'I know of no analagous case.' Mr Ashley asked if the Home Secretary considered George Edalji to be innocent. Mr Gladstone: 'I can hardly think that is a proper Question to ask me. It is a matter of opinion.' Mr Pike Pease asked what character Mr Edalji had borne in prison. Mr Gladstone: 'His prison character was good.' Mr Mitchell-Thompson asked the Home Secretary to set up a new inquiry to consider the matter of the handwriting. Mr Gladstone declined. Captain Craig asked for any notes taken during the trial for the use of the Court to be laid before Parliament. Mr Gladstone declined. Mr F.E. Smith asked if it was the case that Mr Edalji would have received compensation had it not been for the doubt as to his authorship of the letters. Mr Gladstone: 'I am afraid I am unable to answer that question.' Mr Ashley asked why this man had been released if his innocence was not completely established. Mr Gladstone: 'That is a Question which really does not concern me. The release was consequent on a decision by my predecessor, with which, however, I agree.' Mr Harmood-Banner asked for details of similar outrages against farmstock committed while George Edalji was in prison. Mr Gladstone replied that there had been three in the Great Wyrley neighbourhood, in September 1903, November 1903 and March 1904. Mr F.E. Smith asked in how many cases over the last twenty years compensation had been paid after convictions had been shown to be unsatisfactory, and what amounts were involved. Mr Gladstone replied that there had been twelve such cases in the previous twenty years, two involving substantial sums: 'In one case the sum of £5,000 was paid, and in the other the sum of £1,600 was divided between two persons. In the remaining ten cases the compensation paid varied from £1 to £40.' Mr Pike Pease asked if free pardons were granted in all these cases. Mr Gladstone: 'I am not sure.' Captain Faber asked for all police reports and communications addressed to the Home Office on the subject of the Edalji Case to be printed. Mr Gladstone declined. And finally, on 27th June, Mr Vincent Kennedy asked: 'Is Edalji being thus treated because he is not an Englishman?' In the words of Hansard: '[No answer was returned.]'