'You want him to be completely innocent, don't you? Not just innocent, but completely innocent? In my experience, Doyle, no one is completely innocent. They may be found not guilty, but that's different from being innocent. Almost no one's completely innocent.'

'How about Jesus Christ?'

Oh, for God's sake, thought Anson. And I'm not Pontius Pilate either. 'Well, from a purely legal point of view,' he said in a mild, after-dinner manner, 'you could argue that Our Lord helped bring the prosecution upon Himself.'

Now it was Doyle who felt they were straying from the matter in hand.

'Then let me ask you this. What, in your opinion, really happened?'

Anson laughed, rather too openly. 'That, I'm afraid, is a question from detective fiction. It is what your readers beg, and what you so winningly provide. Tell us what really happened.

'Most crimes, Doyle – almost all crimes, in fact – occur without witnesses. The burglar waits for the house to be empty. The murderer waits until his victim is alone. The man who slashes the horse waits for the cover of night. If there is a witness, it is often an accomplice, another criminal. You catch a criminal, he lies. Always. You separate two accomplices, they tell separate lies. You get one to turn King's evidence, he tells a new sort of lie. The entire resources of the Staffordshire Constabulary could be assigned to a case, and we would never end up knowing what really happened, as you put it. I am not making some philosophical argument, I am being practical. What we know, what we end up knowing, is – enough to secure a conviction. Forgive me for lecturing you about the real world.'

Doyle wondered if he would ever cease being punished for having invented Sherlock Holmes. Corrected, advised, lectured, patronized – when would it ever stop? Still, he must press on. He must keep his temper whatever the provocation.

'But leaving all that aside, Anson. And admitting – as I fear we must admit – that by the end of the evening we may not have shifted one another's position by one jot or one tittle. What I am asking is this. You believe that a respectable young solicitor, having shown no previous sign of a violent nature, suddenly goes out one night and attacks a pit pony in a most wicked and violent fashion. I ask you simply, Why?'

Anson groaned inwardly. Motive. The criminal mind. Here we go again. He rose and refilled their glasses.

'You are the one with the paid imagination, Doyle.'

'Yet I believe him innocent. And am unable to make the leap that you have made. You are not in the witness box. We are two English gentlemen sitting over fine brandy and, if I may say so, even finer cigars, in a handsome house in the middle of this splendid county. Whatever you say will remain within these four walls, I give you my word on that. I merely ask: according to you, Why?'

'Very well. Let us start with known facts. The case of Elizabeth Foster, the maid-of-all-work. Where you allege it all began. Naturally, we looked at the case but there simply wasn't enough evidence to prosecute.'

Doyle looked at the Chief Constable blankly. 'I don't understand. There was a prosecution. She pleaded guilty.'

'There was a private prosecution – by the Vicar. And the girl was bullied by lawyers into pleading guilty. Not the sort of gesture to endear you to your parishioners.'

'So the police failed to support the family even then?'

'Doyle, we prosecute when the evidence is there. As we prosecuted when the solicitor himself was victim of an assault. Ah, I see he didn't tell you that.'

'He does not seek pity.'

'That's by the by.' Anson picked a paper from his file. 'November 1900. Assault by two Wyrley youths. Pushed him through a hedge in Landywood, and one of them also damaged his umbrella. Both pleaded guilty. Fined with costs. Cannock magistrates. You didn't know he'd been there before?'

'May I see that?'

'Afraid not. Police records.'

'Then at least give me the names of those convicted.' When Anson hesitated, he added, 'I can always get my bloodhounds on to the matter.'

Anson, to Doyle's surprise, gave a kind of humorous bark. 'So you're a bloodhound man too? Oh, very well, they were called Walker and Gladwin.' He saw that they meant nothing to Doyle. 'Anyway, we might presume that this was not an isolated occurrence. He was probably assaulted before or after, more mildly perhaps. Doubtless insulted too. The young men of Staffordshire are far from saints.'

'It may surprise you to know that George Edalji specifically rejects race prejudice as the basis of his misfortune.'

'So much the better. Then we may happily leave it on one side.'

'Though of course,' added Doyle, 'I do not agree with his analysis.'

'Well, that is your prerogative,' replied Anson complacently.

'And why is this assault relevant?'

'Because, Doyle, you cannot understand the ending until you know the beginning.' Anson was now starting to enjoy himself. His blows were hitting home, one by one. 'George Edalji had good reason to hate the district of Wyrley. Or thought he did.'

'So he took revenge by killing livestock? Where's the connection?'

'I see you are from the city, Doyle. A cow, a horse, a sheep, a pig is more than livestock. It is livelihood. Call it – an economic target.'

'Can you demonstrate a link between either of George's assailants in Landywood and any of the livestock subsequently mutilated?'

'No, I can't. But you should not expect criminals to follow logic.'

'Not even intelligent ones?'

'Even less so, in my experience. Anyway, we have a young man who is his parents' pet, still stuck at home when his younger brother has flown the coop. A young man with a grudge against the district, to which he feels superior. He finds himself in catastrophic debt. The moneylenders are threatening him with the bankruptcy court, professional ruin is staring him in the face. Everything he has ever worked for in his life is about to disappear…'

'And so?'

'So… perhaps he ran mad like your friend Mr Wilde.'

'Wilde was corrupted by his success, in my view. One may hardly compare the effect of nightly applause in the West End with the critical reception to a treatise on railway law.'

'You said Wilde's case was a pathological development. Why not Edalji's too? I believe the solicitor was at his wits' end for months. The strain must have been considerable, even unbearable. You yourself called his begging letter "desperate". Some pathological development might occur, some tendency to evil in the blood might inevitably emerge.'

'Half his blood is Scottish.'

'Indeed.'

'And the other half is Parsee. The most highly educated and commercially successful of Indian sects.'

'I do not doubt it. They are not called the Jews of Bombay for nothing. And equally I do not doubt that it is the mixing of the blood that is partly the cause of all this.'

'My own blood is mixed Scottish and Irish,' said Doyle. 'Does this make me cut cattle?'

'You make my argument for me. What Englishman – what Scotsman – what half Scotsman – would take a blade to a horse, a cow, a sheep?'

'You forget the miner Farrington, who did just that while George was in prison. But I ask you in return: what Indian would do the same? Do they not venerate cattle as gods there?'

'Indeed. But when the blood is mixed, that is where the trouble starts. An irreconcilable division is set up. Why does human society everywhere abhor the half-caste? Because his soul is torn between the impulse to civilization and the pull of barbarism.'

'And is it the Scottish or the Parsee blood you hold responsible for barbarism?'

'You are facetious, Doyle. You yourself believe in blood. You believe in race. You told me over dinner how your mother had proudly traced her ancestry back five centuries. Forgive me if I misquote you, but I recall that many of the great ones of the earth have roosted in your family tree.'