I agreed.
Glancing at the clock, I realised that it was nearly lunch time, I invited Melchett to partake of pot luck with us, but he excused himself on the plea of having to go to the Blue Boar. The Blue Boar gives you a first-rate meal of the joint and two-vegetable type. I thought his choice was a wise one. After her interview with the police, Mary would probably be feeling more temperamental than usual.
CHAPTER XIV
On my way home, I ran into Miss Hartnell and she detained me at least ten minutes, declaiming in her deep bass voice against the improvidence and ungratefulness of the lower classes. The crux of the matter seemed to be that The Poor did not want Miss Hartnell in their houses. My sympathies were entirely on their side. I am debarred by my social standing from expressing my prejudices in the forceful manner they do.
I soothed her as best I could and made my escape.
Haydock overtook me in his car at the corner of the Vicarage road. ”I’ve just taken Mrs. Protheroe home,” he called.
He waited for me at the gate of his house.
“Come in a minute,” he said. I complied.
“This is an extraordinary business,” he said, as he threw his hat on a chair and opened the door into his surgery.
He sank down on a shabby leather chair and stared across the room. He looked harried and perplexed.
I told him that we had succeeded in fixing the time of the shot. He listened with an almost abstracted air.
“That lets Anne Protheroe out,” he said. “Well, well, I’m glad it’s neither of those two. I like ’em both.”
I believed him, and yet it occurred to me to wonder why, since, as he said, he liked them both, their freedom from complicity seemed to have had the result of plunging him in gloom. This morning he had looked a man with a weight lifted from his mind, now he looked thoroughly rattled and upset.
And yet I was convinced that he meant what he said. He was fond of both Anne Protheroe and Lawrence Redding. Why, then, this gloomy absorption? He roused himself with an effort.
“I meant to tell you about Hawes. All this business has driven him out of my mind.”
“Is he really ill?”
“There’s nothing radically wrong with him. You know, of course, that he’s had Encephalitis Lethargica, sleepy sickness, as it’s commonly called? ”
“No,” I said, very much surprised, “I didn’t know anything of the kind. He never told me anything about it. When did he have it?”
“About a year ago. He recovered all right – as far as one ever recovers. It’s a strange disease – has a queer moral effect. The whole character may change after it.”
He was silent for a moment or two, and then said:
“We think with horror now of the days when we burnt witches, I believe the day will come when we will shudder to think that we ever hanged criminals.”
“You don’t believe in capital punishment?”
“It’s not so much that.” He paused. “You know,” he said slowly, “I’d rather have my job than yours.”
“Why?”
“Because your job deals very largely with what we call right and wrong – and I’m not at all sure that there’s any such thing. Suppose it’s all a question of glandular secretion. Too much of one gland, too little of another – and you get your murderer, your thief, your habitual criminal. Clement, I believe the time will come when we’ll be horrified to think of the long centuries in which we’ve indulged in what you may call moral reprobation, to think how we’ve punished people for disease – which they can’t help, poor devils. You don’t hang a man for having tuberculosis.”
“He isn’t dangerous to the community.”
“In a sense he is. He infects other people. Or take a man who fancies he’s the Emperor of China. You don’t say how wicked of him. I take your point about the community. The community must be protected. Shut up these people where they can’t do any harm – even put them peacefully out of the way – yes, I’d go as far as that. But don’t call it punishment. Don’t bring shame on them and their innocent families.”