I looked at him curiously.
“I’ve never heard you speak like this before.”
“I don’t usually air my theories abroad. To-day I’m riding my hobby. You’re an intelligent man, Clement, which is more than some parsons are. You won’t admit, I dare say, that there’s no such thing as what is technically termed ‘Sin,’ but you’re broadminded enough to consider the possibility of such a thing.”
“It strikes at the root of all accepted ideas,” I said.
“Yes, we’re a narrow-minded, self-righteous lot, only too keen to judge matters we know nothing about. I honestly believe crime is a case for the doctor, not the policeman and not the parson. In the future, perhaps, there won’t be any such thing.”
“You’ll have cured it?”
“We’ll have cured it. Rather a wonderful thought. Have you ever studied the statistics of crime? No – very few people have. I have, though. You’d be amazed at the amount there is of adolescent crime, glands again, you see. Young Neil, the Oxfordshire murderer – killed five little girls before he was suspected. Nice lad – never given any trouble of any kind. Lily Rose, the little Cornish girl – killed her uncle because he docked her of sweets. Hit him when be was asleep with a coal hammer. Went home and a fortnight later killed her elder sister who had annoyed her about some trilling matter. Neither of them hanged, of course. Sent to a home. May be all right later – may not. Doubt if the girl will. The only thing she cares about is seeing the pigs killed. Do you know when suicide is commonest? Fifteen to sixteen years of age. From self-murder to murder of someone else isn’t a very long step. But it’s not a moral lack – it’s a physical one.”
“What you say is terrible!”
“No – it’s only new to you. New truths have to be faced. One’s ideas adjusted. But sometimes – it makes life difficult.”
He sat there frowning, yet with a strange look of weariness.
“Haydock,” I said, “if you suspected – if you knew – that a certain person was a murderer, would you give that person up to the law, or would you be tempted to shield them?”
I was quite unprepared for the effect of my question. He turned on me angrily and suspiciously.
“What makes you say that, Clement? What’s in your mind? Out with it, man.”
“Why, nothing particular,” I said, rather taken aback. “Only – well, murder is in our minds just now. If by any chance you happened to discover the truth – I wondered how you would feel about it, that was all.”
His anger died down. He stared once more straight ahead of him like a man trying to read the answer to a riddle that perplexes him, yet which exists only in his own brain.
“If I suspected – if I knew – I should do my duty, Clement. At least, I hope so.”
“The question is which way would you consider your duty lay?”
He looked at me with inscrutable eyes.
“That question comes to every man some time in his life, I suppose, Clement. And every man has to decide it in his own way.”
“You don’t know?”
“No, I don’t know…”
I felt the best thing was to change the subject.
“That nephew of mine is enjoying this case thoroughly,” I said. “Spends his entire time looking for footprints and cigarette ash.”
Haydock smiled. “What age is he?”
“Just sixteen. You don’t take tragedies seriously at that age. It’s all Sherlock Holmes and Arsene Lupin to you.”
Haydock said thoughtfully:
“He’s a fine-looking boy. What are you going to do with him?”
“I can’t afford a University education, I’m afraid. The boy himself wants to go into the Merchant Service. He failed for the Navy.”
“Well – it’s a hard life – but he might do worse. Yes, he might do worse.”
“I must be going,” I exclaimed, catching sight of the clock. “I’m nearly half an hour late for lunch.”
My family were just sitting down when I arrived. They demanded a full account of the morning’s activities, which I gave them, feeling, as I did so, that most of it was in the nature of an anticlimax.