“About tone-deafness? Probably just a little more genuine than he made out.”
“Will he lay traps all evening for us to walk into?”
Harriet realized for a moment how queer the whole situation was. Once again, she felt Wimsey as a dangerous alien and herself on the side of the women, who, with so strange a generosity, were welcoming the inquisitor among them. She said, however:
“If he does, he will display all the mechanism in the most obliging manner.”
“After one is inside. That’s very comforting.”
“That,” said Miss de Vine, brushing aside these surface commentaries, “is a man able to subdue himself to his own ends. I should be sorry for anyone who came up against his principles-whatever they are, and if he has any.”
She detached herself from the other two, and went on into the Senior Common Room with a sombre face.
“Curious,” said Harriet. “She is saying about Peter Wimsey exactly what I have always thought about herself.”
“Perhaps she recognizes a kindred spirit.”
“Or a foe worthy of-I ought not to say that.”
Here Peter and his companion caught them up, and the Dean, joining Miss Shaw, went on in with her. Wimsey smiled at Harriet, an odd, interrogative smile.
“What’s worrying you?”
“Peter-I feel exactly like Judas.”
“Feeling like Judas is part of the job. No job for a gentleman, I’m afraid. Shall we wash our hands like Pilate and be thoroughly respectable?”
She slid her hand under his arm.
“No; we’re in for it now. We’ll be degraded together.”
“That will be nice. Like the lovers in that Strohheim film, we’ll go and sit on the sewer.” She could feel his bone and muscle, reassuringly human, under the fine broadcloth. She thought: “He and I belong to the same world, and all these others are the aliens.” And then: “Damn it all! this is our private fight-why should they have to join in?” But that was absurd.
“What do you want me to do, Peter?”
“Chuck the ball back to me if it runs out of the circle. Not obviously. Just exercise your devastating talent for keeping to the point and speaking the truth.”
“That sounds easy.”
“It is-for you. That’s what I love you for. Didn’t you know? Well, we can’t stop to argue about it now; they’ll think we’re conspiring about something.”
She released his arm and went into the room ahead of him, feeling suddenly embarrassed and looking, in consequence, defiant. The coffee was already on the table, and the S.C.R. were gathered about it, helping themselves. She saw Miss Barton advance upon Peter, with a courteous offer of refreshment on her lips but the light of determination in her eye. Harriet did not for the moment care what happened to Peter. He had given her a new bone to worry. She provided herself with coffee and a cigarette, and retired with them and the bone into a corner. She had often wondered, in a detached kind of way, what it was that Peter valued in her and had apparently valued from that first day when she had stood in the dock and spoken for her own life. Now that she knew, she thought that a more unattractive pair of qualities could seldom have been put forward as an excuse for devotion.
“But do you really feel comfortable about it. Lord Peter?”
“No-I shouldn’t recommend it as a comfortable occupation. But is your or my or anybody’s comfort of very great importance?”
Miss Barton probably took that for flippancy; Harriet recognized the ruthless voice that had said, “What does it matter if it hurts…? Let them fight it out… Unattractive; but if he meant what he said, it explained a great many things. Those were qualities that could be recognized under the most sordid conditions… “Detachment… if you ever find a person who likes you because of it, that liking is sincere.” That was Miss de Vine; and Miss de Vine was sitting not very far away, her eyes, behind their thick glasses, fixed on Peter with a curious, calculating look.
Conversations, carried on in groups, were beginning to falter and fall into silence. People were sitting down. The voices of Miss Allison and Miss Stevens rose into prominence. They were discussing some collegiate question, and they were doing it intently and desperately. They called upon Miss Burrows to give an opinion. Miss Shaw turned to Miss Chilperic and made a remark about the bathing at “Spinsters’ Splash.” Miss Chilperic replied elaborately-too elaborately; her answer took too long and attracted attention; she hesitated, became confused, and stopped speaking. Miss Lydgate, with a troubled face, was listening to an anecdote that Mrs. Goodwin was telling about her little boy; in the middle of it, Miss Hillyard, who was within earshot, rose pointedly, stabbed out her cigarette on a distant ash-tray, and moved slowly, and as though despite herself, to a window-seat close to where Miss Barton was still standing. Harriet could see her angry, smouldering glance fix itself on Peter’s bent head and then jerk away across the quad, only to return again. Miss Edwards, close to Harriet and a little in front other on a low chair, had her hands set squarely and rather mannishly on her knees, and was leaning forward; she had the air of waiting for something. Miss Pyke, on her feet, lighting a cigarette, was apparently looking for an opportunity to engage Peter’s attention; she appeared eager and interested, and more at her ease than most of the others. The Dean, curled on a humpty, was frankly listening to what Peter and Miss Barton were saying. They were all listening, really, and at the same time most of them were trying to pretend that he was there as an ordinary guest-that he was not an enemy-not a spy. They were trying to prevent him from becoming openly the centre of attention as he was already the centre of consciousness.
The Warden, seated in a deep chair near the fireplace, gave nobody any help. One by one, the spurts of talk failed and died, leaving the one tenor floating, like a solo instrument executing a cadenza when the orchestra has fallen silent:
“The execution of the guilty is unpleasant-but not nearly so disturbing as the slaughter of the innocents. If you are out for my blood, won’t you allow me to hand you a more serviceable weapon?”
He glanced round and, finding that everybody but Miss Pyke and themselves was sitting down silent, made a brief, interrogative pause, which looked like politeness, but which Harriet mentally classed as “good theatre.”
Miss Pyke led the way to a large sofa near Miss Hillyard’s window-seat and said, as she settled herself in the corner of it:
“Do you mean the murderer’s victims?”
“No,” said Peter, “I meant my own victims.”
He sat down between Miss Pyke and Miss Barton, and went on in a pleasantly conversational tone:
“For example; I happened to find out that a young woman had murdered an old one for her money. It didn’t matter much: the old woman was dying in any case, and the girl (though she didn’t know that) would have inherited the money in any case. As soon as I started to meddle, the girl set to work again, lulled two innocent people to cover her tracks and murderously attacked three others. Finally she killed herself. If I’d left her alone, there might have been only one death instead of four.”
“Good gracious!” said Miss Pyke. “But the woman would have been at large.”
“Oh, yes. She wasn’t a nice woman, and she had a nasty influence on certain people. But who killed those other two innocents-she or society?”
“They were killed,” said Miss Barton, “by her fear of the death-penalty. If the unfortunate woman had been medically treated, they and she would still be alive today.”
“I told you it was a good weapon. But it isn’t as simple as all that. If she hadn’t killed those others, we should probably never have caught her, and so far from being medically treated she would be living in prosperity-and incidentally corrupting one or two people’s minds, if you think that of any importance.”