“You are suggesting, I think,” said the Warden, while Miss Barton rebelliously grappled with this problem, “that those innocent victims died for the people; sacrificed to a social principle.”
“At any rate, to your social principles,” said Miss Barton.
“Thank you. I thought you were going to say, to my inquisitiveness.”
“I might have done so,” said Miss Barton, frankly. “But you lay claim to a principle, so we’ll stick to that.”
“Who were the other three people attacked?” asked Harriet. (She had no fancy to let Miss Barton get away with it too easily.)
“A lawyer, a colleague of mine and myself. But that doesn’t prove that I have any principles. I’m quite capable of getting killed for the fun of the thing. Who isn’t?”
“I know,” said the Dean. “It’s funny that we get so solemn about murders and executions and mind so little about taking risks in motoring and swimming and climbing mountains and so on. I suppose we do prefer to die for the fun of the thing.”
“The social principle seems to be,” suggested Miss Pyke, “that we should die for our own fun and not other people’s.”
“Of course I admit,” said Miss Barton, rather angrily, “that murder must be prevented and murderers kept from doing further harm. But they ought not to be punished and they certainly ought not to be killed.”
“I suppose they ought to be kept in hospitals at vast expense, along with other unfit specimens,” said Miss Edwards. “Speaking as a biologist, I must say I think public money might be better employed. What with the number of imbeciles and physical wrecks we allow to go about and propagate their species, we shall end by devitalizing whole nations.”
“Miss Schuster-Slatt would advocate sterilization,” said the Dean.
“They’re trying it in Germany, I believe,” said Miss Edwards.
“Together”, said Miss Hillyard, “with the relegation of woman to her proper place in the home.”
“But they execute people there quite a lot,” said Wimsey, “so Miss Barton can’t take over their organization lock, stock and barrel.”
Miss Barton uttered a loud protest against any such suggestion, and returned to her contention that her social principles were opposed to violence of every description.
“Bosh!” said Miss Edwards. “You can’t carry through any principle without doing violence to somebody. Either directly or indirectly. Every time you disturb the balance of nature you let in violence. And if you leave well alone you get violence in any case. I quite agree that murderers shouldn’t be hanged-it’s wasteful and unkind. But I don’t agree that they should be comfortably fed and housed while decent people go short. Economically speaking, they should be used for laboratory experiments.”
“To assist the further preservation of the unfit?” asked Wimsey, drily.
“To assist in establishing scientific facts,” replied Miss Edwards, more drily still.
“Shake hands,” said Wimsey. “Now we have found common ground to stand on. Establish the facts, no matter what comes of it.”
“On that ground, Lord Peter,” said the Warden, “your inquisitiveness becomes a principle. And a very dangerous one.”
“But the fact that A killed B isn’t necessarily the whole of the truth,” persisted Miss Barton. “A’s provocation and state of health are facts, too.”
“Nobody surely disputes that,” said Miss Pyke. “But one can scarcely ask the investigator to go beyond his job. If we mayn’t establish any conclusion for fear somebody should make an injudicious use of it, we are back in the days of Galileo. There would be an end to discovery.”
“Well,” said the Dean, “I wish we could stop discovering things like poison-gas.”
“There can be no objection to the making of discoveries,” said Miss Hillyard; “but is it always expedient to publish them? In the case of Galileo, the Church-”
“You’ll never get any scientist to agree there,” broke in Miss Edwards. “To suppress a fact is to publish a falsehood.”
For a few minutes Harriet lost the thread of the discussion, which now became general. That it had been deliberately pushed to this point, she could see; but what Peter wanted to make of it, she had no idea. Yet he was obviously interested. His eyes, under their half-closed lids, were alert. He was like a cat waiting at a mouse-hole. Or was she half-consciously connecting him with his own blazon? “Sable: three mice courant argent; a crescent for difference. The crest a domestick catt…”
“Of course,” said Miss Hillyard in a hard, sarcastic voice, “if you think private loyalties should come before loyalty to one’s job…”
(“Couched as to spring, proper.”) That was what he had been waiting for, then. One could almost see the silken fur ripple.
“Of course, I don’t say that one should be disloyal to one’s job for private reasons,” said Miss Lydgate. “But surely, if one takes on personal responsibilities, one owes a duty in that direction. If one’s job interferes with them, perhaps one should give up the job.”
“I quite agree,” said Miss Hillyard. “But then, my private responsibilities are few, and possibly I have no right to speak. What is your opinion, Mrs. Goodwin?”
There was a most unpleasant pause.
“If you mean that personally,” said the Secretary, getting up and facing the Tutor, “21;I am so far of your opinion that I have asked Dr. Baring to accept my resignation. Not because of any of the monstrous allegations that have been made about me, but because I realize that under the circumstances I can’t do my work as well as I ought. But you are all very much mistaken if you think I am at the bottom of the trouble in this college. I’m going now, and you can say what you like about me-but may I say that anybody with a passion for facts will do better to collect them from unprejudiced sources. Miss Barton at least will admit that mental health is a fact like another.”
Into the horrified silence that followed, Peter dropped three words like lumps of ice.
“Please don’t go.”
Mrs. Goodwin stopped short with her hand on the door.
“It would be a great pity,” said the Warden, “to take anything personally that is said in a general discussion. I feel sure Miss Hillyard meant nothing of that kind. Naturally, some people have better opportunities than others for seeing both sides of a question. In your own line of work, Lord Peter, such conflicts of loyalty must frequently occur.”
“Oh, yes. I once thought I had the agreeable choice between hanging either my brother or my sister. Fortunately, it came to nothing.”
“But supposing it had come to something?” demanded Miss Barton, pinning the argumentum ad hominem with a kind of relish.
“Oh, well-What does the ideal detective do then. Miss Vane?”
“Professional etiquette,” said Harriet, “would suggest an extorted confession, followed by poison for two in the library.”
“You see how easy it is, when you stick to the rules,” said Wimsey. “Miss Vane feels no compunction. She wipes me out with a firm hand, rather than damage my reputation. But the question isn’t always so simple. How about the artist of genius who has to choose between letting his family starve and painting pot-boilers to keep them?”
“He’s no business to have a wife and family,” said Miss Hillyard.
“Poor devil! Then he has the further interesting choice between repressions and immorality. Mrs. Goodwin, I gather, would object to the repressions and some people might object to the immorality.”
“That doesn’t matter,” said Miss Pyke. “You have hypothesized a wife and family. Well-he could stop painting. That, if he really is a genius, would be a loss to the world. But he mustn’t paint bad pictures-that would be really immoral.”
“Why?” asked Miss Edwards. “What do a few bad pictures matter, more or less?”
“Of course they matter,” said Miss Shaw. She knew a good deal about painting. “A bad picture by a good painter is a betrayal of truth-his own truth.”