Gaudy Night (46 page)

Harriet wondered whether the subject of the Poison-Pen had risen at last to the surface; but presently he said:

“Three hundred years ago it mattered comparatively little. But now that you have the age of national self-realisation, the age of colonial expansion, the age of the barbarian invasions and the age of the decline and fall, all jammed cheek by jowl in time and space, all armed alike with poison-gas and going through the outward motions of an advanced civilisation, principles have become more dangerous than passions. It’s getting uncommonly easy to kill people in large numbers, and the first thing a principle does—if it really is a principle—is to kill somebody.”

“The real tragedy is not the conflict of good with evil but of good with good’; that means a problem with no solution.”

“Yes. Afflicting, of course, to the tidy mind. One may either hulloo on the inevitable, and be called a bloodthirsty progressive; or one may try to gain time and be called a bloodthirsty reactionary. But when blood is their argument, all argument is apt to be—merely bloody.”

The Warden passed the adjective at its face-value.

“I sometimes wonder whether we gain anything by gaining time.”

“Well—if one leaves letters unanswered long enough, some of them answer themselves. Nobody can prevent the Fall of Troy, but a dull, careful person may manage to smuggle out the Lares and Penates—even at the risk of having the epithet
pius
tacked to his name.”

“The Universities are always being urged to march in the van of progress.”

“But epic actions are all fought by the rearguard—at Roncevaux and Thermopylae.”

“Very well,” said the Warden, laughing, “let us die in our tracks, having accomplished nothing but an epic.”

She collected the High Table with her eye, rose, and made a stately exit. Peter effaced himself politely against the panelling while the dons filed past him, arriving at the edge of the dais in time to pick up Miss Shaw’s scarf as it slipped from her shoulders. Harriet found herself descending the staircase between Miss Martin and Miss de Vine, who remarked:

“You are a courageous woman.”

“Why?” said Harriet lightly. “To bring my friends here and have them put to the question?”

“Nonsense,” interrupted the Dean. “We all behaved beautifully. Daniel is still uneaten—in fact, at one point he bit the lion. Was that genuine, by the way?”

“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 realised 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 recognises 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 recognised 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 recognised 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 of her 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, killed 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.”

“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 shaft end by devitalising whole nations.”

“Miss Schuster-Slatt would advocate sterilisation,” 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 organisation 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
nature
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....”