“Perhaps you’re right. But, look here, would you be shocked if I told you this—that I would cheerfully have murdered my cousin at any time, if I could have made quite sure of not being hanged for it?”
“Go steady. Don’t say anything you don’t want to say. Remember that I chatter to my husband continually, and I may pass on any remark you make.”
“Oh, that doesn’t matter. Your husband, I’m quite sure, thinks me capable of any crime, morally. So does Leyland; he’d put me in jug tomorrow if he could see any way of explaining how I’d done it. So it doesn’t matter what they think about my character. Only I’d rather like to know what you think about me.”
“I’ve told you; I’m provisionally shocked. I shouldn’t be shocked, though, merely by your saying that you would do your cousin in for twopence, because I shouldn’t believe you meant what you said.”
“But I do say it, and I do mean it. I don’t think a person like Derek has any right to exist, and I don’t see that it would have been wrong for me to put him out of the way. Selfish, of course—I should only have been doing it to gratify my own feelings and my own pocket. But not wrong, because he’d no right to exist. A fellow like that doesn’t really qualify by any standard; the parsons couldn’t approve of him, the State gets no earthly good out of him; and as for the aesthetic point of view, he simply doesn’t count. He neither enjoys any of the higher pleasures nor helps anybody else to enjoy them. He’s no function. That’s my point.”
“Oh, but that’s just what seems to me absolute nonsense. Either everybody’s life ought to be respected or nobody’s. It’s absurd to suppose that because you can appreciate Scriabin and Derek couldn’t, the man who murdered Derek was doing something worse than if he’d killed you.”
“That’s putting it rather personally. I’m not quite sure that I’ve any right to exist either. I’ve made a pretty good fool of myself, and I shall make a worse fool of myself if I come in for any money as the result of all this—you see if I don’t.”
Nigel, like most people who fancy themselves as rogues, rather liked to have good women talking to him for his good. It enhanced your sense of importance, to have people trying to reform you, as long as they talked sympathetically and looked nice. But Angela was adroit at refusing such openings; her common sense was admirably poised. “Yes,” she admitted, “I should think you’d make a ghastly mess of it. I can imagine you doing a frightful lot of harm. But I haven’t put strychnine in your Bovril for all that, and I’m not going to. By the way, it’s nearly time I gave you some—Bovril, I mean.”
“Yes, but that would be for sentimental reasons, wouldn’t it? I mean, you’d probably hate killing a mouse. But you don’t mind mice being killed. So why should you mind Derek being killed? Or me, for that matter?”
“I didn’t say I would,” Angela reminded him. “I only said I’d sooner not know the person who did it, because I don’t think he’d be a nice person to know.”
“Then I can’t be a nice person to know. Because I’m the kind of person who would have killed Derek, if I’d had the opportunity, and if somebody else hadn’t (apparently) got in before me.”
“Oh, I don’t mind knowing people who think they would have murdered Derek. Because, as I say, I don’t believe you are the kind of person who would have. Unless, of course, you did.”
“Isn’t that a tiny bit inconsistent?”
“Not at all. Actions speak louder than words. Tell me you did it, and I’ll believe you. Tell me you would have done it, and I won’t believe you because I don’t think you know yourself. Of course, it’s different when one’s excited; but when it comes to cold-blooded murder, why, I believe we’re all a little less unscrupulous than we think we are.”
“All the same, where would have been the harm in murdering Derek? He’s for it, anyhow; you can’t go on drinking and doping like that without doing yourself in. What’s the good of his being alive? He’s only keeping me out of fifty thousand.”
“With which, as you say, you’d only make a beast of yourself. No, it’s all nonsense worrying about the consequences of actions. The only thing is to stick to the rules of the game; and murder isn’t sticking to the rules; it’s an unfair solution, like cheating at patience.”
“Well, it’s only speeding up the end. You’d hardly argue, would you, that Derek was worth keeping alive?”
“Everybody’s worth keeping alive—or rather, very few people are worth it, but everybody’s got to be kept alive if it can be managed. Look at you the other day—we all thought you were a murderer, with nothing in front of you but the gallows. And yet we rallied round with hot-bottles and restoratives, and treated you as if you were the Shah of Persia. No use to anybody, particularly, but we had to do it, because one has to stick to the rules. Once try to make exceptions, and we shall all get into no end of a mess.”
“Blessed if I’d do it.”
“You would, though. If you were waiting behind a bush to murder a man, and he fell into the river on the way, you’d jump in and rescue him.”
“You try me. If it was Derek, I’d let him sink and heave a brick after him.”
“No, you wouldn’t. You mustn’t keep on contradicting, or I shall put you to
