On my way home, I ran into Miss Hartnell and she detained me at least ten minutes, declaiming in her deep bass voice against the improvidence and ungratefulness of the lower classes. The crux of the matter seemed to be that The Poor did not want Miss Hartnell in their houses. My sympathies were entirely on their side. I am debarred by my social standing from expressing my prejudices in the forceful manner they do.
I soothed her as best I could and made my escape.
Haydock overtook me in his car at the corner of the Vicarage road. “I’ve just taken Mrs. Protheroe home,” he called.
He waited for me at the gate of his house.
“Come in a minute,” he said. I complied.
“This is an extraordinary business,” he said, as he threw his hat on a chair and opened the door into his surgery.
He sank down on a shabby leather chair and stared across the room. He looked harried and perplexed.
I told him that we had succeeded in fixing the time of the shot. He listened with an almost abstracted air.
“That lets Anne Protheroe out,” he said. “Well, well, I’m glad it’s neither of those two. I like ’em both.”
I believed him, and yet it occurred to me to wonder why, since, as he said, he liked them both, their freedom from complicity seemed to have had the result of plunging him in gloom. This morning he had looked like a