“Oh, but that’s theory! So very different from practice, isn’t it? But anyway, here he is, so we can ask him.”
Haydock was, I think, rather astonished to find Miss Marple with us. He looked tired and haggard.
“It’s been a near thing,” he said. “A very near thing. But he’s going to pull through. It’s a doctor’s business to save his patient and I saved him, but I’d have been just as glad if I hadn’t pulled it off.”
“You may think differently,” said Melchett, “when you have heard what we have to tell you.”
And briefly and succinctly, he put Miss Marple’s theory of the crime before the doctor, ending up with her final suggestion.
We were then privileged to see exactly what Miss Marple meant by the difference between theory and practice.
Haydock’s views appeared to have undergone a complete transformation. He would, I think, have liked Lawrence Redding’s head on a charger. It was not, I imagine, the murder of Colonel Protheroe that so stirred his rancour.
It was the assault on the unlucky Hawes.
“The damned scoundrel,” said Haydock. “The damned scoundrel! That poor devil Hawes. He’s got a mother and a sister too. The stigma of being the mother and sister of a murderer would have rested on them for life, and think of their mental anguish. Of all the cowardly dastardly tricks!”
For sheer primitive rage, commend me to a thoroughgoing humanitarian when you get him well roused.