“No, thanks,” said Wimsey. “Sorry to bother you. Unseemly to come and try to haul people out of church, but—yes, it was rather important. I’ll leave a message at the house. Thanks frightfully.”
He turned away; then stopped and came back.
“I say,” he said, “you give advice on moral problems and all that sort of thing, don’t you?”
“Well, we’re supposed to try,” said the priest. “Is anything bothering you in particular?”
“Ye-es,” said Wimsey, “nothing religious, I don’t mean—nothing about infallibility or the Virgin Mary or anything of that sort. Just something I’m not comfortable about.”
The priest—who was, in fact, the vicar, Mr. Tredgold—indicated that he was quite at Lord Peter’s service.
“It’s very good of you. Could we come somewhere where I didn’t have to whisper so much. I never can explain things in a whisper. Sort of paralyses one, don’t you know.”
“Let’s go outside,” said Mr. Tredgold.
So they went out and sat on a flat tombstone.
“It’s like this,” said Wimsey. “Hypothetical case, you see, and so on. S’posin’ one knows somebody who’s very, very ill and can’t last long anyhow. And they’re in awful pain and all that, and kept under morphia—practically dead to the world, you know. And suppose that by dyin’ straight away they could make something happen which they really wanted to happen and which couldn’t happen if they lived on a little longer (I can’t explain exactly how, because I don’t want to give personal details and so on)—you get the idea? Well, supposin’ somebody who knew all that was just to give ’em a little push off so to speak—hurry matters on—why should that be a very dreadful crime?”