All over the countryside, away to the rolling hills around Aldershot,
the little red and grey roofs of the farm-steadings peeped out from
amid the light green of the new foliage.
Are they not fresh and beautiful? I cried with all the enthusiasm of
a man fresh from the fogs of Baker Street.
But Holmes shook his head gravely.
Do you know, Watson, said he, that it is one of the curses of a mind
with a turn like mine that I must look at everything with reference to
my own special subject. You look at these scattered houses, and you are
impressed by their beauty. I look at them, and the only thought which
comes to me is a feeling of their isolation and of the impunity with
which crime may be committed there.
Good heavens! I cried. Who would associate crime with these dear old
homesteads?
They always fill me with a certain horror. It is my belief, Watson,
founded upon my experience, that the lowest and vilest alleys in London
do not present a more dreadful record of sin than does the smiling and
beautiful countryside.
You horrify me!
But the reason is very obvious. The pressure of public opinion can do
in the town what the law cannot accomplish. There is no lane so vile
that the scream of a tortured child, or the thud of a drunkard s blow,
does not beget sympathy and indignation among the neighbours, and then
the whole machinery of justice is ever so close that a word of
complaint can set it going, and there is but a step between the crime
and the dock. But look at these lonely houses, each in its own fields,
filled for the most part with poor ignorant folk who know little of the
law. Think of the deeds of hellish cruelty, the hidden wickedness which
may go on, year in, year out, in such places, and none the wiser. Had
this lady who appeals to us for help gone to live in Winchester, I
should never have had a fear for her. It is the five miles of country
which makes the danger. Still, it is clear that she is not personally
threatened.
283