His head was all over the wall...
Look, he said to his imagination, if this is how you’re going to behave, I shan’t bring you again.
But, with its usual treachery, it went on working. He’d never, ever, laid a finger on anyone. He’d always run rather than fight. And murder, now, surely murder was an absolute? You couldn’t commit 0.021 of a murder, could you? But Pump seemed to think you could murder with a ruler. Okay, perhaps somewhere downstream people were... inconvenienced by a crime, but... what about bankers, landlords, even barmen? ‘Here’s your double brandy, sir, and I’ve 0.0003 killed you’? Everything everyone did affected everyone, sooner or later.