Heads You Lose (2 page)

There was a sort of ruthlessness about Fran. She faced the truth so squarely for herself that she could not be hypocritical for others, even to be kind. She struggled to say something nice about the water-colour, but round the edges of her goodwill the truth came bursting forth; she said abruptly: “But why do the church tower, when it’s so particularly hideous?”

Poor thing! Just unable to appreciate beauty, that was all. Useless, Grace knew, to try to explain to those that could not see for themselves, the artistic values of a church tower peeping through an orchard, with the little round copse on the right and her own snug cottage pairing off so nicely on the left. Just the roofs visible above Mr. Pendock’s fruit trees, no troublesome perspectives at all…

“And besides,” said Francesca, peering at the sketch in the gathering dusk, “isn’t that the wood where the kitchen-maid was killed?”

A kitchen-maid—not Grace’s kitchen-maid or Pendock’s, but just a kitchen-maid—had parted with her lover one evening in the previous summer and had subsequently been found in a truly appalling condition: for her hands had been bound behind her with her own belt, and her head severed from her body with one sweep of a large, sharp scythe which lay by her side; and body, head and weapon had been thrown carelessly at the foot of a tree as though the murderer had suddenly grown tired of his ghastly work and abandoned it without care or concealment. It was this very lack of precaution that had made it so hard for the police to find anything to go upon; there was no grim parcel done up in laundry-marked clothes, no surgical dismemberment, no tell-tale length of rope, no sailors’ knots. The lover had, of course, been sought out and questioned exhaustively, and friends and relatives had been interviewed again and again, but to no avail. Such few poor shillings as the kitchen-maid had possessed, had remained untouched in her handbag; a tawdry brooch had been torn from her frock, examined perhaps and found to be worthless, and tossed back again on to her breast; beyond this, beyond the pitiful body at the foot of the tree, there had been no sign of what had passed during that night of horror in the little wood. Maniac, avenger, thief?—her assailant had gone his way and left no trace.

Fran led them back through the french windows, into the drawing-room. “Come on, Aziz darling. Oh, look, sweetie, you’ve got your feet all wet and mucky!” She hoicked the squirming dog into her arms and dried his paws with her handkerchief. “Here’s Miss Morland,” she announced to Pendock, who stood with his back to the big log fire. “She’s been doing the most gruesome picture of the wood where the kitchen-maid was found.”

Pendock shuddered, for he had been among the first to be called when a terrified local had stumbled over the girl’s body in the copse. “Poor child,” he said. “It was a ghastly business; I shall never forget her parents, what a state they were in, and the wretched young man… and her—her head…” He went very white and added, as though to turn his thoughts away from the dreadful vision: “It’s past clearing up now, I suppose. Some tramp; hoped she might have money…”

“What an upheaval there was in the village,” said Fran, tenderly depositing Aziz upon one of the drawing-room chairs. “Detectives and photographers and reporters swarming all over the place. I shouldn’t think there’s ever been such an excitement here before.”

“I hope there never will be again,” said Pendock devoutly.

“Were you staying here at the time, then?” asked Grace of Francesca, making ineffectual little dabs at Aziz, who had immediately jumped off the chair and now sat staring disconcertingly into her face.

“It was just at the end of our holiday,” explained Venetia. “Fran and Granny were staying with Mr. Pendock as usual, and Henry and I were here for the last week of our honeymoon. It wouldn’t have seemed like summer, if I hadn’t spent at least part of it with Pen.” She smiled at him affectionately.

“And how is dear Lady Hart?”

“Oh, she’s all right; she’ll be down in a minute. Did you know James Nicholl was here?”

James Nicholl was a young man who kept a sailing-boat in the bay, and spent most of his holidays at the local pub. She remembered him best as a vague, rather droopy, very untidy undergraduate; latterly he had taken a somewhat indifferent interest in his family business and become a little less untidy, though remaining as dreamy as ever. He was under the guardianship of his uncle, a stern old man who had kept a careful eye upon his nephew’s more or less blameless activities, until the first threat of war had sent him scuttling off to America; and much good that had done him, thought Grace with self-satisfied irony, for only yesterday she had seen his obituary notices in the papers. No doubt Mr. Nicholl would come in for a nice fat fortune; and she had heard that he was in the Army too…

“What a pleasure; and I hear he is in uniform now?”

“Yes, definitely our Brave Boy in Brown,” said Fran, gently mocking. “He doesn’t know which hand to salute with or who to salute, and I’m sure he’s always stepping off with the wrong foot, but otherwise he’s tremendous. Mr. Pendock’s doing his bit by having him here for his seven days’ leave; aren’t you, Pen darling?”

Thank goodness for that, anyway, thought Grace, toasting her frozen feet at the fire. Perhaps Francesca would turn her attentions to young Nicholl, now that he had come in for a bit of money, and leave Mr. Pendock alone. Pen darling, indeed! She wished that tea would arrive.

“Here’s Granny,” said Fran, and the two girls went to the door. “Hallo, darling; have you had your snooze?”

Their grandmother was an old lady whose tiny head looked like nothing so much as a pea perched upon a goodly cottage loaf. She rolled joyously into the room, beaming at them all. “… and here’s Miss Morland,” said Venetia.

“She’s been painting the copse where that girl was killed last summer,” said Fran, who could not get over this singular choice on the part of the soulful Grace.

Lady Hart looked mildly surprised, but under cover of Grace’s protestations sank into a chair. “Thank goodness, here are Henry and James,” she said. “I want my tea.”

At first glance you would have said that they were an oddly assorted couple to be such close friends. Henry Gold was, without having the characteristic features, unmistakably Jewish. He was a small, slim, ugly man, with a friendly, rather puck-like smile that lit up his face into eagerness and gave him a quite overwhelming charm. James Nicholl, standing in the doorway beside him, was nearly a head taller, with stooping shoulders and heavy-lidded, sleepy eyes, and the rather vacant look of the intellectual mind withdrawn from the teeming personal life without. Henry, beneath a veneer of super-sophistication, was vividly and immediately interested in even the simplest things that made up life; James accorded to time on the wing only the courtesy of a sleepy, mocking, self-deprecatory smile. He alone of the three men was in uniform.

Grace Morland was thrilled. “How splendid to see you, Mr. Nicholl, and in khaki! Or should one say Captain?—or Major? All those lovely pips! I feel quite honoured to shake hands with you.”

“Do you?” said James, surprised.

“And were you in France during all that dreadful time? Dunkirk? Do tell me about your adventures. Or perhaps…” she lowered her voice to a sickening whisper—“perhaps you’d rather not speak of it?”

James was perfectly willing to speak of it, but not to Miss Morland. “He spent the entire time crouching under a pier,” said Henry, to rescue him, “reading a pocket edition of ‘Love’s Labour’s Lost.’”

Jealous, of course. These Jews! “I see that
you’re
not in uniform, Mr. Gold,” said Grace.

“Henry happens to be in a reserved occupation,” said Venetia, flaming at once in defence of her husband. “He offered himself at the very beginning of the war, but they made him stick where he is.”

Henry grinned behind his hand. Dear Venetia! As if he cared two hoots what this ridiculous old spinster thought of him; but deep down in his heart his casual dislike took on a sharper form.

Aziz removed himself, apparently in disgust, and embarked upon a complicated toilet in the middle of the hearthrug. “Darling, not here,” said Fran, upsetting his equilibrium with the toe of her shoe. “It’s rude.”

Quite extraordinary, thought Grace, who had been lost in contemplation of a distant object, drawing attention to it like that. She said, for want of something to fill up the gap, which nobody had noticed but herself: “Aziz! what an odd name!”

“It’s because he’s our Black Boy,” said Venetia, as if that explained everything.

Miss Morland looked blank. “After the little doctor, in ‘Passage to India,’” explained Henry courteously. “His mother was called Esmiss Esmoor.”

Grace assumed her Boots’s Library look, tapping her front teeth with her thumb-nail, rolling her faded blue eyes. “‘Passage to India—Passage to India.’ No! Haven’t come across it.” That dismissed ‘Passage to India’; but she added affectedly: “Odd; because I’m so fond of travel books.”

There was a rather appalling silence; she could see that she had gone wrong somewhere, and sought to cover it by saying brightly: “Fancy having, a
dachs-
hund! I don’t think I should care to; not in war-time, anyway.”

“Wouldn’t you? How silly!” said Fran. Lady Hart suggested mildly from her arm-chair that they could hardly put Aziz into cold storage until the war was over.

“Oh, of course I know that some people get very
fond
of a dog,” said Grace hastily. “I’m sure he’s a dear little fellow. Where did you get him from?”

“He came down by parachute,” said James. He added sweetly: “Disguised as a Church of England clergyman.” Miss Morland’s father had been Rector of Pigeonsford.

“Hence the dog-collar,” said Henry. They all went off into fits of slightly hysterical laughter.

An ancient butler arrived with a loaded tray, walking as daintily as a cat upon his corn-tormented feet. “And a parcel has arrived for Miss Fran, Miss. The carrier brought it from the post office at Torrington. It’s on the table in the hall.”

“It’s my new hat,” cried Fran, leaping to her feet and clutching him by the arm. “Is it a hatbox, Bunsen? This size, and square?”

“About that size, Miss.”

“It is! How lovely! I asked them to send it down, but I never thought it would arrive so soon… not that I could wear it here, it would shake the village to its core. You wait, Granny! you’re always complaining that our hats nowadays aren’t as ridiculous as yours were in the year dot. Well, this one is.”

It certainly was. She came back with it perched on her little dark head, smiling and nodding, turning round and round to let them admire its wonders, blushing a little at the look in James’s sleepy brown eyes. Pendock felt his heart turn over in a sickening roll as he watched her, so sweet and gay and unaffected, with the absurd little bunch of flowers and feathers perched on her silky head. “Do you like it, Pen?” she said, coming up to him, smiling innocently into his eyes.

Before he could stop himself he had caught her by the hand and pulled her towards him and kissed her, there in front of them all. “You lovely little thing!” he said; and then, conscious of what he had done, he laughed and added lightly: “I think it’s a delirious little hat. Don’t you, Miss Morland? Don’t you think it’s a quite remarkable hat?”

Grace sat frozen in her chair, colder than she had been on the terrace outside, in spite of the roaring fire, and knew that this was the failure of all her dreams. She, too, lost control, but not for love of Fran, and cried out spitefully: “Do you call that a hat? I don’t call it a hat at all. Good heavens, I wouldn’t be seen dead in a ditch in a thing like that!”

They all looked mildly astonished. “I’m sorry you don’t like it,” said Fran, slowly taking it off. “Of course it’s only a bit of nonsense, but I thought it was rather sweet.” She supposed Miss Morland was annoyed because she had laughed about her picture.

Grace got up to go. “I didn’t mean to be quite so—severe,” she said hastily, a little abashed at the sight of Fran’s crestfallen face. “I’m sure it’s a charming hat, but it’s a little more
advanced
than we are quite used to here. I’m afraid in a village, and especially in war-time, one gets into the way of thinking perhaps rather too much of the more serious things of life; isn’t that so, Mr. Pendock? You who live amongst us can appreciate that; these bright young people from Town…” She thought of London always with a capital letter, as Town.

Pendock was hardly to be expected to enter into a discussion of his guests before their very faces. “You must let me walk across the garden with you,” he said. He could not help adding maliciously: “Just to see that you get safely past the copse.”

Fran and Venetia came out on to the terrace to see them off. “What a poisonous woman,” said Fran, still a little troubled, watching their progress across the snow-sprinkled lawn. “I never did her any harm that I know of; why should she be so loathsome about my hat?”

“I’m afraid it was Pen, not the hat,” said Venetia reluctantly. “It looks very much as though he’s fallen for you, Fran.”

Fran made a little face. “I’m afraid it does. How funny, after all this time.”

“It’s been coming on for years, Fran, almost since you were a little girl. He always loved you best, though I don’t mean to say that he doesn’t love me—because, of course, I know he does. But with you it’s always been different, and now it’s come to a head. I suppose you couldn’t fall in love with him, could you? He’s so sweet.”

Francesca looked doubtful. “Well, I don’t know. I do adore him, of
course,
and I should be most divinely rich and live at Pigeonsford for ever…”

“You’re fairly rich as it is,” said Venetia, laughing.

“Yes, I know. That’s what makes it so awkward. I mean it cuts out an added incentive, and I don’t know whether I love Pen enough to marry him without an added incentive, like terrific wealth or having to be made an honest woman of, or something of that sort. Besides, he’s a bit old,
is
n’t he?”

“I suppose he is, a bit. But it seems a shame to have two such nice people in love with you as Pen and James, and not to be able to be in love with either of them.”