Heads You Lose (6 page)

James was saying to Pippi: “It was probably me that you saw in the orchard. I strolled down that way and was—er—walking about. Funny we didn’t meet. Not that it matters in the least, but the police will ask.”

“They have,” said Pippi, and gave them a jocular wink.

The police continued to ask. Inspector Cockrill, with rims of sleeplessness round his birdlike bright eyes, cast his felt hat upon the stand in the hall (now reopened to the public), and led the way into Pendock’s library, and questioned them each in turn. When that was over he summoned them all together, and made a short speech.

“Well, ladies and gentlemen, I won’t keep you longer than I can help. This is a terrible affair, and you’ve all been very good in helping me to sort out the facts of it. As I see it now, the murder was committed between the hours of eleven, when Miss Morland was last seen alive by her maid, and midnight, when the body was discovered by the butler. In the meantime the hat had been removed from the hall here and was later found upon the body. I have evidence” (he glanced at Fran with an almost imperceptible wink) “that the box was on the hall-stand, and apparently undisturbed, at eleven o’clock. From that time onwards, the doors and windows were locked and bolted from the inside; and after the crime I found them still locked and bolted from the inside.” He paused impressively and rolled himself a cigarette.

“It’s im
poss
ible, Cockie,” said Francesca. “And anyway, nobody
knew
about the hat.”

“A great many people knew about it,” corrected Cockie sternly. “You knew about it yourself. Lady Hart knew about it. Venetia and Mr. Gold and Captain Nicholl knew about it. Miss Morland herself knew about it. And the butler here knew about it.”

“And
all the rest of the servants no doubt,” added Lady Hart.

He swung round upon her. “Ah, the servants! I thought we should soon come to the servants. Now, let me tell you, ladies and gentlemen, that the servants at Pigeonsford House have nothing to do with this crime. For a long time before eleven, and till some time after twelve, the cook was having a toothache; and a most providential toothache it turns out to be, for it kept them all running about with oil of cloves and hot towels and little nips of brandy, I shouldn’t wonder, and anyway, well within each other’s range of observation. None of them could have been absent long enough even to start on the murder. The butler certainly knew all about the hat; but at twenty or twenty-five minutes past eleven he was starting off from Tenfold to bicycle home; and if he did the four miles over the downs, through the snow which is still quite thick up there, lured the poor lady from her house, killed her, fetched the hat and put it on her head, and ran across the lawns to summon help—all in the space of thirty-five minutes, then all I can say is that he’s a better man for his age than I am for mine.” He glared at Bunsen as though he quite resented such an affront to his own physique. Bunsen gave him a grateful, tremulous smile.

“As for the old woman down at the Cottage,” continued the Inspector, rolling himself another of his untidy cigarettes, “I suppose you’ll admit that she’s hardly in the picture.” He looked round at their faces, as though there were the slightest possibility of their questioning it. “Well then. She’s out. The butler’s out. The servants are out. There remain six people who knew about the hat; and those six people,
because
they knew about the hat, must come under suspicion. I’m sorry, but you must face the facts. And those are the facts.”

“But, Cockie, the maniac! The man who killed the girl last year in the wood.”

“We’re coming to the ‘maniac,’” said Cockrill sourly. He added with an air of inconsequence: “You were all down here at the time, weren’t you?”

“Yes, we were staying with Pen. And James was at ‘The Black Dog’ in the village.”

“And Miss le May? Was she at the Cottage, do you remember?”

Lady Hart stared at him. “Why do you want to know all this?”

“Nothing, nothing, nothing; just asking.” His mahogany-coloured fingers played with his cigarette. “But as a matter of interest—was she?”

“I don’t know why we should be supposed to know anything about the le May girl’s affairs, but actually I happen to remember that she wasn’t. Was she, children? She was abroad with a touring company, and the only reason it sticks in my mind was that we heard she was having difficulty in getting back, because of the war.” Her expression added that it was a pity she had ever succeeded.

“Oh. These two crimes,” said Cockie in a new voice, staring thoughtfully at the cigarette. “It does look rather as though there were some connection, doesn’t it?”

“Only that in both cases the heads were—cut off!”

“Isn’t that enough?” said the Inspector, with sardonic amusement.

“Well, yes, of course. You mean that they must have been done by the same person?”

“Not must have been, Fran; may have been.”

“But, Inspector, it’s all so simple,” protested Henry. “We decided that the murderer last summer was a tramp, a homicidal maniac. If the same man strikes again, why look for him at Pigeonsford House? Why start talking about us coming under suspicion?”

“If
you
decided that he was a tramp—and a maniac,” said Cockie coolly, “that doesn’t mean to say that the police did. He may have been, of course; but if he was a maniac he was a very unusual one, to say the least of it. The girl had been tied up and then decapitated with the scythe; most homicidal maniacs, whatever they may do afterwards, kill the victim with the hands, or with anything they may happen to have in their hands—they strangle or bludgeon or slash or stab. The lust to kill is strong and they don’t waste time on fancy stuff like tying up the victim first. Furthermore, there was no sexual interference; that isn’t extraordinary, of course, but it all adds up. And if, as you want to think, the man was a tramp, what is he doing here now? Tramps don’t stay put. By the very nature of the beast, they move on.”

“He might have moved full cycle and come back,” suggested James, with a descriptive twiddle of his forefinger.

“He might,” agreed Cockie amiably, but he did not look impressed.

Such little snow as had been lying on the ground on the evening before, had melted during the night, so that it was impossible to distinguish between footprints made before and after the crime. The head had been severed from the body with a large, rather blunt hatchet, which lay discarded at the edge of the drive. Sergeant Jenkins, extremely portentous, sought an interview with the owner of this hatchet.

“Er—relating to this matter of a ’atchet, left in the orchard outside Pigeonsford Cottage on the night before—well, last night: the police is seeking to establish the exact whereabouts of this ’atchet and the time it was left in the orchard outside Pigeonsford Cottage on the day before the…”

“You got the needle stuck,” said the farmer’s small boy, who, having been banished from the parlour upon the arrival of Sergeant Jenkins, now reappeared at the window. Jenkins frowned austerely.

“Left ’er there for choppin’ up sticks the follering day,” said the farmer heavily. He added truculently, for he was very much afraid: “Nothin’ wrong in that, is ther? It’s what I allus does.”

“A very dangerous ’abit,” said Sergeant Jenkins severely. “’Oo knew you was in the ’abit of leaving the ’atchet there?”

“Anybody might a known. Other ’and nobody need a known to have used it for the job. It was lying ther, just on the edge of the path, other side of the little bridge. She were an old ’atchet, all rusted up, and I didn’t set no store by ’er. Just used ’er for breakin’ up sticks…”

Sergeant Jenkins pursued his investigations as far as Torrington, whence young Dr. Newsome had been summoned to minister to Bunsen’s sister, at ten o’clock, the night before. Dr. Newsome, hopping with impatience, passed a hand over his crinkly gold hair, and confirmed that he had driven over to Tenfold, which lies between Torrington and Pigeonsford village, and visited the sick woman; that he had arranged for the district nurse to go to her, and that he had remained until the nurse arrived; that the patient’s brother had been there all the time, and that he would be very glad if the sergeant would excuse him now as he was in the devil of a hurry and already late on his rounds. The nurse, in her turn, said that she had arrived at the little cottage at about eleven o’clock, to find both Dr. Newsome and the patient’s brother there; that the brother had waited until she settled the old lady for the night, and had finally left to bicycle back to Pigeonsford, at about twenty past eleven, and that surely the sergeant could let her go now, because if he was not busy, she
was,
and could have told him the whole thing in five minutes without spinning it out like this for half an hour…

Trotty had been, of all things, a trapeze artist, in the buxom days of her youth. She had lived and worked, and had been going to marry in the vital atmosphere of the circus-ring, doing her job well though not brilliantly, her only spectacular performance her last. For a single day Trotty’s name had been big upon the posters all over England; thenceforward she had dragged herself through life with pitiful patched-up legs. Grace Morland’s mother had befriended her, as she befriended all the broken hearts and broken bodies that came her way; had given her some small job and later taken her into her household, where she had remained to this day, faithful, devoted, grateful and increasingly crotchety. She was a downright, humorous, ginger-haired little woman, her splendid muscle all run to firm white fat. She received three visitors from the ’Ouse without fuss, and stood, clutching for support at the back of a chair, while she spoke to them.

“Sit down, Trotty dear, do,” said Venetia, getting a chair and placing it for the old woman.

“Yes, Trotty, sit down.” Pendock took her plump little hands in his own: “I’m so sorry for you in all this trouble.”

Her eyes filled with tears. “Poor dear Miss Grace; what an end for her to come to, that always lived so finicky and lady-like! I wanted to go to her, Mr. Pendock, sir; I don’t like to think of her lying alone in some cold place, with nobody she knows about her; but they won’t let me see her. You couldn’t arrange for me to see her, could you, sir?”

“Oh, Trotty, it’s better not,” said Fran quickly. “They’ve taken her away to—to the hospital, and they’ll keep her there till we’ve had time to arrange for her funeral. It’s a good thing you’ve got Pippi here, isn’t it? She’ll see to all that, and of course if there’s anything in the world that any of us can do for you, you’ve only to let us know. You will, won’t you?”

“Yes, Trotty; if you want any help, you’ve only to send for me. I’m sure you know that.”

“Everybody in Pigeonsford knows that, Mr. Pendock,” she said sincerely. “It was good of you to come down and see me, sir; and the young ladies.”

They talked for a little while, Pendock said at last, diffidently: “Trotty—I wanted to ask you something; about this hat? Has the Inspector asked you about a hat?”

“He’s been on and on about it,” said Trotty, with a puzzled air. “Miss Grace never told me anything about any hat, Mr. Pendock. What does it matter, when my poor lady’s lying killed and murdered, about some miserable hat? None of Miss Grace’s hats is missing, that I do know.”

“It was my hat,” said Fran, as though she were a little ashamed to admit it.

“Didn’t Miss Morland mention it to you when she came in last night, Trotty? She didn’t like it at all, she thought it was a silly little hat, and I expect she told you about it and said what she thought of it…?”

“She never mentioned it, sir. And I can tell you why I’m so certain; she went straight to her room when she came down from the ’Ouse. She called out that she’d had her tea, and up she went, and didn’t come down till Miss Pippi arrived, just before eight o’clock. I thought she’d been crying; but with the excitement of Miss Pippi coming, I didn’t worry any more about it, and she certainly didn’t say anything about any hat, and she didn’t say nothing to Miss Pippi either. I was with them all the time, getting them some supper and then standing by while Miss Pippi was telling about her doings in the revue and all. I like to ’ear about them things, Mr. Pendock, it puts me in mind of the old days; and Miss Pippi’s very kind, she was telling all the jokes and adventures, and I know it was mostly to please me. Miss Grace doesn’t really approve of those sort of things; she shuts her mind to the broader things of life, messing about with paints and embroidery and forgetting that paint can be used on the outsides of houses, and that there’s such a thing as coarse, warm, necessary clothes without any frills or fancies; though God forgive me for seeming to say a word against her, for she was a good kind mistress to me, and now she’s dead, poor thing.”

“And never having said a word about the hat?”

“Not a word, Miss Venetia. Some time after ten Miss Pippi said she was stuffy and she’d like to go out for some air. Miss Grace she keeps the drawing-room rather warm, you know, and Miss Pippi she’s used to theatrical life, with all its draughts and chills and seldom enough a nice cosy sit by the fire; so Miss Grace went up to bed and I cleared the meal away. It’s as true as I stand here, sir,” said Trotty earnestly, sitting on a chair, “that Miss Grace never mentioned that hat. Never
men
tioned the hat.”

“But later on, when Pippi came in again?”

“Miss Pippi came in just before eleven, Miss Fran, and went up to her room. I followed her upstairs and saw her into bed. Then I took Miss Grace’s drink to her room; she was standing there without a light, looking out of the window, and she was queer, Mr. Pendock. She said she’d got somebody in the ’ollow of her hand; but she never said nothing at all about the hat.”

“And that was the last time you saw her?”

“It was, sir. I went back to Miss Pippi to take her empty cup, and was talking to her and listening to her tales until she’d finished her drink, and for a long time after that; it must have been well after half-past eleven when I went downstairs and to my bed…”

Their hopes began to fall. “And you didn’t go out? You didn’t go down to the village and talk to anyone there?”