Heads You Lose (7 page)

“Go out?” said Trotty, amazed. “No, indeed, Miss Fran. What would I be going out for at that time of night, me that can hardly walk so far by the light of day? If you think I’ve been talking, Miss, I can tell you you’re wrong. I saw nobody but Miss Grace and Miss Pippi last night, and Miss Grace never told either of us nothing about no hat.”

They had never suspected her of doing more than spread the story of the hat; to suppose for a moment that this frail old woman with her crippled legs and painful, dragging walk could have murdered her mistress, was as ludicrous as it was repellent; and anyway, now it seemed that she had not known of the hat. Bunsen was Out. And Trotty was Out. And Pippi had not been told about the hat.

That afternoon they went for a walk, straggling in twos and threes along the bank of the little stream that runs between Pigeonsford Cottage and the ’Ouse. Pippi le May saw them from the window of her bedroom and called to them to wait for her; she ran after them, bright and bouncing, with her cap of coarse auburn hair and her expensive little suit that somehow looked rather cheap.

Francesca walked with Lady Hart, subduing her young strides to the old lady’s ponderous roll. “I say—Gran.”

“Yes, darling?” said Lady Hart, rather surprised, for Fran usually said all in a rush, whatever was in her mind.

“Do you like James?”

“Yes, I do. I like him very much.”

“So do I,” said Fran doubtfully.

“What you mean is that you don’t know whether you like him enough to marry him.”

“Well, actually, darling, it’s more than that. I like him most terribly; I won’t say that I’m madly in love with him, but Venetia says it’s more comfortable not to be.”

“Because Venetia’s uncomfortably in love with
her
husband, it doesn’t follow that it’s the same for everyone,” said Lady Hart, smiling lovingly after the little shining figure that walked ahead of them. “The lucky people get it half and half.”

“Well, I know, Gran, but never mind about that. Suppose I do love James enough to marry him and James loves me—which, as a matter of fact, he does… well… would you say that he was a good person for me to marry? I mean the right person, really the best for me?”

Lady Hart considered. “This is very important, Fran; but yes, I think I do. We’ve known James a long time now, on and off, ever since he was a boy; he’s well off and he’s in a good social position, so that part of it’s all right, but the great thing is that he’s good and charming and has what the Eastern religions call ‘compassion,’ and I don’t think he could do anything cruel or crooked if he tried. He’s terribly vague, of course, and sometimes he’s rather irritating, because he looks as if he were sound asleep when you’re talking to him and you get careless and silly and say worthless things, and all the time he’s awake and summing you up; but if you love him, darling, and he really loves you…”

“He loves me most terribly, Granny,” said Francesca in a subdued small voice. “It’s quite—I don’t know—You say yourself how sleepy and casual he seems; well, when he wakes up it’s—it quite takes your breath away. It’s rather a sort of responsibility to have someone loving you as much as all that…”

Lady Hart could understand. There was something about Fran that turned your heart upside-down for her, even if you were only her grandmother. She was so young and fresh and pretty, and always with that sort of gallantry about her, that resolution to fight her own battles against the world and never show where, in the soft, deep places of her heart, she might be hurt or afraid. A man in love with her beauty and gaiety must feel also a tremendous tenderness, a longing to protect her from harm, to wrap her about with kindness and gentleness… She said quietly: “Only you can know how much you care for James, Fran darling. But if you do—I think he’s the man for you.”

They walked for a moment in silence, Fran with her head bent, looking at her little shoes. She said at last: “I say, Gran. You know Pippi le May…?”

“What has Pippi le May got to do with this?” said Lady Hart sharply.

It took Fran a long time to tell her what Pippi le May had to do with it.

Pippi caught up with Pendock and walked between him and James. “I hear you’ve been telling the police that I was on tour last summer. They’re poking about for proofs. Fortunately nothing could be simpler, because they can check up with the manager of the company I was with. I never left the show for a day. But why this thusness, do you think?”

“They’re doing it to all of us,” said Pendock indifferently.

“I suppose it’s because of that girl that was slain in the copse near the Cottage. Do they connect her up with poor old Grace?”

“They have to look into it, anyway.”

“Because if they do, it lets me out; that is if they’re trying to make out that I bumped the poor old girl off for the sake of her pinchbeck bracelet and a painting of the Church Tower in Blossom Time, which is what she’s always told me I get by her will. Anyway, I’m safe enough, because I certainly didn’t know anything about Fran’s famous hat. Do you think they suspect me?”

“I don’t think they suspect you or any of us,” said Pendock irritably. “It’s all the routine stuff.”

“All right, all right, all right; just asking!” said Pippi, quoting Inspector Cockrill.

James Nicholl walked beside her, saying not a word. “Is Venetia calling you?” said Pippi suddenly, to Pendock.

He went back, leaving the two of them together. “Did you call me, Venetia?”

“No,” said Venetia, surprised.

“Now that you’re here,” said Henry in his eager way, “stay and talk to us. We’ve been going over and over things, and you know, Pendock, you really can’t get away from the fact that it looks as if one of us…”

“Or
Pippi,” said Venetia firmly.

“Or Pippi—as if one of us six, or Pippi, may have done this frightful affair of Grace Morland. I know it seems fantastic,” said Henry hastily, “but look at it fair and square: who else could it have been? I can’t see that the business of the hat can have been just chance;
or
the ditch. I mean, dash it all, the woman said she wouldn’t be seen dead in a ditch in the hat, and a few hours later she was. You can’t get away from it.”

“Some maniac…” insisted Pendock.

“That’s what I’ve been saying,” said Venetia sadly; “but as Henry says—why the hat?—and why the ditch? There’s acres of ground round Pigeonsford, and only one poor little ditch: why did the maniac put the body there? Not to hide it, because it wasn’t hidden—Bunsen saw it at once. Darling—honestly, the coincidence is too much.”

“Well, but what about the girl last summer? That was a maniac obviously: there was literally no motive…”

“If that’s your only reason for thinking it was a maniac, the same applies to Miss Morland: after all, the poor woman was harmless enough.”

“Just what I say: the maniac was responsible for both.”

“But put it another way, Pendock; allow for a minute that only someone who knew about the hat—and that means one of us—could have murdered Miss Morland; well, couldn’t that person have murdered the kitchen-maid, too?”

“Oh, Henry darling—no!”

“But it’s true, Venetia; after all, if we’re going to acknowledge that one of us could do the one—why not the other? It was no more horrible…”

“But we don’t acknowledge it; it’s only that that wretched hat…”

“The police are taking the hat pretty seriously,” said Henry.

“But they don’t know about Grace Morland’s remark—about being seen dead in a ditch, I mean.”

“You don’t think we ought to tell them, do you?” suggested Henry, going off at a tangent.

“Good God, no,” said Pendock violently.

“Ah, but that’s the point,” said Venetia sadly. “Why not? If you think we’re all so safe and innocent, what’s wrong with telling them? The truth is,” she added, wagging her golden head, walking along beside Henry, tightly holding his hand, “the truth is that you’re afraid to tell them. And so’m I. And so’s Henry. Aren’t you, Henry?”

“Terrified,” admitted Henry readily.

“If we were another lot of people—I mean not you, Pen, and Henry and me and Granny and Fran and James—well, we wouldn’t hesitate, would we? We’d think it was all quite clear, wouldn’t we, that some one of us six who heard Grace say that, had, for some reason unknown, killed her and put the hat on her head? It’s only because we’re
us
that we blind ourselves to the facts.”

The air was cold and clear, with promise of fresh snow; the stream ran, willow-bordered, upon their right; in the distance a train whistled like some shrill mechanical bird, and a puff of dark smoke hung motionless over the snowy downs. They walked for a while in silence. Henry said, smiling his puckish smile: “If only it could be Pippi!”

“It’s not Pippi,” said Pendock definitely. “It’s almost impossible that there isn’t some connection between the two deaths; and Pippi was not here when the kitchen-maid was killed last summer. It isn’t Pippi.”

They were silent again, each withdrawn into himself; behind them Lady Hart and Fran walked, also in silence; ahead, Pippi le May was talking to James volubly, waving expressive hands. Venetia said at last bitterly: “She doesn’t care two hoots about her cousin; we didn’t go much on old Morland, but I think we feel it more than Pippi. If only it could have been her!”

“I suppose I’d better ask her in to dinner tonight,” said Pendock with a sigh, for he did not care at all for Pippi le May.

Pippi accepted with alacrity, and at seven o’clock walked up from the Cottage, fur-coated, with a bright woollen scarf tied over her head and wound about her throat. Pendock intercepted one of the housemaids on the landing: “Oh, Gladys, I want to arrange for one of you girls to go down and sit with Trotty at the Cottage while Miss le May’s up here; ask Bunsen to see to it, will you?”

Gladys was a fine young woman with excessively curly hair and stout, round legs; she cherished a secret passion for her employer, and now said eagerly: “I’ll go myself, sir—if you’d like me to.”

Pendock did not care two hoots who went; he said indifferently: “All right, Gladys; if that suits Bunsen, you go.”

Gladys, however, was not going to lose so splendid an opportunity of making herself interesting. She said, with a show of timidity, that she didn’t know if she could, after all, bring herself to pass the—to go near the—she was afraid she was ever so silly but she really was too—

“What are you talking about, child?” said Pendock patiently.

Gladys was talking about the spot where Miss Morland had been killed, but it was not to be expected that she would explain this in so many words. Pendock said at last: “Well, get one of the men to walk down with you; and go across the lawn, then you needn’t pass near the drive. And try and be a sensible girl and don’t talk this kind of talk to the others… you’ll have them all upset.”

Gladys explained that her nerves had been bad from a child.

It seemed dreadful to be standing round a big fire in the beautiful, familiar drawing-room, drinking cocktails, when Miss Morland, who had sat and had tea there the day before, was lying in a mortuary, murdered and mutilated; but what could one do about it? Fran said, in that ruthless way of hers that hid so much of delicacy and pain and pity: “We couldn’t go anywhere else, Pen, could we? And we need drinks more than ever, just because of it… to try and shut out the idea of her… poor Miss Morland…”

“I keep thinking of her too,” said Venetia, who knew the innermost workings of Fran’s heart. “It’s so impossible to believe that here, in Pen’s garden, she should have died, and died like—that. But it doesn’t do
her
any good to brood over it; and it’s only worse for us.” She added: “I’m so sorry, Pippi… we shouldn’t be talking about it in front of you.”

Pippi looked blank. “Oh, good heavens, don’t mind about me. I mean, it’s rotten about poor old Grace, but there’s no use moaning over it, is there?”

Pendock looked at her with increasing dislike. Odd how people could say almost the same things and have such different meanings. Fran and Venetia, he knew, were haunted by their own imaginary reconstructions of the scene in the moonlight, down by the drive; he himself could not blot it from his mind—though, strangely enough, the first death, that of the girl in the wood, remained more clearly with him; but Pippi seemed genuinely not to care at all, to be able to continue her own heedless way, cocky, impregnable, tough. He finished his drink at a gulp and said abruptly: “Let’s go in to dinner.”

The Inspector burst in upon them as they sat round the table. “Sorry to disturb you, Mr. Pendock, but I’m off for the night. They’ve taken a man into custody at Torrington, and I’ll have to go and see him. I’ll leave someone here in case you need them, but I don’t think you will.” He was about to rush off when the news that had been oozing out of him suddenly emerged with a plop: “This man has confessed to the murder of that girl last summer,” he said, and was gone.

A load seemed to lift from about their hearts and Pendock expressed the feelings of everybody at the table when he said over his shoulder to Bunsen: “I think we’ll have some champagne.”

Pippi was used to cocktails but not to champagne. It warmed the cockles of her heart and went straight to her henna’ed head. “I know you all thought it was me,” she said cheerfully, waving her golden glass. “But you see you were wrong. It was this nasty ole tramp.”

“We didn’t think it was you at all,” said Fran, who was, indeed, innocent of any such charge. “It couldn’t have been you, because you couldn’t have known about the hat.”

“Ah, but thasswhere you were wrong,” said Pippi, giggling joyously.

“Trotty definitely told us that she was with you and Miss Morland all the evening,” said Pendock, staring at her. “And that Miss Morland said nothing to either of you about the hat.”

“Quirright,” said Pippi. She was only just drunk enough to make her enjoy a pretence of being more drunk than she actually was.

“Then you couldn’t have known. No one could have known.”

“Anyone could have known,” corrected Pippi. She nodded her head at them artfully.
“I
could have known; tramp could have known; anybody could have known.”