Heads You Lose (8 page)

“I don’t see what you mean, Pippi,” said Venetia, leaning across the big table with the candlelight on her hair. “The story didn’t go out of this house; and if Miss Morland didn’t tell anyone…”

“How do you know she didn’t tell anyone?”

“But who could she have told?” said Venetia, bewildered by her air of jaunty triumph; and Fran, from the other end of the table, chimed in impatiently: “When could she have told them?”

“She could have told them just before she died,” said Pippi, and drained her glass and set it down with a thump. “She could have told her murderer.”

She could have told her murderer. This man, this creature who had confessed to killing the kitchen-maid; he had somehow lured Grace out of her house and she, for some reason they would probably never know, had told him about the hat. And after he had killed her he had got the hat and thrust it upon her head; how he could have got it, why she should have told him, were questions for the police to answer; it was sufficient to know that there was a self-confessed murderer to account for the incredible horrors of the night before and that they were safe. Lady Hart and Fran and Venetia and Henry and James were safe. And Pippi, of course—but who cared for Pippi le May? Pendock leant back in his chair, sick and dizzy with the relief of it.

Strong black coffee brought Pippi back to normal; she was unashamed of her lapse into insobriety and chattered away full of herself and her doings until Pendock, his head now aching violently, could bear it no longer. Lady Hart was silent and distrait, and he saw that Pippi was getting badly on her nerves. He said at last: “I think the snow’s getting heavier. I hate to speed the parting guest, Miss le May, but you wouldn’t want to get cut off from the Cottage, would you?”

“I shouldn’t mind in the least,” said Pippi, laughing.

“Well, no, of course, we could always put you up; but my housemaid is down there with Trotty, and she’s got to get home.”

Pippi could hardly ignore so broad a hint; she swathed her head in the scarf and wriggled into her cheap little ocelot coat. “Come on, then; who’s going to see me home?”

“I am, of course,” said Pendock, unhooking his coat from the stand in the hall.

“Remember what happened to the last person you saw home!” said Pippi brightly. At the sight of their faces she had the grace to look ashamed of herself, and added apologetically: “Oh, well, I’m sorry; perhaps that was rather an unfortunate remark.” She went on, turning to Pendock: “But honestly, don’t bother to come. I shan’t get mislaid between here and the Cottage, and the snow’s not quite at the lost-for-days-in-a-drift stage.”

“Of course I’m coming,” said Pendock testily; but as he caught her arm and marched her out in the middle of her farewells, he saw something in her face that all of them had missed that night: a shadow of weariness, of loneliness, perhaps of fear, under the cocky smile, and for the first time he warmed to her a little and said apologetically: “I’m sorry, my dear; I’m afraid I’ve been rather abrupt. It’s been a dreadful day, and, of course, last night…”

“It must have been a shock for you especially,” said Pippi, more gently than he had ever heard her speak.

“I thought it was Fran,” he explained, as though he were telling her for the first time, as though she had not heard, over and over again, the details of last night’s discovery. “God help me, I thought it was Fran. I ran through the hall and down these very steps and out over the grass, and all the time I was thinking that I should find Fran there in the ditch, with her head hacked off her body…” He shuddered violently and buried his face in his hands.

Pippi said nothing, and they continued on their way in silence. Gladys, all of a dither at the thought of walking home with the master, opened the door to them. “Where’s Trotty?” said Pippi, looking past her into the little hall.

“She’s gone off to bed, Miss. She was ever so tired, and she thought you wouldn’t mind. I took her a nice cup of milk…” (‘The girl’s sweet smile and kindly thought quite won the heart of the proud, rich man,’ thought Gladys, showing all her teeth for the benefit of Pendock.) “I tucked her up comfortable…”

Pippi was searching in her handbag and through the pockets of her coat. “Dash it—I believe I’ve left my gigs up at the house; I’ll have to come back with you and get them.”

“Will you want them to-night?” said Pendock.

“My dear, yes, I
must;
I mean I can’t read a word without them…”

“Is it your glasses, Miss?” said Gladys, returning in her best coat from the kitchen quarters. “Because Trotty found them on the droring-room mantelpiece, and she took them up to your room; she said you’d want them if you were going to read in bed.”

“Oh, good! Thank you, Gladys.” She looked out at the driving snow and said, with the careless good-nature of her kind: “Here, you’d better have my scarf. Wind it round your head and tuck it over your chest; you can let me have it back to-morrow—no hurry.” She stood in the doorway and called: “Good-night. God bless.”

Pendock was silent on the walk home. In the hall he said to the girl: “Better leave the scarf here; I shall be seeing Miss le May to-morrow, I expect, or anyway I’ll arrange that she gets it back.”

“Yes, sir. All right, sir. And thanks ever so much for seeing me home, sir.”

Pendock was practically unaware that he had seen Gladys home; but he smiled at her in his kindly way and said, “Good-night, my child.”

“… and that moonlight walk through the snow set the seal on the beautiful housemaid’s romance,’ thought Gladys joyfully.

Fran and Venetia and Henry and James were playing Vingt-et-un. “Weren’t we fools to start this?” said Venetia, laughing. We shall go on all night. But we had to get the taste of Pippi out of our mouths.”

“Where’s your grandmother?” said Pendock.

“Here I am,” called Lady Hart; the writing bureau was out of sight in the short end of the L-shaped drawing room. “I’m struggling with a letter to the Income Tax people and I wish to be left severely alone. How do you spell preposterous?”

“Come and play Vingt-et,” said Fran, holding out her hand to Pendock. She felt rather shy of him now that she had had a glimpse of his passion for her, and especially since her talk in the orchard with James.

Venetia looked under the table. “Aziz; oh, you
are
there, darling! I thought he must have gone out when Pen opened the door.”

Pendock stood beside Fran, holding her hand in his own warm grasp, and watched the game for a moment. “I don’t think I’ll play. I’ve still got an awful head. It’s,” he glanced at the clock, “eleven o’clock and I want to get some sleep to-night.”

“Well, it’s a pity, darling, because we should have had to divide up a bit, and Henry could have given you some of his money. Look at him, he’s got so many matches that we’ve had to give him a lump sum of James’s lighter, and distribute them again.”

“Trust a Jew,” said Venetia, laughing. “He always does it. It only shows that it’s quite right when they say that the Jews have all the money and people like Henry are responsible for the War and Mussolini and the measles epidemic and the common cold and everything else that ever goes wrong with the world…”

“Well, I absolve him from responsibility for my headache,” said Pendock. “Did you ever hear anyone talk like that le May girl? Oh, and by the way, she lent Gladys her scarf, so will someone see that she gets it back to-morrow? She’s sure to be up here sometime. I’ve put it in the left-hand little drawer of the stand in the hall.”

“I’ll take it down to the Cottage in the morning,” said James, indolently dealing out cards. “I ought to go and pay my respects to Trotty.”

“Will you? Thanks very much. Well, I’m off to bed,” said Pendock, with his hand on the door handle. “Thank God we can all sleep a bit more easily to-night. Good-night, my children. Good-night, Lady Hart.”

“Good-night,” called Lady Hart’s voice from around the corner. “Sleep well!” They could hear her pen, scratching away as she wrote.

P
ENDOCK WAS DREAMING AGAIN;
he saw the same dim tunnel stretching out before him, the woman standing at the end of it, out in the sunshine, and felt the same strange urge to see her face. He put his hand beneath her chin to lift her head, and there came again the thunderous din in the tunnel behind him; he swung round to see what had made it, and when he turned back again, the woman was gone. Hands reached out of the tunnel and caught him by the shoulders… a voice said urgently: “Wake up, wake up, wake up!”

He was awake and shivering, sick with foreboding and fear. The man leaning over him was Cockrill.

“For God’s sake—what is it?” said Pendock.

“Get up, man; I thought you’d never wake. Fran’s room—quick, which is her room?”

“Over there, opposite mine, across the corridor. Why do you want Fran’s room…?”

But Cockrill was across the passage and flinging open Fran’s door. Pendock pushed him aside and ran to the bed. “Francesca! Oh, God! Oh, Christ! Fran darling—”

Cockrill felt for the switch and turned on the light. She was lying in her bed as she had been the morning before, her dark hair spread softly over the pillow, her heavy eyelashes curling against her cheek; but this time she was really asleep. He caught her by the shoulder, and laid his face against her hair, holding her to his heart. “My darling, thank God you’re safe.”

Aziz leapt down from an arm-chair, barking anxiously. Fran stirred and woke up. “What on earth—Pen! Good lord, what’s happening now?”

Lady Hart appeared in the doorway, white-faced, with soft, untidy hair. Soon they were all in Fran’s room, Venetia clinging to her sister, James looking increasingly vague and sleepy as Cockrill’s story unfolded itself, his face as grey as a ghost’s. A sergeant came to the door and reported stolidly: “All safe in the servants’ quarters, sir.”

“Good. Well, now, get as many men as you can around the house. Have someone on the landing out here and put a man on the terrace below the windows of this room; and send Troot here.”

“Outside my room?” cried Fran, frightened and bewildered. “Why my room? What is all this about?”

“I’m afraid you’ve been in some danger, young lady,” said Cockie, looking at her almost angrily from beneath his beetling brows; “but don’t worry now. You’ll be safe enough; we’ll look after you.”

Lady Hart sat down heavily on the edge of her granddaughter’s bed. “Cockie—you must tell us what’s happened. You can’t leave us in this uncertainty. Why should Fran be in danger?”

The Inspector produced a tin of tobacco and some papers and rolled one of his wispy cigarettes; he stood there looking down at it, and his nicotined fingers were shaking as they worked. He said at last: “I received a telephone call an hour ago from this house. A woman’s voice spoke to me. She said: ‘Francesca’s next.’”

“A woman—what woman?” cried Fran.

“Well, she said she was the murderer,” said Cockie, and lighted his cigarette.

A second policeman arrived in the doorway of Fran’s room. “You sent for me, sir?”

“Yes, Troot. You’ve been on duty here since I left this evening?”

“Yessir.”

“What were the various people in this house doing at eleven o’clock?”

“At eleven o’clock, sir? The ladies and gentlemen were in the droring-room and the servants they was in the servants’ ’all.”

“All the servants?”

“Yes, sir. Not counting the gardeners, but they live out in the village. All the rest was there, except Mr. Bunsen, sir. I let him in just a few minutes ago; he’d been over to Tenfold, sir.”

“Yes, yes, he had permission to go. But the others were all together?”

“Yessir. A young woman, the housemaid, sir, she’d just come back from sitting with the maid at the Cottage. The rest of the staff waited up to ’ear if there was any titbits of news, like. … I saw Mr. Pendock go down with Miss le May, sir, but I wasn’t to know that he bring the girl back with ’im, and I knew she was a bit nervous; so I went into the kitchen quarters after Mr. Pendock went into the droring-room, just before eleven, to see if she’d got back safe and sound. I was there about ’alf an hour, and nobody left the kitching during that time.”

“You’re certain of it?”

“Oh yes, sir, certain. The talk was rather free, like, over a cup of coffee, and I thought I might learn something if I stayed on. I was there till they went up to bed. After that I made a tour of the ’ouse to see that everything was locked up proper…”

“Yes, yes, never mind about that. Now, Mr. Pendock, where are the telephones in this house?”

“There’s one in the hall,” said Pendock—“that’s the main one; the other two are extensions, one to the library and one to the servants’ hall.”

“Which was under my heye, sir,” said the constable.

“And, Mr. Pendock, where were you and your guests between eleven o’clock and eleven-fifteen to-night—last night,” corrected Cockie, taking out his watch.

“We were all in the drawing-room,” said Pendock thankfully.

“All?”

“Yes, certainly. These four were playing Vingt-et-un, and Lady Hart was writing letters, and I stood talking to them till some time after eleven.”

Cockie manoeuvred into position and clicked on the switch of Fran’s electric fire with his toe. “Oh. Can you be sure of the time?”

Pendock looked doubtful. “Yes, don’t you remember,” said Henry suddenly, “you said it was eleven o’clock and you were going to bed? I glanced at the drawing-room clock as you said it, and it was just a minute or two after eleven.”

“Is that clock right?”

“Yes, it’s one of those electric things.”

“Oh,” said Cockie again, looking anything but pleased. He added to Pendock: “And did you, in fact, go to bed?”

“Yes, I did. I talked for two or three minutes longer—”

“What do you mean by two or three. Two? Or three? Or four or five?”

“I mean two—or three—or four or five. I honestly can’t remember any nearer than that. I stood and talked to them for a few minutes after I had looked at the clock, and then I said good-night and went upstairs.”

“And after that?” said Cockrill to the others.

Lady Hart got up from Fran’s bed and sat down in the big arm-chair. “I was writing letters at the desk. At about half-past eleven or a little later—now don’t start your two or three or five business with
me,
Cockie, because I don’t know nearer than that—I finished my letter and got it passed by Henry and James, and then I sat with the children for a while and watched their game. I don’t know if you know Vingt-et-un, Inspector, but it’s apt to go on for two or three—or four or five—days, if you let it. Henry had been winning rather heavily but he began to lose again, and I persuaded them that it would never end and they’d better go up to bed. We’d had rather a terrible night the night before, and I thought they should all get some sleep and try to forget it.” She added gently, looking at their anxious faces: “Life doesn’t stand still, even when murders and mysteries force themselves into the lives of ordinary people like ourselves. Things seem to go on much as usual, and you talk and eat and get on with your everyday life, because there’s nothing else to be done about it; but it’s all in your mind, and it’s rather a strain. I think that’s why they were playing Vingt-et-un.”