Heads You Lose by Christianna Brand Read Free Book Online Page A

dangerous, to be lightly put into words. They stiffened at Pippi’s crude question. Pendock said: “Hasn’t the Inspector told you?”
    “He asked me a devil of a lot of questions which didn’t seem to me to make sense at all. How could I be expected to know anything about some hat of Fran’s?”
    But perhaps she had known, thought Venetia, and the horrors of the night seemed to lift like a dark cloud from about her heart. Here was escape from the ghastly conclusions of the early hours of the morning, when life and humour and a sense of proportion had been at their lowest ebb. Grace might have told Pippi, her cousin; she might have told Trotty, her old maidservant. Trotty might have told half the village. Perhaps dozens of people had known that Grace Morland had said that she wouldn’t be seen dead in the hat; now, in the dear, familiar white-panelled dining-room, with its warmth and beauty, the thin winter sunshine streaming in through the high french windows, she could suddenly see that it might have been all a coincidence. Somehow or other, perhaps to spite Fran, Miss Morland had got hold of the hat; and coming back from the house with it, had been overtaken and murdered and her body thrown into the culvert at the side of the drive. No need for the ghastly, shadowy suspicions that last night she had felt she couldn’t tell even Henry about; no need for any of their beloved ones to be involved; all clear, all easy, all simply explicable. She turned eagerly to Pippi le May.
    “Didn’t Miss Morland mention to you or to Trotty that Fran had this particular hat? Miss Morland didn’t like it; she thought it was frivolous and silly, and her last words to Pen at her door were something to that effect… I expect her mind would be full of it and she’d say something to Trotty about it as soon as she got into the house…”
    “I can’t say, not having been there at the time,” said Pippi indifferently. “She certainly didn’t mention it to me, and Trotty says she’s heard nothing about it. Does it make any difference?”
    Lady Hart could see that Fran was distressed by all this talk of the hat. Fran felt it shocking and dreadful that her comic little hat should have been put to so horrible a purpose, as though she were in some way to blame because Grace Morland was dead and made ludicrous, poor silly woman. She said, to change the subject: “Why are you down here, Pippi? I thought you were in a revue?”
    “I got a few days off,” said Pippi airily. “We’ve got a new idea—we swap the turns about so that it’s never the same on consecutive nights; it’s pretty hot, actually, because people come time after time, knowing that they’ll see the same artists and some of the same numbers, but always some different ones. The best of it is that it doesn’t make much difference if one or other of the cast is away, so it’s fairly easy to wangle a day or two off, if it’s absolutely necessary.”
    They could not help reflecting that it could hardly be absolutely necessary for Pippi to wangle a day or two off to pay a visit to her cousin Grace. She spent most of her summer holidays there, as she had done since she had been a schoolgirl; for Pigeonsford village is not very far from the sea, and Grace had a baby car and a month with her cost Pippi nothing. But, in the depth of winter, with nothing more gay than a Village Institute Party in Tenfold or tea at the Vicarage…
    James Nicholl had known her better than any of them, in the old days, for she had always been very willing to go sailing with him in the Greensleeves and to stay and drink beer in the pub when the Pigeonsford party had gone decorously home to dinner; perhaps it was this old familiarity that emboldened him to say suddenly: “Er—Pippi. What were you doing last night between half-past ten and eleven?”
    Pippi put down her coffee-cup with a little clonk; but it was the briefest possible moment before she said coolly, “I got bored with Grace