Heads You Lose by Christianna Brand

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.