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.And the snow was still falling, covering up the prints of her high-heeled shoes…”“I will never speak to you again,” said Venetia steadily.He went and stood humbly before the little group.“I’m sorry, Venetia.I couldn’t help myself.” And to Lady Hart he added: “I realised this long ago.I wanted to protect you.I tried…”“You tried to throw suspicion on to Trotty,” said Fran roughly.“Where are all your fine professions of justice after that?”He moved his head impatiently.“Trotty! Give me credit for a little common sense.It was all of you that suggested that Trotty had done it; and I knew well enough she could never be seriously accused.All I was trying to show was that the thing could have been done after the snow stopped falling, so as to draw attention away from all us innocent ones—and from the guilty.”Lady Hart said gravely: “But why try to protect me, if you believe me guilty?”He looked at her with those dark, mysterious eyes.“How was I to know your reasons? Who was I to be your judge? And could I have denounced someone that Venetia loved so much…?”“You’re denouncing her now,” said Fran swiftly.“Because she’s letting an innocent man be accused in her place.”Lady Hart no longer looked frightened.She got to her feet and stood, holding a hand of each of her granddaughters, gathering her forces about her.“Venetia knows I’m not guilty, and so does Fran.James, do you believe this story?”James came to with a start.“What, me, Lady Hart? Well, no.I don’t think I do.”“You say that from purely sentimental reasons,” said Henry angrily.“Not at all.She was writing a letter to the Income Tax people; it was in answer to one she’d received that afternoon, so she couldn’t have cooked it up before, and she showed us the finished article when she’d done.You can’t write a sensible letter to the Income Tax people when you’ve got murder on your mind.”“This is not a laughing matter,” said Henry shortly.“I never was more serious in my life,” said James.Lady Hart looked around her with something of triumph dawning in her eyes.“And you, Pen? What do you think?”Pendock stood silent in the doorway, in a turmoil of doubt and confusion and pain.He lifted his eyes to hers, and he remembered her white face that night as she had stood by his bed and tried to make him understand that, out in his own garden, a woman was lying murdered; remembered how she had swayed and tottered and finally fallen in a huddled heap on the floor; remembered his own frantic flight down the stairs and across the hall and over the moonlit lawns; remembered the sickening dread that had turned his legs to water as he ran—the dread that he would find Fran, his lovely one, dead in a ditch, with her beautiful head hacked off.With her head hacked off…Bunsen had called up, standing below the window, breathing heavily after his run across the grass, that there was a woman—or had he said, ‘a young lady’?—lying in the garden, down by the drive.He had added: “She seems to be wearing Miss Fran’s hat.”Nothing about the head.Nothing about the head; and yet, he, Pendock, had known about the head—and only Lady Hart could have told him.She had come into his room, and standing by his bedside she had said…She had said: “Bunsen has found a girl—has seen a girl…” And then she had swayed and steadied herself and gone on: “There’s a woman lying in the garden, down by the stream.She seems to be wearing Fran’s hat…”Not a word about the head.And suddenly he knew the truth, the real truth; and the truth was so horrible that something snapped in his brain and he lunged forward and fell, unconscious, into the arms of his guard.Pendock was dreaming again.He dreamt that he walked down the long, familiar tunnel and that at the end, out in the sunshine, the girl was standing, her head bent down and her dark hair hiding her face.He struggled through the blackness towards her, dragging his leaden legs; she did not move, and he was shaken with the urgency of his desire to see her face.He came out of the tunnel and went up to her, and still she did not move.He put his hand beneath her chin to lift her face to the sun; and suddenly both hands were round her throat and beginning to close upon it.There was a sudden sharp pain in his leg, and at once she lifted her face, and it was Fran.“I’m mad!” he thought.“God forgive me, I’m mad, and I’m murdering Fran.I did this to Grace Morland and I did it to Pippi le May and now I’m doing it to Fran and I can’t stop myself.” He had a memory of those bleeding stumps of necks, of the swing of the hatchet and the sickening scythe of the train; and above all, of the body of the girl in the wood, lying so quietly with the flashy little brooch laid neatly on her breast.“Her neck… her neck… I couldn’t get it out of my mind.The thought of it, the sight of it, the terrible smell of the blood…”There was a swirling blackness about him and then the sunlight again, and he had Fran’s throat in his hands and was forcing her head back, squeezing her throat and forcing her head back; he knew he would break her neck.“I must stop,” he thought.“This is Fran—Fran whom I love; I don’t want to hurt her—it’s Fran.” But his hands would not obey.Again there was a sharp, sweet, sickly pain in his leg, and the wave of sanity returned.Grace Morland.Lying in the ditch, made horrible and disgusting by the bright little hat perched on her lolling head.“She shouldn’t have sneered at Fran; she came running up to the house and said she had seen Fran kissing James in the orchard; she said filthy things about her, obscene and filthy things… I killed her, I strangled her and hacked off her ugly head.She shouldn’t have sneered at Fran…”The darkness descended upon him again, great waves of horror and helplessness and despair.He got a sort of backward glimpse of Pippi as he had come upon her at the telephone in the hall; of her staring eyes and suddenly faltering voice, of the feel of his hands about her throat, squeezing, squeezing, squeezing… as he was doing to Fran.But this was Fran, not Pippi: this was Fran.Something behind him in the tunnel was dragging at his legs.“I’m going to kill her,” he thought.“I love her, but I’m going to kill her.I’m mad, I can’t stop myself.” And through the chaos of his mind a thought, straight from the great, good heart, beat like a gong.“I ought to be destroyed.I’m dangerous.I ought to be dead.”Hands were dragging at him.A voice cried: “Shoot! Why don’t you shoot?” A voice said, agonised: “I daren’t; I should hit the girl.” Fran had a revolver, somebody had given her a revolver; voices were crying: “We can’t get him off you.Shoot! Press it against his body and shoot! SHOOT!”He tore the revolver out of her grasp and pointed it round him blindly, not knowing what he did.He held Fran braced against his body; she was calling out to him, pleading with him: “Pen, let me go! Pen, don’t you know me? It’s Fran.Pen, let me go!”He must get to her throat again.His fingers began to curl for the feel of it, for the sweet, warm feel of her throat, Fran’s throat, who would never be his.I ought to be dead.I ought to be destroyed.I’m mad, I’m dangerous, and this is Fran.I ought to be dead.Good and Evil: heart and mind wrestled together in the few black seconds that lasted a hundred years.I, Pendock, I’m mad.I’m dangerous.I’m nothing better than a mad dog; I ought to be destroyed
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