Desmond Collins has fallen under the power of a mysterious severed head he brought back from southeastern China. When his mother Flora sees him in the room where he keeps the head in a glass case, he bursts out with inexplicable remarks, such as “An outcast has no friends!” and “I kept telling them! Death was an extension of life! I kept telling them that!” Flora remarks that Desmond hasn’t acted like that since he was in love with a girl named Carson. He then tells her that she’s discovered his secret. He met a pretty girl recently and can’t find her again, and that’s what he’s upset about. This doesn’t explain who it was Desmond told that “Death was an extension of life!” or why it is important to remember either that idea or the notion that “An outcast has no friends,” but it’s the best Flora is going to get, so she settles for it.
Desmond really is trying to reconnect with a pretty girl. Her name is Daphne Harridge, and he finds her today when he goes to the offices of the Collinsport Star to ask for some issues from October 1803, 37 years ago. His cousin, the 57 year old Daniel Collins, told him that the papers were full of stories about a series of murders that took place in and around the town of Bedford in that month, and that a severed head was mentioned in connection with them. Since Daniel also said that the man who was last known to have the head ran off to Macau and died there, Desmond suspects that it is the same head he brought back from that city. Moreover, a man named Ben Stokes recently died in circumstances that strongly remind Daniel of the Bedford Atrocity, and Desmond now knows that the Head has power over him. So he fears the worst.
Desmond is surprised when Daphne answers the door at the offices of the Star. She explains that she needed a job, and she found a respectable one there. She shows him the file with back issues from October 1803. He finds some with stories about the killings in Bedford, and asks permission to sign them out. When he does, she asks if he is making a joke. He has signed his name “Judah Zachery.” He is disconcerted, then claims that he uses that as a pen name for some writing he does.
Earlier, we had seen Daphne at what we now know was her desk at the newspaper office. Daphne was thinking to herself that she really ought to have found a way to pretend to like Desmond when they met yesterday, since he can be useful to her in the objective she has come to Collinsport to pursue. She wondered how she would meet him again. So when he invites her to the house he and Flora share, a mansion known as Rose Cottage, she gladly accepts.
Daphne has dinner with Desmond, Flora, and Quentin Collins. Quentin is Daniel’s son and the heir to his vast fortune. He turned up at the great house of Collinwood the other day, six months after he and his son Tad were washed off the deck of a ship at sea and presumed dead. He and Tad hiked their way back to the States over a circuitous route that took them all through South America, and Quentin got home just in time to congratulate his wife on her remarriage.
Flora has recently taken an avid interest in the occult. She deals a layout of tarot cards to tell Quentin’s fortune. She is horrified by each card in its turn. She asks Quentin if someone close to him died recently. They just had Ben’s funeral and he has been close to the family for decades, but Quentin gets agitated and insists that no one he loves has died, no one at all.
Back in the newspaper office, Daphne writes in a notebook that she has met the man she came to town to kill. Presumably this is a private notebook; it might be embarrassing if that winds up printed in the paper.
