Nest of Vipers

Chapter Five

The Case for the Police

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THE meeting broke up in some disorder. Everybody talked at once and Niobe wept. In the end, when he could make himself heard, Evans suggested that we should all hold our horses until we saw how the cat was going to jump and not worry about pigs in pokes until the pigeons headed for home, and with this splendid collection of metaphors he cleared us all out of his sitting-room and settled down, if the sounds were anything to go by, to a first-class row with Constance Kent. At any rate, no more was said about anybody leaving.

The police came again next day, the day of my arrest. They began by taking me through my story, the same story as I have given you, Dame Beatrice, in these pages. If you are going to help me, you had better know the extent of the case against me. I should not have thought it was strong enough to warrant my arrest, but I suppose it must be, as I am now in custody. The police are not anxious to make mistakes.

I think I had better report the interview as I did the previous one; that is, in the form of question and answer, because it is the form the interview took, and a very uncomfortable occasion it was, because I soon perceived that they had only one thought in their heads. They were certain I had killed Miss Minnie and they believed they knew my motive. The means, of course, were obvious. There remained only the question of opportunity, but they had satisfied themselves about that, too.

The main plank in their platform was the fact that Miss Minnie had been a relative of Mrs Dupont-Jacobson. They had been in contact with the lawyers and had found out that Miss Minnie’s full name was Minnesota Dupont and that she had been Mrs Dupont-Jacobson’s first cousin.

They even admitted that a previous will had named Minnesota Dupont as sole heiress. It turned out, however, that the two women had fallen out when Miss Minnie had joined the Panconscious sect and had promised to leave them her money. Upon this, Mrs Dupont-Jacobson had re-made her will, this time in my favour, so my conversation with the police went as follows:

‘Are you sure you knew nothing of Miss Minnie’s existence before she came here, sir?’

‘I knew nothing of her at all until I returned from Paris. She had then been living in the bungalow here for several months, I believe.’

‘Were you surprised when you found out that, apart from a few bequests to charity, you were Mrs Dupont-Jacobson’s heir?’

‘Naturally I was surprised; overwhelmed, in fact.’

‘Did it not occur to you that there might be persons with a better right to the money and the property than yourself?’

‘No. Why should it? People have a right to dispose of their own things as they wish.’

‘Why did you straightway go to Paris?’

‘Why shouldn’t I go to Paris?’

‘You did not go to escape from claims which were already being made upon you?’

‘Certainly not. I went there to get on with a novel I was writing.’

‘Yet certain claims had been made. Do not deny this, sir. We have proof.’

‘There were a certain number of begging letters. It’s like winning the Pools, I suppose. There’s always somebody ready to cut himself in for a bit of the stuff.’

‘Did one of the letters come from Miss Minnie?’

‘Not to my knowledge.’

‘How do you mean, sir?’

‘When I found I was being pestered, I left instructions that all my correspondence should be examined by Miss Niobe Nutley before it was sent on to Paris. She was to weed out the begging letters and send on only what mattered.’

‘Miss Nutley informs us that there was a letter from a Miss Minnesota Dupont among those she sent on to you.’

‘If there was, I never got it, but I did change my digs a couple of times in Paris and I don’t suppose a concierge at a pension would bother about forwarding anything.’

‘So you do not deny the possibility that Miss Dupont wrote to you, sir?’

‘As a possibility, no, of course I don’t. All I can say is that I never received the letter.’

‘Did you receive very much correspondence while you were in Paris?’

‘Very little; mostly letters from Miss Nutley herself, telling me about the repairs to the house and how the work was progressing.’

‘And none of her letters miscarried?’

‘Well, she always knew where to find me. I always gave her plenty of notice when I was going to change my address.’

‘But in that case, sir, why should Miss Dupont’s letter not have reached you? According to what you have just told me, Miss Nutley would have known where to send it. In fact, she would have known what it was, since you had given her instructions to deal with your correspondence and suppress what you refer to as begging letters. Apparently she did not regard Miss Dupont’s communication as coming under that heading. Moreover, she asserts that she enclosed it with a letter of her own to explain why she was sending it on.’

‘I never received either.’

I may tell you, Dame Beatrice, that at this juncture I asked the Chief Superintendent to send for Niobe, which he was willing to do. I tackled her, but she was absolutely certain that she had sent me Miss Minnie’s letter enclosed with one of her own. Pressed by me, she confessed that I had never replied to it, or had ever given any indication that I had received the letter. She then burst into tears and told the police that they must believe me. She repeated this two or three times, which, as you may imagine, did my case no good at all, but Niobe always does overdo things.

Well, they got rid of her with a few soothing words and then turned their attention to me again. A lot of it was a repetition of our earlier interview and referred to keys, window-fastenings and my dips in the sea. They were particularly pressing on the subject of my invasion of Miss Minnie’s bungalow, and repeated their question. Why, they asked again, had I taken two men with me and not a woman, if I suspected that Miss Dupont had been taken ill? I repeated my former answer, but they made no secret of the fact that it did not satisfy them.

‘You could have taken one of the ladies with you, broken the window and let the lady in at the front door, could you not, sir?’

‘I suppose so, if I’d thought of it, but I’m glad I didn’t. I wouldn’t have wanted a woman to see what was in the bedroom.’

‘So you expected to find a dead woman!’

‘Of course I didn’t, but Miss Minnie was elderly, so the thought that she might have died was not so very unlikely.’

This of course, was all repetition, but I did not change my story. I had no need to, for it was the truth. They tried another tack.

‘When you rescued Mrs Dupont-Jacobson from the sea, had you any reason to think that she would reward you?’

‘Good Lord, no! Why should she? It was nothing.’

‘Your aquatic ability stood her in good stead, sir.’

‘Nonsense. There were a dozen fellows, as well as some girls, who could have done what I did. I happened to spot her more quickly, that’s all. It wasn’t my aquatic ability, as you call it, which mattered much; it was that my job had alerted me to notice swimmers who were in difficulty.’

‘When you knew you had inherited this house, sir, what were your ideas concerning it?’

‘To sell it. I looked on it as a white elephant.’

‘I see. You thought you would realise your assets and live abroad on the proceeds.’

‘I had no intention of living abroad permanently.’

‘What caused you to visit Miss Dupont’s bungalow that morning?’

‘What morning?’

‘Come, now, sir, don’t waste my time.’

‘Oh, I see. A parcel had come and the postman had tried several times to deliver it at The Lodge, so, in the end, he brought it to me.’

‘And then, sir?’

‘I took it across to the bungalow.’

‘Immediately?’

‘Well, no. I put it down by the hall table and forgot all about it until our cleaner reminded me it was there.’

‘So then you took it across, failed to get an answer, returned to get hold of two other gentlemen, Mr Evans and Mr Targe, and broke in. I still don’t quite understand why you thought it necessary to break in, sir. Could you not have taken the parcel back to the house and tried again later?’

‘Yes, I suppose so, but this wasn’t the first time I’d had difficulty in contacting Miss Minnie.’

‘Really, sir?’

‘Yes. I’ve remembered what made me so anxious. A few weeks – or it might have been longer than that – yes, I think it was – a registered letter came for her and the postman could get no answer at the Lodge. The thing needed a signature, of course, so he came up to the house and I obliged and promised to see that Miss Minnie got the letter. When I went over there with it – in pouring rain, I might add – I couldn’t make anybody hear, so I bunged the envelope through the letter-box and left Miss Minnie to find it.’

‘There was no registered envelope among her papers, sir, but that, of course, proves nothing.’

‘So when I took the parcel over and couldn’t get an answer I began to wonder what was wrong, and that’s why I got Evans and Targe to accompany me when I broke in.’

‘I see. Now about the anonymous letters. Nobody has shown us any of them.’

‘I thought Miss Nutley filed the ones that came for her and me.’

‘She claims that she did file them, sir, but that her files had been rifled.’

‘Means she was right, then.’

‘Right about what, sir?’

‘That the ghost scare we had was Miss Minnie snooping around. I told you about that, if you remember. Niobe – Miss Nutley – always thought that it was Miss Minnie.’

‘Why did she think so?’

‘By that time I think we’d heard that Miss Minnie had been related to Mrs Dupont-Jacobson and had had – expectations, don’t they call them?’

‘And was looking for a will of a later date than the one under the terms of which you inherited Weston Pipers, as it is now known, and a very large sum of money?’

‘That’s what Miss Nutley thought, but, if that’s right, the old lady must have been crazy. Actually, I think she was, a bit. They get bees in their bonnets at that age.’

‘And water in their lungs, presumably, Mr Piper. I notice that all the main windows of this house face the park and the lake.’

‘Yes. It’s the best view, so I suppose the architect arranged it that way.’

‘So the bungalow, which is on the back lawn, would be unnoticed most of the time.’

‘The tradesmen would notice it.’

‘And the postman, as you have pointed out. I was thinking of your other tenants.’

‘They wouldn’t have taken much notice, anyway. As I’m sure I’ve made clear, Miss Minnie was a recluse. She did not go out, I believe, except for occasional shopping and even for that she refused lifts in people’s cars unless Miss Barnes happened to be going her way.’

‘So if some ill-disposed person got into the bungalow, overpowered Miss Dupont and dragged her down to the creek and drowned her, especially if this happened at dusk or later, nobody except herself and the murderer need have known anything about it.’

‘Except that I should think any old lady so treated would have yelled the place down.’

‘Not, perhaps, if she were threatened with a knife or with physical violence, sir.’

‘Or if she had a bit of adhesive plaster over her mouth, I suppose,’ I said lightly. He gave me the sort of look which I think must be on the face of a cat when finally it pounces upon the mouse it has been playing with. He signalled to his sergeant, who produced a roll of the plaster.

‘Strange you should mention it, but we all make mistakes, especially murderers,’ he said. But they are wrong, Dame Beatrice. I swear they are wrong. I did not kill Miss Minnie and I have not the slightest idea who did. I can only continue to believe that something in her past life brought about her death and that fate or providence or yourself will take a hand in exonerating me. I never wished her or anybody else any harm. Surely they can’t convict me on such evidence as they have? What does it amount to, after all?

I asked them where they had found the plaster, but they said that I knew, as well as they did, where it had been found. I swear that I had no idea there was a roll of the stuff anywhere on the premises, least of all among my own possessions. Can somebody have framed me? It begins to look uncommonly like it. Nest of Vipers! Somebody, joker or not, knew a thing or two when he gave my house that name!