Nest of Vipers

Chapter Eight

Niobe, All Tears

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‘I HAVE heard some very disturbing news,’ said Dame Beatrice, having opened the door of Niobe’s office in response to a notice which read: Please ring and Enter.

‘Oh, really, Mrs Farintosh? I am sorry to hear that. I hope it does not mean that you want to leave us? Your contract, which I modified greatly, at your request, from our usual three-year agreement, has more than a month to run.’

‘Oh, I shall honour it so far as the rent is concerned, of course. The question is whether I can bring myself to stay. I consider that you ought to have informed me before I took up my tenancy.’

‘Of what, Mrs Farintosh?’

‘That the owner of Weston Pipers, Mr Piper himself, is being remanded in custody under suspicion of having murdered one of the tenants.’

‘But I thought that was common knowledge, Mrs Farintosh. It has been in all the papers. Besides, Mr Piper is innocent. Nobody who knows him has the slightest doubt about that.’

‘But if he did not do this dreadful thing, that only makes matters worse.’

‘How so? – oh, do please sit down.’

‘The murderer may still be living here. In that case nobody is safe,’ said Dame Beatrice, seating herself and lowering her voice.

‘The murderer was a burglar or a tramp. You need have no fear that he is still on the premises,’ said Niobe sharply.

‘Then why has Mr Piper been arrested?’

‘Oh, there were suspicious circumstances, of course, but I am sure they will all be cleared up at the trial. It is the time of waiting that is so trying. I need – I need your sympathy, Mrs Farintosh, not a threat to leave me. I am having to cope all alone. It is not easy for me, this period of bearing full responsibility. I am accountable to Mr Piper – to Chelion—’ her eyes filled with tears – ‘while he is in this dreadful predicament. So far, I have been able to prevail upon most of the tenants to stay, and Mr Moore and his – er – his wife have even returned from America – he has been on a lecture tour over there, you know – and are taking up their option on their flat.’

‘I have met Mr and Mrs Moore, of course. They are a charming couple.’

‘He is the distinguished Canadian-Irish poet,’ Niobe wiped her eyes and essayed a smile.

‘Is he a descendant of the Thomas Moore who wrote the delightful Irish Melodies and was Lord Byron’s biographer?’

‘I could not say, but I should think it very likely.’

‘Did the Moores know that murder was committed here while they were away? It might have affected their willingness to return if they did know, don’t you think?’

‘No, I don’t,’ said Niobe shortly. ‘The burglar or tramp, or whatever, killed that old lady in the bungalow, not in the house. The house is completely protected.’

‘Oh, but I was told that the poor woman was drowned in the sea.’

‘Oh, well, yes, of course, but the body was found in the bungalow. That is one of the reasons why the police thought—’ she sniffed dolorously – ‘they thought Chelion had done it. They said that an outsider would have left the body in the sea so that the outgoing tide could carry it away. We have thirty-foot tides here, you see. The water comes almost up to the lawn at high tide and then goes out ever so far.’

‘So I have noticed. You have not resolved my apprehensions. The house itself may be burglar-proof, but that is beside the point. One does not spend the whole of one’s time behind a locked door. You not only omitted to tell me that Mr Piper is a suspected murderer; you even allowed me to rent the bungalow for my manservant.’

‘You suggested it yourself! It was for your own convenience that you housed him in the bungalow. Good heavens,’ cried Niobe, beginning to weep again, ‘if every house which has had a dead body in it were never to be lived in again, more than half the population would be homeless!’

‘A dead body is one thing, Miss Nutley. A murdered body is quite another. You should have told me.’ (I am being completely unscrupulous, thought Dame Beatrice, but murder is not a thing to be too nice about.)

‘Well, I’m sure I’m very sorry you were not told, but I have a responsibility to Mr Piper – to Chelion – while this wretched time goes on. If everybody thought as you do, he would be coming back to an empty house, his livelihood gone,’ Niobe began to weep again.

‘Oh, the rents are his livelihood, are they? I was given to understand that he was a wealthy man in his own right,’ said the unsympathetic listener.

‘I don’t know who told you so, but, be that as it may, I am still responsible for the lettings,’ snapped Niobe, dabbing at her eyes. ‘Besides, that wretched dead woman was attempting to claim the property.’

‘It is interesting that all the tenants are writers. Is that merely a coincidence or is it an idiosyncrasy of Mr Piper’s?’ asked Dame Beatrice, on a different note.

‘As a matter of fact,’ said Niobe, who appeared to be relieved by the apparent change of subject, ‘I selected the tenants myself. Chelion had nothing to do with choosing them. He is an embryo author himself, you see, so I thought he would like to be surrounded by his own kind.’

‘An embryo author?’

‘By that I mean so far he has not had anything published.’

‘It must be very frustrating to get what I believe are called pink slips.’

‘That hasn’t happened – yet. Chelion is still working on his first novel.’

‘Oh, I see. So, to encourage him, you filled his house with other writers.’

‘All of whom are successful in their own sphere. Psychologically a very sound idea, don’t you think? I mean, you ought to know. You represented yourself in your letter as a contributor to psychiatric journals.’

‘Talking of letters, Miss Nutley, one or two of my fellow-tenants have referred to some unpleasant, unsigned missives which people here have received from time to time.’

‘Poor old Miss Minnie wrote them,’ said Niobe in a positive tone.

‘Can you be sure of that?’

‘Well, no more have been written since she died. Proof positive, I should say.’

‘Hardly proof positive, I would have thought. Did Mr Piper receive one?’

‘I don’t know. He has never said so.’ (Lie number one, thought Dame Beatrice.)

‘You yourself—?’

‘Oh, yes, I got one. I’ve destroyed it, of course.’

‘Oh, of course. Such pernicious things are apt to contain a grain of truth, are they not? In that case, to destroy them is the only possible course if one wants to restore one’s peace of mind.’

‘Mine did not contain any truth.’ Tears came into her eyes again. (How prophetic were her parents at her baptism! Or can it be that it pleases her to live up to her name? thought Dame Beatrice.) ‘It accused me of being Chelion’s mistress,’ Niobe went on, attempting a watery smile.

‘Oh, dear! How very annoying for you.’

‘We were engaged to be married before he came into money, but of course I released him when I realised how wealthy he was. There has been nothing between us since. As soon as I knew what had happened I offered him his freedom and he took it and went off to Paris.’ Here she broke down completely, put her head on the writing-table at which she was sitting and sobbed aloud. Dame Beatrice pursed up her beaky little mouth and waited until the paroxysm was over. Then she said:

‘I will not play cat and mouse with you any longer. I am here on official business. One of your tenants recognised me and, so far, has kept his own counsel. Another I have confided in. Now I feel it is your turn.’

Niobe, tear-stained, swollen-eyed and unattractively blotched, raised her head. ‘My turn for what?’ she asked.

‘To be put in the picture. As a psychiatrist – oh, yes, that is true enough – I entertain certain doubts about the wisdom of the county police in having arrested and charged Mr Piper, so I have decided to look into the case on behalf of the Home Office.’

‘But Chelion doesn’t plead – what do they call it? – diminished responsibility, does he?’ asked Niobe, staring at her visitor out of red-rimmed eyes.

‘No. He claims that he is completely innocent of the charge and I am inclined – I go no further than that – I am inclined to believe him now that I have his own account of the matter.’

There was no doubt that Niobe was able to recover quickly from her bouts of weeping. She looked alert, wary and interested.

‘Well, this is somewhat of a surprise and I find it rather disconcerting,’ she said. ‘I had no idea that he was in need of a psychiatrist, especially of one who is employed to visit prisons.’

This statement was made in so venomous a tone that it seemed she thought it best to qualify it by saying, ‘One feels so helpless when one comes up against the police and the law.’

‘I suppose so, yes. Most unfortunately there is a very strong piece of evidence against him which cannot be ignored or glossed over.’

‘I suppose you refer to the fact that Miss Minnie may have had claims upon Mrs Dupont-Jacobson’s fortune,’ said Niobe, nodding soberly and then shaking her head.

‘Exactly. It makes the case against him look very dark.’

‘I know.’ Niobe’s eyes filled with tears again, but this time she did not break down. ‘And, of course,’ she added, ‘she was drowned in the sea, and Chelion was the only one of us who ever used this little beach for bathing.’

‘Yes,’ said Dame Beatrice, not choosing at this stage to mention Miss Minnie’s sea-water baths and curious to know whether Niobe would do so. If she did not, it could be that she did not know of them, but the gardener, after all, was her servant and no doubt she would have kept an eye on his activities. There was a long pause. Dame Beatrice saw it as a deliberate attempt on Niobe’s part to force her to make the next move. She decided to make it. ‘Yes,’ she said again. ‘I wonder at what time of day or night Miss Minnie was drowned?’

‘Day – or night? Well, it must have been at night, mustn’t it?’

‘Why so?’

‘Well, I mean – well, if it had been done in daylight, surely some of us would have known about it.’

‘Will you explain that, please?’

‘I should have thought it was obvious. Most of the windows in the sitting-rooms of these flats look out on the park and the lake, of course, but there are some from which the lawn, the bungalow, and the beach are visible. Miss Minnie was fully dressed, I understand, when the body was found. Somebody, surely, would have seen her entering the sea if she had done so by daylight.’

‘Entering the sea? Voluntarily, you mean?’

‘Well, hardly, considering the battering of her head, poor thing. But surely, as it must have been murder, somebody would have heard her protesting, perhaps screaming, or would even have seen her dragged towards the beach.’

‘Her protests and her screams could equally well have been heard in the dark, could they not?’ (So the possibility of sea water baths taken inside the bungalow was not going to be mentioned, thought Dame Beatrice. Perhaps, though, after all, Niobe knew nothing of the buckets of sea water scooped up by Penworthy and peddled by him to the rheumatic old lady; or perhaps she had so much guilty knowledge of them that she was not prepared to mention them.)

Dame Beatrice did not wait for an answer to her question, but continued: ‘At what time did Miss Minnie retire for the night?’

‘Oh, all sorts of times. I have seen her light go off at nine and I have known it to be still on at two in the morning.’ (So you kept a watch on the bungalow, thought Dame Beatrice.)

‘I have been told that you suspected her of breaking into this house at night,’ she said.

‘Yes. There were complaints, so I had all the downstair windows made secure, as well as the doors.’

‘Very wise. But why, Miss Nutley—’ here Dame Beatrice made her own dramatic pause – ‘why do you follow her example?’

‘What do you mean? My rooms are in the house by right. I do not need to break in!’

‘Not into the house, but into some of the tenants’ rooms.’

‘I have never done such a thing! Well, not deliberately. Who told you that I had? I suppose somebody has shown you one of those abominable letters! As a matter of fact, there you have the grain of truth you yourself mentioned. I did inadvertently enter a room that was not my own. I mistook it for Chelion’s, that is all. I went to look over his clothes to see whether there was mending to be done or anything to be sent to the cleaners.’

‘A strange mistake, surely, since Mr Piper’s rooms were on the ground floor and the room I am told you entered was upstairs.’

‘I was confused. I hardly knew what I was doing. You have no idea of the shock I had when poor Chelion was arrested.’

‘Yes, shock can have strange effects. What caused two of your tenants to leave Weston Pipers?’

Niobe did not appear surprised by the change of subject.

‘Billie Kennett and Elysée Barnes?’ she said. ‘I think they found the rent a little above their means. I had to let them go, although their lease had quite a long time to run.’

‘They were not the victims of persecution, by any chance?’

‘Persecution? What do you mean?’

‘Were they happy together?’

‘So far as I know.’

‘Sometimes, Miss Nutley, an unhappily married woman can become extremely envious of the happily unmarried, especially those of her own sex. I have known cases.’

‘Some people would rather be unhappily married than not married at all.’

‘That also is true. Is it certain that Miss Minnie had no attachments?’

‘So far as I know, she had none, except that elderly man who attended the inquest, but he could hardly be called an attachment.’

‘Why do you say that?’

‘He was merely the head of that religious sect for which, I believe, she edited some sort of magazine.’

‘How do you think the murderer actually drowned his victim?’

‘I would rather not speculate. It is a horrid subject for thought, just simply horrible.’

‘As the body was fully clothed, she could hardly have been drowned in the bath.’

‘Of course not. She was drowned in the sea. He overpowered her – she was elderly and frail – and plunged her in.’

‘I still think it was a very stupid murder. If it happened as you suggest – and of course you realise that the suggestion implicates Mr Piper, as it did when you made it to the police – why on earth was not the body left in the sea? – a point we have already touched on. In that case, don’t you see, it would have been so easy to make it look like suicide. It would have been worth the risk, for in the case of anybody known to be somewhat eccentric, suicide would have been taken for granted.’

‘The murderer must have had a reason,’ said Niobe, ‘but we shall never know what it was.’

‘Oh, yes, we shall, Miss Nutley. The murder had to look like murder. A verdict of suicide would not have suited the murderer’s plans at all.’

‘That does not make sense to me.’

‘What other explanation can you offer?’

‘Explanations of other people’s dreadful deeds are beyond me. And now, Mrs Farintosh, I am a very busy person.’

‘Of course. I thought you might like to know that there may be help at hand for Mr Piper.’

‘Help? Just to get him into Broadmoor instead of Dartmoor? A distinction without a difference!’

‘Ah, well, we shall see. My researches are beginning to make certain matters clearer. Oh, one other thing: did Miss Minnie ever have visitors?’

‘Not to my knowledge.’

‘Not even at night?’

Niobe changed colour. She looked both angry and frightened.

‘Have you been questioning my tenants?’ she demanded.

‘Certainly.’

‘Then I must ask you to go. Enough mud has been stirred up already.’

‘And enough sea-sand, too. I understand that grains of it were found in the nasal passages, around the dentures and under the tongue of the corpse.’

‘Your remarks are revolting!’

‘The truth often is. I could cite you many instances.’

‘Please go. You frighten me. Leave my house and take your manservant – if that’s what he is – with you.’

‘Well, he is not a plain-clothes police officer,’ said Dame Beatrice, ‘although I think that is hardly what you inferred.’ She cackled with real mirth. ‘Well, Miss Nutley, I understand your feelings. I still think it was a stupid crime. If a verdict of suicide would not have fitted in with the murderer’s plans, would it not have been much simpler to have murdered her inside the bungalow and left the body there? Obviously the murderer knew how to get in. That is why I asked about visitors.’

‘Now that I come to remember,’ said Niobe reluctantly, ‘I believe you have hit on the explanation. I found my gardener carrying buckets of sea water up to the bungalow door. He said they were for Miss Minnie’s sea water baths.’

‘Ah, that would explain everything,’ said Dame Beatrice in a tone of deep satisfaction. ‘But had you never thought of it before?’

‘Never. I have been so confused and so upset that my normal faculties simply have not been functioning. Well, I am set on your leaving us, but I had no intention of deceiving you. I thought everybody knew about Chelion’s arrest and the awful accusation against him, yet you say you did not know. Now you admit—’

‘I did not say I did not know. I said you should have told me when you let me the rooms, and particularly when you let me the bungalow for my manservant.’

‘That is not the way to do business, and, if you knew, you knew, so there is no need to reproach me. Had I realised that you were connected with the police—’

‘With the Home Office.’

‘What is the difference? If I had known what you were, I would never have let to you at all. I am the one who was deceived.’

‘So I am rejected and ejected and, withal, not without a stain on my character,’ said Dame Beatrice to Laura, giving her a ferocious grin.

‘How come? Though I’m glad to have you back.’

Dame Beatrice gave the substance of her conversation with Niobe.

‘Well, I should think you’d expect her to chuck you out after you had led her up the garden with all that rot about how she ought to have told you about the murder, and then let her know that you’d known about it all along.’

‘True. If I were able to feel contrition I should feel it now. Incidentally, she had already turned me out before we reached the last stages.’

‘But I suppose there was method in your madness, as usual. Did you want to get slung out?’

‘Sometimes summary dismissal is preferable to a long-drawn-out departure accompanied by tears.’

‘Oh, Lord! She is Niobe both by name and nature, eh? So what’s the next job? Those two girls who, so your letters inform me, have fled the joint, I suppose.’

‘How right you always are! Yes, indeed. They are now the only pebbles left on my beach.’

‘Oh, well, you won’t need to stub your toe on them, then. Do you know where to find them?’

‘I traced Miss Kennett through the newspaper she works for. I sent a letter to her in care of the editor, he passed it on and I have had an answer from her with her new address. She has invited me to call on Sunday and where she is we shall also find Miss Barnes, no doubt.’

This did not turn out to be the case. Billie herself opened the front door to them.

‘Oh, yes,’ she said, ‘Dame Beatrice, isn’t it? And Mrs Gavin? Oh, yes, do come in. Sorry Elysée isn’t here. I believe you wanted to see both of us.’