Nest of Vipers

Chapter Nine

Billie and the Witch

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‘I EXPECT you yourself can tell me anything I need to know,’ said Dame Beatrice, when the three of them were seated in a tiny room which overlooked a scrap of green hardly large enough to be called a lawn, ‘unless you would prefer to wait until Miss Barnes comes in.’

‘She won’t,’ said Billie, her square face firmly set and her eyes full of misery. ‘She’s left me. She went off yesterday with a man.’

‘Would you rather I came back another day, I wonder?’

‘No, it wouldn’t make any difference. It’s about this business at The Vipers, I think you said. Don’t know that I can tell you much about it. We got out before any of it happened.’

‘So I understand.’

‘Anonymous letters, you know. Why should anybody bother to throw filth about? We had no enemies. We did nobody any harm.’

‘I am surprised that in these days you paid any attention to the letters.’

‘I wouldn’t have done. It was Elysée who couldn’t take what they dished out. I know why, now, of course. She was afraid of losing this bloke she’s gone off with. She must have thought he’d opt out if the facts of our – well, our friendship – came his way.’

‘Did you know, while you were living at Weston Pipers, that this man existed?’

‘Yes, and I’ve always been prepared. What’s your connection with Weston Pipers, anyway? What’s the Home Office got to do with Chelion Piper?’

‘Well, nobody wants a miscarriage of justice, surely?’

‘Personally, I couldn’t care less. I don’t suppose there’s such a thing as justice in this world and, as I don’t believe in the next one, it goes for that, too.’

‘I was referring to the law. It has its own interpretation of the word. From what you saw of Mr Piper during your stay at the mansion, what opinion did you form concerning his character?’

‘Ah,’ said Billie, her sombre expression settling into easier lines, ‘now that’s a question I can answer. I’ve thought about him a lot since he was arrested, and I feel perfectly certain he didn’t drown that old woman. My job is reporting crime, so I tag along to all the big trials. There’s always a public for details of murder, rape, arson and so forth. Same public as screams its stupid head off at dirty little jokes and sexy innuendo, I dare say. How I loathe and despise it!’

‘So you have attended several trials for murder,’ said Dame Beatrice, stemming the flow before it could develop into what she suspected might become a torrent.

‘That’s what I’m saying. I’ve seen a number of murderers in the dock and this Piper ought not to be one of them.’

‘Can you produce chapter and verse?’

‘No. One gets an impression, that’s all. Actually I had very little to do with him. All the business dealings were with the bitch.’

‘With Miss Nutley?’

‘Yes, if you prefer to call her that. My other name for her is Nut Case.’

‘Really? A play upon her surname?’

‘More of a play upon her nature. I called her a bitch just now, but not in the sense that most women call other women bitches. Niobe Nutley was a cringing, whining, please-don’t-kick-me little whelpess who’d attached herself to Piper in the most sickening way you can imagine. Of course, you never saw them together, did you?’

‘No, I had not that affecting experience. My impression of Miss Nutley was of a hard-headed businesswoman with unexpectedly sensitive tear-ducts.’

Billie’s heavy, sardonic expression had vanished. She lifted her head and laughed aloud in an unaffected shout of amusement.

‘I say,’ she said, ‘would you mind if I used that at some time? It’s rather good.’

‘I resign the copyright to you.’

‘Unexpectedly sensitive tear-ducts! Yes, they’re so very sensitive that one suspects the tears may be of the crocodile variety. I mean, it was because of what she told the police that Piper got arrested.’

‘If you were not there at the time, how do you know that?’

‘Through my job. I wasn’t sent along to cover the case, but I knew the chap on our paper who got the assignment. Niobe seems to have spread herself on the subject of sea bathing and Minnie’s expectations under Chelion’s patroness’s will.’

‘Did you see anything of Miss Minnie while you were at Weston Pipers?’

‘No. She was an unsociable old pussycat and didn’t mix with the sinful likes of us. Elysée used to say she was sorry for her, but my view is that you choose your own way of life and, if you aren’t cut out to be a mixer, why try to mix? In a way I envied the old girl her independence. It’s not much fun, really and truly, being a slave to another person, whether it’s lover, husband, elderly invalid, or widower father. I’ve experienced most of all that in my time – except the husband angle, of course.’

‘You must have a strong protective instinct and a very large heart.’

‘Protective instinct, yes, I believe I have. Large heart – well, not that you’d notice. I’ve hated most of the people I’ve had to protect.’

‘Do you think Miss Nutley has ever felt protective towards Mr Piper?’

‘Lord, no! Do you? After all, it seems to have been mostly her evidence which landed him in the soup.’

‘As you pointed out, I have never seen them together, so I cannot express an opinion.’

‘If you ask me, I sum her up as a woman wailing for her demon lover, and when she can’t get him she’d just as soon see him in hell.’

‘Or in the condemned hold?’

‘Yes, if you like,’ said Billie, giving Dame Beatrice a very straight glance. Dame Beatrice paid it the compliment of asking a direct personal question.

‘Are you perhaps attributing to Miss Nutley sentiments which may apply in your own case?’

‘No,’ said Billie, without showing the slightest sign either of surprise or resentment. ‘There are two kinds of love. Mine’s the second kind. Men do make passes at Elysée, but I’ve never really minded until now.’

‘Do you know the man who has eloped with Miss Barnes?’

‘Yes, and if I met him down a dark alley I’d stick a knife in his ribs.’

‘That contradicts your previous assertion, surely?’

‘I don’t think so. If I believed Elysée would be happy with him, I’d give them my blessing; but she won’t be happy with him. He’s a rat.’

‘Oh, really? That still seems to me a little like wishful thinking.’

‘I expect you’ve met him if you’ve been staying at the Vipers,’ said Billie, ignoring this sally. ‘He’s Cassie McHaig’s stand-off half, Polly Hempseed. I knew he made passes at Elysée, but I never really thought he’d be the one she’d fall for. I believe he’s only run off with her to score off Cassie. Mistress McHaig is quite a good sort, but kind of heavy in the hand, I’d say. They were always rowing. He thought Cassie was bossy and narrow-minded (which she is) and she despised the way he made his money. So do I, in a way, but we poor journalists have to live, I suppose, although there doesn’t always seem much point in it.’

‘He wrote his Woman’s Page with tongue in cheek, I was told. Perhaps that softens the evidence against him.’

‘I think it makes him even more of a heel.’

‘Did you know that Miss Minnie took hot sea-water baths?’ asked Dame Beatrice.

‘Oh,’ said Billie, ‘so that’s how it was done!’

‘It seems a likely theory. I have presented the police with it.’

‘But, if they accept it, isn’t that enough to clear Piper? I mean, if she was drowned in her own sea water, Piper is no more suspect than anybody else, is he?’

‘That is what I have attempted to convey to the authorities.’

‘Bully for you! I mean, it’s so much more likely, isn’t it, than that she was dragged out of the bungalow down to the beach and held under water and then her body taken back to her bedroom and coshed. The coshing is the hardest part to understand. I mean, anybody can be excused for committing murder if they have reason enough, but a gratuitous assault on a dead body doesn’t seem like the action of a sane person, does it?’

‘In my book, as Laura here would put it, no murderer is a sane person, Miss Kennett.’

‘That’s too sweeping altogether, Dame Beatrice. Surely there might be the best of reasons why certain people should not go on living.’

‘Those people would not be murdered; they would be executed.’

‘The result would be the same. I think you’re splitting hairs.’

‘So long as I do not split heads, I am still on the right side of the law. If Mr Hempseed is as unworthy as you think him to be, what was his attraction for your friend?’

‘Well, just that she wanted a man, I suppose. Besides, she and I had begun to get on each other’s wick a bit. It works that way sometimes in friendships such as ours. It would have settled itself in time, but Elysée didn’t give it a chance. All the same, although I’m as sick as mud with her, I’d have her back tomorrow if she’d come, and there would be no recriminations, either. My firm belief is that people can’t help what they do. We’re all conditioned to make certain mistakes, and we make them. I think Elysée is the most sickening little ass to have fallen for this lonely hearts adjuster, but time will show.’

‘It seemed to me,’ said Dame Beatrice, ‘that only two people at Weston Pipers were what I (possibly in my ignorance) would call happy.’

‘You mean Irelath and little Sumatra, don’t you? Yes, I’m sure you’re right. Niobe is as miserable as sin, poor cow, Polly has gone off with Elysée because he was always at loggerheads with Cassie, who must be feeling suicidal at his defection, and, of course, long ago, I should guess, the Evans couple became fed up with each other, but can’t quite face up to a divorce. I’ll tell you something else, but it’s not for publication. If I had to pick the most likely murderer from among the Viperites, I’d plump for Mandrake Shard every time.’

‘His height and his physique might be against him, don’t you think?’

‘Oh, I think not. He’s probably very wiry and tough, in spite of his size, and Minnie was an old lady and probably frail.’

‘I do not see him as a violent character, although in his capacity as blackmailer and anonymous letter-writer he is far from harmless.’

‘Blackmailer?’ Billie had changed colour. ‘How did you get on to that? He tried it on us, you know – on Elysée and me – and, in the end, of course, it got her down and she pestered me to agree that we’d leave and find somewhere else to live.’

‘Ah, yes,’ said Dame Beatrice, ‘I was under the impression that you left Weston Pipers because of an anonymous letter. I have the best reasons for believing that I know who wrote it, but it was not Mr Shard that time.’

‘It wasn’t?’

‘No.’

‘How do you know it wasn’t?’

‘Because the author of it confessed to being the writer.’

‘Any use to ask who it was?’

‘No.’

‘Well, did this person write the other letters as well?’

‘I think not. I think the letter you received was – and will be – the only one to emanate from this particular source.’

‘Oh,’ said Billie, ‘I suppose it was that poisonous cat Constance Kent, then. She tried to give me a heart-to-heart once, but I soon showed her the door – with a carving-knife in my hand, I don’t mind admitting. I could soon have sorted her out, anyway. It didn’t need threats. I knew she had had an illegit. kid and murdered it.’

‘Mrs Evans?’

‘None other. I covered the case, so I know. Of course she didn’t know me, but I recognised her as soon as I met her at Vipers. It was a local case and I was only a cub reporter at the time. It was before she married Evesham, of course. They’ve only been married about five years. She got off on the score of diminished responsibility and, anyway, they didn’t really prove that it was a wilful act, so the beaks took the broad, charitable view. She changed her name to the one she uses for her books, but I always thought it was an odd thing to pick as her pseudonym the name of another child-murderess.’

‘There are doubts about the first Constance Kent.’

‘Oh, well, let it go. Is there anything else I can do for you?’

‘Only one thing – and you may not be willing to do it.’

‘You mean I haven’t been of any help, so far, but if I find out where Polly and Elysée are living, you’d like the address. Very well. My personal feelings are of much less importance than that Piper should be cleared. I don’t hold much of a brief for men – I’ve worked with them too long to have many illusions about them – but Piper’s all right and he is certainly no murderer of old ladies.’

‘Did you know that, among all the inhabitants of Weston Pipers, your friend Miss Barnes probably knew Miss Minnie best?’

‘Elysée?’

‘Yes. I understand that, when she had the use of your car, she was accustomed to giving Miss Minnie a lift into the town.’

‘First I’ve heard of it.’

‘Would you have objected?’

‘Of course not. Elysée knew that, or she would have mentioned it.’

‘May I ask a question which, without your permission, I have no right to ask?’

‘If you’re going to ask about my relationship with Elysée—’

‘Oh, gracious me, no! It is only those relationships which lead to crime that concern me.’

‘Love is love,’ said Billie, tritely and unanswerably. ‘You don’t go in search of it. It finds you, and, when it does, you’ve had it – in both senses. Never mind that. What’s your question?’

‘I will put it bluntly. Did you leave Weston Pipers because you could not pay the rent, and not because of anonymous letters?’

‘No. We shared it fifty-fifty, like the housekeeping and holidays. We managed all right. Has anybody suggested we left in arrears?’

‘No, nothing of that sort.’

‘Then why did you ask?’

‘To clear up a small point.’

‘Of course,’ said Billie, ‘there was a scale of charges, you know. Our rent was a good deal less than the first-floor people paid. I say, I rather wish Elysée had just mentioned that she was in the habit of giving Miss Minnie a lift in the car. Seems funny that she didn’t tell me, now I come to think of it. We always told each other everything.’

‘So often a disastrous policy. In any case, I take it that Miss Barnes did not tell you that she intended to elope.’

‘Only at the very last minute, but, as I told you, I wasn’t all that much surprised. The only surprise I felt was that I couldn’t understand her choosing Polly Hempseed.’

‘Perhaps there was no choice.’

‘You don’t mean that in quite the way it sounds,’ said Billie shrewdly. ‘What’s the double entendre?’

‘Not that, exactly. Miss Minnie seems to have been a woman of mystery so far as Weston Pipers was concerned. Can anything have passed between her and Miss Barnes which led to Miss Barnes’s going away with Mr Hempseed?’

‘Sounds very far-fetched to me.’

‘I attach significance to it for one reason only; that Miss Barnes made no mention to you of giving Miss Minnie the lifts, yet Mr Piper, by his own admission, knew of them.’

‘Well, he was at home, while I was at work. Elysée only had the car two or three days a week, anyway, and I don’t suppose Miss Minnie went shopping every one of those days. I don’t think there’s anything much in what you’re saying.’

‘Did Miss Barnes ever go out in the evenings?’

‘Without me, you mean? Chelion took her to the pictures once or twice in the town, but otherwise the only times she was out in the evenings was if she had a late modelling session. That happened quite a number of times while we were at Pipers.’

‘Not a bad scout, that slightly uncouth and very unhappy blighter,’ said Laura, when they had left the house. ‘Anyway, for both their sakes I hope she never does meet this Hempseed down a dark alley.’

‘She would hardly be likely to have a carving-knife with her.’

‘That was an interesting sidelight on Mrs Constance Kent, wasn’t it? Do you believe the story?’

‘Yes. I had personal experience of the case and an expert opinion was called for.’

‘You mean you actually talked to Constance Kent Evans? But that means she must have recognised you when you turned up at Weston Pipers.’

‘Oh, I think she did, but she was no more than a girl when the case came up and I expect she hoped that her appearance had sufficiently changed for me not to recognise her.’

‘A bit thick that she should moralise about those two harmless girls when her own slate was hardly what you’d call clean.’

‘Oh, guilty people often attempt to blacken others in order to shed some of the load.’

‘So, in your opinion, she did deliberately murder the baby?’

‘Opinion is not fact. Let us abandon the subject. I shall be glad to learn Miss Barnes’s new address.’

‘You think she’ll get in contact with Miss Kennett and let her know where she is?’

‘I think Miss Kennett believes that she will, and she is in a better position to judge than we are. Besides, she may well be right in her estimation of Mr Hempseed’s character and motives. She is deeply hurt at the moment, but her work has probably made her a pretty good judge of people and particularly of men, since the courts cater, in all respects, much more for that sex than for women.’

‘Was she of any help to you? She seemed to think she wasn’t.’

‘She took kindly to the theory that Miss Minnie was drowned in sea water but not in open water.’

‘What does that prove?’

‘Nothing.’

‘There’s only one thing against the theory, you know.’

‘Yes, I do know and I have given thought to it. You mean that if Miss Minnie was drowned while she was taking a bath, the body would hardly have been found fully clothed.’

‘Or on the bed, come to that.’

‘As I say, I have given thought to these things and have attempted to make a reconstruction of what must have happened. I do not believe that Miss Minnie was drowned either in the sea or in her bath. The buckets of sea water were left to settle, so that any sand might fall to the bottom of the pail. The murderer had only to watch the pails being delivered to the bungalow by Penworthy to know that the means of drowning Miss Minnie were to hand and would remain so for several hours.’

‘You mean he simply broke in and held her head down in one of the buckets?’

‘And then carried the body, which would have been fully clothed, into the bedroom and laid it on the bed while he (or she, of course) spied out the lie of the land. The plan, I am sure, was then to have transported the body to the beach and put it into the water to indicate suicide. I hold this opinion despite the discussion I had with Niobe Nutley.’

‘Then why on earth wasn’t that done? If it had been, a charge of murder would never have been brought and poor old Minnie would still have been got out of the way.’

‘Dear me,’ said Dame Beatrice, ‘the whole point was not only to get Miss Minnie out of the way, but to involve Mr Piper. Almost at the last moment, I think, the murderer saw his (or her) error. A suicide would never do. It still had to look like what it was – murder. There was probably a moment of indecision; almost, if not quite, a moment of panic. Then, as a last resort, I think the murderer took up the remaining buckets of sea water and soused the whole of the body (and, of course, the bed) with them.’

‘And the poker-work, or whatever, on the head?’

‘Frustration, because what had seemed a perfect plan had, at the last minute, miscarried, perhaps, but there is a more likely explanation.’

‘Such as?’

‘Work it out for yourself. It is very simple.’

‘Well, it wasn’t Piper’s and it can hardly have been Niobe Nutley’s plan.’

‘Why not? I agree that a swimming instructor, man or woman, would be the last person (owing to the inhibitions induced by his or her training) to drown another in open water, but he or she probably would not be averse to drowning puppies or kittens in a bucket.’

‘You make me feel quite ill,’ said Laura. ‘So, if it wasn’t Piper, it was Niobe.’

‘Not necessarily, of course. One must keep an open mind.’

‘The reason for bashing the face of the corpse? To cover up other facial injuries, I suppose.’

‘Caused by the edge of the bucket, no doubt. It may be worth noting that although Piper and his companions had to break into the bungalow, there is no evidence that the murderer did so.’

‘But that means Minnie must have let him in, and that’s contrary to all we know about her, isn’t it?’

‘I am not so sure that it is. Mr Shard had doubts, and so, by implication, has Miss Nutley.’