Nest of Vipers

Chapter Ten

The Junk Shop

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(1)

‘YOU know,’ said Laura thoughtfully, when they were back in the Stone House where Dame Beatrice spent most of her time when she was not in London, ‘I’ve been doing a bit of pondering.’

‘You fill my mind with pity and terror.’

‘No, seriously, though. What is the classic reason for bashing in a face? I mean the face of a person who is already dead? I’ve got an idea that my first thought was wrong.’

‘There is more than one reason. I can name four. There is the attempt to make the features unrecognisable; there is blind hatred; there is the pathological feeling that it is unbearable to look upon beauty which was once the object of the divine passion – and, of course, there is the need to cover up injuries inflicted before death, as you said.’

‘I was thinking of the first one you mentioned. Suppose Miss Minnie was not Miss Minnie at all?’

‘It is not our province to suppose anything of the kind. In any case, the police will have given careful consideration to that question.’

‘And bully-ragged this pastor person who was called upon to identify the body?’

‘I hardly think dear Robert would approve of your description of police methods.’

‘Of course he wouldn’t. He’s always worn kid gloves, but I wouldn’t go bail for all his rank and file.’

‘Well, if you feel strongly on the subject, there seems no reason why we should not seek out this pastoral leader and put him to the question. He may not consent to talk to us, but it is worth remembering that, even if Miss Minnie was not entitled to that name, she has been identified unconditionally as the woman who took up residence in the bungalow. The three men who broke in and found the body were in no doubt that it was that of the woman they knew as Miss Minnie.’

‘But they seem to have seen very little of her while she was alive, and to some people who are not particularly interested or not very observant, I dare say one old lady they haven’t seen much of looks very like other old ladies of about the same age and size.’

‘There is, as always, much in what you say. I can readily obtain the pastor’s address from the police, so let us pay him a visit.’

The pastor proved to be a plump, smooth-faced, smiling individual whom Laura immediately wrote off as a scoundrel. Dame Beatrice, more perceptively, recognised that he was an Eurasian, probably half-Sinhalese, half-English. The address she had been given was that of a murky little junk shop in a side street of the seaside town nearest to Weston Pipers. The side street, which was partly cobbled roadway, partly widely-spaced steps, went steeply uphill from the seaside promenade which was the high street of the pleasant, unpretentious little town, and the shop was on a corner where the cobbled road ended and the flight of steps began.

It had two windows, one on to the cobbled street, the other on to a narrow concreted way which ran parallel with the high street. Dame Beatrice studied both windows of the shop before she entered. One was cluttered with items which included such miscellaneous objects as a bicycle pump, two dejected-looking, grimy, pink parasols, a torn lace fan, a rolled-up pair of unsavoury-looking corsets, a set of heavy steel fire-irons, a pair of oleographs depicting rural scenes, and there were also half a dozen vases of various sizes, shapes and colours arranged around a couple of pitchers of the kind used as part of the furniture of an old-fashioned wash-hand stand.

The other window displayed, among less identifiable objects, several wine glasses, a decanter which had lost its glass stopper, some china trinket-boxes, a Malay kris and a Balkan yataghan.

‘Well,’ said Dame Beatrice, ‘we had better steel ourselves to make a purchase. Has your fancy strayed in favour of any of these, to my mind, undesirable objects?’

‘Wonder how much they want for that thing in the leather-covered scabbard? Hamish collects swords and I don’t think he’s got one of that type.’

‘The yataghan? It will make an excellent bargaining-point. If it is as good a specimen as it looks, the blade will be damascened.’

The proprietor, whom they had noticed taking stock of them from behind a lace curtain, came forward as soon as they entered and made them an ingratiating bow.

‘You have seen something you like, ladies?’

‘Perhaps we may look around,’ said Dame Beatrice, noting that objects d’art littered three small tables in the middle of the shop.

‘But of course! Take your time. A pleasant day, is it not? You are visitors to the town, perhaps?’

Without answering, except with a reptilian smile which made the fat proprietor banish his own in favour of a grave inclination of the head and a hastily-sketched gesture designed to counteract the Evil Eye, Dame Beatrice picked up and studied one or two repellent pieces of china and glass and a paper-knife in the form of a fish, asked the price of each, shook her head as though in regret that the amount was beyond her means and then added:

‘Does your stock contain anything from the house which is now called Weston Pipers? I believe most of the furniture and effects were sold when the previous owner died.’

‘You have a connection with the house, madam?’

‘As a temporary tenant, yes. A very dreadful affair, the murder which, I am told, took place there recently, but I believe the police have made an arrest.’ She walked over to the torn lace curtain which only partly screened the collection of which the yataghan formed an item, as though to indicate that she had no further interest in the murder. She peered at the sorry display in the window. The proprietor came and stood at her shoulder.

‘The only things I have from the house,’ he said, in a purring tone which brought the suspicious Laura level with him, a heavy glass paperweight in her hand, ‘are a fine set of fire-irons. With all this central heating and electric fires of the present day, there is little call for such things. If madam would care to have a memento of Weston Pipers I would accept a cheap price.’

‘I have seen something in your shop I like better. I wonder whether that came from Weston Pipers as well?’

‘I think not, madam, but please to point it out.’

Dame Beatrice turned and faced that side of the room where the wall was partly barred off by a small wooden counter which held a till. On the wall, its only ornament, was a strange little picture hardly visible in the dim light of the interior of the shop.

It depicted a head with three aspects. One was full-face, the other two were in profile. On the top of the head was an erection which looked like a broad-based, rather squat vase and surrounding this were the two horns of the crescent moon. The head was one of dignified, disdainful malignity. It had broad, negroid features and a thick, curved, sensual, cruel mouth. The eyes were set unnaturally high on the forehead, the creature had no ears. Dame Beatrice pointed to it.

‘At my own home I have a little niche where that would go,’ she said. ‘How much are you asking for it?’

‘Oh, that is not for sale, I’m afraid, madam.’

‘A pity. I have a taste for the grotesque. Is it a talisman of some kind? Your good luck sign, perhaps?’

‘Nothing of the sort. Is there anything else you have seen?’

Laura, who had begun to think that she was not to be allowed to make an offer for the yataghan, cut in on him to ask:

‘What do you want for that sword-thing in the window?’

Obviously relieved to have someone other than Dame Beatrice to deal with, the bland proprietor drew aside the curtain, took up the yataghan and handed it over.

‘A very nice piece,’ he said. ‘A duelling sword of best French workmanship of the eighteenth century. Beautiful all-leather sheath.’

Laura drew the weapon out of its scabbard. The blade, although tarnished, was not rusty, and it was damascened in silver whorls and twirls.

Dame Beatrice took the sword and scabbard from Laura and looked them over.

‘A battle sword of Balkan manufacture,’ she said. ‘Nineteenth, not eighteenth, century. The scabbard is of wood covered thinly with leather. Name your price.’

‘I am a very poor man, as you can see, madam. As for the sword, I knew what it was, of course, but people are more impressed by an earlier century of workmanship. I did not expect to come up against an expert in a place like this.’ He pouted childishly and looked away.

‘Dishonesty is not the best policy,’ said Laura sternly. ‘Well, how much?’

The proprietor glanced at Dame Beatrice and then at Laura.

‘It is a nice piece,’ he said hesitantly. ‘Would ten pounds interest you?’

‘Done!’ said Laura, opening her handbag.

‘Well, well!’ said Dame Beatrice. ‘The collector’s acumen appears to be missing from your make-up! You should not have been so precipitate.’

The proprietor twisted his hands together.

‘The lady has made an agreement!’ he said, in agony. ‘Look, I’ll throw in the fire-irons for you yourself if you do not dispute with me. You shall have the fire irons for nothing!’

‘But not the little picture I fancy so much?’

‘I cannot part with it. It has religious significance. Please accept the fire-irons. They are very nice.’

‘Do you hold services here, then?’

‘Oh, well, as to that—’ He turned away from both of them and put Laura’s notes into the till. Then he rummaged around to find wrappings for the fire-irons and the yataghan. At last he handed over the packages and, bowing and smiling, opened the shop door, saw them out and would have followed them to their car but that the stolid chauffeur was already holding the car door open for them.

‘Did I get stung over the yataghan?’ asked Laura, when they were seated and George had reversed the car.

Dame Beatrice cackled. ‘I hardly think so,’ she said, ‘and, in any case, when one really covets an object, the price, so long as one can afford it, is immaterial.’

‘Is that really your philosophy?’

‘Certainly. Besides, the good pastor got rid of the things he really wanted to part with, the things, in fact, that he was almost over-anxious to get rid of.’

‘What, those ungainly fire-irons?’

‘Yes. If I mistake not, he believes that this steel poker, and not the brass one which was found at the bungalow, was used to disfigure Miss Minnie’s face and head. He had to identify the body, you know, and the fire-irons seem to have come from Weston Pipers, so I think he may have put two and two together and come to a very unwelcome conclusion and possibly a correct one.’

‘What was that rather grim picture you tried to buy?’

‘A kind of totem, I think, of an obscure and possibly obscene religious sect. I did not want the picture. I only wanted to find out whether he was prepared to sell it.’

‘And he wasn’t. What did it represent?’

‘The phases of the moon. Had it been sculptured instead of painted, there might have been a fourth face at the back of those three which were depicted.’

‘Black magic?’

‘A magical conception, anyway. The picture represented the Great Mother of the ancients. She belongs to a form of witchcraft innocent enough in itself in pre-Christian times, since it was a form of worship. Fertility, the bounties of nature and, indeed, life itself were worshipped. It became debased later, partly owing to persecution and the need to go underground, and partly because, until modern space travel proved that this was not so, there was believed to be a dark side to the moon.’

‘So these Pan-whatever lot that this chap leads are really modern witches and Miss Minnie was one of them. I suppose her death wasn’t a ritual murder of some sort?’

‘I think there was a more rational reason for her death.’

‘Too bad! I was hoping for sinister revelations. What’s the next move?’

‘I shall show the fire-irons to the police. If they accept my theory that among these is the object with which Miss Minnie was struck after she died, no doubt they will visit the shop and obtain from the proprietor a description of the person who sold the fire-irons to him and the date on which he purchased them. If the police dismiss my theory (as they may and it will not surprise me if they do) we ourselves will pay the shop another visit.’

‘Won’t the chap smell a rat when we go back there again?’

‘After we have been customers and I go solely in order to make him another bid for his picture?’

‘But you said it was a witchcraft thing and that it must have some significance for this sect he leads.’

‘Nothing was said by me or admitted by him along any lines which could connect the symbol with witchcraft. Besides, witchcraft is quite respectable these days. It is even discussed on television.’

‘You rather aroused his suspicions. You rather gave yourself away over the yataghan, I thought.’

‘In what way?’

‘Specialised knowledge and all that.’

‘Specialised knowledge of the weapons of cut and thrust does not also imply specialised knowledge of ancient pagan cults. In fact, the one may allay suspicion in the case of the other. Now, had the yataghan been an athame, there might be some substance in your argument.’

‘Let it go! Let it go! You know, I’m beginning to think I’d like to see the chap’s face when we turn up again and are in the market for that picture.’

‘It will be inscrutable, I fancy. Now I come to think of it, we could go back there after lunch. There is no reason for me to be in a hurry to show the police my fire-irons. There will be no fingerprints on them now except those of the shopkeeper and myself.’

‘Oh, I don’t know so much,’ said Laura doubtfully, ‘about losing time. After all, I am a Scotland Yard wife. If I stalled on showing the police anything which might help an enquiry, however indirectly, Gavin would be livid, and quite right, too.’

‘Very well, I will give up my treasure-trove tomorrow, but if the shopkeeper has any guilty knowledge he will swear that Niobe Nutley sold the fire-irons long before Chelion Piper returned from Paris.’

The police showed what Laura, who had expected rather more to come of Dame Beatrice’s exhibits, thought was a lukewarm interest in the fire-irons, for, as the Chief Superintendent pointed out, nothing was to be gained from them in the way of fingerprints.

‘We didn’t think the poker found in the sitting-room at The Lodge was the weapon used to batter the head of the deceased,’ he said, ‘since the prints on it were those of Mr Evans, who admitted handling it, superimposed on those of the dead woman herself. Our theory is that, like so many lonely old ladies, she kept the poker by her as a means of self-defence, picked it up when she heard her murderer enter the bungalow and was disarmed by him before she could use it. In fact, she may have laid it down again when she saw that the visitor was Piper, from whom she anticipated no harm.’

‘You still think Mr Piper guilty?’

‘Somebody got in who had a pass-key, Dame Beatrice. Except for the window which Piper smashed when he and the other two broke in and found the body, there were no signs of any other forced entry.’

‘If Mr Piper had a pass-key, why, in your opinion, did he not use it instead of breaking a window?’

‘Oh, madam, you know the answer to that, just as well as we do. To our minds, it clinches matters. He was hiding the fact from his companions that he had a pass-key and could get into the bungalow whenever he liked.’

‘Did you ask whether anybody else in the house had a pass-key?’

‘We did, and Miss Niobe Nutley immediately produced hers. Of course, we didn’t find Piper’s key. Miss Nutley said he had had one and must have lost it.’

‘That young lady thinks of everything,’ said Dame Beatrice. ‘Did you find Miss Minnie’s own door-key?’

‘Yes, it was on the body. Why do you ask?’

‘Oh, nothing – except that Mr Piper clearly was not the only person who could obtain access to the bungalow whenever he wished to enter it. There is another point, too, which you might care to consider: Miss Nutley also used her key (a master-key to which, as housekeeper, I suppose she was entitled), to enter any of the apartments at any time. That must have included the bungalow, one would think.’

‘Are you offering that as a serious suggestion, Dame Beatrice?’

‘Well, it is one which ought to be taken into account, as the charge against Mr Piper is a serious one.’

‘This was not a woman’s crime, madam.’

‘I wonder on what you base that assumption?’ Dame Beatrice outlined her theory about the buckets of sea water. ‘Miss Nutley may be tearful and may appear distraught,’ she concluded, ‘but she has the shoulders and the muscular strength of a coal-heaver.’

‘But the motive, Dame Beatrice! It is clear, from our enquiries, that Miss Minnie has good grounds for attempting to upset Mrs Dupont-Jacobson’s will. Money, more often than not, is the motive behind murder, especially the murder of an elderly person. The motive in this case sticks out a mile. With Miss Minnie out of the way, Piper’s inheritance was safe.’

‘And with Mr Piper behind bars and serving a life sentence, Miss Nutley’s thirst for revenge would be partly if not wholly slaked, I think. Did you peruse the document written at my instigation by Mr Piper?’

‘Yes, with great interest, but it did not convince me of his innocence. These novelists have a trick of putting themselves across when they’re given a ball point and sufficient paper,’ said the Chief Superintendent, smiling at his own omniscience.

‘So no sense to be drummed into that blighter’s thick head,’ said Laura disgustedly when they had left the Chief Superintendent’s office. ‘You’d think that even he would have smelt a rat when the police knew that the Nutley woman could get into the rooms (and into the bungalow) whenever she chose.’

‘I believe we have left him with something to think about,’ said Dame Beatrice. ‘He is not a stupid man.’

‘He’s got a bee in his bonnet about motive, that’s the trouble.’

‘And, as he says, he cannot see this as a woman’s crime.’

‘I suppose Nutley wept all over Chelion Piper when he was arrested.’

‘The Walrus wept for the oysters, but it did not prevent him from swallowing them,’ said Dame Beatrice. ‘My opinion of Miss Nutley is not a high one, but I see her less as a murderer than as an avenging Fury.’

(2)

It was a fairly long drive back to the Stone House on the edge of the New Forest, but, as Dame Beatrice pathetically observed (following the observation with a sardonic cackle of laughter), ‘Now that I have been turned away from the stately mansion of Weston Pipers, I have nowhere to lay my head except in my own home.’

‘We could have stayed at a hotel in Moretonhampstead or Exeter,’ Laura pointed out.

‘There is a good reason for going back to Wandles Parva. My telephone number was on the cards I left with Miss Kennett and the proprietor of the antique shop. I shall be surprised if we do not hear something from the latter before we visit him again. I have very little doubt that he knows we went to the police with his Weston Pipers’ fire-irons.’

But the call came from Billie.

‘If you want to question Elysée, she is with me again. Cassie McHaig trailed them to the hotel where they were staying and staged a ménage à trois. Elysée wasn’t having any of that, so she’s come back. Don’t know really whether I’m glad or sorry. Anyway, she’s here if you want her.’

‘So we can kill two birds with one stone,’ said Laura, who had taken the call. ‘Billie Kennett’s place isn’t all that far from the shop.’

‘Quite. The shop first, I think, and then to find out what Miss Barnes has to tell us.’

But when they reached the grimy little junk shop it was closed.