Nest of Vipers

Chapter Fourteen

The Yataghan

« ^ »

IT was an errand altogether to Laura’s liking.

‘Hope I shan’t be arrested for carrying an offensive weapon,’ she said blithely. ‘I’d better stick it in the boot of the car.’

Dame Beatrice had never described Niobe’s physical appearance, so that Laura, who had had nothing to go on except the story of Niobe’s almost incessant weeping, was somewhat taken aback when, the all-efficient charwoman having announced her, she was confronted by the chatelaine of Weston Pipers.

Laura, herself an Amazon, taking in Niobe’s size, thews and general aspect, thought, ‘If it came to a scrap, I don’t know that I’d fancy my chances!’

‘Mrs Gavin?’ said Niobe. ‘Do take a seat. I’ll look up the books and see what we have. Will you be alone? I don’t take children, of course.’

‘Mine are grown up and live with me no longer.’ Laura, who perceived the misunderstanding, was not going to let pass any chance of seeing something of Weston Pipers while she was there. She added: ‘My husband works in London, so is not at home all the time.’

‘All the same, no doubt you would want something suitable for two. Excuse me.’ Niobe opened a ledger and ran her finger down a closely-written page. ‘Ah, yes. If you would care to come this way.’

‘Before we begin a tour of inspection, I should like to know something about terms,’ said Laura.

‘Oh, they vary from flat to flat, but the most expensive flats are already let, I’m afraid. Do put down your parcel. It looks rather heavy. It will be quite safe here in my office.’

Laura laid the yataghan, which was wrapped in brown paper, across the corner of Niobe’s desk.

‘A present for my son,’ she said. ‘He is a collector. I picked this thing up in a little junk shop in that town on the other side of the bay.’ She waved towards the creek which was visible from the office window. ‘Are those the only grounds to the house? The lawn seems small for a house of this size and that bungalow takes up a lot of room.’

‘Oh, that lawn is nothing, except for the view of the sea. The park and gardens, with some ornamental water – a lake, no less – are at the front. Whichever flat you choose will give you an excellent look-out.’ Niobe closed the office door behind the two of them and led the way up the beautiful staircase.

‘Well,’ said Laura when she had been shown the rooms previously occupied by Billie and Elysée and recently vacated by Dame Beatrice and had also seen the two flats which so far (although Niobe did not mention this), had never been let, ‘I don’t think this is exactly what I’m looking for. The place seems (if you’ll forgive the expression) rather a rabbit warren.’

‘What!’ said Niobe, and to Laura’s concealed delight she burst into tears. ‘Oh, Mrs Gavin! What a horrid thing to say!’ She ran down the stairs to the hall and banged tempestuously at a door. It opened, and a tall, querulous young man stood there. ‘Good Lord, Niobe,’ he said, ‘what’s all the racket?’

‘Oh, Chelion! Will you take Mrs Gavin into my office to collect a parcel she has left there? She doesn’t want a place here. She calls it – she calls it a rabbit warren.’

‘No, it’s a nest of vipers,’ said the young man, with a sour smile. ‘Well, if she doesn’t like the house, show her the bungalow, and for goodness sake don’t interrupt me again. You know I’m writing my prison story for the Sunday papers. How am I to get on with it if you come crashing in every second moment?’

He slammed the door in Niobe’s face. She turned her tear-stained countenance to Laura and asked humbly:

‘Would you care to look over the bungalow? You would be quite on your own there.’

‘Oh, well, as I’ve come all this way, I may as well see everything, I suppose,’ said Laura off-handedly. ‘Did I hear you call that man Chelion? It’s an unusual name. I seem to have seen it somewhere, and recently, too.’

‘Oh, really? Yes, I suppose it is an unusual name. I believe it comes from the Bible, only he spells it Chelion, not Chilion.’

‘Ah, yes. Chilion was one of the sons of Naomi, I believe,’ said Laura, who had looked it up as soon as she had heard Piper’s name. Niobe said how clever it was to know these things. She had regained her composure very quickly, Laura thought. She now led the way into her office and Laura picked up the parcel containing the yataghan. She had taken the precaution of leaving the car outside the gates of the mansion in case any of the inhabitants of Weston Pipers, particularly Niobe herself, should recognise it as that which had brought Dame Beatrice to the house. For the same reason, she had been her own driver and had left George behind.

‘You mentioned a junk shop in the town,’ said Niobe, as they walked across to the bungalow.

‘Yes, a rather wretched little place up one of those streets which go uphill away from the front. I picked this thing up and they also had a rather nice set of fire-irons which they said came from this house.’

‘From Weston Pipers? They couldn’t have done! We have no coal fires here.’

‘Perhaps, before it was converted into flats—’

‘Oh, I see. Yes, perhaps. I suppose you noticed that all the fireplaces have been blocked up.’ She produced the right key and opened the bungalow door. ‘Well, this is it. Look round all you want. I’ll wait in here.’

Nothing loth, for, like many people, she was possessed of a certain amount of curiosity concerning places where murder is known to have been committed, Laura went on a tour of inspection. There was not much to see. The place was sparsely but just sufficiently furnished, the bed (presumably the one in which George had slept) was new, and there was no sign of any of the pails in which Miss Minnie’s sea water had been collected and in one of which, according to Dame Beatrice’s theory, she had been drowned.

Laura returned to Niobe, who had stayed just inside the front door and shook her head. She spread out two shapely palms in a gesture of apology and said sadly:

‘Not quite what I’m looking for, I’m afraid.’

‘No, I thought it wouldn’t be,’ said Niobe calmly. ‘Why did you come here?’

‘It was suggested to me by a friend, who happened to be with me when I bought this.’ She unwrapped the yataghan, drew it from its sheath and flourished the cleaned and polished blade. ‘She thought it might have come from here.’

Niobe drew back in the face of the slightly curved, gleaming, menacing weapon.

‘Good heavens! Put that thing away!’ she said. ‘Of course it didn’t come from here.’

‘But the fire-irons did,’ said Laura, lowering but not sheathing her weapon. ‘I suppose you sold them to that shop when you had all the electric fires put in and the ordinary grates blocked up.’

‘People in flats don’t want to be bothered with coal fires. Anyway, what fire-irons are you talking about?’ But there was no doubt that Niobe was both astonished and alarmed.

‘Oh, a set which the shopkeeper was so anxious to get rid of that he threw them in for nothing when I bought the yataghan.’

‘The what?’

‘This thing.’ Laura made a pass with it, swishing it through the air. ‘There was another thing in the shop which was rather interesting, but the man wouldn’t part with it. It was a picture. It looked like – you haven’t got a bit of paper on you, by any chance?’

‘What for?’ Niobe kept fascinated eyes on the naked blade as though it was having a hypnotic effect on her.

‘I could draw the picture for you,’ Laura explained.

‘I’m not interested,’ said Niobe, taking a step backwards.

‘You had better be, or else I shall tell you what else we saw in the shop, yes, and in the upstair rooms, too.’ Laura lowered the weapon, but spoke in a menacing tone which she herself rather admired.

‘You went upstairs? But there is nothing for sale up there!’ exclaimed Niobe, now making no secret of the fact that again she was alarmed.

‘You think not?’

‘I know there isn’t. Besides, the proprietor would never have allowed you upstairs.’

‘How do you know that? Suppose I mention a room, or, rather, two rooms converted into one? Suppose I described black velvet hangings, a table with various rather suggestive implements laid out on it in ritual fashion, a row of lifelike paintings of nudes on the walls—’

‘All right! All right! That’s more than enough,’ cried Niobe. ‘You had better come up to the house and meet the others.’

‘Oh, you mean Shard and those people,’ said Laura carelessly. ‘As you wish, but they are of little importance so far as I am concerned.’

‘You know them? Then why have we never seen you at a coven?’

‘There are covens and covens.’ Laura was on very unsure ground and she knew it and hastened to get on to less dangerous territory. ‘I don’t suppose any of your company here have penetrated very far into the Mysteries. I should still like to test you with my picture. Then we may know where we stand.’

‘Oh, I’m hopeless at guessing games,’ declared Niobe, emitting something which might be classed as a laugh, but still eyeing the yataghan nervously.

‘Ah, come on, now!’ said Laura, giving the weapon another dangerous-looking flourish.

‘Oh, very well,’ Niobe agreed. ‘Back to my office, then. I never argue with psychopaths. But I do wish you would sheath that thing. It isn’t part of your ritual, is it?’

‘No, no, merely a very present help in time of trouble.’ Laura put it back into its scabbard and followed her companion out of the bungalow and across the lawn. Chelion Piper was in the hall.

‘Hullo,’ he said. ‘Do we get a new tenant?’

‘Not for that morgue,’ said Laura decisively. ‘At any rate, not so far as I am concerned. Would you live in it, Mr Piper?’

Chelion shrugged his wide shoulders. ‘Hardly,’ he said.

‘Of course, I remember now. It was you who discovered the body.’

‘I wasn’t alone.’

‘I believe not.’

‘Here is a piece of paper,’ said Niobe, producing a writing-tablet of plain paper. ‘Mrs Gavin,’ she added, ‘wishes to draw a picture she has seen in a junk shop.’

‘Oh, yes?’

‘Why, Mr Piper,’ asked Laura, accepting the writing-tablet and fishing out a pencil, ‘have you been released before trial?’

‘Oh, at my last remand the beaks came to the sensible conclusion that no case against me would hold water.’

‘Unlike the corpse,’ said Laura, with intentional bluntness. ‘Oh, stop it!’ she added fiercely, as Niobe burst into sobs. ‘I suppose it was the evidence provided by the buckets of sea water which let you out, Mr Piper.’

‘You appear to know things which have not, so far as I am aware, appeared in the newspapers, Madam.’

It was Laura’s turn to shrug her shoulders, and the gesture roused Niobe to tearful, sudden, unexpected and impassioned speech. Piper stared at her, said ‘Oh, for goodness sake!’ and went into his own room, slamming the door.

‘Irelath Moore and Sumatra are a couple apart from the rest of us,’ Niobe was saying, ‘and I’m sure Evesham Evans suspected nothing when Constance paid so many visits to her publishers. And that awful little Shard was always going out to tea—’

‘Cassie McHaig must have had some difficulty in hoodwinking Hempseed,’ said Laura, boldly chancing her arm and seizing up this surprising opening.

‘Oh, I don’t know.’ Niobe seemed to be regaining her self-control. ‘I had my suspicions of her. She could always make excuses to get out of the house if she wanted to, and Polly had what you might call a static job here and always wrote his sob-stuff letters in his own room. He and Cassie used to have lots of rows and refused to see each other or speak or even go to bed together for days on end.’

‘What made you get rid of Billie Kennett and Elysée Barnes?’ asked Laura. ‘They were harmless, I would have thought, from what I know of them. Anyway, they might have been pleased to be included.’

‘Not Kennett. Besides, the Master only co-opted those whom he could trust. Our band—’ She dropped her voice and glanced at Piper’s closed door.

‘Your band, yes. The other is somewhat different.’ (I am talking through the back of my neck, thought Laura. She only hoped she could get away with what was becoming a gigantic bluff.)

‘Different?’ said Niobe.

‘Yes.’

‘Can you tell me more?’

‘My drawings will tell you everything you want to know.’

But at this point Niobe seemed to lose her nervousness. She looked narrowly at Laura.

‘If you are what you say you are—’ she began.

‘I have said nothing yet.’

‘Oh, but of course you have! If you are what you claim to be, why have I never seen you before?’

‘Oh, but you have! That is to say, you have seen my familiar. By the way, before I draw my picture, we need a witness.’

‘To what?’

‘To the drawing itself, for one thing, and to make sure you don’t start any funny business, for another, while I am absorbed in my task.’

‘Perhaps you would care to name the witness, since you seem to know some of my tenants so well,’ said Niobe, tearful again, but with a sarcastic edge to her voice.

‘Certainly. Please send for your charwoman.’

So Mrs Smith was summoned and stood by while Laura sketched the picture with which the junk-shop proprietor had refused to part.

‘Yes, fair enough,’ Niobe admitted, ‘but any ordinary shop-customer could have seen that. It is kept hanging on the wall behind the counter.’

‘Just so. I wonder,’ said Laura, turning to the interested and puzzled charwoman, ‘whether you would be good enough to sign my drawing, Mrs Smith?’

‘Who? Me? I don’t sign nothing without I know what I am signing. No small print don’t fool me,’ said the factotum severely. ‘They warns you on the telly.’

‘So they do.’ Laura put the drawing into her handbag and, unsheathing the yataghan, she asked: ‘In your peregrinations round and about this house, have you ever seen this sword before?’

‘No, that I haven’t,’ said Mrs Smith, ‘and would not wish to do. I hate anything of that sort. And now, if it’s all the same, my time is worth money and I’ve still got Mr Targe to do.’ She made a dignified exit. Laura put down the yataghan, but kept it, still unsheathed, under her hand. With the other hand she pointed to a chair in a corner of the room but on its window side, so that, from where she was, she could keep an eye on it and on its occupant.

Niobe took the seat which had been indicated, and, with a few swift lines, Laura sketched the evil-looking object which had taken the place of the picture and dropped some red ink on it from the bottle on the desk. Then she stood up, picked up her naked yataghan and moved a little way off from the desk, indicating, with a wave of the hand and a masterful jerk of the head, that Niobe, who was clearly in a state of ferment, was to approach.

‘How about that?’ she asked, pointing to her red-ink-spattered drawing.

‘Her reactions were rather interesting,’ said Laura, recounting the story of her visit. Niobe’s reaction, upon being shown the drawing had been to exclaim, ‘So you know!’ To this Laura had replied: ‘Know what? Like the recent witness, I also read the small print.’

‘Know that the Master of Cups, Wands and Swords is dead.’

‘Upon which,’ said Laura, ‘she flung herself on to the carpet and, although she didn’t actually bite pieces out of it, one got the impression that it was only the feeling that she wouldn’t like the taste of it which restrained her. She drummed with the toe-caps of her sensible ward-shoes and sobbed and sobbed and sobbed. I left her to it, picked up both my drawings so that I could show them to you to see what you thought of them, and left as unobtrusively as possible after I’d wrapped up the yataghan again. I fancy it proved a real friend in time of need. Is that why you told me to take it with me?’

‘We live in an age of violence. Soon it will be suicidal for any woman (or man, either, for that matter) to stir abroad without ominous means of defence.’

‘What do you make of the Nutley reactions?’

‘Nothing, except that she knew of the antique-dealer’s death, as she seems to have assumed that you did.’

‘So she’s a double murderer!’

‘It has not yet been proved that she is a single one, of course. We have to remember that the death of this Eurasian warlock may have taken place after Chelion Piper’s release.’

‘Was it because you knew you would be recognised by Niobe and that, possibly, she would refuse to see you, that you sent me instead of going there yourself?’

‘That did cross my mind, of course. Besides, I cannot draw pictures. These sketches of yours are masterly.’

‘Just little things I toss off while I’m thinking about my next Academy picture. Have I really done any good?’

‘You have confirmed something which I had already guessed.’

‘About a nest of vipers being, in actual fact, a nest of witches?’

‘Exactly.’

‘What made you think so?’

‘I did not think so until I spoke with Miss Barnes.’

‘Spoke with? Not spoke to?’

‘Come, come! Do the prepositions of the most beautiful and articulate language on earth mean nothing to you?’

‘All right, then, until you spoke with Miss Barnes. Incidentally, I was not surprised that she was young and pretty, but I was surprised that she was so tall.’

‘She is what is called a model, as well as her having a reputation for possessing literary and artistic gifts.’

‘Well, she could give me an inch or so, and I’m above average height for a woman.’

‘I believe many models are nearly or quite six feet tall. They are thought to show off fashionable clothes better than women of lesser height can do.’

‘I call it a damn silly idea. What looks amazingly good on a stream-lined beauty queen of twenty-odd is just plumb ridiculous on a five-foot-three dump of wealthy middle-agery.’

‘Your strictures are very just, but now back to work.’

‘You don’t really think Piper is guilty and that the police arrested the right man after all, do you?’

‘Time and my familiar spirit will show. Ah, and talking of familiar spirits reminds me of a conversation I had with Mr Shard soon after I arrived at Weston Pipers. It meant something at the time, but coupled with our visit to Miss Kennett and Miss Barnes, it means a good deal more now.’

‘Familiar spirits? All that witchcraft business upstairs in the junk shop?’

‘All that Satanism upstairs in the junk shop, yes. There was the strange remark made by Miss Barnes, if you remember, as to the advisability of her contracting a matrimonial alliance.’

‘But do you think she was a virgin when she decided to hitch on to Hempseed?’

‘I have no doubt that a jury of witch-matrons had pronounced judgment and found in her favour.’

‘A sacrificial victim! No wonder she was scared enough to take Hempseed for better, for worse! So what next?’

‘When I have had a further talk with Miss Kennett, I shall seek out Mr Shard and find out exactly how much he knows. His propensity for spying and “listening ahint doors” may stand us in good stead.’

‘I suppose,’ said Laura, struck by a new idea, ‘all these witchcraft developments won’t end in washing out Niobe Nutley from the list of Murderers We Have Known?’

‘It is a thought which merits consideration, certainly.’

‘Does it put Piper back in the picture?’

‘He has never been entirely out of it. He had much to lose if Miss Minnie had lived to pursue her claim to Mrs Dupont-Jacobson’s property.’

‘Still, he couldn’t have murdered the shopkeeper. He was still under arrest when that happened.’

‘Was he? You made that point earlier, but nobody knows the exact time of that murder, you know. He certainly had not been killed as recently as on the day that you discovered the body.’

‘I suppose the medical evidence will show when he died.’

‘Within limits, yes. Actually, I do not suspect Mr Piper, but we must do our best to find an alibi for him if the medical evidence does not exonerate him. But first for Miss Kennett – not that I expect to get any more from her than some confidences regarding Miss Barnes and those lifts into the town which were given to Miss Minnie. This may give us a lead, or it may not. My chief hope lies with Mr Shard.’

‘Nasty little man!’

‘Little is the operative word. He regards his lack of inches in the light of a physical disability, I think, and that gives him a claim on our charity. This “house of dust” in which we are all imprisoned is of such paramount importance to most of us that any blemish or inadequacy in it is a matter of grave concern.’

‘Seems dotty to me.’

‘Ah, but, you see, your magnificent frame is neither blemished nor inadequate, so you are not qualified to judge the probably misguided but very painful reactions of less favoured mortals, dear child.’