Nest of Vipers

Chapter Sixteen

Assessments and Conclusions

« ^

(1)

‘OH,’ said the Superintendent almost airily, ‘we soon gave up our suspicions of Piper and the same – although I can’t say we’d ever considered her seriously – any suspicions we might have had of Miss Nutley, the only other person, so far as we could discover, who had ever had a key to the bungalow apart from Miss Minnie herself.’

‘Ah,’ said Dame Beatrice, ‘you discovered, as I did, that those particular keys, Piper’s and Miss Nutley’s, would not open the bungalow door. But I thought Piper had lost his key.’

‘Gave us a bit of a facer when we tried Piper’s key which we found in Miss Nutley’s desk and she swore was his, and then the duplicate Miss Nutley showed us. Miss Minnie, as she called herself, had had the lock altered unknown to Miss Nutley and Piper. Once we realised that there was no way Piper could have got into the bungalow except the way he did get in, unless Miss Minnie herself opened the door to him – and all the available evidence was that, of all unlikely things for her to do, that was the unlikeliest – we virtually wiped Piper off our slate.’

‘But did not immediately release him from custody.’

‘An old and perhaps somewhat discreditable ploy, ma’am. We thought that while we held on to Piper the real murderer might get careless and do something to betray himself, but he (or she) didn’t, so in the end we had to give the beaks the tip, the last time he was remanded, that we felt he had no case to answer.’

‘And you still have no idea of the murderer’s identity?’

‘No. Anyway, we’re now only faced with finding one murderer, not two.’

‘Oh, really? You have come to the definite conclusion that the shopkeeper’s death was suicide?’

‘Yes, we’re forced to that conclusion and would have arrived at it independent of your hints except for the little mystery of those milk bottles, but what we reckon is that somebody who hasn’t come forward – a charwoman, most likely, because the whole house was better kept and looked after than an elderly man living on his own would have kept it – picked up the bottles automatically, as it were, and put them in the kitchen.’

‘Wouldn’t she have raised the alarm when she found the body?’

‘Judging by the nature of some of that stuff I told you about in his desk and filing cabinet, ma’am, I don’t suppose she was ever allowed in the office, and that, of course, is where the body was.’

‘So what made you decide upon your verdict?’

‘The coroner’s verdict it will be when the inquest is resumed. You’ll remember (as Mrs Gavin was called upon as the finder of the body) that the inquest was adjourned at our request and will now be resumed.’

‘Ah, yes. The body was identified by the manager of the local cinema, was it not?’

‘That’s right. Well, the medical evidence showed that there was nothing to rule out the probability of suicide, and although the pathologist thought the wound was too deep to have been self-inflicted, the coroner told the jury to disregard that and the inquest will be resumed on those lines, especially as the pathologist himself could find no rational significance in the depth of the wound and was forced to agree that if Bosey had fallen on the knife, that would explain matters. This, coupled with your own hints, has settled the thing so far as we’re concerned, so now we shall concentrate on the Minnie case, for there is no doubt whatever about that being murder.’

‘I shall be interested in pursuing my own enquiries, subject to your permission, of course.’

‘Please go ahead, ma’am. I trust our former agreement stands and that you’ll keep in touch with us and give us the benefit of your findings?’

‘If any, yes, of course, but I have a feeling that our murderer may have slipped through our fingers.’

The Superintendent stared at her.

‘Is that another of your hints, ma’am?’

‘Perhaps. Need I say more?’

‘No, I daresay you need not. It would explain a good many things, but I’ll have to mull it over in my mind. Yes, it would explain quite a lot, that would, but we’ll have to add chapter and verse before it’ll be acceptable in a court of law.’

‘But it is feasible, you think?’

‘Oh, undoubtedly, especially taken in conjunction with the changed lock on the bungalow door. When could that have been done, though, without Miss Nutley knowing? We understand that she wouldn’t allow any tampering with any of the fastenings – no bolts, no safety gadgets, no anything – unless she authorised the job and supervised it herself.’

‘Have you forgotten, or did you not know, that Miss Nutley was accustomed to drive from Weston Pipers into the town quite frequently in order to swim from a beach which was more attractive than the one at the bottom of Weston Pipers’ lawn? At least, that was her excuse, but I think you will find that on these occasions she was absent for longer than was needed for a swim, and quite long enough for a lock to be changed in her absence.’

‘Yes, and, of course, we know from the Nosey Parker at Number Twelve in the next street that she used to visit that junk shop now and again, probably before Piper came back from Paris. May I ask how you plan to proceed, ma’am?’

‘Certainly. I shall go to Weston Pipers again and speak to the groundsman, Penworthy.’

‘We’ve tried him, but he seems a bit of a dim-wit.’

‘It was he who gave us the clue to the buckets of sea water. Once it was realised that Miss Minnie need not have been drowned in the cove and her body carried back to the bungalow, one part of the puzzle fell into place and the first doubts were cast upon the likelihood of Mr Piper’s guilt.’

‘It wasn’t the drowning itself so much as his motive, ma’am. There doesn’t seem any reason to disbelieve the story that, until Miss Nutley and Piper had the downstair windows made secure, Minnie used to break in and snoop around looking for a later will than the one which gave Piper his inheritance.’

‘But Miss Nutley, later on, after Miss Minnie’s death, did the same thing.’

‘Guilty conscience, I reckon, ma’am, or just ornery curiosity about some of the guests’ sleeping habits. There’s a crazy streak in that lady, ma’am.’

‘A tearful one, at any rate.’

‘I don’t think her conscience would let her rest. There’s no doubt in my mind that she did her best to frame Piper for the murder. I’m almost inclined to put her back on my list of suspects, you know. I reckon she’s capable of murder. She’s big-built and, for a woman, very muscular. It wouldn’t have taken her long to overpower Minnie, who was a little thing and old.’

‘I know. I also thought of her at first, but the problem there is that she did not have a key to the new lock on the bungalow until you gave her one.’

‘Well, I reckon that’s right enough. Mr Piper and Mr Evans let us in after they’d busted a window and climbed in and found the body, and we gave Minnie’s own key to Miss Nutley after we’d concluded our investigations at the bungalow.’

‘Yes. When I took over the bungalow for a few days, I remember that Miss Nutley’s own key would not operate the lock and she was obliged to return to the house for the key you had given her.’

‘Well, that only means one thing, ma’am. Except for Mr Piper breaking the window, which he admitted doing, and which we thought at first was a suspicious circumstance, as he claimed he had lost his key to the bungalow—’

‘Found later by you and Miss Nutley. At the time, she was ignorant of the fact that neither it nor the duplicate in her own possession, would open the bungalow door.’

‘So, ma’am, the suspects are narrowed down in number, it seems to me.’

‘Quite so. It appears that Miss Minnie herself opened the door to her murderer.’

‘That’s it. She must have done.’

‘On the evidence we have been given, she made it a point never to open the door to anyone.’

‘We only know that from Piper, though. She might have made exceptions he didn’t know about. From your own researches of which you have been good enough to keep me informed, it seems that several of the tenants of Weston Pipers had visited that hell’s kitchen on the top floor of that junk shop. Couldn’t Minnie have been persuaded to let one or two of them into the bungalow?’

‘It is possible, certainly, although, except for one person, it seems to me unlikely.’

‘And that one person could have been Miss Barnes, who used to give her those lifts into the town and was in the running to become a sacrificial virgin. That’s who you meant when you spoke of the murderer slipping through our fingers, wasn’t it? You mean she’ll have cooked up an alibi.’

‘I was not thinking of Miss Barnes, Superintendent. If you remember, you were convinced that this was not a woman’s crime and I agree with you. However, I shall know more perhaps, when I have paid my next visit to Weston Pipers.’

‘Right. You do that, ma’am. We’ve still got plenty on our plate trying to trace those missing schoolgirls. Either they or their bodies must be somewhere about. We’re still going through Bosey’s villainous records.’

(2)

‘I am afraid that any morbid discoveries the police may make regarding the fate of the missing schoolgirls will represent but a Pyrric victory,’ said Dame Beatrice to Laura, ‘since it will have cost the taxpayers a great deal of money and bring less than comfort to bereaved parents, for the prime movers in this truly infernal business are both dead. Do you care to accompany me to Weston Pipers? Do as you wish, for neither of us, I am afraid, is exactly persona grata where Miss Nutley is concerned.’

‘Nothing would keep me away.’

They went to Weston Pipers, Laura driving, on the following morning and pulled up in front of the house. Early daffodils and late crocuses were showing in the beds under the windows of Niobe’s office and Chelion Piper’s study, the tide at the foot of the lawn was at the full and the groundsman Penworthy was leaning against the handle of a garden roller watching other people at work.

The work in question was the demolition of the bungalow. Already the doors and window-frames were out and stacked on the grass, and workmen were beginning to load them on to a lorry. A pile of broken glass was lying nearby and other workmen were digging a deep hole in the soft earth at the foot of the high bank near the back of the bungalow as a repository for the glass and any other unsaleable rubbish. Standing by and occasionally dabbing at her eyes with a lace-edged handkerchief, was Niobe.

Dame Beatrice got out of the car, closely followed by Laura, and went up to her.

‘Good morning, Miss Nutley,’ said Dame Beatrice briskly. ‘Rather early, I’m afraid, for a social call, but this is nothing of that kind. I want a word with your man Penworthy.’

‘Oh?’ said Niobe. ‘Well, there he is—’ she raised her voice – ‘idling his time away as usual. Oh, good morning, Mrs Gavin. Do you know Mrs Farintosh, then?’

‘I work for her, only I know her as Dame Beatrice Lestrange Bradley,’ said Laura.

‘Well, yes, of course, I know that now, but I knew her first as Mrs Farintosh. There’s Penworthy. Help yourselves. Is it – may I know what it’s about?’

‘Oh, yes, certainly,’ said Dame Beatrice. ‘It is in connection with the death of Miss Minnie.’

‘I see. Yes, I suppose the police are still trying to find out about that, now they’ve seen fit to release Chelion. I can’t think Penworthy will be of any help, though.’

‘So you are having the bungalow pulled down,’ said Dame Beatrice, gazing admiringly at the orderly nature of the wreckage.

‘Yes, it seemed the best thing. I am going to have a heated swimming pool in its place.’

‘That, perhaps, will be pleasanter for Mr Piper than bathing from the beach, and will save your own journeys into the town when you wish to bathe.’

Niobe looked suspiciously at her, but Dame Beatrice remained bland and seemed innocent of intending any double meaning. Then Niobe said, as unrestrained tears began to pour down her face:

‘Chelion won’t be using the pool. He isn’t here. He’s going to be married. He’s left me Weston Pipers and some money. I don’t suppose I’ll ever see him again.’

‘Dear me!’

‘I expect it’s all for the best.’ Niobe began some vigorous mopping-up operations. ‘He can’t feel any kindness towards me now.’

‘I am sorry to hear it. Just a word with Penworthy then, if I may.’

Penworthy, who had heard Niobe’s strictures, was now engaged with the roller, but thankfully abandoned his task when Dame Beatrice approached.

‘Mornin’!’ he said. ‘You want to know some more about them old buckets of sea water? Drownded in one on ’em, they says. What you think to that, eh?’

‘So you know that, do you? You were a great help, you know. Will you help me again?’

Penworthy wiped the palm of his hand down the side of his trousers. Dame Beatrice took the hint and produced a fifty pence coin.

‘I likes to be helpful, I do,’ said Penworthy, taking the coin and giving it the benison of a slight spit on the reverse side before he tucked it away. ‘What would it be this time?’

‘Trespassers.’

‘Trespassers?’

‘Trespassers.’

‘Oh, them! Only ent ever been one or two. They come paddlin’ round at low tide along the foreshore. Ent nothin’ to stop ’em, not at low tide.’

‘I am surprised that this only happened once or twice, if it is so easy to get to these grounds that way.’

‘Course there might have been more. If I’d been in the kitchen up at the house getting my elevenses, any number could of come and I wouldn’t see ’em, but you wouldn’t get ’em comin’ this time of year. Nobody wouldn’t come paddlin’ round the creek at this time o’ year. Come to think of it, though, I do recollect of one what come, but I don’t reckon he paddled, ’cos he had his shoes and socks on, you see.’

‘How observant you are! Did you speak to him?’

‘Ar, of course I did. I said as how he was on private property. He said he had heard a friend of his, Mr Shard, had rented a flat here, and he give me ten p. to go and find out if Mr Shard would come out and speak to him.’

‘Did you not think that a very strange request? Why could he not have gone up to the house?’

‘He had give me ten p., so I went, but when I got back, me having to go by way of the kitchen, not being allowed the front door, and having to find somebody as was willin’ to take a message to Miss Nutley’s office to ask her to get hold of Mr Shard, and me ’angin’ about only to find as Mr Shard had gone out, well, when I goes back to tell the feller, what does I find but he’s gorn. Got tired of waitin’, I suppose, and me takin’ all that trouble.’

‘Can you describe the man?’

‘Ar, reckon I can, near enough. He was a shortish, roundish kind of feller with one of them faces, all smooth-shaven and a bit yeller, what look as if they’re smilin’ until you look at their eyes. Some kind of a foreigner, though you couldn’t tell that from the way he talked, and his hair was jet black and quite thick and looked kind of greasy.’

‘That is a very good description. Had you ever seen him anywhere before?’

‘Not so far’s I know. I reckon I’d have remembered him if I had.’

‘Now how long ago was this? Can you remember?’

‘Oh, that’s an easy one. He come the day I took the last buckets of sea water up to the bungalow door. The arrangement was that when the old lady wanted her sea water she put out the buckets first thing in the mornin’. She never stuck to no regular days, but it was always three times a week she had the sea water. Well, I used to fill the buckets as soon as the tide come in and took ’em to her front door and give her a knock and a shout, and then, when she felt like it, which was always in my dinner-time, so I never see her do it, she took ’em in.’

Dame Beatrice took Laura, who had been talking to Niobe, in tow, they drove back to the hotel and she telephoned the Superintendent. He came round at once and listened to the story.

‘The description fits Bosey well enough,’ he said, ‘but there is no proof that he was admitted to the bungalow.’

‘It seems to me significant that those were the last buckets of sea water which Miss Minnie seems to have required. Besides, I think, now that we know the connection between them, that Bosey was the only person Miss Minnie would have admitted to the bungalow.’

‘But why should Bosey have murdered his right-hand helper?’

‘Because he no longer trusted her. She must have miscalculated in some way, and her usefulness had not only gone, but she may have brought you and your police force very close to him. We shall never know the details, but I think it highly significant that, following his visit, Miss Minnie needed no more sea water baths.’

(3)

‘So now we come to your affairs, Miss Kennett,’ said Dame Beatrice.

‘They don’t bear looking at,’ said Billie. ‘I suppose you’ve got it all worked out. Oh, well, I don’t care what happens now.’

‘I hear that Mr Piper has left Weston Pipers to Miss Nutley and has gone away to be married.’

‘Yes, to Elysée. They are going to live in Paris.’

‘Very wise. That will take Miss Barnes well away from all her unhappy memories.’

‘They weren’t all unhappy, you know. It was just that it took me a long time to accept the fact that Elysée was hetero and not homo. Are you prejudiced against people who don’t conform?’

‘Only against such people – if one is justified in calling them people – as Miss Minnie and Bosey.’

‘So somebody killed Bosey and got away with it. At the resumed inquest – my paper sent me to cover it – the verdict was suicide. Anyway, suicide or murder, it was much too easy a death for that monster.’

‘Why didn’t you put the milk bottles into the refrigerator?’ asked Dame Beatrice. Billie stared at her. Then she laughed.

‘So you know,’ she said. ‘How did you find out?’

‘By inference, deduction and the laws of probability.’

‘So what are you going to do about it?’

‘Nothing, of course,’ said Dame Beatrice, blandly surprised by the question. ‘Who am I to upset the findings of a coroner’s jury?’

‘You mean you’re going to let me get away with it?’

‘Well, you yourself have stated that it was too easy a death for such a monster.’

‘After I’d made Elysée tell me some of the truth – I don’t suppose for a moment I got it all – I began to wonder about Minnie’s death. I knew it couldn’t have been Piper. I did wonder about Niobe Nutley, but I don’t believe Minnie would have allowed her inside the bungalow.’

‘I agree. When did you kill him?’

‘First thing on the Monday morning. Sunday’s milk was still on the step, but I left it there.’

‘Was the shop open so early?’

‘Yes. I got there sharp on nine and he was just opening up. He recognised me, not as Elysée’s friend, but as the reporter who’d covered the preliminary inquest on Minnie. I’d met him, you see, when it was over, congratulated him on the way he’d given his evidence and asked him whether he could supply me with anything more about her for my paper. This was before I knew that Ellie was mixed up with the two of them, of course, so the interview was quite friendly.’

‘So presumably he left you to look around his shop on that Monday morning.’

‘I asked whether I might and he agreed and said he had some paper-work to finish, so would I shout if I found anything I wanted to buy. He went off and I turned the card round on the door so that it said CLOSED, picked up the milk bottle from outside the door, bolted the door as quietly as I could and sneaked along by the way I had seen him go. I had a knife – razor-sharp it was, too – because, of course, I was prepared for a fight when I tackled him about Ellie.’

‘You thought you could win if it came to physical combat?’

‘I had the knife. He was sitting at the big desk, bent over it, but he heard me and swung round. Then he jumped up and I don’t know whether he panicked or whether he thought I’d turn and run, but he rushed me, so I stuck out the knife and that was that. Then I got back as far as the door and fainted.’

‘You did not faint!’

‘Actually, no, but one always puts in a bit of local colour. If I’d been writing this up for my paper, I should certainly have said the woman fainted, whether she did or not.’

‘I see.’

‘Yes. Look here, you must have had something definite to go on in suspecting me. What did I do wrong? – apart from breaking the sixth Commandment, I mean.’

‘Psychologically you were my first suspect, unless (as was possible, of course) some person quite unknown to me had done the deed. My other suspect would have been Niobe Nutley, but I soon dismissed her from my calculations because, far from objecting to Bosey’s experiments, I think she enjoyed them because she had to find compensation for Piper’s defection.’

‘She could have ended up on that sacrificial altar, the same as I was afraid, when I got at the truth, Ellie might have done.’

‘I think Niobe Nutley felt that, with her weight and strength, she could have held her own against him if matters went beyond the merely obscene and looked like ending fatally for her.’

‘Did you ever suspect Ellie?’

‘No. She had taken matters into her own hands to protect her life, even though, in so doing, she had had to sacrifice what some might call her virtue. Besides, I cannot see her as a killer.’

‘Yes, that’s right enough, I suppose. So what do you want me to do? – give myself up?’

‘Why? Your story makes sense. You carried the knife in self-defence and Bosey rushed you and spiked himself on it. Maybe you should not have been carrying an offensive weapon, but that is the most, so far as I am concerned, which needs to be said. But the milk bottles still puzzle me. Can you explain?’

‘Oh, yes. I remembered that milk bottles left on the doorstep are a suspicious circumstance, so early on the Tuesday morning, knowing I could get in by the back door because I had left that way, I went along and found, to my horror, not one milk bottle, but two. The bottle I’d picked up on Monday morning must have been left on Sunday and he hadn’t bothered to take it in. Well, I shoved both bottles into my brief case – luckily it’s a roomy one – made sure nobody was about, went in again by way of the alley and the back door, which, of course, I knew I’d left unlocked, dumped the bottles and scarpered.’

‘Well, after all, it was suicide,’ said Laura defensively, when she heard the story. ‘If he rushed her and spiked himself on the knife she happened to be holding, he took a calculated risk and bought the result.’

‘Quite. She needs not this spirited defence from you. I accept that that is what happened, although I do not believe it.’

‘What will she do now? I’m desperately sorry for the poor blighter.’

‘She has her health, her work, and, when she comes to think things over, the satisfaction of having rid the world of one of the wickedest individuals who have ever lived. Not that I wish to exaggerate, of course, but the police are still checking the facts with regard to the disappearance of those schoolgirls.’

‘Do you think he had some idea that Minnie was double-crossing him?’

‘I think he distrusted her from the moment she took up residence in the bungalow.’

‘But why?’

‘She was there for one reason only, it seems to me.’

‘To push her claim to the Jacobson-Dupont property by looking for a lost will?’

‘Exactly. From that time onwards he suspected that she was putting her own interests before his and, with the police hot on his trail, he could not afford to have a traitor or even a dissident in his camp. I think he came more than once by night to the bungalow, no doubt to put his case. Mr Shard, the self-appointed spy, knew of those meetings and, although he refused to name the man to me, claiming that he did not know who it was, I am perfectly certain that he did know. He had attended at least two of the Satanist meetings and must have heard Bosey speak at them.’

‘But didn’t you tell me that Shard accused Piper of the murder?’

‘Mr Piper was, unwittingly perhaps, the cause of envy and jealousy. Miss Nutley seems to have done her utmost to throw suspicion on him, although I think she regretted it later and, as for Shard, well, Mr Piper is everything which Shard is not – frank, athletic, good-looking, and (more than this) very attractive to two tall women, Niobe Nutley and Elysée Barnes. Shard was once engaged to a girl whom unkind acquaintances referred to as his “beanstalk”. He broke off the engagement in consequence.’

‘Poor little runt!’

‘Pity is not akin to love, especially when it is couched in those terms.’

‘Sorry. But I am truly sad about him, same as I am about Billie Kennett.’

‘Billie Kennett? Ah, yes. The devil-marks on Elysée Barnes’s fair body were the last straw, I think. She got the truth out of Elysée and brooded on it until she was ripe for murder. Ah, well, she has been faithful to her Cynara – in her fashion.’

—«»—«»—«»—

[scanned anonymously in a galaxy far far away]

[converted from free-floating anonymous RTF file and reproofed cautiously, but without benefit of a printed copy for reference]

[A 3S Release— v2, html]

[April 11, 2007]