of Billie Kennett who reported it. Whoever had played that joke and sent the printers that notepaper-heading may have guessed more truly than he knew when he called my house Nest of Vipers.
My random thoughts, having taken this direction, became canalised. I eyed the poker again. It could have been the agent with which Miss M’s head had been battered. If so, and if he had done his homework, the murderer would have cleansed it of blood, hair and his own fingerprints before replacing it in the sitting-room.
Then, my shocked mind beginning to work overtime, I returned to wondering whether Evans was the murderer and, if so, whether perhaps he was deliberately re-imposing his fingerprints on the poker, holding me as witness that his prints were innocent ones.
‘Two can play at that game,’ I thought confusedly. You will understand, Dame Beatrice, that I was not myself at the time, or I would never have given way to such morbid imaginings. I spoke to him. ‘Damn cold in here,’ I said. ‘Why don’t we have the fire on?’ I stooped and pressed the switch. ‘Now
‘That’s better,’ he said. ‘Ought to have thought of it for myself.’
‘And so have put your seemingly innocent dabs on to something else you may have touched when you were here before,’ I thought; and such was my disordered state that I only just stopped myself saying it aloud.
I suppose we must have sat there for the best part of an hour before anybody turned up. I don’t know what Evans’s thoughts were, but I know now that we were both adding two and two together and totalling them into a conclusion that the other fellow was a murderer. Looking back, I can see that if my mind had not been temporarily disturbed I would never have dreamed of suspecting Evans, but under the influence of shock one seldom thinks clearly.
The first person to turn up was the local doctor. He was accompanied by Targe. Evans and I went together to the front door – Evans first putting down the poker – to let them in, but Targe did not cross the threshold.
‘So where is the body?’ asked the doctor, coming in in a business-like way. ‘Are you sure it is defunct?’
‘Yes, nobody, not even you, can do her any good,’ replied Evans in a phrase I suppose he had used to dramatic effect in one of his books. We took the doctor into the bedroom. He looked at the body on the bed.
‘Well, well! What’s all this?’ he said. ‘All right, you two need not stay. I can manage.’
‘We are witnesses,’ said Evans, ‘to a very nasty business. We leave nobody alone here until the police arrive.’
The doctor shrugged his shoulders, took off his overcoat, turned up his cuffs and began, I suppose, a preliminary examination of the body. He had finished and was washing his hands in the bathroom (to which Evans and I had followed him, although I saw no point whatever in doing so, but Evans had caught my sleeve and steered me along) when the police turned up.
They sent us over to the house and then I suppose they went through the usual routine of photographs, fingerprints, agreement or otherwise between the doctor Targe had summoned and the police surgeon, and then, of course, they came over to the house and began the inevitable questioning of myself and the others. As Miss Minnie’s landlord and one of the three who had found the body, I was interrogated first.
How long had I owned Weston Pipers?
For about two years and a half.
How long had the deceased been a tenant?
Ever since the alterations to the mansion had been completed.
How long ago was that?
Last May twelvemonth.
Why had the deceased rented the bungalow instead of taking an apartment in the house?
She was a recluse.
Could she have had an apartment instead of the bungalow if she had asked for one?
Yes, she could have had the choice of two, but she opted for the bungalow and would not consider anything else. My – I boggled a bit here, not knowing quite how to describe Niobe’s position in my scheme of things – my housekeeper, who had been responsible for all the lettings while I was in Paris, would confirm.
Had I any previous acquaintance with the deceased before she rented the bungalow?
I certainly had not.
How did the deceased get on with the other tenants?
So far as I knew, she had had nothing to do with them at all.
Thank you, sir, that would be all for the moment. Would I ask my housekeeper to spare them a few minutes? Oh, by the way, sir, they noticed that I had fitted anti-burglar devices to my downstair windows. Had I had any particular reason for doing that?
No, it had been a precautionary measure, that was all.
Yet the same precautions, they had noticed, had not been extended to the bungalow.
No, they had not.
Why not, sir? Surely it was more necessary for the bungalow of an old lady living alone to be so protected, rather than a house which (they consulted a list) contained five able-bodied men?
Well, we – that is, my housekeeper – suspected that Miss Minnie herself broke into the house at night, so there was no point in fortifying the bungalow.
Why would Miss Minnie break in?
She seemed to have some idea that there was a will somewhere in the house which made her Mrs Dupont-
