Nest of Vipers

‘You rat!’ said Niobe to Targe. She began to cry.

‘You told us you knew, but you didn’t tell us how you found out,’ said Cassie. (This was all news to me, Dame Beatrice. A nest of vipers was beginning to hatch out.)

‘Oh, well, I ferret around, you know,’ said Targe, in the apologetic voice he had used in addressing me. ‘I thought Miss Minnie was an interesting old lady and might have something in her past which would make a story if I changed the names of people and places, you know. Miss Kennett did say that she thought Miss Minnie must have had a past, and as Miss Kennett was a newspaper woman and reported crime and so forth, I thought perhaps she knew something and that I could track it down. I was rather stuck for material for another book, you see – one is, sometimes – so I poked around and kind of dug up the dirt, you know. Well, that’s the way it goes, isn’t it?’

‘You rat!’ said Niobe for the second time. ‘Just be quiet! Nobody wants to know.’

Chapter Five

The Case for the Police

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THE meeting broke up in some disorder. Everybody talked at once and Niobe wept. In the end, when he could make himself heard, Evans suggested that we should all hold our horses until we saw how the cat was going to jump and not worry about pigs in pokes until the pigeons headed for home, and with this splendid collection of metaphors he cleared us all out of his sitting-room and settled down, if the sounds were anything to go by, to a first-class row with Constance Kent. At any rate, no more was said about anybody leaving.

The police came again next day, the day of my arrest. They began by taking me through my story, the same story as I have given you, Dame Beatrice, in these pages. If you are going to help me, you had better know the extent of the case against me. I should not have thought it was strong enough to warrant my arrest, but I suppose it must be, as I am now in custody. The police are not anxious to make mistakes.

I think I had better report the interview as I did the previous one; that is, in the form of question and answer, because it is the form the interview took, and a very uncomfortable occasion it was, because I soon perceived that they had only one thought in their heads. They were certain I had killed Miss Minnie and they believed they knew my motive. The means, of course, were obvious. There remained only the question of opportunity, but they had satisfied themselves about that, too.

The main plank in their platform was the fact that Miss Minnie had been a relative of Mrs Dupont-Jacobson. They had been in contact with the lawyers and had found out that Miss Minnie’s full name was Minnesota Dupont and that she had been Mrs Dupont-Jacobson’s first cousin.

They even admitted that a previous will had named Minnesota Dupont as sole heiress. It turned out, however, that the two women had fallen out when Miss Minnie had joined the Panconscious sect and had promised to leave them her money. Upon this, Mrs Dupont-Jacobson had re-made her will, this time in my favour, so my conversation with the police went as follows:

‘Are you sure you knew nothing of Miss Minnie’s existence before she came here, sir?’

‘I knew nothing of her at all until I returned from Paris. She had then been living in the bungalow here for several months, I believe.’

‘Were you surprised when you found out that, apart from a few bequests to charity, you were Mrs Dupont- Jacobson’s heir?’

‘Naturally I was surprised; overwhelmed, in fact.’

‘Did it not occur to you that there might be persons with a better right to the money and the property than yourself?’

‘No. Why should it? People have a right to dispose of their own things as they wish.’

‘Why did you straightway go to Paris?’

‘Why shouldn’t I go to Paris?’

‘You did not go to escape from claims which were already being made upon you?’

‘Certainly not. I went there to get on with a novel I was writing.’

‘Yet certain claims had been made. Do not deny this, sir. We have proof.’

‘There were a certain number of begging letters. It’s like winning the Pools, I suppose. There’s always somebody ready to cut himself in for a bit of the stuff.’

‘Did one of the letters come from Miss Minnie?’

‘Not to my knowledge.’

‘How do you mean, sir?’

‘When I found I was being pestered, I left instructions that all my correspondence should be examined by Miss Niobe Nutley before it was sent on to Paris. She was to weed out the begging letters and send on only what mattered.’

‘Miss Nutley informs us that there was a letter from a Miss Minnesota Dupont among those she sent on to you.’

‘If there was, I never got it, but I did change my digs a couple of times in Paris and I don’t suppose a concierge at a pension would bother about forwarding anything.’

‘So you do not deny the possibility that Miss Dupont wrote to you, sir?’

‘As a possibility, no, of course I don’t. All I can say is that I never received the letter.’

‘Did you receive very much correspondence while you were in Paris?’