Nest of Vipers

‘I have sounded him on the subject and he is eager for the experience.’

‘I’d rather him than me.’

‘Quite so. I am fortunate in having a factotum who is immune from superstition and who does not believe in ghosts.’

‘You’ll be careful, won’t you?’ said Laura rather anxiously. ‘As soon as people know that you don’t believe this man Piper is guilty, the murderer is going to get a bit restless, don’t you think?’

‘I shall keep my errand a secret for as long as I can.’

‘But you’ll have to ask questions and probe into motives and all that.’

‘Ah, well, yes, but I shall go as Miss Dorothy L. Sayers’s – or, rather, Lord Peter Wimsey’s – “lady with a long, woolly jumper on knitting-needles and jingly things round her neck”. I shall affect to know nothing of the recent events which have occurred in the house and the bungalow, but merely state that I have answered an advertisement in the local paper. I shall allow it to be understood that I am taking a flat in Weston Pipers as a temporary measure while I am looking for a suitable house of my own in that part of the country.’

‘Giving a false name and all that? What fun you are going to have! I’d love to be there and see you in action.’

‘That may be sooner than you think, but to begin with I must play a lone hand.’

‘Except for George.’

‘Except for George. He will take that as his surname. It will be less confusing for both of us if I can continue to refer to him as George, so I have booked him in as William of that ilk, after the famous bookseller.’

‘And what shall you call yourself in case I have occasion to write to you or send on any correspondence?’

‘You remember my success, perhaps, as Mrs Farintosh at Sir Bohun Chantrey’s Sherlock Holmes party some twenty-odd years ago?’

‘I hope you don’t intend to wear that hideous mixed-tartan rig-out and the elastic-sided boots!’

‘That would make me appear eccentric.’

Laura looked at her small, spare, black-eyed, yellow-skinned, beaky-mouthed employer and decided that nature had done all that was necessary to make her look eccentric and that a livelier iris upon the burnished dove would be a redundancy better left unstressed.

‘Right. Mrs Farintosh, complete with knitting-needles, it is,’ she said, ‘and I’ll play Sister Ann while you comb through Bluebeard’s castle.’

‘As a matter of academic interest only, now that you have read Mr Piper’s account of the events leading up to his arrest, have you come to any conclusions?’ asked Dame Beatrice.

‘About the identity of the murderer? Well, the verdict at the inquest was death by drowning, so I agree with you. I don’t think Piper is guilty.’

‘Interesting. Why do you say that?’

‘Because people who have been swimming-bath attendants would never dream of drowning anybody.’

‘Surely a sweeping statement?’

‘Maybe, but that’s my answer and, of course, it stymies me.’

‘How so?’

‘Because it also lets out the Niobe woman. Apart from this firm belief of mine, I would have picked her as Suspect Number One.’

‘Why so?’

‘Oh, the old story of the woman scorned, you know. If you look at Piper’s evidence objectively, there is nothing to show that this Niobe didn’t work the whole thing to bring suspicion on him and land him in the cart as a matter of revenge for his dodging the column and deciding not to marry her.’

‘A fascinating theory.’

‘But you don’t think it’s worth the toss of a biscuit.’

‘On the contrary, I consider it well-reasoned and most plausible. Do people toss biscuits, by the way?’

‘To dogs and the birds, perhaps.’

‘Rosalind had not one to toss, or, rather, to throw, at a dog. I speak of words, though, not of biscuits. Perhaps she confused the two.’

‘And you have not one or the other to throw at a bitch. Is that it? For this Niobe, whether she is guilty or not, is a bitch. I’m certain of that.’

‘Must you malign the poor girl before either of us has so much as met her?’

‘If she isn’t a bitch, why hasn’t this Piper married her? He seems, by his own account, to have intended marriage when he could afford it. Why would he have ducked out as soon as fortune favoured him?’

‘He explains that, I think. While he was a poor man he was safe from the toils. As soon as he became wealthy his bulwark was gone.’

‘So we write him off for a heel and join in Niobe’s tears, do we?’

‘I have better use for my eyes than to redden them in a lost cause.’

‘But you don’t think Piper’s is a lost cause?’