Nest of Vipers

‘Oh, keep your sob-stuff for your Answers to Correspondents!’ said Cassie.

‘Stranger things have happened than people wronging other people’s daughters. You should see some of the letters I get. Heartrending!’ said Hempseed, pulling a face at her.

‘Nonsense! Just like to see themselves in print, that’s all. I’ve no patience with people who make a parade of their troubles.’

‘Not a parade of their troubles. A safety-valve for their emotions, if you like.’

‘All right, so long as you think so,’ said Cassie. ‘I’ll tell you who could do with a safety-valve for her emotions and that’s Niobe. She frets for Chelion. She may look like a taller edition of Lola Sapola, but she’s a pushover where Chelion is concerned. That’s a sob-story if you like.’

‘If you ask me, it’s not Niobe’s emotions that need an outlet. I think she’s gone off her rocker,’ said Hempseed.

‘Oh, rubbish! She’s as sane as you are,’ snapped Cassie.

‘Then why has she taken to walking about at night disturbing and frightening people? She’s got this master-key, which means she can get in anywhere. I don’t like it.’

‘I wonder you don’t have bolts put on your doors,’ said Dame Beatrice. ‘That surely, would be the answer if you don’t want nocturnal visitors.’

‘It would if she would allow it, but she won’t,’ said Hempseed. ‘Says it would spoil the beautiful woodwork.’

‘Perhaps she should be confronted with a fait accompli.’

‘Put bolts on the doors without asking permission?’ said Cassie. ‘The next thing would be our notice to quit.’

‘I wanted to put a chair against the door at night,’ said Hempseed, ‘but madam here said that at least Niobe moved around quietly, whereas the chair would make a row if she shoved against it trying to get in. But then Niobe’s walkabouts at night don’t wake madam up. It’s only poor old light-sleeper me who gets disturbed.’

‘How often does she pay these visits?’ asked Dame Beatrice.

‘I don’t know about other people, but she has opened our door twice in the past ten days.’

‘What can be her object, I wonder?’

‘Just restlessness, I guess,’ said Cassie, ‘and perhaps nosiness about people sleeping together. I would say she has a fairly nasty mind, but I’m very sorry for her.’

‘We share a bed,’ said Hempseed, ‘being married and all that. I know it’s old-fashioned nowadays, but we tied ourselves up without thinking.’

‘I thought,’ said Cassie. ‘I come of Presbyterian stock and have my prejudices. Of course nobody here knows that we’re married, so we’d be glad if you kept it dark. Evesham and Constance don’t mind being known as a married couple, but we think in the modern way.’

‘Did you receive any of the anonymous letters which appear to have been distributed to some of the residents?’

‘Yes, we had a couple – one each. Why?’

‘You have not kept them, of course?’

‘We did at first,’ said Cassie, ‘because we thought of going to the police, but when old Minnie was killed we knew that it would be unnecessary, so then we destroyed them.’

‘Were you so sure that Miss Minnie wrote them?’

‘Well, nobody has had one since she went. We always thought she wrote them, but when no more came it seemed like proof.’

‘When Miss Nutley entered your bedroom, what did she do?’

‘Nothing,’ replied Hempseed. ‘When I sat up and switched on the light she murmured that she was sorry she’d mistaken the room. Very funny that she mistook it twice!’

‘You never wondered whether she and not Miss Minnie wrote the letters?’

‘We might have done,’ said Cassie, ‘but when she had one herself she asked every one of us except Latimer Targe, who doesn’t own a typewriter, to turn out a half-page of typing for us all to compare with the typing on her letter and on any which we had received.’

‘People made no secret of the fact that they had received these communications, then?’

‘Oh, no. Nobody here is particularly reticent about private matters except the two girls who have left. I believe everybody had at least one letter, except Evesham and Constance,’ said Hempseed.

‘And if we’d let it be known that we were married, instead of letting people think we are just living together, I don’t believe we would have had one,’ said Cassie. ‘That’s what I think. Minnie was just the kind of old party who would think cohabitation outside marriage was the blackest of sins. She worked for some peculiar religious group, you know.’

‘And did people co-operate by producing their specimens of typing?’ asked Dame Beatrice.

‘Everybody except Miss Minnie. There, according to Niobe, she met with a point-blank refusal. Latimer Targe even produced a page which his typist had done for him. Niobe had talked about bringing the police in, you see, so we all thought the sensible thing was to put ourselves in the clear.’

‘And the typings did not match with the typing of the anonymous letters?’

‘We even used a magnifying glass and they didn’t. Mind you, Chelion bought Niobe a new typewriter just about