Nest of Vipers

‘Will you explain that, please?’

‘I should have thought it was obvious. Most of the windows in the sitting-rooms of these flats look out on the park and the lake, of course, but there are some from which the lawn, the bungalow, and the beach are visible. Miss Minnie was fully dressed, I understand, when the body was found. Somebody, surely, would have seen her entering the sea if she had done so by daylight.’

‘Entering the sea? Voluntarily, you mean?’

‘Well, hardly, considering the battering of her head, poor thing. But surely, as it must have been murder, somebody would have heard her protesting, perhaps screaming, or would even have seen her dragged towards the beach.’

‘Her protests and her screams could equally well have been heard in the dark, could they not?’ (So the possibility of sea water baths taken inside the bungalow was not going to be mentioned, thought Dame Beatrice. Perhaps, though, after all, Niobe knew nothing of the buckets of sea water scooped up by Penworthy and peddled by him to the rheumatic old lady; or perhaps she had so much guilty knowledge of them that she was not prepared to mention them.)

Dame Beatrice did not wait for an answer to her question, but continued: ‘At what time did Miss Minnie retire for the night?’

‘Oh, all sorts of times. I have seen her light go off at nine and I have known it to be still on at two in the morning.’ (So you kept a watch on the bungalow, thought Dame Beatrice.)

‘I have been told that you suspected her of breaking into this house at night,’ she said.

‘Yes. There were complaints, so I had all the downstair windows made secure, as well as the doors.’

‘Very wise. But why, Miss Nutley—’ here Dame Beatrice made her own dramatic pause – ‘why do you follow her example?’

‘What do you mean? My rooms are in the house by right. I do not need to break in!’

‘Not into the house, but into some of the tenants’ rooms.’

‘I have never done such a thing! Well, not deliberately. Who told you that I had? I suppose somebody has shown you one of those abominable letters! As a matter of fact, there you have the grain of truth you yourself mentioned. I did inadvertently enter a room that was not my own. I mistook it for Chelion’s, that is all. I went to look over his clothes to see whether there was mending to be done or anything to be sent to the cleaners.’

‘A strange mistake, surely, since Mr Piper’s rooms were on the ground floor and the room I am told you entered was upstairs.’

‘I was confused. I hardly knew what I was doing. You have no idea of the shock I had when poor Chelion was arrested.’

‘Yes, shock can have strange effects. What caused two of your tenants to leave Weston Pipers?’

Niobe did not appear surprised by the change of subject.

‘Billie Kennett and Elysee Barnes?’ she said. ‘I think they found the rent a little above their means. I had to let them go, although their lease had quite a long time to run.’

‘They were not the victims of persecution, by any chance?’

‘Persecution? What do you mean?’

‘Were they happy together?’

‘So far as I know.’

‘Sometimes, Miss Nutley, an unhappily married woman can become extremely envious of the happily unmarried, especially those of her own sex. I have known cases.’

‘Some people would rather be unhappily married than not married at all.’

‘That also is true. Is it certain that Miss Minnie had no attachments?’

‘So far as I know, she had none, except that elderly man who attended the inquest, but he could hardly be called an attachment.’

‘Why do you say that?’

‘He was merely the head of that religious sect for which, I believe, she edited some sort of magazine.’

‘How do you think the murderer actually drowned his victim?’

‘I would rather not speculate. It is a horrid subject for thought, just simply horrible.’

‘As the body was fully clothed, she could hardly have been drowned in the bath.’

‘Of course not. She was drowned in the sea. He overpowered her – she was elderly and frail – and plunged her in.’

‘I still think it was a very stupid murder. If it happened as you suggest – and of course you realise that the suggestion implicates Mr Piper, as it did when you made it to the police – why on earth was not the body left in the sea? – a point we have already touched on. In that case, don’t you see, it would have been so easy to make it look like suicide. It would have been worth the risk, for in the case of anybody known to be somewhat eccentric, suicide would have been taken for granted.’

‘The murderer must have had a reason,’ said Niobe, ‘but we shall never know what it was.’

‘Oh, yes, we shall, Miss Nutley. The murder had to look like murder. A verdict of suicide would not have suited the murderer’s plans at all.’

‘That does not make sense to me.’