Nest of Vipers

‘Protective instinct, yes, I believe I have. Large heart – well, not that you’d notice. I’ve hated most of the people I’ve had to protect.’

‘Do you think Miss Nutley has ever felt protective towards Mr Piper?’

‘Lord, no! Do you? After all, it seems to have been mostly her evidence which landed him in the soup.’

‘As you pointed out, I have never seen them together, so I cannot express an opinion.’

‘If you ask me, I sum her up as a woman wailing for her demon lover, and when she can’t get him she’d just as soon see him in hell.’

‘Or in the condemned hold?’

‘Yes, if you like,’ said Billie, giving Dame Beatrice a very straight glance. Dame Beatrice paid it the compliment of asking a direct personal question.

‘Are you perhaps attributing to Miss Nutley sentiments which may apply in your own case?’

‘No,’ said Billie, without showing the slightest sign either of surprise or resentment. ‘There are two kinds of love. Mine’s the second kind. Men do make passes at Elysee, but I’ve never really minded until now.’

‘Do you know the man who has eloped with Miss Barnes?’

‘Yes, and if I met him down a dark alley I’d stick a knife in his ribs.’

‘That contradicts your previous assertion, surely?’

‘I don’t think so. If I believed Elysee would be happy with him, I’d give them my blessing; but she won’t be happy with him. He’s a rat.’

‘Oh, really? That still seems to me a little like wishful thinking.’

‘I expect you’ve met him if you’ve been staying at the Vipers,’ said Billie, ignoring this sally. ‘He’s Cassie McHaig’s stand-off half, Polly Hempseed. I knew he made passes at Elysee, but I never really thought he’d be the one she’d fall for. I believe he’s only run off with her to score off Cassie. Mistress McHaig is quite a good sort, but kind of heavy in the hand, I’d say. They were always rowing. He thought Cassie was bossy and narrow-minded (which she is) and she despised the way he made his money. So do I, in a way, but we poor journalists have to live, I suppose, although there doesn’t always seem much point in it.’

‘He wrote his Woman’s Page with tongue in cheek, I was told. Perhaps that softens the evidence against him.’

‘I think it makes him even more of a heel.’

‘Did you know that Miss Minnie took hot sea-water baths?’ asked Dame Beatrice.

‘Oh,’ said Billie, ‘so that’s how it was done!’

‘It seems a likely theory. I have presented the police with it.’

‘But, if they accept it, isn’t that enough to clear Piper? I mean, if she was drowned in her own sea water, Piper is no more suspect than anybody else, is he?’

‘That is what I have attempted to convey to the authorities.’

‘Bully for you! I mean, it’s so much more likely, isn’t it, than that she was dragged out of the bungalow down to the beach and held under water and then her body taken back to her bedroom and coshed. The coshing is the hardest part to understand. I mean, anybody can be excused for committing murder if they have reason enough, but a gratuitous assault on a dead body doesn’t seem like the action of a sane person, does it?’

‘In my book, as Laura here would put it, no murderer is a sane person, Miss Kennett.’

‘That’s too sweeping altogether, Dame Beatrice. Surely there might be the best of reasons why certain people should not go on living.’

‘Those people would not be murdered; they would be executed.’

‘The result would be the same. I think you’re splitting hairs.’

‘So long as I do not split heads, I am still on the right side of the law. If Mr Hempseed is as unworthy as you think him to be, what was his attraction for your friend?’

‘Well, just that she wanted a man, I suppose. Besides, she and I had begun to get on each other’s wick a bit. It works that way sometimes in friendships such as ours. It would have settled itself in time, but Elysee didn’t give it a chance. All the same, although I’m as sick as mud with her, I’d have her back tomorrow if she’d come, and there would be no recriminations, either. My firm belief is that people can’t help what they do. We’re all conditioned to make certain mistakes, and we make them. I think Elysee is the most sickening little ass to have fallen for this lonely hearts adjuster, but time will show.’

‘It seemed to me,’ said Dame Beatrice, ‘that only two people at Weston Pipers were what I (possibly in my ignorance) would call happy.’

‘You mean Irelath and little Sumatra, don’t you? Yes, I’m sure you’re right. Niobe is as miserable as sin, poor cow, Polly has gone off with Elysee because he was always at loggerheads with Cassie, who must be feeling suicidal at his defection, and, of course, long ago, I should guess, the Evans couple became fed up with each other, but can’t quite face up to a divorce. I’ll tell you something else, but it’s not for publication. If I had to pick the most likely murderer from among the Viperites, I’d plump for Mandrake Shard every time.’

‘His height and his physique might be against him, don’t you think?’

‘Oh, I think not. He’s probably very wiry and tough, in spite of his size, and Minnie was an old lady and probably frail.’

‘I do not see him as a violent character, although in his capacity as blackmailer and anonymous letter-writer he is far from harmless.’