Nest of Vipers

‘So what are you going to do about it?’

‘Nothing, of course,’ said Dame Beatrice, blandly surprised by the question. ‘Who am I to upset the findings of a coroner’s jury?’

‘You mean you’re going to let me get away with it?’

‘Well, you yourself have stated that it was too easy a death for such a monster.’

‘After I’d made Elysee tell me some of the truth – I don’t suppose for a moment I got it all – I began to wonder about Minnie’s death. I knew it couldn’t have been Piper. I did wonder about Niobe Nutley, but I don’t believe Minnie would have allowed her inside the bungalow.’

‘I agree. When did you kill him?’

‘First thing on the Monday morning. Sunday’s milk was still on the step, but I left it there.’

‘Was the shop open so early?’

‘Yes. I got there sharp on nine and he was just opening up. He recognised me, not as Elysee’s friend, but as the reporter who’d covered the preliminary inquest on Minnie. I’d met him, you see, when it was over, congratulated him on the way he’d given his evidence and asked him whether he could supply me with anything more about her for my paper. This was before I knew that Ellie was mixed up with the two of them, of course, so the interview was quite friendly.’

‘So presumably he left you to look around his shop on that Monday morning.’

‘I asked whether I might and he agreed and said he had some paper-work to finish, so would I shout if I found anything I wanted to buy. He went off and I turned the card round on the door so that it said CLOSED, picked up the milk bottle from outside the door, bolted the door as quietly as I could and sneaked along by the way I had seen him go. I had a knife – razor-sharp it was, too – because, of course, I was prepared for a fight when I tackled him about Ellie.’

‘You thought you could win if it came to physical combat?’

‘I had the knife. He was sitting at the big desk, bent over it, but he heard me and swung round. Then he jumped up and I don’t know whether he panicked or whether he thought I’d turn and run, but he rushed me, so I stuck out the knife and that was that. Then I got back as far as the door and fainted.’

‘You did not faint!’

‘Actually, no, but one always puts in a bit of local colour. If I’d been writing this up for my paper, I should certainly have said the woman fainted, whether she did or not.’

‘I see.’

‘Yes. Look here, you must have had something definite to go on in suspecting me. What did I do wrong? – apart from breaking the sixth Commandment, I mean.’

‘Psychologically you were my first suspect, unless (as was possible, of course) some person quite unknown to me had done the deed. My other suspect would have been Niobe Nutley, but I soon dismissed her from my calculations because, far from objecting to Bosey’s experiments, I think she enjoyed them because she had to find compensation for Piper’s defection.’

‘She could have ended up on that sacrificial altar, the same as I was afraid, when I got at the truth, Ellie might have done.’

‘I think Niobe Nutley felt that, with her weight and strength, she could have held her own against him if matters went beyond the merely obscene and looked like ending fatally for her.’

‘Did you ever suspect Ellie?’

‘No. She had taken matters into her own hands to protect her life, even though, in so doing, she had had to sacrifice what some might call her virtue. Besides, I cannot see her as a killer.’

‘Yes, that’s right enough, I suppose. So what do you want me to do? – give myself up?’

‘Why? Your story makes sense. You carried the knife in self-defence and Bosey rushed you and spiked himself on it. Maybe you should not have been carrying an offensive weapon, but that is the most, so far as I am concerned, which needs to be said. But the milk bottles still puzzle me. Can you explain?’

‘Oh, yes. I remembered that milk bottles left on the doorstep are a suspicious circumstance, so early on the Tuesday morning, knowing I could get in by the back door because I had left that way, I went along and found, to my horror, not one milk bottle, but two. The bottle I’d picked up on Monday morning must have been left on Sunday and he hadn’t bothered to take it in. Well, I shoved both bottles into my brief case – luckily it’s a roomy one – made sure nobody was about, went in again by way of the alley and the back door, which, of course, I knew I’d left unlocked, dumped the bottles and scarpered.’

‘Well, after all, it was suicide,’ said Laura defensively, when she heard the story. ‘If he rushed her and spiked himself on the knife she happened to be holding, he took a calculated risk and bought the result.’

‘Quite. She needs not this spirited defence from you. I accept that that is what happened, although I do not believe it.’

‘What will she do now? I’m desperately sorry for the poor blighter.’

‘She has her health, her work, and, when she comes to think things over, the satisfaction of having rid the world of one of the wickedest individuals who have ever lived. Not that I wish to exaggerate, of course, but the police are still checking the facts with regard to the disappearance of those schoolgirls.’

‘Do you think he had some idea that Minnie was double-crossing him?’

‘I think he distrusted her from the moment she took up residence in the bungalow.’

‘But why?’

‘She was there for one reason only, it seems to me.’