'No. One gets an impression, that's all. Actually I had very little to do with him. All the business dealings were with the bitch.'
'With Miss Nutley?'
'Yes, if you prefer to call her that. My other name for her is Nut Case.'
'Really? A play upon her surname?'
'More of a play upon her nature. I called her a bitch just now, but not in the sense that most women call other women bitches. Niobe Nutley was a cringing, whining, please-don't-kick-me little whelpess who'd attached herself to Piper in the most sickening way you can imagine. Of course, you never saw them together, did you?'
'No, I had not that affecting experience. My impression of Miss Nutley was of a hard-headed businesswoman with unexpectedly sensitive tear-ducts.'
Billie's heavy, sardonic expression had vanished. She lifted her head and laughed aloud in an unaffected shout of amusement.
'I say,' she said, 'would you mind if I used that at some time? It's rather good.'
'I resign the copyright to you.'
'Unexpectedly sensitive tear-ducts! Yes, they're so very sensitive that one suspects the tears may be of the crocodile variety. I mean, it was because of what she told the police that Piper got arrested.'
'If you were not there at the time, how do you know that?'
'Through my job. I wasn't sent along to cover the case, but I knew the chap on our paper who got the assignment. Niobe seems to have spread herself on the subject of sea bathing and Minnie's expectations under Chelion's patroness's will.'
'Did you see anything of Miss Minnie while you were at Weston Pipers?'
'No. She was an unsociable old pussycat and didn't mix with the sinful likes of us. Elysée used to say she was sorry for her, but my view is that you choose your own way of life and, if you aren't cut out to be a mixer, why try to mix? In a way I envied the old girl her independence. It's not much fun, really and truly, being a slave to another person, whether it's lover, husband, elderly invalid, or widower father. I've experienced most of all that in my time - except the husband angle, of course.'
'You must have a strong protective instinct and a very large heart.'
'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 Elysée, 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 Elysée 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 Elysée, 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,
