'Perhaps there was no choice.'
'You don't mean that in quite the way it sounds,' said Billie shrewdly. 'What's the double entendre?'
'Not that, exactly. Miss Minnie seems to have been a woman of mystery so far as Weston Pipers was concerned. Can anything have passed between her and Miss Barnes which led to Miss Barnes's going away with Mr Hempseed?'
'Sounds very far-fetched to me.'
'I attach significance to it for one reason only; that Miss Barnes made no mention to you of giving Miss Minnie the lifts, yet Mr Piper, by his own admission, knew of them.'
'Well, he was at home, while I was at work. Elysée only had the car two or three days a week, anyway, and I don't suppose Miss Minnie went shopping every one of those days. I don't think there's anything much in what you're saying.'
'Did Miss Barnes ever go out in the evenings?'
'Without me, you mean? Chelion took her to the pictures once or twice in the town, but otherwise the only times she was out in the evenings was if she had a late modelling session. That happened quite a number of times while we were at Pipers.'
'Not a bad scout, that slightly uncouth and very unhappy blighter,' said Laura, when they had left the house. 'Anyway, for both their sakes I hope she never does meet this Hempseed down a dark alley.'
'She would hardly be likely to have a carving-knife with her.'
'That was an interesting sidelight on Mrs Constance Kent, wasn't it? Do you believe the story?'
'Yes. I had personal experience of the case and an expert opinion was called for.'
'You mean you actually talked to Constance Kent Evans? But that means she must have recognised you when you turned up at Weston Pipers.'
'Oh, I think she did, but she was no more than a girl when the case came up and I expect she hoped that her appearance had sufficiently changed for me not to recognise her.'
'A bit thick that she should moralise about those two harmless girls when her own slate was hardly what you'd call clean.'
'Oh, guilty people often attempt to blacken others in order to shed some of the load.'
'So, in your opinion, she did deliberately murder the baby?'
'Opinion is not fact. Let us abandon the subject. I shall be glad to learn Miss Barnes's new address.'
'You think she'll get in contact with Miss Kennett and let her know where she is?'
'I think Miss Kennett believes that she will, and she is in a better position to judge than we are. Besides, she may well be right in her estimation of Mr Hempseed's character and motives. She is deeply hurt at the moment, but her work has probably made her a pretty good judge of people and particularly of men, since the courts cater, in all respects, much more for that sex than for women.'
'Was she of any help to you? She seemed to think she wasn't.'
'She took kindly to the theory that Miss Minnie was drowned in sea water but not in open water.'
'What does that prove?'
'Nothing.'
'There's only one thing against the theory, you know.'
'Yes, I do know and I have given thought to it. You mean that if Miss Minnie was drowned while she was taking a bath, the body would hardly have been found fully clothed.'
'Or on the bed, come to that.'
'As I say, I have given thought to these things and have attempted to make a reconstruction of what must have happened. I do not believe that Miss Minnie was drowned either in the sea or in her bath. The buckets of sea water were left to settle, so that any sand might fall to the bottom of the pail. The murderer had only to watch the pails being delivered to the bungalow by Penworthy to know that the means of drowning Miss Minnie were to hand and would remain so for several hours.'
'You mean he simply broke in and held her head down in one of the buckets?'
'And then carried the body, which would have been fully clothed, into the bedroom and laid it on the bed while he (or she, of course) spied out the lie of the land. The plan, I am sure, was then to have transported the body to the beach and put it into the water to indicate suicide. I hold this opinion despite the discussion I had with Niobe Nutley.'
'Then why on earth wasn't that done? If it had been, a charge of murder would never have been brought and poor old Minnie would still have been got out of the way.'
'Dear me,' said Dame Beatrice, 'the whole point was not only to get Miss Minnie out of the way, but to involve Mr Piper. Almost at the last moment, I think, the murderer saw his (or her) error. A suicide would never do. It still had to look like what it was - murder. There was probably a moment of indecision; almost, if not quite, a moment of panic. Then, as a last resort, I think the murderer took up the remaining buckets of sea water and soused the whole of the body (and, of course, the bed) with them.'
'And the poker-work, or whatever, on the head?'
'Frustration, because what had seemed a perfect plan had, at the last minute, miscarried, perhaps, but there is a more likely explanation.'
'Such as?'
'Work it out for yourself It is very simple.'
'Well, it wasn't Piper's and it can hardly have been Niobe Nutley's plan.'
'Why not? I agree that a swimming; instructor, man or woman, would be the last person (owing to the inhibitions induced by his or her training) to drown another in open water, but he or she probably would not be averse to drowning puppies or kittens in a bucket.'
'You make me feel quite ill,' said Laura. 'So, if it wasn't Piper, it was Niobe.'
'Not necessarily,
