'The description fits Bosey well enough,' he said, 'but there is no proof that he was admitted to the bungalow.'
'It seems to me significant that those were the last buckets of sea water which Miss Minnie seems to have required. Besides, I think, now that we know the connection between them, that Bosey was the only person Miss Minnie would have admitted to the bungalow.'
'But why should Bosey have murdered his right-hand helper?'
'Because he no longer trusted her. She must have miscalculated in some way, and her usefulness had not only gone, but she may have brought you and your police force very close to him. We shall never know the details, but I think it highly significant that, following his visit, Miss Minnie needed no more sea water baths.'(3)
'So now we come to your affairs, Miss Kennett,' said Dame Beatrice.
'They don't bear looking at,' said Billie. 'I suppose you've got it all worked out. Oh, well, I don't care what happens now.'
'I hear that Mr Piper has left Weston Pipers to Miss Nutley and has gone away to be married.'
'Yes, to Elysée. They are going to live in Paris.'
'Very wise. That will take Miss Barnes well away from all her unhappy memories.'
'They weren't all unhappy, you know. It was just that it took me a long time to accept the fact that Elysée was hetero and not homo. Are you prejudiced against people who don't conform?'
'Only against such people - if one is justified in calling them people - as Miss Minnie and Bosey.'
'So somebody killed Bosey and got away with it. At the resumed inquest - my paper sent me to cover it - the verdict was suicide. Anyway, suicide or murder, it was much too easy a death for that monster.'
'Why didn't you put the milk bottles into the refrigerator?' asked Dame Beatrice. Billie stared at her. Then she laughed.
'So you know,' she said. 'How did you find out?'
'By inference, deduction and the laws of probability.'
'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 Elysée 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 Elysée'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
