Nest of Vipers

think she’s right in the head.’

‘It’s up to you to get rid of her,’ I said. ‘You were the person who let her have The Lodge.’

‘It’s your property, not mine. I can’t turn her out.’

I had special fastenings put on all the downstair windows and we left it at that. I did not feel prepared to tackle Miss Minnie myself.

(2)

As, I suppose, might have been expected, the next item was a flood of anonymous letters, most of them addressed either to Niobe or to me. They accused us of ‘living in sin’.

‘Miss Minnie again, of course,’ said Niobe. ‘She really will have to go.’

‘On what excuse? She has signed for a three-year tenancy, and we have no evidence to prove that she writes – or, rather, types – the letters,’ I pointed out. ‘Hers is not the only typewriter in the place. Everybody has one except Targe. He sends his stuff out to be typed.’

‘Or, of course, you could marry me and put an end to her nonsense. Where is that note Miss Minnie sent you to tell you not to disturb her on the Sabbath?’ Niobe had spoken the first sentence lightly. On the next she had struck a serious note.

‘I turned it over to you. Don’t you remember?’ I asked.

‘Then it’s been filed. Come along to my office. All typewriters have their idiosyncrasies, so we shall soon know whether her note was done on the same machine as these filthy letters.’

‘I wonder whether anybody else has had one?’ I said.

‘You or I would know, wouldn’t we? One of us puts out the letters on the hall table every day.’

‘Oh, beyond just setting them out, I never bother to look at them,’ I said. ‘I never even trouble to see whether more than one is addressed to the same person. I don’t make piles. I just lay them out face upward and leave people to pick out their own.’

‘Yes, you always were as lazy as Hall’s dog, whoever he was,’ she said. ‘Even at the swimming pool you left most of the work to me. Still, you did pick up one letter which was not meant for you.’

I had noted that she kept her office locked when she was not in it. She unlocked it and we went through the files. Miss Minnie’s curt note was not there.

‘Well, I must have filed it if you gave it me,’ said Niobe. ‘It proves what I said. She is our ghost all right. When she decided to send the anonymous letters she must have got into this room and removed the only bit of her typing we had.’

‘I don’t see how she could have got in here if you always keep this room locked,’ I said.

‘The windows, idiot! That’s why I told you to get them properly fastened at night.’

‘By the way,’ I said, as we went out, ‘it isn’t really Hall’s dog you meant; it was Ludlam’s dog.’

‘Oh, yes? And who was Ludlam?’

‘According to the Reverend E. Cobham Brewer, L.L.D., who states that he got the story from Ray’s Proverbs, Ludlam was a famous Surrey witch who lived in a cave near Farnham. Her dog was so lazy that it even rested its head against the wall to bark.’

‘My home was in Surrey,’ said Niobe, laughing. ‘But,’ she added, sobering down, ‘what are we to do about these letters?’

‘So far as you and I are concerned, I don’t propose to give in to anonymous rubbish,’ I said, laughing in my turn. ‘But we’d better find out whether the letters are a nuisance to any of the others, or whether you and I are especially favoured.’

We soon knew the answer to that one. Billie came to me and said that she and Elysee would be giving up their tenancy. I referred her to Niobe, who pointed out that they had signed a three-year lease.

‘Although actually,’ Niobe said to me privately, ‘I think we ought to let them go. They’re rather an embarrassing couple, aren’t they?’

‘I don’t find them so. Very nice girls. As for their little idiosyncrasy, well, there are plenty of others like them, especially in these days, as people are beginning to find out.’

‘Personally I haven’t much use for Women’s Lib, and a misogynist like you wouldn’t give a hoot how offensive to others their conduct is, so long as neither of them makes a pass at you,’ said Niobe bitterly.

‘But their conduct isn’t offensive. They’re most discreet,’ I said. ‘As for Elysee, I get the impression that, if the right chap came along, she would ditch Billie like a pair of laddered tights.’ (I was rather proud of this simile, as you will have noticed.)

‘I don’t believe it! I’ll tell them they can go, then, shall I?’ Niobe asked.

‘Did they mention any letters?’ (I suppose the conclusion I jumped to was the obvious one.)

‘No, only the ghost, but it’s really the letters, I’m sure. They’re bound to have had at least one. After all, they’re pretty vulnerable, aren’t they?’

‘What, in these days? Still, if they want to leave, that’s that.’

So the two quietest and best-behaved (so far as I was concerned) of our tenants took their leave of us, and their modest apartment on the second floor remained empty. What is more, the anonymous letters ceased as soon as Billie and Elysee had gone.

‘So we were wrong in suspecting Miss Minnie, it seems,’ said Niobe. ‘It was those two little misfits who wrote them.’