Nest of Vipers mb-55

by Gladys Mitchell

  ‘I knew almost nothing about her. In any case, the answer to that is the same as I have given you in connection with the other tenants. I had neither the time nor the inclination to keep tabs on their activities.’

  ‘Your housekeeper has mentioned some obnoxious letters which came for you.’

  ‘Not only for me. She herself had a couple and so did two of my tenants, two girls. There may have been others.’

  ‘Two girls? Who would they be, sir?’

  ‘A Miss Kennett and a Miss Barnes. They moved out a few weeks ago. I think the letters were the cause of their leaving.’

  ‘Can you give me their present address, sir?’

  ‘Sorry, but no. They didn’t tell us where they were going to live. No doubt the Post Office would have an address for forwarding letters.’

  ‘No doubt, sir. About the window-fastenings: you said, I think, that they were only a precautionary measure.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘But not entirely true, sir. I understood that you suspected the deceased of breaking into the house at night and prowling about in the other tenants’ rooms.’

  ‘I think that was other people’s idea, not mine. I saw nobody prowling around, but I had the fastenings put on as a precautionary measure, just as I said.’

  ‘Quite so, sir. You will forgive a very personal question, I hope? How did you come into possession of this property and the money to repair and convert it?’

  ‘I told you that, the last time you were here. I was left the money and the estate by a Mrs Dupont-Jacobson who entertained the remarkable theory that I had saved her from drowning.’

  ‘In the sea, sir?’

  ‘Yes, off Funchal, Madeira.’

  ‘We know that the deceased claimed to be Mrs Dupont-Jacobson’s next of kin. Are you sure she proposed to contest the will?’

  ‘So I was informed. I was never approached personally in the matter.’

  ‘But you were sufficiently impressed by what you had heard to go to your solicitors about it.’

  ‘Merely another precautionary measure, Chief Superintendent. I was assured that there was no substance in the claim.’

  ‘That must have gratified you, sir.’

  ‘Not particularly. If the claim had been a valid one, the time to have made it was when the will was proved, not more than two years afterwards.’

  ‘Two years, sir?’

  ‘More than. Nearer three. I was a year in Paris while the renovations and some structural alterations were carried out, and my tenants, as I told you, have been in residence since May twelvemonth.’

  ‘Thank you for your help, sir. I wonder whether you can place a room at the disposal of my sergeant and myself?’

  ‘Do you mean you want an interview room? I thought you saw everybody on your first visit.’

  ‘Mr Evans and Mr Targe, who were with you when you broke into the bungalow, may be able to help us.’

  ‘Well, I expect my housekeeper will be prepared to give up her office to you for an hour or so.’

  He and the sergeant remained for the rest of the morning. When they had gone, little Shard came to see me. The tenants wanted another mass meeting. Evans was to take the chair and they hoped very much that Niobe and I would be present.

  This sounded ominous. Niobe thought so, too. She said she did not like it. They must have been putting their heads together. She hoped that the mass meeting was not to herald a mass walkout.

  ‘Well, I suppose you couldn’t blame them,’ I said. ‘Nobody likes being mixed up with the police, especially in a case of murder.’

  The mass meeting took place in Evans’s large sitting-room immediately after lunch and Niobe’s pious hopes were soon dashed. It was clear that, as soon as the police would allow it, a mass walk-out was planned.

  Evans, as one would expect, proved a competent, business-like chairman. He was hospitable, too. Coffee and an assortment of liqueurs were dispensed by Constance. The armchairs, some indigenous, some borrowed, were extremely comfortable. The tenants settled down ghoulishly.

  ‘I want to make it clear,’ said Evans, ‘that no personal feelings are involved. I’m sure we have all been very happy at Weston Pipers and the last thing we would have wanted is to leave.’

  Here Niobe spoke up with some abruptness.

  ‘I hope you remember that you have all signed a three-year agreement,’ she said.

  ‘So had Billie and Elysée,’ Constance Kent pointed out, ‘but they went and so shall we.’

  ‘Please! No arguments at this stage,’ said her husband, ‘although circumstances do alter cases. The point is, Chelion, that whereas the fact of a murder wouldn’t do some of us any harm because of the nature of our work, it must have its effect on others of us. Besides, all this police questioning and probing is a confounded waste of our time and it also saps our concentration. I need all my energies for a damned Chapter Eight which is refusing to come right. I am not willing to expend them answering questions from the Chief Superintendent about matters which are no concern of mine.’

  ‘But you would still be subject to questioning, even if you left today,’ said Niobe.

  ‘Granted, and I have no doubt I could survive it, but there are others, as I say.’

  ‘Including me,’ said the soldierly Constance. ‘The publicity over this business will be the ruin of my books. You can write pulsating stories of star-crossed lovers, or you can get yourself mixed up in a sordid case of the murder of a defenceless, grey-haired old woman, but you can’t do both.’

  ‘Oh, there I think you exaggerate, Constance,’ said Targe.

  ‘No, I don’t. Maybe your own work won’t suffer at all. You may even be able to make capital out of this awful business, as will Mandrake and even Cassie.’

  ‘Don’t you believe it,’ said Cassie McHaig. ‘My paper is very finicky about its reporters getting mixed up with the police. I’m supposed to champion the cause of the downtrodden, not to get myself a bit of notoriety by being questioned about the brutal murder of an old lady.’

  ‘Before we go any further,’ said Targe, ‘there is something I think Chelion ought to know. I’ve told the others, Chelion, and, to put our cards on the table, it is the real reason for our wanting to leave.’

  ‘I’m not sure this is the time,’ began Evans.

  ‘It’s got to be said, ’said Polly Hempseed. ‘Personally, unless I can get the reporters to mention me under my real name which, as most of you know, is Conway, I’m in the same boat as Constance. You can’t write letters of sob-stuff advice to the lovelorn in a woman’s paper and at the same time get yourself tied up in an unsavoury case like this one. I’m with Cassie all the way.’

  ‘Then why don’t you marry her?’ said Niobe. Everybody looked astounded at the boldness of this uncompromising question.

  ‘Aren’t you married?’ asked Constance.

  Latimer Targe tried again.

  ‘With all respect to the chair,’ he said, ‘I feel I must speak. It is true, Chelion, that poor Miss Minnie did have a claim to this estate and her cousin’s money, isn’t it?’

  I said, ‘She had no legal claim, Targe.’

  ‘You rat!’ said Niobe to Targe. She began to cry.

  ‘You told us you knew, but you didn’t tell us how you found out,’ said Cassie. (This was all news to me, Dame Beatrice. A nest of vipers was beginning to hatch out.)

  ‘Oh, well, I ferret around, you know,’ said Targe, in the apologetic voice he had used in addressing me. ‘I thought Miss Minnie was an interesting old lady and might have something in her past which would make a story if I changed the names of people and places, you know. Miss Kennett did say that she thought Miss Minnie must have had a past, and as Miss Kennett was a newspaper woman and reported crime and so forth, I thought perhaps she knew something and that I could track it down. I was rather stuck for material for another book, you see – one is, sometimes – so I poked around and kind of dug up the dirt, you know. Well, that’s the way it goes, isn�
�t it?’

  ‘You rat!’ said Niobe for the second time. ‘Just be quiet! Nobody wants to know.’

  Chapter Five

  The Case for the Police

  « ^ »

  THE meeting broke up in some disorder. Everybody talked at once and Niobe wept. In the end, when he could make himself heard, Evans suggested that we should all hold our horses until we saw how the cat was going to jump and not worry about pigs in pokes until the pigeons headed for home, and with this splendid collection of metaphors he cleared us all out of his sitting-room and settled down, if the sounds were anything to go by, to a first-class row with Constance Kent. At any rate, no more was said about anybody leaving.

  The police came again next day, the day of my arrest. They began by taking me through my story, the same story as I have given you, Dame Beatrice, in these pages. If you are going to help me, you had better know the extent of the case against me. I should not have thought it was strong enough to warrant my arrest, but I suppose it must be, as I am now in custody. The police are not anxious to make mistakes.

  I think I had better report the interview as I did the previous one; that is, in the form of question and answer, because it is the form the interview took, and a very uncomfortable occasion it was, because I soon perceived that they had only one thought in their heads. They were certain I had killed Miss Minnie and they believed they knew my motive. The means, of course, were obvious. There remained only the question of opportunity, but they had satisfied themselves about that, too.

  The main plank in their platform was the fact that Miss Minnie had been a relative of Mrs Dupont-Jacobson. They had been in contact with the lawyers and had found out that Miss Minnie’s full name was Minnesota Dupont and that she had been Mrs Dupont-Jacobson’s first cousin.

  They even admitted that a previous will had named Minnesota Dupont as sole heiress. It turned out, however, that the two women had fallen out when Miss Minnie had joined the Panconscious sect and had promised to leave them her money. Upon this, Mrs Dupont-Jacobson had re-made her will, this time in my favour, so my conversation with the police went as follows:

  ‘Are you sure you knew nothing of Miss Minnie’s existence before she came here, sir?’

  ‘I knew nothing of her at all until I returned from Paris. She had then been living in the bungalow here for several months, I believe.’

  ‘Were you surprised when you found out that, apart from a few bequests to charity, you were Mrs Dupont-Jacobson’s heir?’

  ‘Naturally I was surprised; overwhelmed, in fact.’

  ‘Did it not occur to you that there might be persons with a better right to the money and the property than yourself?’

  ‘No. Why should it? People have a right to dispose of their own things as they wish.’

  ‘Why did you straightway go to Paris?’

  ‘Why shouldn’t I go to Paris?’

  ‘You did not go to escape from claims which were already being made upon you?’

  ‘Certainly not. I went there to get on with a novel I was writing.’

  ‘Yet certain claims had been made. Do not deny this, sir. We have proof.’

  ‘There were a certain number of begging letters. It’s like winning the Pools, I suppose. There’s always somebody ready to cut himself in for a bit of the stuff.’

  ‘Did one of the letters come from Miss Minnie?’

  ‘Not to my knowledge.’

  ‘How do you mean, sir?’

  ‘When I found I was being pestered, I left instructions that all my correspondence should be examined by Miss Niobe Nutley before it was sent on to Paris. She was to weed out the begging letters and send on only what mattered.’

  ‘Miss Nutley informs us that there was a letter from a Miss Minnesota Dupont among those she sent on to you.’

  ‘If there was, I never got it, but I did change my digs a couple of times in Paris and I don’t suppose a concierge at a pension would bother about forwarding anything.’

  ‘So you do not deny the possibility that Miss Dupont wrote to you, sir?’

  ‘As a possibility, no, of course I don’t. All I can say is that I never received the letter.’

  ‘Did you receive very much correspondence while you were in Paris?’

  ‘Very little; mostly letters from Miss Nutley herself, telling me about the repairs to the house and how the work was progressing.’

  ‘And none of her letters miscarried?’

  ‘Well, she always knew where to find me. I always gave her plenty of notice when I was going to change my address.’

  ‘But in that case, sir, why should Miss Dupont’s letter not have reached you? According to what you have just told me, Miss Nutley would have known where to send it. In fact, she would have known what it was, since you had given her instructions to deal with your correspondence and suppress what you refer to as begging letters. Apparently she did not regard Miss Dupont’s communication as coming under that heading. Moreover, she asserts that she enclosed it with a letter of her own to explain why she was sending it on.’

  ‘I never received either.’

  I may tell you, Dame Beatrice, that at this juncture I asked the Chief Superintendent to send for Niobe, which he was willing to do. I tackled her, but she was absolutely certain that she had sent me Miss Minnie’s letter enclosed with one of her own. Pressed by me, she confessed that I had never replied to it, or had ever given any indication that I had received the letter. She then burst into tears and told the police that they must believe me. She repeated this two or three times, which, as you may imagine, did my case no good at all, but Niobe always does overdo things.

  Well, they got rid of her with a few soothing words and then turned their attention to me again. A lot of it was a repetition of our earlier interview and referred to keys, window-fastenings and my dips in the sea. They were particularly pressing on the subject of my invasion of Miss Minnie’s bungalow, and repeated their question. Why, they asked again, had I taken two men with me and not a woman, if I suspected that Miss Dupont had been taken ill? I repeated my former answer, but they made no secret of the fact that it did not satisfy them.

  ‘You could have taken one of the ladies with you, broken the window and let the lady in at the front door, could you not, sir?’

  ‘I suppose so, if I’d thought of it, but I’m glad I didn’t. I wouldn’t have wanted a woman to see what was in the bedroom.’

  ‘So you expected to find a dead woman!’

  ‘Of course I didn’t, but Miss Minnie was elderly, so the thought that she might have died was not so very unlikely.’

  This of course, was all repetition, but I did not change my story. I had no need to, for it was the truth. They tried another tack.

  ‘When you rescued Mrs Dupont-Jacobson from the sea, had you any reason to think that she would reward you?’

  ‘Good Lord, no! Why should she? It was nothing.’

  ‘Your aquatic ability stood her in good stead, sir.’

  ‘Nonsense. There were a dozen fellows, as well as some girls, who could have done what I did. I happened to spot her more quickly, that’s all. It wasn’t my aquatic ability, as you call it, which mattered much; it was that my job had alerted me to notice swimmers who were in difficulty.’

  ‘When you knew you had inherited this house, sir, what were your ideas concerning it?’

  ‘To sell it. I looked on it as a white elephant.’

  ‘I see. You thought you would realise your assets and live abroad on the proceeds.’

  ‘I had no intention of living abroad permanently.’

  ‘What caused you to visit Miss Dupont’s bungalow that morning?’

  ‘What morning?’

  ‘Come, now, sir, don’t waste my time.’

  ‘Oh, I see. A parcel had come and the postman had tried several times to deliver it at The Lodge, so, in the end, he brought it to me.’

  ‘And then, sir?’

  ‘I took it across to the bungalow.’

  ‘Immedia
tely?’

  ‘Well, no. I put it down by the hall table and forgot all about it until our cleaner reminded me it was there.’

  ‘So then you took it across, failed to get an answer, returned to get hold of two other gentlemen, Mr Evans and Mr Targe, and broke in. I still don’t quite understand why you thought it necessary to break in, sir. Could you not have taken the parcel back to the house and tried again later?’

  ‘Yes, I suppose so, but this wasn’t the first time I’d had difficulty in contacting Miss Minnie.’

  ‘Really, sir?’

  ‘Yes. I’ve remembered what made me so anxious. A few weeks – or it might have been longer than that – yes, I think it was – a registered letter came for her and the postman could get no answer at the Lodge. The thing needed a signature, of course, so he came up to the house and I obliged and promised to see that Miss Minnie got the letter. When I went over there with it – in pouring rain, I might add – I couldn’t make anybody hear, so I bunged the envelope through the letter-box and left Miss Minnie to find it.’

  ‘There was no registered envelope among her papers, sir, but that, of course, proves nothing.’

  ‘So when I took the parcel over and couldn’t get an answer I began to wonder what was wrong, and that’s why I got Evans and Targe to accompany me when I broke in.’

  ‘I see. Now about the anonymous letters. Nobody has shown us any of them.’

  ‘I thought Miss Nutley filed the ones that came for her and me.’

  ‘She claims that she did file them, sir, but that her files had been rifled.’

  ‘Means she was right, then.’

  ‘Right about what, sir?’

  ‘That the ghost scare we had was Miss Minnie snooping around. I told you about that, if you remember. Niobe – Miss Nutley – always thought that it was Miss Minnie.’

  ‘Why did she think so?’

  ‘By that time I think we’d heard that Miss Minnie had been related to Mrs Dupont-Jacobson and had had – expectations, don’t they call them?’

  ‘And was looking for a will of a later date than the one under the terms of which you inherited Weston Pipers, as it is now known, and a very large sum of money?’