Nest of Vipers mb-55 Read online

  There remained Miss Minnie, the woman apart. I had felt enough curiosity about her to examine, in Niobe’s office, her tenancy agreement. She had signed it Minnie, D-J (Miss). I took it that D-J were the initials of her baptismal names and was intrigued by the hyphen. I pointed it out to Niobe, who said, to my slight surprise:

  ‘I don’t believe Minnie is her real name. She is hiding from avaricious relatives, I expect.’

  ‘Well, I hope she’s not a criminal fleeing from justice,’ I answered lightly.

  She did not answer my repeated knocking on her door, so I thought, as it was a fine day, that she might be in the garden at the back of the house. You may have seen descriptions of my property in the newspapers, Dame Beatrice, but perhaps I had better give a short account of its situation and lay-out.

  I have mentioned a seaside town and its shops, but actually we had the sea itself at the bottom of the front lawn, just beyond Miss M’s bungalow. The gardens and park were at the back of the house, but in front there was this lawn which went down to the almost semi-circular inlet in a much larger bay on whose opposite shore the white-walled town, less than a mile away as the crow flies, could always be seen from our lawn unless the weather was misty. The deception lay in the fact that to reach the town by road involved a journey of ten miles along narrow twisting lanes (one could not call them roads) which made safe walking out of the question, apart from the added difficulty that the countryside was extremely hilly.

  Our inlet was attractive enough at high tide, when the sea almost lapped against the grass verge, less so when the tide was low, for then we had an expanse of uninviting muddy sand between us and the sea. I used to bathe on the incoming tide, but I was (so far as I know) the only resident who ever went for a swim there. Knowing, as I suppose you do, what has happened, you will realise the importance of this and the part it has played in my predicament.

  The town was on the south side of the big bay of which our inlet was so tiny a part, so my house faced north. It was entered from an ornate but not unpleasing portico which had been built on at a date much later than the building itself in order, I suppose, to add to the importance of the façade. Below a very high bank which formed one of the boundaries of the front lawn there were the stables (now converted to Miss Minnie’s bungalow), which caused me to think that, before the portico had been added, the true front of the house had faced south, overlooking the gardens and park, for all the best rooms also faced that way. This proved important later on, for it meant that for the other tenants Miss Minnie’s bungalow was out of sight.

  (3)

  This seems a long preamble, but Rufford has told me not to leave anything out. So far as my house-warming party was concerned, I don’t think there is anything to say. Miss Minnie was not in the garden and I hardly liked to snoop around her bungalow peering in at windows, so I concluded either that she was out or that she chose not to answer my knocking. I got Niobe to type an invitation to the house-warming and asked her to put it, in an envelope, through Miss Minnie’s letterbox. A typed reply came next day, Miss Minnie would thank me not to interrupt her Sunday devotions by hammering on her door and was not interested in drunken orgies. I handed this missive to Niobe, who sniffed and filed it.

  ‘Worth keeping, I think, the horrid old cat,’ she said. At the party itself Mandrake Shard drank the strong coffee Niobe had prepared for him, backed into a corner to show her some tricks with a piece of string and left soon afterwards, afraid, I suppose, poor little devil, of being tempted to have a drink.

  Billie and Elysée got a bit tight and then treated us to the quarrel scene in Julius Caesar between Brutus and Cassius which, I must admit, they did extremely well.

  Polly Hempseed got drunk and offered to fight Evesham Evans for refusing to swap mates for the evening and night. Cassie McHaig boxed his ears and took him back to their apartment in disgrace.

  Evesham Evans, who had handled the situation well, and Constance Kent, who had completely ignored it, proved to be ideal guests in that both remained sober. Latimer Targe got maudlin tipsy and insisted upon kissing Niobe and advising me to make an honest woman of her before it was too late. He stayed long after the others had gone and, in the end, I dragged him to his room and gave him a large whisky doped with aspirin and left him lying on his bed. He was contrite next day and begged my pardon for misbehaving himself with Niobe. He wanted to apologise to her, too, but I headed him off.

  ‘What a shame!’ said Niobe. ‘He might have kissed me again!’ We discussed Miss Minnie’s unkind and unnecessary comments on what she had supposed our house-warming would be like.

  ‘In a sense I suppose she wasn’t so very far wrong,’ I said, ‘when you think of that young goat Hempseed and his wife-swapping nonsense and Targe going all maudlin and making scandalous suggestions to me about you.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Niobe a trifle frostily, I thought. (Could she have enjoyed the old reprobate’s drunken kisses?) ‘Yes perhaps Miss Minnie wasn’t so far wrong, as you say, but, you know, Chelion, I think Billie Kennett is right. She says nobody could be so secretive and peculiar as Miss Minnie unless she was a woman with a past.’

  ‘I expect she’s a reformed and retired Madame,’ I said lightly. ‘She has the look of one.’

  ‘You get the idea from having spent a year in Paris, I suppose,’ said Niobe markedly changing her tone.

  ‘Not at all. Just my imagination functioning. In France I don’t believe a Madame ever retires.’

  ‘Anyway, I’m glad Miss Minnie didn’t come to the party. I wish Irelath and Sumatra hadn’t turned it down, though. We could have done with them. The others were a pretty stodgy lot,’ said Niobe, ‘whether they got drunk or stayed sober.’

  ‘Billie and Elysée,’ I suggested, ‘were lively enough.’

  ‘They make me sick. You know, I still have old-fashioned prejudices, Chelion.’

  ‘Live and let live is my motto. They won’t do any harm if they’re left alone,’ I said uncomfortably.

  ‘I suppose you’d say that about a tarantula or a black mamba!’

  ‘Why not? – provided it didn’t choose me for its victim, of course, and neither of the girls is likely to do that.’

  I hoped she did not know of the rush I had so misguidedly given Elysée, so I changed the subject with what may have been injudicious haste when she said, with a certain emphasis, ‘Neither of the girls?’

  ‘Why,’ I asked, ‘are you glad that Miss Minnie did not come to the party? Just because some of the company got tight and stepped a bit out of line? She may be a curmudgeonly old harridan, but it seems to me that she must be a pretty lonely one. Do her good to see something of the rest of us, one would have thought.’

  ‘She sees something of Elysée Barnes,’ said Niobe. ‘That nymph picks her up in their little car when Billie Kennett isn’t using it and runs her into the town for shopping.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘Because I keep my eyes and ears open.’

  ‘But I thought Miss Minnie had refused all offers of a lift into the town.’

  ‘From the men, yes. Incidentally, what was in that letter you opened by mistake the other day?’

  Well, now, Dame Beatrice, I had better come clean about that letter. It had lain on the hall table for a couple of days without being claimed and it had been postmarked with one of those advertising slogans the Post Office is so fond of. The result was that the name of the intended recipient was almost obscured. Thinking that I had better find out for whom it was intended, I slit the letter open, but as soon as I saw it began: ‘Dear Sister in Pan,’ I guessed for whom it was intended and, as Niobe was about to walk into the village and would be passing near enough to the bungalow, I asked her to drop it in, and remarked that I would tell the postman that any correspondence for Miss Minnie should be left at The Lodge. I slipped a note in with the letter apologising for having opened it in error and suggesting that Miss Minnie make a point of informing her correspondents of her correct address.
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br />   ‘I have no idea what was in the letter,’ I said, nettled by Niobe’s tone. ‘Have you? You took it over to her.’

  ‘I do know something of what was in it, Chelion,’ said Niobe, ‘but not because I read it. Miss Minnie herself tackled me about it because the letter had been opened. She was furious about it. “I suppose that upstart thinks I have no claim,” she said, “but this house is mine. He can open all the letters he likes, but one day I shall make my claim good and he can go back to his job as bath-attendant.” ’

  I had no idea that Miss Minnie knew of my swimming pool era. I could only suppose that she had instituted some enquiries. I certainly thought she had a bee in her bonnet about my inheritance, so all I said was:

  ‘If she can prove her claim, good luck to her. Does she think she ought to have Mrs Dupont-Jacobson’s money as well?’

  Niobe said, eyeing me without friendliness.

  ‘I don’t know. I only know that she begrudges the rent she pays. She told me so and gave me the reason. She claims that she was Mrs Dupont-Jacobson’s next of kin and that a later will exists than the one which gave you the property.’

  ‘You had better refer her to the lawyers. Heaven knows I don’t want to do her out of her rights, if she has any, but I don’t really think she has,’ I said.

  ‘Of course she hasn’t. If you ask me, she’s just a bewildered, rather nasty old thing with a grudge against you.’

  I was not easy in my mind. It had never seemed to me likely that Mrs Dupont-Jacobson had no living relatives. There was every chance that one day (and sooner rather than later) one of them would turn up and contest the will, but the lawyers had been satisfied that everything was in order and I had taken their word for it. Now I began to doubt, as I had done at first, and my mind was not eased by a series of small, but, it seems to me now, significant events which followed my house-warming party.

  (4)

  The first of these was ludicrous, rather than alarming. At Niobe’s instigation we had decided to re-name the house. So far, it had been called Creek Dupont.

  ‘It’s an awful name,’ said Niobe. ‘It sounds like a not too choosy country club with a dubious reputation.’

  ‘Well, that’s what you’ve turned it into, by and large,’ I pointed out. ‘Still, I’d like to get rid of the Dupont angle, ungrateful to my benefactor though it may be to say so. Anyway, what shall we call it?’

  ‘We ought to connect it with the village, I suppose. We shall have to notify the Post Office if we change the name, but that should be a simple enough matter.’

  ‘And the inmates must be told, so that they can notify their correspondents – and that includes Miss Minnie.’

  ‘Yes, of course. How about presenting each flat with a packet of headed notepaper? Let’s give them a little surprise. People are tickled to death to be given things free of charge.’

  The nearest village was called Polweston. After some thought, we discarded the first syllable and settled for Weston Pipers. (Piper, of course, is my own surname and I was rather flattered when Niobe suggested that we use it.) We notified the Post Office of the change and ordered the notepaper.

  Again at Niobe’s suggestion, we had never numbered the apartments, as all letters came by way of the front door and it was my business – although actually, as her office opened off the hall, Niobe often made it hers – to put out the correspondence on a small table just to the left of the front door (to which all had keys) so that people could come and collect their letters at their convenience. The exception, of course, was Miss Minnie, whose correspondence, if any, was delivered through her own front door at The Lodge – or should have been, as I pointed out to Niobe.

  The first news that there had been a printer’s error of some magnitude came from Constance Kent. The printer’s boy had delivered the packages by hand at midday on that particular morning. I had asked for the packets to be made up separately for each tenant, so when the boy arrived, as Niobe was on the telephone to one of our tradesmen, I set out the packages, each with a typed name on the cover, so that each tenant could pick up his or her own. I intended to put Miss Minnie’s through her letterbox later, as hers was addressed like the rest and so did not include the words The Lodge, although I assumed she would add those two words herself to the headed notepaper.

  I had notified the tenants that there was to be a change of address with the arrival, sooner or later, of complimentary packets of notepaper, and apparently Constance Kent, who, when she was not visiting her publishers or her literary agent or had some other reason for going up to London, was always in residence, had seen the boy’s arrival. She was down the stairs and into the hall while I was still setting out the packages on the hall table.

  ‘Ah!’ she said, picking up the one with her name on it. ‘You didn’t say what the new address was to be. I should like to have seen proofs, but I suppose you didn’t bother to ask for any. You amateurs!’

  She tore off the wrappings and uttered an incredulous yelp. ‘Oh, no! Oh, no!’ she said; and burst into hysterical shrieks of laughter. ‘Oh, how absolutely priceless! The printer’s error to end all printers’ errors, and God knows how we suffer from those!’ She thrust the top sheet of her notepaper under my nose and I saw the heading. Nest of Vipers it said, in beautiful italic type.

  Chapter Three

  Departure of Miss Minnie

  « ^ »

  (1)

  OF course the whole consignment had to go back to the printers. I took it to them myself, with the intention of giving them a piece of my mind and insisting upon a replacement free of charge and, needless to say, free of errors. To my astonishment they produced a typed sheet which justified and completely absolved them.

  ‘Seems to me, Mr Piper,’ said the manager, ‘that one of your literary ladies or gents has been having a bit of a game with you. I’m afraid we’ll have to charge you for the work. The mistake is none of our making, as you can see for yourself. Here’s your order, sir, and here’s your signature.’

  ‘It’s a forgery! That isn’t my writing!’

  ‘We were not to know that, sir, were we?’

  I took the notepaper back with me to Weston Pipers. Since I had to pay for it, it belonged to me, anyway.

  Niobe said: ‘The address doesn’t take up much space at the top of each sheet. The guillotine will soon chop it off and we’ll keep all the notepaper for our own use, so it won’t be a dead loss and anyway I forgot to remind you to ask for envelopes to match. I’ll just type out the new address again and we’ll have cards printed for the tenants to send to their friends.’

  ‘I’ll have another firm do the job, and it won’t be a local one this time, I can tell you,’ I said, remembering the manager’s amusement.

  ‘Nest of Vipers, eh?’ he had chuckled. ‘Oh, well, sir, let’s hope the old saying won’t work out in this case.’

  ‘Old saying?’

  ‘That there’s many a true word spoken in jest, sir.’

  Well, Constance Kent spread the story around and it became a tiresome joke for a bit. For my own satisfaction I put out one or two feelers in order to pin down the joker, but with no success. I put it squarely up to Billie Kennett and to Irelath Moore, to whose sense of humour I thought the altered address might well appeal, but both denied having perpetrated the jape. Irelath said that he wished he had thought of it. Billie said that she would have been delighted to have such an address on her notepaper, but had not the wit to think of anything so clever. I was forced to believe their denials and no clue so far has turned up to explain the substituted address.

  The next contretemps was received with mixed feelings among our little group. It began with a conversation between Latimer Targe and Elysée Barnes. Owing to the nature of her work, that of a crime reporter for the county newspaper, Billie Kennett was out of the house most days and, owing to the nature of hers, Elysée spent some of the week in London attending fashion shows or studying the creations in the big London shops, and the rest of the week indoor
s sketching her cribs from what she had seen, writing up her copy (a word, for her, with a double meaning) and otherwise passing the time until Billie came home.

  This meant that she was quite often alone in the apartment she shared with Billie and as, unlike Billie, she was a gregarious young woman, she would invite one or other of us to coffee or a drink or a stroll in the gardens with her. The two girls owned a car (Niobe had arranged for half a dozen well-screened lock-ups to be erected near the back of the house), but Elysée, on her days at home, never drove it because, on those occasions, Billie used it to get to her newspaper office. When Elysée had to go up to Town, she drove to the nearest station, nearly ten miles away, and left the car there against her return, while Billie took herself to work on her moped. It was on these occasions, I suppose, that Elysée dropped Miss Minnie in the town.

  Because in some respects their occupations were complementary, Billie’s as a crime reporter, Latimer’s as a re-hasher of past crimes, he was the only male friend of Elysée’s upon whom Billie did not look with a jealous and jaundiced eye. His work entailed a great deal of research, so he was often out of the house, but when he was at home he and Elysée were usually in one another’s company. I suppose she showed him her sketches and he, no doubt, regaled her with an account of his often gruesome discoveries. Anyway, they liked to be together, although Elysée never pushed her luck to the extent of neglecting Billie in favour of Latimer Targe, neither do I think he would have wanted her to do so.

  ‘I’ve stayed out of woman trouble ever since my wife died, old boy,’ he said to me when we were having a drink together one evening. ‘It’s not that I don’t like women, but once bitten twice shy, and one thing about these two girls, they’re safe, if you know what I mean. You can talk to them and that’s where it begins and ends.’ (As I have stated, I did not think this need be true in Elysée’s case, but I was not prepared to argue.)