Nest of Vipers mb-55

by Gladys Mitchell

  ‘Oh, dear me! You found their conduct shocking?’

  ‘Yes, indeed. Such strange goings-on! I believe the Greeks had a word for it, but I simply call it unhealthy. And the names they choose to be known by! Billie, for instance. Why could she not write under the name of Wilhelmina, which must have been how she was christened, if indeed she was christened at all. And the other one, Elysée, when of course her real name is simple, undistinguished Elsie! I wonder she did not call herself Desirée and have done with it.’

  ‘So you got rid of them?’

  ‘My dear, I had to insist that Miss Nutley did. They were a most undesirable pair. Besides, Evesham had begun making what used to be called sheep’s eyes at Elysée. Never, Mrs Farintosh, be persuaded to marry a man younger than yourself.’

  ‘I was not so persuaded and the chance is unlikely to be presented to me now.’

  ‘Ah, well, I spoke rhetorically. I made that mistake and have regretted it for years. My marriage, Mrs Farintosh, has not been a happy or an easy one.’

  Dame Beatrice said she was sorry to hear it, but she supposed that nobody’s life was a bed of roses.

  ‘You may wonder,’ Constance went rightly ignoring this deplorable cliché, ‘why I write the kind of novels I do. With my undoubted talents I could have done anything, simply anything I chose, Mrs Farintosh.’

  Dame Beatrice said that Thomas Gray had been so right, so very right.

  ‘Thomas Gray? You mean Gray of Gray’s Elegy?’

  Yes, Dame Beatrice had meant Gray of Gray’s Elegy. (It sounded like some owner of a stately home open to the public at fifty pence a time, she thought.) She quoted:

  ‘Full many a flower is born to blush unseen,

  And waste its sweetness on the desert air.’

  Constance Kent did not appear to be flattered.

  ‘That is hardly me,’ she said. ‘I certainly was not “born to blush unseen”.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Dame Beatrice, ‘perhaps, then, you see yourself as:

  Some village Whitehouse who, with dauntless breast,

  The pornographic tyranny withstood;

  Some mute inglorious Joan of Arc may rest,

  Some Corday guiltless of foul Marat’s blood.’

  ‘I don’t recollect that Gray wrote those words,’ said Constance, looking puzzled.

  Dame Beatrice waved a yellow claw. ‘I was attempting to rescue the poet from the charge of being a male chauvinist pig,’ she said.

  ‘Oh, dear! I am not a Women’s Libber, Mrs Farintosh, and that,’ said Constance, looking happier, ‘brings me back to Kennett and Barnes.’

  ‘You said you got rid of them.’

  ‘I got the idea from a letter which was actually sent to me myself – anonymously, of course. Well, you know, all is grist which comes to a novelist’s mill, so although the letter was very unpleasant both in content and in the unpleasant words it used, I thought Why Not?’

  ‘Why not what?’

  ‘Write one myself, of course. I was stuck in the fourth chapter of my Split Summer – Split being that place on the Dalmatian coast, so it was rather a clever title, I thought – but somehow I had come to a full stop. Then came this letter. It horrified me at first, but then I suddenly saw how to open up my book. I am, of course, a purist where my work is concerned, so I wanted to find out for myself what effect an anonymous letter was likely to have on the recipient.’

  ‘But I thought you knew the effect such a letter had on the recipient. You say you yourself had received one.’

  ‘I am hardly a typical case. I knew that the statements and accusations contained in my letter were lies. The letter I wrote to these two misguided girls was the truth.’

  ‘May I ask—?’

  ‘What was in the letter I myself received? Certainly. I have nothing to hide. The letter accused me of having trapped Evesham into marrying me and it enquired, in a most disagreeable way, how I had managed it. My reply, I should explain, was only tit for tat. I knew where my letter came from. Kennett and Barnes wrote it.’

  ‘What made you decide that it came from those two girls?’

  ‘Oh, my dear! They were quite, quite abnormal.’

  ‘You destroyed the letter, I suppose.’

  ‘You may be sure I did! Even if I had not, I would not dream of showing it to you. However, I retaliated in kind and – talk about killing two birds with one stone! – my novel suddenly took fire again and those two embarrassing and dangerous young women lost their nerve and spent no time at all in packing their bags and leaving. I told Miss Nutley what I had done and she undertook to see that they got the anonymous letter.’

  ‘You were going to tell me what makes you write your novels.’

  ‘Oh, that, yes. Well, for one thing, I want to leave the world a better place than it was when I entered it. I am a moral reformer, Mrs Farintosh.’

  ‘A moral reformer?’

  ‘My dearest wish is to do good.’

  ‘Robert Louis Stevenson thought it was more necessary to be good.’

  ‘Oh, well, I suppose one takes “being good” for granted. I am sure I have nothing with which to reproach myself.’

  ‘Stevenson went further. Not only did he think he had to be good; he thought he had no duty to make his neighbour good, but to make him happy, if that were possible.’

  ‘I have made thousands happy in my time,’ said Constance complacently. ‘It is my aim to brighten the drab lives of other women. Deprived of happiness myself, I also write by way of compensation, I suppose, for my unfulfilled, unsatisfactory married life.’ The story of Constance Kent’s unhappy, unsatisfactory married life lasted for the ensuing hour, but Dame Beatrice, listening patiently to the garbled and, she was sure, highly-exaggerated history of Constance Kent’s wrongs, felt that the time had not been wasted. At least the author of one of the anonymous letters was now known, and the letter itself reason enough to explain, perhaps, the abrupt departure of Billie and Elysée. Later on, she decided, she would ask Constance Kent to reproduce the document.

  (4)

  As though Constance Kent had set a fashion, two more invitations had been pushed under Dame Beatrice’s sitting-room door while she was at lunch. One was from Mandrake Shard suggesting tea for two at a little place he knew not far from Weston Pipers. As the other invitation was for cocktails with Polly Hempseed and Cassie McHaig at six in the evening, she was able to accept both. She had expected, from Piper’s written description, that Mandrake Shard would be a small man, but, even so, she was slightly taken aback when he knocked gently on her door at half-past three that afternoon. She was accustomed to be dwarfed by Laura and by Laura’s husband and tall son, and by her own son, Sir Ferdinand Lestrange. She found it almost a unique experience to find herself playing giantess to a man whose height she estimated at well under five feet.

  Mandrake Shard was not misshapen. Except that his head was rather too large for his body, he was quite well-proportioned.

  ‘I often walk to this farm place for my tea,’ he explained, ‘but you won’t want to do that in this wintry weather. I’ve brought my car round. I had to have a few adjustments made to accommodate my height, you know’ – he spoke as though he were nine feet tall instead of about half that – ‘but I’m a very good driver, I assure you – careful, you know, and courteous to other drivers and, of course, I do understand my car. We go everywhere together.’ He gave a falsetto little giggle. ‘Her name is Portia, because she’s got gaskets. Do you see the joke? Portia of Belmont, Italy, had caskets. Portia of Weston Pipers, England, has gaskets. Clever, don’t you think?’

  Dame Beatrice, seating herself beside him in the front of the car, agreed that it was very clever. She added that it was also most amusing.

  ‘Ah, now, talking about amusing,’ said Shard, steering the car through the gateway and turning left on to a narrow road, ‘I really must tell you of a most amusing thing I did – really one of my very best efforts. I get hold of a good deal of information by listening at doors, you
know. I write rather good spy stories, as perhaps you know, so listening at doors and looking through keyholes is part of my stock-in-trade. Helps me to get the right atmosphere into my books, so I don’t look upon it as common or garden snooping—’

  ‘Although others might think there was a resemblance,’ Dame Beatrice pointed out, as he seemed to expect some comment at this stage of his narrative.

  ‘Oh, I’ve been assaulted, you know, punched and kicked. Once I was kicked from top to bottom of a long, steep staircase. But the way I look at it is that it’s all in a secret service agent’s life-cycle and it helps me to get the feel of things.’ He gave his high-pitched little giggle again. ‘Did you notice I said “feel”? I was black and blue for a week!’

  ‘You appear to make real sacrifices to your art,’ said Dame Beatrice.

  ‘That’s what art is for – to have sacrifices made to it. Art is a god, you know, and a god demands sacrifices, oh, dear me, yes.’

  ‘You were going to tell me about one of your best jokes,’ Dame Beatrice reminded him, certain that she was going to be told the origin of Nest of Vipers. So it proved. He had overheard a conversation between Piper and Niobe and had managed to exchange their order to the printer for one of his own.

  ‘It was a perfectly simple matter,’ he went on, with another falsetto giggle. ‘Outgoing letters are placed on the hall table just as is the incoming mail, so all I had to do was to abstract the envelope addressed to the printers, substitute my own missive for Piper’s order for the new stationery, and off the letters went as usual. Our excellent charwoman picks them up, you know, and posts them on her way home.’

  ‘A simple matter indeed,’ Dame Beatrice agreed, ‘and the result, I suppose, amused everybody.’

  ‘Well, I am not sure about Chelion and Niobe. Everybody else thought it a good joke.’

  ‘Chelion?’

  ‘Chelion Piper.’

  ‘He had to pay for your joke, I suppose.’

  ‘Well, I could hardly own up to it, could I? – especially now I know what he’s capable of doing if anybody angers him.’

  ‘Oh? Of what is he capable?’

  ‘Murder, no less. I was there when Targe came into the house to telephone the police. I saw him come tearing across from the bungalow and I’d seen Piper and Evans go across there with him, so, of course, I listened outside the office door and heard him ask for a doctor and then he phoned for the police.’

  ‘I have heard something of this from Mrs Constance Kent.’

  ‘You should say Miss Constance Kent. Professional women who use a pseudonym are always deemed to be unmarried.’

  ‘I am obliged to you for the information. What makes you think that Mr Piper committed murder?’

  ‘Oh, Miss Minnie wrote anonymous letters, you know. Such a wicked and dangerous thing to do.’

  ‘How do you know she wrote them?’

  ‘Well, the letters came and she was murdered. One only has to put two and two together.’

  ‘But can you be sure that Mr Piper received an anonymous letter?’

  ‘Oh, yes, he had at least one such missive, I think. If he hadn’t, he wouldn’t have murdered her, would he? I’ll tell you something else, too. I know Minnie sometimes had a man in that bungalow at night.’

  ‘Oh, really, who was that?’

  ‘I don’t know. I am not tall enough to look in at the windows. I’d heard the voice before, but I couldn’t place it.’

  ‘So it wasn’t Mr Piper’s voice?’

  ‘Doesn’t prove he isn’t a murderer.’

  ‘Did you receive a letter?’ asked Dame Beatrice, abandoning the game of going round in circles. Shard did not answer until he had parked his car and they were seated at the tea table in a cottage where the owner’s wife (he informed Dame Beatrice proudly) did all her own baking.

  ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I got one of the letters. I can’t show it you because I destroyed it. It was unkind, but not scurrilous. It called me Jack the Giant-killer and asked what I had done with my beanstalk.’

  ‘That does not sound very unkind.’

  ‘I don’t know how Miss Minnie knew,’ said Shard, ‘but I was once engaged to a girl a good deal taller than myself. I broke the engagement because my friends, so-called, were so – well, they thought it a subject for coarse humour.’

  ‘People are very insensitive.’

  ‘Insensitive? Yes, one could say that, I suppose. Are you a Sensitive, Mrs Farintosh?’

  ‘I thought it was an adjective, not a noun. What is a Sensitive?’

  ‘I see you do not understand me. I had an idea that you were One of Us.’

  ‘You still appear to use capital letters. One of whom?’

  ‘Ah, well, obviously you do not understand. You don’t belong to the Panconscious People, do you?’ A waitress came up to the small table and, after consultation with his guest, Shard ordered and said nothing more until the tea arrived. Dame Beatrice took advantage of his silence (which was not absolute, for he was humming very softly, regardless of the indignant glare of a woman who was seated at the next table) to work out the meaning of his last question. He returned to it as soon as the tea was poured, but by that time she was ready for him.

  ‘The Panconscious People,’ she said, ‘sound both strange and sinister. Pan is a terrifying and unpredictable god. One remembers a story by E.M. Forster.’

  ‘Oh, I’m sure these people are sinister. I went, you know, but it alarmed me very much. Our own practices are pure and are for the benefit of mankind. Theirs are evil. Exciting, intoxicating, but – oh, yes, evil. So you are not a witch?’

  ‘I am a psychiatrist.’

  ‘Ah, then, to that extent, you are a Believer.’

  ‘In what?’

  ‘In the Power.’

  ‘Of witchcraft?’

  ‘In the power of the occult. In the power of some minds over others. In the power of the Old Gods.’

  ‘With reservations, yes, I ascribe power to all those things, but whether one should meddle with them is another matter entirely. Aspirations, ideals and forms of worship may be excellent in themselves, but my work has led me to the conclusion that there can be a very narrow line between some forms of worship and some forms of mental instability – to put it as mildly as possible.’

  ‘Yes, I know what you mean. I think some of the others have crossed that narrow line. I would not have thought Piper was one of them, though. It just shows how difficult it is to know what people really are like. Will you take more tea?’

  ‘Thank you. By the way, I am invited to cocktails this evening.’

  ‘Polly Hempseed and Cassie McHaig, yes. I shall be there, but I don’t drink. Still, I shall go.’

  (5)

  It turned out that all the tenants of Weston Pipers had been invited. They included the newly-returned Irelath Moore and his charming little companion, Sumatra. Mandrake Shard was present, as he had said he would be, and his tiny frame was installed at a table in a corner of the room well away from the cocktail bar which occupied the whole of one long wall. A coffee-pot and a plate of sweet biscuits were on a smaller table beside Shard and he appeared to be enjoying himself, for he waved a biscuit cheerily at Dame Beatrice as she entered, and called out, ‘Meet the gang!’

  Polly Hempseed proved to be a charming and courteous host, Cassie McHaig an assiduous and capable hostess and the party went well. Except that it gave her an opportunity of seeing all the tenants together, however, the evening was wasted from Dame Beatrice’s point of view, since what she had hoped for was to have a word in private with Hempseed and Cassie.

  As, on this occasion, there was no opportunity for so doing, she amused herself by studying the company, chatting with this one and that and noting the by-plays and interrelationships which, under the influence of the blushful Hippocrene, gradually began to manifest themselves. Particularly she became aware that her hostess was keeping not only a watchful eye but also an alert and suspicious ear (difficult though it must have been to
do so amid the clack of almost a dozen shrill or booming literary voices, each aggressively eager to assert itself against all comers) upon her husband (or whatever he might be). The tall, handsome, debonair Polly Hempseed seemed to combine the attitudes and easy self-assurance of a man of the world with the equally easy charm and unsophisticated attractiveness of a well-mannered under-graduate, and it was not at all difficult to see why the homely, downright, superficially unglamorous Cassie had not only chosen him for a life-partner, but was accustomed to keep eye and ear on him.

  It was almost impossible to conjecture why he had selected her to live with, thought Dame Beatrice.

  ‘She’s up to his weight,’ said Latimer Targe, as though he had read her thoughts. ‘You’re wondering about our host and hostess, aren’t you? So did I when I first met them. It’s the old story of the immovable whatever it is and the irresistible something else. They are for ever locked in a useless and exhausting struggle for supremacy. They can’t overcome one another and that means they can’t get away from one another. We see a lot of it in our business, you know.’

  ‘In your business?’

  ‘The literary battle ground. Passionate friends who’d give anything for a chance to part but are held together as a magnet holds a collection of iron filings; deadly enemies whose raison d’être would dissolve like the dew on the grass if they ceased to have one another to contend with. The whole world of art and letters is a seething cauldron, Mrs Farintosh. You may well regret having entered it.’

  ‘I wonder whether Miss Minnie regretted having entered it?’ said Dame Beatrice.

  ‘I believe she was already in it. She edited some esoteric journal for some off-beat religious community, you know. It wouldn’t surprise me in the least if one of the congregation did her in for expressing subversive views in her editorials. These off-beat sects are a pretty weird lot, in my opinion.’

  ‘You have attended the meetings of Miss Minnie’s particular group, perhaps?’

  ‘Once and only once. Shard took me. He said (having a bee in his bonnet, poor little runt) that they were a ring of spies. My impression was that they could be a gang of crooks and that Minnie was their stool-pigeon and had been sent here to case the joint and see who was worth robbing.’