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.’