[Mrs Bradley 55] - Nest of Vipers

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 3
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