Venom House b-16

by Arthur W. Upfield

  “We will hope that Miss Mary is alive,” Bony contributed.

  “Take a lot of strangling, she would,” Blaze said with conviction.“Got a neck like a sawed-off tree.”

  Nothing more was said during the crossing, and silently the three men left the boat, walked over the levee and across the grass to the main entrance. There was light in the room to the left, and the stained-glass window above the door was a tall oblong of gold. Mawson knocked on the heavy door.

  The door was opened to reveal Janet Answerth wearing a silken gown over her night attire, and in her right hand a weapon Bony had not previously seen outside a police museum… a horse pistol. The lamp suspended from the ceiling directly above the foot of the magnificent staircase cast her face in shadow, but movement in addition to her voice betrayed her agitation.

  “Oh! Please come in. I’m so glad you are here. Poor Mary!”

  Mawson first entered, almost sweeping Janet Answerth aside. To the left of the staircase, Mrs Leeper was kneeling beside Mary, who was lying on a mattress. To her Dr Lofty went at once, and Bony, seeing that the horse pistol was wavering from one to the other, firmly relieved Janet of further responsibility. Blaze hurried in last, and closed the door. Janet would have spoken, but Bony motioned her to be silent and brought a chair.

  “Neck,” whispered Mary. “An’ back.”

  “Almost strangled with this cord,” Mrs Leeper said. “He dragged Miss Mary to the ground andher back is hurt, too.”

  “Well, well, we’ll soon have you comfortable, Miss Mary,” soothed the doctor. Janet began to speak and Bony told her to wait. A minute was marked off by the victim’s groans and the doctor’s encouraging murmurs. Presently he stood up.

  “Is that the lounge?” he asked Mrs Leeper, indicating the lighted room off the hall. “We’ll have a bed put in there for the patient, instead of carrying her up to her room.”

  Mrs Leeper called on Blaze, and Mawson went with them up the stairs. Bony stepped forward, raised his brows interrogatively to Dr Lofty and received his nod of assent. Kneeling beside the victim, he was shocked by her appearance. The great bosom heaved beneath the blanket covering her. Her breathing was stertorous, but the mouth was still square and grim, and the dark eyes very much alive.

  “Please don’t speak unnecessarily, Miss Answerth,” he commanded. “Where were you attacked?”

  “Outside,” the woman managed to reply.“Something thrown at me window. When I poked me head out a man asked me to go down. Didn’t have a light. Went out, and when I was off the step, he got me.”

  “You didn’t see him when it happened?”

  “No. Corded me from behind.”

  “Did you recognize his voice when he spoke to you from the ground?”

  “No.”

  “Did he say why he wanted you to go out to him?” persisted Bony.

  “To talk about the cattle that was lifted. He got me good…The swine.” Dr Lofty’s sedative was now taking effect, and Bony nodded understandingly.

  “You went down off the porch step and then he drew the cord about your neck?”

  “Yes. Hauled on me. The step caught me back.”

  “Even then you didn’t see him… even the dark outline of his head?”

  “No. I canwa… I can wait, Inspector. I’ll get me hands on him some day. I’ll… Leave me be.”

  The lids drooped, fluttered, closed, as though the mind of this woman could not be subdued even by the doctor’s drug. Her breathing was changed in tempo, and as Bony watched the rugged face he was forced to acknowledge that to such personalities must be given the credit that the first settlers survived to found a nation.

  Mrs Leeper came to the doctor to say the bed had been placed in the lounge, and the men lifted the patient on the mattress and carried her from the hall. That accomplished, Bony beckoned Mawson and Blaze to follow him from the room. The door was closed.

  Bony gave Mary’s story.

  “He could still be in the house, or somewhere on the ‘island’,” Mawson suggested, and Bony said he thought it unlikely as a full hour had passed since the attempt on Mary’s life.

  “He will have gone the way he came,” he decided. “In a boat, or by swimming, and we’ll find his tracks at the water’s edge when it’s light enough to see. However, you might cruise about the ground floor and see that all doors are locked. Bring the keys. If there is a back stairway, set a trap with flour or something from the kitchen. You might accompany Constable Mawson, Blaze, as you probably know the house.”

  “Ground floor, anyway,” agreed the cook. “There is a back stairs, with a heavy door at the bottom. Might be able to lock that.”

  Blaze led the way to the passage along which Bony and Mawson had been conducted a few days previously, and Bony, glancing at the hall lamp, so arranged two chairs that the light would favour him. He sat and pensively rolled a cigarette, and the house was silent and cold so that he shivered.

  Now the glory of the regal window was dimmed by the funereal tint of night, and the shade of the low-hung oil-lamp banished the upper half of hall and staircase, and the panelled walls appeared to be one with the shadows. On the top floor was that young man who was training himself to be strong, and who fished from his window with a magnet attached to power flex. Above were rooms filled with old period furniture whereon the dust layheavy. Above were the rooms occupied by two women and, till recently, another. The strangler who had failed could play successfully a game of hide-and-seek.

  It was so unlikely that the man had entered the house that Bony did not seriously consider the possibility. He had the feeling that he was sitting on a brightly-lit stage, and beyond the light a large audience was waiting, silent and watchful. The audience knew what was to come, but he, the actor, was ignorant of the plot. He felt relief when Janet Answerth came from the lounge, and rose to invite her to be seated in the chair he had placed. He supplied her with a cigarette, and then sat opposite with the light behind him.

  “Tell me just what happened… from the beginning, Miss Answerth.”

  Bars of colour slanted across her gown where the light was caught by the silk. It tinted her hair with living lustre. It shone greenly in her eyes. Her face was pale, and she seemed as fragile as a doll.

  “Take your time,” he urged. “It’s been a nasty experience for you.”

  “Horrible, Inspector,” she said. “Thank you for being so… so considerate. I… it terrified me.”

  “It must have done. You had gone to bed, I suppose?”

  “Yes, I was in bed. I was dreaming, and it was a nasty dream, too. I dreamed I was out on the causeway, and something I couldn’t see was chasing me. I slipped, and then knew it had me, and I screamed and woke up.

  “I was thankful for my little bedside lamp, and was chiding myself for being so frightened by a mere dream, when I heard a peculiar noise, a noise I’d never heard before and so couldn’t say what it was. I went to the door and listened. Then I opened it a little way. I could hear nothing until Mrs Leeper called me from downstairs.

  “I went into the dark passage and along to the gallery above the hall, and I looked down and saw Mrs Leeper on her knees beside Mary. There was a lamp on the hall floor beside Mrs Leeper and it was smoking terribly. Then I thought I must be still dreaming and was walking in my sleep. I have done that, you know. I went down to the hall, and Mrs Leeper told me to lock the front door, and telephone for the police.

  “I asked her what had happened, and she said that Mary had been strangled. So I telephoned to Edison and the operator told me to wait, and I had to wait such a long time before Constable Mawson spoke to me. I… I…”

  “A little brandy, perhaps,” suggested Bony.

  “There’s some on the sideboard in the dining-room.” She made to get up, but he stopped her, saying he would bring it, and she nodded to the room opposite the lounge. Aided by his flashlight, he found a decanter and glass.

  “Thank you, Inspector. Where was I? Oh, yes. After I told Constable Mawson
what had happened, Mrs Leeper asked if there was a gun in the house, and I remembered there was an old pistol in the escritoire in the lounge. So I managed to go in there in the dark and light a lamp. I was dreadfully frightened, but I had to do it.

  “Mary was groaning, and I thought Mrs Leeper was fighting with a snake. Then I saw it was a piece of Morris’s fishing line and I meant to ask her what it was for when she told me to stand guard with the pistol and shoot if a man appeared. She went out to her room and came back with her mattress and a blanket, and we managed to pull Mary on to it. Once Mary screamed out that her back hurt frightfully, and Mrs Leeper said she must bear it and wait for the doctor to come. We asked Mary if she would like some brandy, but she said she couldn’t swallow. That is, we thought she said that. She couldn’t speak clearly, you see.”

  “When you came downstairs, the front door was open, you said. Was it wide open?”

  “Yes, Inspector. The draught or something was making Mrs Leeper’s lamp smoke. She blew it out when I lit the hall lamp.”

  “You heard no strange sounds in the house, after you came down?”

  “No, not a thing.”

  “Where is your sister’s room?”

  “Over the lounge,” replied Janet. “Mine’s over the dining-room. And Morris’s room is over what used to be the library. It’s been locked up for years, and there’s nothing in it, no books or anything.”

  Mawson returned with Blaze, to report having found nothing unusual. They had locked the door to the back stairs. Blaze said, eyeing the decanter:

  “The fire’s alight in the kitchen stove. What about making some coffee?”

  “Oh, yes, please, Blaze,” Janet said, just forestalling Bony. “And cut sandwiches, too. You must all be starving.”

  “What happened to the flex you mistook for a snake?” asked Bony, and Janet said it was rolled into a ball and left under the telephone. The instrument was in heavy shadow at the rear of the hall, and Mawson brought the flex. “Why was it put there?”

  “Oh! Mrs Leeper whispered to me to put it out of Mary’s sight. Poor Mary was so terriblyupset, we thought it might make her worse if she saw it.”

  Bony shook the flex free and took up the looped end to examine the manner in which it had been fashioned with sewing thread. Passing the other end through the loop, he then had a noose, and such was the condition of the two twisted cords that he was surprised by its flexibility. It was probably far from new when Mrs Leeper used it to fasten her trunks.

  Bony passed the flex to Mawson, and the constable tested the freedom of the noose before placing it with the pistol on a side table. Not speaking, Janet Answerth continued to sit stiffly on her chair, her gaze concentrated first on one man and then the other, her slim fingers opening and tightening on her handkerchief. There reached Bony a distinctive perfume, and this was recorded on his mind only when Mrs Leeper was asked to take Janet’s chair, when Janet was released to supervise Blaze in the kitchen. The perfume from Mrs Leeper was of carbolic.

  “I was wakened by a noise I thought at first came from somewhere on the Folly,” the cook-housekeeper began her statement. “When I heard it again, it seemed to come from inside the house. I was wondering what it was when I heard what I thought was a door bangSo I said to myself: ‘Ah! they’re at it again.’ I lay still…”

  “Who, did you think, was at what again?” interrupted Bony.

  “They have arguments, Inspector,” replied Mrs Leeper. “Miss Janet riles Miss Mary, and Miss Mary loses her temper and throws things and bangs doors and thumps along passages. Sometimes Miss Janet calls her insulting names, and then Miss Mary swears, and her language is shocking.”

  “Has this behaviour occurred in the middle of the night?”

  “No. They’re quiet enough at night, but at night you never know when you’ll come on one or the other prowling about in the dark. As I told you, Inspector, you or I would carry a lamp when moving about a large house like this, but they don’t, and more than once I’ve got a fright when they’d step from a room or appear in a dark passage.”

  “Disconcerting, Mrs Leeper. What happened when you heard the sound of a door bang?”

  “The next sound I heard was like someone calling, and I lit the hurricane lamp I always keep handy, and went out to the passage leading to the hall. It was then I heard someone groaning and calling for me. When I reached the hall, the first thing I noticed was the front door wide open and then I saw Miss Mary at the foot of the stairs on her hands and knees.

  “I asked her what had happened, and she said she had been attacked and strangled. She didn’t say it as easy as that, though. I got her to lie down, and she moaned of pain in her back.

  “Then I noticed she had something caught in her left hand, and I had the silly idea it was a snake. I moved the lamp to see what it was, and saw it was a length of flex.”

  “Had you seen that type of cord here before tonight?”

  Mrs Leeper nodded. She looked like a very fat koala bear as she sat easily and well protected by a grey woollen dressing-gown.

  “I think the flex I found clutched in Miss Mary’s hand was some I secured my trunk with when I came here first.”

  “You do not know that Mrs Answerth was strangled with similar cord?”

  “N… no.”The long-drawn negative could be due to rising horror. Bony persisted.

  This time the negative was sharply uttered.

  “What did you do with the cord after removing it from about the trunk?”

  “I don’t remember. Probably dumped it into a cupboard. I had no call to remember it.”

  “You shouted for Miss Janet to come down from her room?”

  “Yes.”

  “How long after you called did she appear?”

  “At once. I think she was actually on her way down when I called. She probably heard Miss Mary trying to call for assistance. Anyway, when she did come down I asked her to shut and lock the front door, and then to ring for the police.”

  “Before, or when asking Miss Janet to ring the police, did you tell her that Miss Mary had been strangled?”

  Mrs Leeper hesitated before saying she could not remember having done so.

  “Exactly when did you realize that Miss Mary had been partially strangled?”

  “After I could make out what she was saying, I think. And then the mark round her neck was deepening… in colour.”

  “Well, what next?”

  “When Miss Janet had called the police, I asked her to stay with Miss Mary while I went to fetch a mattress. It would be some time before the police could get here, and I couldn’t leave her lying on the floor. And, Inspector, I couldn’t know just how hurt she was, and had to move her as little as possible till the doctor came. We managed to get her on to the mattress and make her a little more comfortable, and then I went to the kitchen and started the stove.

  “After that, I came back to Miss Mary, and Miss Janet said she thought she was unconscious. But she wasn’t. She opened her eyes, and I asked her if she’d like a drop of brandy. She wouldn’t take anything. I went back to the kitchen and filled hot-water bottles, which I placed at her feet. There was nothing else I could do till Doctor came.”

  “Your room is near the kitchen, I think you said. Is the back door locked at night?”

  Mrs Leeper smiled grimly.

  “How they can be nervous of burglars, I don’t know, Inspector. With all the water round the place, and the only boat chained to a stump on the other side, no one could come across the causeway. No one knows the path over it excepting these women and the men’s cook. But every night before going to bed, those two see to it that all the windows are fastened and the doors locked. I… No, that isn’t possible.”

  “What isn’t possible, Mrs Leeper?”

  “I’ve seen Morris with flex like that I had on my trunk. He uses it to lower a magnet from his window to catch metal things. Just for the moment, I had a bad idea about him.”

  Janet came back pushing a supper wag
on, and Bony warned Mrs Leeper he might have further questions later on. He walked to the front door and out upon the porch to stand on the step. The hall lamp cast a broad ribbon across the porch and down the step, to end at a distance on the sward. The step followed the line of the house front, and was immediately below the large stained-glass window.

  Sitting on the step, he rolled a cigarette and lit it before placing himself in the position of Mary Answerth when pulled to the ground. She said she had been strangled from behind, and that indicated that the man must have stood to one side of the door as she came from the house. Having slipped the noose over her head, he found he was unable to complete the deed, and so hauled on the cord and thus brought the heavy woman down upon her back.

  It did seem that his only way of escape without being seen and possibly recognized was into the house, because to have broken into the open he would have had practically to leap over his victim.

  According to medical theory, the body of Mrs Answerth had been hauled through shallow water by the cord about her neck.

  The Three Sisters were well down to the westward and told Bony it wanted at least three hours to daybreak. He had been right to refrain from instituting a search of the ground about the house, for the tramp of men in the dark might have ruined vital tracks. And if the attacker had taken Blaze’s boat, well, he would have to reach the shore somewhere, and from that place could be tracked no matter what he did to evade pursuit.

  Dr Lofty came out to tell him that the coffee tasted good, and was invited to sit on the cold step.

  “I’ll not keep you longer than a minute,” Bony said. “Can you tell me how that woman saved herself?”

  “Luck and brute strength saved her, I think,” replied Lofty.“Plus animal instinct to counter attack. When the cord fell about her head, she must have felt it touch her hair and was in time to thrust a hand upward between it and her neck. The cord cut the back of her right hand, such was the pressure exerted, and where the right hand would be held against the neck there is no mark of the cord.

  “The neck ligaments are badly wrenched, and her back could have been broken on this step. She’ll be up and about again in a week. You or I would have been in hospital for a couple of months… if we had managed to get clear of the noose.”