Venom House

by Arthur W. Upfield

  Turning from the window, a woman came forward to meet them. She was of medium height and slight of figure.

  “Inspector Bonaparte! And Constable Mawson!” she said, with the merest trace of a lisp. “I am Janet Answerth. Please sit down.”

  Bony honoured her with his inimitable bow, and no cavalier ever bettered it. Janet Answerth’s grey-green eyes widened, brightened. He said:

  “I regret the circumstances compelling me to force myself into your presence, Miss Answerth. It’s generous of you to receive us so early.”

  “Oh, we quite understand, Inspector Bonaparte. Do we not, Mary?”

  “Damned if I do,” growled her sister. “We could have answered questions in the kitchen ... or at the police station.”

  “Oh, dear!” murmured Janet, seating herself. Mary wedged herself into a long-armed, low-backed chair, and thrust forward her leather-encased legs. Bony sat with Mawson on a divan, and glanced at a smoker’s stand.

  “If you care to smoke, Inspector...” Janet said, and nodded her sanction.

  “Thank you. I’ll not keep you longer than necessary. By the way, I think it probable that the coroner will comply with your request made last night. He hopes to reach a decision by midday.”

  “We’re most grateful, Inspector,” Janet cried. “It’s all been such a nightmare.”

  This was a rare occasion on which Bony felt he could not roll a smoke. Producing his case of “real” cigarettes, he crossed to offer it to Janet. He was conscious of Mary Answerth leaving the room, and he had but just regained his seat when she re-entered carrying a china spittoon. This she placed on the floor, and proceeded to thrust herself down into her chair, and then began cutting chips from a tobacco plug, an old pipe dangling from between her large and square teeth.

  “I want to know something of the last hours of your mother’s life,” said Bony, hoping that if Mary Answerth spat her aim would be straight. “The circumstances call for patient enquiry. You know, of course, that Mrs Answerth did not die by drowning.”

  “I knew it, but Janet wouldn’t believe me,” muttered Mary, the pipe still between her teeth. “When I saw the mark round her neck, I knew she’d been throttled.”

  “How horrible, Inspector,” Janet whispered as though remarking on the picture of a traffic accident. “What reason ... who...”

  “We must try to uncover the motive,” Bony smoothly cut in. “Miss Janet Answerth ... tell me when did you last see Mrs Answerth alive?”

  “Oh! I think I told Mr Mawson about that. It was yesterday morning. No, it wasn’t. It was the afternoon of the day before yesterday. In the kitchen. I had reason to go to the kitchen to instruct Mrs Leeper. She’s our housekeeper-cook, you know. Mother was there. Doing something. I don’t remember what.”

  “You did not see Mrs Answerth afterwards ... at any time during the remainder of the day or evening?”

  “No, Inspector.”

  “You’re a liar,” interposed Mary, and having lit her pipe she tossed the spent match into the spittoon.

  Her sister flushed and grimaced with disgust.

  “You always were a liar, Janet,” proceeded Mary. “A natural born liar. You were talking to Mother just after dinner that evening. In the hall. You had just come down with Morris’s dinner-tray, and I heard you tell Mother she wasn’t to visit him as he was poorly.”

  “Mary, how can you!” flamed Janet.

  “When you last saw Mrs Answerth, she was not upset, or different in her manner?” interposed Bony, regarding the younger sister.

  “I don’t know. I didn’t speak to her. I saw nothing about her that was different to what she usually was. She’d been ailing for years, you know. Sometimes she was very depressed about poor Morris. He is ... well, he’s always been childish.”

  “Your mother ... she was able to get about without aid of any kind?”

  “Oh, yes. She liked digging the garden and looking after the hens.”

  Bony turned to Mary.

  “When did you last see Mrs Answerth alive?”

  “Round about ten o’clock that night. When she was going to bed.”

  “She seemed her normal self?”

  “No different.”

  “Really, Mary, you mustn’t tell the Inspector such fibs,” cooed Janet, and stubbing out her cigarette, she crossed her slim legs and leaned back with her hands clasped behind her small head. The grey-green eyes were smoky. The sunlight gleamed upon her red-gold hair. The expression on her triangular face was of triumph. “At eleven o’clock that night, I heard you and Mother arguing below my bedroom window. I heard you ask Mother what the hell she was doing out of doors at that time of night. I saw you both come inside and I heard the front door close. So I wasn’t dreaming.”

  Mary spat, and Bony was relieved that her aim was true. Holding the mouthpiece of the old pipe away from her face, she permitted a sneer to grow.

  “You’re always dreaming this and that,” she said. “If you weren’t always dreaming and mooning about Morris, you’d have let his mother go up and see him that night. You haven’t let her see him for weeks. You wouldn’t let me see him, either, if you knew how to stop me.”

  “Really, Mary, you are vulgar and mean,” Janet said quickly.

  “Vulgar, eh? You’re telling me. I’ll be bloody vulgar if you insinuate I murdered Mother. I told her to come into the house. She’d been standing under Morris’s window to call good night to him, because you’d refused to let her go to his room to say good night. I sent her up to bed, and I followed her upstairs and heard her shut her door before I closed mine.”

  Janet Answerth began to cry. To Mary, Bony said:

  “How was your mother dressed ... when you brought her into the house?”

  “Same as when I found her dead in the water next morning.” “How d’you know that, Mary?” sobbed Janet. “There’s never any light in the hall.”

  “I’m not saying there was a light in the hall,” snapped Mary. “I’m not blind, and the stars were out. Mother was wearing her usual day clothes, and she was dressed in them same clothes when I found her. And you keep your gob shut when the Inspector is asking me questions. If you don’t, I’ll slap it shut that hard you won’t open it again for a month.”

  With astonishing alacrity, Mary Answerth left her chair and advanced towards her sister. Janet’s sobs were cut. She stood. The sunlight falling upon her red-gold hair appeared to create a scarlet dye seeping downwards to stain her face. Her eyes were abruptly large, and bright green. Her nostrils were thin and white. She was about to speak ... and Mawson was between them.

  “Now, now,” he soothed. “No fireworks, please. Sit down and just answer the Inspector’s questions.”

  Bony helped himself to one of his own “tailor-mades” and touched its tip with a match. Above the lighted match, he regarded the tableau, his face calm although inwardly he was delighted. The tension waned, and Bony spoke:

  “I would like to visit Morris Answerth.”

  Mawson was too late to hinder them. They slipped by him to confront Bony, anger replaced by dismay, and in unison exclaimed:

  “You can’t see Morris!”

  Chapter Six

  The Fisherman

  OLD MAN MEMORY produced from his card index a picture for Bony, and whilst regarding these two women so did he gaze on the picture of a small Australian terrier standing beside a bulldog. Janet stood before him in an attitude of entreaty: Mary stood with lordly and contemptuous indifference.

  “Morris isn’t normal,” Janet Answerth said. “He’s never been out of his room for years.”

  “Which is why I will go to him and not order Constable Mawson to bring him down here.”

  “But, Inspector...” Mary began.

  “His room?” interrupted Bony.

  “I will take you,” Janet said, sadly resigned, and walked to the door.

  On leaving this modern architectural creation for the original building, Bony felt as though he passed, in two steps, from summe
r to winter. He caught a glimpse of a large woman in white within the kitchen, and then the darkness of the passage was like smoke until they entered the hall. Treading the royal-blue carpet, he resisted the impulse to touch the gleaming honey-hued balustrades, and, on arriving at the gallery at the head of the staircase, was shocked to observe that the carpet running both ways from it was threadbare and colourless. Still following Janet Answerth, his gaze clung to that hall of extraordinary beauty.

  And then he was walking along another dark passage till Janet stopped before a confronting door at the angle. From a wall hook she took down a key, with which she unlocked a padlock securing a stout door-bolt. As she drew back the bolt, Bony placed a hand on her arm. “I will go in alone, Miss Answerth.”

  “Oh, no! You must not. Morris mightn’t be friendly towards you.”

  “Constable Mawson will come at my call. Miss Answerth will not enter with me, Mawson.”

  “Very well, sir.”

  Bony opened the door, entered, closed the door and paused with his back to it.

  No one was within the room. It was spacious ... long and narrow. It was lighted by two windows in the front wall of the house and one at the end wall. All were guarded by steel lattice fixed to the outside. In the centre stood a large mahogany table on which was a mechanical train set, a Ferris wheel, a contraption of some kind, and a litter of what small boys call their junk. There was a magnificent stone fireplace and on the wide mantel one object only, a tall cloisonné vase. Two common kitchen chairs, a dilapidated leather arm-chair, a throne chair of cedarwood, a large glass-fronted bookcase having two panes broken, and a faded chintz-covered couch completed the furniture. The floor was covered with modern but worn linoleum. The walls were black-panelled to the smoky ceiling.

  The room was tidy and the air clean. It was almost a pleasant room. The application of furniture oil and wax would have made it bright and wholesome. Following the first swift survey, Bony’s gaze returned to the throne chair. Once it had been painted or varnished black. Now the seat was worn to natural tan, and the tops of the massive and carved side posts were equally worn. The oddity was interesting, but Bony hadn’t the time to cogitate upon it, for through a doorway opposite the fireplace there appeared a boy.

  He was cleanly dressed in the uniform of Eton. The dark-grey trousers needed pressing. The short Eton jacket needed to be brushed, but the wide Eton collar was spotless, as were the white shirt-cuffs. He came forward with measured tread, to look down upon his visitor with eyes, either blue or grey, expressive of astonishment. His hair and trimmed beard were the colour of Janet’s hair, the hair being combed low on the left side and smelling strongly of the oil making it gleam. His voice was soft and well accented.

  “I saw you ... coming in the little boat. Does Janet know you are here?”

  “Yes. You are Morris Answerth, aren’t you?”

  The man in the schoolboy’s clothes gravely nodded, saying:

  “I think I oughtn’t to speak to you. Janet mightn’t like it.”

  “But I have her permission.” Bony failed to read the effect of this statement. The face was pale like all faces of the imprisoned, but the physical well-being was undoubted. With a slight shock, Bony realized that his training in the art of defence, plus his natural ability to counter violence, might serve him little should this man go into action. He said: “Surely you do not mind me coming up to talk with you?”

  “Talk with me?” came the puzzled voice.

  “Yes. About your train. About your magnet. About you. About anything you would like to talk about.”

  Morris Answerth smiled, slowly, shyly, and it was the most pathetic smile Bony had ever seen on a grown man’s face.

  “My magnet!” he exclaimed. “I fish with that, you know. Did you see me catching fish?”

  Bony chuckled with creditable realism.

  “Yes. You did splendidly.”

  “Do you like my room?” The voice was eager.

  “Very much. Will you show me your things ... your fishing-line and magnet?”

  The eagerness seeped away. The eyes were troubled. Then uneasiness was banished by cunning, and the scrawny red beard heightened the effect. A large hand gripped Bony’s arm below the elbow, and Bony determinedly refrained from wincing.

  “You would tell Janet.”

  “I would not,” asserted Bony, indignantly.

  “Yes, you would.”

  “No fear, I wouldn’t,” came the ungrammatical assurance. “I never tell Janet anything. Doesn’t do, you know, to tell her anything.”

  The cunning vanished. The smile returned. The painful grip was removed. Morris said:

  “Janet would scold me if you told her things. She makes me cry when she scolds. She’s very nice, but when she scolds she has a dreadful look on her face. She never beats me like Mary did once. Mary is very strong. Stronger than I am. At least she thinks she is. But she doesn’t know. Three times a day I do my exercises. Would you like to see me at my exercises?”

  “Of course. You are training to become very strong?”

  “Stronger than Mary. You won’t tell Janet I told you, will you?”

  “Certainly not. Haven’t I said so?”

  “That’s right. Mother made me promise not to tell about the exercises. The idea is that I become much stronger than Mary, and then when Mary wants to beat me again, I am to resist.”

  “Think you will be able to?” asked Bony. “Your sister is very, very strong.”

  “I know. But some day I’ll be stronger than she is, and then I’ll snap her neck like a carrot.”

  “You don’t like Mary, I can tell.”

  “Oh, I don’t think I dislike her,” protested Morris. “It’s Janet who hates Mary. Janet doesn’t know about my exercises. You mustn’t ever tell her. If you do she will scold me and have that look on her face. Mary is very kind. She gave me the train set and the magnet to play with. But it’s fun training to be strong.”

  “How old are you, Mr Answerth?”

  “Mister! Oh, I say! I’m not old enough for Mister, you know. Let me think. My forgetary is bad. Janet says it is, and she’s always right. Oh yes ... I’m just fourteen. Janet says I am, and she must know. Mary says so, too. Who’s outside the door?”

  “Friend of mine. Just waiting for me.”

  “Oh! Then it won’t matter if he hears me doing the exercises.” Morris smiled delightedly and laughed with studied restraint. “If your friend stays quiet, I can hear if Janet or Mary comes up. They don’t know I can hear them. I’ve never told them, but I can hear them in time to stop them finding me out doing something wrong.”

  “How was it you didn’t hear me, and my friend, coming up?”

  “Oh! That was because I happened to be in the bathroom. Shall I do the exercises now?”

  “I would certainly like to watch.”

  With the conceit of a boy much younger than fourteen, Morris Answerth removed the absurd collar and the well-fitting Eton jacket, and rolled up his shirt-sleeves, revealing the arms of a wrestler. When slowly he opened his arms and angled them, the biceps rose to small mountains, and the forearms became great ropes. Turning away, he performed cartwheels round the centre table. From the far end of the room, he ran to leap cleanly over the table. He placed one of the kitchen chairs on the table and cleared that. Crawling under the table, there on his knees he made his head and hands the three points of a triangle, and slowly straightened his legs till he stood with the massive table balanced on him. As slowly, he sank again to his knees, grounded the table and crawled from under, not a crane upset, the toy train still upon its rails.

  Smiling proudly at his audience, he turned to the fireplace and took up the heavy poker. This he bent to a U, with no muscular strain evinced on his face. He chuckled as he straightened the poker. Replacing it, he walked on his hands to Bony and retreated to the nearer window. Standing, he proceeded to bend forward to touch the floor with finger-tips keeping his legs straight. He kept this going for five minu
tes, and might have continued indefinitely with the next exercise had not Bony motioned him to stop.

  How many hours a day, and for how many years, had this boy-man thus whiled away in this room from which he had escaped but once? Coming to stand before Bony, he asked, hopefully:

  “Well? What do you think?”

  “Remarkable,” replied Bony.

  “One day I shall be stronger than Mary.”

  “And you will snap her neck like a carrot?”

  “If Janet tells me to. She won’t, of course. She doesn’t mean me to. She was only joking. She said so.”

  “Of course. Have you been here long?” asked Bony.

  “Yes. I’ve always been here. Excepting once. It was glorious.” “Tell me about it.”

  “You would really like me to? Then I will. One night, Janet forgot to bolt the door, and I crept downstairs and went out. It was dark, but the stars were bright, and I could see. I went to the water, and I boarded the boat and pushed it about with an oar. Then I didn’t want to do any pushing, so I sat and watched the water and the stars lying down in it. After a long time I pushed to land, and I walked in the grass and found a little lamb. I had a little nurse of the lamb, and then I found another one and a lot of mother sheep.

  “It was growing light then, and I ran about on my hands and knees and baa-ed like the little lambs, and the lambs came running to me, so I nursed them again. They liked it, too. It was good fun. Then I saw Mary coming, and she was vexed with me, and she brought me home and then she beat me until I went to sleep. When I woke up, I was very sore, and Janet was here. She was crying and she said I had been a very wicked boy, and that I must never do that again.”

  “And you never did?” Bony asked, softly.

  Solemnly, Morris Answerth shook his head.

  “No. I never dared. And Janet didn’t leave the door unbolted. If she had done, I might have dared, you know. It was such fun playing with those little lambs.” The wistful smile vanished. The cunning returned, and the mouth was twisted into a leer. “Some day I’ll be stronger than Mary, and then I’ll go over the water again and play with the lambs. And if Mary tries to beat me, I’ll snap her neck like a carrot.”