Venom House

by Arthur W. Upfield

  “Was it from that time that Mrs Answerth was never allowed to visit her son?” he enquired.

  “No. I don’t think so, Inspector. That came later ... much later.”

  “When?”

  “I don’t remember exactly when. I do remember Mrs Answerth complaining to me that Miss Janet said she wasn’t to visit Morris any more because she was a bad influence over him.”

  “It was after Mrs Answerth had been stopped from visiting her son that she left the house very late at night to speak to him from below his window?”

  “It could have been. I’m not sure.”

  Chapter Eight

  Old Hands Gossip

  NOTHING WAS SAID during the return trip from Venom House, and then before leaving Blaze, Bony said he would call on him again just to talk of places known to both. Blaze sucked at his pipe, nodded, his mind reviewing pictures of long ago.

  When their car was a quarter-mile in from the edge of the forest, Bony asked Mawson to stop.

  “I’ll leave you here and go back for a word or two with Blaze,” he said. “I want to talk to Robin Foster, the head stockman, who appears to be on a bender just when he is required to give information. Might be as well to arrest him for something and lock him up so that he will be sober later today.”

  “All right!” agreed Mawson. “How will you get to town?”

  “Walk ... If I cannot beg a lift. Ring Doctor Lofty and ask him to let us have another print of the pictures he took of the body of Mrs Answerth.”

  The constable having departed townward, Bony entered the scrub and emerged immediately above the cluster of station buildings. From this point he was able to walk to the men’s kitchen and dining-room without being observed by anyone on the roof or at an upper window of the distant house, anyone armed with binoculars. Several chained dogs gave warning to Blaze, but he ignored the barking and was therefore surprised by Bony entering the kitchen by the rear door.

  “Said I would return soon,” Bony reminded the cook. “Are you boiling the billy for a mug of tea?”

  “Yes What are you after?”

  “Bit of a gossip. Information. A mug of tea.” Bony sat on a packing-case at the kitchen table and proceeded to roll a cigarette. “Suppose you often think of the old days and wish you were back on the stock-routes and in the outback townships?”

  “Often wish I was young again and could ride and drink like a man.” Blaze sighed loudly. “What part of Australia d’you come from?”

  “North Queensland ... south of the Gulf.”

  “H’m! Thought so. Or over west by Halls Creek. Detective-Inspector, eh! You’ve got on well.”

  “Political influence,” murmured Bony.

  “Don’t think,” Blaze scoffed. “When was you in Cloncurry last?”

  They talked of Cloncurry, of Halls Creek, of Broken Hill. Talked of pubs, and the progress, if any, in these famous settlements. And then they spoke of the cities, and of this coastal district where Blaze had been working for many years, and the reason for this great change in the cattleman’s life did not emerge.

  Bony chose his moment.

  “Do you know much about this place and the Answerths?”

  “Most all there’s to be known,” replied Blaze. “I was head stockman here before Mrs Answerth was married to the boss. His brother, Morris, was alive when I came here. Morris died by a gun: Jacob by a horse pistol.”

  “Of late years did you see much of Mrs Answerth?”

  “Not often,” replied Blaze, stroking a withered cheek with the mouthpiece of his pipe. “She’d wade over sometimes for a yarn. Usta like talking about the old days when she came here as a bride. She never had no happiness at Venom House. She called it Venom House, you know, and now no one don’t know it by any other name.”

  “Tell me the history of it,” Bony urged.

  “All right, if you’re interested.” Blaze seated himself on a rickety chair. “Back in the Year One* there was great doings in these parts. That there lake wasn’t there. There used to be a river what came down from the hills to west’ard and ran in and out among the giant gums on them flats, and so to the sea. The country was lousy with kangaroos, and kangaroo rats, possums and the rest. It was a sort of Paradise for the blacks, who never went short of tucker.

  *1901

  “The first white man who come into this country was a Morris Answerth, the present mob’s great-grandfather. Over in the house is a diary what he kept. Mrs Answerth brought it one day and let me read it.

  “Seems that the first Morris came down from Brisbane driving a bullock team and wagon. On the way he collected a dozen runaway convicts, and a woman he bought with two gallons of rum from her parents, who had settled just out of the city. She was only fourteen, and didn’t have no say in anything. He’d picked up a Chinaman, too, and made him his offsider.

  “Proper hard doer he must have been. He claimed all the land he wanted. The abos argued the point, and he shot ’em down. Then others rattled him by spearing his cattle, so he and his gang rode out hunting and shot more of ’em. Then it appears that one of the men was a stonemason by trade, and Morris Answerth, being something of an architect, decided to build himself a house.

  “You could write a book about how that house was put up. When his men went on strike, him and the Chow flogged ’em after he’d shot a couple of ’em. He knocked his wife about until she turned up her toes after bearing him a son. When the son grew up, he started to argue with his old man, and the old man planned to shoot him.

  “Accordin’ to the diary, the original Answerth got no further than planning. Seems that the son, also called Morris, got in first. The second Morris went on with the house-building, finished her, built up the cattle herd and imported sheep. He and his men finished off the blacks, too. Then he married, and by this woman had two sons, the first one being called Morris and the other Jacob. They was almost grown-up when their mother had her throat cut by a bushranger, and their father got the same knife between his ribs ’cos he paused a bit with his horse pistol.”

  There flashed a humorous twinkle in the old cattleman’s brown eyes, and the stem of his pipe caressed his long whisky-riddled nose.

  “They was real doers, them first two Answerths,” he went on. “And this Morris and his brother Jacob wasn’t so far behind ’em. They had been left the station in equal shares. Neither of ’em would sell his share to the other, and they snarled like dingoes over a bone. In the end, Morris ... that’s the third Morris ... was found against a wire fence with most of his head blown off by the shotgun beside him. By this time the Law had come to these parts, and the Law said it musta been an accident.

  “As I told you, I was head stockman then. Jacob was like his old man, full of roars and spit, and fight sooner than say good day-ee. He tried it out on me, but I’d been reared tough, and after he come to, we had a coupla drinks.

  “One year, a gang of shearers come to work, and with ’em was a woman who did their cooking and washing. Didn’t belong to any particular man, and Jacob married her. She thought she could fix Jacob, but she had six more thinks coming. He tamed her in less’n three days, so he told me, and he was sore ’cos it took him that long.

  “By her he got Miss Mary and Miss Janet. Miss Mary’s the dead spit of her mother. Miss Janet’s always been a mystery to me ... taking after her uncle more’n anyone I know. When their mother ... the one-time shearers’ slut ... fell off a horse and broke her neck, Jacob hunts around and takes up with the daughter of a near-by squatter. Respectable squatter, too, and from him he gets the idea of being social. So he sends young Janet up to Brisbane for a first-class education. Mary’s that hopeless, he lets her be.

  “The second Mrs Jacob Answerth had a son what’s called Morris, the present Morris. Seems that the boy was always wonky so that he has to be kept shut up. Anyway, when the boy was six, Jacob sort of lost interest in things and decides to push off ... using his father’s old horse pistol. Why that horse pistol I don’t know. It made a terribl
e-looking bloke of him.

  “Anyway he left the place in equal shares to Miss Mary and Miss Janet, and nothing at all to Mrs Answerth and young Morris. Miss Janet came home from college and started to manage the house. Didn’t get far ’cos Miss Mary soon spoke her little piece.

  “And that’s the way with these Answerths, Inspector.” Blaze looked at Bony pensively. “You know what I think? I think that them blacks what was flogged and burned and shot and clubbed by the first Answerths and their convict cobbers, pointed the bone at them and their descendants. I wouldn’t say this to no one else because they wouldn’t understand. You understand, I’m game to bet.”

  “Yes, I understand, Blaze. A tale of woe, to be sure, but we must now confine our thoughts to the tragic demise of the second Mrs Jacob Answerth. Someone strangled her with a cord, and removed the cord. Then pushed the body off the causeway, or out from the shore. I would like to establish just where she was murdered. You know this sheet of water, currents, depths and shallows. Tell me about this Answerth’s Folly.”

  “From the beginning?”

  “Please.”

  “When I first come here, this Folly wasn’t set. As I told you, the bit of a river came down from them western hills and snaked over the valley, passing just beyond the house, and so on to the sea that’s a full three miles away. All the land had been cleared exceptin’ for the big trees what was left to give shade to the stock. And some years, in summer, there was a flood or two what submerged part of the valley in spots.

  “Old Jacob’s brother, Morris, got the idea of widening the outlet to the sea, and snagging the river, so that the flood water would get away quick and not widen out over the flats. Seemed a sound idea, and Jacob fell for it. They hired teamsters with horses and bullocks, and they widened and deepened the outlet.

  “The following summer there was a cyclone or two come down from Cooktown, and these cyclones played hell in general to the work done on the outlet. For every ton of sand and mullock shifted by the teamsters, the sea piled in a hundred tons. And stopped the river getting out at all.”

  Blaze steadily regarded his guest, saying:

  “That’s when I knew them old blacks had boned the Answerths. There was that river outlet doing its job for hundreds of thousands of years, keeping back enough water for the ducks and other birds to be snared by the abos. Then the abos gets wiped out. Then the Answerths what wiped ’em out mucked about with the river, and down on ’em comes the boning in full blast.

  “The river not being able to get away gradually overflowed out on the low-lying flats, and then the paddocks, and then creeps round the house and surrounds it. Jacob ... by that time Morris had blown his head off ... got the teamsters to work making the causeway from the house to higher ground, shifting the outbuildings and the stockyards, building a levee round the house to stop the water going in through the front door. Coupler years after that, Jacob had to put ’em on again raising the causeway and the levee. Another five years goes by and they wants raising again ... and Jacob goes on strike. Musta begun thinking about that old horse pistol at that time. Extra to the Gov’ment taking bits and pieces of land off them Answerths, the blacks took eight thousand acres off’em by blocking the river outlet.”

  “The present Answerths did nothing about it?” asked Bony.

  “Not a thing. They put it to the local council to open the outlet, and the council said they was short of about three million quid for the job. Then they puts it to the Gov’ment, and the Gov’ment sent men down who did nothing but scratch their backsides.”

  “Now the causeway is covered with more than twelve inches of water and many holes gouged in it,” Bony mused. “How many, other than the Misses Answerth, know the way across by wading?”

  “Only me. The old lady knew the way, as I said.”

  “Would Morris Answerth know?”

  “Don’t think. How could he? He’s never broke loose exceptin’ once, and that time he took the boat.”

  “Are there any dangerous currents?”

  “Only when the wind blows hard. Then you’d think you was on the beach up round Broome.”

  “Was the wind blowing that night?”

  “No, she was fairly quiet.”

  “After such a blow, after the wind drops, how long do the currents keep moving?”

  “Might be eight to a dozen hours,” was the answer. “I remember once....”

  A telephone bell shrilled in another building.

  “That’ll be the house,” Blaze said, standing. “Phone’s in the men’s hut.”

  He was gone three minutes, and Bony drank more tea and rolled a cigarette.

  “Want me to take the boat over for Miss Janet and Miss Mary,” the cook said on his return. “They’re going to the funeral this afternoon at four o’clock, and they’re all dolled up. Says I could go with ’em. Think I will. The old lady was all right, you know.”

  “I didn’t observe any telephone poles crossing to the house,” Bony said, and was told that the line went east to join the poles from the Edison Post Office. Also that it was not possible to communicate with Edison by this station line.

  “Go back in your mind to the Carlow drowning,” Bony requested. “It rained hard that night. Did the wind blow?”

  “Oh, a bit. Not enough to rouse the currents, though. Or the day before and the day before that.”

  “You were the only man here at the time. Had the night been quiet, with no noise of the rain on the iron roof, could you have heard sounds of a struggle on the land opposite where you found Carlow’s body?”

  “Don’t think. Unless one of ’em shouted out. Don’t think they made any noise. There was four dogs chained up close by here, and none of ’em so much as yelped.”

  “Well ... thanks for talking,” Bony said, rising to his feet. “I’ll be getting back to Edison. Don’t mention the fact that I called for a yabber. By the way, when was the shearing finished this year?”

  “End of July. July 27th it was.”

  “Shearing began...?”

  “Last day in June.”

  “How many shearers?”

  “Two. There was a picker-up. And Robin Foster’s brother done the wool pressing. Bloke from over Manton way came to do the classing.”

  “Local men, the shearers?”

  “No. The picker-up was a lad from Edison. And Henry Foster works most time timber cutting round about.”

  Bony walked to the door, where he turned, to say:

  “I’ll come again sometime, for another yabber.”

  Chapter Nine

  The Neanderthal

  IT WAS A FEW minutes before three o’clock when Bony entered the police station, to find Mawson in full uniform. Automatically the constable stood, and remembered in time not to salute.

  “Going to the funeral,” he explained, noting Bony’s interest in the uniform. “Timed to leave the undertaker’s parlour at four.”

  “You enjoy funerals,” Bony said matter-of-factly, and Mawson flushed.

  “Best to go along,” he said. “These Answerths are influential.”

  “And influential people require police attendance at their funerals. Anything I ought to know in this instance?”

  The question worried Mawson, for he was still unsure of this Inspector, this remarkable half-caste who had nothing of the policeman in his outward appearance. He recalled the iron stiffness of Detective-Inspector Stanley, and the same mental stiffness of the officer in charge of his own Division. With them it was impossible to compare this man unfavourably.

  “Perhaps you’ve never come up against what’s like a blast of cold air coming down from somewhere up top,” he said, diffidently. “I’ve never felt it, and don’t want to, but the feller before me did. He had a disagreement with Miss Mary Answerth and she told him she’d have him shifted from Edison. He came back by telling her he had a job to do and would go on doing it, and that no one could shift him. In two months, he was shifted to a one-pub township so far west that he could throw
a stone into the Northern Territory. He had nothing to do there but look at the sand.”

  “How d’you think Miss Mary managed the transfer, Mawson?”

  “Through the local Member of Parliament who has the ear of the Chief Secretary who has the ear of the Chief Commissioner. Same bloke is still our M.P. So I does my duty, and I dips me lid to the Answerths. The bloke before me had a wife and three kids to educate, too.”

  “And was lacking in tact, I expect. Anyway, I’ll hold the fort while you are absent. Did I hear someone swearing in the back yard?”

  Mawson smiled, and found that it hurt. Bony noted the livid mark on the left cheek.

  “In pursuance of your directive,” Mawson said. “I parked Robin Foster in one of the cells.”

  “Strife?”

  “Plenty. He wasn’t really drunk enough to arrest easily. Had to borrow Mrs Carlow’s wheel-barrow and call on bystanders to assist in the name of the King. Took four of ’em and me to get Foster in the wheel-barrow to the lock-up. Wheel-barrow’s damaged. Three assistants damaged, and I’m going to have a black eye. But he’ll be ripe for questioning any time you want him.”

  “You charged him with...?”

  “Drunk in a public place, to wit the sidewalk outside the Edison Hotel, using obscene language, resisting the police ... and one or two more items. It was before I put on me uniform for the funeral.”

  “Your day will not be without interest,” Bony said, smilingly. He fingered the cloth-covered cord of the telephone instrument. “Did you obtain prints of Lofty’s photographs?”

  “Yes. Here they are.”

  Accepting the large envelope, Bony withdrew the pictures to arrange them in an arc on the desk.

  “I suppose I ought to be armed with a large magnifying glass,” he said. “I decline to carry one, however, because it tends to sag the coat pocket. Peculiar mark round the neck, isn’t it? The cord which strangled the unfortunate woman comprised two wires each covered with cotton materials over rubber and twisted into a rope ... like this telephone cord.”