Venom House

by Arthur W. Upfield

  “By gum, that’s true,” agreed Mawson. “Telephone flex.”

  “Or electric light flex. Is electric power being brought to Edison?”

  “No. Been hoping for it, but it seems we can go on hoping.”

  “Are any of the houses or offices here wired for electricity?”

  “No, not to my knowledge.”

  “There isn’t an electrician living here?”

  “No.”

  “Get me Dr Lofty.” A minute later the doctor was on the phone. “Thank you for your prints, Doctor. Yes, just what I required. I am wondering if the mark about the neck suggested to you the type of cord employed?”

  “Yes, light packing-case rope,” replied Lofty.

  “What is your reaction to my suggestion that it might be telephone or power flex?”

  “Entirely favourable, Inspector. Damn it! I should have thought of telephone cord. Why it’s looking at me now.”

  “Thanks. I’m glad we agree. You might ... er keep that up your sleeve. Going to the funeral?”

  “Oh yes. Are you? Everyone will be going.”

  “I have work to do, Doctor.”

  “So have I, blast it. But ... can’t get out of going.”

  “Well, enjoy yourself. Good-bye and thank you.” Bony replaced the receiver on its cradle. “Telephone flex, Mawson. Electric power flex. Did you observe that Morris Answerth was fishing from his window with power flex?”

  The constable’s eyes narrowed, and, leaning over the desk towards his superior, he drawled:

  “No. Now you’re telling me. Funny sort of cord to have in Venom House. It’s not wired for power. I...”

  “Is there a telephone mechanic stationed here?”

  “No. Repairs done by Manton people.”

  Bony glanced at the wall clock, rose and passed to the front window. A hearse was drawn up before the mortician’s parlour across the street, and many cars parked along the kerb behind it. The sidewalk was crowded.

  “What is your opinion of the Answerths, and the cook, based on our visit there this morning?” he asked without turning round.

  “They seemed edgy to me,” replied Mawson. “But then there was a murder in the family. Those two women weren’t exactly full of mutual love. They sort of gleefully bowled each other out, and both of ’em were upset when you insisted on seeing Morris. You don’t think...”

  “Why dress a grown man in a schoolboy’s clothes, Mawson? Why keep him confined to his rooms? Why prevent his mother visiting him of late? I found him rational, if childish. I found him tidy in person, clean, and meticulous in keeping his books in order. His room was clean and fairly tidy. There was no evidence that a person of unsound mind inhabited that room. Now you be off to your funeral. They are bringing out the casket.”

  Continuing to stand at the window, Bony watched the policeman cross the silent street. All about Bony was silence, but from a distance came the sound of a man’s muffled shouting.

  The casket was placed inside the motor hearse. There was a vision of masses of flowers. People appeared to dwindle in number, and the cars became prominent. The undertaker walked down the street before the hearse, and car by car moved away in procession.

  Following the hearse was a utility almost buried beneath flowers. Following that was a smart sedan in which were two ministers and Janet Answerth, in black. Behind the sedan was the station wagon driven by Mary Answerth and without a passenger. Car after car passed the police station, and Bony recognized Mr Harston in one and a woman in a van driven by a youth and having on the panel the words “E. CARLOW, BUTCHER”. When the last car had glided down the street, there was not one person to be seen. The town wore its Sunday clothes.

  Bony found the key of the lock-up and passed out to the rear yard. At the back of the yard were three cells under the one roof, with a face behind the grille in the centre door. The shouting stopped as he approached the prisoner.

  “What’s to do?” he enquired, mildly. “You seem to be making a fuss at a most inopportune time.”

  The prisoner’s faded blue eyes glared from behind the bars, and fair hair almost met the eyes, so low was the forehead.

  “Let me bloody well outer here,” he roared. “I bloody well done nothin’ agin the bloody law.”

  “Drunk in a public place. Resisting the police. Assaulting the police. Using obscene language. Damaging property, to wit a wheel-barrow. Creating a public nuisance. Obstructing the footpath. And ... oh well, that will do to go on with. Let us say a month.”

  “A bloody month,” shouted the prisoner. “Caw!” He was abruptly awed by the enormous wickedness of the coppers. “And who the bloody hell are you?”

  “I,” began Bony, pretentiously, “I am Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte. I am fate. I am doom. And you are facing a month.” Leaning against the wall of the lock-up, he gazed round the angle of the grid to watch the prisoner’s expression change to swift uneasiness, and then to bewilderment. “Care to answer a few questions, Foster?”

  “I don’t bloody well know nothin’.”

  “You know how old you are, surely?”

  “Course I bloody well know how old I am.”

  “Then you know something. Answer my questions to the best of your knowledge and ability, and I’ll unlock the door that you may return to the hotel and continue your bender. It’s not in order, but then I am not an ordinary policeman. Do we trade?”

  As Foster was completely sober, as he suffered a poisonous hangover, as the pub was within three hundred yards of his thirsting throat, what could he do but trade?

  “All bloody right,” he snarled. “But I bloody well tell you I bloody well know nothin’.”

  “You were in Edison on a bender that night Edward Carlow was drowned in Answerth’s Folly, weren’t you?”

  “I bloody well was ... thank Gawd.”

  “Why are you thankful?”

  “Why! And you a bloody demon? If I hadn’t been on a snorter of a binge that night you bloody (twice) demons would of said I drowned Ed Carlow, that’s what you’d have bloody well done.”

  “And immediately after Mrs Answerth’s body was found you came to Edison with Miss Answerth and started on another bender,” Bony persisted. “When the inquest was held into the death of Edward Carlow, you were still on that bender and were incapable as a witness.”

  “I wasn’t bloody well wanted for a bloody witness,” shouted Foster.

  “You thought you might be required to give evidence, and so kept yourself full of booze.”

  “I’m telling youse ... I bloody well didn’t.”

  “You are, it is obvious, a person erroneously called a real Australian,” murmured Bony. “Your employment of the national adjective proves it. However, when I want you as a witness, Foster, I take steps to have you sober. Do we understand each other?”

  “Caw! Strike me bloody blue!” The prisoner grabbed at the bars, and tugged and pushed and shouted: “Let me outer this bloody joint. When do I bloody well get out?”

  “Perhaps next month if you don’t pipe down. You are the head stockman employed by the Misses Answerth. How many acres do they own?”

  “Acres! Sixty bloody thousand acres, and nine outer ten bloody houses and shops in Edison ... that’s what them Answerths own.”

  “How long have you been employed by them?”

  “Six years.”

  “You forgot the adjective that time. How many sheep did the Answerths shear this year?”

  “How...” The small blue eyes winked. “How many sheep?”

  “You heard me. Come on.”

  “Three thousand, four hundred and eighty-two, including the bloody lambs, was the tally.”

  “Any shortage from the previous muster?”

  In the faded blue eyes a shutter fluttered as quickly as that before the camera lens.

  “Don’t think,” was the reply.

  “Better try. You were and are the head stockman.”

  “They’s was a few down at the bloody shearing.”<
br />
  “How many down?”

  “Caw! What am I supposed to bloody well be? Gettin’ on for a bloody hundred, we reckon. Every place is losing a few sheep these bloody days.”

  “Did you work in the shearing shed?”

  “Course not. I had me bloody time cut out drafting the bloody woollies into the bloody sheds, and taking the cleaners out again to the bloody paddocks.”

  “Did you help shift the wool after it was baled?”

  “Only once I helped Miss Mary with the bloody bales in the wool shed.”

  “How many bales were there?”

  “Cor bloody blimey! What d’you bloody well take me for? A bloody tally clerk?”

  The next question was sharply spoken.

  “When did you last see Mrs Answerth alive?”

  Foster swallowed. Sweat glistened on his ribbon of a forehead.

  “Not for bloody monse. Long time afore the bloody shearing any’ow.”

  “You had nothing against her, did you?”

  “What, against old Mrs A! Talk bloody sense.”

  “What did you have against Edward Carlow?”

  “A bloody lot. He was flash, for one bloody thing. About as straight as a porker’s tail. I wasn’t the only one hereabouts what had no bloody time for Ed Carlow, the big, fat, bloody...”

  “The other national adjective isn’t permissible, Foster,” Bony hastily interposed. “Your brother didn’t have any time for Ed Carlow either, did he?”

  “No, he bloody well didn’t. But he was drinking with me that night Ed Carlow got bloody wet.”

  “Well...” Bony slipped the key into the padlock barring the door. “That will be all for now, Foster. I may want to ask further questions, and when I do you will be sober.”

  The door was flung open, and the prisoner came forth. Save for straightness of back, he was Neanderthal. He confronted Bony with bared teeth and clenching hands reaching down to his knees.

  “Thanks for bloody well nothin’,” he shouted.

  “That’ll be enough,” Bony told him, airily. “By the way, return the wheel-barrow over there to Mrs Carlow. Apologize to her for damaging it.”

  Foster rocked on the heels of his riding-boots.

  “Caw! The bloody nerve. Why, you bloody...” Stepping close to Bony, he glared at him, in his eyes the Neanderthal’s contempt of restraint and for consequences. A huge fist shot upward to contact Bony’s jaw.

  It was, of course, not fair to Foster. He was still full of dead whisky and beer, he had never been scientifically trained, and had nothing with which to think. A battering-ram pounded into his stomach ... so full of dead beer and dead whisky ... that made him bend forward to receive the toe of a shoe smack against his Adam’s apple. As he had very little neck, the shoe work was a credit to the expert. He proceeded to gasp for air, as he rocked on his feet. And then he appeared to lie down flat on his back, the back of his head being the first to contact the greater solid.

  On regaining composure, he discovered himself to be kneeling, his left arm held by a vice having ten separate jaws. He was ordered to stand, and stood. He was ordered to march, and marched. He was ordered to gaze upon the broken wheel-barrow, and gazed.

  “You will return the wheel-barrow to Mrs Carlow’s shop,” said the soft voice from somewhere behind him.

  Then he was free. He whipped about and crouched. The man he saw appeared to fade away behind a pair of brilliant blue eyes which magically grew large and larger. He felt for the handles of the barrow and, finding them, pushed the barrow out of the yard and to the street.

  “I’m behind you,” softly spoke the voice.

  What was the “bloody” use? The butcher’s shop was closed, so he left the barrow outside the “bloody” door.

  Chapter Ten

  The Boss of Edison

  MAWSON HAD RETURNED from the funeral, and Bony was writing notes, when heavy feet pounded on the floor of the outer office.

  “Here comes a customer,” Bony murmured, adding data to matter headed: “The Wool Clip.”

  Mawson stood, and Bony secretly commended him for this respect for superior rank, this refusal to take a yard when given a foot. Abruptly, the room appeared to be full of Mary Answerth, and Bony stood.

  “Good afternoon, Miss Answerth.”

  “Gud-dee, Inspector. I’ve come to pick a bone with Constable Mawson. They tell me, Mawson, you’ve locked up my head stockman.”

  The window light was full upon her, and Bony noted the whiteness about the woman’s nostrils and the smallness of the black eyes with the peculiar uniform of the irises. She was wearing gabardine trousers into which was tucked a khaki blouse having a high and close-fitting collar. Mawson admitted his crime.

  “Yes, marm. Drunk in a public place.”

  “Drunk my back ... my foot, Mawson. Foster was sitting on the bench outside the hotel, reading the Sporting News, when you arrested him. Just like that.” She accepted the chair offered by Bony, and the chair was no longer visible. “I want Foster on the job. We got to dip cattle in the morning. I’m taking him back to the quarters.”

  “It was necessary, Miss Answerth,” Bony interposed. “It was necessary for Foster to answer certain questions I wished to put to him. As he had been drinking, and was not sober, I ordered his incarceration.”

  The black brows shot upward.

  “You did?”

  “I did.”

  The silence was brittle until Bony rested his elbows on his papers which crinkled like breaking glass. Mawson saw his superior join his hands and rest his chin on the finger-tips, but his mind was engaged with the picture of the wrecked office as it would surely be.

  “I ordered Foster’s arrest because he was present when the body of Mrs Answerth was removed from the water, because it was necessary to question him, because he was not sober, and, Miss Answerth, because a witness must be sober when questioned.”

  “Have you finished with him?”

  “I have questioned him. And I have considered charging him with several additional counts which should result in a month in gaol.”

  The hard mouth widened and the chin jutted. The black eyes almost met above the bridge of the beak nose. The face, the personality, was so masculine that Bony was repelled. Her gaze clashed with his, and he felt her mental strength. She said, slowly and almost hesitantly, as though the situation beat her and she could not believe defeat:

  “Well, if that’s how it is, Inspector.” Swiftly she recovered. “My cattle’s got to be dipped in the morning and I want Robin Foster out of gaol.”

  “Then, Miss Answerth, you can have him and welcome,” Bony told her. “Doubtless he is well soused again. Should you have any trouble in persuading him to return to his job, tell him that if he’s in town at six tonight, he’ll be taken inside again.”

  Mary Answerth’s face broke into pieces and was refashioned by a smile in which there was much of anticipatory triumph. “You can bet a couple of deaners that Robin Foster won’t be in town at six tonight. Can I have a word or two in your ear?”

  Bony glanced at Mawson, and the constable withdrew to the outer office. The visitor produced her pipe and tobacco and proceeded to load it from a paper bag. Bony thoughtfully rolled a cigarette.

  “’Spect you think I’m pretty wild and woolly,” remarked Miss Answerth whilst puffing the pipe into action. “I am. There ain’t a horse I can’t master, nor a man.” She paused to add a rider: “Exceptin’ p’raps you. With you I has me doubts.”

  Bony smiled and, like Brer Rabbit, “said nuffin”.

  “You see, Mr Bonaparte, I’m the eldest of this generation of Answerths, being forty-four and Janet forty-one. I was dragged up by me back hair. You could say I never had no schoolin’, but I had the sort of schoolin’ to fight life and all them what lives it with me. I’m no weakling, I’m not going to blow my head off like my father did.

  “You take Janet. Janet’s a lying little bitch. She was always a crawler, always clinging and lith-ping, always a l
iar. Time after time I’ve seen her putting it over men, watched ’em go all soft-like and moo at her like poddy calves when she looked ’em over, and wanted something. She got at Father, too. He gave her all she asked for: sent her up to Bris for an education, to learn the piano and paint pictures and gabble out poetry like a baby that’s wet itself. And me rounding up cattle, and brandin’ them, and throwing young stallions in the yards, and helping with the shearing, and driving loafers of men, and knocking ’em down, too, if they tried to tell me my business. I’ve slept more times under a tree than a roof. And the roof Janet sleeps under every night I’ve kept over her and Morris.

  “If I wasn’t able to master men like Robin Foster and old Harston, Janet would now be on the streets and Morris put away in a lunatic asylum. And strangers would be living on all that us Answerths bent our backs to build up.

  “Don’t you go and fall for Janet, Inspector. There’s nothin’ weak about Janet. She can talk polite, and she can read novels and spout poetry, and she can use her brain better’n most. If anything happens to me, she gets all the estate ... gets the ruddy lot.”

  “Surely you haven’t reason to think that anything will happen to you?” enquired Bony.

  “Well, something happened to my stepmother, didn’t it?” She waited for agreement, then insisted, “Didn’t it?”

  “Yes, Miss Answerth, something certainly happened to Mrs Answerth.”

  Now Bony waited. The huge woman knocked out her pipe against the heel of her riding-boot and stood. She was regardless of the smouldering tobacco strewing the floor. Bony would have risen, but with the weight of one hand upon his shoulder, she kept him to his seat.

  “You took a bird’s-eye view of our Morris,” she said grimly. “As you don’t go round with your eyes shut, you saw that he’s like me, pretty hefty. You know, there’s something about him what reminds me of a tame bear that came to this town. The man with the bear whispered into its ear to sit down, and it sat down. He told it to stand on its hind feet, and it did. Janet is like the man with the bear, telling Morris that some day he’ll be strong enough to break my neck like a carrot, and mindful of telling him to have a go when she’s sure he’ll manage it. Now I’ll be going after that Foster. Gud-dee, Inspector!”