Venom House

by Arthur W. Upfield

  “Wouldn’t you like to know who tried to kill Mary?”

  “Perhaps we do know,” Bony said.

  “Oh! Who?”

  “You tell.”

  Morris chuckled and shook his head. He looked again at the lamp, and Bony hoped his attention would not be recaptured by the bright light. He rubbed his hands together, turned back to his visitors and again laughed.

  “Then perhaps you would like to know who killed Mother?”

  “What I am sure about, Morris, is that Doctor Lofty would like to watch you throwing your lasso.”

  “Would he?”

  “I certainly would,” said the doctor. “Who did kill your mother?”

  “I won’t tell.”

  Morris’s laughter this time was prolonged.

  “Oh, never mind who killed your mother,” Bony exclaimed, impatiently. “It’s the lasso we want to see. Come on, Morris! We want to see you in action, and we can’t stay all night.”

  “I don’t know what I’ve done with the lasso.”

  “That is a pity. Especially after I told Dr Lofty about it. Well, I suppose we had better be going, Morris. It’s long after your bed-time.”

  “Yes, it must be, Bony. I’m sorry about the lasso. I am very angry with myself for forgetting to remember what I did with it. I found the magnet. I’d left it on the mantel over there. I made another line with string, but the string isn’t heavy enough to use for a lasso.”

  “What you really want is some light rope, Morris,” Bony told him. “Would you like me to bring some when I come again?”

  “Thank you, Bony,” said Morris, abruptly grave. “That would do very well.”

  “The magnet, you say, you found on the mantelshelf?”

  “Yes. I must have left it there.” Morris went over to the fireplace and with a finger indicated the exact position. Bony accompanied him.

  “D’you ever have a fire?”

  “Oh no! I hate fires. Once a fire burned. It came from a match in a box Janet brought. I told her she had left it, and she told me to fire one of the matches and it burned me. I don’t like fire.”

  “But lamps are fire, and you like lamps, don’t you?”

  “Yes. But lamps don’t burn if you know all about them. Janet says I know nothing about them, and that’s why she won’t let me have one.”

  Bony again examined the mark on the wood made by the incessant blows of the lasso about the cloisonné vase. Then, sinking to his knees, he looked at the empty grate and up the chimney. He fancied he saw a hanging spider’s web, and he brought out his torch and turned the beam upward. At about the level of the mantel, two iron bars crossed the inside of the chimney, previously used to suspend hooks to support iron kettles over the fire. The spider’s web was a strand of red flex, for on the bars rested a rolled length of it. He pulled it down, shook it out over the floor. There was neither soot nor dust upon it. It was very much reduced in length.

  “Well, that’s what you did with your fishing-line and lasso,” he told Morris, but Morris wasn’t interested. The torch completely captivated him, and when Bony returned the torch to his pocket, he cried out:

  “Oh, please don’t put it away. What is it, Bony? Let me see.”

  “Don’t you remember putting your lasso up the chimney?” persisted Bony, merely wasting breath because Morris insisted on looking at the torch. It was brought out and flashed on and off and on again, whilst Bony softly said: “Would you like me to give this lamp to you?”

  “Give it to me! Why, it’s lovely. It’s better than the other one. Oh, I would. Thank you, Bony.”

  “If I give this little lamp to you, you should give me something in return.”

  “Of course. I’ll give you the lasso.”

  “I’ll give you the torch if you tell me who killed your mother.”

  The torch vanished into Bony’s side pocket, and Morris Answerth stepped back, and from the pocket his gaze rose slowly to meet Bony’s eyes.

  “I’ll give you the lasso for the lamp,” he insisted.

  “But I don’t want the lasso.”

  “Then I’ll give you something else. What would you like?”

  “You to tell me who killed your mother.”

  Morris’s white teeth chewed the under-lip. The struggle was obvious, and Bony became confident of victory.

  “I mustn’t.... I mustn’t tell who killed Mother.”

  “That’s just too bad, Morris.” Bony turned away to the doctor standing near the table. With his back to the man-boy, he was thankful to see Constable Mawson standing stiffly at the door. “Well, Doctor, we had better be going. Morris seems reluctant to show you how he throws a lasso.”

  A large and capable hand was rested lightly on his shoulder and, turning again, he looked into the appealing face and eyes.

  “I mustn’t tell,” Morris cried. “I promised not to. I mustn’t tell you ... I mustn’t. I’d be whipped again if I did, and I can’t bear to be whipped.”

  “Who would whip you, Morris?”

  “Janet.”

  “But you are ever so much stronger than Janet,” Bony argued. “She couldn’t whip you.”

  “Oh, she would if Mary held me.”

  “Well, who told you about Mary being strangled tonight?”

  “No ... I won’t say. I won’t say, Bony.”

  “Did you strangle your mother and try to strangle Mary? Tell me,” thundered Bony.

  Morris wept, standing like a dying tree swaying in a windstorm. Shaking his head he continued to murmur:

  “I mustn’t. I mustn’t.”

  Bony motioned to Lofty to take the petrol-lamp from the table and, when the doctor had joined Mawson by the door, he said gently:

  “Never mind, Morris. Let us still be friends. I’ll come and see you again. This time I’ll take your lasso and you may have my lamp.” The flaring joy on the bearded face was pathetic. “See, you hold it so. That’s right. Now press upon the little button. Now lift your finger from the button, and the light goes out. Good night.”

  He backed to the doorway, watching Morris Answerth flashing the torch on and off, holding it from him that the beam be directed to his delighted eyes. The room darkened as Lofty carried the petrol-lamp into the passage, and from the doorway Bony paused a moment to see Ajax bathed in lightning flashes. He closed the door, shot the bolt and padlocked it. Having returned the key to the wall nail, he said:

  “I would regard it as a favour did both of you say nothing of this visit to Morris Answerth.”

  They could hear Morris singing as they passed along the passage to the gallery crossing the hall, and the echo lived in their ears as they went down the golden staircase. Lofty said he would visit his patient, and Bony sensed that the little doctor wanted time to bring his reactions to Morris into focus before giving an opinion. Blaze rose from the chair beside the door, his old eyes undimmed by the vigil, and Mrs Leeper was sent after the doctor.

  “Doing any good?” Blaze asked, regarding Mawson with suspicion and wondering if he did actually see the constable “pouring” flex into the doctor’s bag where already was the cord which had almost choked out Mary Answerth’s life.

  “May do better after daybreak,” replied Bony. “Take a peep outside and see how far off it is. Don’t go from the porch.”

  Bony sat in the chair vacated by Mrs Leeper, and Blaze returned to say that in less than thirty minutes it would be light enough to gather mushrooms. When Bony relaxed and closed his eyes, the cook returned to his chair at the front door. He heard the lounge door open and close, and didn’t bother to see who came out. His mind was racked by questions the answers to which could be only problematical, based as they were on an incomplete survey of this scene of attempted murder.

  There were, of course, facts which had emerged from the latest visit to Morris Answerth. One fact was that he had been in the habit of leaving his room by the window, roaming about outside the house, and returning the same way. Another fact was that Morris Answerth was not the
simple, polite little boy as first impressions would give.

  There was the fact that Morris admitted knowing who killed his mother and who attempted to kill his half-sister. Mary Answerth had said she had told Morris of his mother’s death, and no doubt Janet had told him of the attack on Mary when she returned him to his room.

  Morris could have been out of the house and witnessed both the murder and the attempted murder, and thus known the killer. However, to Mary he had evinced no emotion when informed of his mother’s death, and he had betrayed no emotion save one of childish triumph when asking if he, Bony, would like to know who killed his mother. It certainly indicated that he was bereft of the power of affection.

  It seemed obvious, too, that Morris had to tell someone that he knew who killed and tried to kill, and this accorded with abnormal psychology, a superficial survey of which Bony had but a few hours previously given to Mawson. One thing fairly certain was that no one knew Morris could have and had left his room via the window that very night Miss Mary was attacked. He could have killed his mother, and dragged the corpse over the causeway, and in opposition to the statements that only the Misses Answerth and Blaze knew the hidden pathway, there was the inescapable fact that from his window Morris had repeatedly watched them cross over and return, and therefore could have the pathway charted on his mind. He could have met and pounded Carlow into insensibility, and then dragged him to the Folly and drowned him. He could be the man who induced Mary to leave the house.

  There was the flex. The small loop at one end of the flex used in the attempt to strangle Mary Answerth was of the same size, although bound with sewing thread, as that fashioned with twine to make the noose of Morris’s fishing-line-lasso. The neatness with which both loops had been made indicated they had been bound by the same person.

  Janet could know who killed Mrs Answerth, and do all in her power to prevent the killer becoming known. Mary could know that Morris had attacked her. Both, for the same or different reasons, could be determined to protect their stepbrother at all cost. They hated each other, but there had emerged no evidence that either hated Morris. The whipping he had received, following his escape, was probably administered as corrective punishment.

  Bony was now feeling the cold of the hall and rose to stretch and stifle a yawn.

  “Bit fresh this morning,” remarked Blaze, and for the first time Bony noted that he was wearing only shirt and trousers.

  “Could be a frost outside.”

  “Cold enough.”

  “Why didn’t you say so much earlier? Without a coat you must be as cold as mutton.”

  Blaze grinned and struggled to set his lower denture into place.

  “You townies are too soft,” he managed to say. “Not like us old bushwhackers. You going out?”

  “Ought to be growing light. Prove your hardiness by coming with me.”

  Bony opened the door and the dawn light was like new steel. They passed out to the porch, and Bony closed the heavy door. The air stung. The grass glistened with dew almost frozen, and the dead trees on the Folly beyond the levee were white splinters against the distant backdrop of varied greens. The birds were united in their anthem to the new day.

  “Now I can breathe,” Bony said, and old Blaze chuckled and declared he preferred a blacks’ wurlie to a house, and in the greatest storm would choose a five-wire fence to the shelter of Venom House.

  “I want you to accompany me,” Bony told him. “I want you to see what I shall see, and give me your opinion. And remember what I told you Miss Mary said had happened to her and where. First, from this porch to the levee are the tracks made by you, by Doctor Lofty and Mawson and by me.”

  “Don’t appear to be no tracks right under Miss Mary’s winder,” Blaze said, rubbing tobacco into shreds for his pipe.

  “Do you think anyone could throw something against her window when standing on the porch step?”

  “Take a glancing shot to do it.”

  “But it could be done by a person aware of the tale-telling dewy grass. Our four pairs of tracks are plain enough, and they do not entirely obliterate those left by Miss Mary when she stepped down from the step. Right?”

  “Correct.”

  “A man could stand just left of the door and not be noticed when she came out. If expert with a lasso, he wouldn’t need to come forward to make his throw. In the dark, he could slip by the woman when she was on her back on the porch and struggling to release herself. Think so?”

  “Correct again,” answered Blaze. “And I see tracks coming and going along the house front ... or going and coming. There was dew on the grass when them tracks was made, and a lot of dew fell on the tracks after they was made.”

  They left the porch and, keeping wide of the two sets of tracks, followed them to the corner of the house, round the corner to halt beneath the second window.

  “Now, what do you think?” asked Bony.

  Blaze faced to the house and the window on the ground floor. Then he looked upward to the window above it, a window guarded by steel lattice. Pointing to the lower window, he said:

  “He came out of that room. Usta be the library. Nothing in it now, so I was told. He came out of the library, sneaked round the corner and walked to the porch, and came back the same way.”

  Bony stooped and indicated several short lines about the clearly defined shoe prints.

  “D’you think those lines could have been made by a rope?”

  “It would be a pretty hefty-sized rope,” Blaze contended, his eyes screwed to bright brown point. What he saw in Bony’s quizzing smile brought a frown.

  “A rope made of torn-up blankets,” Bony suggested, and the cook exclaimed:

  “Cripes! Not him?”

  “Those short lines were made by the tail end of a blanket rope let down from Morris Answerth’s bedroom window.”

  The cook sucked in his breath. He followed Bony back along the tracks to the porch step, and was then asked to follow the tracks to the levee to see if his boat was still there. On his return, he watched Bony stooping and angling his body that he could observe the tracks near the porch step, and to himself said:

  “They’s born with it ... them abos. Trick ’em! Not on your life.” Coming behind Bony, he said that the boat was where he had tethered it.

  “Take another look at these tracks, Blaze. What do they tell you?”

  Blaze, who had once been renowned for his bushcraft, now took his time. Having lost one bout with this half-abo, he wasn’t going to lose another ... as easily. Bony stood back to give him room as from various positions the old man crouched and angled to sight the tracks.

  “He come from round the corner,” Blaze eventually began his summing up. “He came along to here, and he stepped up on to the porch. Then he stepped off the porch and went back the way he’d come. Funny! He stepped off the porch backward, and he walked backward to there before turning round and walkin’ away in proper style.”

  “Point out just where he turned.”

  “Here’s where he turned ... a good twelve feet from the porch step.”

  “Yes?”

  “And when he turned, he set off almost running.”

  “That’s so,” agreed Bony. “He hurried away as far as the corner. From the corner to his rope, he walked at normal gait. Most interesting, isn’t it?”

  “Yes. He’d have been the last I’d picked.”

  “I wonder, Blaze, if you could answer just one question.”

  “I’ll give her a go.”

  “Why, Blaze, did Morris Answerth step off the porch backward.”

  “Why ... Hell! How d’you expect me to know?”

  “I do not expect it,” countered Bony.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Bony is Displeased

  MAWSON OPENED THE front door and Dr Lofty appeared, to ask if he might now return to his home and his labours.

  “Of course, Doctor. Blaze will row you over at once. Mawson! You may return, too.”

  At the leve
e, Bony drew the doctor aside.

  “You will be paying Miss Answerth another visit ... when?”

  “Some time this afternoon. She’s comfortable, and I’ve given Mrs Leeper instructions.”

  “Did you leave any drugs, a sedative, with Mrs Leeper?”

  “Only sleeping tablets. I’ve treated the abrasions, and will bring back a supply of ointment. They had a good embrocation in the house which will do for her back.”

  “How many tablets?”

  Lofty’s brows shot upward. A little stiffly, he replied that there were one dozen in the bottle he had left with Mrs Leeper.

  “What do you think of Morris?”

  “Arrested intellect. Mind you, I’m no psychiatrist. Physically he’s an extraordinarily fine specimen, and that is extraordinary in a man confined all his life to two rooms.”

  “D’you think it essential that he be continuously kept to his room, never permitted to take the air? Do you think his mental condition warrants that?”

  “Not having a history of the case I am not competent to give an opinion. From a somewhat superficial examination, I’m inclined to agree with your doubt.”

  “Your opinion of Mrs Leeper? She is really a trained nurse?”

  “Oh yes. I tested her. She’s worked in hospitals. I’m quite satisfied to leave the patient with her.”

  “And Miss Answerth will be abed for a week, I think you mentioned.”

  “Should be in bed for a week at least. I doubt that she’ll consent to stay there that long. However, Mrs Leeper will do her best to persuade her.”

  “Thanks. I’ll wait over here till you come this afternoon.” Bony turned to Mawson. “I’ll be staying, Mawson. Telephone if necessary. Squash any rumour in Edison that Miss Mary is even suffering a headache. Where is Mrs Leeper now, d’you know?”

  “In the kitchen preparing breakfast.”

  “And Miss Janet?”

  “She’s with Miss Mary. I heard ’em arrange that she was to stop with Miss Mary until Mrs Leeper called her to breakfast and could take her place.”