Venom House b-16 Read online

  “Wool at one hundred and eighty pounds per bale is well worth stealing,” remarked Bony.

  “Probably fetch more than that. Anyway, that’s how them fleeces couldof been pinched, if they was pinched.”

  “I’m glad you express the doubt,” Bony said, thoughtfully.

  “You musta had some idea of wool havin’ been pinched.”

  “Merely an idea.”Bony scrambled to his feet, and smiled down at the wizened old man. “What brought Edward Carlow to the logging stage where he parked his van? Or did someone else drive it into the scrub to hide it? And how was it that Carlow, who was a town butcher, came to be drowned in Answerth’s Folly within five days after the Answerth’s clip was baled?”

  “You answerthem questions. I’m only a flamin’ cook.”

  “Answer this one, then. How did Mrs Answerth get along with Mrs Leeper?”

  “No good. That Leeper woman was brought in by Miss Janet and old Harston. Before Mrs Leeper, there was a woman cook who’d been there before I come. She just died naturally. Up to then Mrs Answerth was more or less boss of the house, but when Mrs Leeper came she had to take a back seat, and she didn’t like that. Seems that Mrs Answerth was gradually pushed out, she tellin’ me that she got to be only in the way and not wanted by anyone.”

  “Your opinion of Mrs Leeper?”

  “A grab-all and know-all,” replied Blaze. “Makes me thankful I never got meself married. She’s out for Number One, but then a lot of people are like that. She certainly runs the place better than Mrs Answerth did, and as neither Miss Mary nor Miss Janet is keen on housework, I reckon she earns her wages.”

  “I understand she seldom leaves the house. That right?”

  “Takes a spell in Brisbane once a year. Otherwise stays put. Told me she was saving her money.”

  “Does she know the path over the causeway?”

  “No. I rows her back and across in the boat.” Blazesmiled, his eyes impish. “When she came here first, I had to take four trips over with her swags. Isays to her: ‘You aim to stay a long time.’ And she says: ‘I’m staying all of ten years.’ I tells her she mightn’t like staying ten days, and she says p’raps not, but she’s staying ten years all the same. And by the looks of it, ten years it’s goin’ to be.”

  “When was it you were last in the house?”

  “About a coupla monse ago.”

  “Did you happen to see Morris fishing out of his window?”

  “Yes. He’s always fishin’.”

  “Did you then notice what kind of line he fished with?”

  “Course. It was reddish rope sort of stuff. First time I ever see rope like that was when Mrs Leeper came. One of her tin trunks was bound with it, ’cos the locks had busted.”

  Chapter Twelve

  A Day with Mike Falla

  CONSTABLEMAWSONWASarranging his papers preparatory to prosecuting at the Court of PettySessions, scheduled to open at ten, when Bony appeared. As usual neat and debonair, Bony smiled as his eyes accepted the constable’s “Sunday-go-to-meeting” uniform.

  “Not another funeral, Mawson?”

  “Court day. Five cases beside what the Clerk will have entered in the register. Chairman of the Benchsick, and Bittern will take his place, so that we oughtn’t to be mucking about all day. You have a pleasant evening out?”

  “Delightful. By the way, what is the character of young Alfred Carlow?”

  “All right… so far.”

  “Care to enlarge?”

  Mawson slipped a rubber band about his court papers, and took time to consider. Bony had previously noted the constable’s deliberation before giving an opinion on a person.

  “Young Carlow’s industrious enough,” he began. “Always been a help to his mother. Seems tending to flashness, though. He’s dark and good-looking, like his brother. And never forgets it. Might settle down, though.”

  “What precisely does he do in the business?”

  “Fetches the carcases from the slaughter yard and does the serving in the shop. The mother keeps the books, and serves when he’s out delivering.”

  “They have a man doing the slaughtering?”

  “He’s a small farmer. Steady and a worker. Big family to keep him at it.”

  “Know anything of a man named Tanter?”

  Mawson’s gingery browsrose a fraction.

  “Sheep man out Manton way. He’s pretty solid. Does the wool classing in this district. You getting interested?”

  “The present tense is correct, Mawson. Could I borrow your car today?”

  “Yes. She’ll want juice, I think. And don’t forget to ask for a receipt from the garage for petrol and oil. The department pays. Wish I was a plain-clothes man. High-flying and all that.”

  “An adventurous man is he who prevents his fetters from laming him,” Bony said, and added dryly: “And that is not a quotation.”

  It was a brilliant day and its spring warmth was joyous to feel. The street was already busy when Bony drove the borrowed car down the grade to stop outside an old shed, fronted by two majestic petrol pumps. There he sounded the hooter for service, and from the shed issued Mike Falla.

  “How many?” asked Mike without dropping from his upper lip the dead cigarette-end.“Why! It’s the Inspector! Gud-dee.”

  “Day off or something?” enquired Bony. “Seeing to those brakes?”

  Mike laughed, and the sunlight appeared even brighter. He was wearing dungaree overalls, but the greasy cap was absent, and the fair hair unruly.

  “Come off it, Inspector. A bloke’s not a real driver if he has to use brakes. I’m having a day off as the old man wanted to take a pig to Manton and I let him do the run. Only had two passengers, so they rode in front with him and the pig went to sleep on the back seat. How many?”

  “Fill the tank, please, and check the engine oil. I’ll want a receipt for the money.”

  “That’ll be okee. Mr Mawson has it booked. You gonna have a look at the scenery today? Wouldn’t mind going with you.”

  “You may come if you wish.”

  “I can! Goodo! It’ll do me. I’ll tell old Lousy to look after the business. Comes in handy, he does, at times.”

  Having filled the tank and attended to the engine and tyres, Mike vanished inside his shed, from which had come the musical clanging of a hammer on an anvil. On reappearing, he had the same fag-end hanging from his upper lip, but the dungarees had been discarded for a pair of tweed trousers and a sports coat.

  “Bit more comfortable than my old grid,” he decided on easing himself into the seat beside Bony. “Yair, Lousy will look after the customers. Does a bit of work for me when he feels like it. Ninety-one not out, and a good tradesman. Only one thing crook with him. He never washed since he was christened, and he says the drought was so bad that year the parson had to do with spit instead of water. Where do we aim for?”

  “Depends,” countered Bony.

  “I’m askin’.”

  “On your ability to keep your mouth shut hard on what we do and where we go.”

  Mike combed his hair with spread fingers, crossed his long legs, and watched the passing paddocks make way for the tall timber of the forest. As though only now brought to full realization that he was a passenger, he produced tobacco and papers, rolled a cigarette and then, when about to lick the paper-edge, was made aware of the old butt.

  “A long time ago,” he drawled, “me old man tells me that to make dough in this world you have to keep one hand blinded to what the other one does. Having made up me mind, sort of, to make a lot of dough, I bears that advice in mind. Over to you.”

  Bony laughed, and Mike turned a little to look at this man who could be a milk inspector, a bank inspector, any kind of inspector save a police inspector.

  “Enjoying the ride?” Bony asked.

  “Yair. I’m likingthe scenery. Youwas sayin’?”

  “I was asking if you know the man who does the slaughtering for MrsCarlow? ”

  “Was you? Musta bee
n deaf. Know old Jim Matthews? He’s chased me outer his orchard more’n once.”

  “Straight goer?”

  “Too right. Worries like hell about getting his income-tax return correct. Eleven kids and a wife to add to his worries, too. Three pairs of twins. Doing well, ain’t he?”

  “He slaughters on Tuesdays and Fridays, I understand.”

  “Yair.”

  “Tell me when we reach the turn-off to the yard.”

  “Okee. Bit on yet.”

  “Edward Carlow did the slaughtering himself, didn’t he?”

  “Yair. Pretty slick at it, too.”

  The yard was built in a natural clearing beside a running stream. It was constructed with heavy timber forming high walls of posts and rails. Off it was a smaller yard having a concrete floor, and the hoist to lift the carcases. A little to one side was an open-fronted shed, and, behind that, another shed the door of which was padlocked. The smell of blood and offal was strong. The crows whirred about like black snowflakes. It was a place that Bony hated.

  “The cattle are shot, not speared nor pole-axed,” he said, and Mike agreed that the slaughter-man used a rifle.

  Before leaving the car, Bony slowly manufactured a smoke and studied the lay-out. This place had received no mention in the Official Summary of the murder of Edward Carlow, and Mawson had told him that, so far as he knew, Inspector Stanley hadn’t come here.

  Mike Falla was extremely curious to learn Bony’s reason for coming, but instead of asking, he said:

  “Don’t think I’d choose this joint to spend a honeymoon in. Even the trees round about look sorta bilious.”

  Bony offered no comment, and Mike followed him from the car to the open shed, and watched whilst he poked about behind stacks of hides and sheepskins. Save for bags of salt, a tucker-box, several blackenedbillies and a cross-cut saw, there was nothing to strike a discordant note. Presently Bony observed:

  “Sheepskins are valuable these days for the wool on them, Mike. Mrs Carlow evidently doesn’t fear thieves.”

  “Aw, no one ’ud come here to pinch a few skins.” Mike waited for the next question and when it did not come, he added: “Any’ow, no one would pinch skins off Mrs Carlow.”

  “Glad to hear it. Wonder what’s in the other shed.”

  “Dunno. Good sort of lock on her.”

  “Yes. I think we’ll have a peep inside while we’re here. H’m! The padlock seems not to have been unlocked for some considerable time. Find me a piece of wire. Thin and pliable.” The wire was found, and Bony fashioned an open hook at one end, watched by the interested Mike. “A crime worse than entering, Mike, is breaking and entering. Should you ever think of becoming a burglar, study the law. Such study will enable you to avoid harsh sentences. If you break down this door in order to steal, you will receive six months. If you use a piece of wire to pick the lock you will receive only three months. If you shoot a man dead, be sure to say that the pistol went off. Never admit you fired the pistol. Just that it went off at a most inopportune time. Then you’ll get five years instead of ten.”

  “You reminds me of me old man,” Mike said, absorbed by the manipulation of the wire in the bowels of the padlock. The lock clicked open, and they entered the shed.

  There were more hides and skins and a pack of wool sacks. On wall pegs were several saddles and bridles, throwing-ropes, and a Winchester rifle suspended by its sling. Dust proved that none of these articles had been disturbed for many months. To one side there was a stack of chaff bags, filled and tied at the mouth with twine.

  Bony felt the top layer, and then untied a sack and thrust in a hand. Wool. Opening another sack lower down in the stack, that also contained wool. A sample of each sack he placed in specimen envelopes.

  The curious Mike said nothing. They passed outside and Bony snapped shut the padlock to the iron bar guarding the door. Neither spoke until they were half a mile away, back again on the road to Manton. Then Bony asked where the slaughter-man lived and was told four miles out of Edison on another road. After that, Mike said:

  “That wool in the sacks didn’t come off sheepskins.”

  “Is that so?”

  “Yair. Come off living sheep’s backs. I seen the shear cuts on the bits you pulled out.”

  “Join the police, Mike. You’d go high.”

  “Yair. Might be more money in burglaring, though. You seem to make it that easy.”

  “You lose a lot of time, though… in gaol. Where does Mr Tanter, the wool classer, live?”

  “Out a bit from Manton. Better ring from town and find out if he’s on deck.”

  Mike decided on another cigarette, and as he was making it they came to the junction of the three tracks at the old logging stage. A mile farther on along the road to Manton, Bony said:

  “Can I hear someone shouting?”

  “Yair. And a whip crackin’, too. Someone out after cattle.”

  “Whose country is this?”

  “The Answerths’. They rent it from the Government. Bit of a land pocket about fifteen square miles.” Mike leaned out from the car the better to locate the source of the shouting. “Bit along the track. It’ll be Mary Answerth.”

  The cigarette was made and lit when, far ahead, a steer leaped from the road bank to the track. Bony slowed the car, and now the shouting was more distinct and the whip cracking like a machine-gun in the hands of a novice. A large bullappeared, tawny and disinclined to a siesta. Seeing the car, it began to paw the earth high over its broad back.

  “Nine hundred pounds dressed,” estimated Mike. “He’s going to spring a leak in the radiator if he gets going. Old Mawson won’t like that.”

  Before the beast could charge, several other steers and cows leaped from the bank to the track between it and the car, which Bony had stopped. And then down the track after them rode a horseman, a man having a perfect seat, none other than the Neanderthal. He shouted and flayed a cow and herded her with other beasts to the lower side of the road. More beasts gained the track behind the still pawing bull, and these trotted to stand behind the bull as though adding their defiance to his and sooling him on to flatten the car.

  It might have charged did not the Neanderthal have trouble with a dozen animals whose curiosity in the car over-rode their fear of the long, snaking stockwhip. It was then that Mary Answerth appeared in the road beyond the cattle backing the bull.

  By comparison, the Neanderthal’s yelling was gentle whispering. The adjectives made Mikechuckle, and Bony aghast. The woman charged the cattle behind the bull, her whip a machine-gun in the hands of an expert. The cracker at the end of the leather thong exploded in the ear of a cow and sent her upwards on four straight legs. It exploded in the ear of the others in such swift rotation that none could have heard a sound for the next week. The bull spun round on a shilling, hindquarters going up and head and shoulders going down. His little black eyes took in the charging horse and the huge woman on its back, but before he could think, an atom bomb exploded on his nose precisely between the foam-flecked nostrils.

  The other cattle had vanished off the road, the Neanderthal after them to keep them on the move. The bull moaned and ran his nose along the dust of the track, and got caught with a bomb on either rump. It was enough… for him. He streaked for the scrub. But it was not enough for Mary Answerth. As though she hated all masculine things, and wanted to parade her hatred before the two men in the car, she followed the unfortunate bull showering him with bombs and yelling insults. Magically, the track was clear, and the uproar dwindled among the tall trees towards Answerth’s Folly. There remained only memory of a huge woman, astride a small horse, who could shame every bull-fighter in Spain and every bargee on the canals of Old England.

  “Bit of a doer, ain’t she?” remarked the laconic Mike Falla.

  Bony slipped into top gear, and chuckled to hide from his companion the thrill of admiration for Mary Answerth’s horsemanship and dexterity with a fourteen-foot stockwhip. Gross, superbly efficient, as contempt
uous of an enraged bull as of her head stockman whom she had tossed into her wagon like a sheaf of hay, the woman was ruthlessness personified.

  “I must agree, Mike,” Bony said, and gave himself to meditation until they arrived at Manton.

  Tanter’s house was brightly painted and the centre of wide and verdant pastures on which sheep were white dots on green. Tanter himself was short, alert, quiet.

  “I won’t occupy much of your time, Mr Tanter,” Bony said when they were seated in the classer’s office. “I understand that you classed the Answerths’ wool this year.”

  “I have classed their wool for the last nine years, Inspector.”

  “The shed routine is, I assume, the same as that on outback stations?”

  “Yes, the same.”

  “Did you at any time note, or evenfeel, that anything was wrong with the fleeces and wool left overnight in your bins?”

  The classer’s face registered his answer before he spoke it.

  “Well, that’s strange you should ask me that,” he said, quickly. “It was only a feeling that something wasn’t quite right. Not a conviction, else I’d have spoken about it. In fact, I blamed myself, coming to doubt my memory, thinking I must be slipping somewhere.”

  “You said nothing of this, as you say, doubt of yourself to anyone?”

  “No. Had I become certain that anything was amiss, I’d have spoken of it to Miss MaryAnswerth. ” Tanter hesitated. “You see, Inspector, Miss Answerth isn’t the kind of woman one can talk to easily. She is

  …”

  “I think I understand. You, of course, placed the wool in the several bins?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “The only man to remove the wool from the bins was the presser?”

  “That is so.”

  “And the presses were in the same shut-off part of the shearing shed as were your wool tables and bins?”

  “Yes.”

  “No one worked there other than the presser and yourself?”

  “No one.”

  “If during the night someone entered your room and took out half the fleeces in your bins, and placed sacks under the top fleeces left in each bin, you would not notice the loss?”