Venom House Read online

  “Was she happy with her stepdaughters?”

  Mr Harston blinked. His eyes hardened. Yet he spoke with seeming frankness.

  “I cannot honestly say that she was particularly unhappy, Inspector. She was not a normally happy woman. Her only son, Morris, was ever a sore disappointment, and her husband never forgave her for that boy.”

  “Who now benefits by her demise?”

  “No one. Old Jacob left his entire fortune, save for the few bequests, to his daughters in equal shares. He didn’t leave a penny to his wife or son, and Mrs Answerth never took legal action. To murder Mrs Answerth doesn’t add up, does it?”

  Bony rose to his feet and the coroner-business-agent followed suit.

  “It will, Mr Harston. We’ll talk again, if you will spare me your time. Meanwhile, there’s no hurry for the inquest. I dislike adjourned inquests, you know. Much more interesting when the coroner is able to charge a person with murder, don’t you think?”

  “Yes, I suppose it would be, Inspector. We’ll hold the inquest when you are ready.”

  This time Bony accompanied the caller to the front gate, and there he asked his final question for the night.

  “I heard someone refer to the Answerth house as Venom House. Is it widely known by that name?”

  “I’m afraid it is. And by no other,” replied the business agent. “The Answerths have a wretched history. It’s quite a long story. The family began in evil times and evil has clung to it all the way down the years. When you are ready, I can give you the history of it.”

  “Thank you. Good night, Mr Harston.”

  Assuring Bony that he would delay signing the release of the body till one o’clock the next day, the deputy coroner crossed the street to his house and, pensively, Bony returned to the station office.

  “Your opinion of Harston?” he asked, and Mawson smiled faintly.

  “He thinks he’s a cut above the bank managers and the parsons,” replied the constable. “He’s chairman of the Bench and a stickler for court procedure. Makes quite a good coroner. Very well off, I believe. Owns property and a couple of farms. Has one son an officer in the Navy and another in business down in Melbourne. Wife’s president or secretary of women’s organizations.”

  “H’m! We’ll call it a day, Mawson. You could take me to Venom House in the morning ... be there about nine?”

  “Certainly. Should leave at eight-thirty.”

  “Make it eight o’clock. I shall want to examine the locality where Carlow’s van was parked. Good night!”

  At half past eight the following morning, Bony alighted from Mawson’s car and surveyed the large natural clearing amid the jumble of hills where the van had been parked in the scrub. Mawson led the way into the scrub on the side opposite the old logging stage and pointed out the place where the van had been found. It was impossible for anyone in the clearing to have seen it, such was the massing of semi-tropical vegetation.

  “What exactly did Inspector Stanley do about the van?” Bony asked.

  “Had it dusted for finger-prints,” replied Mawson. “Steering-wheel gave only Carlow’s prints. Examined the sacking and the tarp inside it. Had the vehicle driven over soft ground and photographs taken of the tyre imprints. Tyre tracks gave nothing. It rained somewhat more than two inches that night Carlow was killed.”

  All this Bony knew from the Official Summary, and copies of the finger-prints and the tyre-prints were in his suitcase. He was confident that had he been assigned to the Carlow murder investigation he would have discovered much more from this page of The Book of the Bush than Stanley and his assistants had done. And that despite the hindering rain.

  Mawson took a track little better than a green-grey tunnel, for the early morning mist percolated thickly into the massing scrub and hid the upper portion of the trees rising from it. Emerging from the far end of the tunnel, they came to a wide slope of cleared land ending at the base of an opaque wall surmounted by the fairly blue sky and tinted light gold by the still invisible sun.

  As the car was driven down the slope, to the left appeared the dark shape of many buildings. These buildings became identifiable: a wood shed, a small shearing shed, the men’s quarters, and other out-houses. Within an open-fronted shed stood the station wagon which Mary Answerth had driven and a smart single-seater coupe.

  Mawson stopped the car almost on the edge of the Folly and cut the engine. Immediately there came to them the call of ducks and far-away hooting of swans. The silvered water was like glass, and upon the glass stood, here and there, the grey trunks of long-dead trees.

  Somewhere near the men’s quarters dogs barked. Along the shallow shore of the Folly came a duck followed by five ducklings. The old lady deviated to avoid the car and, having steered her brood past it, veered again to follow closely the grass-edged shore.

  The tinting of gold sank downward to claim the mist to the glassy surface. The air was cool and pleasurably breathed, and it brought the scents of luscious growth, of cattle, of gumwood burning in a stove. A distant shadow materialized in the mist, became a featureless oblong based on nothing, and both men silently watched as the shadow solidified to a large flat-roofed house. The tips of the taller of the dead trees standing in the Folly were gilded by the sun, and the mist magically thinned to reveal the windows and the great arched porch to the front entrance of the distant house.

  “Must be very damp,” commented Bony.

  “Stands on a sort of island made by a levee all round it,” Mawson said. “Once there was no water here at all. A river used to pass the house on the far side, but one of the Answerths interfered with its exit to the sea and despite all their efforts the outlet was permanently blocked. Water couldn’t get away and so formed this lake. It’s why it’s called Answerth’s Folly.”

  “I would say that the artificial island on which the house stands is one-third of a mile from us. What is your guess?”

  “Bit more, I think. From here to there is the causeway, covered by about a foot of water.”

  Colour was brushed upon the house. It was built of grey stone and comprised two storeys. Facing them were six windows on the ground floor and seven on the upper floor. All the windows were of a past era, tall and narrow. The house stood upon a green base.

  “What does that house remind you of?” inquired Bony, and Mawson was prompt to make answer.

  “Buckingham Palace. Very small edition, of course.”

  “The green is grass growing on the levee?”

  “Must be. I understand that the levee encloses about two acres of land.”

  “I’d like to own that house. Unusual. Its history will be interesting. Slip up to the men’s quarters and ask that cook to come here. Meanwhile, I’ll indulge in the wishful spending of a hundred thousand pounds lottery prize.”

  “I wouldn’t even get that far,” grumbled Mawson, and departed.

  Venom House! Strange name to give a house ... behind its back. What had Harston said? The Answerths have a wretched history. They began in evil times and evil has clung to them down through the years. Yes....”

  Voices recalled him to the approach of Mawson and another man, and Bony left the car to survey the station cook. He was about the same size as Dr Lofty, but his legs were like twin bows bent to speed an arrow to right and left. He wore white moleskin trousers, a white cotton shirt, and slippers. His age? Anything between fifty and ninety. His eyes were dark and screwed to the size of small marbles, and this mannerism, together with the burned and lined face, was a finger-post to his origin ... the sun-burned plains of the Interior.

  “The men’s cook, sir,” Mawson said, stiffly. “Name is Albert Blaze.”

  “Come and sit down, Blaze, and talk,” Bony invited and himself sat on the running-board of the car.

  “Good-dayee, Inspector. I’ll sit and yap any time, but I don’t know much.”

  The long tail to the “day” was further proof that Albert Blaze had been bred somewhere near the heart of the continent. There was mus
ic in the way he drawled the greeting.

  Chapter Five

  Sisters at Home

  “HOW LONG HAVE you been cooking for the Answerths?” was Bony’s first question. The reply wasn’t delayed.

  “I told Inspector Stanley that.”

  “Did you? Now tell me.”

  Bony’s expression was bland when regarding the little man seated beside him. Despite his age, Blaze hadn’t forgotten how real men sum up each other. Calmly, unhurriedly, he examined Bony’s face feature by feature, and so came to discard his first impression for another more accurate. Here was no bashful half-caste, no slinking half-caste, no simple half-caste. Here was a half-caste never to be found in the vicinity of such places as Darwin, where the riff-raff of both races congregate. Here was a half-caste who could have come from the Tablelands, the Diamintina, the Murchison.

  “I began working here in ’24,” Blaze said, easily but coldly.

  “Before then you were, of course, riding the stock routes with cattle. How many years were you on the cattle roads?”

  “All my life before I came here. If you want to know why I left the cattle country to work on a place no bigger than a cattle station’s backyard, I won’t be telling you. That happened a long time ago.”

  “I’m not prying, Blaze. I was wondering if you and I know the same places. I believe we do, and we will swap yarns later, if you care to. At the moment we’ll concentrate on the death of Mrs Answerth. You have been cooking for the men ... how long?”

  “Nine years. I was head stockman before that,” answered the ex-cattleman. “Got too old and stiff for the work. I’m near eighty, you know.”

  “Don’t believe it.”

  “All right ... bet-cher. No good, though. Can’t prove it. But I’m eighty this year accordin’ to the bloke what brought me up.”

  “All right! You win. You were having breakfast when Miss Mary Answerth called you all to rescue the body of Mrs Answerth, were you not?”

  “The men were at breakfast. I never eat none. I was in the kitchen when she came in with the news, and I went with the others down to this causeway. She sung out to us to take the boat. Boat’s always locked up, and I keep the key.”

  “Why is that?”

  “Been locked up since young Morris Answerth got out one night and went for a row on the Folly. Anyone wanting to leave the house, or go over to it, has to wade, and if they falls in a hole they has to swim. And if they can’t swim they has to drown. Only time boat’s used is to take over rations, tow over wood, and carry Miss Janet, who won’t always wade. I got orders to take you and Mr Mawson over, if he wants to go with you.”

  “How often did Mrs Answerth leave the house?”

  “Oh, pretty seldom. She’d always wade, night or day. She wasn’t over this side the night she was murdered, if that’s what you’re after.”

  “How d’you know?” flashed Bony.

  “No one seen her, anyway.”

  “That night two men were employed here in addition to yourself. Are they as sure, as you seem to be, that Mrs Answerth was not here that night she was drowned?”

  “Sounded as though they were. You ask ’em. Robin Foster, he’s head stockman now, is up at the pub on a bender. Young Tolly had to ride out, but he’ll be home come lunch time.”

  “When did Foster leave to go on a bender?”

  “Yesterdee mornin’. Went to town with Miss Mary drivin’ the body, and stopped in town. Wave a feather dipped in whisky across his nose, and Foster would leave a job for the nearest pub if he was a thousand miles away.”

  “Oh, that kind of man.”

  “That kind of man. You would know ’em.”

  “Of course. When Edward Carlow was drowned, Robin Foster was on a bender in town, wasn’t he?”

  “Yes. Seems to know when to go.”

  “There was no one with you in camp?”

  “No. I was cooking for myself.”

  “And you had a fancy for roast duck?”

  “Teal. Just a couple. I don’t eat overmuch.”

  “And you shot a couple. Where ... from here?”

  Blaze stood, and Bony stood with him. The cook pointed a steady finger.

  “See that tree what looks like Billy Hughes in a temper,” he asked, indicating a dead trunk having two threateningly poised arms. It was a hundred yards off-shore and about half a mile distant. “Well, I shot me teal about opposite that tree, and I had to wade for ’em. I’d picked up one, and was going after the other, when I kicked against something soft and giving-like. I stirs it around with me foot, and up comes Ed Carlow.”

  “How deep was the water at that place?”

  “To me waist. It’s pretty shallow out from there. Course, I was a bit surprised. Ed Carlow hadn’t no right being there. He wasn’t workin’ on the place. I said to him: “What in ’ell’s the game, Ed?’ He looked crook, too. Anyway, I wades after me second duck, and then I comes back and tows Ed ashore, the yabbies dropping off him all the time. What with the excitement of reporting him to Miss Janet, who had to telephone to Mr Mawson, I forgot to put me teal into the safe and the dratted flies ruined ’em. Couple of plump birds they was, too.”

  “Pity, about the birds,” agreed Bony. “Take us over to the house now, please.”

  “All right.” The cook stared at Bony with a hint of anger in his screwed-in eyes. “Well, ain’t you goin’ to ask if I had it in for Ed Carlow, and that it’s funny I happened to kick him up from the bottom?”

  “No. Why?”

  “’Cos Inspector Stanley did. You’re a policeman, too.”

  Bony smiled, and said softly:

  “Ah! But you see, Blaze, you and I know the same places, and therefore, I am not so dull.”

  Mawson thought that all this back-chat was a waste of time. He was unaware of Bony’s purpose decided upon when he and the cook were coming from the kitchen. Blaze walked to the boat tethered to a stump, walked to it mincingly, despite his years and the slippers on his feet. When he was pulling at the oars, Mawson asked if there were as many ducks as in other years, and Blaze said there were not.

  They were midway to the house, when the front door was opened and Mary Answerth came out to stand on the levee, and watch their progress.

  “Gud-dee!” she said to Mawson, who was first to leave the boat. “Gud-dee!” she said to Bony when his turn came. “Bert, you camp in the boat until Inspector Bonaparte wants to go back.” And without further speech she led the way to the house.

  The distance from the levee to the house front was something like fifty yards. Greensward stretched away upon either side, swung away round the flanks of the building. Six ewes were as lawn mowers always in action. The house porch was arched and deeply inset, there being one broad step to reach the studded door. Either side the porch was a tall side-light of frosted glass, and above the porch was a stained-glass window reaching almost to the wide cornice. To the right were three upper-storey windows, and movement at the second attracted Bony’s attention.

  The second and third windows were guarded by steel lattice in a diamond pattern, and from one of the openings a hand was thrust and appeared to be beckoning. The house front being in the morning shadow, Bony paused to watch the hand, and then made out the line to which a weight was attached. On the porch, Mary Answerth turned about and, seeing what interested him, said impatiently:

  “My brother. Spends most of his time dropping things out of his window and getting them up with a magnet. Does nobody any harm.”

  Saying nothing, Bony walked to the descending magnet. It was within a foot of the ground when he reached the line. Gently he tugged at the line, waited, and the magnet proceeded to descend. On reaching the ground, the “fisherman” jogged it about and almost at once the bait caught a metal pencil case and a screw. There were other metal articles, and Bony manoeuvred the bait to catch additional “fish”, when he stood away and watched the catch being drawn up. He was smiling on rejoining Mawson and Mary Answerth.

  Mawson looked
his interest, the woman scowled. She entered the house, followed by the men, who found themselves in a spacious hall. The furniture was unimportant, for the staircase mounting to the upper floor was another kind of magnet. Bony had never seen anything comparable. It rose like the stem of a flower to bloom at the gallery serving both wings. The banisters and the treads, where uncovered by the once royal-blue carpet, were the colour of honey, the hue undoubtedly warmed by the stained-glass window above the door. Bony thought of the coach placed at Cinderella’s service, and he was conscious of effort to revert his gaze to the walls of this vast hall, to note the rich panelling, aged and aloof.

  Mary Answerth was crossing the hall to a rear passage, and he could not delay following her. He hoped that his shoes were clean when stepping off the strip of royal-blue to uncovered parquet.

  Then he was at the back of the hall, with the distracting staircase behind him. The passage ahead was dim and seemingly filled by the huge woman. Her boots and his shoes ought to have sounded upon the bare floor, but the featureless dark walls and bare ceiling swallowed all sound. He became conscious of cold, the cold of frost on grass rather than the dank cold of the freezing chamber.

  Their guide turned left, and he saw the entrance to a large and heavily raftered kitchen. The metallic eyes of polished kitchen-ware stared soullessly at him. Friendly warmth touched him as he, too, turned left into another passage. He passed opened doors, noticed the sunlight pouring through tall windows into rooms reminding him of the illustrations of the Pickwick Papers.

  A moment later, he stepped into a different house.

  The room was long and lighted by a single huge pane of glass framed with velvet curtains of dove-grey. The walls were of primrose-yellow, the ceiling of palest aqua. The furniture was of modern design in silver ash and silk brocade. Hand-woven blue-grey rugs graced the polished flooring.