Venom House. Arthur W. Upfield
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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.
Turning from the window, a woman came forward to meet them. She was of medium height and slight of figure.
“Inspector Bonaparte! And Constable Mawson!” she said, with the merest trace of a lisp. “I am Janet Answerth. Please sit down.”
Bony honoured her with his inimitable bow, and no cavalier ever bettered it. Janet Answerth’s grey-green eyes widened, brightened. He said:
“I regret the circumstances compelling me to force myself into your presence, Miss Answerth. It’s generous of you to receive us so early.”
“Oh, we quite understand, Inspector Bonaparte. Do we not, Mary?”
“Damned if I do,” growled her sister. “We could have answered questions in the kitchen ... or at the police station.”
“Oh, dear!” murmured Janet, seating herself. Mary wedged herself into a long-armed, low-backed chair, and thrust forward her leather-encased legs. Bony sat with Mawson on a divan, and glanced at a smoker’s stand.
“If you care to smoke, Inspector ...” Janet said, and nodded her sanction.
“Thank you. I’ll not keep you longer than necessary. By the way, I think it probable that the coroner will comply with your request made last night. He hopes to reach a decision by midday.”
“We’re most grateful, Inspector,” Janet cried. “It’s all been such a nightmare.”
This was a rare occasion on which Bony felt he could not roll a smoke. Producing his case of “real” cigarettes, he crossed to offer it to Janet. He was conscious of Mary Answerth leaving the room, and he had but just regained his seat when she re-entered carrying a china spittoon. This she placed on the floor, and proceeded to thrust herself down into her chair, and then began cutting chips from a tobacco plug, an old pipe dangling from between her large and square teeth.
“I want to know something of the last hours of your mother’s life,” said Bony, hoping that if Mary Answerth spat her aim would be straight. “The circumstances call for patient enquiry. You know, of course, that Mrs Answerth did not die by drowning.”
“I knew it, but Janet wouldn’t believe me,” muttered Mary, the pipe still between her teeth. “When I saw the mark round her neck, I knew she’d been throttled.”
“How horrible, Inspector,” Janet whispered as though remarking on the picture of a traffic accident. “What reason ... who ...”
“We must try to uncover the motive,” Bony smoothly cut in. “Miss Janet Answerth ... tell me when did you last see Mrs Answerth alive?”
“Oh! I think I told Mr Mawson about that. It was yesterday morning. No, it wasn’t. It was the afternoon of the day before yesterday. In the kitchen. I had reason to go to the kitchen to instruct Mrs Leeper. She’s our housekeeper-cook, you know. Mother was there. Doing something. I don’t remember what.”
“You did not see Mrs Answerth afterwards ... at any time during the remainder of the day or evening?”
“No, Inspector.”
“You’re a liar,” interposed Mary, and having lit her pipe she tossed the spent match into the spittoon.
Her sister flushed and grimaced with disgust.
“You always were a liar, Janet,” proceeded Mary. “A natural born liar. You were talking to Mother just after dinner that evening. In the hall. You had just come down with Morris’s dinner-tray, and I heard you tell Mother she wasn’t to visit him as he was poorly.”
“Mary, how can you!” flamed Janet.
“When you last saw Mrs Answerth, she was not upset, or different in her manner?” interposed Bony, regarding the younger sister.
“I don’t know. I didn’t speak to her. I saw nothing about her that was different to what she usually was. She’d been ailing for years, you know. Sometimes she was very depressed about poor Morris. He is ... well, he’s always been childish.”
“Your mother ... she was able to get about without aid of any kind?”
“Oh, yes. She liked digging the garden and looking after the hens.”
Bony turned to Mary.
“When did you last see Mrs Answerth alive?”
“Round about ten o’clock that night. When she was going to bed.”
“She seemed her normal self?”
“No different.”
“Really, Mary, you mustn’t tell the Inspector such fibs,” cooed Janet, and stubbing out her cigarette, she crossed her slim legs and leaned back with her hands clasped behind her small head. The grey-green eyes were smoky. The sunlight gleamed upon her red-gold hair. The expression on her triangular face was of triumph. “At eleven o’clock that night, I heard you and Mother arguing below my bedroom window. I heard you ask Mother what the hell she was doing out of doors at that time of night. I saw you both come inside and I heard the front door close. So I wasn’t dreaming.”
Mary spat, and Bony was relieved that her aim was true. Holding the mouthpiece of the old pipe away from her face, she permitted a sneer to grow.
“You’re always dreaming this and that,” she said. “If you weren’t always dreaming and mooning about Morris, you’d have let his mother go up and see him that night. You