Venom House. Arthur W. Upfield
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can spare me a few minutes?”
The voice was soft and the enunciation clear save for a slight lisp. What could have been nervousness in the caller Bony at once unchivalrously attributed to woman’s paving the way to the naming of a want. He was right, too.
“Yes, Miss Answerth. What can I do for you?” he purred.
“I’ve been wondering, Inspector, if we can come in the morning for poor Mother’s body. I do hope ... I hope, indeed ... that Doctor Lofty didn’t think it necessary to mutilate it. Mary, my sister, has been most upset. You will forgive her for being a trifle brusque, won’t you?”
“Naturally, Miss Answerth.”
“You see, Inspector, we often read of these dreadful things in the newspapers, and then when we are ourselves involved in such a tragedy we are horrified that anything of the kind could enter our lives. You will understand, I’m sure. We hate to think of poor Mother lying cut up on a cold slab or something. It’s just too grim. You will let us come for her in the morning?”
“Regretfully, Miss Answerth, I am unable to make a decision,” Bony told her. “However, I shall be calling on you at nine tomorrow morning, and may be able to advise you.”
“Oh!” There was a distinct pause. “You wish to come here?”
“To make a few enquiries. Formality, you understand.”
“Yes, of course, Inspector. How silly of me to be shocked by the idea of a visit from a detective-inspector. I will arrange that the boat is ready to bring you. You see, the causeway is dangerous to anyone who doesn’t know just where the deep holes are. It’s under water. We can easily wade over it, but as the water is often coloured, strangers cannot see it and would step into a deep hole for sure.”
“Very well, Miss Answerth. At nine in the morning.”
“You really could not decide to let us have the body ... in the morning?”
“No.”
The negative reply was softly but stressfully given, and the voice from the Answerth house betrayed nothing of disappointment when the conversation terminated.
“Your opinion of Janet Answerth?” Bony asked Mawson.
“Very nice little woman,” replied the constable. “Much younger than the other, more civilized. Reminds me somehow of a little moorhen. Quite a good type, I think.”
“Are you married?” Bony blandly asked.
“I’m a widower,” replied Mawson, openly wondering. “Another sister keeps house for me. Why?”
“I wished to assess the value of your opinion.”
Chapter Three
Dr Lofty’s Views
“Before we contact your Dr Lofty, tell me about the first murder,” requested Bony. “Take your time. Begin with the victim’s early background, his history. More often than not, homicide is the climax of a story beginning years prior to the act.”
“When I came out here eight years ago,” Mawson said after thought, “Edward Carlow was nineteen years of age and worked for his father, a farmer. The old man was never much good, and when I’d been here two years his drinking habit reached a climax and he left the family dead broke. Beside Edward, there was his mother and his young brother, Alfred, still at school.
“When the old man dropped out, the owners of the farm decided to find another tenant. The rent hadn’t been paid for years. The owners were these Answerths, who were influenced by their local business agent named Harston. Harston, by the way, is our deputy coroner.
“I never got to the real rights of that farm matter, but it seems that Miss Mary was with the business agent all the way, Miss Janet being against throwing the Carlows out and all for giving Edward Carlow the chance to succeed. I’m still not certain, mind you, but it seems that Miss Janet put Edward Carlow into a butcher’s shop here in Edison and found a house for the family close by.
“In those days, Edward Carlow was big and dark and handsome. Although he’d worked on the land he wasn’t dumb, and it’s been said that his mother gave him a better education than he’d have had at the local school. Anyway, Miss Janet took the wheel and started him off in the butchering line. Edison badly needed a good butcher, and Carlow never looked back. Began deliveries with an old truck and within a year was delivering with a smart new van.
“They left the house Miss Janet found for them for a better one Edward Carlow bought. There was new furniture, too, and Alfred was sent to finish his schooling in Brisbane. The business certainly flourished.”
Constable Mawson paused to light his pipe and hesitated to proceed. Receiving no comment from Bony, he went on:
“A little more than three years ago, a farmer reported the loss of steers. Then another man reported that the number of his sheep was down by thirty. While I was making enquiries about the sheep, they were found on virgin country, and there’s a lot of it in spots. Finding these sheep sort of put a question to the loss of the steers, for they also could have taken to the scrub and remained lost.
“One day I was over towards Manton delivering a summons when I chanced to meet the Forest Ranger. As it was near midday, we boiled the billy and had lunch together, and during the yabber he mentioned that several farmers and one or two sheepmen had asked him about stock which had got away.
“That made me think a bit. You know how it is in a district like this. The local butcher is always suspect when stock goes missing, and more often than not isn’t to blame. I began to look at Edward Carlow. By now he was softer than when he’d been on the farm. He was drinking at the pub, and doing a bit of betting.
“So we come to June of this winter. The Forest Ranger reported that he’d found evidence of possums having been trapped. As you know, this year’s fur prices have been very high. Also, possums are protected. The Ranger had his eye on a timber cutter named Henry Foster, and we agreed that Henry Foster could be the illegal trapper and that Edward Carlow could be the skin buyer from Foster. Could be, mind you. We had no proof.
“My ideas about Carlow’s prosperity were firmed a lot when his empty van was found parked in the scrub near that old logging stage where you met me and Miss Answerth this afternoon. How come that that van was concealed by the scrub when Carlow’s body was a mile away in Answerth’s Folly?
“Carlow was last seen about five p.m. on August 1st. He was then driving out of town, Mrs Carlow saying that he was going to Manton, where he was courtin’ a woman. She couldn’t tell us the name of this woman, and we couldn’t locate her. I believe she was truthful about it, that Edward told her a yarn about courting a girl.
“The next day, shortly after eleven in the morning, Carlow’s body was discovered by a feller named Blaze, the men’s cook out there. It was by the merest chance, too. The cook shot a duck and when wading out to get the bird actually kicked against the submerged body.
“The van wasn’t found until the following day when we began examining every off track from the track to Manton. It was well concealed by the scrub, and finding the van was chancy because, during the night Carlow was murdered, it rained heavily and tyre tracks were scarce. That afternoon, Inspector Stanley and Detective Jones arrived from Brisbane and took over.”
“You had then questioned the cook and the Answerth stockmen?” Bony probed.
“Blaze, the cook, yes. There were no men in camp the night Carlow was murdered. Excepting the cook, the only man employed at that time was the head stockman. The shearing was over and the sheep put into the spring pastures, and so work was slack. The head stockman was on the booze here in Edison. Feller by the name of Robin Foster.”
“Same name as the wood cutter.”
“Yes. Henry Foster’s brother.”
“How did the cook come out of it?”
“Seemed