Division and Multiplication
THELIGHTINthe men’s quarters waned and vanished. The light in the small room off the kitchen continued to gleam. The light within an upstairs room of Venom House was like a fire-fly steady on a leaf. The world was invisible, for the stars suffered a high-level haze foretelling wind.
Reclining on his bunk, Bert Blaze read a weekly newspaper, and, between paragraphs, he was beginning to think of blowing out his lamp when through the open doorwayflitted a dark form that silently approached the stretcher and passed unnoticed until it squatted on the floor.
“You move around,” calmly remarked the cook.
“Speak softly,” ordered Bony. “The light in the men’s quarters has just gone out, but Foster may not yet be asleep. Anyone with him?”
“No. He ain’t fit for company, anyway. Got brought home by Miss Mary like something picked up by the dog-catchers. Seems she yanked him outa the pub for the cattle-dipping tomorrow.”
“It happened like that.” Bony madehimself comfortable and rolled a cigarette. Blaze waited, and presently Bony said: “I’ve been thinking that you might like to give me a hand.”
“Might. Depends, of course, on what.”
“At locating the murderer of Mrs Answerth.”
“Then you can rope me in.”
“I’m glad I wasn’t mistaken in you, Blaze. Let us talk of Mrs Answerth. Somewhere in the background of the past lurked the motive to kill her, and as we don’t know the motive, it is to the past we must travel. I have gathered that no one knows these Answerths more intimately than you.”
Bony offered opportunity for comment on this point, and as Blaze remained silent, he went on:
“We don’t know just where Mrs Answerth was strangled. If on the house side of the causeway, then we must concentrate on the living Answerths. If she met her death this side, then we have a much wider range of people with whom to deal. How did Mrs Answerth come to confide in you about her home life?”
“Well, to explain all that, you’ve got to understand I first came here as head stockman, and that old Jacob was alive and, in addition to his freehold, he leased another fifty thousand acres and employed round about a dozen men.”
The yellow light of the lamp set on a packing-case at the head of the bed was kind to the lined face and to the dark eyes which could gleam so brightly. The ex-head stockman crammed tobacco into a pipe with a broken stem.
“In themdays things was good and easy,” he said. “Money went a longer way, therewas more men about, and they was good at their work. When the first Mrs Jacob snuffed out, and Jacob got society ideas, he sort of left me to be a bit more than just head stockman. The causeway wasn’t under water them days, and I usta go over and spend an evening now and then with Jacob.
“In them days I was pretty capable, and too independent to call the King me uncle. I knew me job, and old Jacob knew I did, too. When he shouted at me, I shouted back, and he sorta liked it.
“He’d been married to the second wife about six monse and I was over there at dinner. He was a bit sour, and he took it out of his new wife. Because she wouldn’t answer back, he got up sudden and made to hit her, and I told him I’d knock his teeth down his throat. Instead of sacking me, he doubled me wages, saying I was the only man who’d ever showed the guts to beard an Answerth.
“He never stopped askin’ me over, either. But he was always careful what he said to his wife when I was there, and she seemed to like me going for that reason. That began a sorta friendship, and I mean friendship and not any funny business. She’d look at me pretty miserable-like, and I’d give her a nod of encouragement, and that’s as far as it went for years.
“Troubles piled up against her like the driftwood against the coolibahs when the Diamintina’s inflood, and troubles were like a pack of dingoes around old Jacob until he shot himself instead of the dingoes.
“Then I took sick and was off formonths in hospital, and after that wasn’t any good with horses. So I took on this cooking, and one night in this here room I wakes up to find Mrs Answerth standing just where you’re sittin’.
“ ‘Bert,’ she says. ‘Come outside, I wanta talk to you. I must talk to someone.’
“We went out and sat on a log a bit away, and she tells me all she’s had to put up with from the girls, and mostly that both of ’em are gradually getting Morris away from her.”
“About how old would Morris be then?” Bony asked.
“Oh, musta been getting along for eighteen,” Blaze replied. “Seems that Miss Janet decides that young Morris wants a firmer hand and less his own way, and Miss Mary disagrees with her. Then the way them two went on upset Mrs Answerth. They wouldn’t speak to each other for weeks, and neither would speak to her, even when she spoke to them. She goes on tellin’ me all this till it is getting dawn, and sometimes she’s crying and I’m patting her shoulder, not knowing what to say.
“She came over again another night, and after that she’d come about once a week just for a pitch about old times when she was a bride and therewas visitors and people about the place. As I told you, there wasn’t ever any funny business. We got to be good cobbers, and I used to get a lot off me chest, too.
“You see, my parents were speared by the wild blacks and I was brought up on a cattle station and the boss wasn’t married. Exceptin’ the lubras there wasn’t a woman on the place. I was fifteen, or thereabouts, before I ever saw a white woman. I never had anyone to tell me things which worried them, until that night Mrs Answerth came over to talk about her troubles. It was the first time I got the notion I was worth a zac to anyone. And that’s all of that, Inspector.”
“You would be more than interested to know who killed her,” Bony said, stating a fact.
“Never hadno education exceptin’ what I got off a Scottish lord who had sense enough to keep two hundred miles away from the nearest pub so he could go on living. I can read the papers enough to know they don’t hang murderers in this State. I usta think that was best. If I finds out before you do who murdered Mrs Answerth there won’t be no trial. And that’s jake.”
“D’yoususpect any particular person?”
Blaze shook his head.
“Ain’t come to thinkin’ that far. But I will.”
“Any idea about Carlow coming to be drowned in the Folly?”
“Ideas! Plenty. He was on the make. I’ve heard a whisper or two. You know, picking up a stolen beast what’s been killed and skinned ready for his shop.”
“And Carlow evaded paying the lifter what he owed him?”
“Might be something like that. Them as think themselves smart generally gets taken down. There’s fellers in the forests agin which Ed Carlow was a suckin’ calf.”
“Men like Robin Foster?”
“No. Robin Foster’s justa grow ’d-up gorilla. His brother Henry’s different. There’s more like Henry who never miss a chance to make a quid or two easy and quiet. Me and old Jacob was troubled by them kind in the old days.”
“And you think that Henry Foster…”
“I’m not thinkin’ nothing about Henry Foster ’cos I don’t know anything,” came the swift counter. “I’m putting up Henry Foster as an example of the blokewho’s slick when the chance comes his way.”
“Was he ever employed by the Answerths?”
“Only when he does the wool-pressing at shearin’. And then hedon’t actually work for the Answerths: he’s employed by the shearers who contract for the job.”
“Has the recent wool clip here been sent to Brisbane?”
“Yes. Several weeks back.”
“How many bales-do you know?”
“Ninety-two. Branded M amp; J over A.”
“What agent was it consigned to?”
“Parsons amp;Timms.”
“Do you know how many sheep were shorn this year?”
“Of course. I keep in touch although I’m only a dough slinger.”
“Then let us work out a little sum and check up.”
Bony produced notebook and pencil, and Blaze swung his feet over his visitor’s head and sat on the side of the bed that he might watch the sum being worked out.
“The clip came off three thousand, four hundred and eighty-two sheep. That right?” asked Bony.
“Correct.”
“Ewes, hoggets, weaners, lambs. Wethers and rams in together. How many lambs?”
“One more’n seven hundred and thirty.”
“Now mix up the rest and give me the average weight of the fleeces.”
“I’d say ten pounds… average.”
“Good. This might be harder. Average weight of the lamb fleeces?”
“Four pounds,” Blaze promptly answered, watching the working pencil.
“Now what have we? The total weight of the clip works out at twenty-eight thousand, four hundred and thirty-four pounds. Consider again your estimate… because it’s important… the average weight of the fleeces-ten pounds for the adult sheep, four pounds for the lambs.”
“Istands by it,” asserted the cook. “As a matter of fact, I guessed them weights before the classer worked it out on the scales in the shed.”
“We’ll take another step, Blaze. How many pounds of wool to a bale?”
“Three hundred… mostly just a bit over.”
“Right! I’ll work all that out.”
Blaze could not follow the figures leaping to the page, but he was satisfied that this mathematician knew his work. Presently Bony announced the total number of bales to be ninety-four. Still satisfied, Blaze offered no comment.
“Mistake somewhere along the line,” Bony murmured. “Our total is ninety-four. You said that ninety-two bales comprised the clip. We’re out by two. I’ll check.”
This time Blaze did not watch the pencil. The hand which held the short-stemmed pipe to his mouth moved downward slowly to rest on a pyjama-clad knee, and thereafter his body was still.
“My figures are right,” Bony said. “Sure yours are?”
“Yes.”
“Sure the number sent away is ninety-two?”
“Yes. I helped load ’em on the transport; Miss Mary was there, checking the bales out. There wasno more nor less than ninety-two.”
“No bales left over in the shed?”
“Shed’s empty and unlocked. Myguesses on weights is right. Myfigures is right, too. If your sums is right, then two bales musta been pinched. Musta been pinched in fleeces, ’cos Miss Mary checked the baled wool outer the shearing shed and into the wool shed at the end of every day.”
“The bales would be serially numbered, I suppose?”
“From one upward. Miss Mary had a boy from Edison helping with the branding of the bales and moving ’em about.”
“And she would keep a daily tally of the bales received into the wool shed?”
“In her head if not in a book,” Blaze replied with conviction. “That he-woman misses nothin’. I’ll tell you how that wool coulda been pinched. You know the game. Shearer removes fleece. Picker-up carries it to the wool table. The classer trims it, rolls it into a bundle, puts it into one of his bins. The presser takes the fleeces from the bins to bale ’em. At the end of the day, there’s generally fleeces left in the bins for baling next morning.
“That’s the way it goes. Nowa coupler smart fellers could sneak in every night and lift a dozen, perhaps more, fleeces from them bins.”
“The classer?” purred Bony.
“Feller named Tanter. Got his own place out from Manton. Don’t think he would be in it. But if thefleeces in his bins was took, he musta known.”
“What about the presser?”
“Henry Foster! He musta known, too. Of course, he could…”
“What?”
“Tell you how the presser could have worked it. He’s the bloke who takes the fleeces from the bins to bale ’em. His cobbers sneaks in at night and lifts, say, half the fleeces left in each bin, and makes up the difference in the level by pushing in hessian sacks under top ones they leave. Theclasser don’t notice any difference in the morning, and the presser whips out the bags when the classer ain’t lookin’… leavin’ the bags handy to be used the followin’ night. And now Icomes to think of it there was always a few sacks on the floor near them bins. I seen ’em there when I took the mornin’ and afternoon smoke tea in.”
“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.”