Death by Water (14 page)

Magda concluded, and bowed. The applause was general.

She was really good. Jazz and blues required a precision control of dissonances: too many and the singer sounded perpetually off-key, not enough and she sounded too much like a parlour contralto singing drawing room ballads. Magda had fire and her sister’s accompaniment was positively uncanny in its anticipation of the singer’s changes of key.

The Melody Makers started playing the Maori Farewell,

‘Now Is the Hour’, as the last dance assembled, and Phryne trailed away towards her cabin, thinking such deep thoughts as were possible after three glasses of very good cognac.

Dot wasn’t there, which was unlike her. Phryne managed to wriggle out of the blue dress and, unwilling to try unstitching
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the necklace, decided to tuck the dress into bed with the teddy bear. She cleaned her face and assumed her nightdress and dropped into the dreamless sleep of the slightly shickered.

Phryne woke feeling cold. She snuggled down into the eider-down provided by P&O for the chills of the first class passengers, rolled over and became fully conscious.

The French windows were open. A very cold wind was blowing in. And someone was tapping at the cabin door.

Phryne reacted fast. She grabbed and donned her gown and retrieved her little gun from under her pillow. Then she turned on all the lights and opened the door.

‘Hello,’ she said. A dishevelled Caroline gestured to a huge overalled young man who loomed behind her, filling up the corridor. He might not have been nine cubits and a span, but he would have run Goliath of Gath close.

Caroline spoke sharply. ‘Bring her in here, Tui. Lay her down on her bed.’

Tui, his head scraping the roof, hulked inside and laid an unconscious Dot on her bed. He stepped back, looking bashful.

‘Good boy, Tui,’ Caroline told him. ‘Now cut along and don’t say a word to a dog.’ The giant vanished with no noise at all.

Phryne, holding a gun and, for some reason, a teddy bear, stared at the closed door and said, ‘Well?’

‘I don’t know, Miss.’ Caroline wrung her hands. ‘She came to dinner with us and we talked for a bit and then she said she was coming back here, and then hours later Tui came to get me because he found her on the companionway down to the engine room. I thought I’d better bring her back here.’

‘Is she hurt? Concussed?’

‘I can’t see anything, Miss, and she hasn’t got a bump on her head. She just seems to be asleep.’

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‘That doesn’t look like ordinary sleep,’ said Phryne grimly.

‘Go get Doctor Shilletoe, without waking anyone else.’

There was no possibility that anyone would disobey Miss Fisher in this imperative mood. She had paled to the colour of porcelain and her green eyes were as cold as age-old ice.

Caroline went.

‘Now, Dorothy,’ said Phryne gently, putting down the gun and the teddy bear, ‘let’s just close these windows and have a look at you. What have you been doing, eh?’

Phryne shut and bolted the French windows. The suite began to warm. Dot murmured in her sleep. Her forehead was cool, her hands limp, her pulse slow. Phryne examined her gently, tucking her skirt around her and pulling down the rumpled shawl. No sign of sexual interference, no torn seams or lost buttons, all her underwear in place. That was fortunate—for the attacker, Phryne thought. Had anyone molested Dot it would have been necessary to kill him and that was always difficult. No bruises, bites, no bumps under the soft hair.

No skin under the short fingernails, no sign of an affray. Dot had been drugged. Why?

To allow someone to break in through those pestilential French windows and find that thrice-cursed gem. Phryne went back to her bed and pulled out the blue dress. The stitching was still intact and the sapphire gleamed balefully at her in the three in the morning electric glare. Phryne swore at it, found the embroidery scissors and unpicked the stitches, then stowed the gem in its little pouch, slung it on a ribbon to go round her waist. She tied it on. Better get dressed, she thought, some investigation was going to be necessary.

Phryne put on underwear, trousers, a jumper and soft shoes. She put her little gun in her pocket. She was more awake than she had ever recalled being. Where to begin? Where that
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behemoth had found Dot, on the companionway down to the engine room. And then, Phryne thought, to wherever she had lost her shoes. For Dot’s stockinged toes were in evidence.

Somewhere she had lost both of her sensible, low heeled evening shoes.

And now the matter was wide open again. It was no use the crew continually telling Phryne that it wasn’t them. If it wasn’t them, who had drugged Dot?

Doctor Shilletoe was conducted into the cabin by a dis-traught Caroline. He was surprisingly brisk. Phryne supposed doctors got used to being called in the middle of the night.

‘No concussion,’ he said, after making a careful examination. ‘But her pupils are shrunk to a pinpoint. Drugged, Miss Fisher, with an opiate—laudanum, maybe. Not a dangerous dose,’ he said. ‘She doesn’t take sleeping draughts usually, I expect?’

‘She has a moral struggle with taking aspirin,’ said Phryne.

‘Right. Someone has slipped her what people now call a Mickey Finn.’ The doctor put down Dot’s hand. ‘What’s going on, Miss Fisher?’

‘There you have me,’ said Phryne. ‘So the best we can do for Dot is to let her sleep it off?’

‘Well, yes. Her respiration is fine, no trouble breathing, she just needs to sleep. We could wake her to pump her stomach but I don’t believe that’s necessary and would just cause her distress.’

‘She is feeling no pain at present,’ Phryne agreed. ‘All right.

Thank you very much for coming out. I know that I’m keeping you from your rest, but can you stay here with Dot for a little while longer?’

‘I’m awake now, anyway,’ commented the doctor. ‘I’ll just sit down in this nice basket chair and have a snooze. I’ll wake if she calls. Why, what are you going to do?’

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‘A little recce,’ said Phryne and, taking Caroline by the arm, led her out and shut the door.

‘What do you want me to do, Miss?’ asked Caroline. Miss Fisher was making her very nervous. Dot had hinted that her employer was a strong-minded woman but Caroline had discounted this. Miss Fisher was rich, and rich women were soft.

This opinion was now undergoing rapid revision. Phryne was set-faced, very quiet, and that was a real pistol in her perfectly steady hand.

‘Take me to where Tui found Dot,’ she said, and Caroline complied.

The residential part of the ship at night was lit only by dim lights along the walls. Phryne followed Caroline down the back staircase to the decks below Third Class, where the crew lived, where the engines throbbed, and where the complex preparations for feeding, clothing, washing and conveying all those passengers largely went on.

Deeper still and deeper. The walls changed from decorated to plain to smeared with grease. The stairs went from carpeted to lino to American oilcloth to bare metal and got progressively steeper.

‘Engine rooms are down here,’ whispered Caroline. ‘Out of bounds for all of us. I’d be sacked if they found me here.’

‘Being sacked is the least of your worries,’ Phryne told her.

She could smell a heady mixture of heated metal and grease with overtones of petrol and—frying?

‘Stokers live down here,’ Caroline told her.

‘But these engines are diesel, they aren’t stokers any more,’

said Phryne, to whom this had just occurred.

‘It’s just what they call them, Miss,’ said Caroline, whose patience was fraying. ‘They’ve got a little cubby here and they do some cooking in it, even though they aren’t allowed to,
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because it’s such a long way up to the kitchen. No stewardess service down here,’ she added sharply.

‘They may fry anything, up to and including a full sized shark,’ said Phryne. ‘It is no concern of mine. Where did Tui find Dot?’

‘Tui?’ called Caroline. There was a stirring in the cubby-hole and the massive man shouldered his way out. Phryne could imagine that he had to spend quite a lot of time hunched over. Ships just weren’t built for large economy sized Maoris.

‘Where did you find the lady?’ asked Caroline.

Tui lumbered seven paces to the steep companionway which led up to the third class kitchens.

‘Here,’ he said simply. ‘I was going to the head,’ he added.

‘She was all limp. I reckon they might have rolled her down the steps. But she wasn’t hurt or broken and I took her to Caroline.’

‘Did you see anyone around? Hear anything?’ asked Phryne.

Tui’s brow wrinkled. He nibbled at a massive thumbnail with a surprisingly delicate movement. ‘Nothing,’ he concluded. ‘Except this thud. I reckon that was the lady. And here’s her shoe,’ he said, producing it. ‘I could see she was one of Caroline’s ladies, I seen her with Caroline before, so I took her to Caroline.’

‘Fair enough,’ said Phryne, stuffing a banknote into the huge fist. ‘You did very well and I’m very grateful. Anything else you remember, tell Caroline. Now, let’s have a look at those stairs.’

Caroline accompanied Phryne up the steep companionway. At the top lay the other shoe. Also on the floor was a piece of cloth which might have been a muffler or a sling, knotted with a hard knot in one corner. Phryne picked it up.

‘What’s along there?’

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‘Third class kitchens and dining room,’ said Caroline.

‘What was Dot doing down here?’

‘I don’t think she had a choice,’ said Phryne grimly, climbing another staircase. ‘I think she was nabbed just outside your dining room, Caroline, and carried down here.’

‘But why throw her down the stairs?’

‘I don’t think they did. I think they left her at the head of the companionway for some reason, and she struggled in her sleep and tipped herself down the steps. By the time they came back for her she was gone. This is a nice, quiet, dead place, isn’t it? Not overlooked by anything. I think she was taken because she decided to go to bed early, while I was still dancing. The French windows were open when I woke.’

‘The sapphire, was it taken, Miss?’

‘No,’ said Phryne. ‘And now this is personal. When I find out who did this they are going to repent it sorely.’

Caroline believed her.

They retraced a possible route through the ship which Dot’s captors might have taken, but found nothing useful. They returned to the Imperial Suite and at the door Phryne said to Caroline, ‘You’ve been very kind, thank you. Do something else for me. Don’t tell anyone about this, and make sure that Tui doesn’t tell, either.’

‘We ought to tell the captain,’ said Caroline, troubled.

‘Ladies drugged! I never heard of such a thing! And they’ll blame the crew again, sure as eggs is eggs.’

‘Leave it to me,’ said Phryne. ‘And when it is all sorted out, the captain will be told exactly what happened.’

‘All right, Miss,’ said Caroline reluctantly. ‘I’ll go back to bed, then. I’ll call at eight with the breakfast. Miss . . .?’ she asked tentatively.

‘Mmm?’ Phryne replied.

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‘Is that gun loaded?’

‘What use is an unloaded gun?’ asked Phryne. She unlocked her door and slipped inside. Caroline looked at the closed door for a while, then went back to her own cabin.

Phryne found Dot asleep in her bed and Doctor Shilletoe asleep in the chair. She added herself to their number and fell asleep in her own bed, still wearing the Maharani around her waist.

Mustafa Ali

Casablanca

Salaam aleikum. The blessings of the prophet be upon your house
and the houses of your sons. I report that I have expended my
master’s gold in buying tickets for the master’s two cousins on a very
good ship to America. I have sent them to Cherbourg in the care
of a very reliable servant of this house. This emigration will remove
them from the reach of their enemies and should ensure the further
prosperity of my master’s house, for which his servant duly prays.

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CHAPTER EIGHT

As idle as a painted ship

Upon a painted ocean

ST Coleridge

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

Saturday

Phryne Fisher woke as Caroline came in with the coffee. Dot was sitting up in her bed, rubbing her eyes.

‘It must have been that extra glass of sherry I had,’ she said woozily.

‘I know you don’t like coffee, Dot dear, but Caroline will give you a cup and you should drink it all,’ said Phryne, sitting up and revealing that she was wearing undergarments instead of her nightdress. ‘And I’ll tell you all about why in a moment.’

Dot did as she was told. The coffee was Leo’s finest and would have drawn a shocked gasp from an Egyptian mummy.

Caroline brought in Phryne’s croissants and departed without a word. Doctor Shilletoe had left Phryne a note which said that if Miss Williams experienced any nasty after-effects she should
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call him immediately. Phryne read it as she stripped off her underwear, dropped the sapphire into Dot’s hands, and went to take a shower. It had been a nervous night.

Reclad for a cool morning, Phryne explained to Dot what an adventurous night she had had. Oddly enough, once reassured that her virtue was intact, Dot seemed rather relieved.

‘I thought I might be getting on the grog,’ she said. ‘Like my Uncle Ted. He used to pass out all the time.’