Death by Water (20 page)

Mr Arthur Emery

London

Dear Pa

Mommy says you will be sailing soon on a new big ship. We miss
you. Sal says can you bring her some of that Oxford marmalade?

And I would like some fudge. That English kind with nuts in. Well
that’s about enough from me.

Your loving daughter

Marnie

PS and maybe a cute little white doggie? That kind called West
Highland? With a plaid collar? Papa darling? Please?

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CHAPTER ELEVEN

Let the day be time enough to mourn
The shipwreck of my ill-adventured youth
S Daniel

‘Sonnet’

Phryne woke, conscious of a headache which drinking gin during the day, as she had often been told, always produced.

She sniffed. Odd. She could smell a gamy, male smell, reminiscent of unwashed fox and damp fur. She opened her eyes—carefully, in case any important bits of her head fell off. Two green eyes looked into hers. The eyes were surrounded with nibbled grey fur and topped with two deckle edged ears.

‘Hullo, Scragger, old chap,’ murmured Phryne, getting creakily to her elbows. ‘P&O aren’t going to like you napping on their silk coverlet. I, on the other hand, must have coffee, and aspirins, and a lot of cold lemonade, rather quickly. What will you have? Bracing saucer of milk?’

Scragger considered her offer and put his head back on his
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paws. Phryne reached for the phone and gave the answering voice an order. Then she shut her eyes against the light.

When she opened them again, a tray was being carried in by Nick, the night steward, and Scragger was nowhere to be seen.

‘You shouldn’t drink with them musos,’ reproved Nick, dropping a tablespoon of fruit salts into a glass of cold water and handing it to Phryne to drink. She drank. It was most refreshing.

‘You might be right,’ she murmured.

‘Here’s your coffee, extra strong from old Leo. Here’s a nice jug of iced lemonade. Got your aspirin?’

‘Thanks,’ said Phryne, medicating herself and taking a long draught of the lemonade to sweeten the bitterness. ‘What time is it?’

‘Just on five, Miss. Caroline’s helping the poi girls rehearse so I said I’d answer your bell myself.’

‘Thank you very much,’ said Phryne, pressing a coin into his hand. ‘What’s poi?’

‘Prettiest dance you ever saw,’ Nick assured her. He went out, shutting the door. Scragger must have seen his chance of escape and taken it, but his flavour, so to speak, lingered in the air. Phryne opened the French windows. The fog was lifting.

The westering sun was silvering the mist and touching the peaks with gold light. Phryne sat down to drink the rest of the lemonade and make a firm resolution about quantities of gin during the day.

But there was something she had forgotten to ask those girls, and she would have to go and ask it. That meant getting up, which she was not keen to do. Perhaps it was in her notes.

She found the Pierrot bag and scrabbled in it.

There it was. Both of the ladies whose gems had been
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pinched from their person had been dancing with Jack Mason in the Grand Salon. That meant that it must have been Saturday, when the dancing was transferred from the Palm Court to that beautiful bejewelled room.

The other two thefts had taken place, respectively, on a Sunday and a Tuesday. From the cabins of the ladies in question. Phryne felt that this might be significant, but could not precisely see how. The masquerade was going to be in the Grand Salon. She must keep her eyes peeled.

But just now she needed more lemonade and a little more rest. She gulped down a couple of glasses and waited to see if they were staying. They were. Leaving the windows open, she lay down and drew the satin comforter over her legs.

When she woke again Dot had arrived and Phryne’s headache had left. Both of these events improved her outlook.

She stretched.

‘Hello, Dot, nice read?’

‘Yes, Miss. Maggie and Mr Thomas wanted me to go for a walk with them but I said I didn’t feel like it.’

‘A wise decision. Besides, you can only go about a hundred yards along the track and then—forêt sauvage. Straight out of Chaucer with wild boars in. You’d need a bulldozer to get through it.’

‘That Mr Mason, he’s gone for a walk,’ said Dot, getting out a suitable evening gown for Phryne.

‘No doubt. He was threatening to do so at lunch. Well, he’ll either catch the ship in the morning or he won’t. It’s a pity that so young a man is bending such a lot of effort towards breaking his neck, but there we are. What do you know about Maggie and Mr Thomas?’

‘Maggie’s Mrs West’s maid. She’s been with her for years.

She’s a bit silly, Miss.’

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‘Maggie or Mrs West?’

‘Maggie. Well, both, really, but I meant Maggie. She thinks Mrs West is ever so beautiful and fashionable and lovely. She’s generous with clothes that she doesn’t want anymore and she gives Maggie a lot of make-up and so on. She says Mr West is mean to Mrs West and jealous of her, and in private he begs and pleads, and Maggie thinks he’s not very manly.’

‘God preserve us from being judged by Maggie!’ said Phryne piously. ‘In view of the dance she leads him, one might expect Mr West to beat his wife. Would that be more manly?’

‘I s’pose,’ said Dot, who had firm views on beating women.

She was against it. ‘I told you Maggie was silly. Anyway, she gets herself up like Mrs West, all shiny and scented and not a lot of clothes. But she’s a bit short and stubby and the dresses don’t really fit her.’

‘Poor Maggie,’ said Phryne. Dot, who had not thought of the situation like that, thought about it and nodded.

‘Yes, I s’pose. But all the men chase her.’

‘Does she favour anyone in particular?’

‘Yes, Mr Thomas. She really dotes on him.’

‘And what’s he like?’

‘I don’t see it,’ said Dot, puzzled. ‘I really don’t. There’s some nice young blokes amongst the crew. She could have her pick.

Well, not for marriage or anything respectable, but for . . .

you know.’

‘Dalliance,’ supplied Phryne, brushing her perfectly black, perfectly straight hair. Dot blushed and deposited
The Lives of
the Saints
face down on her lap, in case it should be shocked.

‘She might not be after a full-blown affair, Dot dear, just someone to flirt with. Which is harmless enough.’

‘Maybe,’ said Dot. ‘I don’t know enough about such things, God be praised. I never flirted with my fiancé Hugh.’

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‘You didn’t need to. The essential goodness and charm of your character was enough for that excellent young policeman.’

‘I wonder how he’s going?’ Dot said, drifting off the topic.

‘I’m sure he is fine,’ said Phryne gently. ‘Now, by contrast, Mr Thomas?’

‘He’s tall and slim,’ said Dot, wishing to give the man his due. ‘And very well dressed. Mr Mason is also generous with his clothes and they’re the same size, Mr Thomas says, so useful if one runs out of socks—that’s how he talks. He’s got dark hair and dark eyes and he’s—I don’t know, Miss, I just don’t like him. He’s jokey about Mr Mason, calls him The Kid, and seems happy to tell everyone about his life—how he hates his father and his father hates him, how he was going to betray his class and play football for a living, how he does Swedish exercises in the nude every morning. He’s not what I expected a valet to be.’

‘So he’s not there because he likes Mr Mason,’ concluded Phryne, putting down the hairbrush. ‘I wonder if he owes his allegiance to Mr Mason senior? Is he, in fact, a spy for Jack Mason’s father?’

‘I wouldn’t put it past him,’ said Dot darkly. ‘Now Maggie, though she talks about Mrs West all the time, doesn’t say anything about her private life. I was wondering if there was a lover, Miss, because of, well, the clothes and the manner and all, but I couldn’t find out from Maggie. She just prims up her lips and says it’s none of her business to gossip about her lovely Mrs West.’

‘Very proper,’ approved Phryne. ‘Do we know what either of these people did before they were servants?’

‘This is Maggie’s first job,’ said Dot. ‘Mrs West picked her from a group of girls straight out of school who wanted jobs as personal attendants. Mr Thomas is older. I think he said
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he was thirty-nine. I don’t know what he did before. He never said.’

‘Any guesses, Dot?’

‘Never done hard work,’ said Dot. ‘He’s got no little scars on his hands that brickies and carpenters and mechanics get.

Writes very pretty. Could have been someone’s secretary, perhaps. Might have worked in a restaurant. He carries a tray like a waiter, flat on one hand. He’s a bitter sort of person.

Might have been educated for something better and lost all his money. Maybe that’s why he doesn’t respond to Maggie. She’s working class. He might think she was too common for the likes of him.’

‘Dot, you amaze me,’ said Phryne.

‘How did you get on with the musicians?’ asked Dot, laying out underwear and stockings and changing the subject. She had never really known how to cope with compliments. Phryne poured herself another glass of lemonade.

‘You were right about the way they drink. Like fish. But a nice group of women, no worse than the rest of us. They know the crew don’t like them and they return the favour. They work hard. They know a lot of things, but nothing germane to the issue. However, I have worked out that two jewel robberies took place on the dance floor in the Grand Salon, and I think we should take a very careful look at Jack Mason, who was dancing with the ladies at the time they were bereft of their bijoux.’

‘He’s got reasons,’ said Dot. ‘No money of his own and no profession that he likes. If he had some capital he could strike out on his own.’

‘True. But I wouldn’t have said that he had any ambition or any idea of what he would like to do. Not much point in taking that kind of risk if you haven’t got an end in view, eh?’

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‘But he likes risks,’ responded Dot. ‘You said he was going walking in that wilderness for fun. He used to climb mountains. That’s a mad thing to do. If you ask a mountain climber why they are doing it they always say—’

‘Because it is there,’ quoted Phryne. ‘A point, Dot, a pal-pable point. It is noticeable that the people who lost their jewels were not nice people. A quixotic young man might take the view that they had it coming. Hmm. I’ll have to think about this. Any gossip about him and Mrs West?’

‘Lots, Miss, but no one has any proof. No one’s seen him go to her cabin, for instance, or seen her come to his. If they are carrying on, it’s somewhere secret, and a ship hasn’t got a lot of secrets.’

‘You’ve got that right,’ agreed Phryne. ‘Lord, it’s seven already. Off you go to dinner, Dot, I can climb into this dress on my own. And be cautious with the gathering of gossip.

You’ve already been assaulted once.’

‘I’ll be careful,’ said Dot, and went out.

Phryne dressed herself in her fourth dark blue dress, a long brocade garment slashed with green silk like a doublet, and put on the sapphire. It really was a beautiful thing, she thought, watching the light catch the star at its centre. Beautiful and deadly, even though the story had been a complete fabrica-tion, with apologies to Conan Doyle and the Sign of Four.

And the stone was, of course, glass. Most of the great stones had curses on them, if not visible blood. It was a solemn thing to hold in the palm of one hand something that (if real) was worth so much. What could one buy with the value of one sapphire? Freedom from a wife or husband no longer loved? A new life in a distant colony? A house, a wife, a different fate?

She shook herself and went out.

. . .

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Sunday dinner was accompanied by skilled tinklings from the piano. Table three was all present and accounted for as Phryne came in, save and except for the errant Mr Mason, presumably still walking on the Milford Sound shore.

‘Boy’s probably knee deep in a morass by now,’ said Mr Aubrey.

‘Or lost on a mountain in the snow,’ said Miss Lemmon, who had a soft heart.

‘Or perfectly safe in the hotel and suffering splendid hard-ships,’ capped Professor Applegate dryly. ‘Good evening, Miss Fisher. That is a very pretty gown.’

‘Thank you,’ said Phryne. ‘Hello, Doctor.’

Doctor Shilletoe jumped when addressed, knocked over a glass, and said, ‘Oh, hello, Miss Fisher.’

‘Done any more long distance medicine?’ asked Phryne politely.

Doctor Shilletoe jumped again, spilled the salt he was holding, and knocked his fork to the floor, whence it was retrieved and replaced by an attendant.

‘No, it’s all been really quiet,’ he said. He reached for his glass and Phryne managed to stop him from knocking it over as well. She folded his fingers around the stem and watched him raise it to his mouth. It was indeed fortunate that he had not had to do any surgery lately, what with his hands shaking like that. What was wrong with the man?

Even Mr Singer had noticed and, being Mr Singer, commented. ‘You been at the surgical spirit?’ he asked. ‘Ouch,’ he added angrily.

‘I’m so sorry,’ said Margery Lemmon sweetly. ‘I seem to have inadvertently kicked you in the ankle. How clumsy of me.

Steward, can we get Mr Singer some more beer? And a gin fizz for me. Miss Fisher?’

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‘I’m rather off alcohol at the moment,’ said Phryne. ‘Just lemon squash, please.’