Death by Water (21 page)

‘More beer,’ said Mr Singer.

‘A glass of wine,’ said Mrs Singer. The table looked at her.

Mrs Singer had previously confined herself to nothing more intoxicating than ginger beer.

‘What sort of wine?’ asked the steward. ‘Red or white, madam?’

‘Oh, I don’t know . . .’ Mrs Singer’s courage was ebbing away.

‘A nice glass of gewurztraminer,’ said Phryne. ‘In all prob-ability, you’ll like that, Mrs Singer. And what are we eating tonight?’ she asked the steward.

‘A little onion soup, Miss Fisher, tournedos of beef, aspara-gus and creamed potato, trifle for dessert,’ said the steward.

‘Wonderful. Very French. Make my tournedos rare, please.’

The doctor was sitting between Miss Lemmon and Mrs West, crumbling bread between his fingers. Mr Aubrey started a charming but lengthy story about his time in the India Office.

Phryne listened abstractedly. Mr West drank straight whisky and glared indiscriminately at everyone. He was clearly in the sort of temper where no amount of piano accompaniment would soothe his savage breast. Miss Lemmon was adding a few comments about Indian customs and Mrs Cahill was putting in some remarks about how the local Australian Aborigines had not appreciated attempts to convert them to Christianity.

Mr Singer ate his omelette moodily. Possibly his ankle was still aching. Miss Lemmon was a sturdy woman who could probably give him a reasonably memorable kick. Mrs West was smiling at Doctor Shilletoe.

Dinner was as good as ever. Conversation drifted from Indian politics to Indian gods.

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‘Can’t offend native sensibilities,’ said Mr Aubrey. ‘That’s why the missionaries mostly got a less-than-enthusiastic welcome, as you know, Margery. Nothing against them personally, you understand. Just that India is very old and very well balanced, on the whole. Introducing a new religion into the middle of that collection of gods and demons might upset the whole applecart.’

‘But they’d say that there are millions of people in India to be brought to the light, Nunc,’ protested Miss Lemmon.

‘Yes, yes, m’dear, but not unless they want to be,’ said Mr Aubrey. ‘I know that it’s hard to believe that some of the heathen are happy in their darkness, but they seem to be. Happy and principled and law abiding, which is rather to my point.

Anyway, you must have noticed what happened. The Hindu just decided that Christ was an incarnation of Krishna—note how close the names are—and went on as before.’

‘I suppose so,’ said Miss Lemmon. ‘Actually, the missionaries I know spent much more time on the natives’ bodies than their souls. Persuading families to take care of girl babies was enough of a feat for them.’

‘If they did it, my dear Margery, then they did a heroic thing,’ said Mr Aubrey. ‘My goodness yes. But there are ways to use religion to make social changes. Consider the worship of the rat god. That was a real problem in places where the black death is still raging. One good way to foil the advance of the epidemic is to kill the rats, but you can’t when the rat is a god.’

Mr Singer stood up, growled, ‘Can’t you people talk about anything civilised?’ and strode away. Phryne noticed Mrs Singer automatically rise to follow him, then tell herself something very firmly, sit down again, and sip her wine cautiously. She seemed to like it.

‘Odd bloke,’ grunted Mr Cahill. ‘Go on, Mr Aubrey.’

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‘Oh no, please,’ said Mrs West faintly. ‘I mean, rats, they aren’t dinner conversation. Or the black death.’

‘Tell you later, then,’ said Mr Aubrey gamely.

‘And what would you like us to talk about, Mrs West?’

challenged Phryne. ‘What do you think civilised conversation ought to be?’

‘Oh, I hadn’t thought about it,’ said Mrs West. ‘People, I suppose, and clothes, and . . . things.’

‘You’re a fool,’ said Mr West. This was demonstrably true, but unkind.

‘What are you wearing to the masquerade?’ Phryne asked Mrs West directly. ‘I saw the musicians hemming what looked like yards of net. Have you thought of a costume yet?’

‘Oh, no,’ said Mrs West brokenly. She fumbled for a very small lace edged handkerchief and dabbed at her eyes.

‘We’re going to make Mrs Cahill into a princess,’ Phryne told her. ‘Miss Lemmon?’

‘Oh, I shall manage,’ said Miss Lemmon smugly. ‘But I can come and help you if you like. I can do plain sewing quite well.

I used to help my Ayah make our clothes in India.’

‘Good. Come along to my cabin at eleven in the morning and we shall see what we can scavenge. All right, Mrs Cahill?’

‘Very kind,’ Mrs Cahill beamed.

‘Damn nonsense,’ said Mr Cahill. Mrs Cahill froze, disappointed and hurt. Then Mr Cahill grunted, ‘Always looked like a princess to me,’ and gave her a one armed squeeze which did not interfere with his manipulation of his soup spoon. Mrs Cahill, Phryne and Margery Lemmon laughed.

‘And I am sure that the doctor can let us have some supplies,’ Phryne said deliberately, attempting to attract the young man’s attention, which seemed to be entirely engrossed in advanced bread pill making.

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‘Doctor?’ prompted Miss Lemmon, giving him a gentle nudge.

‘Eh?’ he asked, lifting his head but avoiding Phryne’s eyes. ‘Oh yes, certainly. Anything you want.’ He went back to the bread.

Now I wonder, thought Phryne, if this has anything to do with Dot’s descent into the unknown? What was the source of the drug that had put her so comprehensively to sleep? Doctor Shilletoe could not have looked more guilty if he had poisoned the entire crew. He was avoiding everyone’s eyes. He had eaten little and drunk two glasses of wine. It looked suspicious to Phryne. Of course, there could be other explanations. Her nasty cynical mind was already looking for possible lovers at the table.

And Mrs West came up as the most likely. Mrs Cahill and Mrs Singer were unlikely. Miss Lemmon had a tendre for Jack Mason, though possibly neither of them knew it yet. Had Mrs West seduced the doctor? If so, why? And was that the source of Mr West’s evil mood? No harm in asking.

‘Finish up your trifle,’ urged Phryne, ‘and take a walk with me.’

The young man shoved his untouched trifle under his spoon and rose with the wholehearted willingness of one being conducted to the close embrace of the Iron Maiden. What on earth was wrong? He had seemed quite straightforward and attractive when she had spoken to him before.

Phryne took his arm and led him up the steps to the lido, where the darkness shimmered on the cataracts leaping down the face of the glacier. The cold was like the breath of an ice-box.

Doctor Shilletoe’s arm, under her hand, was as tense as steel.

‘What on earth is the matter, my dear?’ she asked him when they were well out of earshot. There were no other walkers on the sun deck this night.

‘I can’t tell you,’ he gasped.

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‘You’ll feel better if you do,’ she advised him, releasing him in order to light a cigarette. ‘Let me guess, then. You’ve made a dreadful medical mistake and poisoned the captain?’

‘No,’ he said.

‘You’ve found typhoid amongst the crew,’ suggested Phryne.

‘No,’ he said, almost laughing.

‘Then it isn’t as bad as all that,’ she told him.

‘Oh yes it is,’ he said. ‘Sorry, I know you’re only being kind. But it’s worse than that, a lot worse. You see, I could cope with those things. But I can’t cope with this.’

‘With what?’ asked Phryne.

‘Sorry,’ said the doctor, and ran away, quite literally, clat-tering down the stairs like an avalanche.

‘Well,’ said Phryne to herself. She finished the gasper and went back indoors. She wanted to hear the end of the story about the rat god.

When she returned the table had broken up. Mr and Mrs West had gone and Mrs Singer was on her second glass of wine and was flushed with Dutch courage.

‘Tell us about the black death and the rat god,’ Phryne encouraged Mr Aubrey.

‘Well, it was quite a problem, you see. Plague on its way. Rat god worshipped in almost every house. Millions of the beggars around, fat as butter. Disaster ready to happen. So my young colleague thought about it and then he sent to England for the Staffordshire potteries to make him a porcelain master copy, which he had manufactured in Benares by the thousand. Thousands and thousands of statues of Ganesha, the god of household happiness.’

‘He’s a blue elephant,’ Miss Lemmon informed them. ‘A very lucky idol.’

‘And anyone who wanted could apply for a statue of
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Ganesha, free to each household,’ said Mr Aubrey. ‘They were really very beautiful—I believe that now they are very valuable—and most people came to get one. This largesse was explained as the government wishing to honour Ganesha, which was an acceptable explanation.’

‘So everyone has a blue elephant,’ said Mrs Cahill. ‘How did this affect the rat problem?’

‘Oh,’ said Phryne, enlightened. ‘Elephants are supposed to hate mice. In fact they don’t like small things running around their feet, my friend who has elephants tells me. So maybe Ganesha doesn’t like rats?’

‘A drink for Miss Fisher!’ beamed Mr Aubrey. ‘If Ganesha is in the house, the rat god cannot be there. And that goes for his rats as well. A not very subtle gift of packets of rat poison almost cleared the city of rats, and the plague didn’t get to my clever colleague’s province.’

‘Bravo,’ said Phryne, and proposed a toast to Ganesha.

Madame Le Roux

Toulouse

Dear wife, I have a good position with a master chef on this
maiden voyage to New York. I will look about me when I arrive
in America and if there is any chance that we could make a good
living there, I will send for you. Kiss little Jeanne for me. And strive
to get a good price for the red cow’s calf.

Your loving husband

Pierre

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CHAPTER TWELVE

Beasts did leap and birds did sing

Trees did grow and plants did spring
R Barnfield

‘The Nightingale’

Monday

Sunday night lacked incident, which was nice of it. At dawn Phryne was vaguely aware of the engines starting up and the ship beginning to move again, so gently and slowly that it rocked her back to sleep. She woke knowing that something was wrong with her theory about the doctor. He had cared for Dot in her drug induced sleep without any sign of nerves.

Something else must have happened to him since then.

Wondering what, she bathed, breakfasted, and welcomed Miss Lemmon and Mrs Cahill to her cabin. Mrs Cahill had an armload of dresses and the ladies spread them out on Phryne’s bed to consider them. Dot, who had the quickest eye, selected a loose white satin sacque with a draped back, decorated with crystal beads.

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‘This one might do for the bodice,’ she said. ‘If we put it on back to front.’

Mrs Cahill, in her dressing gown and foundation garments, obliged. Phryne saw that Dot was right. The loose draped back made a very pretty round front and was unshaped enough not to be uncomfortable.

‘Then we just need to make a big skirt and stiffen it out, and put on a lot of beads. Or sequins. Or we might be able to paint it,’ observed Miss Lemmon.

‘We could make the underskirt out of that white petticoat and use another for the overskirt if I can unpick a couple of seams,’ said Dot.

‘Unpick away,’ cried Mrs Cahill recklessly. ‘It can all be stitched up again, I presume. And if not, I can afford a couple of petticoats.’

‘I’ll go down and see if the laundrymen can find me any unclaimed undergarments,’ offered Miss Lemmon. ‘Seems a pity to ruin a good petticoat.’

‘I’ll come too,’ offered Dot. ‘I’d like to look at the laundry.’

‘And we can see what jewels will suit the princess. What do you think, Mrs Cahill? Would you like your own hair or a powdered wig? What was your favourite picture of a princess?’

‘The one in the story book I had as a child,’ said Mrs Cahill, pink with excitement. ‘She had a white dress just like the one we are making. Her hair was all loose, and she had a crown.’

‘Let’s take down your hair,’ said Phryne, harvesting pins.

Mrs Cahill had a respectable length of hair. It was not of any particular shade and was dull and lank from being washed with soap, but Phryne knew a cure for that.

‘A lovely lot of hair,’ she commented. ‘The girls at the salon will give you a shampoo and curl it. Not too tightly, just loose ringlets. And perhaps a brightening rinse.’

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‘Oh, I’ve never had my hair done,’ said Mrs Cahill.

‘Have you a religious objection?’ asked Phryne.

‘Religious? No, it just seemed like a waste of money in the old days, and we lived so far out of town, and then—well, actually, Miss Fisher, there’s no reason at all why I shouldn’t go to the salon.’

‘I’ll call down for an appointment.’

‘And you’ll come with me?’ asked Mrs Cahill, as though she was being invited to take a frivolous visit to a dentist.

‘Why, yes, of course,’ said Phryne. ‘You’ll like it, I promise.

Very soothing. Now, let’s try out some jewellery.’

Phryne opened her jewel box and exhibited as fine a collection of paste as the art of Holland had ever made.

‘Diamonds or pearls?’ she asked.

Mrs Cahill was taken aback at the blaze of facets from the box. ‘Gosh,’ she said. ‘What a lot, and how lovely! The picture in the book had diamonds. Because of the witch, you know.’

‘Oh yes, the nice sister who gave her food to the old beggar woman spilled diamonds from her lips whenever she spoke, and the nasty sister who told the beggar to starve somewhere else spat out toads. Just shows you that you have to be careful not to oppress the wrong beggar. This necklace? Or the other?’