Death by Water (22 page)

‘Oh, this one,’ said Mrs Cahill caressingly, opting for the traditional rosette pattern over the filigree deco vines and grapes.

‘And you already have a diamond ring, which is good, because I don’t have any with me,’ said Phryne, who seldom wore rings. When she did they were invariably large and heavy, like the dragon and phoenix she had bought in Shanghai. ‘I’m glad you like the rosettes. They belonged to my grandmother and my father was very cross when he found out that he had to give them to me. These earrings go with it, and this tiara.’

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She piled jewellery on Mrs Cahill, who looked in the mirror and saw—her own face, weathered skin, double chin and all. Her whole body sagged with disappointment. For a moment she had almost believed in transfiguration.

‘Oh no you don’t,’ said Phryne, as the older woman’s hand went up to tear off the crown. She had seen that reaction before. ‘You are always you, no matter what you are wearing.

But I promise you will look like a princess tomorrow night.

Now, don’t worry about the gems, they’re paste copies. Keep them on so that you can get used to wearing the tiara. It needs balancing. Let’s order some coffee and then, perhaps, you might give me the benefit of your advice.’

‘Of course, Miss Fisher,’ murmured Mrs Cahill, turning her head and feeling the weight of the tiara.

Phryne phoned in her order for coffee, tea and some petit fours, and then posed her question. ‘What costume would Dot look good in?’

‘She’s a good girl, isn’t she?’ asked Mrs Cahill, glittering brightly in her gems.

‘Definitively.’

‘And you’re going as a Chinese lady?’

‘Yes. In varieties of red. Manchu make-up, for which I’m going to need to buy some really white powder. Little red slippers.’

‘Lovely,’ said Mrs Cahill. ‘Well, she could go as your amah, you know, your attendant. I’ve seen them with fine Chinese ladies. In blue tunics and black trousers.’

‘Nice, but I want her to look pretty on her own account.’

‘I see,’ said Mrs Cahill.

She was artlessly pleased with herself again. Phryne warmed to her.

‘How about Mr Cahill?’ she asked.

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‘He’s got his awful old moleskins and his flannel shirt and his terrible old leather hat,’ she said, blushing. ‘He always brings them in case there’s a chance to get on a horse. He’ll go as a swaggie. And he’ll be quite all right as a swaggie, bless him.’

‘Nice,’ said Phryne.

The refreshments arrived. Mrs Cahill told Phryne ‘You know, I have never sat around at nearly noon in my dressing gown like this. It feels positively sinful!’ She giggled like a schoolgirl and took another petit four.

By the time Dot and Miss Lemmon came back, Mrs Cahill had assembled a list of things that Dot could be. Dot had been most interested in the laundry, and the laundrymen, recognis-ing Miss Lemmon ‘s unaffected interest, had handed over three unclaimed petticoats, including a vast satin one which could have clothed La Paloma herself.

‘This’ll do,’ said Dot, almost invisible under the waves of cloth. ‘I reckon we can glue silver sequins on. I saw packets of them for sale in the shop.’

‘Good, and now Mrs Cahill is sorted out, we need to consider you,’ said Phryne relentlessly. ‘Here’s your list, Dot dear.

Pick one. Or make another reasonable offer. You shall go to the ball, Cinderella.’

Dot wondered if Cinderella had ever had moments when she wanted to stay quietly home in her kitchen and talk to the mice. But the list was interesting. Much better than Miss Phryne’s suggestion of Lady Godiva.

‘I reckon I spent enough time as a schoolgirl,’ she said.

‘Witches have warts. Indian maid sounds too complicated. But I’d like to sell flowers, or be a nurse, or a clown. As long as the costume is modest.’

‘There are very few obscene clowns, flower sellers or nurses,’

said Phryne comfortingly. ‘I could borrow a nurse’s uniform
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from the doctor, I expect. For a clown you just need to borrow some oversize gentleman’s clothes and paint your face. And I’ve had an idea about the princess, too. What about making an overgown of gauze, like our grandmothers had?’

‘It used to be called illusion,’ said Miss Lemmon. ‘My grandma wore it to meet the regent. Soft sort of transparent stuff, yes, very like gauze. We could loop it up with little knots of sequins.’

‘Lovely,’ sighed Mrs Cahill. She settled back on the sofa.

Mrs Cahill was having a lovely day.

By popular agreement, stitching was to take place in Phryne’s suite, where there was room to spread out. Caroline came in for the tea tray.

‘Meant to say, if you need any seams done, I can do them on the machine,’ she offered, and promptly disappeared under a cloud of satin.

Dot decided that she would like to be a nurse. In fact, she was going as Edith Cavell, for whom she had always had a great admiration. Phryne appointed herself to go to the doctor and obtain a lot of gauze and a nurse’s apron and cap.

She was still curious about that doctor. And had Jack Mason managed to get back on board before the ship sailed from Milford Sound?

Both of her questions were answered as she came to the doctor’s rooms and heard the young man exclaim, ‘But I can’t see!’

‘Entirely your own doing,’ Doctor Shilletoe told him severely as Phryne came in without bothering to knock. ‘If you’d used my insect repellent they wouldn’t have laid a tooth on you. But no, you have to be a he-man. Not only do you have bruises on your bruises and ingrained thorns, you have about a million sandfly bites and all I can suggest is, if you want
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to be able to see for dinner, that you keep that wet boracic cloth over your eyes until then.’

‘Hello, Mr Mason, been having fun?’ asked Phryne brightly.

The young man on the examination table groaned. ‘I got quite a way up the mountain,’ he said. ‘But the undergrowth kept trying to strangle me and I had to come down. Then, I forgot about the repellent, so everything bit me. Apart from that it was fun.’

‘Lucky you’ve got a mask for the masquerade,’ said Phryne heartlessly. ‘Shall I walk you back to your cabin?’

‘No, curse it, Thomas ought to be outside,’ uttered the Voice from the Tomb.

‘No one there,’ said Phryne.

‘I’ll sack him without a character,’ said Jack.

‘But you can’t, can you? Daddy pays his wages so he gets to be as insolent as he wants. Which is pretty insolent.’

‘Dammit, Miss Fisher—’

‘Smeaton, can you get him back to his cabin?’ asked the doctor. A smiling assistant in a white coat said, ‘Yes, of course, Doctor.’

‘Take this bottle of solution, lie him down, and wet the cloth again. And when you find his man, tell him two aspirin every four hours and calamine lotion for all the rest of his body.

He’s come out of this better than he deserves.’

Jack Mason, horribly swollen and limping, was led out by the assistant.

‘And what can I do for you, Miss Fisher?’ asked Doctor Shilletoe.

‘I want about ten yards of gauze and a loan of a nurse’s uniform,’ said Phryne. ‘And an explanation would be nice, but I don’t insist on it.’

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‘Gauze and nurse’s uniform, absolutely. Explanation, I really can’t. I wish I could. There’s no one I would rather confide in than you.’

He looked so bereft that Phryne came closer, gave him a small kiss on the nose and the benefit of a gust of Nuit D’Amour, and said, ‘Never mind.’

A shell-shocked doctor doled out gauze with distracted generosity and Phryne left him to his patients.

The seamstresses went to lunch with a pleasant feeling of a morning well spent. The overgown was cut out and the main seams sewn by the obliging Caroline. Miss Lemmon had contributed just the right sort of sash to cover the gap between bodice and skirt and Dot had glued on several packets of sequins. Phryne had stayed out of the sewing, as her ability to tangle thread was legendary, but had amused the patient while she was being fitted. Lunch was excellent as always.

‘We’re out in the open sea again,’ said Phryne to Navigation Officer Green. She had felt the ship lift and rock ‘Where are we now?’

‘Going round the bottom of the South Island,’ he replied.

‘On the way to Dunedin. Site of the first university in New Zealand. A boom town during the Gold Rush, but it has fallen into a bit of a decline. Nice architecture, Miss Fisher. It has an excellent museum and there we shall see one of the
taianui
.’

‘What is a
taianui
?’ asked Phryne, as she was required to do.

‘The Maori people came to New Zealand from Polynesia,’

he said. ‘In these huge big canoes, the
taianui
. They must have been great navigators. It’s not as though you can just fling yourself out on the bosom of the ocean and get washed ashore in New Zealand, Miss Fisher.’

‘Yes, where would you end up if you didn’t row?’

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‘America,’ he said grimly. ‘Eventually. Once you passed all those South Pacific islands.’

‘I have a feeling that I have heard of some of Dot’s saints doing just that, though,’ she said, spooning up a quite excellent green pea soup. ‘Irish saints. They just took a few essentials, like a bible or two, and writing implements, and . . .’

‘Navigatio,’ said Mrs Singer very unexpectedly. She had a glass of gewurztraminer to hand and was eating a hearty lunch.

Her husband was staring into his omelette with an expression of bitter astonishment. ‘We learned about them in Sunday School. Saint Brendan in his coracle. And there was another one who made the voyage on a millstone. They just went out on the sea and trusted God to take them somewhere where they were needed. One of them ended up in Greenland, I think.’

‘Not a navigational method which could be used in the present day,’ said Theodore Green diplomatically. ‘Did the Maoris have compasses, Professor?’

‘They’re a bit tight lipped about their methods,’ said the professor, beginning on her poulet à la reine. ‘They say that they were guided by the stars and the flight of birds and dolphins, and also by magic. People who live so close to the sea can tell a lot by how the water tastes and looks, you know. They say that they made a return journey, too, but I rather doubt it.’

‘Why?’ asked Mr Aubrey.

‘Because they didn’t bring back any pigs,’ said the professor. ‘I can perfectly understand why the original settlers didn’t bring pigs, what with the number of women and sacred items and so on that they had to fit into the canoes. But the idea that a return journey didn’t pick up a few breeding sows is unlikely.’

‘A good point. Nothing like a good roast pork with a lot of crackling,’ agreed Miss Lemmon.

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Mr Singer groaned and left them. Mrs Singer asked for another helping of poulet à la reine and a refill for her glass.

Mrs West said to Phryne, ‘I’ve decided on my costume, Miss Fisher.’

‘Oh, good. Are you going to tell us what it is?’

‘Circe,’ she said. ‘She was a sorceress in the old days, that’s what Jack said.’

‘She turned men into swine,’ said Phryne. ‘Not a long journey in some instances. That should be an intriguing sight.

Mrs Cahill is going to be absolutely beautiful, my companion is going as Edith Cavell, and Miss Lemmon is very mysterious about her costume.’

‘I want it to be a surprise,’ said Miss Lemmon.

Lunch concluded with the usual wishy-washy coffee and Phryne decided that this was a good chance to go for another swim, now Jack Mason was confined to his cabin with multiple sandfly bites. She reposed for an hour to allow her lunch to digest, put on her bathing dress and her cherry red rubber cap, and went out. Dot was still sewing.

When Phryne got to the lido she found that the wind was straight off the ice and it really was too cold. She called herself a piker and, dropping her robe and bag on the chair, dived in.

After that brief moment when the bather’s heart stops and they are convinced that their end is nigh, it was brisk and exhil-arating, and she swam up and down, occasionally diving, keeping as much of her skin under the water as she could. A cold rain began to bucket down, striking the surface of the pool like lead shot. It was much warmer in the water than it was in the air and she was arguing with herself about getting out. She was halfway up the ladder when a figure appeared from behind a wall and threw something soft over her head. She was pum-melled and rolled in the covering, her assailant feeling all over
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her body, then letting her go with a misdirected blow which was meant to strike her head.

She was supposed to be unconscious, Phryne imagined, so she lay as still as she could, floating on the surface of the water, until she heard footsteps scurry away.

Then she had to unroll herself from the clinging material, which stuck closer than a brother. She recalled the Taoist story about the old man who fell into the rapids and emerged unscathed at the other end. Don’t fight the water, let it carry you.

Cloth wrapped her limbs like bands of kelp, dragging her down.

She began to feel real terror, tasting brass in her mouth, running out of air. Her lungs were demanding ‘Breathe!’ and her mind was saying ‘Don’t breathe!’ and it was a toss-up if she was going to suffocate or drown before she broke through the folds and took a welcome breath which hurt all the way down.

She was entangled in her own gown. She gathered it in, got out of the pool, and sat for a moment on the sun lounge on which she had deposited her bag. She pulled off the cap. This was now personal. Someone had tried to kill her, or at least not cared whether she died, and all in pursuit of that wretched stone. Someone had rummaged through her property and ran-sacked her person. Now they were going to be very sorry, thought Phryne coldly, wringing out the gown and dragging it on. She wrapped the bath towel around herself, over the wet gown, took the bag, and went back to her cabin.