Death by Water (23 page)

Fortunately Dot and Miss Lemmon were too busy to notice much and she got to her own bathroom without comment. She stood in the shower and allowed the hot water to fall on her freezing shoulders and counted her injuries: none, except for a minor bruise on the shoulder. There would not otherwise have been a mark on her corpse as it was dragged from the pool.

Just an unwise young woman bathing too soon after lunch.

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And, of course, they had not found the stone. It was in Dot’s sewing bag, beside Dot on the floor of the suite, half buried in a thousand yards of white satin and net. Phryne wondered if other jewel thefts had not been noticed because the possessor had died unexpectedly on board
Hinemoa
. She needed to find out about that. Who to ask? Why, of course, Navigation Officer Theodore Green. Man of Facts.

Phryne dried herself vigorously, rubbing her feet and hands with a coarse towel. She put on her brightest red jumper with the grey suit. Being alive was nice. There were silk stockings if you were alive, and nice clothes, and perfumes. And meals.

Come to think of it, she was ravenous.

She invited Theodore Green to afternoon tea in the Palm Court and he came in rubbing his hands. He observed that Miss Fisher had ordered a full Devonshire tea, with scones and jam and cream, and wondered where on earth, in that small frame, she put all that food.

‘Hello,’ she said, waving a hospitable scone. ‘Someone just tried to kill me and that makes me very hungry.’

Theodore Green did not exclaim ‘What?’ or tell her not to worry her pretty little head. He was used to emergencies and alarms, and he just took a scone and said, ‘Tell me.’

‘I went for a swim, and just as I was getting out someone muffled me in my own robe and searched me, then threw me into the pool all wrapped up, with what should have been a stunning blow on the head. Fortunately I wriggled and he hit my shoulder instead. You may inspect the bruise if you wish.

Now, I need to know—have there been any suspicious deaths on the
Hinemoa
? Unexpected drownings, for instance? Any people loaded with expensive jewellery who have taken an accidental overdose of their sleeping mixture?’

‘This is awful,’ said Theodore Green. ‘Let me think.’

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He thought about it. He ate another scone and poured himself a cup of tea. Phryne loaded her scone with jam and cream and reflected that the other nice thing about being alive was food. Great stuff. The creaminess of cream, the slightly acid sweetness of raspberry jam. The lightness of the scone.

Theodore Green came out of his brown study.

‘Perhaps,’ he said. Two voyages ago, a Mrs Reed was found comatose. The doctor had to pump her stomach. It was called an accident, she had been used to taking sleeping tablets and the bottle was left by her bed. The doctor said that she probably fell into a half-sleep and took some more, forgetting that she had taken any. Apparently that happens quite commonly.

But at the time I thought there was something odd about it.

She had been a cheerful sort of lady and she never seemed to recover her spirits. And there was another, a near drowning—

rather similar to yours. That was a young gentleman. I don’t recall him being able to explain what happened. Somehow his towel blew off the sun lounge, landed on him, and he became entangled in it and sank. He was a bit like Jack Mason—

hanging after Mrs West. I did wonder at the time if it was as much of an accident as it seemed.’

‘Events have taken a nasty turn,’ said Phryne enthusiastically. ‘Good.’

‘Good, Miss Fisher?’

‘Yes, it means they are getting desperate, whoever they are.

And desperate people make mistakes.’

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Miss Unity Gordon

Somerset

Dear Unity, how sickening for you to catch measles and miss this
trip. That’s what comes of all that tiresome district visiting you
insist on doing. It doesn’t make you liked, you know, my dear.

Those villagers of yours are just after what they can get. They just
take your scarlet flannel vests and chicken soup and give you loath-some diseases. And I expect you have spots. I would hate my Albert
to see me with spots.

Anyway, pip pip my dear, cheer up and see you on the other
side of the pond when you are spotless again.

Your friend, Christine

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CHAPTER THIRTEEN

For sweetest things turn sourest by their deeds:
Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds.

W Shakespeare

‘Sonnet’

Having left Theodore Green with expressions of mutual concern, Phryne did not rejoin the sewing club but went to the library and read women’s magazines. There are days when a good women’s magazine, with a few tips on smart dressing on a budget, gardening advice on growing primroses, recipes for appalling canapés and a display of the most unlikely hats, is soothing to the spirit. Phryne leafed through
Women’s World
, scanned
Australasian Vogue
, and settled down to read an article on recent developments in TB research in
Women’s Choice
, always a good bet for a sensible person.

She was still wound up to a high pitch of nervous tension.

What would have been very good for her nerves would have been a few hours in a suitable bed with a suitable lover, but she could not see her way to seducing an officer, in view of the risk
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they took, and none of her fellow guests were available or advis-able, which were frequently not the same thing . . .

She finished the article, went to her suite and made certain preparations, and then went in search of Mr Forrester. She found him in his cabin, contemplating an array of photographs spread out across his bed.

‘Miss Fisher?’ he asked in benevolent inquiry, rumpling his absurdly curly hair.

‘I wonder if you would be so kind as to oblige me?’ she asked.

‘Why, certainly,’ he began. ‘What can I . . .’

Miss Fisher was unbuttoning her coat. Miss Fisher was pulling her jumper over her head. Miss Fisher was stepping out of her skirt. He was left in no doubt as to the manner in which Miss Fisher wished to be obliged.

‘Delighted,’ he said, moving to the door and bolting it. He swept the photographs into a pile and deposited them on the chair. He turned back the covers on his bed.

And there was Phryne. He might have been expected to have become accustomed to female flesh, he told himself as he stripped off his clothes with trembling hands. But he never had, never. She was smooth and beautiful and exceptionally willing and Mr Forrester had to restrain himself from diving into bed with her, probably beating his chest.

Phryne wrapped herself around him like an amorous cat, and he was lost.

Mr Forrester was never afterwards able to entirely describe making love to Phryne Fisher. It was, he finally concluded, rather like being hit by a thunderbolt which twined and twisted around the body, electrifying where it touched. A thunderbolt which knew what it wanted and meant to get it. A thunderbolt which, assuaged, turned into a very pretty young woman
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who was peacefully putting on her clothes while he lay shipwrecked in his disordered couch.

‘Thank you so much,’ she said, finding and putting on her shoes. ‘I think you can call me Phryne now,’ she added, and went out.

Mr Forrester had a short nap to recover his nerves. Phryne felt much more centred. She went back to the library and read the rest of
Women’s Choice
. Then she read
Home
. All of it. Even the advertisement for marcel waves. Even the recipes for canapé Anglais using smoked tongue. Even the cocktail made of pickled onion juice. She contemplated it for a moment. One portion French vermouth, two portions gin, two dashes orange bitters, four dashes pickled onion juice; shake and serve with a pickled onion instead of a cherry. Amazing. And people said that the world was civilised.

Thereafter she watched the water going past and the dolphins dancing on the waves, racing the ship’s shadow. It was a nice world, even if it did contain the pickled onion cocktail.

Four o’clock and time for Mrs Cahill’s appointment at the hairdresser’s. Phryne sat in a pink plush chair and talked soothingly to the victim as the attendants clucked over the state of her hair, shampooed it with coconut oil shampoo, rinsed it with two changes of water and applied ‘Sun Dew’. Mrs Cahill was as frightened as a woman at an inexperienced tooth-drawer’s to begin with, but gradually relaxed under the gentle fingers.

The attendants took advantage of her immobility to apply a fine moisturising mask to her face and cucumber slices to her eyes, extinguishing any protests.

When she was rinsed again and allowed to sit up, Phryne judged that the brightening rinse had done its work; not so gold as to seem metallic, but enough to highlight the baby-fine hair.

Mrs Cahill seemed nervous.

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‘What will my hubby say?’ she asked. ‘I’ve never gone in for this sort of thing, even though it is very pleasant, girls, really nothing could be nicer,’ she added, anxious not to offend her attendants.

‘He’ll say you look perfectly sweet,’ said Phryne. ‘Now, you need to sit under this HG Wells contraption and get that hair dry. Otherwise you will, my mother always said, catch your death.’

‘Oh yes, my mother used to say that too. Tell me, Miss Fisher, my stewardess says you are titled! Is that true?’

‘Merely the unimportant daughter of an unimportant baron,’ said Phryne dismissively. ‘Tell me, what is the attraction of all this travelling? You’ve been on lots of cruises, I understand.’

‘I like the people,’ said Mrs Cahill, a little apprehensively, as the metal hood came down over her head. ‘I like to travel, but I can’t walk like I did once. Walter likes the places we go to. He’s lined up a horse ride tomorrow when we go to the Maori village in Otago. Oh, how curious,’ she observed, as hot air began to cascade down her neck. ‘He hasn’t ever got the hang of cars, so we can’t go on motoring tours. And, you see, he promised the boys he’d stay out of their way for two years.

He loves the station so much, but he has to retire, and they all three of them knew that if he stayed, it wouldn’t answer; he’d never be able to let them run the place their way.’

‘A very wise decision,’ said Phryne. ‘But it must have been a wrench to leave.’

‘That’s why the ship is good,’ said Mrs Cahill. ‘It gives him new things to see every day.’

Phryne contemplated a father brave enough to endow his hard-won place on his sons and sensible enough to see that he had to leave it indeed if they were to have any chance of success.

She was impressed.

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Presently, her hair in loose curls, Mrs Cahill went back to her cabin to impress her husband and Phryne found that sewing had concluded in her suite.

‘All finished, Miss,’ reported Dot, putting away the good scissors in their leather pouch. ‘Margery and me were just going to order some tea.’

‘A good idea. But, Miss Lemmon, I’ve had a thought.

Would you be very kind and go and see that silly Mason boy?

He’s come back from his ill-advised adventure chewed and bruised, and I don’t like that Thomas man of his, I don’t believe he is likely to look after the boy. Would you look in on him and make sure he’s all right?’

‘Of course,’ said Margery Lemmon. ‘I don’t like that Thomas either, Miss Fisher. We’ll have tea another time, Dot.

See you at dinner, Miss Fisher,’ she said and, gathering up her sewing materials, left in something of a rush.

‘Miss?’ asked Dot suspiciously. ‘You matchmaking?’

‘She really does like him, Dot,’ Phryne excused her med-dling. ‘She just hasn’t noticed it yet. Now, let’s have that tea, Dot, and a council of war. We’re going to have to catch this jewel thief soon, because he’s turned violent.’

‘Did you hurt him?’ asked Dot.

‘I didn’t even see him, if it was a him.’ Phryne related the occurrence at the swimming pool.

Dot packed her sewing basket with its little reels of thread as she spoke. ‘This is bad,’ she concluded.

‘It isn’t good, but it must mean that they are desperate.

Now, let’s run through the suspects. I am leaving out Mrs Cahill and her husband—I simply can’t see it, and neither of them is spry enough to go bouncing round slippery surfaces.

Same for Mr Aubrey. Jack Mason is out because he was in the doctor’s surgery being treated for multiple injuries.’

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‘Margery was here with me all the time,’ said Dot.

‘So that leaves Mr and Mrs West, Mr and Mrs Singer, the professor and Mr Forrester. I am trying not to assume it is the Wests because I don’t like them.’

‘We really don’t know where the Singers or the Wests were just after lunch,’ said Dot. ‘But Caroline said that the professor was in the crew’s quarters, talking to the men about a haka.’

‘What’s a haka?’ asked Phryne.

Caroline knocked and came in with tea. Phryne asked her the question. ‘It’s a dance,’ she said. ‘A war dance. The professor knows some very good ones. She’s been with the boys for hours, running through some of them. I reckon they’ll give the Moanapipi lot a run for their money.’

‘You know, I understood every word in that sentence but I haven’t the faintest idea what you mean,’ said Phryne.

‘You’ll see tomorrow,’ said Caroline, and left.

‘All right, scratch the professor. One of the crew or the officers, or a West or a Singer. I know who I’d favour.’