Death by Water (31 page)

Detective Inspector Minton was not comfortable leaving Dunedin, where anything might happen if he was not there to protect it. He was definitely not in the mood for confident young women.

‘Just a bit of news,’ said Phryne breezily. ‘The body you are looking for is the personal assistant Thomas, not Jack Mason.

He borrowed Death’s costume in pursuit of some jape or wheeze and therefore Thomas, not Mason, collected the boathook in the back and is now improving his acquaintance with the fishes.’

‘How do you know this?’ bellowed Minton.

‘You told me not to investigate, so I didn’t,’ she said flatly.

‘I have come into some information which is of use to you so, like any good citizen, I am telling you about it. It would be appropriate for you to say ‘‘Thank you, Miss Fisher’’ at this point, instead of shouting at me.’

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‘Thank you,’ mumbled the policeman. ‘But, jeez! This means we’re looking for the wrong bloke.’

‘Yes, you should call off the chase.’

‘But, no one knew it was Thomas inside that costume and mask,’ put in Mr Peace. ‘They thought they were killing Mason all right.’

‘Where is Mason now?’

‘I’ll take you to him, provided there is no nonsense about either bullying the poor boy or charging him with anything. He was woken in the dark after a crack on the head, and he panicked. Also, I don’t want any nasty legal repercussions against anyone who might have been aiding or comforting him.’

‘Otherwise?’ asked Minton, who did not like threats.

‘Otherwise, you can start searching the ship for him,’ said Phryne. ‘And I don’t think you’ll find him until he wants to be found.’

‘I don’t like this,’ said Peace slowly. ‘If he’s that well hidden the crew must be in on it. And if that Caroline knows about it, wild horses won’t drag it out of them.’

‘It’s a ship,’ snarled Minton. ‘It can’t be that big.’

His deputy looked at him significantly.

‘It’s that big,’ said Phryne. ‘And there are only two of you.

The task is impossible. Come along,’ she coaxed. ‘It won’t be as bad as all that. You go down and talk to Jack Mason and satisfy yourself that he’s alive and had nothing to do with the murder. Be a good policeman. Then I’ll give you a murderer for supper.’

‘You will,’ said Minton with heavy irony.

‘Oh yes,’ said Phryne blithely. ‘Well, what’ll it be?’

‘Can’t hurt,’ said Detective Sergeant Peace, who had met Caroline’s grandmother and didn’t like to think of what she would do to him if he insulted her granddaughter.

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‘All right,’ said Minton grudgingly. ‘As long as you give me my murderer.’

‘On toast,’ said Phryne. ‘With truffles.’

Spiridion Theotocopoulos

Corfu

Honoured father

I saw Theo in London as you told me and he got me the tickets for
the ship and also showed me many places, like the Tower of London
and the British Museum which has some marbles which belong to
the Hellenes, and also the zoo which has lions. I never saw lions
before. They are very big and fierce. I sail tomorrow, confident in
the protection of our island’s saint.

God bless you Papa.

Your loving son

Spiro

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CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Weigh the vessel up

Once dreaded by our foes

And mingle with your cup

The tears that England owes

William Cowper

‘Loss of the Royal George’

Dinner on Wednesday evening began rather sadly. Everyone seemed depressed. Table three, however, picked up their spirits as, with captain’s compliments, Pierre was ordered to provide them with free drinks. The presence of two policemen at the next table went largely unnoticed. Margery Lemmon had joined the feast, mopped up if not recovered.

Mr Aubrey started a conversation with her in Farsi about love poetry.

Professor Applegate was talking to the Cahills about cattle stations she had visited. The Singers were present. Mrs Singer was more puzzled than afraid, though she ordered her usual gewurztraminer. The Wests were marginally cheerier. Mrs West had returned to her former mode of dressing and was partly clad in a purple crepe dress which slid off one shoulder all the
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time. Detective Sergeant Peace kept telling himself not to look.

And looking.

Phryne Fisher wore dark blue and a collar of sapphires, with the great stone depending to her porcelain bosom, which drew Mr Forrester’s eyes. She was a poem in blue and white.

He wished, very fervently, that someone would invent colour film, though he thought it very unlikely that science would ever progress that far. Only then could he really capture the white skin, blue gems, green eyes and pink lips of the divine Miss Fisher.

He sighed. Phryne patted his hand. She had put a lot of planning and effort into this dinner. When it was over Mr Forrester might prove lucky again. He perceived this by some sexual telepathy, and smiled.

Conversation turned, for some reason, to shipwrecks as the waiters brought in the soup, a calm and gentle chicken broth.

Phryne spooned it down. She might need her strength and chicken soup, it was well known, fed the wits as well.

‘There is a difference between a wreck from natural causes and something like a torpedo,’ said Mr Aubrey. ‘Or so it seems to me. One is an act of human malice. One is an act of foolishness, as in the
Titanic
disaster, or perhaps an act of God, like being caught in a typhoon. I was in a typhoon once. I swear, the wind caught us and the ship spun on her axis. The sky was yellow as poison and I commended my soul to God. Luckily, he didn’t want it. That day.’

‘I was in a typhoon in the Bight of Benin,’ responded Margery Lemmon. ‘It was awful. So hot, you know, the air like the breath out of an oven, and poor birds whirled like feather dusters through the air, and all the crew screaming . . .’

‘I’ve been in some hard weather,’ said Theodore Green, shocked that a crew should so far forget themselves as to
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scream. ‘I remember one night in fog with every member of the crew that wasn’t sailing the ship or tending the engines, even the cooks and the boys, hanging over the side looking for the faintest glint of ice. The sea was as flat as a plate, so we couldn’t see the little ruffle of breakers which tells you there’s an iceberg ahead. It was like that the night the
Titanic
sank.

No moon and no sort of a sea.’

‘Is it true that nine-tenths of an iceberg is underwater?’

asked Phryne, putting a warning hand on Mr Forrester’s thigh.

She hadn’t been able to get around to him and the pressure of the hand asked him to play along. Mr Forrester was quite willing to play along, especially if that hand stayed on his thigh.

‘Yes, fully nine-tenths. You just have to look at the ice in your drink,’ said Theodore Green earnestly. ‘See how it rides?’

Mrs West held up her glass and looked through it. ‘Oh yes, I see,’ she said. ‘Most of it’s under the surface.’

‘Quite. They say that the iceberg that
Titanic
hit was as huge as a small island. Someone saw it later, and identified it because it had a streak of White Star red along its side.’

‘Horrible,’ said Mr Cahill, whose idea of safety depended on at least a thousand acres between him and any sea water.

Mrs Cahill, who had left her hair in its loose ringlets and now wore a mere brush of powder and a little lipstick, patted his arm.

‘You’re thinking of John,’ she said. ‘My husband had a friend who drowned in the
Lusitania
,’ she explained to the table at large.

‘I was on the
Lusitania
when it was torpedoed,’ announced Professor Applegate. Mr Singer made his strange giggling noise again.

‘Lord, you never told me that, m’dear!’ said Mr Aubrey. ‘Tell us about it,’ he urged.

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‘Not a nice story,’ said the professor. ‘But perhaps instructive.’

‘I would like to hear it,’ said Theodore Green.

‘And so would we,’ said Mrs West.

Waiters took away the soup plates and served a very canonical Irish stew, made with local vegetables and strongly flavoured New Zealand mutton. It seemed to Phryne, as she listened, that the taste of the Irish stew infused the terrible story of the wreck of the
Lusitania
.

‘It’s what you were saying, Vivian, about the difference between being sunk by malice and sunk by inadvertence,’ said Professor Applegate, tucking in her napkin. She was wearing her only formal evening dress again and could not afford to get it stained. ‘I was travelling from New York, where I had been to a conference, really a very good conference, on Polynesian and Plains Indian creation myths. We left on May the first and six days later we were off the Irish Coast, expecting to dock fairly soon, when suddenly there was an enormous cracking noise, and a torpedo hit the ship. It was two in the afternoon.

I was on deck. I could see the beastly thing as it surfaced to see what it had done and I am ashamed to say that at that moment I hated those men in their metal coffin and would have boiled them alive if I could.’

‘Hate,’ murmured Mr Singer. Mrs Singer leaned away from him.

‘Then everything was confusion,’ said the professor. ‘The crew were trying to launch the boats, and there were enough boats for all of us, the
Titanic
disaster had taught the shipping lines about that, but the ship was going down fast, listing to starboard.’

‘As her watertight bulkheads filled,’ said Theodore Green.

‘Makes it hard to launch boats.’

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‘Impossible,’ said the professor. ‘I saw them spill and no one in those boats ever came up again. I can’t really convey how very horrible it was. I can still hear that screaming, men and women and children, all crying out against an unjust fate. They were being murdered and they knew it. The crew were doing their best, in most cases, and we weren’t even very far out from the shore, but it was misty, and we seemed to be all alone, like a—like a fallen buffalo, a crippled horse, and that predator lying smugly in the water, waiting, watching us die. Ever since the
Lusitania
I really can’t bear crocodiles.’

‘But you were brave enough to sail again,’ said Theodore Green, with great respect.

‘Well, U-boats don’t happen once wars are over,’ replied the professor briskly. ‘I’m not likely to meet another one of those again. I was lucky, I was with a female friend of mine, and we found ourselves in a lifeboat, one of the first to reach the little boats who had come out to help us. I was there with Elizabeth Duckworth. What a woman. When we passed people in the water, she asked if we could help, and when the crew member said no, Elizabeth said yes, and hauled people out by main strength. We got aboard the
Peel 12
, a fishing boat, and I was so glad to see it, and hear those soft Irish voices. They wrapped us in blankets and gave us cocoa and I’ve never tasted a drink so delicious. My friend Annie was so overcome she kissed the Irish boy who brought the cocoa and he blushed like a rose.’

The main course plates were cleared away, and waiters brought dessert, which was a selection of ice creams and fresh fruit, and a cheese board. The professor ate her ice cream and peeled a meditative nectarine.

‘Yes, she was a wonderful woman, Elizabeth Duckworth.

When a boat came in with only three men aboard—it had been capsized—and wanted to go back for other people, the
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petty officer said he couldn’t spare anyone and Elizabeth said,

“You can spare me!” and jumped aboard. They kept coming back with more people. I believe they saved forty.’

‘Unlike the
Titanic
,’ said Mr Aubrey. ‘But the water was so cold then. No one could live long in water with ice in it.’

‘About four minutes without special clothing,’ Theodore Green informed the table.

‘Not such a bad death,’ said Phryne, and heard Mr Singer choke. Now she was sure. It just needed special care in approach-ing the point. Her table companions were doing splendidly. In a very short time they had bonded, and were now responding as a group.

‘But a lot of people died in the
Lusitania
,’ she said to the professor.

‘Oh yes, dear, most of the children died. I think it was over a thousand bodies washed ashore eventually. The Irish villagers buried them as they came in, as an act of faith.’

‘Not many ever washed up from the
Titanic
,’ said Phryne.

‘No, but it was in the wide ocean,’ said Theodore Green.

‘In the very deep water. That was a terrible thing, that
Titanic
.

Folly, pure folly. I was on the
Carpathia
. Our radio operator was fooling around when he heard the distress call. He should have been in bed like the Marconi op of the
Californian
, who was closer to the sinking ship. I was just a boy at the time, you understand. All I knew was that the Old Man said, ‘‘Turn the ship’’, and suddenly we were racing through that same ice field, every spare man staring at the sea looking for ice, praying to any number of different gods.’

‘Under those circumstances, my boy,’ said Mr Aubrey, ‘they are all the same God.’

‘Probably,’ conceded the navigation officer. ‘It was black dark and we zigged and zagged. When dawn came up and the
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