Death by Water (33 page)

‘He didn’t. He narrowed his focus down to one thing and could not be distracted.’

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‘A good definition of a murderer,’ agreed Phryne.

‘And Mrs Singer will recover,’ he said soothingly. ‘Some women immediately go out and find another heavy-handed brute, but I don’t think she will.’

‘No, not now she has escaped.’

Phryne and Forrester danced away. Mavis and the Melody Makers were really putting their backs into their music tonight, Phryne observed. The tempo was a whisker quicker, the notes more accurately struck or hooted. Lizbet Yates was dragging notes out of her trumpet which perfectly harmonised with the effortless jazz voice, floating above each note before hitting it like an arrow to a target. Bull’s eye.

‘I went down to Saint James’ Infirmary,’ sang Magda. ‘And I saw my baby there . . . so cold, so white, so bare . . .’

Phryne’s mind was suddenly presented with the picture of a sea covered in corpses, cold and white and bare.

‘I’m worn out,’ said Phryne to Forrester. ‘I’m going to bed.

Thank you for your company,’ she said, leaning up and kissing him gently on the mouth.

Mr Forrester did not press her to join him in his cabin. He escorted her to her door and was rewarded for his forbearance with another kiss.

‘Dot, you in?’ asked Phryne as she stepped into the room.

‘Yes, Miss,’ said Dot from her own room. ‘So you got him?’

‘I got him,’ said Phryne.

‘I knew you would,’ said Dot. ‘I told them you’d get him.

That policeman was cock-a-hoop. They telegraphed from Christchurch that he’d done it before when he was called Chant. How’s poor Mrs Singer?’

‘Relieved,’ said Phryne. ‘Oh, you’ve got Scragger.’

Scragger, lying in a pose made fashionable by the sphinx, was near the French windows, staring blandly out at the night.

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‘He was in here when I came from dinner,’ Dot responded.

Phryne stooped to caress the nibbled ears and knocked against Dot’s sewing box, sending reels of thread rolling all over the floor.

‘How clumsy of me,’ she exclaimed, dropping to her knees as Scragger, leaping to his paws, began to chase them.

‘Dammmit, Scragger, don’t, they’ll go everywhere.’

Several of the reels had gone under Phryne’s elaborate bed and she dived in after them. Dot heard her say, ‘Well, well,’ and then Phryne crawled out, put her arms around Scragger, and started to laugh.

‘Miss?’ asked Dot, plucking the last reel out from between Scragger’s iron claws and replacing it in the sewing box.

Scragger, who was not used to being embraced, oozed out of the importunate arms and resumed his place by the windows.

Phryne kept laughing.

She stopped before Dot could really begin to worry about her.

‘Well, that explains everything,’ she said at last. ‘No need to worry, Dot, I haven’t taken leave of my senses. Or, at least, I don’t think I have.’

‘Diving around the floor in that delicate brocade,’ grumbled Dot as Phryne got to her feet and allowed Dot to peel off the misused dress. Her employer was still struck with occasional fits of the giggles as they went through the evening ritual of bathing, the brushing of hair and the donning of pyjamas.

Only once did Dot ask why she was amused, and Phryne said,

‘Ever since I started explaining my solutions, Dot dear, you’ve been saying that they are simple. This time I am going to make an effect. Goodnight,’ she said, and threw herself into her bed.

Dot went to her own, puzzled. She devoted some moments to praying for the soul of Mr Singer and his victims, and all who
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perished in the sea, and then for Mrs Singer alone in her cabin.

Then she went to sleep, leaving her puzzles in the hands of God, who knew the answers. She slept like a log in that confidence.

Thursday

At breakfast Phryne announced that her maid was leaving her for the night to sleep in the crew’s quarters. ‘They’re making a dress,’ said Phryne. ‘Dot is a very fine needlewoman. Apparently one of the stewardesses is getting married and they are getting her trousseau together.’

‘Very nice,’ said Mrs Singer, who was washed and brushed and seemed already more at ease. ‘I always think it’s more fun to sew in a group. That’s how our ancestors used to do it, you know. All get together to make a quilt or any big project.’

‘I would have been supplying the refreshments,’ said Phryne. ‘I can’t sew a stitch.’

‘No necessity, Miss Fisher, when you have so many other talents,’ said Mr Aubrey. Phryne wondered if she had really caught a mischievous glint in the old man’s eyes. ‘I am sure that you read aloud very well. That would please the needlewomen.

I believe that my grandmother, in her time, read her way through the entire works of Walter Scott, though, now I come to say it, it does rather beggar belief. How are you occupying the day, then?’

‘I’m swimming,’ said Phryne. ‘Then perhaps a little reading. The usual.’

‘Come up and watch the deck tennis,’ said Jack Mason.

‘You don’t have to play. Mr Green will explain the rules, I am sure.’

‘Delighted,’ said Theodore Green.

‘We shall see,’ said Phryne. Hell would freeze over, she thought.

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‘So you’ll be quite alone tonight?’ asked Mrs West. ‘I wouldn’t like that. If my husband isn’t with me, I’ve always got Maggie.’

‘Ah yes, your maid,’ said Phryne. ‘Has she been with you long?’

‘Oh, forever,’ said Jonquil West airily. ‘She’s a bit upset at the moment. She was close to Mr Thomas. I’ve told her that she has to get over it. He wasn’t at all a nice man.’

‘But she might have liked him,’ said Margery Lemmon.

‘Even the most evil characters have someone who likes them, even if it’s only their mother.’

‘And that’s true,’ said Phryne, rising to take her leave. ‘See you at lunch,’ she said, and left.

To Phryne that day passed with geological slowness. As the
Hinemoa
pottered along towards Christchurch, Phryne half expected to see fossils forming on the shores as she watched: fossil trees, fossil horses, fossil men. Hours dragged their feet with the bright alacrity of aeons.

Phryne swam herself to exhaustion and had a short nap before lunch. She went to interview the doctor and secured his puzzled acquiescence to whatever she felt like doing to save him. Then she was driven, after Dot had been exasperated to the point of screaming by her mistress walking around the suite picking things up and putting them down again—in the wrong places!—to the library, where she decided she had better stay.

Phryne found notepaper and pen and began to translate her Chaucer. This was difficult. Even though some words appeared to mean the same as they did in 1928, she could not be sure of that, and attempting to translate and keep the rich rhyme was almost impossible.

‘The Pardoner’s Tale’ was a moral treatise on the dangers of greed. Of course, he didn’t like gluttony either: ‘Oh womb,
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oh belly, oh stinking cod! Full filled of dung and corruption!’

But then, pardoners made their living out of sin. If everyone heeded their strictures and became moral, they would be out of a job. There did not seem to be much likelihood of that happening, however.

Phryne read on as the young men gathered around the pot of gold and began, instantly, to plot to kill each other off. And did, the last being poisoned by food which he had forced one of his early victims to prepare. The gold remained where it was, a glittering, beautiful, nectar-trap, poised like a sundew, for whoever walked past it.

It was getting dark. Phryne closed her book. At last, the long day was over and it was time to dress for dinner.

Dinner was, as always, excellent. Phryne found herself sitting next to Mrs West, not her preferred seating. However, Jonquil appeared to be in an affable mood. She talked lightly about the dolls she would buy in Christchurch and the difference in washing survival of various sorts of silk.

‘Of course, you can always sponge the dress with vinegar and dry it in the shade, but that doesn’t seem entirely clean to me,’ said Mrs West, leaning close to Phryne.

‘I suppose not,’ said Phryne, who had given up on domes-tic detail ever since she had been able to afford people to do it for her. They presumably knew all about how to wash things, it was their profession, so who was Phryne to interfere?

‘No sense in washing good silk,’ said Mr Aubrey unexpectedly. ‘Takes the gloss off it. Needs to be pounded with fuller’s earth and shaken. They make a silk in China, I’m told, that only retains its shine in darkness. Moonlight, it’s called. It loses colour as soon as it is exposed to the sun. Fabulously expensive,’ he added.

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‘And foolish extravagance,’ said the professor. ‘I’ve never seen any point in spending that much money on clothes. Not when books are to be had,’ she said.

‘No, indeed,’ said Margery Lemmon. ‘No offence, Miss Fisher, Mrs West.’

‘None taken,’ said Phryne, sliding her glass under the table and gently pouring the liquid into a towel which Pierre had placed there on her instructions. It was a pity to waste good wine like that but she was fairly sure that it was not as the vintner had left it.

The meal went on. Phryne ate lamb chops, roast potatoes and green peas, which were excellent. She disposed of three glasses of wine and a dessert soufflé of surpassing delicacy.

Then she yawned, apologised, yawned again a few moments later and told the company that she was suddenly very sleepy, and that she must bid them goodnight.

When she got back to her cabin, Dot was waiting. ‘You’re sure you don’t need me?’

‘No, and I don’t want you anywhere near when it all happens. Off you go, Dot dear, have fun sewing, and I’ll come for you as soon as it’s all over.’

‘You promise?’ demanded Dot, eyeing Phryne narrowly.

‘I promise,’ said Phryne, wetting her finger and crossing her heart.

‘All right, then,’ said Dot. She took her sewing basket and went out. Phryne locked the door and did the usual night-time things, in case anyone was watching or listening. She dressed herself in her pyjamas, which were of green silk, and lay down on her bed with a packet of gaspers, an ashtray, a flashlight, her little gun, and a sense that the end justified the means. Her preparations were all complete. Now she had to wait.

She fretted and smoked for half an hour, then fell into the
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cat’s watching trance. Her mousehole was covered. Phryne lay as still as any sleeper. There were no lights in the suite. Dot’s room was innocent of occupation. Surely the robber would take this opportunity, which might never come again, to gain the big blue stone which had once been an eye of Krishna.

There was a faint noise—far too faint to wake a sleeper—

then four hardened paws hit the bed and Phryne found Scragger had joined her little tête-à-tête. He had clearly been hunting, but luckily had not brought his rat with him, probably having consumed it in situ. Phryne stroked down the knobbly spine and Scragger purred his rusty purr. He lay down, tucking his paws under him, and Phryne readjusted her hearing.

It was very late when Scragger tensed under her hand and Phryne woke from a light doze. There were definite scraping noises coming from under her bed, and at the same time, someone tried the door. She heard the handle make its characteristic creak as it was turned. Scragger stood up, interested.

Then there was a snap and a howl, and Phryne turned on the lights. She took the little gun in hand, went to the door and unlocked it. Two policemen, Tui and Caroline were there.

So was Mrs West, securely held by the stewardess.

‘Come in, ladies, gentlemen,’ Phryne invited.

Both policemen entered. Tui bent and hauled on a wire, and out from under the sumptuous bed, noosed like a rabbit and kicking like one, came Mr West. He was wearing black clothes and a black stocking over his head. Tui stood the robber on his feet and pulled off the stocking.

‘Hello,’ said Phryne. ‘Were you looking for this?’

She dangled the sapphire in front of his nose.

This, in retrospect, she considered to have been unwise.

West wrenched himself free of Tui and dived for Phryne, grabbing at the stone. She dropped it and kicked him very
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hard in the place where she felt it would do the most good. All the men in the room winced. Tui reclaimed his captive.

‘Now, Mrs West, what were you doing here outside Miss Fisher’s cabin?’ asked Detective Inspector Minton.

Jonquil West flew at him, nails forward, and was restrained by Caroline. Neither of the Wests had spoken a word but this action seemed to break their silence.

‘But I saw you drink that wine,’ said Jonquil artlessly.

‘Jonquil, shut up!’ yelled Mr West frantically.

‘I didn’t drink it,’ said Phryne. ‘I bet an analysis of it will show how much laudanum you put in it.’

‘Just to put you to sleep,’ protested Jonquil, as Tui gagged Mr West with one huge hand. ‘Just to get the gem, you see.

My husband found that hole under the bed one night while we were staying in this suite. It’s an old ventilation shaft. It leads down into the doctor’s surgery, so we could always say that’s where we had been. Wasn’t it clever of him?’

‘Very clever,’ said Minton, delivering himself of the usual warning. ‘Come along with me, Mrs West. Mr West. And Miss Fisher,’ he added. ‘There’s still a lot of explaining to do.’

‘I’ll just go and tell Dot that I’m all right,’ said Phryne.

‘And when Caroline has handed Mrs West over to someone else, I’m sure that she can supply a very good meal for Scragger. Fish. Lobster, perhaps. I never would have worked it out without him.’