Death by Water (35 page)

‘It was,’ said Professor Applegate.

‘Now, I get to hand over this hunk of glass to Theodore Green, and enjoy the rest of the cruise.’

‘Here he comes now,’ said Mr Aubrey, grinning an expansive grin. ‘Oh, Officer? Miss Fisher wants to hand over her piece of worthless paste.’

Phryne was tossing the sapphire from hand to hand, watching the play of light in its centre. It really was a wonderful fake. The way that the star in the middle seemed to glow in sunlight. The depth of the indigo colouring. Really, even Venet-ian glass wasn’t usually this good. A horrible suspicion rose suddenly in her breast and she closed her fingers around it.

‘Oh no,’ she said.

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‘Oh yes,’ said Theodore Green. ‘It wouldn’t do to try to palm off a paste replica onto an experienced jewel thief. That sapphire belongs to one of the director’s wives,’ he said, taking it very carefully from Phryne. ‘And if she doesn’t get it back, there will be trouble. It’s insured for ten thousand pounds.’

‘Oh,’ said Phryne faintly, conscious of having dropped, flung and tossed this priceless gem.

‘I’ve come to tell you that the board is very grateful to you for your good work,’ said the navigation officer. ‘They’d like to offer everyone here a reward for trapping Mr Singer into a confession and for—well, saving us a lot of unpleasantness.

Perpetual travel, Mr Aubrey, Professor Applegate, Mr Forrester, Miss Fisher. First Class for as long as you like.’

‘Thank you,’ said Mr Aubrey. ‘I am most gratified. And delighted to be able to assist P&O.’

‘Indeed,’ murmured the others.

Theodore Green departed with the sapphire. Table three caught each other’s eyes and began to laugh.

‘I bought such a nice doll for my little sister,’ Dot told Phryne that evening. ‘And I’m sure that the girls will like their presents.’

Dot looked at the pile of souvenirs. Shawls made of very soft wool, dyed in earth tones, for various female relatives. The bones of a Moa’s head and neck for Jane. A huge tin of different sorts of fudge for Ruth. Maori dolls in flax dresses and headbands for little girls. Carved greenstone charms for others. Phryne had found packets of seeds for Jack Robinson. She looked forward to his attempt to grow a pohutukawa tree. Phryne had a necklace made of hundreds of little pieces of paua shell, polished like opal.

‘What a fascinating place,’ said Phryne. ‘Every sort of scenery you could want, all packed into one little island. And the friend-liest people in the world.’

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‘Except for Mr Singer and the Wests,’ said Dot.

‘They were imports,’ said Phryne.

Phryne came in to dinner with a resolution, and said so.

Other resolutions had also been made. The table three jewel thieves had forsworn a life of crime. Mrs Singer had decided to go home to Melbourne, realise Mr Singer’s estate and buy a small house. Delivered, she had lost most of her more iritating traits.

‘I shall have a cat,’ she said. ‘I always wanted a cat but I knew that my husband would have killed it. He hates cats.’

‘I shall learn deck tennis,’ said Phryne. ‘Tomorrow.’

‘And now Margery has turned me down,’ said Jack Mason cheerfully. ‘And quite right, old thing. We would not have suited. I’ve found a profession. Not going to waste my life anymore. A nice respectable profession but one which is going to make my father foam at the mouth.’

‘And what is that?’ asked Mr Aubrey, accepting his plate of vindaloo.

Jack Mason beamed. ‘Those chaps were a real inspiration.

I’m going to become a policeman,’ he said.

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Kevin O’Connor

Sligo, Eire

God and Mary be with you, Kevin my brother. I don’t really
know how to say this, but that fine ship the ‘Titanic’ may still be
on its way to New York harbour, but I shan’t be upon it. I don’t
know what it is but I couldn’t be staying on it after what that
great gentleman said who built it. ‘Even God Himself couldn’t
sink this ship’ the man said the other day. Father Doyle would have
given us the larruping of a lifetime had we said such a thing of
the work of our hands. Blasphemy altogether is what he would
have called it, and there’s myself thinking of my skinned knees
praying before the man back home in Sligo with you. Father
Doyle was a terrible man for his denunciations as you well
remember. So I jumped ship and here I am, walking the roads of
old Ireland. Expect me in the summer.

Your loving brother

James

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AUTHOR’S NOTE AND

PRE-EMPTIVE APOLOGY

I have always been in love with the sea and ships, my father having been a wharfie working for the Union Steamship Company of New Zealand, but when I came to research the New Zealand–Australia route in 1928, I found that I needed to construct my own ship, due to lack of information on the SS
Aorangi
. I have made the
Hinemoa
as much like a ship of the time as I could from pictures and descriptions, but I will have made mistakes. Forgive me. Though I confess to hours of fun designing the interior and ordering my glass panels from Tiffany.

The same goes for New Zealand, the most civilised country in the world, which I may have unintentionally maligned.

There just isn’t a lot of published information about New Zealand in 1928 and I have had to use such sources as I could scrounge. If you are reading up on NZ, don’t miss Mr Reed, the last of the great walkers.

Any similarity between real people and the cast of this book is purely coincidental. Feel free to email me on kgreenwood

@netspace.net.au if y
ou would like to do so.

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The perfect champagne cocktail

1 Chill a bottle of dry champagne. It doesn’t have to be expensive—in fact this is a great way to dress up cheap champagne—but it must not be sweet.

2 Take a big glass and swill about a teaspoonful of Cointreau around it to coat the inside.

3 Drop a cube of sugar in, place three drops of bitters onto the sugar. If you like sweet tastes, add two lumps of sugar but don’t add any more bitters.

4 Very gently pour in champagne and fill the glass. Garnish with a thin strip of orange peel.

5 This is the only champagne which can be drunk through a straw. To make a champagne cup, dilute this half and half with Schweppes lemonade. It’s worth getting all hot and tired playing deck tennis if there is a champagne cocktail in prospect.

Bottoms up! and best wishes

Kerry

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

Baillie, Captain DGO.
A Sea Affair
Hutchinson, London, 1957

Baty, Scott
Ships that Passed
Reed Books, French’s Forest, NSW, 1964

Bisset, Sir James
Commodore: War, Peace and Big Ships
Angus and Robertson, London, 1962

——
Sail Ho!
Rupert Hart-Davis, London, 1961

——
Tramps and Ladies: My Early Years in Steamers
Angus and Robertson, Sydney, 1960

Britten, Sir Edgar T
A Million Ocean Miles
Hutchinson and Co, London, 1936

Broadbent, Michael
Vintage Wine
Websters International, New York, 2002

Chambers, John H
A Travellers History of New Zealand
Inter-link, New York, 2004

Chaucer, Geoffrey
Complete Works
Oxford University Press, London, 1969

Dovaz, Michel
Fine Wines
Assouline Publishing, New York, 2000

Durrell, Gerald
Two in The Bush
William Collins, London, 1966

Ellis, Richard
Monsters of the Sea
Doubleday, New York, 1994

Farquhar, IJ
Union Fleet
New Zealand Ship and Marine Society, Wellington, 1968

Frazer, JG
The Golden Bough
MacMillan Press, London, 1922

Gardiner, Robin and Dan Van Der Vat
The Riddle of the Titanic
Orion Books, London, 1996

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Hoeling, AA and Mary Hoeling
The Last Voyage of the Lusitania
Longmans Green and Co, London, 1957

Kennett, Frances
Fashion
Granada, London, 1983

Kipling, Rudyard
The Second Jungle Book
Pan Books, London, 1967

Lord, Walter
A Night to Remember
Longmans, Green, London, 1956

Main, Jim
Australian Murders
Bas Publishing, Melbourne, 2004

Marsh, Ngaio
Colour Scheme
Willliam Collins, London, 1943

——
Vintage Murder
William Collins, London, 1937

New Zealand
Lonely Planet Publications, Melbourne, 2003

Olney, Richarde
Romanee-Conti
Rizzoli, New York, 1995

Orbell, Margaret
A Concise Encyclopedia of Maori Myth and
Legend
Canterbury University Press, Christchurch, 1998

Park, Ruth
Pink Flannel
Pacific Books, Sydney, 1963

——
The Witch’s Thorn
Pacific Books, Sydney, 1962

Reed, AH
The Four Corners of New Zealand
New Holland Publishers, Auckland, 2004

Riley, Murdoch
Maori Love Legends
Viking Sevenseas, Para-paraumu, New Zealand, 2003

Wilson, Damon (ed.)
The World’s Greatest Unsolved Mysteries
Magpie Books, London, 2004

Wylie, Elizabeth and Sheldon Cheek
The Art of Stained and
Decorative Glass
Todtri Productions, London, 1987

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Document Outline

• About the author
  
• Title page
  
• Chapter One
  
• Chapter Two
  
• Chapter Three
  
• Chapter Four
  
• Chapter Five
  
• Chapter Six
  
• Chapter Seven
  
• Chapter Eight
  
• Chapter Nine
  
• Chapter Ten
  
• Chapter Eleven
  
• Chapter Twelve
  
• Chapter Thirteen
  
• Chapter Fourteen
  
• Chapter Fifteen
  
• Chapter Sixteen
  
• Chapter Seventeen
  
• Chapter Eighteen
  
• Chapter Nineteen
  
• Chapter Twenty
  
• Author's note and pre-emptive apology
  
• The perfect champagne cocktail
  
• Bibliography