Murder in the Dark (12 page)
There, laid out on trestles draped in the purest white linen, was a full country house breakfast such as Phryne never thought she would see again outside her father’s establishment, where he insisted on it. If there were no porridge, kedgeree, kidneys, devilled bones, bloaters, kippers, various kinds of eggs, chops, ham, bacon, fish cakes, collops of venison, curry, toast, marmalade, coffee and tea in oceans and stacks and oodles he threw the nastiest of tantrums and remained beastly all day. Often the only edible meal in the household was breakfast, because most French chefs objected to making such barbaric dishes at such an hour.
And here it all was, with the addition of fruits and grilled tomatoes at the height of their succulence. And glasses of cold water ready for the sachets of hangover-alleviating fruit salts which were piled into little baskets down the length of the table.
Phryne had always found that food made her think better. She took a large plate and loaded it with scrambled eggs, toast, grilled bacon, mushrooms and tomatoes. Then she sat down at a trestle table to eat it. The first forkful decided her on Mrs Truebody’s remarkable skill. The bacon was crisp, the eggs moist, the tomatoes and mushrooms just right and the toast not cold. A feat, a palpable feat.
Minnie recognised Phryne and brought her a china cup and saucer and a pot of coffee. Phryne smiled at her.
‘Have you had some breakfast, Minnie?’
‘Hours ago,’ said Minnie airily, adding her customary giggle. ‘I never saw such a breakfast, never. You want to try the devilled bones, Miss, they’re very good. And the kippers are real Scotch. So is the marmalade.’
‘I’ll try some presently. Minnie, what would you say if I said that I was looking for time?’
‘Plenty in the garden, Miss,’ said Minnie. ‘I’d better go,’ she added, and fled.
Phryne smiled, and took up another forkful of eggs. Thyme. What a nasty little mind it has, to be sure. But Phryne was not going to be separated from a good breakfast so easily. ‘Foundation of the day!’ her loathed pater used to announce, and in that he had been right. An empty stomach was no basis for a complicated problem.
After more toast with the Scotch marmalade and a small dish of fruit salad which emphasised the mango and pineapple, Phryne dabbed at her mouth and sauntered into the herb garden, which adjoined the house and was laid out like a knot garden, formal and beautiful. The rising heat was bringing up the volatile oils and the scent of rosemary was strong enough to sting the eyes. There was a whole bed of thymes: lemon thyme, apple thyme, Greek thyme. Phryne had no difficulty finding where someone had scrabbled a little hole. In it was a sealed jar which had once held jam. In the jar was a slip of paper. She unfolded it. There were only two lines in the same educated script as the first:
‘Once I drank deep when I was a tree/Now all of you can drink from me.’
‘Gnomic,’ observed Phryne, replacing it in the jar and screwing on the top. She picked herself a small bouquet of sweet herbs, in case anyone had been wondering what she was doing in the garden, and then strolled into the grounds to find a tree to sit under. She did not want to talk to any Templars this early in the morning. She had a book, and she wanted to smoke a meditative gasper and reflect.
A wooden seat was almost hidden under a massive hornbeam. Phryne ensconced herself there with Miss Christie’s latest and lit her cigarette with pleasure. The sun struck gold through the leaves, she was delightfully full, and the unknown riddler had not actually cheated. He had rules and was keeping to them. Phryne had none, which meant, she considered, that she would defeat him in the end.
She had read a chapter or so when something ploughed through the leaves and she saw it was her old friend, Mintie the goat. Drawn, perhaps, by Phryne’s nosegay, which included mint.
‘Look here, you can’t keep shaking the place down for mint,’ Phryne told the goat, handing over the herb a leaf at a time. ‘Your mistress is going to think I’m a goat thief. You be off, do you hear, as soon as this mint is finished.’
‘You got my goat again?’ asked a cracked voice.
Phryne sighed. The hornbeam was a big tree but its shade was beginning to feel crowded.
‘Yes, she’s here,’ she confessed.
‘It’s mint, you see,’ explained the Goat Lady, in a good mood this morning, it seemed. This was soon explained. ‘I come down early so me grandnephew’s boy could gimme some of that toffy breakfast—I been eating for an hour,’ she said proudly, patting a rounded belly. She disposed her dresses gracefully as she sank down on the wooden seat next to Phryne. Although the Goat Lady smelt, as one might expect, very strongly of goat, she was not otherwise offensive and Phryne did not move away.
‘Some goats just have a real yen for some sort of tucker— I’ve known ’em to go for pineapple tops, for lacquered straw hats, for leather shoelaces, even for cigarette butts. And they’ll do anything to get a mouthful of whatever it is. This one’s got a yen for mint. She must have followed me up, remembering that she got some here last night. Goats are smart. They remember things.’
Phryne reached her last leaf and showed her empty hands to the goat.
‘Sorry, that’s all,’ she said. The goat nudged her companionably and sat down at her knee like a large dog. Phryne scratched her behind the ears. This attention was well received. Phryne was beginning to warm to this goat.
‘There now,’ said the Goat Lady. ‘She likes you. Can tell about people, too, goats can. Well, hoo-roo,’ she said, getting up and summoning her goat with a gesture. ‘See you round, maybe.’
‘Maybe,’ said Phryne. The small encounter had not been too wearying, so she returned to Miss Christie. That Hercule Poirot. Clues were always transparent to him. What would he make of this riddle game in which Phryne had got herself involved?
‘Probably say “
Tiens!
” and whiffle his moustache,’ muttered Phryne bitterly. ‘That’s what he usually does.’
And where was Tarquin? He was a pest, but he was still a small boy, and someone had to look out for him.
Fictional crime lost some of its charm. Phryne stared at the message in the little jar and tried to think.
Satan’s Whiskers
1 part gin
1 part Grand Marnier
1 part dry vermouth
1 part sweet vermouth
1 part orange juice dash orange bitters
Shake together and serve with a twist of orange peel.
It was somewhere up the country, in a land of rock and scrub,
That they formed an institution called the Geebung Polo Club.
They were long and wiry natives from the rugged mountain side,
and the horse was never saddled that the Geebungs couldn’t ride;
But their style of playing polo was irregular and rash—
They had mighty little science, but a mighty lot of dash:
And they played on mountain ponies that were muscular and strong,
Though their coats were quite unpolished, and their manes and tails were long.
And they used to train those ponies wheeling cattle in the scrub;
They were demons, were the members of the Geebung Polo Club.
AB Paterson, ‘The Geebung Polo Club’
Presently a young man in a caftan came looking for Miss Fisher and found her under her tree. It was Jonathan, the reciter of the previous day. He looked hungover and was speaking carefully, as if a sudden move might jar his teeth loose.
‘Miss Fisher? Gerald wonders if you would favour him with a few words.’
‘More than a few, if he likes,’ said Miss Fisher graciously.
‘And the polo demonstration game begins in an hour,’ added Jonathan, who was clearly not going to be out in the heat and dust looking at something so hearty and healthy. Phryne followed him to the Templar tent where Gerald was sitting at a small table with Mr Ventura.
‘You will just have to manage,’ she heard Gerald say, and Mr Ventura, evidently displeased, gathered up a portfolio of papers and barged past Phryne without a greeting.
‘Trouble?’ asked Phryne.
‘Just a little man with no concept of magnificence,’ said Gerald. ‘Have you found Tarquin, Phryne?’
‘Another clue,’ said Phryne, and summarised the night’s events. Gerald examined the paper in the little jar and professed bewilderment.
‘Have you spoken to your sister yet, Gerald?’
‘No!’ He jumped. ‘I mean, no, there hasn’t been time, I . . .’
‘Come along,’ said Phryne, not unkindly. She took his hand and conducted him into the other half of the space behind the dais, which was divided in two by a rich purple curtain.
Isabella was discovered reclining in her bath, surrounded by acolytes who were washing her hands, paring her nails, combing her hair, and generally vibrating around her like a set of attendant bees. Phryne expected them to buzz, or at least, hum. They all looked up when Gerald and Phryne came in. Pam, Sabine, Marie-Louise, Minou and Even Sadder Alison. What on earth was wrong with the girl?
‘I need to talk to you, Isabella,’ said Gerald wretchedly.
Isabella waved a hand at the acolytes and they all fled.
‘What is troubling you, brother?’ she asked in her creamy voice. Isabella did not talk much, making the greater impression when she did. Gerald sat down by the bath and took one of the immaculate hands. Phryne took a chair.
‘Someone has stolen Tarquin from me,’ he said.
The perfect eyebrows arched. ‘Oh?’
‘And I wondered if you had him,’ put in Phryne, who also wondered what it took to dent Isabella’s ceramic serenity. More than this, it appeared. Phryne added, ‘If you have got him, can we have him back, please?’
‘It is unworthy of you,’ said Isabella gently, speaking entirely to Gerald and ignoring Phryne completely, ‘to allow such a thought to enter your head. Me, steal? And a child? A moment’s thought will show you how ridiculous this is. What would I want with the child and where would I hide him, attended as I am every moment by my friends?’
‘True, they would have to know about it too,’ observed Phryne judiciously.
Isabella’s beautiful face did not grimace, in fact she showed no expression, but her voice hardened. ‘Did you help me to look for my little Marigold, brother? Did you care what happened to her?’
‘What did happen to her?’ asked Phryne, with such fervent sincerity that the sibling quarrel was temporarily derailed. Both sculptured faces turned to her and she put up a hand to fend off all that loveliness.
‘We came here three days before the party began,’ said Isabella.
Phryne interrupted. She had no time for stream of consciousness narratives.
‘Begin with acquiring the child. Did you get her at the same time and from the same place as Tarquin?’
‘Yes,’ said Gerald. ‘We went to the orphanage together. We each wanted a child with no living relatives. I found Tarquin immediately—he found me, rather, he was sitting outside the housemaster’s room, being punished for trying to run away. He just threw himself at me and clung—it was very touching. But Isabella had to search through all the girls for her choice. They didn’t have a very wide range and most of them were quite impossible, shrill and vulgar. But Isabella has excellent taste and she found the only pearl amongst the beads. Pretty little creature,’ mused Gerald. ‘Dark hair and eyes, like Tarquin. We both wanted a contrasting child.’
And you chose one as though you were picking out a puppy from a litter, thought Phryne. She remembered Ruth saying to her, ‘You can’t just take one of us and leave the other behind, as though we were kittens.’ She had been right, which was why Phryne had two adoptive daughters. Cruel to select just one and leave the others. That was probably pretty rough on kittens, too. But one could not rescue every cat in the world and Phryne supposed that the children had been pleased with their change of fortunes—at least, she knew that the obnoxious Tarquin had been. And how pleased his orphanage must have been to see the departure of that little troublemaker.
Phryne dragged her attention back to Isabella.
‘I knew she was the right one, even though she was dressed in that dreadful institution uniform—grey serge, in this weather!—and her hair was dragged back into a plait. She had dark, restless eyes. I asked her if she wanted to come with me and be my daughter, and she said yes. So we arranged it. The place is dreadfully overcrowded, and the smell!’ Isabella looked around for an acolyte to fan her and, finding none, fanned herself. ‘I think they were glad to see two of the children settled, even though Gerald and I are not . . . conventional.’
‘Right, so you collected the children and brought them with you to this place?’
‘We stayed one night in Melbourne to get them some clothes and things. Tarquin’s gold suit,’ said Gerald. ‘Marigold’s clothes.’
‘She was dressed as a nymph,’ said Isabella. ‘A filmy layered dress in shades of apple blossom. She loved it. She paraded in front of the mirror like a little fairy.’
‘So you came here with both children,’ prompted Phryne.
‘We were staying in the house while the marquees were set up and the organisation under way,’ explained Gerald. ‘One had to supervise to make sure that Tom Ventura didn’t cut any corners. Which he is prone to do,’ he added. ‘The acolytes came down the next day in a charabanc. And vans with the rest of the delicacies. How poor old Syl complained about riding with the tinned crab!’ Gerald laughed, a jovial rumble such as a god might have given, and Phryne’s mouth curved even though she didn’t think it funny. Gerald had that effect on everyone.
‘We had a fuss, settling them all into their tents and so on,’ said Isabella. ‘And then I noticed that the child was missing. She didn’t come to lunch. I sent people around, asking, and Gerald just said, “She’s run away, you can’t trust those gypsy eyes,” and refused to take it seriously. Then someone came and told me they had seen the child at the Geelong road entrance, getting into a car.’
‘So I was right,’ said Gerald. ‘She just used you to get out of the orphanage. She had somewhere to go and she went there.’
‘Gerald, you are so unfeeling,’ drawled Isabella.
Phryne agreed. ‘Put a sock in it, Gerald dear. If you want me to find your Tarquin I need all the information I can get. Isabella,’ she said, leaning forward and taking the pale hands in her own, ‘who told you that they had seen Marigold on the road?’