Murder in the Dark (13 page)

The comely face looked up blankly, blinking away two tears which ran down the flawless cheeks. ‘I don’t remember,’ she said.

‘Try to recall,’ urged Phryne. ‘I’m going to do some prospecting,’ she told the golden twins. ‘You think about it and let me know as soon as you can,’ she added, and left their company. She heard the quarrel begin again as she let the flaps fall.

The Hispano-Suiza was just drawing up in the forecourt when Phryne came out of the Templar tent. She felt a rush of gladness at seeing Mr Butler and Dot again. They were so normal. Dot subjected Phryne to a hard stare and, finding her free of visible signs of disease, wounds or moral degeneration, smiled.

‘I’ve got your things, Miss,’ she said. ‘Are you having a good time?’

‘Intermittently,’ said Phryne. ‘Yes, Mr Butler?’ Mr Butler had been waving a hand.

‘I’d like to find my old friend Tom Ventura,’ said Mr Butler. ‘If you wouldn’t mind, Miss, I’ll just take the car round the back and see how he’s getting on.’

‘By all means,’ said Phryne, and the big car slid away, to general admiration. She led Dot into the denuded house and gained the Iris Room, where she shut both of them in.

‘Here’s your clean underthings,’ said Dot, unpacking her bag. ‘And the dress you asked for, and . . . this. The craft lady delivered it this morning, real early. I hope it’s what you wanted, Miss. Horrible looking thing.’

‘Yes, but beautiful in its way,’ said Phryne, putting the box on the mantelpiece.

‘I suppose so,’ said Dot reluctantly, piling clean knickers into Phryne’s drawer. ‘Everything’s all right at home, Miss. Mrs Butler is making pies today and the girls have gone to visit their friend Rebecca. They’re sorry for her because Jews don’t have Christmas. Mr Lin called and asked after you, Miss, and said that if you needed him you had only to call.’

‘Nice of him,’ said Phryne absently. ‘Now listen, Dot, this is the situation. Two children have gone missing and someone is threatening to kill Mr Templar. These events may or may not be connected. I’m going to tell you all I know in case someone knocks me on the head and I forget it all—no, don’t look like that, I was joking. So far the trickster hasn’t managed to outwit me, though of course he may in future.’

Dot listened attentively as Phryne rehearsed all that she knew, had learned or suspected about the Templar menage and its assailant. At the end of the recital Dot said, ‘Well!’ and then, ‘I wonder if the little girl really did run away?’

‘A question which I have been considering, Dot dear. Isabella seems to have assumed it on one person’s evidence, and now she can’t even remember who told her. She has, of course, got cotton wool between her ears. I think she was offended that the girl would run away from her magnificent condescension and decided to ignore her disappearance out of pique. I agree, not nice. But, as Hemingway would say, the rich are different.’

‘Yes,’ said Dot sourly. ‘They’re rich. Only difference I’ve ever seen.’

Phryne grinned. With Bert, Cec, Dot, Lady Alice and her sister Eliza, she was not going to be able to develop delusions about the plutocrats being superior to the working classes.

‘Indeed. I don’t want to call in the police yet, Dot, because that would spoil the Last Best Party and because I don’t think they have a hope of finding anything out in this bizarre gathering. I, being one of it, might have a better chance. I’m in possession of a clue, though what it is pointing to is another matter.’

‘Yes,’ said Dot. ‘Anything I can do?’

‘Ask around in Werribee whether they’ve had gypsies through,’ said Phryne. ‘I know they travel with carnivals. If the child was actually a gypsy she might have run if she could rejoin her people—then we don’t need to worry about her. But if not—well, we’ll have to keep looking. The child is ten and ravishing, apparently. She would not be safe on her own.’

‘Not with all these nasty people about,’ said Dot. ‘And I don’t just mean your party,’ she added, wise in the ways of criminal investigation. ‘Well, I’ll be going. Got your list for tomorrow? Good-oh. You be careful, Miss Phryne,’ she added, giving Phryne a worried kiss, and took her leave to collect Mr Butler from the kitchen and return to St Kilda.

She found Mr Butler finishing a cup of tea in company with the balding worried Mr Ventura. ‘One day down,’ said Mr Butler bracingly. ‘Only four to go. You can manage it, Tom. You don’t need to worry about the kitchen or the food, Mrs Truebody’s doing that and she works like a Trojan—and makes very good tea, too,’ added Mr Butler. Mrs Truebody smiled a little and handed over a fresh supply of lemon and passionfruit biscuits. Mr Butler took three and Dot took one, tasted, said, ‘Delicious!’ through the crumbs, and asked for another in a napkin to beguile the homeward journey.

Mrs Truebody supplied a small cardboard box and filled it with assorted biscuits, and Minnie brought out a thermos flask, refilled with good strong tea with milk and sugar. Mrs True-body felt that driving in a car was a dangerous and exhausting occupation and the driver and passengers needed to recruit their strength frequently. And she thoroughly approved of Miss Phryne’s attendants, who showed a suitable appreciation of her administrative skill and her food.

Tom Ventura bit moodily into a lemon curd tart, heedless of the cream on his moustache.

‘Just because nothing’s gone wrong yet,’ he argued, ‘don’t mean that nothing will. It’s the polo demonstration this afternoon, and anything might happen when those ponies get up speed. And the tennis players waving rackets all over the place. And the swimmers in that cold water . . .’

‘Give it a rest,’ said Mr Butler affectionately. ‘You dose him with a nice cup of valerian and chamomile tea, Mrs Truebody. Always used to work in my mother’s day. Then you get your head down and have a nice sleep, Tom. I’ll see you tomorrow. You ready, Dot?’

‘All ready,’ said Dot.

Carrying the thermos and the laundry bag, Mr Butler led Dot, bearing the box of refreshments, out to the car and settled his companion in the front seat. Dot had graduated to sitting next to the chauffeur and found it less exciting than the back seat. Dot did not like being excited.

‘We’ve got to stop in Werribee,’ she told Mr Butler. ‘Miss Phryne asked me to find out if the gypsies had been this way recently. Then we can rest under those pine trees and have a nice cuppa and the rest of those biscuits.’

‘I don’t want you to breathe a word of this to Mrs B,’ said Mr Butler in a whisper, ‘but those lemon and passionfruit biscuits are better than hers.’

‘I won’t say a word,’ promised Dot, slipping a hand into the box and collecting two biscuits, one for Mr Butler and one for herself. ‘And I think so, too.’

Phryne Fisher considered that she just had time, before the polo demonstration, to follow up the clue which had been buried in the thyme. ‘Once I drank deep when I was a tree/ Now all of you can drink from me’ clearly meant a barrel, and there couldn’t be too many barrels around, even in a large establishment like Chirnside. She settled her hat and went to the door of the drinks tent.

‘Not open until noon,’ said a tall young man, barring her way with a brawny arm. Phryne gave him a ravishing smile.

‘I’m on a treasure hunt,’ she said in a thrilling whisper. ‘If you let me examine your barrels I’m sure that Mr Templar wouldn’t take that as an infringement of the rules.’

‘I don’t know, Miss . . .’ he hesitated, then took the coin she pressed into his large, wet hand. ‘Come in then, before them other thirsty buggers notice,’ he said, and Phryne slipped inside.

There were four barrels in store and one which had been broached, sitting in its cradle. Phryne tapped and examined all four, finding nothing except things which one expects to find in and on barrels. When she turned her attention to the barrel on the cradle, it had no telltale label.

‘Are these all the barrels you have?’ she asked.

‘Yair, lady, don’t you think there’ll be enough?’ exclaimed the barman jocularly.

‘You never know,’ said Phryne mysteriously, and slipped out into the sunshine again. Damn. Still, there was the house, which might well have barrels in the cellar. She would have to wait until after the polo now. People were already making their way to the huge ground, where goals had been set up, patrolled by men on horses. Two other men in white coats, evidently umpires, were cantering up and down a long rope, fixed to the earth with tent pegs, which apparently was some kind of boundary.

About now, Phryne knew, some likely young man who fancied his chances would arrive at her shoulder, offering to tell her all that she never wanted to know about the rules of polo. She found a shady spot and leaned confidently against a tree. And there he was. Tall. Well dressed. Scented with liniment.

‘Hullo-ullo-ullo,’ he said breezily. ‘I’m Ralph Norton, Miss Fisher, we met at the gate. I was driving that little Austin.’

‘To the public danger,’ said Phryne severely. ‘And you’re hoping to catch my interest by telling me all about polo?’

‘Er . . .’ said the disconcerted young man. ‘Er, well, yes, Miss Fisher.’

Always a mistake to be seen to be too intelligent, Phryne told herself. She relented. ‘Very well, then,’ she told Ralph, who really was rather ducky in his tight polo clothes and polished boots. ‘Instruct me.’

There was a pause while Ralph tried to work out if this astounding young woman was somehow mocking him. Phryne actually saw the moment when he decided that she couldn’t possibly be, fine fellow that he was. He straightened his shoulders. He took a deep breath.

‘Polo is played by two teams of four, in eight chukkas, which last for seven minutes each. The aim is to get the ball through the goals at either end, there. You have to hit the ball with a polo mallet, those big bamboo-handled things.’

‘Following you so far,’ said Phryne gravely. ‘Who are the two teams?’

‘Well, there’s us, the Grammar Boys, we all went to school together, except for Johnson and he’s a good chap, you’d never know, and there’s the up-country lads—they even have girls on their team, bad show altogether. Our captain complained but Templar said they could field werewolves as long as they played well. Girls can’t possibly ride as well as men, so we will beat them easily—but it’s not a good show, you know.’

‘Indeed,’ murmured Phryne. ‘You’re playing in the real game too?’

‘Yes, Miss Fisher. Two o’clock on Monday. Will you be watching?’

‘Oh, yes,’ said Phryne. ‘And would you care to wager a little on your inevitable victory? Say, five pounds on the Wonnangatta Tigers?’

‘Done and done,’ said Ralph promptly.

‘And you will be,’ said Phryne with a smile.

‘Oh, good show,’ said Ralph, as the first riders came prancing onto the ground. ‘There are our chaps. And there’s the others. You’d think they could clip their ponies, at least. They’re as shaggy as old sheep.’

The Wonnangatta Tigers were not sartorially splendid, it was true. They were all wearing a uniform, more or less, blue shirt and scrubbed white moleskins. Thereafter they differed; the hat was of the rider’s choice, and ranged from old leather through dainty white canvas to new straw. Their ponies matched the riders. They were shaggy, as Ralph had observed. But they were bright eyed and danced a little on their hoofs. Phryne thought them charmingly rustic.

The Grammar Boys, on the other hand, were gorgeous. Their jodhpurs were impeccable, their shirtfronts white as snow, their uniform of red and gold almost too bright to view without smoked glasses. Their ponies were polished to a fine gloss, their manes and tails bobbed or braided and their tack gleaming.

The first demonstration was put on by the Tigers. Eight of them lined up to watch an umpire fling out the ball, and then they were off in pursuit. They rode raggedly, all knees and elbows. Phryne saw Jill in the middle of the melee, shouting. But they bullied the ball down the length of the field and through the goals.

Phryne particularly noticed a small pony, apparently called Mongrel, ridden by a long-legged boy called Dougie. They looked absurd as a pair, but it was Mongrel who somehow crept through the pack and allowed Dougie to flick the ball out from under another pony’s legs, and then shepherd it down the ground, running with a curious scurrying, sure footed gait which was neither a canter nor a gallop but something that Mongrel had clearly invented for himself. When the ball went through the wide goal Phryne distinctly heard the pony snigger.

‘Odd-looking beast,’ commented Ralph.

‘It is undeniably effective,’ Phryne pointed out.

‘Mmm,’ said Ralph. ‘Here they come again. By Jove, some of them can ride, all right. Look at that chap on the grey!’

Phryne wondered whether she should tell Ralph that the chap on the grey was actually Jill, a palpable girl, and decided not to ruin his day quite yet. There would be time for good old Ralph. The Tigers belted the ball through the opposite goal to massed cheers.

‘Oh, well done!’ said Ralph. ‘Must go, Miss Fisher. See you later, perhaps?’

Phryne decided she didn’t dislike him as much as all that and watched while the Tigers came panting off the ground and the Grammar Boys came on.

My, but they were brilliant. They lined up, eight of them in red and gold like an Assyrian cohort, and saluted the flag. Then they trotted around in a tight circle, their ponies dancing and occasionally jerking their heads out of control, clearly keyed up and nervous with all these new sights and smells. Highly strung, thought Phryne from under her tree. I suppose they breed them for sensitivity. How are they going to cope with country matters, I wonder? Birds and beasts and heat? I bet they haven’t been ridden more than once a week. Whereas those Tigers’ ponies probably spent their colthood wheeling cattle in Gippsland scrub. Well, we shall see.

It was a polished, well-drilled display. The ponies’ neat little hoofs flashed, drumming the hard ground. The riders barely moved in their seats. The ball sped up and down the ground, foiled neatly every time it appeared that someone was in a position to shoot for goal. After ten minutes, Ralph rose in his stirrups, gave the ball an almighty whack, and it flew through the goal. At this all of the Grammar Boys gathered round to congratulate him before they trotted off the field and surrendered their mounts to their stable boys.