Murder in the Dark (15 page)

‘How very like a tale by Miss Sayers,’ said Nicholas.

‘Indeed, I was thinking that myself. So far the riddler has had things all his or her own way. I don’t have a lot of choice but to follow the clues. But I hope to have a surprise for them this evening, and I want you to watch and see who reacts to me when I come in to dinner.’

‘Very well,’ he said. ‘Are you going to tell me anything more?’

‘Yes,’ said Phryne. ‘But if you should be responsible for the ground glass in my cold cream and the theft of the threatening letters from my room, I shall drown you in due course.’

‘Er . . .’ said Nicholas, writhing.

Phryne put one strong hand on the crown of his head, ready to duck him.

‘Not the cold cream? Nicholas, you disappoint me.’

‘No,’ he said hurriedly. ‘The letters. But I had a key!’ he added, as he felt her beginning to exert pressure. ‘The Lady wanted to know what was going on, and she asked me to take them back! All I did was unlock the hatbox, take the letters, lock the hatbox and leave the room. I never touched your cold cream,’ he said as his mouth disappeared underwater. ‘Filthy trick,’ he added as he came up again. ‘Meant to hurt you. I would never want to hurt you, Phryne.’

‘We shall see about that,’ said Phryne grimly. ‘Have you got the letters now?’

‘No, the Lady has them. But I can pinch them back again,’ he said hastily. ‘I think she was just curious about why you and Gerald were being so secretive. She hasn’t done anything with them.’

‘See that you do, and meet me in my room in an hour. I had better get dry and collect my costume.’

‘Just as you say, sir.’ Nicholas saluted and Phryne kissed him again.

They swam to the edge. Phryne put on her bathing gown, which was as decorous as her bathing costume was indecorous, having no back and no legs, and went to the costume tent for her bundle of Japanese clothes. From there she went to the house for a wash. The lake water was clean enough but she had mud on her feet, which she felt instinctively that a Japanese lady wouldn’t.

Her bath was not prolonged but hot and scented. She donated it to Gilbert, who had been lurking near the bathroom for this purpose. She hoped that he liked magnolia bath salts. Phryne donned the various layers of her costume with care, wishing that she had a full length mirror. The three filmy silk kimonos were evidently meant to be worn one above another, so that hems showed and provided contrasting colours. Should it be plum, crimson and rose? Or maybe the paler colour underneath, rose, plum, vermilion? She had just settled on vermilion, rose and plum when Nicholas tapped and a Japanese gentleman entered. He looked good in the flowing robes and Phryne said so.

‘And while you are here, you can help me with this
obi
. It is supposed to go over the whole ensemble and be tied into a pretty female package. But it fastens at the back. These are stage costumes so there should be hooks. Yes, there, see? Can you manage?’

‘I suppose so,’ said Nicholas, biting his lip. He was obviously unfamiliar with female clothing and the donning or removal of same. However, he managed creditably enough.

Phryne smoothed her multi-coloured silks.

‘I wish I could see what I looked like,’ she said, assuming the headdress, which was a crown with dependent red birds. Rubies dripped from their beaks. Phryne had whitened her face and painted her mouth and eyebrows and was so transformed that when she turned to face Nicholas he was not sure that he knew her.

‘You look wonderful,’ he said fervently.

‘Now for the pièce de résistance,’ she said, and slipped a bracelet onto her left arm. It did not match the costume, but it was instantly arresting. ‘This is what you need to watch for,’ she told Nicholas. ‘Anyone who sees this and reacts with undue interest. Now,’ she added, ‘pour us a drink from that thermos, and let’s see these letters.’

Phryne had prudently obtained a supply of gin slings and had borrowed a couple of glasses from the drinks tent. Her expensive English thermos flask kept things ice cold as well as piping hot, just as the advertisement had said. Nicholas laid down his bag of letters and poured drinks as requested. He wasn’t used to strong cocktails and sipped carefully.

‘What have we here,’ said Phryne as she spread out the letters, ordered them according to the numbers written in the top left hand corners and read them. They were not informative. ‘Not the same hand as my labels,’ she said after comparing the two. The riddles were written in a scholarly hand in blue ink. The letters were scrawled in black ink on Woolworth’s paper. The letters were short and all repeated the same phrase: ‘Die, you fraud’. Some added, ‘I will kill you’, or ‘Watch every shadow’. They were not signed or even set out like letters.

‘Not very informative at all.’

‘I see what you mean,’ said Nicholas Booth ruefully. ‘Hardly worth pinching, really. Someone thinks Gerald is a fraud, and is intending to kill him. Odd, you know, you could call Gerald many things, but fraud isn’t one of them. He genuinely believes in what he does—or so it seems to me,’ he added, deferring to Phryne’s opinion in the most charming manner.

‘Oh, I agree.’ Phryne sipped her drink thoughtfully. ‘Cheap paper, post office ink. Might have fingerprints but they’d be Gerald’s and yours and mine and Isabella’s by now. Nothing helpful on the envelopes. Bundle them up and put them back, will you? No need to upset the Lady more than necessary. I’ll wait here for you.’

She sat quite still, looking like the expensive Japanese dolls that doting sailors bought for their little daughters in Tokyo, which are immediately put on a shelf as too fragile to play with. Nicholas took the vision of her with him as he walked too briskly for his garments back to the Templar tent.

There was a tap on the door which stirred Phryne out of her trance.

‘Yes?’ she asked as Minnie bobbed a curtsy to her.

‘Oh, Miss, you do look beautiful! Mrs Truebody’s compliments, Miss, and can she see you for a moment when convenient?’

Minnie had evidently learned this piece of antique courtesy by heart and was anxious not to forget any of it. Phryne picked up her fan, secreted a number of items in her sleeves, and accompanied the young woman to the green baize door.

Mrs Truebody was flushed and beaming. ‘I’ve found your label, Miss Phryne,’ she said. ‘After the whole staff went through every teapot and cup and kettle we own. You’ll never guess where it was.’

‘No, where?’ asked Phryne, intrigued.

‘In the Toby jug! You see, your clue said that you had to cerebrate, and that means brains, and so I thought it might be a head, and there it was. Not that it helps, perhaps,’ said Mrs Truebody, handing over the blue bordered label.

‘Wonderful,’ said Phryne. ‘Here’s the reward, and a couple of bob for the staff— I take their efforts very kindly, Mrs True-body. Thank you all very much.’

The door had swung open and the whole kitchen was staring at Phryne in her butterfly silks. She blew them a kiss and went back to her room, where Nicholas Booth was waiting.

‘You left the door open, anyone could have got in,’ he exclaimed.

Phryne shrugged, a very un-Japanese movement.

‘At the moment, dear boy, they seem to be able to get in whether I lock the door or not. Did you get the doings back to Isabella without being noticed?’

‘Yes,’ he said.

‘And I’ve got another clue. Same hand, same ink. “I am the kindest, deepest, first. Sinless and wicked and needed and cursed”.’

‘What does that mean?’ asked Nicholas, his brow crinkling.

‘Not the faintest at the moment,’ said Phryne. ‘But I am carrying all my clues on my person for the present. So it can go in my nice little card case with the others,’ she told Nicholas. He had caught sight of other objects in her sleeve.

‘Phryne, a pistol?’

‘My very own little pearl-handled Beretta for which I have a licence. Don’t fret,’ she said, leading the way out of the Iris Room. ‘I won’t shoot you unless I have a reason.’

‘Oh, good,’ said Nicholas Booth gloomily, following in her magnificent wake.

Dinner was to be appropriately Japanese. Phryne wondered how her joints would stand up to sitting on the ground for an extended time and decided that others would crack before she did. The area in front of the Templar tent was decorated with paper lanterns and silken banners. What sounded like a real Japanese orchestra was playing music on stringed instruments which set Phryne’s teeth on edge.

‘The RSPCA will hunt them down for what they are doing to that cat,’ murmured Nicholas Booth, wincing. A young man with a sensitive ear, it seemed.

‘What sort of music do you like?’

‘Bach,’ said Nicholas. ‘And Beethoven. And I’m very partial to a bit of jazz. Have you heard that woman singing with the Three T’s? Rip your heart out of your . . . er . . . well, chest. You?’

‘Jazz,’ said Phryne. ‘Gilbert and Sullivan. Vaughan Williams. Bach when he isn’t being too mechanical. Sometimes he sounds just like clockwork.’

Nicholas’s mouth opened to defend his beloved composer but Phryne was going on. He had noticed this conversational habit of hers and there seemed nothing to be done about it.

‘Mozart. And jazz,’ she concluded. ‘Play your cards right and I’ll introduce you to Nerine, your jazz singer. She’s an old friend of mine.’

‘Gosh, Phryne, really?’ Nicholas’s eyes shone with heroine-worship. Nerine had that effect on all susceptible—that is, functioning—males.

Phryne nudged him. ‘Remember what you promised to do. Watch for the reaction. Let’s lurk under this tree for a moment. I want everyone to be there and sitting down before I make my entrance.’

‘You’re good at grand entrances?’ asked Nicholas with studied innocence.

‘Yes,’ said Phryne honestly. ‘I’m already twenty-eight. I might be able to make two or three more great entrances, the ones which, when one wakes at three in the morning from a nightmare, one drags up to warm the bones.’

‘I didn’t mean . . .’ Nicholas began, obscurely feeling that he had insulted her.

‘Vanity, vanity, all is vanity, that’s what you were thinking, eh? You’d be right. Nothing wrong with a little vanity. If we cannot love ourselves we can certainly not love anyone else.’

‘I think you’re on shaky theological ground there,’ Nicholas told her.

She looked entrancing in the fading light, her whitened face and red lips mask-like and mysterious and unbearably exotic. He wondered what her mouth would taste like if he kissed her now.

‘Possibly. Anyway, who died and made you Pope? Come along, my presbyter. And keep your eyes peeled.’

She folded her hands in her sleeves, leaving the bracelet to gleam brown and red and cream against the vermilion outer robe. Nicholas followed as Phryne, an almost perfect geisha, walked with tiny steps to the edge of the gathering, now all sitting on the ground. The musicians saw her and worked their way toward a crescendo. Drums beat. Strings wailed.

Phryne made a slow bow to Gerald and another to Isabella, and someone in the gathering gasped aloud. Nicholas located the noise. And noted another person whose jaw had dropped and whose eyes were like saucers. Then he seated himself next to Phryne. The experiment had been a success. Around her sleeve Phryne wore a papier-mâché bracelet which depicted, in very realistic colours, a coral snake curled and ready to strike.

‘Today is Holy Innocents’ Day,’ said Dot.

‘Who were they?’ asked Ruth.

‘Don’t they teach you any religion at that school of yours?’ demanded Dot. ‘When Herod heard that the child Jesus had been born, he sent his men out to find him, but they failed. And the Magi, who had promised to come back and tell him where the baby was, they were warned by an angel and went away. So, to make sure that he killed the baby Jesus, the cruel King Herod—’

‘Oh, yes. Ordered the soldiers to kill all the children,’ said Ruth. ‘I forgot it because it’s so awful. What sort of king makes his soldiers kill children?’

‘Almost any sort,’ said Jane. She was a student of history.

‘Well, they shouldn’t,’ declared Ruth. ‘It’s unfair.’

Dot shrugged and went on with the story. ‘ “Take the mother and child and flee into Egypt,” said the angel.’

‘Why did they have to take a flea?’ asked Ruth.

Jane giggled, and therefore got no chocolate once the misunderstanding was sorted out.

CHAPTER NINE

All thoughts, all passions, all delights,
whatever stirs this mortal frame,
all are but ministers of Love,
and feed his sacred flame.

ST Coleridge ‘Love’

It did not take long before conversation broke out again, but Phryne had elicited that moment of silence which was her accolade. She accepted a tiny cup of green tea and asked Nicholas, ‘Did you hear?’

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I say, Phryne, this tea hasn’t got milk or sugar.’

‘No, it’s green tea, just drink up,’ she advised kindly. ‘Think of it as flavoured hot water. This meal may prove to be a revelation to you, my meat and three veg man.’

‘Nothing wrong with meat and three veg,’ said Nicholas.

Phryne flipped open her fan and smothered a high-tension giggle. She used the fan to cover both their mouths as she leaned close to him and asked, ‘Who gasped?’

‘Sylvanus,’ said Nicholas. ‘But the one with the face like a goldfish was Jonathan.’

‘I do hope the trickster isn’t Syl,’ she said, sotto voce. ‘I’ve always liked him and I thought he liked me, and that coral snake was a murder attempt. If my cat hadn’t had very fast reflexes and hadn’t woken up cross I might have been fatally punctured. Still, one can never tell with people. Do you know anything about Jonathan?’

‘A bit. Your cat killed it?’

‘Yes. I should imagine that he is presently being overfed with smoked salmon by my sister, who never saw the reason for cats as house pets before. Of course, they aren’t often called upon to kill snakes in Christmas packages. Go on.’

‘He’s twenty-five,’ said Nicholas. ‘He joined up with the Templars in Paris, where he has family, a sister and a younger brother. His father is a wine importer, based in Lyons and London. Got a house in both cities. Fairly rich family. Jonathan went to Oxford University but was sent down without taking a degree. Read history and classics. Nothing known against him,’ he said.