Murder in the Dark (16 page)

‘I wonder why he was sent down without a degree?’

‘Don’t know. You could ask him,’ said Nicholas.

‘So I could. Oh, how very nice, we have miso soup.’

‘What’s that when it’s at home?’ asked Nicholas, glaring down into the cloudy depths of the bowl. Phryne tapped his wrist with her folded fan.

‘Bean paste, perfectly pleasant. Just pick up the bowl in both hands, like this,’ said Phryne, shaking back her sleeves to demonstrate. ‘And sip.’

Reluctantly, Nicholas allowed that the miso soup was not actively poisonous. Phryne eyed him with amusement.

‘The last bastion of conservatism,’ she commented, ‘is food.’

‘Oh, I do agree,’ said Guillaume, who was sitting on Phryne’s left side and sipping with enthusiasm. ‘This is very good miso soup. I was in Tokyo for a couple of years,’ he added. ‘It was as much as my poor cook’s life was worth to try Japanese dishes on the European visitors. I came upon him almost in tears once, saying that all he was asked to cook were large lumps of dead beast, and it was too much, and he was going home to Hansi province where he was appreciated.’

‘Poor man! What did you do to comfort him?’ asked Phryne.

‘I ordered a huge banquet with all his specialities and invited the local warlord. I owed him a favour, anyway. He arranged that my goods didn’t go missing off the docks.’

‘For a small fee?’ asked Nicholas.

‘For teaching his sons English and French,’ replied Guil-laume. ‘He was a forward looking man. They assassinated him just after I left to go to Paris. It was sad. He was a real loss. But in Paris I met the Templars, so it was a fortunate journey.’

‘Indeed. Where on earth did the Templars get this Japanese feast? And the musicians?’

‘They know a lot of people. I believe that they are all off a Japanese ship. Cooks as well, and the supplies. I have to import my miso paste directly from Japan, and my wasabi powder. No one keeps it here.’

‘Are you likely to return to Japan?’

‘Not soon,’ said Guillaume. ‘The situation is a bit . . . well, fluid. Politically. Nationalism, you know. Not comfortable for foreigners. Friend of mine had a crowd of about eight hundred outside his compound, screaming for his head on a pole. He just got onto a ship with his skin and his ceramics intact. He valued his ceramics much more highly than his skin, of course. Collectors are all the same.’

Phryne agreed and they discussed collectors and their strange ways—Nicholas knew of a collector of steam engines, and Phryne of a man whose life was devoted to stuffed fish— as the next course, a fine tempura of vegetables and seafood with a delicate soy dipping sauce was carried around. This introduced Nicholas to his next challenge: chopsticks.

‘It’s simple. You keep the bottom stick stable and move the top stick like a pair of pincers,’ said Guillaume, demonstrating. Nicholas tried. After being briefly convinced that he had the wrong number of fingers for this skill, all of them thumbs, he managed to make the points meet and beamed with pleasure.

‘Brilliant,’ said Phryne. ‘Not for us the humiliation of asking for a spoon. Take up a piece of fish, thus—’ she did so— ‘and dip it in your little plate of sauce, thus—’ she held a napkin underneath to fend off the sauce from her kimono— ‘and you eat it. Thus. Oh, very nice,’ she added.

Nicholas managed to lift a piece of fish to his mouth and found the batter so evanescent as to melt on the tongue. He liked it. He said so. Phryne applauded and fed him a morsel from her own chopsticks. Guillaume smiled. He knew what that meant. So did Phryne.

Sitting across from Phryne were Alison, the sad English girl, her friend Amelia, Pam and Sabine. Sabine was urging Alison to try the battered fish.

‘It’s just like fish and chips, without the chips, my lamb,’ she coaxed. ‘And at least it’s Christian food. Tomorrow it’s Arabian and Gerald is such a madman about it all being authentic, we’ll probably have to eat sheep’s eyes. There, now, doesn’t that taste good?’

Alison admitted that it did and ate some more. The servers carried around wide wooden dishes of beautifully displayed raw fish, seafood and vegetables carved into flowers. There was a dish of pale green paste with every platter. Nicholas sniffed it, said, ‘Oh, horseradish,’ and took a large mouthful before Phryne could prevent him.

Nicholas barely had time to notice that what he had bitten into was not, in fact, horseradish, when he was conscious only of the inside of his mouth bursting into flame and buried his face in the large napkin Miss Fisher handed him as his eyes spurted tears, his ears rang, probably with melting wax, and his nose spouted.

‘Oh, my poor bairn, that’s wasabi,’ exclaimed Sabine in her soft Scots voice. ‘Ten times hotter than the hottest vindaloo, but a rare thing to clear out the sinuses.’

Nicholas, who previously had not known that he had sinuses, nodded. They were clean and he had probably lost a portion of his brain cells, too. He reached for the iced water decanter and drank it, then grabbed for another and emptied it in turn. Gradually the burn died into a pain, and he stopped crying. He became aware that Phryne was apologising.

‘I’m so sorry, dear boy, I didn’t manage to stop you in time,’ she said.

Nicholas felt a strange elation, as though the top of his head had blown off.

‘Think nothing of it,’ he said generously. ‘What’s this stuff?’

‘That,’ said Phryne, ‘is a radish rose. That is raw fish, and so is that. That is sea urchin which tastes like spoiled egg yolk.’

‘Say not so,’ objected Guillaume. ‘But I’ll eat yours, if you like.’

‘Feel free,’ said Phryne. ‘This,’ she said, as a steaming platter of rice was carried to the diners, ‘is steamed rice and to go with it is
toki teriyaki
, which is chicken. You will like it. Have some.’

Light headed with wasabi, Nicholas eschewed the raw fish and took a spoonful of the chicken. It was, indeed, good, almost as salty as vegemite. Sad Alison, Amelia, Pam and Sabine ate raw fish as though they had been suckled in Tokyo, and gossiped. Phryne and Nicholas listened idly.

‘You haven’t heard from your sister, then?’ Sabine asked Alison.

‘No, but I’m sure she’ll be all right now that . . . now that we have all left. Mama has found her a nice place in a nursing home in Brighton.’

‘That’s good. And she still won’t tell you?’

‘Oh, she told me.’ Alison’s voice was leaden. ‘Is this drink any good?’ she asked, lifting a little pot of warm sake from its heater.

‘It’s a bit strong,’ said Phryne, mindful of her failure to preserve Nicholas from the wasabi. ‘I think you might like the plum wine better. Nicholas, pour the lady a drink, will you? Traditionally served cold,’ she said, dropping some pieces of ice into the glass from the covered ice bucket in front of her. She briefly wished she could crawl into the bucket, and reflected that Japanese food was at least appropriate for a hot climate. So were the clothes. Phryne was wearing three layers of silk and hardly felt them. It was like being dressed in strikingly coloured air.

Alison gulped down the plum wine and held out her glass for more.

‘Nice,’ she said, as Nicholas refilled her glass. ‘Is there pudding?’

‘Not in a Japanese meal,’ said Guillaume. ‘They don’t do dessert, it’s a Western invention. My cook used to say that sweets were only for children. Try some of the sea urchin,’ he said generously. ‘It really is delicious.’

The rest of the diners declined, so Guillaume settled down to a sea urchin feast with small cries of delight. Phryne was full. Holding back her sleeve with one hand, she poured Nicholas a cup of sake and had one herself, even though she was convinced that the faint, oily overtaste was actually turpentine. The musicians were going wild. A velvet curtain was being drawn between two trees. A heavily made-up person in remarkable robes leapt into the space.

‘Oh,’ said Sabine, delighted. ‘We are going to have a Noh drama! How wonderful!’

‘Hmm,’ said Phryne ambiguously. She had already sat through the only Noh drama which she intended to endure in one lifetime. She pressed the fingers of her hand meaningfully on Nicholas’s shoulder, pushing him a little away. He patted her hand in understanding.

‘Well, before it begins, we must visit the amenities,’ she told her fellow diners, rising stiffly from her knees. ‘Back in due course.’

Nicholas stood up to escort her. As they crept away, Phryne heard Sabine tell Guillaume, ‘I know this one. It’s
The Ground
Spider
!’

‘Fabulous,’ he responded.

Sad Alison did not speak. Phryne wondered about that bit of conversation she had overheard. Alison’s sister had every reason to be sad, it appeared. Was it the usual, Phryne wondered, or something more arcane? And what did Alison mean when she said, she will be all right now that we have gone? Curious. Phryne was almost out of the circle of light when someone caught at her hem.

‘Agape tonight,’ said Jonathan from the ground. ‘Are you coming?’

‘Perhaps,’ said Phryne, and removed her dress from his clasp.

‘What is this agape thing?’ asked Nicholas, when they had retreated to the refuge of the house. ‘They’ve invited me several times but it sounded a bit iffy so I haven’t gone.’

‘It’s not at all iffy, if by that you mean that your honour might be compromised,’ said Phryne, leading the way to the wc near her own chamber. ‘Just wait for me, I won’t be long.’

Nicholas waited, and then replaced her. It had been a long dinner. When he came out she took him by the sleeve and led him into the empty dining room, where she sank down on a brutally hard bench by the window.

‘Well, what is it?’ he asked.

‘
Agape
is Greek for “love”,’ she said slowly. ‘Agape is also an ecclesiastical term in the Church of England for a love-feast. The Templar agape is a love-feast, with the added thrill of a method of avoiding a climax called karez. Have you heard of it?’

‘No,’ he said, a bit worried by the term ‘climax’. Was it what he thought it was? Did women have them? He asked. Phryne laughed.

‘Yes, it is what you think it is, and of course women have them,’ she said. ‘You haven’t got a lady friend, then, Nicholas?’

‘No,’ he said. ‘Well, yes, I have been walking out with a young lady, but I’m sure that she doesn’t know anything about . . .’

‘Then it is up to you to teach her. Recipe for a happy marriage, just ask Marie Stopes. Where was I? Ah, yes, agape. This sort of communion was thought to have been invented by the agapemonites.
Agapemone
means “abode of love”. Otherwise known as the Community of the Son of Man. They believed in the spiritualisation of the matrimonial state, which was otherwise positively soggy with sin. They put all their possessions into the common stock expecting the end of the world soon, as instructed by their priest, one Henry Prince. They broke up in scandal because one of the sisters became pregnant. They aimed for purely spiritual unions, you see. Love-feasts supplied the human need for closeness.’

‘What happened to the agapemonites, then?’ asked Nicholas, his head spinning. No lady he had ever met had talked this way before.

‘Despite the Holy Ghost having taken residence in his body, the immortal messiah died in 1899 and ruined his chances of ascension. He is supposed to have been buried standing up. So that he would be ready for the resurrection, you see.’

Nicholas laughed uncertainly.

‘It was a dotty idea, I agree. But the love-feasts were adopted by the Templars, and the karez is the reason why they were not rubbed out by the Parisian police. Because nothing untoward happens in them. I’m going tonight, why don’t you come with me? It’s like fairyland. Just remember the rules. Don’t smoke anything. Don’t eat anything. If nothing else, a Templar karez agape is an experience.’

‘You still haven’t explained about karez,’ complained Nicholas, as Phryne led him to her room and he watched her begin to remove the Japanese costume. She unaffectedly shed the headdress and all but the innermost of the kimonos.

‘I’d just upset your modesty,’ she said. ‘Here. There’s an exposition in the purple book. You read it, and I’ll have a quick wash.’

She vanished, wrapped in her towel, and Nicholas took off his Japanese cap and started to read the essay on karez which had been provided for the partygoers. He was only a few lines into it before he was very glad that Phryne wasn’t there. He was blushing as red as a sunset and Mrs Truebody could have boiled a kettle on his head.

He rummaged for the vacuum flask, poured himself a cold drink, and managed to regain his calm. That a lady should have read such things! It was appalling. But somehow it was very hard to disapprove of Phryne, partly because he sensed that she wouldn’t care a scrap if he did. And in any case, when she said that karez would not damage his honour, she spoke the truth. A virgin could indulge in agape all her life and still be classified as a virgin. He supposed.

His confusion was not much relieved when Phryne came back, her face returned to its natural colour.

‘All clear, then?’ she asked him, nodding at the pamphlet, and he nodded back, not willing to enter into a discussion about it. ‘Good. I’ve had an idea about that riddle. Go along and have your wash—what are you wearing under that robe?’

‘Running shorts and a singlet,’ he confessed.

‘Very decent,’ Phryne approved. ‘I’ll just sit here and write.’

Nicholas went. It seemed the simplest solution. His last glimpse of Phryne was her concentrated profile as she seized a pencil and a notebook and sat scribbling very quickly.

When Nicholas came back she was dressed in a simple cotton shift dress which left her arms and legs bare. She approved of his running clothes and picked up the bundle of their Japanese costumes, which she had carefully folded and rolled.

‘The Noh play ought to be over by now,’ she told him. ‘Even Noh plays come to an end eventually. They must. Ah, yes, I hear the howling and the crescendo of drums which must mark . . .’

‘A climax?’ suggested Nicholas, who had learned a new word.

Phryne gave him a considering look. All she said, however, was, ‘Indeed.’

They lurked on the outskirts of the gathering as the actors and musicians were applauded and left. The night was hot and still. Gerald Templar led the way into the purple tent, holding his sister by the hand. An antechamber had been set up where the initiates shed their costumes and put on tight calico drawers and a loose white caftan. Nicholas managed to find one to fit him and Phryne took his hand.