Murder in the Dark (17 page)

‘Come along,’ she said, and he followed her into the gloom.

The floor of the tent had been laid out with soft mattresses, covered in cotton sheeting. The company gave at the knees as they came in. Nicholas stayed close to Phryne’s side as she found a suitable mattress and sat down on it, pulling the young man down onto his own mattress beside her.

Hubble-bubble pipes were lit. Smoke wreathed the still air. Nicholas began to feel light headed. It was a pleasant sensation. He lay down on his mattress. Caftan clad people moved slowly through the tent, offering trays of dark chocolatey fudge. Phryne waved them past, but took a bottle which seemed to contain water. She took a sip and passed it to Nicholas. It was cold water, tasting of roses.

Music began to play, sweet choral voices singing a chant which sounded rather religious. Then Gerald and Isabella came down and joined the congregation, and the love-feast began.

‘Agape,’ said Phryne to Nicholas, curling herself around so that she was lying beside him. ‘Now you say “agape” to me.’

‘Agape,’ said Nicholas, and Phryne kissed him very gently.

Her underlip was like satin and she tasted of roses. He gasped and she smothered his gasp with her mouth. All around him he heard the acolytes murmuring like birds settling down to rest, as the pipe smoke rose to the roof in sweet clouds. He stroked Phryne’s back under the white caftan, and she wriggled with pleasure. Someone was caressing his feet, soft hands like clouds. He had never been so aware of having skin. All of it seemed to be alive.

Phryne slid both hands down his back, relishing the feeling of orderly muscles, then cupped his buttocks, squeezing hard. He was now as aroused as he had ever been in his life. Still the sweet music went on, the delicate voices, the murmuring of the initiates. Lifting himself on one elbow he saw Gerald lying passive under the loving attentions of four people. They were stroking his face, kissing his mouth, touching his chest, sliding their hands down his thighs.

When he looked back the woman Sabine was kissing Phryne’s feet, gradually working her way up her body, and Nicholas was almost shocked, except he seemed to have lost the knack of it. He surrendered. He forgot to think. He buried his face in Phryne’s belly, mouthing and sucking, noticing that her skin was quivering under the thin fabric, which was becoming transparent as she perspired in the heat. The sharp points of her nipples invited suckling, and he suckled. She jerked, her hands closing into fists. Then she sighed and smiled like an angel.

‘Lie back,’ she said to him, and he lay down while Sabine transferred her kisses to his ankles and Phryne kissed slowly down his neck to his chest, chest to belly, belly to those parts covered by the calico chastity knickers. And they were no bar to her clever fingers, which wormed their way under the caftan and past the tight waist band to touch, to stroke, and then to perform one movement which would have made Nicholas groan with pleasure if Sabine had not covered his mouth with her own.

‘Naughty,’ she said to Phryne. ‘
Mechant
.’

Phryne agreed. ‘
Mechant
it is,’ she said, and slipped down, supine, for Nicholas to fondle her again. He lost all sense of time. He would not have taken any bets on who he actually was. He did not know how often he had elicited that sharp sigh from Phryne. But he was weary and greasy with sweat and not all that steady on his feet when Phryne dragged him out of th throng. Most of them seemed to be sleeping. Phryne led the way into the antechamber and told him to reclaim his clothes.

‘Just drop the others in that pile,’ she said, shaking back her hair. ‘I am so hot! Race you to the lake.’

She was off and he managed to struggle into his shorts and follow the sound of her flying feet. He sighted her as she reached the lake and pulled the shift over her head. Underneath she was as naked as the day she had arrived to grace the planet with her ineffable presence. She dived in and Nicholas tore off his clothes and splashed after her.

The water was cold and dark and sobering. It washed the sweat and juices of desire off his body. It felt good and he dived, feeling the heat leach out of his body into the water. Phryne surfaced beside him, spouting water like a nymph.

‘I will never again go to an agape in this weather,’ she declared. ‘I nearly melted.’

‘But it felt good?’ he asked, suddenly unsure of the significance of all those little sighs. Did they mean what the book told him they meant? Phryne threw wet arms around his neck and kissed him.

‘Lovely,’ she said. ‘You will make someone a very good husband. Useful lessons have been learned tonight. But nevertheless, Australian summers are too hot for karez. They’re too hot for making love, as well. In my boudoir I have a basin of ice and an electric fan, which renders the nights tolerable. And tonight I have to sleep in that little room, stifled by the heat. Oh well, it’s all in the interests of justice. And if I say Jack Robinson to you, my dear, what would you reply?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Nicholas, sounding puzzled. ‘What would you like me to reply?’

‘You’re very good,’ Phryne told him. ‘But I will find out, you know.’

‘Find out?’

‘Don’t overdo it,’ she advised him. ‘Now, I’m going to float in this divinely chill water until I turn as blue as possible on such a night, then I’m going to bed. Thank you for a most enjoyable evening,’ she added, kissing him again.

She released him and lay back in the embrace of the water, relishing the cold of the spring-fed lake. Nicholas grunted and did the same and they lay amicably side by side.

After about an hour the hearties woke and came leaping and shouting, and Phryne and Nicholas removed themselves discreetly, redressed and headed for the house. The Templar tent was silent. The lovers were all asleep.

The house appeared asleep, too, as they crept inside. Nicholas bade Phryne a decorous good night and was about to leave when Big Sam from the kitchen arrived and begged for Miss Fisher’s assistance. One of the kitchen maids, it seemed, had gone suddenly mad.

‘Noblesse oblige,’ said Phryne.

‘Perhaps I can help,’ said Nicholas, and Big Sam preceded them to the green baize door.

They were so elegant and deadly, his ladies. Eleanora, Elissa,
Madeleine, Mirielle and Belle. He gazed at them lovingly. Ever
true. Ever beautiful. Ever faithful.

CHAPTER TEN

Helper and healer, I cheer—
Small waifs in the woodland wet—
Strats I find in it, wounds I bind in it—
Bidding them all forget!

Kenneth Grahame
The Wind in the Willows

The kitchen maid was Minnie and she had evidently been struck down with something. She was sitting on the floor in a dishevelled state. She had pulled off her cap and let down her hair, which was long and fine. She was muttering to herself.

‘Oh, Miss Phryne, can you help?’ asked Mrs Truebody, as disturbed as she would have been with breakfast to cook and the bacon still undelivered. ‘She’s not drunk. I can’t smell spirits on her.’

‘Minnie?’ asked Phryne. She knelt down next to the girl, took both her hands and pulled her around so that her face was in a bright light. Minnie winced and covered her eyes.

‘Ah,’ said Phryne. ‘Don’t worry, Mrs Truebody, it’s not serious. And it’s not her fault, either. Did she by any chance clean out the fudge bowl? Or perhaps eat a burned corner?’

‘Probably,’ said Mrs Truebody. ‘No one is rationed in my kitchen.’

‘Even though Miss Isabella would have told you not to allow anyone else to eat the fudge?’ asked Phryne gently. Mrs Truebody bristled.

‘She had the brass-bound nerve to tell me who could eat what in my own kitchen!’ she exclaimed.

‘Quite. Do not, however, eat any of it in future. The people with the Templars are used to it—it’s strong medicine,’ said Phryne. ‘We’ll just take her to her bed and she’ll be fine in the morning, though hungry.’

‘I’ll carry her,’ offered Big Sam.

‘Thank you,’ murmured Phryne, who was very tired. ‘You can go to bed, Nicholas. I’ll see you in the morning.’

Nicholas, finding himself surplus to requirements, said goodnight and left.

Big Sam hoisted Minnie without apparent effort. She giggled. She kept on giggling all the way through the back kitchen and into the yard, then through the corridors to the servants’ wing.

‘The names are on the doors,’ grunted Big Sam. Minnie was trying to curl his ear around her finger and the giggling was beginning to get on his nerves.

‘Betty, Amy, yes, here we are.’ Phryne surveyed the neat little room. ‘Put her down on the bed, Sam. I’ll just take off her shoes and maybe her dress, and tell her to go to sleep.’

‘And she’ll sleep?’ asked Big Sam, rubbing his insulted ear and turning his back.

‘Oh yes, they’re very suggestible, the hash eaters.’ There were rustling noises. Then Phryne said very firmly, ‘Go to sleep, Minnie. Go to sleep right now,’ and Sam turned back to see the maid’s eyes closed.

‘My word,’ said Sam.

‘Now, get me out of here and back to my own room by the fastest way,’ ordered Phryne, ‘or you might have to carry me, too.’

‘I could do that, Miss, if you like,’ said Sam admiringly. He liked women who took charge.

‘I’ll let you know,’ said Phryne.

Big Sam had a long stride and Phryne had to trot to keep up with him.

‘Fastest way’s past the old boarded-up scullery,’ he told her. ‘Where the girls reckon they hear the ghost.’

‘No ghost is going to get between me and my lawful bed,’ swore Phryne. ‘Lead on.’

Big Sam did as he was told. There was little lighting in the yard now that the house was asleep, and the shadows near the boarded-up scullery were as black as pitch. Phryne was suddenly assailed with a terrible feeling of loneliness and despair— not her own emotions, someone else’s. She stopped dead to listen and Big Sam came lumbering back.

‘Quiet,’ she said, holding up a hand. ‘Do you hear that?’

‘Must be the wind,’ said Sam uneasily.

‘There isn’t any wind. Listen. Like a child sobbing.’

‘I don’t hear nothing,’ said Sam stoutly and untruthfully. He could hear it and it was giving him the willies.

‘Do you keep any tools in any of these sheds?’ Phryne demanded abruptly.

‘What sort of tools?’

‘Case opener, jemmy, anything to get those boards off?’

‘There’s a case opener in the back kitchen for crates,’ he said.

‘You’ll go and get it,’ she told him, ‘then you’ll come back here with a torch and we’ll have those boards off. Come along, Sam,’ she said. ‘Great big bully like you afraid of a little ghost?’

‘No fear,’ he said, and obeyed.

Left alone, Phryne did not try to see, because it was too dark. She laid an ear against the boards and listened. The feeling of despair was overwhelming and she could taste brass in her mouth. If this wasn’t what she thought it was, then it might well be a ghost. The sobbing continued.

Big Sam came back before she had time to get too frightened. He brought with him a case opener, a sledgehammer, a torch, and reinforcements in the form of Gabriel. They stood shoulder to shoulder, waiting for orders. Between them, Phryne considered, they’d have no trouble bringing down a good solid stone building, much less a mere assemblage of badly nailed planks.

‘I want all those boards off as soon as you can,’ she told them. ‘But quietly, too. No need to wake the whole house.’

Big Sam grinned at Gabriel. They flexed a few muscles. Then they each took hold of an end of one of the boards and peeled it off the wall by main force. As a spectacle, it was impressive. Phryne held the torch and dodged flying splinters. In not much more than the average trice, the boards were all removed and a door stood revealed. Behind it Phryne could hear something wailing.

‘Open that door, Sam,’ she said urgently. ‘Right now!’

Sam shoved his huge comrade aside and inspected the door. Then he crooked two sets of fingers in the gaps above and below it and hauled. Once, twice he hauled, stamping as the door cracked and protested. No door could have stood it. Immovable object became movable with Sam’s irresistible force and broke in half. He dropped the bits and dusted his hands, grinning as Gabriel slapped him on the back.

Through the cloud of dust and broken door something wailed and slumped into the yard, and Sam caught it by reflex. It was a child.

Phryne took charge before they could react. ‘Gabriel, go get Mrs Truebody right away, but don’t tell anyone else what has happened. Sam, you hold her up. I’m going to look into this prison.’

Phryne took the torch and inspected the ghost’s lair. It was a small stone building with a flagged floor and roof. There was an old sink with a tap which dripped. There was a drain in the floor. There was nothing else. No crumb of food. No coverings. No bed. Not even a cup.

Phryne felt the sense of despair ebb and fade away. ‘Alas, poor ghost,’ she told the air. ‘I’ll take her away, and you can rest in peace. And when I find out who has done this, they will be sorry. I promise.’

By the time Phryne had left the old scullery, Mrs Truebody arrived. She listened carefully as Phryne outlined her problem. The child had stopped wailing and was snuggled into Sam’s embrace.