Murder in the Dark (25 page)

‘Mat’ it was and Phryne did the little word gesture.

‘A?’

‘A’ was accepted and Phryne enveloped herself in a rich red robe and stuck the fairy queen’s crown on her head. Then she adopted a look of lordly condescension and waved a hand at the peasants. They went though all the variations of queen and lord before someone finally happened upon ‘peer’.

And now it was time for the whole word. Phryne took off her robes, laid out her carpet, sat down cross-legged upon it in imitation of a yogi, and folded her arms. There was a dumbfounded silence.

Then Gilbert, the young man with the scented bath fetish, began to laugh helplessly.

‘What?’ demanded several voices.

‘Can’t you see it, you dolts? It’s the cleverest today,’ he giggled. ‘Onomatopoeia. On-a-mat-appear. Oh, well done, Miss Fisher!’

Phryne bowed and went back to her place.

The last charade of the afternoon was Sylvanus’s. He came on stage with a tall young man who was holding a branch above his head. The young man swayed and bent. ‘Wind?’ the watchers guessed. ‘Breeze?’ Sylvanus unshipped something from his shoulder and began to chop. The young man shrieked silently. Phryne was unsettled. This was far too cruel for an afternoon’s amusement. This was charades, not grand guignol.

‘Tree,’ she called. Sylvanus grinned at her.

Then the stage was set for a family dinner. Several people were sitting on the floor on cushions (probably for tonight). Sylvanus was draped in a long rich garment and had a blue kefiyah on his head. He looked surprisingly authentic as a sheik of the desert. His concubines offered him tea and he drank it, sighing and putting a hand to his head theatrically. If it had had a caption the scene would have been entitled ‘Oh, woe!’

Then running, stumbling, came a half-naked man, clothed only in a sheepskin. His hair was long and disarrayed, his body striped with mud, his feet filthy. Husks still clung to his skin. An unprepossessing sight but Sylvanus leapt to his feet, cast his robe around the boy, and started shouting orders. One of the men objected, but was sent off immediately. The prodigal had returned to his father.

‘For this my son is come home . . .’ said Phryne.

‘Son!’ called Marie-Louise.

Whole word. Sylvanus, wrapped in a black cloak, lurked in a corner. Another person, equally wrapped, approached him. Sylvanus handed over an envelope marked ‘CASH’ and received in return a roll of paper marked ‘SECRETS’.

‘Treason!’ exclaimed Sabine.

Everyone applauded, then began to stand. Five o’clock and the hearties and horsemen would be out of the bar by now. Everyone felt they had done well and deserved the drink of their choice. They needed a wash and brush-up before they dressed for the Arab feast, and someone was going to have to charm some butter from the housekeeper to get the burned cork off Minou.

‘Remarkable,’ said the American.

‘Yes, sir,’ said the second man.

The third man nodded.

Phryne decided on a swim. The water was cold, her hair needed a wash, and there was something about lying in water, supported and buoyant, staring idly at the sky, that assisted her thought processes. She lathered and rinsed her hair before she went into the water. Definitely an egg shampoo when she got home. That fierce combing had pulled out what felt like handfuls of hair. Meanwhile she had a riddle to solve and an assassin to foil.

Phryne rocked in the cradle of the deep, half asleep, not consciously thinking . . .

When she swam ashore she had no clue as to the identity of the assassin, but she thought she might know where Tarquin was. And who had kidnapped him.

Her bath was scented with roses, for innocence. As usual, Gilbert was waiting for her, and slipped inside saying, ‘Oh, divine! Heaven must smell like this.’

‘If it doesn’t, I’m not going,’ replied Phryne. ‘But then, I might not have the option.’

She liked her Arab clothes. Fortunately the weather had cooled a little, or they might have been too heavy to endure. She had a loose white shift, ankle length, a loose dark red robe, a lot of tin jewellery and several filmy black veils. Presumably these were to be disposed as the wearer thought fit. Phryne let them drift down over her head and pinned them where they fell. It made a fluid and elegant effect. She left a long edge so that she could cover her face. She remembered being mistaken for a man in Egypt, when she had been dressed in drill trousers suitable for investigating dusty tombs. Women washing at a well, unveiled, had thrown the skirts of their gowns over their heads, revealing their salient attributes but covering their faces. Strange place, Egypt. Phryne had not liked it much. The antiquities were fine but the weather was atrocious and the veiled women made her uncomfortable. What was seething behind those blank exteriors?

Nicholas joined her, looking like an extra from
The Son of
the Sheik
, though his butter-coloured hair and fine blue eyes rather ruined the illusion. He looked, in fact, just like one of the romantic heroes in railway novels. Phryne said so.

‘Thanks,’ he murmured. ‘I think. Tell me how to comport myself at an Arab feast, Phryne.’

‘Simple. Eat with your hands, but only your right hand. Easy way to remember is to sit on your left hand. Your left hand is unclean. The food will be very tasty and easy to eat with the fingers. You will like it,’ instructed Phryne.

And she was right, thought Nicholas, scooping in another mouthful of saffron rice and roast lamb. No one had asked him to eat a sheep’s eye, though he was willing to do anything once. The mood of the gathering was affable. The flat bread was odd but tasty, and so were the beans in oil, and those little red peppers that packed such a punch. Forewarned by his wasabi experience, he had tasted them very gingerly and had escaped with merely a second degree burn to the soft palate. Gerald Templar, looking very fit after his day in the saddle, had announced that there would be no karez that night, so Nicholas could afford to relax a little.

Phryne, reclining next to him, was remarkably attractive, though she was just a bundle of garments, sketchily hinting that there might be a womanly shape under them. The hash scent of the hubble-bubbles was almost subsumed by very strong incense, smelling of sandalwood.

The poetry recitation was beginning, and since they knew what poem Nicholas would recite, he had not been asked.

Phryne had a poem prepared. The theme was ‘regret’. Gilbert stood up to recite, draping his robe gracefully. What he recited was unbearably sad, but he showed no sign of being affected, speaking as clearly and unemotionally as a child.

‘So we’ll go no more a-roving

‘So late into the night.

‘Though the heart be still as loving

‘And the moon be still as bright

‘For the sword outwears the sheath

‘As the soul wears out the breast

‘And the heart must pause to breathe

‘And love itself have rest.

‘Though the night was made for loving

‘And the day returns too soon

‘Yet we’ll go no more a-roving

‘By the light of the moon.’

Gilbert sat down. The whole company was on the verge of tears. He smiled a faint, amused smile.

Sylvanus leapt to his feet. ‘Oh the harems of Egypt were fair to behold . . .’ he began.

Oh, good old ‘Abdul the Bul-Bul Amir’, thought Phryne, blinking back tears. Crass, crude, and very biological, and it utterly destroyed the air of complete despair that Gilbert had generated.

Phryne had no time for despair. She had solved her riddle, and seated across from her, triumphantly unveiled, sat Alison, sad no longer, occasionally stroking the glossy tresses of her beautiful chestnut hair.

The Joker had gone for a little swim in the lake, avoiding the
hearties. It was a pity that the hunt had not killed, but he could
wait for his taste of blood.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

For they waddied one another till the plain was
strewn with dead,

While the score was kept so even that they
neither got ahead.

AB Paterson
‘The Geebung Polo Club’

After Abdul had come to his well-deserved conclusion, Phryne stood up to speak her deceptively artless Verlaine. Written about what he could see from his prison window, it had always moved her by its simplicity, speaking of the blue sky and the branch shaking above the roof, the bell ringing, the peaceful murmur from the village, and the prisoner’s cry, ‘My God! This is what life is!’

‘Le ciel est, par-dessus le toit
‘Si bleu, si calme!
‘Un arbre, par-dessus le toit,
‘Berce sa palme.
‘. . . Mon Dieu, mon Dieu, la vie est là.
‘Simple et tranquille.
‘Cette paisible rumeur-là
‘Vient de la ville.

‘Qu’as-tu fait, ô toi que voilà
‘Pleurant sans cesse
‘Dis, qu’as-tu fait, toi que voilà,
‘De ta jeunesse?’

For a change, Sylvanus did not sneer, possibly because of what Phryne could have said about ‘Abdul the Bul-Bul Amir’ as a poem for decent company. Or even Templar company. There were murmurs of appreciation.

Then the Lady rose, supported by her acolytes.

‘She doesn’t often recite,’ said Nicholas. ‘That was very pretty, Phryne. All I know about Verlaine is scandal.’

‘There is more to know,’ Phryne informed him, as Isabella began her poem. Her voice was beautiful, sweet and clear. Her choice was ‘The Nymph Complaining for the Death of Her Fawn’, by Andrew Marvell.

‘The wanton Troopers riding by
‘Have shot my Fawn, and it will dye.
‘Ungentle men! they cannot thrive
‘Who killed thee. Thou ne’er didst alive
‘Them any harm: alas! nor cou’d
‘Thy Death yet do them any Good . . .’

One of the three American gentlemen sitting behind Phryne—she really must find out who they were when she had a moment—said, ‘Wonderful.’ The second said, ‘Wonderful.’ And there was a pause while the third, presumably, nodded.

‘Upon the Roses it would feed
‘Until its lips ev’n seemed to Bleed
‘And then to me ’twould boldly trip
‘And print those Roses on my lip . . .’

Strong, sensuous images flooded through the company: the fawn kissing the nymph on her reddened mouth, the nymph with the snow white skin and flaxen hair of the Lady, her cool hands caressing it in death, blood on her white gauzy gown.

Phryne shook herself free of the spell. Wonder of wonders, now Gerald was going to recite. He stood up from his throne after the applause for his sister’s recitation had died away and said conversationally:

‘It was many and many a year ago,
‘In a kingdom by the sea
‘That a maiden there lived whom you may know
‘By the name of Annabel Lee;
‘And this maiden she lived with no other thought
‘Than to love and be loved by me.

‘I was a child and she was a child
‘In this kingdom by the sea
‘But we loved with a love that was more than love
‘I and my Annabel Lee;
‘With a love that the winged seraphs of heaven
‘Coveted her and me.’

Phryne saw his hand stretch out to his sister. They stood together, pale and paler, fair and fairer, while the golden voice continued the dreadful tale which had made Poe’s readers shudder and throw the paper into the fire. For a while Phryne lost the thread of the poem, contemplating the Templars: so beautiful, so strange, as alien as if they had come from another time or another planet in one of Mr Wells’ machines.

‘But our love it was stronger by far than the love
‘Of those who were older than we;
‘Of many far wiser than we;
‘And neither the angels in heaven above
‘Nor the demons down under the sea
‘Can ever dissever my soul from the soul of the beautiful Annabel Lee.

‘For the moon never beams without bringing me dreams
‘Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
‘And the stars never rise but I feel the bright eyes
‘Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
‘So all the night tide I lie down by the side
‘Of my darling—my darling—my life and my bride,
‘In her sepulchre there by the sea,
‘In her tomb by the sounding sea.’

After that, there was no more poetry. There seemed, as Phryne remarked, nothing more to be said.

‘Was I right or was I right?’ asked the American gentleman, sounding very pleased, even smug.

‘You’re right,’ said his second.

‘Yes,’ said the third, speaking for the first time. Then he nodded, just in case.

Arabic music broke out from a hidden corner (where there was probably a gramophone). Platters of sweets were carried in, and little bowls of sherbet and ice cream. Mrs Truebody’s ice cream was good, though not as good as Mrs Butler’s. Phryne leaned back and enjoyed it, and the strong aniseed tasting liqueurs which accompanied the dessert.

‘Arak,’ she told Nicholas.

‘Tastes like licorice. I’ve got someone to meet,’ he said, getting up. ‘Will you excuse me?’

‘Nerine?’ asked Phryne.

‘Nerine,’ said Nicholas, and went, relieving Phryne of a difficult decision but leaving her a little disgruntled. She ate more ice cream. Ice cream was reliable. Young men were not.

Belly dancers romped in, all jingly bracelets and skin shining with sweat. The drums pounded. The dancers twirled and gyrated. Phryne was not in the mood. She slipped out of the tent and, after a phone call to Dot, put herself to bed relatively early. Saturday was ending in virtuous isolation, which might not have been what she’d had in mind but appeared to be all that was on offer. She closed her eyes resolutely. And slept.