Murder in the Dark (26 page)

Sunday, 30th December
Phryne rose betimes, ate a solid breakfast, and sat down on the verandah to await the coming of the Hispano-Suiza and the heartening presence of her familiar friends. She was becoming keyed up: a hunting alertness was refining her eyesight and interfering with her digestion. Tonight, the Feast of Fools, would produce the assassin. He or she must be caught. Ted came and leaned in the doorway beside her. He was carrying a yard broom.

‘No news?’ he asked, speaking like a prisoner, not moving his lips. This also allowed him to retain his hand rolled cigarette in his mouth.

‘None,’ sighed Phryne. ‘But the attack must be tonight. This Joker is peculiar about killing people in the midst of their favourite activity, apparently. Tonight the Templars will be doing their favourite thing, at about eleven, and that is when he will strike. And we have to stop him.’

‘We have to stop him,’ repeated Ted.

‘That’s right.’

‘When no one else has ever laid a glove on him?’

‘Yes.’

‘Jeez,’ said Ted.

‘Indeed.’

They said nothing for a while, looking out at the rolling green parkland and the men setting out the goals and the boundary rope on the polo ground.

‘Reckon we’ve got our work cut out for us,’ said Ted.

‘We have,’ said Phryne.

Silence fell again.

‘I better get a move on,’ said Ted, and went away.

The next visitor was Nicholas. He looked haggard. A night with Nerine really took it out of a man, Phryne knew. She had seen the pallid specimens on the morning after, gulping restorative coffee and whimpering at sudden noises. Some of this had to do with her consumption of Kentucky sour mash bourbon, which an Eastern Market wine merchant imported especially for her. The rest was all down to Nerine herself.

‘Any coffee in your thermos?’ he asked, sitting down suddenly. ‘The stuff at breakfast tasted like dishwater.’

‘Here,’ Phryne supplied him. ‘Keep out of the sun. Would you like some aspirin?’

‘Yes,’ he said weakly. ‘About ten will do to start with.’

‘There’s a paper or two in my bag.’

He picked up the decorated Pierrot bag but seemed unable to work the catch. Phryne took it from him out of pure Christian pity and handed over the drug. He washed the powders down with more coffee.

‘I feel awful,’ he confessed.

‘You look like the “before” picture in a Beecham’s Pills advertisement.’

‘That woman can drink,’ he said. ‘We drank a lot of drinks. And she sang a lot of songs. It’s all a bit of a blur, actually.’

‘I can imagine. Sit quietly here in the shade and you’ll feel better in half an hour. Not in mid season form,’ she said, patting his hand, ‘but better than you do at present.’

‘Couldn’t feel worse,’ he groaned.

‘Is this your very first hangover?’ asked Phryne. ‘What a sweet, sheltered life you have been leading, to be sure. Why not go and lie on my bed? It’s nice and quiet there, better than your tent. Here’s the key. I’ll come and wake you presently.’

Nicholas had never been so grateful for any favour. Clutching the thermos and his head he staggered into the house to find the Iris Room where, with any luck, there might be blessed darkness and coolness and all the other things of which he stood in need.

Phryne did not chuckle until he was safely gone. First hangover. Poor boy. When had she first experienced a hangover? Ah, yes. At a schoolgirl festival of some sort. She and Bunji Ross had got into the sweet sherry. The next day she had been expelled again, but she would have welcomed being executed, she had felt so sick . . . and apart from an unfortunate encounter with some methylated raki in Paris, that was the last hangover she had had. Phryne didn’t like pain. It hurt. She avoided it whenever she could. And if that meant not drinking that fifth cocktail, then there it was. It was an imperfect universe.

But a very pretty one, this morning. A little wind had picked up, just enough to take the edge off the heat. The grass was green. The sky was blue, just like Verlaine’s sad little poem. At least Phryne had no intention of weeping without cease over her misspent youth. She had not so much misspent it as invested it wisely, and she only regretted the bare minimum of it.

She sat basking in the early morning sun. Presently the big red car swished to a halt beside her. A young woman in a terra-cotta hat and jacket, carrying a suitcase, alighted.

‘Hello, Dot,’ said Phryne sleepily. ‘Isn’t it a lovely day?’

‘Yes, it is,’ said Dot, who was now enjoying her post breakfast drives with Mr Butler. ‘I’ve been to early mass and that’s why we’re a little late. Here’s your stuff, Miss,’ she said, offering the suitcase.

Phryne stood up to go into the house and then remembered Nicholas.

‘Oh dear, I just recalled that there is a young man in my bed, sleeping off a hangover. No, don’t look shocked, he debauched himself in other company than mine. I just offered him a bed, not one with me in it. Never mind. We can tiptoe. Any more information about the man we are thinking about, Dot?’

‘No, Miss, just what I told you last night. Mr Bert and Mr Cec are real worried about you. And Mr Robinson.’

‘I’ll be careful. And I’m armed. And forewarned, as well. Did you bring the extra ammunition?’

‘Yes, Miss, it’s in the case. You think this might come to shooting?’

‘It might, then again, it might not,’ temporised Phryne, not wanting to worry Dot unduly. ‘I’m going to brief my accomplices this morning, before the polo match.’

‘Well, I knew this was a Godless gathering, Miss, but that is too much!’ exclaimed Dot, really offended.

‘What?’ asked Phryne. ‘Keep your voice down, remember the afflicted.’

‘The polo match!’ said Dot.

‘What about it? You consider polo anti-Christian? You might be right, at that. All those ball games strike me as having originated in some barbarian army, where the Mongol hordes played catch with enemy heads.’

Dot dismissed the Mongol hordes with a gesture. ‘Miss, it’s Sunday!’

‘Oh,’ said Phryne, who had not given the Sunday Observance Statutes a thought. ‘So it is. One rather loses track of the days. Never mind, Dot dear. You can pray for the heathens and I’ll try to keep the Templars alive, what about that? Now let’s just put the case inside and collect the laundry really quietly. You have never had a hangover, so you will not know the tortures that Nicholas is suffering.’

Dot subsided. Phryne put the case in the room, picked up the laundry bag, collected her empty thermos and closed the door. The young reprobate was snoring like an orchestra. Another reason not to sleep with him, thought Phryne.

‘Did you bring the money? I might have to pay my army,’ said Phryne.

Dot gave her a purse. It was satisfactorily heavy.

‘Oh, and the chestnut blossom bath salts,’ said Dot. ‘Miss Steinbach sent them. From America,’ Dot added, impressed.

‘And those books you wanted. Is there anything else, Miss?’

‘Sit with me for a while, until Mr Butler gets back from debriefing poor old Tom Ventura. I gather he isn’t any happier.’

‘No, Miss, but it’s all gone well so far. Not even any injuries to mention. You haven’t . . . you haven’t found that poor little boy?’

‘No, Dot, but I am at last seeing light at the end of the tunnel, and we must pray that it isn’t an oncoming Cornish Express. What are the girls doing?’

‘Drawing, Miss. Ruth found that paintbox she got for school and never needed, and now both of them are mad about watercolours. They’re painting the sea today,’ said Dot. ‘Miss Eliza says that they can do whatever they like on Sunday, as long as it doesn’t damage the house or wake her from her nap.’

‘Another Godless heathen.’ Phryne grinned at her worried companion. ‘You’re surrounded by them, Dot dear.’

‘Actually I’ve been getting on with the mending,’ confessed Dot. ‘God forgive me, but those girls go through socks like a hot knife through butter.’

‘And you like mending,’ pressed Phryne.

Dot blushed as though confessing a grievous fault to a stern priest. ‘I do,’ she said. ‘Oh, here’s Mr Butler.’

‘Hello,’ Phryne greeted him. ‘How is your Mr Ventura today?’

‘Seems to be a bit more cheerful,’ said the chauffeur, pushing back his cap. ‘Mind you, couldn’t have got any more doleful. But the party’s nearly over, and nothing dreadful has happened. Yet, as he’d say.’

‘All right. I’ll keep in touch, Dot, and you have the phone number if you need to find me. Take care,’ said Phryne as she watched Dot being handed into the red car. ‘And I’ll take care, too,’ she promised. The Hispano-Suiza started with a roar and slid away, scattering gravel.

Presently Phryne roused herself and wandered down to the horse lines, where preparations for the polo match were feverish. She was just about to circumnavigate a huge elm when she heard a sentiment which made her stop, her hands on the rough grey bark.

‘We’ll pound ’em,’ someone was saying in a fine upper-class accent. ‘Pound ’em into the dust.’

‘I say, steady on, Johnson!’ murmured another voice. ‘Brotherhood of the mallet, you know.’

‘Brotherhood of the mallet my foot,’ retorted Johnson. ‘They’ve got girls on their team. It’s an insult to the game.’

‘They ride pretty well,’ said Ralph Norton. ‘I don’t reckon there’s any insult in them wanting to play our game. Trying to improve themselves. Hullo-ullo-ullo!’ he carolled as Phryne came out from behind her tree. ‘Hear you got on well with my Buttercup.’

‘She’s a darling,’ said Phryne, as the little beast, hearing her name, tittupped forward to receive a carrot from her doting master.

‘Isn’t she though?’ enthused Ralph. ‘Johnson, this is Miss Fisher. Miss Fisher, this is Johnson.’

Johnson, a sleek lad with prominent teeth, evidently approved of girls who rode well but did not try to play polo. He shook Phryne’s hand.

‘Delighted,’ he said.

‘So, you are going to beat the Tigers?’ asked Phryne, caressing Buttercup’s silky nose.

‘Of course,’ said Johnson airily. ‘I only hope they don’t fall apart too fast. They might just be able to give us a game.’

‘I see,’ said Phryne. She nodded to Ralph, and passed on. She found Jill and Ann rinsing dust out of equine eyes and cleaning hoofs.

‘Phryne! Good to see you! You haven’t met our other mounts. This is Black Boy, named after King Charles,’ said Jill. ‘This is Rapide, and this is Ann’s pony George.’

‘Pleased to meet you,’ said Phryne to the eager, questing noses, distributing some carrots which she had pinched from Ralph Norton’s supply. He wouldn’t miss them. ‘Aren’t you the pretty ones, though! No more now, neddies, you have to work hard today.’

‘My old dad swears by a handful of sugar just before they go on,’ said Jill. ‘I reckon it works, too. How do they look?’ she asked with pardonable pride.

Compared to the Grammar ponies, these were unkempt and homely. But they were clean and cared for and practically dancing in their horseshoes.

‘They do you credit,’ she told Jill and Ann, and walked on towards the lake.

Phryne, unusually, had time to waste and nothing to do so, in a spirit of satisfaction after she had ascertained that certain of her hypotheses were correct, she sat down on a rustic bench under a spreading monkey puzzle and opened her book. The polo match was at eleven. Plenty of time to find out what Hercule Poirot would make of the strange death of Roger Ackroyd. She lit a Sobranie.

A bleat and a strong whiff of goat, and she knew that her old friends were with her again. This time there were three goats, being walked on halters by the Goat Lady.

‘Sorry, I haven’t a leaf on me,’ she apologised to Mintie.

‘But you could give your butt to Willie, here,’ said the Goat Lady. ‘This is Willie and this is Wayland,’ she introduced two billy goats of fearsome aspect. ‘Willie got a taste for tobacco, somehow. I’m going up to the house for the breakfast leftovers. Never ate so well in all my puff.’

Phryne could believe it. Madge the Goat Lady had certainly filled out since the Last Best Party had been going on.

‘How are you going to manage when we’ve packed up and gone?’ she asked, stubbing out the cigarette and allowing Willie to snuff it up from her hand. He chewed on it like an old sailor. Mintie nudged Phryne and solicited a scratch between the ears.

‘Oh, I manage, Miss, I manage like I always have. I’ve got my goats and milk and cheese, and I’ve got all the vegies that they don’t eat, and I pick up some work here and there. I got my pension. This party is just a treat, that’s all.’

‘Yes, so it is,’ said Phryne. ‘What does Wayland like to eat?’

‘Just about anything,’ said the Goat Lady. ‘Got to go,’ she added, and led the goats around the lake, towards the house and the kitchen and a truly succulent breakfast. Phryne was pleased that Mintie had not scorned her because she had none of her favourite herb.

She returned to her book. Time passed. Phryne stowed the book and stretched. On the way to the polo ground, she detoured through the knot garden. Fortunately, there was no one to explain the rules to Phryne as the two sides lined up. She already knew that the game was divided into chukkas of seven minutes each. The ponies danced and neighed. The riders, in the case of the Grammar Boys, glittered. Phryne put on a pair of smoked glasses. The sward was emerald green and well watered so perhaps falls might be soft. The umpires reported all was ready. Then the game began.

After a few minutes Phryne began to get the hang of it. Inasmuch as she ever got the hang of games. The ponies darted across the lines, the riders clouted the ball with their mallets, and the game rushed, amazingly quickly, up and down the huge ground. The odd thing was that neither side seemed to be able to score. Just as the ball got within thudding distance of the Tigers’ goal, a Grammar Boy would sneak it away. Just when the ball approached the Grammar goal, Dougie on Mongrel or Murph on Moke would sidle in and steal it. Chukka after chukka passed and still no one managed to belt the ball through the goals. The Tigers were being run ragged. The pristine Grammar Boys were sweating. And everyone, Phryne included, was barracking.

‘They’re good,’ observed Albert Green, the elderly stableman, who was sharing Phryne’s verdant bank.