Murder in the Dark (30 page)

‘Don’t watch the knife, block the exits,’ said Phryne practically. ‘Tell me, did you send the coral snake?’

‘Yes, I went to some trouble to deter you,’ he said, the knife still making patterns, a snake hypnotising birds. ‘I like snakes and it was rather expensive. What became of it?’

‘I’m sorry,’ said Phryne. ‘My cat killed it.’

The Joker gave an angry hiss. ‘I hate cats,’ he said.

‘Yes, I thought you might. Now, tell me who hired you to kill Gerald. You promised,’ she reminded him.

‘I was paid by a blind trust called Adventures Limited,’ he said. ‘Is that enough for you?’

‘No,’ said Phryne. They weren’t out of the woods yet. This was a dangerously slippery person and even now, as Ted covered one exit and Rob stood guarding the kitchen door, he could kill and get away, striking like the snakes he loved and slipping into the undergrowth of huts and sheds. ‘Oh, and incidentally, did you really expect Marigold to still be alive? You shut her in that old laundry five days ago now. She wasn’t exactly well fed to begin with.’

‘So she’s dead? That is a relief,’ he said, and Sam roared and charged.

The Joker stabbed him in the upper arm as he was gathered into a gorilla embrace. Sam didn’t seem to notice the wound.

‘You bastard,’ bellowed Sam, holding the Joker around the waist, shaking him as a dog shakes a rat and slapping the knife out of his hand. ‘You left my little girl in there to die? You mongrel bastard!’

He snapped the Joker in mid-air like a snake and threw him away to lie crumpled against the smashed boards of Marigold’s prison.

Phryne ran to the body. The head lolled on the broken neck. He was still warm. But he was completely dead. Dead in an instant. And his hood had slipped back from his face.

‘Oh dear,’ said Phryne to the corpse, even now hearing that detestable light voice discussing her imminent death. ‘And I let you share all those baths, Gilbert.’

‘Jeez,’ said Sam shakily. ‘I never meant to kill him.’

‘You don’t know your own strength, mate,’ said Ted, removing his hand rolled cigarette from behind his ear and relighting it.

‘Much better this way,’ said Rob, reaching out to help Phryne up. ‘Did you hear what he said about Australia? Godforsaken, he said. Foreign bastard.’

Phryne’s teeth began to chatter. She was flooded with cold. Her knees were now entirely failing to support her. She leaned on the wall.

‘It’s all right,’ said Phryne to Sam. ‘Pure self defence. There will not be a charge. You just saved all our lives, Sam, and Marigold’s as well.’

‘Here, Miss,’ said Sam, worried by her pallor. ‘I think you’d better take me up on that free carry I offered you once.’

‘I think I should,’ said Phryne, and was borne into the kitchen in strong arms.

Mrs Truebody was a veteran housekeeper and thought she had seen it all: hunting accidents, fowl pest, hysterical pregnancies, carriage accidents, and even that Patent Steam Pressure Cooker which had patently exploded so impressively, taking out all the windows of the kitchen and leaving everyone hard of hearing for three days. But a murder, a mass poisoning, and several stabbing injuries were trying her patience and extending her expertise. She had turned the back kitchen into her dressing station, and the Werribee doctor, McPherson, was there now, swabbing and stitching, assisted by Minnie.

As soon as Sam had been stitched, he had put on Gabriel’s shirt (which was unbloodied) and gone to fetch Marigold. Then—of all things—he had shown her the body of that terrible young man and said, ‘That’s him, Marigold. He can’t hurt you no more. He’s dead.’

And Marigold, instead of screaming and weeping, had just touched Sam very gently on the face and gone back of her own accord to her room, where she was now, apparently, soundly asleep.

‘It doesn’t seem right somehow,’ complained Mrs Truebody to Miss Fisher, who was also patched with plasters on two small wounds. Miss Fisher was dressed in her page’s costume with the addition of a soft cotton blouse as her jerkin was soiled with mud, slime and blood. She was drinking strongly sedative valerian tea and smoking a gasper.

‘It is necessary for the child to know that the monster is dead,’ she said soothingly. ‘Now she knows that, she can sleep. You are doing a wonderful job, Mrs T.’

‘The old lady used to call me that,’ said Mrs Truebody. ‘What she’d think of these goings-on! Half the guests doped and sleeping on the ground!’

‘How are they?’

‘Doctor says they’re just asleep,’ said Mrs Truebody. ‘They arranged them comfortably and left them where they were. Except Mr Templar and Miss Templar, of course. They got carried to their beds. The doctor says that none of the injuries is serious. Even your young man, Mr Booth. He’s in the front parlour with the police. He asked if you could join them at your convenience, Miss Phryne.’

‘Which will be when I have finished this tea. I have had a strenuous evening.’

Mrs Truebody approved of this attitude. Miss Fisher’s face had regained much of its colour but the cigarette smoke betrayed a faint tremor in her hands. Mrs Truebody applied her best remedy for anything short of actual death. ‘We’ve still got lots of food. How about a tiny little slice of my game pie?’

‘It’s very good game pie,’ conceded Phryne. ‘Just a sliver, then. Or maybe a bit more than a sliver. And perhaps some of that fruit salad? And did I tell you that you make wonderful apple snow?’

Mrs Truebody preened. Phryne ate her supper with the relish of one who had been unsure whether her future would hold any more game pie, cigarettes or, indeed, life.

The doctor reported most casualties had been attended to and was, it seemed, offering Minnie a job.

‘You’ve got a nice neat hand and you aren’t squeamish,’ he said. ‘Call on me when you finish this task. Nurse attendant pays a bit better than housemaid,’ he added.

‘Good,’ said Minnie. ‘I’m saving up to get married.’

Dr McPherson left to attend to others. The kitchen gradually emptied of staff, as Mrs Truebody sent them to bed.

By midnight, Phryne Fisher was presiding over a miscellaneous feast into which Jack Robinson, his sergeant Hugh Collins and a bandaged Nicholas were tucking as though they had not eaten for days. Phryne joined them.

‘Good pies these,’ remarked Robinson with his mouth full.

‘Not as good as Mrs Butler’s, but good,’ said Phryne, brushing crumbs off her blouse.

‘Now, what have you been up to, eh?’ asked Robinson indulgently.

‘Well, since you ask, I have been threatened, nearly bitten by a venomous reptile, and chased all round the houses by an internationally renowned murderer with a knife. Other than that, it’s been quiet. Now tell me something—have you ever seen that man before, Jack?’

‘No,’ said Robinson, looking, as directed, at Nicholas.

‘He’s Secret Service, isn’t he?’ she asked. ‘I kept inserting your name into the conversation and he kept not reacting to it. But I knew he must be something in the policeman line, because of the things he was able to find out.’

‘Ah,’ said Robinson, taking another piece of apple pie and dousing it in cream.

‘You didn’t think I might be the Joker?’ asked Nicholas.

‘No,’ said Phryne. ‘Not after I saw you in that tree with the rifle. You had a perfect shot. The Joker would not have been able to resist it.’

‘Probably not,’ said Nicholas.

‘So, what is it—are you in the Secret Service?’

‘I can’t tell you,’ he said uncomfortably. ‘Neither confirm nor deny.’

‘He’s high up,’ said Robinson. ‘His letter of accreditation isn’t from Scotland Yard. Anyway, he’s never a police officer.

I’d know.’

‘Right,’ said Phryne. ‘Are you staying for the rest of the party?’

‘Phryne, you and Sam between you managed to catch and kill an assassin that no one else has been able to even identify, and because I was here being useless, I’ll get the credit. Honourable wounds and all. I don’t need to go home just yet.’

Jack grunted. ‘I spoke to that huge bloke. They build ’em big in Werribee! If you can vouch for what he said, then it’s a clear case of justifiable homicide.’

‘I can vouch for every word. I never got so close to death, Jack, not even in France in the Great War. Gilbert would have killed me without a thought.’

‘He must have been a kind of . . .’ Jack groped for the word, ‘. . . those lizards that change colour and go insane when you put them on plaid?’

‘Chameleons,’ said Sergeant Collins. ‘Though I believe the story about the plaid isn’t true, sir.’

‘Never mind that. Chameleon. He just fitted into the company he was in.’

‘He was a very convincing artist in an artists’ colony,’ Nicholas said, sipping his whisky. ‘A believable mechanic in a motor yard.’

‘An aesthete who likes scent,’ said Phryne. ‘For a while I thought that Sylvanus might have shut Marigold up, because he always wears that dire freesia scent. But Gilbert smelt sweet because he wanted to blend in—he even used to borrow my baths.’

‘He ran out of Rose de Gueldy,’ Sergeant Collins informed Phryne. ‘There was an empty bottle in his bag. Plus a lot of other things,’ he added.

‘Like an address book and diary which I handed to the correct authorities . . . and a lot of drugs, weapons, knives. Beautiful knives, sharp as razors,’ said Robinson.

Phryne did not want to think about the sharpness of the Joker’s blades.

‘The one that stabbed you was called Eleanora, after his mother,’ she informed Nicholas. ‘And he kept a diary? Have you read it?’

‘No, it’s in code. I don’t even know what language it’s in.’

‘Never mind. Tomorrow morning I will give you the person who hired the Joker. Now, I am going to bed. Are you staying here, Jack?’

‘Yes, Miss, the housekeeper gave us a couple of rooms.’

‘Good, then I’ll see you in the morning,’ said Phryne, and no appeals to her sense of honour proved strong enough to make her tell Nicholas or Robinson what she knew.

‘She’s like that,’ said Jack Robinson, holding out his tea cup for a refill.

‘And nothing to be done about it, I suppose,’ sighed Nicholas.

‘This time I am going to read you the saint’s life,’ insisted Dot. The girls agreed, rather mutinously. They much preferred miracles to boring old bishops. ‘This is the feast of Sylvester,’ said Dot.

Jane and Ruth attended as she recounted Sylvester’s blameless life. Jane pricked up her ears when she heard that he had cured the Emperor Constantine of leprosy. But they privately considered Sylvester a bore, and hoped that the next saint would be more intriguing.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

It was meet that we should make merry, and be
glad, for this thy brother was dead, and is alive
again; and was lost, and is found.

Luke 15: 32
King James Bible

Phryne slept late. When she woke, she limped to the bath and flung in a whole handful of the chestnut blossom bath salts, one scent which the unlamented Gilbert had never shared. She was soaking luxuriously and just beginning to feel her muscles unknot when someone tapped on the door. The sound was disturbing. As she suppressed her start, she realised that she had thought it was Gilbert, asking for her bath as usual. He had fooled her completely. But now that she analysed it, for Gilbert to have been right there when she emerged from the Iris Room, he must have been watching her like a hawk. She banished this meditation with alacrity. Gilbert was dead, and it had enormously improved him.

‘Go away,’ said Phryne firmly.

‘If you can open the door, Miss Fisher, I have coffee,’ said Nicholas.

‘Oh, very well,’ said Phryne grumpily. She hauled herself out of the bath and unbolted the door, leaving it to swing wide as she returned pointedly to the foam and felt the perfumed heat draw the pain from her bones once more.

‘I have Mrs Truebody’s best Arabica,’ said Nicholas. ‘And a little of the green chartreuse to act as a tonic.’

‘You’re almost forgiven for interrupting my ablutions,’ said Phryne, drying her hands on the towel he held out and taking the coffee cup. ‘How are you this morning?’ she asked after a blissful interval, having drunk the coffee and the chartreuse in alternate sips.

‘Bit stiff,’ said Nicholas, wriggling a shoulder under his blue shirt. ‘Stitches are pulling, I expect. And you?’

‘Sore to the heels,’ confessed Phryne. ‘I never ran so fast or stayed so still in my whole life. I suppose you are used to this sort of thing?’

‘Well, no, I don’t know, this was my first mission. I’m very junior, you know.’

‘Yes, they must have picked you up straight out of university. What did you read?’

‘Humanities,’ he said. ‘Languages. At Cambridge, as you say. Wasn’t much on offer for me except teaching. No friends of the family to get me into the diplomatic service. So when they offered me the chance, I jumped at it. And I owe you a great deal, Phryne. Pity they didn’t recruit you, too.’

‘Who says they didn’t?’ asked Phryne, and watched with pleasure as Nicholas’s cornflower blue eyes narrowed. ‘More coffee,’ she requested. He refilled her cup.

‘No, I really can’t tell,’ he said. ‘Did they?’

‘Neither confirm nor deny,’ said Phryne smugly. ‘How are the rest of the people this morning?’

‘All of the acolytes who got the micky in the marzipan slept like logs and have woken refreshed. The ones with the hangovers are the ones who missed out on the marzipan but subsequently drank themselves catatonic trying to absorb the shock of someone wanting to kill Gerald. He and his sister appear to be well. I find it very hard to tell with those two.’

‘Yes, they are something straight out of Mr Wells’ books, aren’t they?’

‘Indeed.’ Nicholas could not help noticing that more and more of Phryne was being revealed as the bath foam oxidised and slid down her admirable shoulders, her champagne breasts, her . . . he dragged his mind back to the subject. ‘Or maybe a Greek myth. Or a Teutonic one. The house staff are still a bit jumpy, but Mrs Truebody has them well in hand. What a slave-driver that woman would make! The little girl Marigold is still asleep.

‘Who else? Oh yes, the horsemen and the others, they never noticed a thing until the screaming began. Actually until it had been going on for some time. Then they all hotfooted it up to help and carried bodies and refreshments and ended up deciding that they ought to guard all those sleeping acolytes. So they set up their camp just outside the tent, which attracted the attention of the jazz musicians. So they had an all-night party, along with the acolytes who were still awake and the medieval musicians, and are presently indisposed for interview. They tell me that the New Orleans jazz version of “
In Dulci
Jubilo
” has to be heard to be believed.’