Murder on a Midsummer Night (11 page)

Phryne shook herself, allowed Mr Butler to seat her, and reached for her large white serviette. The soup was a delicate, very hot, beef consomme, served with sippets of toast. The professor ate neatly. Another good point. Most men slurped.

‘Apicius would not approve,’ he commented.

‘Indeed, why not?’ asked Phryne.

‘Roman cooking was always heavily seasoned with fish sauce, a dreadful condiment made by putting a lot of innocent fish into pickle and burying the whole concoction until it was—excuse me mentioning such a thing at this excellent table—rotten. After which it was, regrettably, dug up again. And slathered over everything. At one point in his book, he says, “Don’t worry if you haven’t got the right meat for the occasion. With enough fish sauce, no one will be able to tell.” Must have been ghastly. Unless, of course—’

‘You liked fish sauce. Australians drench everything in tomato sauce, probably on the same principle,’ she said.

‘And the English consider HP or Worcestershire the epitome of taste.’

‘Sad, isn’t it? When there is such excellent food in the world.’

‘You know, when I came here from Wales, I was astounded at the richness of the Australian diet. Such milk, such eggs, such ice cream! I thought it a land of milk and honey.’

‘Ah, a green salad,
salade russe
, and Mrs Butler’s special poached chicken,’ exclaimed Phryne greedily. Her hashish hunger had not quite left her. She allowed Mr Butler to carve the chicken, which he did with stately grace, and then piled her plate with goodies. The professor gave her an amused smile.

‘This is a feast! I wonder, Miss Fisher, at your slenderness! If I ate like this every day I would not fit through a door, unless liberally greased. Beautiful chicken,’ he added, tasting a slice of the moist delicate flesh. ‘Lovely salads. Now tell me, Miss Fisher, if you would be so kind, what caused you to ask me to this Lucullan banquet?’

‘I am investigating the death of Augustine Manifold, and hoped you might be able to tell me about him. I haven’t got any clear picture, you know. And although I did attend his wake at two separate parties, I still haven’t got him clear in my mind.’

‘Oh, I see,’ replied the professor, possibly a little cast down. Still, the food was wonderful and Miss Fisher kept the best in wine, as well. He sipped a little of the moselle and began, ‘He was a good fellow, Augustine . . .’

‘That’s what everyone says,’ exclaimed Phryne crossly. ‘It doesn’t mean anything, you know.’

‘No, it doesn’t,’ he agreed.

‘In any case, the port and coffee stage of lunch would be a good time for an interrogation,’ she told him. ‘Now is a good time for discussing neutral topics, like how do you like Australia? And are you staying? And how is the university treating you? And things of that order.’

He smiled again and ate a forkful of creamy
salade russe
, with its beetroot and potatoes and mayonnaise which had not come out of a jar. ‘I like it here,’ he said. ‘I never want to be cold anymore, and I never am, not cold like Wales, where you look out in meagre daylight in January and know that there are three more months of misery and gloom before you see a glint of the sun. I can manage the hot days by staying inside and reading Xenophon. I have a nice house in Parkville and a housekeeper who can cook. Everything is so new here, so fresh, so unlike Europe, laden down with its horrible history of war and death. I had quite enough of war in the Middle East. The university appreciates my scholarship—such as it is—and I have enough time to get on with my book.’

‘Indeed? Thank you, Mr Butler, perhaps half a glass. What is your topic?’

‘Xenophon,’ he said, accepting another glass of wine. ‘
Anabasis
.’

‘What I Did On My Holidays,’ said Phryne.

‘Now, now,’ he chided. ‘Xenophon is relevant. Modern, even. Consider our recent history. A Polish legion fought its way across Russia and Siberia during the revolution, and when they finally saw the sea, bless them, they didn’t call out in Polish but in Greek—’

‘
Thalassa, thalassa
!’ echoed Phryne. ‘Yes. True. Same went for Mawson, who had crawled the last few miles, when he realised he was at the end of a terrible journey. “
Thalassa, thalassa
!” It means “Home, home!”’

‘Or, “Rescue, rescue” or, perhaps, “We are, in all probability and against all odds, actually going to live through this.” Yes, indeed. How I recall—’

He broke off and Phryne’s thumbs pricked.

‘You recall something about the war?’ she asked. ‘I never went near the Middle East, I was in France, driving an ambulance.’ Professor Rowlands looked at Phryne and decided, visibly, to trust her with his reminiscences.

‘Yes, well, I was in Palestine with Allenby, a consultant about things classic, incomprehensible or archaeological. He was an amazing man. Looked just like an Empire hero, you know: tall, bluff, built like an ox, temper like Zeus Pater, chin you could strike matches on. The troops called him The Bull. When he was on one of his lightning inspections they’d radio ahead, “BL” which stood for “Bull Loose”. But he was remarkably learned and interested in everything.’

‘Archaeology?’

‘Certainly. And birds. No, thank you, I really couldn’t eat another crumb.’ Mr Butler cleared the table as the professor went on. ‘Storks, for instance. He had all the lookouts reporting when they saw storks flying and in what direction. Big puzzle in the ornithology world, apparently, where did the storks go when they migrated into Africa. Allenby solved it. Admittedly most ornithologists don’t have an army to do their observations. And whenever the troops found anything buried when they were digging—lot of digging in army life, you know—he’d send me to find out what it was. They found at least two beautiful pavements, one Roman and one Hellenic, probably Herodian. And bones, lots of bones.’

‘Fascinating,’ said Phryne, as Mr Butler brought in the sorbet of tropical fruits and the ice cream.

‘It really was,’ said the professor. ‘I didn’t want to be there, but then, neither did Allenby. He’d been sent to Palestine to fail. They said he called Haig a blithering idiot.’

‘No argument here,’ said Phryne, who had her own opinions on that general.

‘No, nor here—and his only child, a son, had just been killed in France. He was sick of soldiering and just wanted to go home to his birds. So he wanted to finish the war, and the only way he could do that was to win, and he rather efficiently did that, in a very short time. He took Damascus, cleared the Turks and Germans out of the whole of Palestine, and became Governor of Jerusalem, much against his will. He did it so well that the Jews thought he was pro-Arab and the Arabs that he was pro-Jew.’

‘Nice,’ approved Phryne. ‘I remember seeing the newsreel film of him walking into Jerusalem.’

‘Yes, well, he was far too modest a chap to ride into the Holy City. Considering the precedent, you know.’

‘Quite,’ agreed Phryne.

‘I was working with Richard Meinertzhagen, the spy. Clever Dick, the soldiers called him. He was a very cunning chap. Been with Allenby since the Boer War. We worked out a series of codes based on Plautus. That’s why I’ve never been able to read the plays without remembering the war, you see.’

‘
Thalassa
?’ prompted Phryne.

‘Oh, yes, we were lost in a dust storm in Judea, in the wilderness. Terrible storm. Dust in everything, mouth, ears, eyes, bitter dust. Hot as the depths of the inferno. We knew we would die if we didn’t find shelter soon. But no use sitting down and crying, so we staggered on. Up, always up, hoping to get out of the dust. Then it cleared and we saw the River Jordan, and we cried “
Thalassa, thalassa
!” as we rolled down the hill and into the water. Oh, it was lovely, so wet and cold. And fresh. If we had gone on in the way we were supposed to go on, it would have been the Dead Sea, and that would not have been refreshing. Dear me, I am prosing on. What did you want to ask me, Miss Fisher? Ah, yes. Augustine Manifold. He was rather all things to all men, you know, which is perhaps why you can’t get a clear picture of him. The single most important thing about Augustine Manifold was his ambition. He was going to get on, make his big transaction, settle his mother, and lead his own life, if it killed him.’

‘As it did,’ Phryne put in.

‘Yes, apparently.’ The professor sighed. ‘Well, let’s see. He was one of the finest self-taught minds I have ever encountered. Learned languages like a child, by listening, though he got his Hebrew from the elder Mr Rosenberg and his Greek and Latin from a cramming class. Of all people he reminded me of George Borrow, who got drunk on words. And his discernment was remarkable. He could look at an object from a civilisation he knew nothing about—Mesopotamia, for instance—and say ancient or modern, fake or real. It was uncanny, almost supernatural. You know there are people who claim to be able to tell things about the previous owners from touching something they owned?’

‘Psychometry,’ said Phryne.

‘Yes, well, Augustine was like that. But he kept that skill well under his hat; he didn’t want anyone to think he was a lunatic. He did it for me, once, as a favour, with a Greek pot. He described the girl who had broken it, a Circassian slave, as if she had been standing in front of him. He kept saying, “But she’s got blonde hair,” because he thought all Greeks were dark. Bless him. But he was a chameleon, you know. A salesman. The ladies who bought his porcelain thought him deferential. His workers liked him. He is a great loss,’ sighed the professor, drinking his coffee.

‘What did that strange crowd of Gerald Atkinson’s want with him, then?’ asked Phryne.

‘Oh, they are hunting treasure,’ said the professor with a wicked grin. ‘And now they will never find it.’

‘Oh,’ said Phryne.

Dark, again, and hot, with a tearing wind, and the tall man unlocked the postbox. His hand trembled so much that he could hardly manipulate the keys. He found the envelope. His hoarded notes were gone. Inside was a folded note. Same handwriting, same paper.

Fifty in two weeks, or I tell.

He stood with the paper in his hand for so long that a passing policeman diverted from his beat to ask if the gentleman was ill. His face, in the streetlight, was as white as the paper he held in his hand.

The man gave a muttered excuse about the heat and hurried away.

The policeman watched after him. He would go down in his notebook, along with everything else that happened on this hot night, when the dogs were cranky.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

The best actors in the world, either for tragedy,
comedy, history, pastoral, pastoral-comical,
historical-pastoral, tragical-historical, tragical-
comical-historical-pastoral, scene indivisible, or
poem unlimited.

William Shakespeare
Hamlet

Phryne put down her coffee cup with a click. ‘Treasure?’

‘Yes, you see, it fascinates everyone, the idea of treasure. Gold, jewels, buried in the ground, free to all finders. Except it isn’t, of course.’

‘What sort of treasure?’ demanded Phryne, not to be deflected.

He chuckled. ‘The usual sort, see previous reference, gold, jewels, coins etc.’

‘You, sir, are trifling with me,’ she told him.

He smoothed back his white hair and smiled at her. ‘Sorry. It’s just so ridiculous. Well, Miss Fisher, to break a confidence, they told me that Blackbeard the pirate—that is, Edward Teach—had buried many hoards, and they wanted one of them. And it was no use me saying that the treasure might have been buried by the said pirate, but who was to say that it was still there? I was reminded of Maes Howe in Orkney. There is a Viking inscription on the wall. “Treasure lies to the South East. Happy the man who finds it.”’

‘And I was the man, and I’m very happy?’ guessed Phryne.

‘How acute you are!
The Orkneyinga Saga
says that they did indeed find it, and had a great deal of trouble—even for Vikings, who were used to trouble, mostly causing it. They said that two of their number went mad, and it was very inconvenient carrying them and the treasure with the dead kings throwing gold cups at them all the time.’

‘Haul comrade ten yards, drop comrade, go back for gold, haul gold ten yards, pick up comrade. Yes, I can see that it might have been inconvenient. I have been into Maes Howe and it is a haunted dark place. Gave me a case of the willies which I have not had since Mycenae, which it strangely resembles.’

‘Yes, it’s one of the puzzles,’ he agreed, picking up a biscuit. ‘It’s a perfect Mycenaen chambered beehive tomb, and it’s in the middle of nowhere—as far as the Greek world was concerned, of course.’

‘Mysteries,’ said Phryne.

‘There are lots of them,’ he agreed, and crunched his biscuit. ‘Fortunately.’

‘About this treasure,’ she pressed. ‘What had Augustine to do with it?’

‘He sold them various artifacts which he said came from the hoard,’ he replied. ‘Pieces of eight. Gold chains. Things which might indeed have been of the right century. But nothing that pinned it down. So the next step was . . .’

‘A treasure map? Of, as it might be, an island? With an X marks the spot on it?’ demanded Phryne sarcastically.

‘And palm trees and directions like “fifty paces north from the place of skulls”. Yes. I fear so.’

‘It must have been a hoax.’

‘And yet, I never thought Augustine a humorous man, and I knew him as rigidly honest. Even as an antique dealer. He never said something was original if it wasn’t. He made rather a point of showing that, for example, a painting had been retouched or a furniture leg repaired. His patrons loved him for it and bought even more from him. Would he so lightly throw that reputation away?’

‘Hmm,’ said Phryne. ‘So they are now relying on the spirits?’

‘Are they? Mediums, I suppose I ought to say media, no, that doesn’t sound right either. Good Lord.’ The professor drank some more coffee. ‘Well, I hope it leads them to wealth, but I, for one, will not be holding my breath.’

‘Indeed. Are there lots of hoards lying around?’

‘No—well, it depends on to whom you are talking. There’s always been a lot of interest in the Temple treasure.’

‘Which temple would that be?’

‘The Temple of Jerusalem, the Great Temple. Built by Herod. Destroyed by the Romans. Picture the scene. You’re a priest. The Romans have captured Jerusalem. They have started out being civilised, but they are already borrowing a few talents from the treasury and you can see that if anything goes wrong, they will sack it. So what do you do?’

‘You sneak the treasure out in man-loads, every night, and bury it,’ said Phryne.

‘Exactly. That Temple mound is honeycombed with paths and tunnels. By the time we get to the Jewish rebellion in
AD
67 there would still be enough left for the Romans to pillage and, outside, enough concealed to begin life anew outside the Holy City. I suspect—I hope—that the Temple library was concealed somewhere safe, as well. Libraries are far too inflammable for my taste. The Romans made new coins with some of the Temple treasure. Judea Captiva, in chains and in mourning. They were not a subtle people, the Romans. Previous coins had plants on them. But even if the Temple treasure was distributed like that, who is to say that it is still there? There is a scroll which seems to set out where it was hidden. And, of course, spots marked X, or rather, spots marked epsilon or alpha. But it says things like “by the base of the hill shaped like a bull’s horn, ten talents of silver” and the chances are that the hill shaped like a bull’s horn . . .’

‘Isn’t there anymore. I see. Any more missing gold?’

‘For that you will have to go to South America, and there find blood-stained gold in plenty on the sacrificial altars of their frightful gods.’

‘Let’s change the subject.’ Phryne did not need sacrificial altars at luncheon.

Mr Butler brought in the salted nuts and dried fruit which Miss Fisher liked with her after-dinner cognac. She picked up a nut. ‘Do you know of anything significant about almonds in the classical world?’

He choked a little on the coffee, wiped his mouth, and objected, ‘Really, Miss Fisher, that was an inquiry out of the blue! And I hardly know how to answer a lady at her own respectable table.’

‘Assume it is not respectable,’ she ordered.

‘Very well. Zeus, the king of the gods, spilled his seed upon the ground, and from it grew a double-sexed monster, called Cybele/Agdistis. A hermaphrodite, you understand. The gods conferred and thought that they really couldn’t have that sort of thing, so they decided the creature should be female and . . . er . . .’

‘Castrated it,’ said Phryne.

‘Quite so. The castrated hermaphrodite, now female, was called Cybele, mother of all. From her excised portions an almond tree grew. Nana, a nymph, put one of the almonds in her bosom and conceived and bore Attis, a beautiful youth with whom Cybele fell madly in love. One version of the story says that she drove him mad, and he performed the same operation on himself, under a pine tree, and bled to death. From his blood, violets grew. Another version says he was killed by a boar, but I think that’s a borrowing from Adonis, another dead boy. Like Tammuz. You know, in the Bible, the prophet heard at the temple steps the voices of “the women weeping for Tammuz”? In any case, there was a cult, much disapproved of in Rome, of Attis and Cybele, in which the priests, the Galli, castrated themselves and threw their . . . er . . . parts at a pine tree which was cut down, brought inside, wound around with woollen ribbons and decked with flowers.’

‘An interesting early form of the Christmas tree,’ commented Phryne, unmoved by this barbaric recital. Professor Edwin Rowlands was taken aback. He had never met anyone like Phryne before. And she looked so demure in her azure dress.

‘A fascinating theory which needs thought,’ he assured her. ‘If you remember your Catullus you might recall poem sixty-four. No, it’s sixty-three. “
Ego mulier, ego adulescens, ego ephebus, ego puer, ego gumnasi fui flos
: I to be a woman, who was once a child, once a youth, once a boy, I was the flower of the playground . . . ” Then he says “
iam iam dolet quod egi, iam paenitet
: Now, now, I rue my act, now, now I would it were undone.” And Catallus concludes with an invocation to the goddess who causes men to do such things. “
Dea, magna dea, Cybebe, dea domina Dindymi, procul a mea tuos sit furor omnis, era, domo: alios age incaitatos, alios age rabidos
. Goddess, Great Goddess Cybele, Lady of Dindymus, far from my house be all your fury Lady and Queen: drive others to a frenzy, drive others to madness.”’

‘A good poet,’ said Phryne. ‘Frenzy and madness. The same might be said of treasure hunters.’

‘Indeed,’ agreed Professor Rowlands, selecting an almond from the bowl of fruits and nuts, and biting it.

Dot reached the door of the Actors’ Benevolent Society and settled her hat, which the wind was trying to tear from her head. She had coiled her long plait into a bun and pinned it firmly, or the wind would have had the hair off her head as well. She had cotton gloves in deference to the heat, and she knew her hands were sweating. And she hated seeing new people. But Miss Phryne had sent her, so she must think that Dot could manage this interview, and rather than disappoint Miss Phryne, Dot would prefer to be publicly whipped through St Kilda at the tail of a cart.

The door opened to her knock and she was blown inside. When the door shut again, an aged but beautifully groomed gentleman was offering her a chair.

‘And perhaps a glass of cold water, or a cup of tea?’ he added.

‘Thank you!’ gasped Dot. The wind had taken all the breath out of her.

‘Shocking weather, this,’ commented the aged gentleman, allowing his guest time to settle her garments and regain her composure. He poured cold water from a thermos, and lit the flame under a spirit stove. His movements were very slow and painful.

Dot drank the cool water and smiled at her preserver. He was dapper to a degree. His shirt front was blinding, his suit old but meticulously pressed, his white hair glossy with care and even his shoes were shining. He sat down at the desk. Dot was struck, suddenly, by a pang to the heart. She knew this was Albert Wright. She had seen him before, when Dot’s mother used to save up to go to the theatre every six months. She had last seen him young and now he was old . . .

‘I saw you on stage,’ she told him. ‘You played the gentleman in all those comedies. You sang and danced. When I was a girl—’ she broke off and blushed. ‘I had ever such a crush on you, Mr Wright.’

‘My dear girl,’ he said, smiling and taking her hand. ‘That’s the nicest thing anyone has said to me for a week. Ah, yes, I could dance then! And sing! They were such fun, those comedies. Silly, innocent things. I would prance on and say, “Anyone for tennis?” and the audience used to applaud. Great days, great days.’

‘You don’t act anymore?’ asked Dot, forgetting her reserve and her anxiety about talking to new people.

He grimaced. Then he rose, silenced the kettle and made the tea. He sugared his liberally and explained.

‘The pins, dear. I got arthritis and that was the end of my dancing days. But I toiled on, you know, never say die. Had singing jobs, some straight parts, second extra gentleman in Shakespeare. But Shakespeare’s terrible, because unless you’re King you never get to sit down. Didn’t really suit me and I wasn’t very good at it, to tell you the truth. Then my uncle died and left me a modest competence and I secured this position. No one needs benevolence like actors do. I was one of the lucky ones. Usually if we get sick they might as well shoot us, like broken-down horses.’

‘That’s a terrible thing to say,’ said Dot.

‘True, O King,’ he said. ‘But never mind.
Toujours l’audace
, as the dear Emperor said. Now, what can I do for you? You’re not in the profession, dear. How can I help you?’

‘Oh!’ Dot had remembered her orders. She took an envelope from her purse and gave it to Mr Wright. He slit it open and his eyebrows rose. It was a rather large cheque signed
Phryne Fisher
.

‘Munificent!’ he said. ‘We can get old Charles out of the doss house and into a clean apartment with a paid companion. He was wonderful in his time, you know. His Othello sent shivers up my spine. Now he’s doing Lear, of course, in real life. You’re not Miss Fisher, dear,’ he said curiously. ‘I mean, I beg your pardon, but I’ve seen her at the theatre quite often. Small woman, carriage like an empress, magnificent clothes, attended mostly by a Chinese chap dressed by Savile Row.’

‘No, I’m Dorothy Williams, her confidential companion.’

‘That,’ said Mr Wright, ‘must be an interesting profession.’

‘Oh, it is,’ Dot assured him. ‘She wants to know about a man you buried in Melbourne General Cemetery in 1914.’

‘Then we will finish our tea and consult the books,’ he told her. ‘My dear Miss Williams! What a wonderful day,’ he added, tucking the cheque into his wallet and patting it close to his heart. ‘And it seemed so unpromising when I got up and realised that it was going to be fearfully hot again. I sometimes feel it would be soothing to be a savage,’ he added. ‘And then all one would have to wear would be a lap-lap and a few pieces of shell. Still, it wouldn’t do,’ he said, sipping his tea. ‘It wouldn’t do for Melbourne at all.’

Dot peeled off her wet gloves and agreed.

An hour later Mr Wright found the entry he was seeking.

‘Really, the books are in a shocking mess. We’ve only had someone in charge all the time since ’23. Before that it was whoever was resting and had the time, and the treasurer used to write his bank statement in eyebrow pencil on the back of a playbill. True!’ he said in reply to Dot’s shocked exclamation. ‘See, here’s one of them—and it’s the one we want.’

Dot scanned the playbill. In suspiciously dark and greasy pencil—perhaps it really was eyebrow pencil—someone had written
service and interment of poor Pat O’Rourke, wake and headstone poor fellow no harm in him shame to treat a sweet swan so . . .
There followed a series of calculations, much crossed out, and a final
twelve pounds, eight shillings and tenpence halfpenny, which leaves eighty-three pounds ninepence in the fund
. Mr Wright raised an eyebrow. Now that she was close to him, Dot was aware of his scent of eau de cologne and powder. Did this delightful man use theatrical makeup even though he had retired from the stage?

‘Sorry about the accounts, they kept a running record, but half the time the treasurer was doing his work in the wings and they did get a little confused. I remember him. Patrick O’Rourke. Never really succeeded, poor chap, though everyone said he was a sweet boy. Old man, when I met him, of course. Living in a wretched room in Fitzroy. No one could quite understand how he came to be gassed. Didn’t have any family here. Irish, you know. Though perhaps he had some distant relatives, several people came to the funeral which we didn’t know. Otherwise it was just the theatre chums. We were the only family he had ever known.’