Murder on a Midsummer Night (3 page)

‘Sorry I went crook, Soph,’ said Cedric. ‘It was what you said.’

‘And I’d say it again,’ said Sophie, a thick-waisted, unattractive girl with pimples. ‘All soldiers are—’

‘Don’t say it again,’ advised Phryne. ‘You can tell me later, if you wish. In private. Ah. Beer.’

Dot had found a tray, some glasses, and the requisite alcohol. She busied herself with pouring and serving. Cedric Yates downed his bottle of beer in one long, practised gulp and reached for the second.

‘Not so fast,’ said Phryne, possessing herself of the bottle. ‘Answers first. You worked for Mr Manifold?’

‘Yair. Matter of seven years. Lost one of me props in the war and trained as a carpenter. Fine woodwork. Not a lot of call for it and I can’t go the roads like other blokes. I was doing a perish until I met Aug. He needed a woodworker and I needed a job. I used to fix the old furniture he bought. Most of it was bonzer. Beaut wood. Just needed a few reglued joints, maybe a bit of missing carving redone, bit of a sand and polish. Sometimes I had to make, say, a new leg or a drawer or something. He was pleased, said he was lucky to get a craftsman like me.’

‘What was he like?’ Phryne was still cradling the beer bottle so Cedric kept talking.

‘Mum’s little angel,’ grinned Cedric. ‘Nothing good enough for my boy. Took himself very serious, flannel next to the skin if he had a cold. But a good enough boss. Now she’s a terror, old Ma Manifold. Wants to drive down the wage and up the hours, she’d pinch a penny until it squeaked.’

‘You’re a—’ Sophie began. Eliza hushed her.

‘Much as I support free speech, young lady, I do not approve of bad manners,’ she said severely. Phryne waited for Sophie to protest but she just gave Eliza an adoring smile. Eliza is better at women than me, Phryne thought. I might leave Sophie to her and concentrate on Cedric. Who was getting restive and very, very thirsty.

‘Tell me about Mr Manifold. Was he depressed? Sad? In some sort of trouble?’

‘Before he offed himself? Nah. Could have knocked me down with a feather when he came back “found drowned”. Never thought he’d do that. Coroner asked me that too. He was cock-a-hoop, said he had some big deal coming up, would make his fortune so his old mum could retire. He said he’d build her a house in Toorak and she’d never have to lift a finger again.’

‘He said that,’ affirmed Sophie.

‘Anyway, he was doing good-o,’ said Cedric, reaching an imploring hand towards the bottle. ‘Can I have me beer now, lady?’

‘Here.’ Phryne supplied the amber fluid. ‘Did he have any friends?’

‘Dunno,’ said Cedric.

‘Sophie?’

‘Yes,’ said Sophie, who had drunk half a glass of gin and lemonade and was feeling a little giddy. ‘Lots of friends. Lovely clothes. They came into the shop almost every day.’

‘Lady friends?’

Sophie shook her head and then seemed to regret it. ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘His mum told him he ought to marry to keep the business in the family and he just laughed and said he was happy as he was and far too busy to take a wife. I never saw him with any girl, not particular. I s’pose Gerald would know.’

‘Gerald who?’

‘Atkinson. Mr Manifold’s best friend. He came in almost every day and took Mr M to lunch. In a beautiful big car.’

‘Rolls-Royce Silver Ghost,’ observed Cedric. ‘Toffy type in big fur-collared coat. La-di-da voice. Knows a lot about furniture, but,’ he added, trying to be fair. ‘Drew out designs for the new stuff. Arty type of bloke. Takes all sorts, I reckon,’ he added, allowing Phryne to pass him the last bottle of beer.

Sophie flushed purple, which made her pimples glow like lanterns.

‘You, you . . . you’re a peasant,’ she said to Cedric.

‘That’s me,’ he said complacently. Sophie’s fingers twitched as if seeking a weapon and Eliza interposed her person.

‘That’s enough! How long have you worked for Mr Manifold, Sophie?’

‘Three years, since I left school.’

‘And what were your duties?’

‘I opened the shop in the morning, posted the letters, answered the phone, I dusted and mended and did a little light cleaning, I showed the things when Mr M asked me.’

‘So you know the stock?’

‘Yes, Miss.’

‘Good. I have the inventory. Later we will go through it to make sure that nothing is missing. For now, I need to know how you saw Mr Manifold.’

Sophie folded her hands in her lap and prepared to confide.

‘He was such a nice man. Never tried . . . tried anything, you know, Miss.’

Cedric made an uncomplimentary sound and Phryne clipped his ear. He subsided in case she took his bottle away. Sophie executed a sitting-down flounce, which Phryne assessed at a high degree of skill. Sophie had an annoying voice, shrill as a mosquito.

‘Well, he never did. And he paid me well, more every year as I learned about the business. What sort of things to show what sort of people. When to help and when to leave the customers alone to find things on the tables. Lots of important people came to the shop. I was getting good at it! I don’t know what will happen to us now he is gone!’

She began to cry again. Eliza patted her shoulder.

‘We shall make some provision for you,’ she soothed. ‘Cedric too. Mrs Manifold may be keeping the shop going, you know.’

‘But it was Mr M who attracted all the people,’ sobbed Sophie. ‘He had such a lovely voice, deep and . . . and he knew where all the valuable things were in Melbourne. When there was an auction he was always there. Especially deceased estates. He used to say he knew more about the riches of the city than any burglar. And he bought things that you wouldn’t think would sell, like that awful colonial furniture, wood with the bark still on, like that three-legged table,’ said Sophie, pointing out a roughly circular table made of a slice of tree for the top and three not very similar branches for the legs. It had clearly been recently repaired and was clamped until the glue set.

‘It’s rubbish all right,’ commented Cedric, who was sipping his final beer to make it last. ‘Like you said, Soph. Old bushies made stuff out of unseasoned timber tied together with spit and baling wire because they didn’t have nails or planes or any of them other things. Then rich people actually wanted to have this stuff in their houses, when they could have a Sheraton chair—I dunno. But I remember the first lot of colonial rubbish, came out of a farmhouse in Horsham, I laughed when I saw it, but Aug said, “You mark my words, this will be worth our while, Cedric,” and blow me down if he wasn’t right.’

‘He had very good judgment,’ said Sophie. ‘They call it a nose. He had a lot of friends amongst the dealers and the junk shop men, old friends of his father’s, and he went round to all the shops, even the really dreadful old wares ones, just in case.’

‘Old wares?’ asked Phryne.

‘The ones which stock old tins and rusty screws and bunches of keys without locks and chain link fencing without any links,’ put in Dot.

‘That’s right, Dot dear, you’re a rubbish pile veteran, aren’t you? Have you ever seen anything worth buying in an old wares shop?’

‘No,’ said Dot. ‘But I wasn’t looking too closely.’

‘But the boss, he would look,’ said Cedric. ‘He used to come home filthy—and didn’t his mum create!—because he’d been burrowing into a pile of old iron. And like as not he came up with something we could clean up and sell.’

‘Yes, remember when he found that big silver platter? It was tarnished black and the old wares man sold it for tenpence,’ put in Sophie, showing her first signs of animation. ‘Took me eight goes of bath brick and then three of Silvo to clean it up. Had to do the curlicues with a matchstick. But it sold for fifteen pounds and Mr M gave me a commission for the extra work.’

‘He was good like that,’ said Cedric, putting down the empty bottle. ‘Well, this is nice but it ain’t buying socks for the baby. You want me to keep on with the work?’ he asked Phryne.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Whatever you have in hand. Mrs Manifold shall pay you until she decides what she is doing with the shop or I’ll know the reason why.’

‘Reckon you will,’ said Cedric, nodding, and went back to his bench. Now that she knew, Phryne could see the drag and swing of his artificial leg. He was conscious of her gaze. ‘Nice bit of mahogany here,’ was all he said, but Phryne looked away quickly.

‘And you,’ Eliza told Sophie. ‘You can help with the investigation.’

‘Well, why don’t you both stay here and go through the inventory with Sophie,’ Phryne suggested. ‘And if she can give me the address, I’ll be off to see Mr Manifold’s best friend, Gerald Atkinson.’

Phryne collected the address and left. She could leave Eliza to cope with Mrs Manifold’s wrath when she found her beer gone and the level in her very own private gin bottle sensibly reduced.

‘What do they call this place, sir?’ asked Vern.

‘The desert of Sinai,’ replied the officer. ‘No, sorry, the bloody desert of bloody Sinai.’

‘In bloody Palestine,’ Vern completed the ritual.

‘Never mind, we’ll be going back after remounts soon,’ said the officer. ‘After Roumani.’

There was a silence. The stars blazed as close as lanterns.

‘After we copped it at Roumani. You remember Bill the Bastard?’ asked Vern.

‘The horse that never galloped without bucking? Of course.’

‘He did after Roumani. He came out of the bloodbath carrying five men: two behind the rider and one on each stirrup. Never even tried to buck. ’Course, he must have been carrying half a ton in soldiers alone.’

‘Is that why he’s now my packhorse?’ asked the officer.

‘Yair. Poor bugger deserved a rest. But the yeomanry copped it worse than us.’

‘Yes, they copped it . . .’

‘It’d be beaut if our CIC was closer to the enemy than the front bar at Shepheard’s Hotel in Cairo,’ said Vern, without moving his lips. The hand-rolled cigarette stayed in the corner of his mouth as if glued.

‘I’m sure Sir Archibald Murray knows about being a commander-in-chief,’ said the officer with a toneless lack of conviction.

‘Yair, my flamin’ oath,’ agreed Vern.

CHAPTER THREE

Happy is the child whose father goes to the devil.

Proverb

Phryne took a taxi to the mansion of Mr Gerald Atkinson. She could have called home and had Mr Butler collect her but she was feeling, for some reason, pressed for time. This proved to be an error, because as she left the taxi and began walking up the garden path, one of those impromptu cloudbursts which made Melbourne weather the proverb it was fell upon her unprotected head. Within moments she was soaked to her French undergarments and partially deafened by thunder booming apparently some three or four feet above her and slightly to the right.

‘Thunder on the right is supposed to be a good omen,’ she said to herself as she completed her trek through a rather nice formal garden to the front door and rang the bell with some force. ‘This may prove to be an interesting interlude.’

The door opened and a magisterial butlerine figure enquired as to the lady’s business. His tone indicated that Phryne had only merited the term ‘lady’ out of charity and she had better have a good story if she wanted to get over the threshold in that condition.

Phryne was in no mood to be buttled at. Her shoes were full of water, her dress was behaving like a dishcloth, and her stylish cloche had wilted around her head and was acting like a cold compress. She walked in, straight past the black and white man, and beamed a sunny smile up into his face.

‘The Hon. Phryne Fisher to see Mr Atkinson. Before which I need a towel, a warm garment, and a telephone.’

‘Yes,’ said the butler, hypnotised. Only the really rich or really aristocratic had this kind of certainty. They knew that the world would unhesitatingly bend itself to their will, and it always did. ‘If your ladyship would follow me . . .’

Squelching, Phryne followed him upstairs into a small bedroom, where the butler was supplanted by a fascinated housemaid, introduced as Gertrude. She supplied a towel and helped Phryne to remove her soaked dress, which was clinging like a corn plaster to her rapidly chilling limbs. When Phryne was dry, the maid helped her into a truly sumptuous gentleman’s lounging robe, of scarlet padded silk with damask collar and cuffs in a sprightly spring green. Phryne resolved not to look at herself in strong sunlight in case of self-combustion.

The silk was luxurious and Phryne sat to allow the maid to dry her hair.

‘That’s Mr Gerald’s favourite robe,’ Gertrude told her. ‘Mr Nunn must really like you! Oops, sorry, Miss, I mean, m’lady. I’m not used to being a lady’s maid. Usually I do the parlour and the door but Mrs Patterson’s down with her leg again and the boy’s gone to the dentist and I’ve been helping Cook. Sorry.’

‘That’s all right,’ said Phryne, reflecting that the gossiping ladies at various tea parties were right, for once. Australians did not make good servants, thank God. There was something indefatigably democratic about them. But Gertrude was a nice girl who was trying hard and should be encouraged. ‘That’ll do for the hair,’ she said. ‘There’s a comb in my bag. How about my shoes?’

‘Soaked,’ said the maid. ‘I reckon they’ll dry out bonzer if I stuff them with newspapers and leave them near the stove.’

‘I’ll ring and get someone to bring me some more clothes,’ said Phryne. ‘Amazing how wet you can get in such a short time!’

‘Yes,’ said Gertrude. ‘And it’s stopping now, look—the sun’s coming out.’

‘So it is,’ said Phryne. ‘How long have you worked for Mr Atkinson?’

‘Six months,’ said Gertrude. ‘Six months more and I’ll marry my young man. He’s a baker. We’re saving up for a house. He’s got his own business.’

‘Congratulations. I hope you’ll be very happy. What’s Mr Atkinson like?’

‘All right,’ said the girl slowly, applying the comb to Phryne’s straight black hair. ‘Bit high-handed and Old Country and he has noisy friends and noisy parties. And the fits he throws if someone moves one of his precious bowls or statues! They’re a task to dust, I can tell you, not to mention his dirty bronzes and horrible carved lumps of rock. But I’m not here for fun, and he pays well enough. I go home every night. Mrs Patterson’s the housekeeper, I don’t see much of Mr Atkinson.’

And that, clearly, was fine with Gertrude. Phryne smiled and shook her head.

‘Can you lend me a pair of slippers?’ she asked, holding out a folded note.

Gertrude grinned. ‘For that, m’lady, you can have them,’ she replied.

So it was that Phryne Fisher, trailing the skirts of her lounging robe like a ball dress, came down the stairs to meet Mr Gerald Atkinson. The first thing he noticed about her was a pair of very new bright pink slippers, with pompoms. The next thing was the upraised head on the slim neck rising from the green damask calyx like a lily. And the third was her jade green eyes.

‘Miss Fisher?’ he asked, holding out a hand.

‘Mr Atkinson,’ she replied, allowing him to take her hand and either shake it or kiss it as he felt inclined. He paused for a moment, then kissed. Phryne allowed him to conduct her to a parlour into which the riches of Europe appeared to have been sent, possibly for storage. Phryne noted a near-Bernini salt cellar, a miniature statue of Michelangelo’s David, a copy of a Tiepolo banquet, several faux Canalettos and shelves full of assorted bric-a-brac as she was led to a deep chair and allowed to sit.

‘As my cousin Sir Eldred always said, “bit of a wetting never hurt no one,”’ he told her.

Gerald Atkinson was tall and skinny, with a haughty arch to the brows which might easily have been accentuated by skilled plucking and a rosebud mouth with just a trace of lip rouge. He was dressed in a very nice tweed suit which was just a bit too new and a cravat which was just a smidgen too bright, with a stickpin in which the diamond was just a soupçon too large. If he was not a friend of Dorothy, Phryne considered, he was a relative. This was no bar to Miss Fisher’s regard. She had many friends whose interest in young men was just as fervent as her own.

‘And as my father the baronet says, “What a man needs after a good soaking is a good whisky,”’ replied Phryne.

‘That can be managed,’ said Gerald Atkinson, brightening at the mention of Miss Fisher’s titled relatives. ‘Irish or Scotch?’

‘Mind you, he’d say the same after a good sunning,’ said Phryne. ‘Scotch, please, with water.’

Mr Atkinson obliged, pouring a small glass for Phryne and a tumbler for himself. Miss Fisher sipped at her very good whisky and looked around the room, wriggling her toes into Gertrude’s pink slippers.

‘I know all about you, Miss Fisher!’ he exclaimed.

Phryne privately considered this very unlikely, but was still trying to place Mr Atkinson, so she merely inclined her head and smiled.

‘And I know nothing about you,’ she said. ‘So you can start.’

This disconcerted the young man, who had clearly prepared an elaborate compliment. He took a gulp of his drink and began.

‘Born: Cairo. My father was a diplomat. School: privately educated. Came to Melbourne in ’13, family fearing war. In which they were right, of course. Family settled in Camberwell. I inherited this house, so came to live here.’

‘Alone?’

‘Sometimes,’ said Mr Atkinson ambiguously. Phryne let that one lie for the present.

‘Occupation?’

‘Gentleman,’ he informed her stiffly. Aha. One of those. Phryne was familiar with the insistence of the upper middle class on idleness as a measure of social status. They had, of course, not met people like Lady Alice Harborough, Eliza’s friend, who worked harder than any skivvy at her chosen avocation, which was rescuing the women of St Kilda from penury and crime.

‘Yes, but even gentlemen have occupations. My father, for instance, is a baronet and also a Justice of the Peace and a Master of Fox Hounds. My sister Eliza is a social worker, and I am a private detective.’

‘Oh, I see what you mean. I’m a collector of antiquities,’ said Mr Atkinson, mollified. Phryne waved a hand at the shelves which Gertrude found such a trial to dust.

‘Yes, I can see that. Care to show me some of your collection?’

‘Certainly!’ Mr Atkinson’s eyes lit up and he looked almost attractive. ‘If you would come this way?’

‘First, I need to call my house and get someone to bring me some clothes,’ she said. ‘I can scarcely travel in your very delightful gown.’

He almost blushed. ‘This way, Miss Fisher.’

The telephone was in a library which Phryne longed to explore. Mr Atkinson did not appear to be bookish. There were no volumes open on the desk or the library table, no bookmarks, no signs that anyone had ever read any of the opulent sets of classics and half-calf bindings. Only the collectors’ texts were well-used: Gibbons on stamps, the standard authorities on coins and on porcelain. And, for some reason, Roman plays.

Phryne made telephonic contact with Mr Butler and gave him orders in relation to the clothes and the address at which he was to call with all convenient speed. He was reminded to bring an umbrella and Phryne hung up.

‘What a lovely library,’ she said, meaning it.

‘I inherited it all from my grandfather,’ said Mr Atkinson, carefully not mentioning the name or profession of the said ancestor. Which meant, Phryne knew, that he had been In Trade.

She considered this philosophy extremely silly. If there were no trade, nothing would ever get done or made. And if her own grandfather had not married a Trade heiress, the Fisher family would be as poor as church mice and eking out a living by taking in washing. No point, however, in imparting her own views to this deluded person. He would only be shocked and she didn’t want to shock him yet.

‘Your grandfather had excellent taste,’ she observed, swishing her gown as she moved. The drag of the heavy silk was most pleasing.

‘Indeed. Now, if you will come this way,’ he said, and Phryne was plunged into the world of the collector.

She had been there before, of course. Sometimes it was fun—like the man who collected Fabergé eggs, or the charming woman who collected children’s toys. Sometimes the wit and charm of the collector could overcome the tedium of the collection, such as the delightful Jane Wright, who had a collection of hair ribbons which covered walls, but was very funny about them, as far as anyone can be funny about hair ribbons. In the case of Mr Atkinson, it was going to be a long day. He collected broken bits of old rock, about which he knew far too much, and Phryne dropped instantly into the trance she employed when stuck in an all-too-familiar church service or a parliamentary debate. She surfaced briefly to nod at ‘Mesopotamian’ and ‘Old Petrie’ and ‘cuneiform’ then slid effortlessly back into her meditative state. More bits passed under her gaze.

‘Of course, if you remember your Aramaic,’ he was saying when she dropped in again. She nodded solemnly and he continued. ‘And this was sent to me from a dig in Gaza. You see the curve?’

It was a shard of terracotta, broken from a bigger pot. Mr Atkinson’s hands described a cylindrical shape.

‘It would have held a scroll,’ he said. ‘The Bedouin bring such things into Cairo occasionally, or Alex. They will never say where they have found them. A few complete ones have been sold, far beyond my touch, alas!’

‘I find such things fascinating,’ lied Phryne. ‘But this is too much to absorb at one time. Let’s go back to the parlour and I’ll tell you why I came to see you.’

‘But the rest . . .’ cried Mr Atkinson, as distressed as a doting mother with a reserve of fifty-seven cabinet photographs of her infants still to exhibit.

‘I will come back and see them,’ promised Phryne, laying a hand on his arm. ‘Now we need to talk about the sad death of your friend, Augustine Manifold.’

‘Oh, poor Augustine,’ said Mr Atkinson, allowing himself to be led back into the parlour and sinking down onto the couch. ‘I’ll never know why he did it.’

‘Tell me about Augustine,’ prompted Phryne.

‘He was my best friend,’ said Mr Atkinson, groping for a handkerchief.

‘How did you meet?’

‘I went to his shop,’ said Mr Atkinson. ‘He had some bits and pieces that I found quite irresistible. Rarities, you know. And we got talking and I found that he knew a lot about antiquities, especially considering that he had never been to university.’

‘Self-taught is often best,’ agreed Phryne.

‘He knew all the archaeologists,’ continued Mr Atkinson, finding the handkerchief in his trouser pocket and wiping his eyes. ‘They sold him duplicates and broken stuff, things you couldn’t put in a museum. I remember we spent a whole night putting together a Greek pot, using his special glue. The best sort of jigsaw puzzle, and it was a kylix with a dancing maenad in the middle, a real find. I’ve got it in that glass case over there, you can hardly see the cracks.’

Phryne got up and looked. It was a lovely thing. The maenad tossed her hair and brandished a lyre, which was polite of her, considering what else, being what she was, she could be brandishing.

‘That glue must be amazing stuff, to join such friable material together,’ Phryne commented.

‘His own invention. He made another one for furniture. The carpenter chappie said it was better than any he’d ever used. You didn’t have to keep it hot, see. But now I expect that it will vanish, unless Augustine wrote down the recipe. That old mother of his hasn’t a particle of Augustine’s initiative or sense—she’ll just sit on the inventions and the collection like a foul old broody hen.’

‘Indeed,’ murmured Phryne.

‘He was such a good fellow!’ Mr Atkinson burst into sobs. ‘We used to talk all day and all night, sometimes. I took him to lunch on the day . . . on the day he . . .’

‘How did he seem?’

‘Just as ever, but excited. He said he had some great enterprise on foot. Something which would make him rich. He was going to buy a lovely house for his mother so he could live alone at last. But he wouldn’t tell me what it was, this deal. And now he never will!’ he said sadly.

Phryne looked away, in charity, from his tear-blubbered face.

She was still in two minds about Mr Atkinson. A snob, certainly, one who had never bothered to learn the name of the carpenter who did such lovely work on the dead man’s furniture. He didn’t like Mrs Manifold, but he would be in good company there. And he seemed genuinely affected by the loss of his friend. But there was some character trait in him that she had yet to elicit, and she did not know what it was. Some buried emotion which she could sense lurking under his civilised surface.