Tamam Shud (18 page)

The young woman stared at Phryne, astonished to hear her own thoughts so cogently expressed.

‘Yes, Miss Fisher, that is it. Safe and pleased. And a good-looking man, too, hazel eyes and a fine well-cut jaw, nice fair hair and broad shoulders. The pathologist says that he was terribly healthy and athletic and there was no reason for him to die.'

‘Well. Let's look at it. Suicides usually leave a note. No note?'

‘No, unless you call that scrap of paper a note.'

‘Was it handwritten?'

‘No, Miss Fisher, torn out of a book.'

‘Then find the rest of the book. And he has been searched. One could conceivably remove all the labels and things from one's clothes – that has been done for many reasons, I have done it myself. But everyone has something in their pockets – a coin or two, a ticket … How did he get out to Somerton Beach? By car? The tram? A handkerchief, a pen, a watch – did he have a watch?'

‘No, Miss.'

‘I can't think that this was just an ordinary robbery. If there was nothing wrong with him, why did he die?'

‘He might have been scared to death,' suggested the young woman.

Phryne tutted.

‘Did he look scared to you?'

Police Constable Hammond looked away, recalling the dead face.

‘No.'

‘Nor to me, and I saw him a couple of hours earlier. It's a mystery, all right.'

Constable Hammond finished her tea. She stood up. ‘Miss Fisher…'

‘Yes, Constable?'

‘I've heard about you. You were a famous detective back before the war, weren't you? For years and years you solved mysteries, they say.'

Phryne smiled. For an old woman, thought the police constable, she had a beautiful smile.

‘I have had my successes.'

‘Well – the war bods say that you are clear for any level of security. Could you could you help me? If I can solve this, I'll be in line for promotion. It's not been easy, being a woman in the police force. And it's all I ever wanted to do. I'd be good at it if they would only give me a fair go. I turned down two good offers of marriage to stay in the cops. Nice blokes but I'd have to give up work. I'm on my own; no relatives. And I could be a really good cop, I'm sure. But I'm not going to get any help from my sergeant or any of the others. They don't like women PCs all that much.'

‘My dear girl,' began Phryne, then looked at the young woman. Dedicated, earnest, dark-eyed and plain. She would make a good sergeant, and Phryne might be able to help her. The social forces keeping women down were intensifying, as they had after the first war. Soon it would be ‘Back to the kitchen, girls' again. Phryne was also struck by a sudden image of the dead man on Somerton Beach, and the young Wehrmacht soldier dying proudly in his ditch. She shivered.

‘All right, if there is something that I can do, I will. Come and see me when you have some more info, and we'll talk about it. But don't tell your sergeant, there's a dear. I have met enough sergeants to last me a lifetime.'

WPC Hammond left feeling happier than she had been since she caught sight of that strange dead face. Phryne Fisher was old, of course, and possibly not as
sharp as she had been in the late 1920s, when Hammond had been a child. But Miss Fisher might be able to help her find a murderer and solve a mystery and get the promotion she felt she deserved.

Marie closed the door after her with that peculiarly Gallic sniff which sounds like ripping linen and expresses extreme disdain.

‘She means to use you, Madame,' she scolded Phryne. ‘Use your skill to get advancement!'

‘Yes, so she does,' agreed Phryne. ‘And why shouldn't she?'

Marie sniffed again, and went back to the kitchen.

***

Phryne spent two days restraining herself from calling any of the people whom she had known in France because she had a strong compulsion to do so, and she had always distrusted strong compulsions. She did not want to get involved. The papers were full of the unknown man on Somerton Beach; his face confronted her from every newsstand and every paperboy cried his mystery.

But she did not call until WPC Hammond returned with a code.

‘Here it is, Miss Fisher. You any good at code-breaking?'

The young woman was excited, her face flushed, though that might have been caused by the weather. A
scathingly hot north wind was blowing. Phryne was clad only in a thin cotton shift and felt that she would really like to remove her skin and soak her bones in cold water.

‘No. I was involved in … other duties. But I know someone who is,' she said, remembering Bernard Cooper, who had been at a place called Bletchley doing something awfully Top Secret involving codes. Bernard was in Adelaide, in the Hills. And she had not seen him since 1945, in London.

‘Here it is.'

Phryne studied the paper. It looked like complete gibberish and, therefore, was probably a code.

‘It was found in a doctor's car. He left it parked above the beach and he found the book in it the next morning. The tamam shud in the dead man's pocket matches it, the tears match, and the typeface, it was torn out of the end of this book. I couldn't bring you the book, Miss Fisher, but it's a standard pocket edition. No name and no other marks than these. And all of the top security bods have been puzzling over it, no one has managed to make head nor tail it of it. What do you think?'

‘Hmm. You're sure that it is all there? What about this peculiar cross over the O in the third line?'

‘I copied it exactly. That's how it is set out and that cross is there in the original. Can you break it?' asked WPC Hammond eagerly.

‘I can't, no, but I know someone who might be able to. I'll take it to him. And don't worry about security,' she added, ‘he had the highest clearance of all of us. He worked on something codenamed Enigma, which no one but Winston Churchill was allowed to know about. I should be able to get you an answer in a day or two, provided he's willing to help. Has anything else happened?'

‘Well, yes, but I don't know if there's a connection. Someone – several someones – broke open all the lockers in the left-luggage office of the Adelaide Central Railway Station last night. Didn't pinch anything, just left all the stuff strewed on the floor.'

‘What were they looking for?'

‘I think it was the suitcase that we found earlier that day. It hasn't any wallet or keys or passport in it, though, but the clothes are the right size. And there is a laundry bag with a name stencilled on it.'

‘Well, what name?'

‘Keane. Or Kean. Otherwise there are just clothes and a toothbrush and some soap, a shaving brush, that sort of thing. All American-made.'

‘So it may not belong to him.'

‘Or it may,' said Hammond.

‘Keane,' mused Phryne. ‘Any initial?'

‘T or A E. The A could mean that his name was Anthony, T for Tony and A for Anthony. I reckon that there's a fair chance that the man was called Anthony E Keane. Not that it helps. No one of that name is missing
in South Australia. The other states haven't got back to us yet.'

‘Well, that's promising. I'll go and see my friend, and if he will help we should have an answer fairly soon. Nothing more from the pathologist?'

‘No, but he's convinced that he was murdered. He says that there are poisons that leave no trace. He's basing his theory on the face, on the expression.'

‘Well, so are we. If he took poison, where's the bottle or paper it was contained in? There was nothing around his feet, I noticed.'

‘So did I but he could have thrown it into the sea.'

‘Yes. Well, I'll get on with the code, and I'll call you when I've got an answer.'

WPC Hammond looked suddenly uneasy.

‘No, Miss Fisher, don't call me. I'll come and find out what you've got in two days time.'

‘Hammond, I should like to have had you with me in France,' said Phryne. ‘You have a fine sense of security.'

***

Bernard Cooper was home. The sound of his gentle voice made Phryne feel safe for the first time since she had encountered her dead man.

‘Bernard dear, it's
Chatte Noire
.'

‘Phryne!' he sounded astonished. ‘What are you doing here? When can you come to dinner?'

‘Tonight, if you like. Where are you?' He gave the address.

‘Come early,
ma chere chatte
– the road's a bit rough and the turning is hard to find in the dark. Nothing wrong,
cherie
?' he asked, sounding worried. ‘No need for me to alarm the legions?'

Phryne smiled. Bernard could probably summon up the entire army, navy and air force if he felt the need.

‘Nothing like that,' she assured him. ‘I have a puzzle to show you.'

‘Oh, dear, and I had thought it was for the pleasure of my company.'

‘It is that, as well. I'll come now, if you like.'

‘Yes,' he said firmly. ‘I do like.'

Phryne hung up, gathered a shady hat and sunglasses, and called upstairs, ‘Marie! I'm going out. I won't be back tonight. I've written down where I'll be and the telephone number. All right?'

‘
Oui
, Madame, I am going to the pictures.'

‘Oh? With that nice greengrocer?'

‘
Oui
, Georges.' She pronounced it in the French manner. ‘He is dreamy.'

Phryne smiled and went out into the searing street. She unlocked the Sprite and drove carefully up into the Adelaide Hills, concentrating on the uncertain surface of the road and hoping that higher up it might be cooler. A little thing like petrol rationing would never worry Phryne Fisher.

***

Bernard Cooper lived in a large colonial house with verandahs, perched on the side of a cliff. It looked vaguely uncertain, as though at any moment it might slide into the abyss. He was waiting for her as she negotiated the steep drive and parked the car at the back door.

‘Come in, come in,
ma chatte, ma cherie
! You must be parched. I have a nice bottle of the local champagne cooling at this moment.' He put a hand under her elbow. ‘All right, Phryne?'

He had aged, Phryne thought, and he thought the same thing about her.

War had not been good to Bernard Cooper. It had furrowed his brow and lent a faint trembling to his hands. Phryne, he noticed, had white streaks in her black hair, and lines around her mouth and neck that had not been there before she went to France. He cleared his throat.

‘You look splendid,' he said, and Phryne grinned at him.

Suddenly the original Phryne was there: impudent, confident and beautiful, her green eyes shining. He caught his breath.

‘Come in,' he repeated. ‘This weather is really enervating. I hardly do anything in the summer,' he added,
closing the door against the harsh sunlight and leading her into a cool panelled study. ‘Just aestivate and pray for rain. Here we are, a nice bottle of bubbly.'

‘Bernard,' said Phryne, sitting down and casting aside her sunglasses and hat, ‘you are babbling.'

‘Quite right,
cherie
, I am,' he confessed.

‘What are you covering up for?' she demanded, putting a hand on his arm.

‘Oh, Phryne,' he said, looking at her quite without artifice, ‘I never thought that we would grow old.'

‘No, neither did I. But I'm not old yet,' she added briskly.

‘Give me a glass of champagne and pull yourself together, Bernard, my dear. You are not old, either. You are still the shaggy bear I loved in London, and I still love you.'

Bernard smiled and poured the wine.

‘I still love you, Phryne. I have never been able to get you out of my mind.'

‘Are you alone here, Bernard? Where's Stephanie?'

‘Stephanie's dead. Didn't you know? She died of heart disease. Two years ago. We got all the way to Australia, bought the house that she always used to talk about – you remember, during the Blitz, we used to talk about the hills and the rosellas and the wine? We'd only been here a year and she died.'

‘Oh, Bernard, I'm so sorry …'

He smiled again, ruefully. ‘At least she got here. She got what she wanted, even if she only had it for a little time. There were so many others who never knew what it was to be free and at peace.'

‘That's true.' Phryne reached across and took his hand. The strength was still there, the tension of strong muscle under the thinning skin. His hair was still shaggy and blond, his beard almost white; his eyes were still the colour of a trout stream, pale grey flecked with gold.

‘I am glad to see you again, Phryne,' he said quietly, and she kissed him.

‘Well, what about this puzzle?' he asked, as she drew away.

‘Take some more wine and tell me about it.'

Sensing that her kiss had started something that Bernard would need time to adjust to, Phryne produced the paper and he laid it flat on a solid oak table, under a strong electric light.

mrgoadard mtbimpanetpmliaboaiaqc

ittmtsamstgab

‘Hmm. Not an alphabet code, I think,' he said.

‘How can you tell?' asked Phryne, who had never understood codes.

‘Not enough letters. I mean, not enough different letters. An alphabet substitution uses all of the letters of the
alphabet and there are several which don't appear. A box code, possibly, or an ETAIONSHRDLUCWME'

‘Sounds Greek,' she commented.

‘It's based on the frequency of the letters in the English language. Where was this found or shouldn't I ask?'

‘It's the code relating to the dead man on Somerton Beach. They're calling it the tamam shud mystery. You haven't heard of it? Don't you get newspapers up here?'

‘What, news? I don't want to hear any news', he said in horror, as though Phryne had offered him nice, fresh axolotl salad. She shook her head at his isolationism and sipped more wine. It was quite passable, and blessedly cool.