The Green Mill Murder (15 page)

Perhaps he had visited. Phryne wondered as to who would know. Mr Freeman did not seem to have been a confiding man. Mrs Freeman had not even known that he had corresponded with Victor.

Phryne went down to the hall and obtained an operator, who connected her after considerable delay to the post office in Talbotville.

‘Yair?’ a strong, confident man’s voice said.

‘I want to speak to Victor Freeman.’

‘To Vic? He ain’t . . .’ the voice changed suddenly. ‘I ain’t heard of no one of that name.’

‘You have, you know.’ Phryne was nettled. ‘I don’t mean him any harm but I need to talk to Victor Freeman.’

‘No one here of that name,’ snarled the voice, and the line went dead.

A mystery, Phryne thought, suddenly angry. What had been going on in Talbotville? Well, she would find out. Phryne did not like being cut off when she was inquiring with the best of motives. As soon as I can find some suitable maps, she resolved, I shall take the Moth up, and fly to wherever the place is, and look for Victor. And if I find him and he wants to stay unfound, then I shall leave him alone.

Bunji Ross, in the mess room of the Sky High Flying School, Essendon (Prop. W McNaughton), spread out the maps and
made a grimace.

‘It’s very lumpy country, Phryne,’ she commented. ‘It’s the highest country in Australia, mountains extending into the Great Divide and up to the Snowy. I’d call it inaccessible and I can see why you want to fly it, but . . .’

Phyrne surveyed Bunji with affection. From a track rider of race horses she had become a very good pilot of aeroplanes. Bunji was small and plump, with permanently ink-stained fingers, and brown hair cropped mercilessly close because it impeded her flying helmet. Phryne and Bunji had been at school together, where Bunji had got her name from her endless and inventive uses for indiarubber. She had been a dead shot with an ink-dart.

‘You are taking the Moth?’

Phryne nodded.

‘Well, let’s have a look at the route. These maps are the best they had; I believe that a new survey is planned, but these were made by the original surveyor back in 1856. The topography won’t have changed all that much, I suppose. Now, you leave from here and fly to – what is the name of the town?’

‘Talbotville.’

‘Aha. Here it is. In that big river valley, there. That looks like a possible landing, though if it is all forested you may have a little difficulty getting out again.’

‘Then to . . .’ Phryne consulted the letters. ‘MacAlister Springs.’

‘Pour me some more tea, will you, Phryne? I can’t see a MacAlister Springs, but there is a MacAlister River. Here. It seems to rise in the shadow of this big ’un, Mount Howitt. That valley, old girl, is not passable. Look at the contours!’

Phryne gazed at the map. Two rivers rose from the bulk of Mount Howitt; the Wonnangatta, flowing east around the mountain, and the MacAlister, flowing south-west. Bunji was right. There did not look to be a flat space at all inside the valley of the MacAlister, and the contours of the mountains connected to Mount Howitt were perpendicular.

‘I’ve borrowed this from the walking club,’ said Bunji, laying another map on the table. ‘It’s a walker’s map. It names all those peaks. See, here, from Mount Howitt. You are going to love the names, Phryne.’ Her blunt forefinger traced the spiky lines. ‘Between Howitt and the next one is the Cross-Cut Saw, and where the Wonnangatta River rises is the Terrible Hollow. It looks like a long way down. Then there is Mount Speculation, and on the other side of the river, the Viking. It appears that the bit of high plain next to Mount Howitt is the Howitt Plains, which leads onto the Snowy Plains. Now, I’ve only seen heights like this in the Himalayas. Big mountains, and they cause a lot of flying problems. Downdrafts that can drop you five hundred feet in a second. Mist. Cloud. You know about cloud. You can be tootling along without a care when the cloud lifts and you’re head-on into a cliff. I don’t think this is a good idea, Phryne, my dear. Isn’t there another way to get to this dratted place?’

‘Packhorse and days and days,’ commented Phryne. ‘I’m in a hurry.’

‘You don’t want to be in so much of a hurry that you arrive dead,’ argued Bunji. ‘However, if you insist. Well, you can get to Talbotville all right; it’s in the basin of that big river, the Wongungurra, and it seems to be at least half a mile wide around there. Your best bet for the MacAlister Springs place might be to drop down onto the Howitt Plains. Aha, yes, there it is—the Springs. From Talbotville, assuming that you can get aloft, it’s not a great distance. You can carry enough fuel to get to these springs, provided you keep between the two rivers and fly towards Mount Howitt. Yes. Take off west from Talbotville, over Mount Cynthia, follow the Snowy Plains straight for Mount Howitt, and land just before the mountain. The walking club says that it is virgin forest and very thick in the valleys, but the Snowy and Howitt plains are pretty flat, with not many trees because they are above the snowline. If it’s cool, there may be snow too. I’ve got an article from the walking club’s newsletter on the place, Phryne. It might be helpful. Who’s your copilot?’

‘Haven’t got one,’ said Phryne. ‘Too dangerous.’

She scanned the newsletter, squinting at the tiny print. ‘Melbourne Walking Club,’ it said. ‘Buller–Howitt country’.

‘Thanks, Bunji. Can you get onto Shell and tell them to get a full load of fuel to Talbotville and Mansfield for me? I’ll start in two days, to allow them to get there first.’

‘Can’t you wait until Saturday? Then I can come too.’

‘No. I said I’m in a hurry, and it’s far too dangerous to take a friend. And I might have a passenger on the return trip. Ask Bill McNaughton to go over the Moth for me, will you? New spark plugs, check the tyres, that sort of thing.’

‘No, not Bill,’ said Bunji in a determined manner. ‘I’ll go over your Moth. Now remember what I’ve said about mountains. Fly above cloud if you can, below it if you must, but never fly in cloud. It will kill you, nine times out of ten. Keep awake. Mountains are not forgiving. There’s not going to be a nice flat paddock to glide down to if you run into trouble. Keep as low as you can. You’ll know if you’re icing because the wings get heavy and unresponsive.

‘And if the wings are iced?’

‘Land somehere. If in trees, aim to shear the tops, that’ll slow your rate of descent.’

‘And tear the wings off?’

‘Yes, of course, but you might get out alive.’

‘Hmmm,’ said Phryne. She finished her tea and stood up, rolling the maps.

‘I’ll study these. I’d better send a message to Talbotville too, and tell them to expect me. I don’t suppose they have many planes drop in on them. Thanks, Bunji,’ she added, and went out to watch the student fliers taking their first tentative steps towards being airborne.

Bunji Ross sighed. She considered Phryne to lack the caution that made for long-lived fliers.

Phryne sent a telegram to ‘Postmaster, Talbotville’ warning him that she was about to descend on his town and asking that a windsock be put up next to a suitable landing place. Phryne’s Gipsy Moth, called
Rigel,
was capable of landing on a continuous strip less than one hundred yards long, and had a stalling speed of 40 mph. She was waylaid by Bill McNaughton, full of news about the new Leopard Moth.

‘It has brakes, Miss Fisher, you must admit that this is a huge improvement on the basic design.’

‘Yes, but wouldn’t it be hard on the tyres? Surely braking will gouge great lumps out of them. They’re only rubber, you know.’

‘True, but there is a new tyre design as well. She’s a pretty machine, Miss Fisher. You know that I gave my heart to the Fokker, but the Leopard Moth is pretty good.’

‘Well, Bill, I’ll think about it. I may need a new plane if my next trip is as hairy as Bunji seems to think.’

Bill McNaughton stooped down from his six-foot height, massive brow corrugated with thought. ‘Bunji thinks it’s dangerous? Then it must be. Sporting flier, that girl. Where are you going?’

‘Over the Australian Alps,’ said Phryne, unrolling her map to demonstrate the route. ‘North-east to Mansfield, then across Buller and into this valley, the Wonnangatta Valley, then to a place called Talbotville.’

‘They look like pretty high mountains,’ he commented, taking the map. ‘Is this the latest map? Looks a hundred years old.’

‘Mountains generally stay where they are put.’

‘Hmm. Well, I’ll put in the order for the Leopard. You never know, you might get out of the crash alive. But I’ll be sorry to see her go, the little Moth. Nice little bus. Got to go, I’ve three new fliers panting for the air. Good luck, Phryne.’ Bill McNaughton strode off, and Phryne took herself soberly home.

‘You’re going alone!’ Dot dropped one of the shoes she was holding.

‘Yes, of course. I don’t want anyone else getting ki— I mean, I like flying alone.’

‘It’s dangerous, isn’t it?’ Dot demanded. ‘Take me!’

‘Don’t be silly, Dot, you’ve never been in the air before.’

‘I can learn.’ Dot’s mouth firmed into a determined line. ‘It can’t be that difficult. Lots of ladies can fly.’

‘No, Dot.’

‘But . . .’ began Dot, and Phryne sat her down on the couch, taking the other shoe gently out of her hand.

‘No, Dot. I am not taking anyone. You shall stay here and go to the Policemen and Firemen’s Ball in that beautiful dress with your charming policeman Hugh, and you will have a lovely time. I will be fine. I am a good flier and I have maps and a compass and I will find my way home, you see if I don’t. I have been altogether too safe and comfortable for too long and I need a bit of danger. I have been suffocating in this over-civilised atmosphere of jazz and drink and I have to get out of it for a bit. You can see that, can’t you?’

Dot couldn’t. Her idea of perfection, after a very hard-working childhood and a traumatic life as a servant before Phryne had rescued her, was one long band of monotony in which nothing out-of-the-way occurred. Phryne divined this, and sighed.

‘We will never really understand each other, Dot dear,’ she said sadly. ‘But at least we can accept each other. I need adventure, you need quiet; well, you shall stay and be calm, and I shall go off and be adventurous. You wouldn’t like flying, Dot darling, you really wouldn’t. And I would be worrying about you instead of myself and the plane, and that would not be helpful. Or safe. Now, that’s settled. Dig out all my flying gear, will you, and see that nothing needs mending or replacing. See, here are the maps.’

She traced out her route, Dot leaning over her shoulder, and talked learnedly of fuel dumps and weight-to-lift ratios, and Dot listened politely without having the faintest idea what Phryne was talking about. As requested, she went to the wardrobe and pulled out the flying gear. Helmet, scarf, long winter woollies, trousers and shirt, and sheepskin-lined boots and coat. She was not, however, happy. Her mad mistress was off on some tearing folly of her own again, and Dot would not stop worrying until Phryne was safely back in her own house, dressing for dinner and behaving like a lady should. Phryne then rang Hilliers and ordered the largest box of best-quality chocolates that they made.

Mr Butler answered the phone as Phryne was consulting with Dot over a strange rubber funnel and tube Dot had found in the case, which Phryne took when flying.

‘What is it, Miss?’

‘Dot dear, I don’t quite know how to reply without offending your modesty. Think of the shape of that soft funnelly thing, and of the number of hours one has to spend in the air, and the consequent strain on the human bladder. Yes, Mr Butler?’