Dead Man's Chest (19 page)

‘That, my boy, is a piece of eight. This is the full silver coin—a real
de a ocho
, eight reals. A spanish dollar. You can cut it into eight pieces, each worth . . .’

‘One real, whatever a real is,’ said Jane. ‘I see. And all these coins date to before 1842, when the mythical Benito allegedly stole the cathedral’s treasure?’

‘Precisely. You are getting the idea,’ responded Phryne.

‘And I’ll fetch a few bones. What sort do you want, Miss Phryne?’

‘Small bones, but unmistakably human. Not skulls.’

‘Oh, no, Mr Thomas needs all his skulls.’

Jane ran upstairs. Tinker surveyed the handful of coins, and the full scandalous ambit of Miss Fisher’s plan bloomed in his adolescent mind. Now this was something that Sexton Blake might have plotted. And it was going to be fun.

Ruth was puzzled but compliant.

‘What do you need us to do, Miss Phryne?’

‘I want you,’ said Phryne, sipping her gin and orange, ‘to salt the mine.’

Jane came back and scattered small bones across the white tablecloth.

‘Metacarpals,’ she said. ‘No animal has them like this. Anyone with a basic knowledge of anatomy will identify them at once.’

‘Good,’ said Phryne. She found her notes. ‘Now, tomorrow, with the pirate fever from the film still seething in town, this is what we are going to do . . .’

No one could quite pinpoint the moment when the Great Queenscliff Treasure Hunt began. Was it when a grubby boy, one of the legion of grubby boys who infested Queenscliff, asked Mr Jones the land agent and banker to give him a shilling for an old bent silver coin he had found in the alley behind Hesse Street? (Mr Jones had beaten him down to sixpence, for which Tinker vowed retribution). Was it when a sandy girl who had clearly been beachcombing came into the lolly shop requesting help because she had found what was later identified as several human fingerbones and a gold coin in one of the multiple caves along Swan Bay? Was it when an anonymous well-wisher had sent Mr Thames, editor of the local news- paper, an American silver dollar found in the shallows off Swan Island? When an Irish girl had given her father a twisted bit of silver coin, and he had woken the whole of Fishermen’s Flat with his rendition of ‘Fifteen men on a dead man’s chest, Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum’ (in which he had freely indulged by virtue of bartering the coin to the publican of the Esplanade Hotel for several bottles)? Or possibly when the neighbours had noticed Miss Fisher, clad in outrageous canvas trousers, with soldier’s knapsack and her three attendants in tow, prospecting with an entrenching tool along that same shoreline?

Whenever it was, gold fever took hold of the respectable watering place. Dot, emerging from the movies on Monday night, where she had seen some of
Pirate Tales
and bent the rest of her attention on romancing Hugh, heard people murmuring ‘treasure’ and ‘Benito’ and ‘gold coins’.

‘What’s happened?’ asked Hugh, moulding Dot closer to his side as the people rushed past.

‘Miss Phryne,’ said Dot complacently. ‘She said her plan might cause a stir.’

‘Stir?’ said Hugh, shoved to one side by people storming the draper’s for tools and stout garments. ‘More like a riot. Remind me, Dot,’ he said, picking her up and swinging her into an alley as the mob throbbed and murmured, ‘never to offend your Miss Fisher.’

‘I’ll remind you,’ said Dot, and kissed him again.

On Tuesday three people fell overboard from boats, eight reported to the doctor’s clinic with heatstroke and one case of sunburn so severe that the doctor popped the patient into a bath of very dilute boracic acid. One of Miss Fisher’s children brought another three fingerbones which the doctor identified as human.

‘What’s that red mark on the bone, sir?’ asked the golden-haired girl respectfully. ‘Could it be paint or dye?’

‘No, it’s probably an iron mark,’ he said crossly. It was a very hot day. His clinic was full of patients, all casualties of the treasure hunt except the fisherman’s baby with croup. It was crying and crowing and vomiting at intervals, which did not improve the already overheated atmosphere in the parlour. ‘The body was buried next to an iron bolt or possibly sword, which rusted and left ferric oxide, which stained the bone. See?’

‘I see,’ said the golden-haired girl, and she went away, which is what the doctor had wanted her to do.

The mark on the bone had been Arnhem Land ochre, applied after the bone was bare. Jane had been given an object lesson in the failings of pure deduction. She was sobered.

On Wednesday morning Phryne got up unaccustomedly early, as she had on Tuesday, and dressed in her canvas trousers and long jacket. Her boots were strong and laced up to the ankle. Her sola topee had been soaked in water overnight, her skin was slicked with Milk of Roses, and her scarf, which also acted as a fly net, was doused in citronella, which made her sneeze but was better, she judged, than coming home covered with itchy bites from the multitudinous mosquitos and sandflies and midges which haunted the salt marsh, hungering for human blood. She also had her English parasol for additional protection. Ruth had already made and packed three picnic lunches.

‘Today,’ Phryne instructed, ‘we split up.’

‘Miss Phryne, I don’t like all this,’ complained Ruth. ‘I’m bitten and sunburnt and I just want to stay home in the cool and read my book.’

‘Me too,’ said Jane. ‘But we’re at your orders, Miss Phryne.’

Phryne looked at them and relented. They were city children, after all.

‘You are very good girls and I am proud of you,’ Phryne told them. ‘You don’t actually need to hunt for treasure, darlings, you just need to be seen to be hunting. I suggest that you set out, in all your gear, and make sure people see you. Then you can stop at the ice-cream shop—here’s some money. Eat your ice cream in the street. Then exclaim, “We forgot the trowel!”, stage a small quarrel about who should have remembered the trowel, and then come back. Remove the gear, have a nice cup of tea and spend the rest of the day quietly in the house. Eat your picnic in the parlour. What about that?’

‘Goodo!’ exclaimed Ruth. She really didn’t like the outside all that much. It was hot and scratchy and there was nothing to cook except the occasional startled wallaby. ‘Máire’s not here today. Her mum’s sick. So me and Jane will cook you a really good dinner, Miss Phryne. For when you come home.’

‘Thank you! Dot will be up in a moment,’ said Phryne. ‘She’ll be here, too, unless she’s going treasure hunting with Hugh.’

‘He’s going fishing,’ said Tinker. ‘He said. With Mr O’Malley. Half the fishos have left their boats and are digging up cellars. Grainy’s all the crew he has left but he reckons she’s enough. Miss Dot is going fishing with the detective sergeant, Guv.’

‘The course of true love should not include seasickness,’ said Phryne. ‘All right, it’s you and me, Tinker, unless you want to go fishing too?’

‘I c’n always go fishing,’ said Tinker. ‘I’m with you, Guv.’

‘Stout man. Got your pack? Your water bottle?’

Tinker stood to attention. He had certainly grown in a week. His hair was curlier. His expression was confident. It hadn’t taken long to convert Tinker from Eddie the Bone-Idle Layabout to Tinker the Attentive.

‘Come along, then,’ said Phryne, smiled at the girls, put a leash on Molly, and went out.

‘Better do as she says,’ said Ruth to Jane. ‘Then we can take the day off. There’s this fascinating crayfish recipe in Mrs Leyel. I wonder if we can pick up a few crayfish on the way home? Or maybe some clams for chowder?’

‘Possibly,’ said Jane. ‘If anyone’s gone fishing today.’

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Latet anguis in herba A snake lurks in the grass

Virgil
Aeneid

‘Where’re we goin’, Guv?’ asked Tinker.

‘Good question,’ said Phryne, surveying the burrowing populace. Men with braces dangling, women with their skirts tucked into their knickers and on shameless public display, children running unwatched into the creamy sea and being dragged out screaming. ‘Most of the foreshore is covered with lunatics. How about going along the very edge of the cliff, on the sand I mean, where there was that big rockfall. That’ll be too uncomfortable for those in bathing dresses, but we are well equipped and Molly is a strong dog, aren’t you?’ Molly wagged. She approved of getting out and about. ‘How are you with heights, Tinker?’

‘Never bothered me, Guv,’ said Tinker. ‘I fall soft.’

‘A valuable skill for a detective.’

They climbed and scrambled to the edge of the big rockfall. The cliff had given way under the battering of a high tide and had slipped rather than fallen. Large boulders had rolled into the sea. No one was attempting to climb them. The sand was full of dried vegetation which cut the uncovered hand and seeded with frightful balls of thorns which looked, as Phryne picked one up to inspect it, like something invented by a fiendish armaments technician for the Great War. Probably to vent poisonous gas or explode with dreadful slaughter in the trench in which it landed.

‘Bindi-eyes,’ identified Tinker. ‘Nasty.’

Phryne agreed. What this landscape really needed, she considered, was a flamethrower.

‘There’s
Black Oak
going out to Swan Island,’ commented Tinker, stamping a burr vengefully underfoot. ‘Guv, what are you goin’ to do with me?’

‘With you?’ Phryne had been considering a strange little dent in the side of the collapsed cliff. ‘I’m not going to do anything with you.’

Tinker climbed up beside Phryne and put a hand on her khaki-clad arm.

‘I mean, yer picked me up, Guv, and what’s goin’ to happen to me when you go home to yer nice house in St Kilda what Miss Ruth was tellin’ me about?’

‘Depends on what you want,’ said Phryne, who had been thinking about this very situation. ‘Do you want to leave Queenscliff and come to the city? You’ll have to go to school and it won’t be nice. They will torment you for being a stranger. But when you are eighteen you can become a police cadet, if that’s what you want to do.’

‘That’s all I ever wanted to do,’ said Tinker, his grip tightening.

‘What about your mother and the children?’

‘I can get a job deliverin’ things, I got a bike now. And them boys won’t pick on me more’n once or twice. I c’n send money home. Me mum’d rather have me room than me company. One less mouth to feed.’

‘All right. We’ll try it. Six months. If it doesn’t work, you can go home with no hard feelings,’ said Phryne.

‘You beaut!’ yelled Tinker, and fell off the rocks.

When Tinker had been picked up—he had, indeed, fallen soft into the sand rather than hard onto the boulders— his bindi-eyes plucked off and Molly had licked him better, he and Phryne continued their examination of the fallen cliff.

‘I reckon there might be cave there,’ said Tinker. Phryne used her parasol to prod the affected area, where the sand was darker and there seemed to be perhaps a bush or two of the indestructible manuka behind it. The parasol went in to the hilt. Phryne poked harder and some sand fell away.

‘Another couple of hours of this and we can go home,’ said Phryne. ‘Oh, I say!’

‘What?’ Tinker crawled to her side.

There was a real, palpable cave. And in it, visible through the manuka bushes which had hidden its opening, were several age-bitten shards of wood, a brass hinge, and a large terracotta pot. Molly began to bark wildly.

‘Grouse!’ Tinker dived ahead with both hands into the pit and then froze as massed hissing echoed from the little cave.

‘Stay perfectly still,’ Phryne ordered. ‘Hush, Molly. Sit. Now let me see if I can remember the snake charmer’s trick I saw in India. Aha.’

‘How many joe blakes do y’ reckon, Miss?’ asked Tinker through teeth so tightly shut that he sounded drunk.

‘Ten at the least, I can’t see very far. What have you got in your hands?’

‘Beads, I reckon. Not coins. And sand.’

The hissing rose in volume. Molly, bidden to be silent, writhed in protest, kicking up sand. Phryne could see that the cave was a mass of snakes. They must have been new hatched when the cave was sealed and presumably lived on rabbits and mice which were unwise enough to burrow into the dune. The warm weather had sent them into a very disagreeable state of wriggle and she could hear scales sliding over each other. They had not taken this intrusion well.

‘I’m going to use the parasol to tip that terracotta pot towards us,’ said Phryne. ‘And I’m going to sing. No criticism, please.’

‘Been good to know yer, Guv,’ said Tinker valiantly.

‘And it will continue to be so, if you shut up and stay still.’

Tinker stayed still. He had not mentioned to the fearless Miss Phryne that he loathed snakes. He could feel betraying shudders starting in his shoulders. He was as cold as if he had been dipped into the Irish Sea. Pretty soon, beyond his control, he would jerk or quiver, and then he could see those long curved fangs striking, sinking into his hands, into his unprotected face . . .

Miss Fisher began to sing a strange Oriental melody, which slid up and down the scales, and her parasol tip described a rhythmical arc. It waved to and fro as it approached the pot, caught at the lip, and tipped it, very gradually, towards the mouth of the cave. Tinker gasped.

The snakes were listening. Each scaly head was turning to the movement of the parasol and beginning, yes, to move along with it, while the strange tune wove and dipped. The pot moved on its base, and the snakes coiled and hissed again. Undaunted, Phryne persisted with her tune, waved the parasol tip, and the heads began to move in unison.

Finally, just before Tinker’s arms fell off, the pot shifted so that its red side was between him and the snakes. Phryne said ‘Now!’ and Tinker pulled out his closed hands and rolled, again, down the slope onto the sand.

‘There,’ said Phryne composedly, stepping down to join him and opening her knapsack. ‘Now, let’s see what you’ve got, Tinker.’

‘It’s yours, you saved my life,’ gasped Tinker, dropping the sand and beads into the knapsack and throwing himself into a throttling hug, in which Molly joined. She licked the tears off his face as they ran down. ‘All yours!’

‘No, no, fifty-fifty, at most,’ she said, hugging him cordially.

‘Where did you learn to do that, Guv?’ asked Tinker, shaking himself down. Sand in every interstice. He was hot now, flushed, and short of breath from relief. With any luck the guv’nor would not have noticed his unmanly tears. Molly had disposed of the evidence.

‘Oh, I saw them in India, and in Egypt. Snake charming is one of those tourist shows that they put on for the people off cruise ships. They say that it’s the movement of the pipe, not the tune, and that snakes are deaf, but I suspect it’s both, and the concentrated mind of the charmer, and I didn’t dare leave anything out.’

‘In case that was the important bit,’ panted Tinker. ‘I under- stand. I agree with the detective sergeant, Guv.’

‘And what did the respected Hugh say?’ asked Phryne, inspecting the spoil which had almost cost Tinker his life.

‘He said you’re the most remarkable woman in the world,’ said Tinker. ‘And he’s right.’

‘Thank you,’ said Phryne, adjusting her sola topee. ‘Look at this, my young associate!’

‘Just a lot of old stones,’ grumbled Tinker a little later.

Phryne laughed a little light-headedly. Snake charming was not as easy as it looked. Phryne, also, did not like poisonous snakes very much.

‘Actually, my boy, those greenish ones are uncut emeralds and the blue ones like pebbles are sapphires, and this red knob of Queenscliff rock is a ruby—quite a big one. That ought to pay for your schooling.’

They sat a moment in silence, staring at a fortune.

‘There’s probably a lot more in that cave,’ said Tinker questioningly.

‘And it can stay there,’ Phryne told him. ‘Never press your luck unless you have to. That’s always been my rule. Greed in this case could be fatal. There, now,’ she said, as the sand, disturbed by being walked on, rustled down to cover the cave again. ‘Fate agrees with me. Pick up your gear, Tinker. We are going back to the foreshore for a bathe and a wash and a nice picnic. I believe,’ she added, hefting the pack with the precious stones inside, ‘that Ruth has included my flask. I could do,’ said Phryne, leading the way along the beach, ‘with a drink.’

Molly and Tinker thought that they could, too.

Phryne’s words had proved prophetic. Dot’s stomach, reliable in cars, buses and trains, proved not to be seaworthy, even though the water was only kicking up a ‘wee chop low enough to wet a leprechaun’s eyebrows’, as Mr O’Malley said. He was unusually Irish today, Hugh thought. It must have been that sea battle. As the
Black Oak
had fish to catch in the absence of other boats, and Dot was really queasy, Hugh negotiated that they should be set down on Swan Island, whence they could easily get home, and which might provide a few nooks suitable for either a little canoodling or rock fishing, whichever came first. The
Black Oak
set off. Hugh noticed that Mr O’Malley had souvenired the black flag, and was still flying it.

There were salt marshes, swarming with insects. Although citronella was keeping off the hordes, enough hardy midges were getting through to make walking that way uncomfortable. Slapping with a suitable myrtle sprig, Hugh found a path littered with fish scales and followed it inland.

‘Feeling better?’ he asked, as Dot drank deeply from the water bottle.

‘Oh, yes, thanks. I felt that queer. All that water going up and down, up and down . . .’

Dot was looking green again, so Hugh suggested, ‘What about this little path? Might go somewhere nice.’

‘All right,’ gasped Dot.

They traversed the low, salt-scoured forest for some time. The wind had dropped. It was hot and, as in all Australian forests, there was nowhere to sit down which might not harbour a snake. Hugh held up a hand.

‘I can smell smoke,’ he commented.

‘Might be a fisherman’s camp. Oh, Hugh, and me not fit to be seen!’

‘I’ll just go on ahead,’ said Hugh. ‘You stay here. Won’t be long,’ he assured her.

Which was how Hugh Collins, coming in very quietly from the east, found the bivouac.

It was a tidy little camp, he considered. Little tin shed reroofed with manuka basketwork. Few rabbit skins hanging up on a bush. Sacks and boxes of food. Barrel of water. Nice latrine concealed behind a convenient bush. Garments hung out to dry. Very basic fishing gear; a many-hooked line wound around a beer bottle. Small fire, almost smokeless, and the kettle just beginning to sing. A rough bench had been constructed out of driftwood and would at least give poor Dot a chance to sit down.

Then a spear was poked into his side and a voice demanded, ‘Who are you?’

The bell-like tones advised Hugh that this was not your average bushranger.

‘I’m Detective Sergeant Hugh Collins,’ he announced.

‘Thank heavens,’ said the voice. ‘ Are you alone?’

‘Just my fiancée,’ he told the voice. ‘She’s been really seasick and she could do with a cup of tea.’

‘Poor child,’ said a female voice. ‘Do put down that silly spear now, Johnson, and let’s get the young lady a cuppa. Nasty thing, seasickness.’

‘Thanks,’ said Hugh.

When Dot staggered into the clearing a tin mug of tea was ready for her.

‘Allow me to introduce Mrs Johnson,’ said Hugh with pardonable pride. ‘And Mr Johnson.’

‘Nice to meet you,’ said Dot, accepting the tea.

‘I’m afraid we’ve only got honey left now,’ said Mrs Johnson. ‘And the milk’s powdered.’

‘I’ve got a bottle of beer here,’ said Hugh. ‘Would you care . . . ?’

‘Not for me,’ said Mr Johnson firmly. ‘We’re teetotal except in cases of swooning or sickness. But sit down, officer, and drink it yourself, and we’ll see what we have for a little snack.’

‘No need,’ said Dot, holding out her cup for more tea. ‘We’ve got a picnic.’

‘Oh,’ said Mrs Johnson, sinking down onto the bench. ‘Proper bread!’

‘Roast beef sandwiches today,’ said Hugh. ‘And chicken legs and some of that potato salad. Better than fish and rabbits, eh?’ he asked, distributing the feast liberally to the marooned. After the breakfasts which Dot had been cooking for him, he was feeling comfortably able to miss lunch.

Mrs Johnson nibbled a chicken leg as though it had been cooked by Carême himself. Mr Johnson helped himself to Ruth’s divine potato salad. Dot ate a sandwich so as to seem companionable. Her stomach was still a little wobbly.

‘It has been rather fun, actually,’ said Mr Johnson. His aldermanic figure might have been reduced by a week’s privation. He had a bright shining bald head to go with his bright shining blue eyes. A thin fringe of white hair remained to define his face.

‘Mr Johnson was one of those farm boys who can do anything with a length of bailing wire and a little ingenuity,’ put in Mrs Johnson. Apart from her hair, which was dishevelled—she must not have brought a comb with her when they were decoyed away from the Thomas house into that mysterious black car—she looked just like the respectable housekeeper she was. She resupplied Dot’s cup. ‘And I was the daughter of a poor man, so I know how to contrive. We reroofed the tin hut, evicted the wildlife—several snakes, my Lord!—and we had our luggage, and later other things.’

‘But you could have gone home,’ said Dot, much refreshed. Nothing like tea, after all, she thought. For all Miss Phryne’s cocktails, it was the cup that cheered but did not inebriate. ‘You didn’t have to stay here.’

‘Yes, we did,’ said Mr Johnson. He looked grave. ‘Can I suppose that the officer is here to do something about the smuggling business which has made Queenscliff a byword for drunkenness and all uncleanness?’

His voice had developed a faint parsonic twang.