Dead Man's Chest (8 page)

Mrs McNaster had clearly outlived manners. Phryne smiled at Lavvie, who had not been invited to sit.

‘Tea?’ she asked her. ‘Do have one of these cupcakes, they look delicious.’

As her employer did not so much as scowl in her direction, Lavvie ventured on a cake and had just taken her first sip of tea when Mrs McNaster swallowed the last bite of bread and butter and shrieked, ‘Lavvie! Get back to the window!’

‘Yes, Mrs McNaster,’ quaked Lavvie. ‘Right away, Mrs McNaster.’

She had pale grey eyes and pale grey hair and was dressed, predictably enough, in pale grey, and she slid out of the room like an apologetic ghost. Phryne was pleased to see the maid slip her a plate heaped with goodies behind Mrs McNaster’s back. Phryne winked at the maid. The maid put a finger to her lips.

‘I understand you saw the Johnsons leave my house,’ she observed, as Mrs McNaster’s gnarled hand shot out towards the pound cake.

‘Me? No,’ snarled the old woman. ‘I never saw the Johnsons leave. Not a sight of them.’

‘Really?’ said Phryne. ‘How interesting. I was sure . . .’

‘Saw their stuff leave.’ Mrs McNaster was clearly a truthful observer. ‘In a pantechnicon. Loads of it. All their furniture went.’ She bit into the soft cake and crumbs fountained onto her withered bosom.

‘Ellis and Co,’ the old lady continued when she could speak again. ‘It was written on the side. But the Johnsons weren’t there. Hadn’t been for a week. Two men loaded it all up and went. What do you mean
your
house, Miss? That house belongs to Thomas.’

‘He lent it to me,’ Phryne told her. The old eyes gleamed with greed. This woman wanted both more food and more information than anyone else, Phryne thought.

‘And who are you to him?’

‘I met him at a party,’ Phryne told her. ‘About now my own retainers will be supervising the renovation of my bathroom and I decided we all needed a holiday.’

‘Husband?’

‘Not a one,’ replied Phryne sunnily.

‘Not right.’ Mrs McNaster muffled her opinion in more cake. ‘Young woman should have a husband.’

‘So naturally I was surprised that the Johnsons weren’t here when I arrived,’ Phryne went on, as though the old woman had not spoken.

‘Flitted,’ said Mrs McNaster.

‘Really? But everyone says they were so devoted to Mr Thomas.’

‘Only as long as they could sting him for every penny he possessed. Like all servants. All thieves, if they aren’t watched like a hawk.’

The Irish maid raised both eyes to heaven and seemed to be thanking her guardian angel that she wasn’t Mrs McNaster’s servant.

‘Like Lavvie. My sister’s girl. She’ll have a pretty penny when I go. Until then I have to watch her. Extravagances! Ribbons! Novels! Chocolates!’

Poor Lavvie, niece to this old monster who would prob- ably live forever, if she could disoblige someone by so doing. Phryne put down her empty cup. It had been good tea. Dr Green the son-in-law kept a good table.

‘Oh, yes.’ Mrs McNaster nodded. Her carefully dressed hair could not hide the bald spot. Phryne tried to drag her eyes away from it.

‘Indeed,’ Phryne sympathised, and rose to take her leave.

‘Been someone at your door, too, Miss,’ hissed the old woman, grabbing Phryne by the wrist. Her fingers were disagreeably cold and strong. It was like being detained by an importunate octopus. Phryne fought down an instinct to break away.

‘Indeed?’

‘Early this morning. Just before dawn. I saw the boy come out and the little dog. That’s the Johnsons’ dog, isn’t it?’

‘Yes,’ said Phryne. ‘Gaston.’

‘They loved that dog,’ Mrs McNaster told her. ‘Doted on it. Would never have left it behind. Mark my words, something’s happened to them, and someone’s stolen their furniture.’

‘Who came to my gate?’ asked Phryne, at last retrieving her hand. Mrs McNaster smelt very strongly of something medicinal—Friar’s balsam, perhaps? Something darker? Phryne’s nose began to itch.

‘Couldn’t see,’ confessed Mrs McNaster. It was clearly a painful thing for her to confess. ‘Too dark.’

‘Well, if they come back again, we’ll find out what it was about. Goodbye, Mrs McNaster, thanks for the tea. No need to show me out, I can find the way,’ said Phryne to the Irish maid. She walked out into the sun on the old parrot screech of ‘Lavvie! What did you see? What did I miss?’

‘Phew,’ said Phryne, and walked across the road, conscious of the beady old eyes between her shoulder blades. She tore off her hat as she walked in the front door, sat down and removed the stockings, shoes and gloves, and ran barefoot upstairs for her sandals and some company.

Everyone, it appeared, was in the kitchen or the garden, and Phryne joined them there.

Ruth had ordered the ingredients and then sent Tinker down to the village for the extra ingredients, and had her menu laid out and her assistants chopping and mincing. Dot, from her garden chair, a throne of shelled peas, offered Phryne a choice of tea or cordial or a cocktail and was unsurprised when her employer cast herself down beside Gaston in the mint bed, caressed the little dog’s ears, and opted for alcohol.

‘Was she as awful as Tinker says?’ asked Jane, who was always interested in people and felt she really knew far too little about them as a species.

‘Fully,’ said Phryne. Tinker beamed. ‘In fact, he was very polite about her.’ Tinker beamed again. That was a fault of which he had never previously been accused. ‘She is a ghastly old bitch and I pity the poor companion who has to endure that parrot screech all day and every day. No matter what her expectations, no gold is worth that sort of a life.’

‘That’s what my mum says,’ offered Tinker. ‘But poor old Lavvie’s been so ground down by that old . . . er . . . lady . . . that Mum reckons she couldn’t survive on her own.’

‘Possibly.’ Phryne took a deep gulp of the orange cocktail, to which Ruth had added some extras. ‘This tastes ambrosial, Ruth dear. Do I detect a little almond? Some noyau, in fact?’

‘Yes, Miss Phryne.’ Ruth was impressed.

‘Lovely,’ Phryne told her. ‘Remember that I am always available to taste your experiments.’

‘Mrs McNaster . . .’ suggested Dot.

‘Could have been named by Dickens. The name just suits her. But I am afraid that she did see the van and it was emblazoned
Ellis and Co
. And she is a good observer. But she says she hadn’t seen the Johnsons for some time before their furniture left, and they weren’t there to load it.’

‘Someone stole their furniture?’ asked Dot.

‘Seems unlikely, when they didn’t take the whole houseful of really quite good furniture, not to mention artworks, books and ornaments,’ said Phryne. ‘Is there any more in that jug? I’d like to wash the taste of Mrs M right out of my mouth.’

‘Someone collected it and it wasn’t the Johnsons dispatching it,’ mused Jane, who was making quite a good job out of crumbling bread for a crumbled topping.

‘So next we have to find out who and why,’ said Phryne.

‘I’ll just get my old duds on,’ said Tinker, dropping the last potato into the bucket.

‘Hold on,’ said Phryne. ‘Not so fast. What about the person who came to the gate very early this morning?’

‘How did you . . . ? Oh, Mrs McNaster saw it,’ mumbled Tinker. ‘I was going to tell you, Guv’nor. As soon as I saw you. See, Gaston barked, and when I went out, he barked more . . .’

‘Which must have been when Molly woke up,’ said Ruth. ‘She just gave one bark then went back to sleep so I didn’t think anything of it.’

‘I went out to the gate, but there was no one there,’ said Tinker, standing straight and reporting. ‘I could see all the way down both ways and there was no one. So I chained the gate and came back and locked the door, and put the bolt up as well.’

‘And you didn’t hear anything else?’ asked Phryne, trying to sound severe though considerably relaxed by her second cocktail.

‘Nothing, Guv’nor, not so much as a mouse.’

‘All right then. In future make sure that I know anything you need to tell me as soon as possible. You tell it to Dot. She won’t forget.’

‘Yessir,’ said Tinker.

‘Tomorrow, I think, would be a good time to investigate the Ellis operation. I need to find out more about it first. Today you can help Ruth and see if you can keep a straight face waiting at table tonight.’

‘Me, Guv’nor?’ Tinker gaped. Phryne grinned.

‘You. I wouldn’t make you sit down with those horrible boys. Just try not to spill gravy down their necks unless they really, really deserve it, and keep your ears peeled.’

‘What for?’ asked Tinker.

‘Anything interesting,’ said Phryne.

The assistants peeled and Jane swapped her crumbs for the fairy tale book. The household settled down to listen.

‘Once upon a time there were two sisters, and they were as unlike as they could be, for one was dark and one was fair. The dark sister was called Rose Red and the fair sister was called Snow White.’

‘I like this one,’ said Ruth.

Gaston and Phryne drowsed companionably in the mint bed.

CHAPTER EIGHT

This film is so cryptic as to be almost meaningless. If there is any meaning, it is doubtless objectionable.

British censor’s report
on
Le Coquille

Having lazily beguiled the day with a swim, a sandwich lunch, a close reading of Dr Thorndyke and a conversation about Ellis and Co with the land agent who was also her banker in Queenscliff, Phryne bathed and dressed for dinner without much expectation of pleasure. The food would be good, she was sure. The kitchen had been emitting delicious smells all day. But the company could not inspire her. And she was trying to remember the surrealists, who had been flourishing, in a small strange way, at the time when she herself had been in Paris during and just after the Great War.

Mostly poets, she recalled, as she dried her skin on a bath sheet and smoothed Milk of Roses into her shoulders, slightly touched by the sun. Apollinaire, who had died so young. Yes. André Breton, who wrote the manifesto. Bad boys: André Gide, for example, who adored dangerous brutes as long as they were male and muscular and didn’t hit him too hard. He hung around the surrealists because they resolutely refused to be shocked by anything and Gide made a good test for their level of tolerance. Yves Tanguy, who captured and then ate spiders to scare passers-by. Man Ray, the photographer, turning women into musical instruments. The slightly disconnected Marcel Duchamp, who gave up painting because he got good at it and started constructing things out of wire and string. Could beat anyone at chess with that absent-minded little smile on his face. Once, when Phryne had asked him what he was thinking about, he had answered, ‘The passion of ducks.’ When she had exclaimed, someone else had whispered, ‘M’sieur est Belge.’ But being Belgian could not alone explain Duchamp . . . Plastic enigmas, authentic falsehoods, and Père Ubu . . .

Phryne realised that she had been sitting naked on her bed for ten minutes, dreaming of Paris and the poetry of desire, shook herself, and dressed. Wondering as she pulled the silky dark red evening dress over her head where they all were now, the strange bad boys of the
quartier
. Most of them, probably, good bon bourgeois papas with six children and a job in a bank. Some of them, almost certainly, dead. Some of them, probably, still seeing the world at right angles to reality. For a moment she yearned for Europe, for the babble of French voices, the smoke of Gitanes, the taste of real coffee in a cafe where the whole world would saunter past during the course of the day. And draw up a chair, order a
blanc
, and talk about art.

But here she was, thousands of miles away, and that was her choice and dinner was already being announced. So she got up, found her shoes, flung a Spanish shawl around her sunburnt shoulders, and sailed down to greet her guests.

At least Ruth would not be cooking a surrealist dinner, which might present the diner with a nice soup bowl of nuts and bolts, or a drink composed of etching acid and ink . . .

After fighting down a natural desire to cook all of Mrs Leyel’s most extravagant dishes in order to show off her skill, Ruth had taken Dot’s advice and considered what sort of food the Mason household usually ate. Conventional. Ordinary. Boring. So she had made a menu which was French and not unfamiliar, with a few touches which ought to make it memorable. In view of the sunny weather, it was all cold and had been chilling in the icebox for most of the afternoon. She wrote it out in her best handwriting, deciding against using her cooks’ French. It tended to make Miss Phryne giggle.

Leek and potato soup, iced

Grey mullet in jelly with cucumbers

Salads: tomato and potato

Onion tart

Chicken in a white sauce

Mixed green salad with hard-boiled eggs, anchovies and olives

Turkish delight fruit salad with orange-soaked dates and rosewater

Cheese and biscuits

Coffee

And then, with any luck, they would all go home. But, Ruth resolved, they would all go home full.

Phryne flowed down the stairs in time to see the Mason contingent arrive. Best clothes and best behaviour. Someone had scrubbed the boys until they shone—with a rather sullen light, it was true. Perhaps they were not looking forward to seeing those little blossoms of education, Jane and Ruth, again.

Mrs Mason had donned another satin gown, this time in a shade of dusty pink which was not so trying to her complexion. She wore a rose bandeau.

On entry, her eyes darted to all corners, hoping for something; clues to Mr Thomas’s regard, perhaps. Phryne had seen much the same greedy light in the eyes of the horrible old woman opposite. She hadn’t liked it the first time.

‘Cocktails,’ she announced, and led the way into the pleasantly shabby parlour, where a tray awaited, the jug beaded with condensation and sloshing with the fine alcoholic fluid which might make this evening bearable.

Kiwi, Jolyon and Fraser took lemonade under firm maternal instructions. Jane and Ruth sipped their half glasses of sherry and tried to Make Conversation. The boys had obviously been threatened with a dreadful doom if they didn’t behave, and they were trying to do the same thing. But the girls didn’t know any of the chaps at school, understood nothing of the noble games of cricket or football, couldn’t take a joke and were far too brainy. What was a chap to do? Fortunately, Fraser thought of something at the same time as Jane offered Kiwi her glass of sherry.

‘Would you like this?’ she asked. ‘It makes me sleepy. I haven’t touched it.’

‘Wouldn’t matter if you had,’ he replied graciously, taking the glass and gulping and passing it to Fraser. ‘Alcohol is a disinfectant.’

‘And anti-bacterial,’ agreed Jane. They smiled at each other. Jolyon claimed the rest of the glass and Jane filled it again. Dot and Phryne were talking to Mrs Mason and no one was watching the young people.

‘Been to the movies yet?’ asked Fraser. ‘We been down in Swan Bay all day watching them make
Benito’s Treasure
. It was . . .’ He searched for a suitable term which didn’t sound childish. ‘Int’resting.’

‘Tell all!’ invited Ruth, who adored films.

‘They paint the actors’ faces yellow,’ said Kiwi. ‘Yellow as Chinks! I swear!’

Jane and Ruth exchanged a glance. The Chinese of their acquaintance had all been of a light biscuit colour, not yellow at all. But these were boys, Ruth reflected. No brains at all at that age, Miss Phryne had said.

‘Really?’ she prompted.

‘Crew of three,’ Kiwi informed her. ‘Cameraman Orphin, director Applegate and the other sheila with the papers.’

‘Script, you idiot,’ said Jolyon. ‘The story of the movie. That’s why she’s always shouting things at the actors. So they do the right things. Actions.’

‘And what was happening in the picture today?’ prompted Jane patiently. Really, it was like shovelling sand to get them moving in the polite direction.

‘The beautiful girl was being marooned on the desolate shore. Not that it’s all that desolate, really—they had to move a couple of times so as not to show the houses. If you got marooned there today you could just knock on a door.’

‘And who was the beautiful girl?’

‘You’ll laugh,’ warned Kiwi.

‘That will be a nice change,’ Jane informed him solemnly.

‘Of all people it was Lily—you know, that droopy slavey that the mater was about to fire?’ chuckled Jolyon. Ruth disliked him afresh.

‘I’m glad to know she succeeded in her quest,’ she said. ‘She really wanted to get into films.’

‘There she was,’ Jolyon went on, enjoying the joke, ‘face painted yellow, dressed in an old-fashioned sort of big dress, waving her arms and wailing. We rolled on the sand laughing.’

‘Quite,’ said Ruth, who had heard Miss Phryne quash the doltish. It had no effect on the boys. They nudged and giggled.

Jane firmly refused to notice the pleading sherry glass which was held out for a refill and followed the party in to dinner.

The food had been laid out on a sideboard, which Ruth had converted to a buffet with the addition of a card table and a lot of spotless napery. One began at the left side of it and proceeded along to the right side, which was dessert. Tinker flicked back the muslin covering and the group of diners possessed themselves of bowls for soup.

‘This is cold,’ protested Jolyon at the top of his voice. His mother blushed.

‘I’m so sorry,’ she said to Phryne. ‘We’ve never had cold soup. He doesn’t know any better. You’d think that school would teach them table manners,’ she added, as the boys dived into the food like starved swine. Fraser, whose father had a French cook, kicked Jolyon before he could demand that his soup be reheated.

‘Tastes like library paste,’ muttered Jolyon.

‘Tastes good to me,’ said Fraser. ‘It’s
vichyssoise
, you idiot. Just eat up and shut up. If you need to compare, compare this to that seaweed slop we get at school.’

‘You can eat it hot,’ observed Ruth. ‘I could . . .’

‘But you’re not going to,’ murmured Jane.

‘No matter,’ said Phryne. ‘A glass of hock?’

‘Thank you,’ said Mrs Mason. ‘That was very good soup. And this jellied fish is superb. So you did manage to find a cook?’ she asked, with increasing interest.

‘Right under my nose,’ said Phryne, smiling. ‘The boys seem to be fascinated by this film that someone is making in Queenscliff.’

‘It’s about Benito’s treasure. I remember looking for it with my brothers when I was a girl. We always came here for the holidays, you know, when my father the judge was alive. Thank you,’ she said, as Tinker filled her glass again with a lemon-yellow plonk which he had tasted and found far too sour.

He was unfreezing. No one had even looked at him in his stout green apron. It was as though he had become invisible and that was all right with Tinker. Those boys had thrown enough rocks at him in his time. Though apparently the guv’nor had set them to the rightabouts. As one would have expected.

He moved over to supply the young persons with lemonade. They didn’t notice him either, though Ruth gave him a furtive grin.

‘Your father was a judge?’ asked Phryne.

‘Yes, a famous one. You have probably heard of him.’ Phryne hadn’t, but she smiled and nodded. ‘He had this house built and we came here, as I said, every holidays. And no one has ever found Benito’s hoard, so it remains to entertain the boys.’

‘Nothing like pirate treasure,’ said Phryne drily. Dot took over.

‘We are thinking of going to the cinema on Friday,’ she told Mrs Mason. ‘What would you recommend?’

‘Go to the first house,’ she said firmly, as she came back with a plateful of salad and cold chicken. ‘After eight the streets become . . . rowdy. Fishermen and . . . so on. The only thing worth seeing at present is
For The Term of his Natural Life
. A worthy production and an Australian classic, on at the town hall. I sent the boys.’

‘She did,’ confirmed Jolyon gloomily.

‘In the other cinema there is a dreadful thing called
Our Painted Daughters
. How they allow such filth onto the screen . . .’

Mrs Mason accepted a glass of a rather young red wine to accompany her salad and continued her condemnation, with the result that the entire company resolved to see
Our Painted Daughters
at the earliest opportunity. Even Dot, who was a self-confessed Good Girl, found herself interested.

‘Well, well, such are the times,’ said Phryne. ‘I have been wondering about what Queenscliff was like before the Great War.’

‘Select, my dear.’ Mrs Mason elaborately did not notice Tinker refilling her glass with a wine which he thought was even more sour than the first bottle of plonk. Might as well drink lemon juice, he thought as he poured.

‘Mrs McNaster, my neighbour, is she an old resident?’

‘Been here all her life, since her father—and there were rumours about him—came to establish his practice here. Her daughter married Dr Green. Moved here due to bad health, they say. Weak lungs. This is a very good place for people with weak lungs. His mother-in-law is a sore trial to him. But his wife is a great comfort, I believe. Such a civic-minded woman. He is a great friend of Mr Thomas.’

‘And Miss Sélavy, next door?’

‘She’s a bit of a mystery,’ said Mrs Mason, lowering her voice. This had the effect of attracting the attention of the whole table. ‘Always wears strange clothes. Has young men visiting her. But she’s Hungarian,’ she said bracingly. ‘Titled.’

‘Oh, indeed?’ Phryne had known some very dubious titled people. Particularly Hungarians. Particularly titled ones.

‘And she’s an artist,’ added Mrs Mason, allowing Tinker to take her empty plate and tottering over to the buffet for the delectable fruit salad. Moral indignation had not affected her appetite.

‘Indeed,’ said Phryne again. The same went for artists, double. That made tonight’s little excursion full of interest.

Dinner concluded with coffee and some passable cheddar, a glass of liqueur, and professions of fond neighbourly affection. Jane had managed to signal to Tinker that the boys ought to have a Cointreau each, and they too were full of goodwill as they took their leave, even asking Jane and Ruth to come swimming with them the following morning. They had provisionally agreed, not knowing what Miss Phryne had planned.

Finally the door shut on them.

‘Brilliant dinner, Ruth,’ said Phryne.

‘Pearls before swine,’ grumbled Ruth.

‘Even swine must be fed,’ said Dot.

‘I suppose so,’ said Ruth.

‘Look,’ said Tinker. ‘They ate almost all of it. That’s good, isn’t it?’

‘They told us what they eat at school,’ replied Ruth. ‘They’d eat cordite pudding with blotting-paper sauce. But they did seem to like most of it,’ she acknowledged, cheering up. ‘And the leftovers, Tinker dear, are all yours.’

‘You beaut,’ said Tinker, gathering plates. He had eaten well before dinner, but this being invisible took it out of a bloke. And there was still quite a lot of that grouse fruit salad with the squashy dates and the orange pieces left. He had just the place for it.