Death Before Wicket: Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries 10 (10 page)

The crowd had largely dispersed in search of beer (and possibly hot pies which the boys had been crying incessantly) and Phryne swung her feet up onto the hard wooden bench. The sun was bright but under the high galvanised pavilion it was agreeably cool.

‘Have you travelled much, Miss Fisher?’ asked Bisset. ‘I was in Italy last year.’

‘And how is Signor Mussolini faring?’ asked Phryne idly.

‘Much better than could be hoped. But I was there to practise my Italian and to see some paintings. Ah, Miss Fisher, Florence and the Uffizi, Venice and the Accademia!’

‘Indeed,’ agreed Phryne, forking up a mouthful of salad.

‘I’ve seen paintings in some of the Scuola which no one else has seen—especially Raphaels. The houses are locked up, the owners are elsewhere. The buildings are sound enough but no one cares about the pictures. It’s not right. Art should be free. A beautiful thing can only justify its existence if it is free to all-comers.’

‘Possibly.’ Phryne was feeling too lazy to quarrel. ‘But the world is full of lovely things and one lifetime wouldn’t be enough to see them all. Just Venice, for instance, it would take twenty years to properly appreciate all of it. But you know how tired travellers get. I always know that if I look into a room and say wearily, “Ah, five Botticellis”, I need a sit down and a nice cup of coffee and probably an ice. And maybe a ride in a gondola with a pretty gondoliere and supper after the opera at night.’

‘Ah, it is only the very decorative that dare to be so hedonistic,’ sighed the young man and Phryne looked at him for the first time.

He had fearless blue eyes, blond hair with a suspicion of a curl and the thickening middle of one who has always regarded sport as an interruption to finishing a chapter and has given it up the second that they could. Jeoffry Bisset was not going to be volunteering for his college’s old boys’ cross country run, though it appeared that he played cricket.

‘Thank you,’ said Phryne. ‘I also approve of your chicken salad. Did your wife make it?’

‘Good God no, I can’t afford to marry,’ said Bisset, shocked. ‘I’m living in Coll. The kitchen made up a hamper for me and since I told them that I was lunching with a beautiful lady they put some effort into it, it seems. Ideal life for a chap, Miss Fisher. Someone makes my bed and does my laundry and cooks my meals and I just have to be civil to ‘em if I meet ‘em.’

‘Not entirely ideal, perhaps,’ returned Phryne. ‘There are the tortures of the flesh.’

‘There are indeed,’ said Bisset, eyeing her admiringly. ‘But they can be relieved by some complaisant person for a small sum, or ignored if the risk is too great.’

‘Where do you go for your complaisant persons?’

‘Oh, Theo’s, the Cafe Royale, perhaps, why on earth do you want to know?’

‘I’m curious about Theo’s. I went there last night.’

‘Miss Fisher, if you are looking for complaisant company, you don’t need to go to Theo’s,’ said Bisset, insinuatingly. ‘If nothing better is on offer, there is a person not two feet from you who would be both delighted and honoured to assist in any way he could.’

‘I’m sure,’ Phryne grinned wickedly and Jeoffry Bisset’s delicate flirtation suddenly became as reflexive as ‘Elle s’amuse’. He sat up straight. ‘I will remember your charitable offer, which does you great credit,’ she added, leaning down to kiss him very lightly on the cheek. She felt a shock run right through the young man. He was not as blasé about the lusts of men as he sounded by a very long chalk, Phryne considered, having a lot of experience in these matters.

‘Miss Fisher,’ said Bisset nervously. ‘I never meant…’

‘Yes, you did, my dear. You’re just disconcerted. I didn’t react as you expected a well brought-up lady ought to react, but I just don’t blush like I used to and allusive conversations bore me. If I want you, I’ll tell you, and if you are willing, I’ll take you. And then I’ll give you back to your College. Clear? Now, tell me about Theo’s. I saw a sample of Bohemianism last night and if it was representative, it’s a pretty wishy-washy imitation of Paris. I didn’t see one suicide, they were all drinking punch, not a suggestion of the underworld and no occultists.’

‘Then you didn’t stay until Tillie’s girls came in and Madame Sosostris and Marrin weren’t there.’ Bisset recovered his poise with some difficulty.

‘A woman in a turban with a most unfriendly stare? Yes, I saw her. Reading tarot cards. I’ll go back to look again, perhaps

I have misjudged them. That Jack Lindsay does a fine line in erotic verse, I have to say. But it wasn’t precisely roistering, you know. More like a safe little chap’s club which only admits women if they are “complaisant” or decorative. I couldn’t see someone like Gertrude Stein presiding there.’

‘An off night, perhaps,’ muttered Bisset. ‘Try it again.’

‘I shall. Besides, I’m looking for one of Tillie’s girls, or at least, I believe I am. I have a commission for her, worth quite a lot of money if I can find her quickly. Darlo Annie, they call her. Do you know Annie?’

‘Yes, well, yes, I…know her.’ Bisset squirmed and Phryne diagnosed his discomforture with unnerving speed.

‘You’ve purchased her company? Tell me, is this her?’

She handed him Joan’s photograph. He held it up to the light, turning away to hide his own blushes. He had never met anyone like Phryne before, and one of the things he had not expected to be discussing at the cricket was the demimonde.

‘It looks rather like her,’ he told Phryne. ‘Younger, you know and less…hardened. But I don’t know where Annie is. I haven’t seen her for a week at least.’

That would fit with the calendar of Joan’s disappearance.

‘Where could such a girl go?’ asked Phryne.

‘Well, she might have gone back to her husband. That’s a wedding photograph, isn’t it? Wreath of orange blossoms and all. Or she might be in hospital. Or dead. Suicide is a possibility, likewise an overdose of veronal or alcohol. She might be in jail. There was a raid on one of the properties last week. Apparently Tillie Devine was ropeable. She’d bribed all the coppers in Sydney, she reckoned, but these ones had slipped through her net. They usually give people “found in a common bawdy-house” fourteen days without the option, because the fine would be paid out of the very immoral earnings which they have been arrested for making. That’s why I always go to Theo’s to meet the girls. The faculty might overlook a little boyish high spirits, but not a jail sentence.’

Phryne filed all these suggestions away. It should not be difficult to ascertain if any of them were true. She hoped not.

Surely if Joan were dead, her family would have been notified? Not if she was lying anonymously on ice somewhere. ‘So cold, so blue, so bare.’ Phryne dismissed the verse of ‘St James’ Infirmary’ from her mind. If necessary, she would view all the unidentified corpses in the mortuary herself.

‘But she’ll turn up,’ said Bisset complacently. ‘Those girls always do. Have some more chicken salad. So will you go to Theo’s tonight?’

‘Yes. Tell me, do you know the student who stole the exam papers?’

‘Adam Harcourt? Yes. I can’t believe he would have been that stupid. He would have passed any examination without needing to cheat. He’s brilliant. Now he’s ruined his life, quite needlessly.’

‘Has he been expelled?’

‘Not yet. The University Senate has to meet next Monday and they’ll make it formal then.’

‘When do you think the safe was cracked?’ asked Phryne. ‘The theft was discovered on the Monday morning, but do we know when it was accomplished?’

‘Not precisely. Harcourt refuses to talk about it, beyond saying that it wasn’t him and he didn’t do it. I know the Book of Hours was there on Saturday morning. I was in the Secretary’s office and Sykes dropped it when he was putting his books in the safe, clumsy bloody fool…I beg your pardon.’

‘What Book of Hours is it? I have seen some splendid ones in the British Museum.’

‘It’s the Hours of Juana the Mad of Castile. It’s only an octavo, made to carry to church, but especially beautiful. The colours, particularly, are as fresh as the day they were painted. And it has a macabre tale attached to it.’

‘Pour me more champagne and tell me all,’ instructed Phryne.

‘One of our graduates was in Spain—he was thinking of writing a book on Catalan and a marvellous novel called
Tirant Lo Blanc
. He must have picked up the Book of Hours in a junk shop somewhere and he had it in his pocket when he was killed on the mountains by a bandit. The Embassy packaged up his property and sent it home, and his parents found a will which left everything to the University, so they gave it to us.’

‘That was generous of them,’ commented Phryne. ‘Isn’t it very valuable?’

‘To a collector, perhaps, but they didn’t want it. We haven’t even cleaned the blood off the binding because it might damage the gilding. And that idiot Sykes just let it fall to the floor and then stuffed it back in again as though it was one of his wretched ledgers. However. Poor Sykes, I suppose. His accounts have all gone missing and what he’s going to say to the auditors I don’t know.’

‘Apparently he isn’t one of nature’s accountants,’ said Phryne.

‘Good God no, he has to take off his socks to count to more than ten. Only a university faculty would have made him Bursar. In fact, only the Dean would have done so, because he likes having someone to yell at. Terrible man, Gorman. Makes everyone who comes in contact with him feel tarnished, because one feels like a coward trying to avoid him and yet one has to, because he never gives up once he’s got his fangs into a chap. Then he runs him ragged.’

‘In what way?’

‘He’s a bully,’ said Bisset. ‘He likes tormenting people. He likes knowing things. He will then drop little hints, wife happy to see you, Bretherton? when he knows that Bretherton likes the ladies. Rather too much, perhaps. He twits Sykes on his accounts and Kirkpatrick on his Scotch accent, though Kirkpatrick gives as good as he gets. He’s always telling Brazell that he only wants to get back to the desert because of the native women, and God knows that isn’t true—Brazell really loves his Coast Murring, a good deal more than he loves civilisation, but that small fact wouldn’t trouble the Dean. In fact, truth isn’t important to him. He’s loud and obnoxious and flashy and has no taste, but we could put up with that if he was a good chap, but he isn’t. He’ll drive someone to suicide one of these days. For instance, on Friday he says to Ayers, saw your slides on

Cairo, Ayers, uncommonly handsome boys you always seem to find, when Ayers…well. You see what I mean.’

‘And what does he say to you?’ asked Phryne.

‘Whoops, here are the others, back from their roast beef and apple crumble. Better give me the glass and we’ll pack up. Professor Jones doesn’t approve of people turning serious games into picnics.’

Phryne drained the glass, it being against her principles to waste good champagne. ‘So who would have been in the faculty office over the weekend?’ she persisted, noting Bisset’s avoidance of the Dean’s accusations. What would the Dean have on Bisset? Communist sympathies? Some scandal about love? But these matters could wait.

‘No one,’ said Bisset, hurriedly stuffing the remains of the feast into his hamper and shoving it under his bench. ‘The office should have been locked, so should the safe. Only the very dedicated go into a faculty office on a Sunday.’

‘What about a Saturday night? Was there a social function, perhaps, and might someone have decided to seek a little privacy there?’

‘An interesting suggestion,’ muttered Bisset. Phryne wondered if it was a trick of the light or whether he had actually paled to the colour of vellum. ‘A good lunch, chaps?’ he asked the returning lunchers.

‘Very good,’ said Professor Bretherton, sitting down as the umpires walked out onto the field again, ‘eh, Jones?’

‘Not as good as it used to be, when my digestion was also younger,’ grumbled the Emeritus Professor, taking up his opera glasses again. ‘Who’s bowling? Geary, I believe. I don’t know why they can’t cope with him. Perfectly ordinary seamer. Just aims at the wickets, that’s all he does.’

‘More than we can do,’ said Kirkpatrick. ‘Did you have any lunch, Miss Fisher?’

‘Some salad, thank you, quite delicious.’ Phryne was watching the bowler.

‘Rabbit food,’ grunted Kirkpatrick. ‘Howsat?’

‘Out,’ said Bretherton sadly. Woodfull walked off the ground.

‘That was never LBW,’ protested Bisset. ‘Would have missed the off stump by a mile.’

‘My dear young man, in all my years of cricket, I have never seen anyone more plumb in front of the stumps,’ said Jones. ‘Definitely LBW. Ah, me, that’s the end of our resistance, I fancy.’

He was right. When Professor Bretherton dropped Phryne at her hotel, the score was not very much for a lot of wickets and Australia was on the skids again.

‘You might dine with me,’ suggested Professor Bretherton, diffidently.

‘I might,’ said Phryne, ‘if you can show me the faculty safe.’

‘An interesting request,’ he replied.

‘And your response?’

‘At your service,’ he bowed.

Six

Be he poor, be he friendless, here he may acquire distinction, the reward of merit alone. Knowledge to him will here unfold her ample page; all the spoils of time, all the treasures of thought, and all the bright domains of a glorious future, may here become his
.