Death Before Wicket: Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries 10 (9 page)

‘Possibly,’ said Phryne, suddenly exhausted and tired of the smoke and the smell of spilt punch. ‘Well, see you tomorrow night, fellows,’ she said briskly. ‘If you want to ascertain my bona fides, you can find me at the Hotel Australia. Phryne Fisher. Goodnight,’ she said, and walked out of Theo’s as Dulcie Deamer danced on the table to a gramophone which lamented that, regrettably, he had absolutely no bananas at all.

Five

There has always been a certain dourness about Australian cricket, an unashamed will-to-power, with no ‘may the best man win’ nonsense. Even the brilliant Victor Trumper was an Ironside in Cavalier’s colours, his bat a conquering sword, not a lance in tournament
.

Neville Cardus,
English Cricket

P
hryne slept heavily and awoke to demand aspirins, black coffee, and suitable clothes to wear to the cricket. As she breakfasted she tried to reassure Dot.

‘What you can do today, Dot dear, is to go and see that nice policeman whom Jack Robinson recommends and tell him all about Joan. If Theo’s is a sample of how Australian Bohemia behaves, no one with a particle of resolution would stay in it if they didn’t want to—it seems to have none of the unfortunate aspects of the Parisian version. I haven’t seen a single
souteneur
. Though there are undoubtedly bullies. If Joan is there it is because she has a reason to be there. Tonight we shall see what we shall see. This morning I’ve got to go to the cricket with the faculty and see if I can get anywhere with this odd theft and…now what?’ she exclaimed. Dot went to the door and unfolded the note, offered to her on a silver tray.

‘Your two young men are waiting downstairs and would like a word, Miss,’ replied Dot.

‘Oh, very well, send them up. I’ll just have a quick wash. It will be all right, Dot dear,’ she said and vanished into the bathroom.

She emerged muffled in a huge towel to find Joss and Clarence sitting on the end of her bed, side by side, looking startled. Though Phryne was actually more clothed in her towel than many young women were in their street garments, they were ill-at-ease. Phryne looked on them with little mercy.

‘I am going to the cricket with the faculty this morning. I may elicit something interesting. It is very odd that all of the contents of the safe vanished and the only parts that resurfaced were the exam papers.’

‘We thought that was strange,’ agreed Joss.

‘Professor Bretherton has asked me to try and find his papyrus,’ she added, allowing the towel to drop and reaching her stockings. She was clad in complete undergarments and could not understand the shock on her interlocutors’ faces. She looked down.

‘Oh, good lord, and you call yourself Bohemians. Turn your backs if the sight of a stocking offends you. I’m in a hurry. Professor Bretherton will be arriving any minute. Have you anything else to tell me?’

‘Yes, we have a small confession to make,’ said Clarence, staring fixedly at a marble urn on a marble plinth and trying to ignore the silken rustle of stockings sliding up a slim leg towards a destination which he would not imagine.

‘That Adam Harcourt pinched the papers?’

‘No!’ cried Joss. ‘They were shoved in his carrel to make it look like it was him. But we’ve not told you something and now we think we should.’

‘Well, get on with it,’ said Phryne, fastening the stockings and settling the silk blouse and linen skirt which Dot had provided as suitable cricket-going clothes.

‘It’s about the papyrus. It’s…’ He stuck, and Phryne cut in.

A curse.

‘Did Professor Bretherton tell you that?’ asked Clarence.

‘Of course he did.’ Phryne buttoned her new petticoat pocket and slipped it beneath the skirt where it hung, not noticeable, at her thigh. ‘Nice work, Dot dear. What an excellent invention.’

‘My grandma used to wear them,’ said Dot.

‘You see, there’s a group of people who might want that curse,’ Joss was saying uncomfortably. ‘They’re followers of the Great Beast, Crowley. Come back from some temple he’s established on an island.’

‘Cefalu, yes, it got a lot of publicity. The Abbey of Thelema, Temple of Do As Thou Wilt, which of course meant Do As Crowley Wilt,’ said Phryne shortly, slipping her feet into sandals.

‘They’re magicians,’ said Clarence wretchedly. ‘And they’re saying that they magicked that curse out of the safe, and they’re going to use it.’

‘On whom?’

‘Their enemies, I suppose.’

‘One of you?’

‘Or Harcourt. He laughed at them when they…’

‘When they? Come on, boys, out with it, time is passing.’

‘Harcourt works with the Bursar, you see, helps him with his figures. He’s always in the faculty office and they got very dirty on him when he refused. They asked him to steal the papyrus because they want the curse.’

‘It’s been published. Photograph and translation. Why didn’t they just buy the book?’ asked Phryne impatiently.

‘They want the actual papyrus; apparently it has secret writings on it.’

‘Hmm. I need to meet Harcourt. Do you know where Theo’s cafe is?’

‘Yes,’ said Joss. ‘The er…magical people will be there, too.’

‘Will they indeed? Who are they?’

‘A woman called Madame Sosostris,’ said Clarence. ‘Chap called Marrin.’

‘Bring Harcourt to Theo’s tonight about eleven,’ ordered Phryne. ‘Tell him that no one magicked anything out of that safe. If he baulks at seeing Madame and Marrin again, tell him that I’ve got an amulet which will preserve him against any magical attack, given to me by the Masters of the Golden Dawn. I was at the Invocation of Isis in Paris,’ she added. ‘Tell him that. Now off you go, gentlemen. I’ve got a cricket match to attend.’

They left biddably.

‘Miss?’ asked Dot, very uneasily.

Phryne paused while trying on a panama hat at the rosy mirror and raised an eyebrow.

‘Did you really see that…thing?’

‘What, the Invocation? Certainly. Interesting performance. While I am out, Dot, after you’ve talked to the policeman, buy me a yard of thin white cord, a silk handkerchief of the strongest purple you can find, and pick up a handful of wormwood and some dried rosemary.’

‘Why?’ asked Dot.

‘Obviously, we have to make an amulet which was given to me by the Masters of the Golden Dawn. Crowley—well, I really don’t know about Crowley, but I do know that his followers aren’t him, and most of their effects are obtained by hypnosis, drugs and fear. If this boy was a Christian, we could give him a crucifix drenched in holy water and it would work just as well. As it is presently fashionable to be an atheist, I have to do a little sleight of mind. Fear is a very powerful motivator. I think I saw this woman last night at Theo’s—Madame Sosostris, telling tarot fortunes in a turban. Has to be a fake. Even the name is pinched from a T.S. Eliot poem, and what T.S. Eliot didn’t know about magic you wouldn’t be able to stuff in a tea-chest. Do you follow, Dot?’

‘No, miss,’ said Dot.

‘Ah, well, there it is. I’m off to the cricket. Toodle-pip.’

Dot gathered up the towel and found the address which had been scrawled down in Phryne’s bold hand from a telephone conversation with Jack Robinson.

Detective Inspector Tom Rawlings. Darlinghurst.

She could buy the amulet materials at the Strand Arcade afterwards.

Professor Bretherton, in mufti, looked younger and more unsure of himself. He showed Phryne into a taxi and she was thrown against him as the cab screeched into the road and aimed itself at the Sydney Cricket Ground without apparently making any allowances for traffic which might intrude unwisely into its path.

‘“Lo, his name is Jehu,”‘ she quoted, extricating herself from his impromptu embrace.

‘“For he driveth furiously,”‘ agreed Professor Bretherton, attempting to untangle hair like black silk from his blazer button.

‘Ere!’ yelled the driver. ‘Oo you callin’ names?’

‘Just a quote, my dear sir,’ soothed the Professor. ‘Excuse me, Miss Fisher, I believe that I have it now.’

Phryne sat up and shook her head. ‘I’ve been hearing about your papyrus,’ she said provocatively.

‘Have you indeed?’ His voice was level and even a little amused. It was hard to pull wool over a Juvenalian’s eyes, Phryne recalled. She decided to demand some information.

‘What sort of curse is it?’

‘Just a curse. You see, Miss Fisher, the essence of most curses, and we have quite a lot of them, especially the Roman
tabulae defixiones
, is that they are very specific. One had a ritual to follow and any mistake could leave the fates a chink into which they could insert their claws. For example, a prayer to various demons to strike down with disease the drivers of the Whites, the Blues and the Reds had to have a special clause which told the demons not to lay a paw on the driver of the Green chariot, on which one had wagered one’s toga virilis, wife’s jewels and favourite slaves.’

‘Yes,’ prompted Phryne.

‘But the Egyptians had a general sort of curse, one which would strike down anyone who did a specific action, such as opening a tomb, defiling a temple or desecrating a monument and, unlike the curse on the drivers of the chariots, it was meant to last forever.’

‘I understand you,’ said Phryne, hanging onto the strap as the taxi squealed around another corner.

‘So various so-called magicians are interested in Egyptian curses, and they’ve been trying to buy—or perhaps they have stolen—this one. Assuming that it is still as efficacious as the day it was written.’

‘Do you think so?’ asked Phryne.

‘I believe that it is just as likely to work now as in ancient times—in fact, it would never have worked. However, superstition is rampant. Especially now. And yet—even so, Miss Fisher, even so. I do not like the idea of someone being able to blame an Egyptian curse for some evil-doing of their own.’

‘That sounds murky,’ said Phryne lightly. ‘How does the curse run?’

‘I can’t recall it off-hand,’ muttered Professor Bretherton.

Phryne did not believe a word of this. This was only one page of writing. Professor Bretherton had been studying it. Perhaps he did not want to offend the taxi-driver’s ears. She did not persist; there would be time. And in any case, the papyrus was translated and in the public record.

Unless there was something on the document which he hadn’t put into his translation, of course. The occultists’ ‘secret writing’, perhaps?

The Sydney Cricket Ground was thronged with cricket lovers, anxious to see some revenge for the humiliation at Brisbane. The day was clear and hot, most of the faculty were there, and Phryne was seated in the Ladies’ Stand with a glass of lemon squash in her hand and surrounded by university men in a remarkably short time. She had a reasonable view of the proceedings and a learned commentary from Bisset (in front of her), Bretherton (at her left), Kirkpatrick (at her right) and Emeritus Professor Jones (behind her, seated on a cushion and staring through a pair of opera glasses).

The two captains walked out with the umpires and a coin sailed skyward. One captain shook the other’s hand, and then gestured to the dressing room.

‘Famous!’ said Bisset. ‘We’ve won the toss and elected to bat.’

‘Might not be a good decision,’ grumbled Jones. ‘They’ve got some dashed good bowling.’

‘They’ve also got some dashed good batting,’ Bretherton pointed out. ‘Depressing to stand there and watch them belt the cover off the ball to the tune of six hundred odd runs before we get a chance at it.’

‘These men have forgotten how to win,’ snapped Jones. ‘But there is one chap in the side whom I’m rather looking forward to seeing again. Saw him make a rather good century against these tourists. Made eighty-seven and one hundred and thirty-two not out for New South Wales. Larwood simply couldn’t fox him. Though he didn’t do any good in the disgraceful Brisbane Test. Eighteen and two, I believe. Funny pouncing, pecking style he had. Bradman. That was the name.’

‘Sorry, Jones,’ said Professor Bretherton, reading the team displayed on the scoreboard. ‘He’s twelfth man this Test.’

‘Drat,’ commented Professor Jones, and settled down to watch.

The game began and Woodfull applied himself well and began to make some headway against the English bowling, though the day was hot and the runs hard to come by. Richardson was bowled by a ball from Larwood which streaked through his wicket, Kippax fell to Geary for nine, and when Ponsford was hit on the hand and retired hurt for live, Phryne began to feel that this was not going to be a triumphant game for the Australian side.

‘They’re bowling at the stumps,’ snarled Professor Jones through his teeth. ‘Just nice, neat, competent bowling.’

‘Lunch?’ asked Jeoffry Bisset hungrily. ‘I’ve brought a hamper.’

‘Hamper? Nonsense. I’m lunching in the members, as I always do. Join me, Miss Fisher?’ asked Professor Bretherton.

‘I think I’ll stay here,’ said Phryne, and was deserted by the gentlemen in favour of roast beef and potatoes.

‘“The sincerest love is the love of food”,’ quoted Bisset, loading Phryne’s plate with chicken salad. He poured a glass of champagne for her and leaned back, sipping.