Death by Water (18 page)

You have always been my lodestone, so guide me home to your
arms.

Your devoted lover

Leonard

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CHAPTER TEN

At first sight the crew were not pleased with
the view

Which consisted of chasms and crags
L Carroll

‘The Hunting of the Snark’

The Melody Makers were getting into the swing of their music, knowing, perhaps, that tomorrow a pianist would take their place and they would all have the day off to recover. Phryne wondered how musicians ought to spend the day of rest.

Attending various forms of divine service, perhaps (Catholic in the second class chapel, sung Eucharist in the first class chapel, Buddhists and pagans presumably to make their own arrangements)? Mend their stockings? Swot up on new music? Instead they played cards and drank beer. Admirable.

Magda, doing a commendable imitation of Bessie Smith, was singing about her kitchen man in a throaty contralto which fortunately blurred the highly coloured words. Phryne was dancing with Theodore Green and almost listening to his information about Milford Sound, which they would reach on the morrow.

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‘Thirteen miles long, Miss Fisher,’ he said solemnly. At least he wasn’t standing on her feet. ‘Walls of stone and ice rising straight out of the water. And we cruise along very slowly, because of what happened to the
Waikare
in Dusky Sound in 1910.’

‘Another shipwreck?’ she said, trying to conceal the fact that she had heard enough about shipwrecks to last the remain-der of her natural life.

‘Well, yes, but it had no tragic consequences. Until 1910 the cruise ships used to go along Dusky Sound quite happily, until
Waikare
found Pinnacle Rock and ran aground, high and dry.

The passengers and crew all went ashore and stayed ashore all night. The navy came to rescue them, I believe, but they suffered nothing worse than cold and sandfly bites.’

‘Sandflies,’ murmured Phryne. The place sounded less and less attractive.

‘Oh, yes. Famous for it. When the sandflies go to sleep, the mosquitoes wake up. Won’t bother us out on the water, of course.’

‘And we aren’t going to land?’

‘Indeed, if you wish, Miss Fisher, you can go ashore on the tender and have a little walk along a track into the rainforest.

The Milford Hotel used to have pet birds which you might like to see. But buy some citronella.’

‘Right. Tell me, are you coming to the masquerade?’

‘Yes, Miss Fisher,’ said Theodore Green.

‘What are you wearing?’

‘My uniform,’ he told her stiffly. ‘That’s always been costume enough for me.’

‘Look for a Chinese lady,’ said Phryne. ‘And save her a dance.’

. . .

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Phryne, before sleeping, secured her suite. She locked all the doors. She put chairs under all the doorhandles. She tied the handles of the French windows together.

‘That ought to do it, Dot dear.’

‘Unless they bring their own battering ram,’ agreed Dot.

‘I gave your message to Mr Cec’s niece Lizbet, Miss. She says come along after lunch and bring beer.’

‘No difficulty there,’ said Phryne, and put herself to bed.

Dot, after her long drugged sleep, did not expect to sleep, but hearing Phryne’s quiet breathing, she drifted off eventually.

Sunday

When Phryne woke it was cold. The French windows disclosed nothing but drifting mist. Not thick enough to be called a pea-souper or a London particular but enough to explain the melancholy sea-serpent cry of the foghorn.

‘Fog everywhere,’ thought Phryne with Mr Dickens. Dot was already awake, plaiting her hair with swift fingers.

‘Ooh, it’s all misty,’ she commented. ‘How can we see where we’re going in all this mist?’

‘I have no doubt that we can,’ said Phryne bracingly. ‘If you really want to know, I’m sure that Navigation Officer Green will tell you all about it. Until your ears bleed. If he wasn’t such a darling, I’d have to drop him overboard. Even then he would be telling me valuable and useful things all the way down. I’m for a hot shower and some warm clothes. Break out a wool suit, will you, Dot? Then unlock the door and let Caroline in.’

Phryne dressed in a modish dark grey suit with a flaming red shirt and secured the sapphire to her belt in a petticoat pocket. The fog was breaking up in patches and suddenly a huge wall of green slid past.

‘Gosh,’ said Phryne, standing transfixed at the window.

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‘It’s the Sound,’ said Caroline, bringing in her breakfast.

‘Milford Sound. Glaciers and that. Rough country. But amazing.’

‘You’ve got that right,’ commented Dot. ‘I’ve never seen anything like it. The hill just drops straight down to the sea, like a curtain. I’m going to breakfast, Miss,’ said Dot. ‘Then to church.’

‘I’ll be on deck,’ said Phryne. ‘Meet you there.’

As she ate her croissants and drank her coffee, Phryne stared out and the cliffs slipped past.
Hinemoa
was moving very slowly, feeling perhaps for a hidden hazard like Pinnacle Rock, and there seemed no end to the backdrop. The cliffs rose sheer, straight up into the grey cloud, with no shelving beach or visible end; just the water, the cliffs, and the sky. It was surreal, alien, astoundingly beautiful.

And, Phryne realised, very cold. She finished her breakfast, put on her shoes, and donned a fur-trimmed coat.

On the sun deck she found the professor, Jack Mason, Margery Lemmon and both Cahills.

‘It’s so strange,’ said Phryne. ‘It almost doesn’t look like landscape. It looks like a sculpture.’

‘I’ve been to Norway,’ said Jack Mason unexpectedly. ‘Their fjords are all ice. They’re beautiful, too, but this is different. Closer to the real world. There are birds and animals in that vertical forest. Men could live there, though I don’t suppose anyone does.’

‘There were tribes here,’ said the professor. ‘But never many and never in the rainforest. The insects alone would drive humans away. Those cliffs are impassable. Behind them there are a lot of valleys, also close to impassable.’

‘I always wondered what those sandflies ate before people came,’ commented Margery. ‘I went for a walk last time we were here, and did I get bitten! I couldn’t see out of my eyes for two days. If you go ashore, Miss Fisher, bathe in citronella.’

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‘I will,’ said Phryne, gaze fixed on the eerie, moving, ghostly mountains. Here before humans came down from the trees.

Will be here when we all evolve ourselves into something which can fly, and will fly away to the stars. Sole occupiers of an empty earth.

She shivered despite her fur coat, and went inside. The Palm Court was setting up for morning tea and gladly supplied her with a cup of hot chocolate and a copy of the ship’s newsletter.

Divine service, a talk on spiritualism, a lecture on Maori creation myths from the professor, a simultaneous chess match with Mr Valdeleur, chess master. Ten boards, already fully booked. Phryne noticed that the chess board was where the navigation officer spent his spare time, which could explain his dancing. He was playing board four. The doctor was playing board five.

Pity I never could master the tedium of actually learning chess, Pryne thought, sipping the rich, sweet drink. Interesting people play it. But for me a nice respectable Church of England sung Eucharist and then ho for the musicians and the gossip after lunch.

She spent the rest of the morning wrapped in her fur collared coat, watching the endlessly strange landscape, tasselled with white cataracts, slide past her own windows. The
Hinemoa
slid down the sound noiselessly, big engines hardly turning over, until she slowed and came to a halt near a large, tin roofed building which proclaimed itself to be the Milford Hotel.

Just before lunch she was persuaded to go aboard the tender and have at least a little toddle into the wilderness. Doctor Shilletoe offered a distillation of his own invention which he assured her would give any sandfly an acute aversion to her person. Professor Applegate offered to show her keas. Jack Mason threatened to take her swimming otherwise.

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Smiling, she consented to go ashore. She slicked all visible flesh with the doctor’s potion, which smelt like roses drowned in carbolic. She stepped down into the tender, the MV
Adventure
, and was conveyed to the hotel. It was an ordinary building, until one considered how far each nail, plank, saucepan and sheet of galvanised iron had had to come before it got there. Phryne knew that a good lunch awaited her on the ship so did not tarry to taste the cuisine but followed the professor’s sturdy walking shoes up a muddy path and into a forest. The actual rain had stopped. Professor Applegate was carrying a heavy canvas bag.

It was the first rainforest of Phryne’s acquaintance and the first thing she thought was that it was certainly rainy. Water gushed off every bush, was funnelled off Miss Fisher’s match-less person by the sou’wester she had borrowed from Mr Green and splashed to the ground. The second was how very dense and dark it was. The trees soared up out of sight, yards in diameter and hung with lianas and vines. The next storey flowed up from the floor to meet the hanging canopy. It was intensely green and grey, and smelt beautiful: an earthy, leafy, almost grapey scent. She was gratified to find that her odour of carbolic and flowers repelled the sandflies. They came flock-ing towards her in a black cloud, intent on blood. Then they smelled the distillate, braked abruptly, and flew off on other business. A few hopefuls hung at a distance, waiting for the repellent to wear off.

‘Just through here,’ said the professor, ‘there’s a bit of a clearing. There was a fire here.’

‘How could there be a fire?’ asked Phryne. ‘You’d think it would take a good soaking in metho to make this lot burn.’

‘Close. It was a spilled petrol tank. This is where an old hermit feeds the keas. You mustn’t tell anyone. Farmers hate
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keas. They think that they kill sheep. ‘‘Feathered wolves’’ they call them. But old Rainbird Jim loves them, and so do I.’

They had emerged into a bottle-shaped clearing. The trunks of several of the great trees, in falling, had brought down the lesser vegetation and Phryne could see open sky above and thousands of seedlings underfoot, striving to get to the light.

‘Should I be quiet, or sit down?’ asked Phryne, remembering a few mind numbing hours she had spent bird watching, forbidden to speak, smoke or breathe loudly. The young man had been very toothsome, but not that toothsome. Phryne had not tried bird watching again.

The old woman laughed. ‘You’ll be soaked to the bones if you sit down. No need to worry. Keas aren’t shy.’

The professor scattered her heavy bagful of lumps of raw fat, chop bones, old bits of cake, bread and butter half nibbled and discarded from breakfast, and mutton bones across the open space. Then she lifted her head and made a rasping screech which sounded a bit like ‘Kea! Kea!’

The surrounding trees shook under the impact. Ten keas hit the branches and roosted there, eying the ground suspiciously. They were dark green, but when they flew their underwings were flame orange and scarlet, so that they looked like a flying bonfire.

They inspected the largesse for a few minutes, some hanging upside down, clucking to each other. Eventually a consensus was reached and they dived down on the food, shouting ‘Kea! Kea!’

They were clownish, charming, gluttonous birds, and Phryne was delighted. They grabbed with beak and both feet and then tried to eat a chop and a ball of bread and a piece of cake simultaneously. They yelled ‘Kea!’ with their beaks full. If one spotted another kea with a better mutton bone they’d grab
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the end and pull, flapping madly, until the winner got the bone and the loser rolled over backwards, tail in the air, screaming

‘Kea!’ in frustration and loss. They pounced on each other and flapped and shouted like boisterous children playing.

Then they examined Phryne. They flew around her, grabbed her sou’wester, pulled it off, and tore it to pieces in mid-air, clicked a beak close to her face to see whether she’d flinch, dived on the professor and beaked her oilskin hood and then retreated, chuckling, diving, forgetting to fly as they told the next kea exactly what they thought of her, hoisted back into the trees, and were gone in a flame of scarlet and orange. The forest rang with them announcing ‘kea!’ as they flew.

‘Oh, wonderful,’ said Phryne. ‘They are wonderful. Thank you for showing them to me!’

‘Natural clowns,’ said the professor, pushing back her holed oilskin hood. ‘I should have told you to tie the hat down. If it’s tied down they just put holes in it. I remember Rainbird Jim telling me that he forgot to put his boots away one night, and what he heard in the morning was this odd pinging noise.

It was the keas. They were eating his boots, and spitting out the eyelets against an iron bucket.’

‘Amazing.’

‘This way,’ said the professor. ‘You’ll be taking cold in a forest without a hat. Time to get back to the ship and have a nice warm-up and some lunch.’

‘Yes,’ said Phryne. ‘But I wouldn’t have missed seeing the keas. Will you call on Rainbird Jim?’

‘No use,’ said the professor. ‘He won’t come out while there are so many people around. I always leave some chocolates for him at the hotel, where he buys his supplies. Came back from the war with shell shock, you know. He can’t stand noise.’

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‘I’ve met men like him before,’ said Phryne, and led the way back down the muddy path.