Murder in the Dark (20 page)

Phryne doubted whether the children of the poor ate much venison but she agreed with the sentiment.

‘Come and let’s show Syl that we are looking at the cage,’ she said, walking around it. ‘It collapses, doesn’t it?’

‘Yair, just held by these rings at each corner. Easy as pie. Bert reckons you got a bad man here, Miss. Dunno why he thinks that ’cos he never told me. But he sent me, I’m Ted, and Rob Yates to look after you. And since if we don’t he’ll have our—’ he hastily censored what he had been about to say and interposed another metaphor ‘—guts for garters, here we are.’

‘That Bert is a man of his word,’ said Phryne.

‘Too right,’ said Rob Yates, which was something Cec was fond of saying. It must have been a family trait. There were an extraordinary number of Yates. They were polyphilo-progenitive to a remarkable degree.

Phryne looked at them both. They would blend in to the domestic staff without any difficulty. They must have been men of gallantry and resource or Bert would not have sent them. Too proud to accept any help? Not Phryne. Not when it came in such useful packages. Rob and Ted could be very useful.

‘Wonderful. Collapse the cage and go along to the kitchen. Tell Mrs Truebody that I sent you to do some of the rough work now that one of her footmen has become a child minder. You’ll like her. She’s a wonderful cook.’

‘Yair, we asked around and they said the work was hard and the hours were long but the grub was tops,’ said Ted hungrily.

‘Did Bert tell you anything about his bad man?’

‘Nah,’ said Rob, unconvincingly. ‘Not what he looks like. Only that someone has hired him.’

Phryne waited. Ted looked at Rob. Rob looked at Ted. Ted shrugged. Rob spoke.

‘He’s a gunman, Miss.’

They all heard a distant crack of a rifle in the forest. Phryne thought of William Rufus. Even being King of England didn’t protect you from an arrow in the thorax if someone really wanted to kill you . . .

‘Oh well, not much to be done at the moment,’ she said. ‘Keep your ears open and we shall try to prevent disaster. Here’s the situation at present.’

Phryne told them about Tarquin, the riddles and the child Marigold. They nodded.

‘Not so good,’ observed Rob. ‘Well, hoo-roo, Miss.’

They collapsed the cage in a tinkle of bars and carried it away and Phryne returned to the lawn chair.

‘I heard firing,’ she observed.

‘The young idiots are trigger-happy, I expect,’ said Sylvanus. ‘Here, take my opera glasses.’

As was to be expected, Sylvanus’s opera glasses were elaborately decorated with panels of mother of pearl. They were lightly etched with classically nude young men. But they had German precision-made lenses and were obviously very expensive. Phryne watched the forest spring into sharp focus. Yes, there were the hunters—and there was the deer, too, cowering out of sight of the foremost riders. She saw the Wonnangatta Tigers in a skilled onrush, threading their way through the trees with effortless ease. She saw Gerald on Acorn and Isabella on Tonnerre. She also saw something else, but she did not jump to her feet. She took a moment to suppress any quiver in her voice.

‘Interesting. But I’ve never liked blood sports. See you at lunch, Syl.’

She handed back the glasses and sauntered away towards the horse lines. Only when she was out of sight did she run.

Phryne skidded into the Grammar Boys’ camp and grabbed the nearest lackey.

‘Mr Norton’s stableman—where?’

The man pointed. Phryne went on. The man was English, sensible and middle aged, which was good. He could not be daunted but he could be persuaded. And he was used to obeying orders.

‘Mr Norton offered me one of his remounts to join the hunt,’ she told him.

He put down the hoof he was examining and turned his attention to Phryne. He knew her. This was the woman his master had spent such a lot of time cultivating. She was unlikely to be a horse thief.

‘You’ll need a fast one to catch ’em,’ he said. ‘You’ll need this one. Can you ride, Miss? Like that?’

He was surveying Phryne’s loose cotton shift and sandals.

‘I can ride a bit,’ said Phryne. ‘Find me an overall, will you? And I can get on with saddling. What’s your name, pretty?’ she asked, as the pony’s intelligent face came around.

‘She’s Buttercup,’ said the stableman. ‘Her gear and tack’s just there.’

He went off to borrow a pair of overalls from a stableboy while Phryne heaved the saddle onto the patient back and swiftly trussed the pony into her everyday rig. By the time the attendant came back with a bundle of denims she was shortening the stirrup leathers.

‘Overalls and boots, Miss,’ said the man. She dragged them on with scant regard for decency. The boots were a size too big but better than trying to ride in sandals.

‘Give you a boost?’ asked the man, but Phryne had leapt to horseback and was away like the wind. Ralph Norton’s stableman watched her go until he was satisfied that she would not fall off. In fact she made quite a nice little rider—a bit rough, like these Australians always were, but quite secure in her seat and going like the clappers.

Buttercup, Phryne discovered, was a neat little pony with a very respectable turn of speed. She had clearly felt left out when the other horses went hunting and wanted to join them. The ground was flat and well watered, the forest approaching more rapidly every moment, and Phryne laughed and loosed the reins, letting the beast have her head, as she obviously knew what she was doing.

It had been too long since she’d been riding. The only riding schools available to her within easy reach of St Kilda were either entirely stocked with elderly, bitter, superannuated screws that hated humans and tried their best to, for instance, rub them off against a convenient tree, or expensive haunts of the rich. These made Phryne uncomfortable. The horses were well bred but the patrons were not, and the female private school accents that squeaked and chirped around her, always talking about money, made the experience wearing. Perhaps she could buy her own beast and find a suitable stable for it.

Buttercup jinked around a wombat hole and Phryne sat up straight and gripped with her knees. Better pay attention. Where was the hunt? She heard the dogs yowling just ahead and to one side, near the river. Phryne did not appreciate the music of the hounds. It reminded her of a wolf pack demanding that the passengers fling another serf out of the droshky. She urged Buttercup on and the pony flicked her ears in agreement.

They came to the bank. Phryne recalled the map. This was the Werribee River, and here it was a slow and lazy creature, sprawled out like a bather in sunlight. Deep, perhaps, in the middle, but muddy at the edges. Phryne, knowing that hunted animals often sought water, rode along the riverbank, hoping that Mole and Ratty were not at home to witness this senseless carnage.

The noise of the hunt burst suddenly out of cover, the deer a brown flash ahead of the foremost hound. Just as Phryne managed to insert Buttercup between the hunter and the hunted, the deer took to water and bucked and plunged through the mud until it gained the middle. It swam strongly. A fusillade of shots followed it. Phryne drew Buttercup back before she kicked one of those irritating dogs. They were leaping and bounding, baying at the tops of their voices, expressing the outrage that a decent dog felt about being cheated, I say, sir, cheated, by their lawful prey.

Phryne slid out of the melee and tried to triangulate what she had seen through the opera glasses with the trees on the ground. It was very difficult. The hunt had poured down to the riverbank. Gerald was there on Acorn, Isabella on Tonnerre. Phryne was trying to avoid Ralph Norton in case he objected to her choice of horse, but she allowed Buttercup to manoeuvre herself through the scrub and into a reasonable clearing. It looked familiar. That was the tree she had seen. It had a heavy right-angled branch on one side and one with two forks on the other. The man with the gun was still there. He sat easily in a high crotch of the old gum, rifle lined up along the branch. Ready for action. Ready to assassinate someone.

Phryne was unarmed. It would not be wise to draw attention to the man, who had taken such pains to avoid notice. But she had boots and an overall and had spent her childhood climbing trees. She dismounted, tethering Buttercup loosely to a bush. Then she started to scale the other side of the gnarled tree, moving like a shadow. The man stirred, perhaps detecting her presence by a change in the air, for she was sure that she had not made a sound.

He turned his head. It was Nicholas.

‘Today is the feast of Thomas of Canterbury,’ said Dot, opening the book. The picture showed three knights stabbing an unarmed monk to death. ‘He was a famous bishop who offended the king. Annoyed, the king said, “Will no one rid me of this troublesome priest?” and three of his men heard, and travelled to Canterbury, and killed Thomas.’

‘Poor king,’ said Jane.

‘Poor king?’ demanded Dot. ‘What about poor Thomas?’

‘But he went straight to heaven, as you’ve explained,’ said Jane reasonably. ‘I bet the king didn’t mean his knights to actually go and kill Thomas. He just lost his temper. But they went ahead and did it. So the king has to pay for the sins of the men and for his own.’

‘Hmm,’ said Dot. This struck her as very dubious theology indeed.

CHAPTER TWELVE

What thing is it that never was nor never shall be?
—Never mouse made her nest in a cat’s ear.

John Wardroper
The Demaundes Joyous of Wynkyn de Worde

Phryne paused with one hand round a branch and one foot groping for a hold, like the slow loris she had once seen at London Zoo. Nicholas! What was that estimable young man doing in a tree with such a very efficient looking rifle?

She hung there for a moment, thinking. There were two reasons for being in a tree with a rifle. Well, three, she told herself, slightly numb with surprise, if you included complete raving lunacy, but he had shown no signs of it so far. The other two were, to shoot someone on the ground and accomplish a murder, and to shoot a fellow sniper and prevent a murder. Of the two Phryne thought prevention more likely, but she was not sure and approached her climb with a slightly less carefree attitude.

It was a simple climb. A goat could have easily managed it. So, possibly, could Buttercup, who was watching Phryne with interest. Foot by foot Phryne ascended. Nicholas did not react, even when her boot slipped on a loose piece of bark. He might have taken her for an unusually heavy footed pigeon. His whole attention was concentrated on someone—in the next tree, perhaps?

Phryne examined the tree. It contained, as far as she could see, seven quarrelling cockies, sulphur crests rampant, two harassed magpies, a juvenile magpie making hoarse, wheezing ‘I’m only a baby and you haven’t fed me!’ noises and a fast asleep koala. The marsupial was curled in an upper quadrant, and surely Nicholas wasn’t going to shoot a koala? It was, for a start, illegal to shoot koalas. Not to say unsporting, to kill a beast who only woke up from a little twenty hour nap to munch dreamily on gum leaves. And this one had a baby on her back. It was also out like a light in the manner of baby koalas, who retained a fierce grip on their mother’s fur even during the deepest slumber.

Phryne managed to creep up behind Nicholas and lay a finger on the gun before he noticed her. He gave a huge start and only kept his perch by grabbing with both hands. This gave Phryne the rifle. She held it securely.

‘How about “Dr Livingston, I presume?”?’ she said affably.

‘What are you doing here?’ he gasped.

‘I might ask the same of you. Someone in the hunt needs killing?’

‘I . . . I can’t tell you,’ he said miserably. ‘I wish I could. But I’m not doing anything wrong, Phryne, I swear.’

‘All right,’ she said, giving him back the gun and watching him reassume his place. ‘Who is the intended target?’

‘I don’t know,’ he said distractedly.

‘I mean, who is the assassin trying to kill?’ Phryne persisted.

‘How the devil did you know about that?’ Nicholas was astounded enough to swear in front of a lady.

‘I have my sources,’ said Phryne with a regrettable hint of smugness.

‘And they said that someone was going to be killed today?’

‘No, they said that a gunman had been hired to kill someone here. No time was specified. But during the hunt seems a sound notion. Lots of ordnance flying about. What are those idiots hunting? The deer got away.’

‘Did it? Good.’ Another fusillade wounded the day. ‘They’re shooting low. Rabbits, perhaps.’

‘That noise will have scared every scut from here to War-burton into a nice safe hole.’

‘I didn’t say they were good hunters,’ said Nicholas shortly.

This was true.

‘Well, unless I can help you up here, I’ll reclaim my pony and follow the guns. A nice country house thing to do. I shall squeal at every shot and exhibit feminine weakness,’ she said, turning round and feeling for a foothold.

‘That ought to slay ’em,’ grinned Nicholas. Not the grin of a cold blooded murderer, Phryne felt. On the other hand, she reflected as she climbed down and remounted Buttercup, she hadn’t met many murderers. Maybe they all had cornflower blue eyes.

The situation on the ground was confused. Horses and ponies shuffled and backed, foiled by the dense scrub. Phryne allowed Buttercup to find her own way through and several times had to duck aside as guns exploded far too near her. The pony twitched her ears unhappily. This, one could see her thinking, was not what she had signed up for. She was a polo pony, and this was not polo. And she was right. Unarmed, there was not a lot Phryne could do while mixed into this melee. Contrariwise, she could do some nice surreptitious searching if she went back to the house now. Everyone seemed to be at the hunt, either watching or riding or beating the bushes. Phryne leant down low over Buttercup’s neck until they reached a wide gravel drive, where the pony picked up her pace, hearing or scenting her stablemates ahead.

‘Tally-ho!’ yelled a cultivated voice. Phryne saw over the flat the fast loping form of a hare. The hunt streamed out of the belt of forest, leaving the koalas to their well merited slumbers. Phryne on Buttercup lagged behind, watching the riders emerge, the Tigers in a screaming mob, the Grammar Boys in close formation, the rest of the guests distributed in between them. Shots were still being fired. Phryne could not see by whom.