The Castlemaine Murders (31 page)

He was about to cry and Lin was revolted. He waved a hand, dismissing his objections. This was a pathetic creature. Li Pen had held the dark man without difficulty but released him on Phryne’s order. He ran away through the trees without a word.

Then the Shaolin monk checked Roderick’s bindings, approved of Phryne’s knots and stowed him in the boot of the Bentley. Both cars’ engines purred easily as the starting handles were employed.

‘I’ll drive this car,’ said Phryne. ‘You drive yours. You’ll have to show me the way. I came here in a sack and I didn’t notice any landmarks.’

The cars went soberly back into Castlemaine. The police cavalcade met them coming the other way. It was an exultant group who came into the town, blowing horns and cheering. The whole staff of the Imperial was on the front step. Annie was crying happy tears. Sergeant Hammond was looking as relieved as a man could be who was now no longer expecting instant demotion and who knew his bunions wouldn’t stand walking the beat again. That was how he’d got the bunions in the first place.

Roderick was lodged in a small but well-appointed cell with locks straight out of
Little Dorrit
. He still had not spoken. Phryne, having bathed and changed, sat in the front bar (where women did not sit, ever, not even women of an unfortunate profession) eating breakfast and accepting champagne from the old French part of the cellar while chain-smoking Roddy’s cigarettes. The guard dog sat at her feet, thumping the floor with his tail and accepting bacon rind. Old Bill Gaskin supped a beer, still disconcerted but of a mind to agree with his old mates Bert and Cec that this sheila was different from all other sheilas. After the doctor had diagnosed mild concussion, Young Billy had been taken home by his Aunt Madge to lie in a nice dark room and be fed lemonade. Lin and Li Pen joined the party. It had been such a prodigious day that the presence of a Chinese priest and his acolyte did not seem strange.

Phryne interrupted this to telephone home. It took her some time to calm Dot and longer for Dot to calm Miss Eliza, but eventually, she gathered, her household was going to sit down to a late breakfast, everyone having been too distraught to eat their early one, and then they were all going to have a little nap, especially Miss Eliza and Lady Alice, who had sat up listening for the phone all night. Then they were setting out on the train for Castlemaine and expected to be there for dinner.

After some hours of carousing, Phryne slid a hand onto Lin’s cassock-clad knee. ‘Is there somewhere we can go?’ she asked. ‘Or can you come to me?’

‘Certainly,’ said Lin. He stood up. ‘Miss Fisher has asked me to escort her to her room. She is feeling a little overcome,’ he announced in his suave priest’s voice. No one in the public bar said a word.

Phryne waved as they left and climbed the stairs.

‘I’m not the only one with a powerful voice,’ she commented.

As soon as the door was locked, Phryne sprang on Lin Chung and tore at the buttons on his cassock, stripping off her own clothes as they came to hand. Lin felt an answering fire leap in his own breast. He shed the cassock and the shirt underneath tore as her clever fingers found more buttons and she rubbed her face against him like an amorous cat, growling in her throat.

She backed Lin until he fell across the well-sprung bed and then with a flash of smooth flanks she was on him and he wondered, as teeth closed on his throat, if this was how it felt to lie down under a tiger. The predator growled, stooped and pounced, and Lin cried out at the conjunction, a pure animal sound. She had him. He could not move. She could. She rose over him; the first thrust went deep enough to hurt.

The clutch of her internal muscles brought him almost to orgasm, and he groaned at the waste, but his captor was alert to the prey’s every move. Twisting, she toppled them over so that he was lying on her breast, her legs wrapped around him, and they coupled like dragon and phoenix, so close that not a hair could come between the lithe body and the supple one and their black hair mingled on the pillow.

It was too intense to last. Phryne collapsed on Lin Chung and gasped as though she had been pulling a rickshaw. He held her carefully, in case she bit him again. He was astonished, gratified, and lightly bruised.

‘The prospect of death makes one love life,’ he said.

‘I was so close,’ she panted. ‘So close to Death last night that I could smell his breath. But I’m alive. Lin, did I hurt you?’

‘Nothing like as much as you pleased me,’ he said. ‘Come and I’ll show you another way to defy death,’ he said, and touched tiny, delicate caresses to all the pressure points along her back. When he reached the lowest one she convulsed.

‘The theory is that each one of these points is a centre of ch’i,’ he told her. ‘That is, life force. Your ch’i has been disrupted by spending a lot of time tied to a chair in danger of being murdered,’ he added.

Phryne laughed shakily. ‘Yes, that can certainly disrupt a girl’s ch’i energy,’ she agreed.

‘Then if we do this . . .’ The clever fingers slid along her spine. ‘And this . . .’ They slipped sideways onto her breasts. ‘We can regulate your breathing like that of a Shaolin master.’

The caresses were not slowing Phryne’s heartbeat. She felt it pound. She reached and captured the hand.

‘Or perhaps we could try this way,’ she suggested, laying one thigh over his hip, and drawing him gently back into conjunction with her again. Slowly, slowly; the sensation was so exquisite that she bit her lip, trying not to grab. They began to move, very quietly and circumspectly, then faster and faster.

The day wore on. Phryne woke from a light sleep to see that the square of sunlight from the window had moved from one side of the room to the other and was now shining directly into her eyes. It must be late afternoon.

Lin was asleep. Of course, he had had an interrupted night. Phryne rose and went to the bathroom. Returning, she sat down on the side of the bed and looked at her lover. Golden skin, cock’s feather hair with a blue sheen, the black line of his eyelashes absurdly thick. He was utterly beautiful and very dear.

She became aware that he had opened his eyes and was looking at her with a similar expression to her own.

‘I thought I’d lost you,’ he said, cupping her cheek in his hand. Her freshly washed hair swung over his hand.

‘And I thought I’d lost me,’ she replied. ‘It’s getting late. Look, the sun has almost gone. Shall we bathe and dress and go down to dinner?’

‘If we must,’ he said. ‘Oh, lord,’ he said, raising himself on one elbow and looking at the mass of garments on the floor.

‘What?’ asked Phryne from the bathroom, over the roar of water.

‘There are no buttons left on my cassock!’ he said.

‘There goes your reputation,’ said Phryne.

As it happened, the party from Melbourne had just arrived, and Lin’s cassock was rebuttoned by Dot, who had been sewing on buttons for little brothers since she could first hold a needle. She also repaired his shirt with fast, even stitches. Li Pen stood by the window as his master was rearrayed in his priestly disguise, which concealed the bite on his throat, and escorted him downstairs to reserve a table.

Everyone was coming to dinner.

Phryne was dressed in a new outfit which Dot had brought from St Kilda: a bright red crepe de Chine cocktail dress with red shoes to match and a trailing, slightly outrageous red ostrich feather panache for her hair. Dot herself, slightly weak with relief, wore her favourite terracotta and ochre evening dress and a rather nice bandeau with an orange geranium in it. Lady Alice and Eliza were in their own room and emerged as Phryne and Dot reached the stairs.

‘So it’s all over, Miss?’ demanded Dot. She liked to be reassured.

‘Absolutely all over. The bad man is in jail and I would say that he has gone over the edge. He is probably completely and incurably insane, and he is guilty of attempted murder. Twice. Of you and me. Therefore he will be held at His Majesty’s Pleasure, and that will probably be for his whole life.’

‘Good,’ observed Lady Alice. She wore a faded but good dark blue silk dress which had been let out, inexpertly, at least twice as Lady Alice’s corpulence increased. But around her neck was a chain of star sapphires and there were sapphires in her dark hair. Eliza wore a dusty rose damask dress with a small hat with more roses on it and the pearls her mother had given her before she fled to the lepers. Both women glowed with joy: they were pleasant to be near, like a wood fire.

‘I’ve asked the Beaconsfield heir to dinner,’ said Phryne. ‘You’ll like him. A good honest man.’

‘Then I hope he just demands the money and doesn’t go anywhere near Father,’ said Lady Alice. ‘That man could corrupt a monk.’

Dinner was laid out on several small tables pushed together. Soup was already on the table as the ladies came down and bottles of champagne popped. Old Bill Gaskin, in a new shirt which Annie had bought for him, looked uncomfortably at Lady Alice over the rim of his beer glass. Madge Johnson, his sister, escorting Young BiIly, prepared to sniff and didn’t. This looked like an ordinary woman, getting on for middle age, a bit plump, not some lady come to put on side. Lady Alice improved her opportunity by sitting down with the Gaskins and enquiring gently after Young Billy’s poor head and telling them that she wasn’t Lady Alice, just Alice Beaconsfield, and she was pleased to meet them and had to apologise for the appalling heir of Dunstable.

Madge Johnson let out her breath. ‘He wasn’t your fault, my lady . . . Miss,’ she said. ‘Neither was your ancestor. Nor the attack on Young Billy. He’ll be all right.’

‘He will,’ said Bill Gaskin. ‘Boy’s head’s as hard as teak, fortunately. Nice to meet you, Miss.’

At the other end of the table Sergeant Hammond was greeting Detective Inspector Robinson, who had come to relieve him of his prisoner and had decided to stay for dinner.

‘He might have been sane before he came here,’ Hammond said in answer to a question, ‘but he’s a fruitcake now. We’ve had to put him in a straitjacket and that wasn’t an easy job, he’s as strong as a bull. Nasty bump on the head might have slowed him down a bit.’

‘Governor’s Pleasure job, then, you reckon?’ said Robinson, taking another spoonful of the soup, which was spring chicken and very good.

‘You’ll never get him to trial,’ said Hammond. ‘Keeps saying he’s the king and we’re all his subjects.’

‘What about the other bloke, this Wallace?’

‘Got away, Miss Fisher says. I don’t know how she did that. She seems to have talked this Wallace into felling the prisoner.’

‘She’s a woman of uncanny powers,’ said Robinson, slurping more soup. ‘And fortunately, unique. See the grey hair at the side of my head? I call these my Miss Fisher hairs. But she got him,’ he said. ‘She uses methods which no Commissioner would ever countenance, but she always gets her man.’

‘Too right,’ said Sergeant Hammond.

‘More bread? Certainly,’ said Miss Eliza to Dot. ‘I have to apologise for my previous behaviour at your house, Dorothy. I was unbearable. I was so unhappy and so angry and there didn’t seem to be a chance that I’d extricate myself from the situation, or ever see my dear Alice again. But I shouldn’t have been so odious. I’ll be leaving soon, as soon as Alice and I can find a small house. We’ve got quite enough between us if I sell my pearls and she sells her sapphires. Where do you think we should live, to do the most good?’

‘Well,’ said Dot, ‘there’s the city itself, that’s a sink of wickedness. St Kilda could do you some pretty good wickedness as well. Why not let me walk you around some of the likely places? The girls can come too,’ she added.

Ruth and Jane, clad in their proper but just a bit spangly evening dresses, were being good, which was always a charming sight for as long as it lasted, Dot thought. They were drinking soup by the respectable but remarkably inefficient ‘tilt the bowl away from you and scoop’ method which they had been taught, which was nice of them, and they were doing it well. Jane was sitting next to Professor Ayers, quivering with questions. He took pity on her and began to talk. Jane, he had decided, was a scientific lusus naturae and therefore to be encouraged.

Dr Treasure had pleaded family commitments and had not come, but Mr Josiah Burton was there, enthroned in a hastily adapted chair and talking affably to Young Billy, who was wondering if he was actually talking to a dwarf or perhaps was not fully recovered from his concussion. Mr Harrison, who was not going to be excluded, sat beside him and sucked soup like a vacuum cleaner.

‘We’ve got something to ask you, Miss Alice,’ said Old Bill. ‘I don’t want this title, but I don’t think a man ought to give way to tyranny, so I told that Roddy that I wouldn’t sign. However, I’d like your advice. What do you think I should do?’

‘You’re asking the wrong person,’ said Lady Alice. ‘I’m not going back to England and I don’t think you’d be comfortable there either. But there’s no reason to allow Father to get away with this—outrageous, utterly outrageous scheme. I say, sting the old bastard for a small fortune in exchange for signing the repudiation. You should be compensated for your ordeal, for Billy’s head, and for all that insult and inconvenience. Get the Melbourne lawyer to tell him so. Then you can use the money for good works, buy your own business or take a trip around the world . . .’

‘Always wanted to do that,’ said Bill Gaskin. ‘On one of them cruise ships. Egypt. Ceylon. India. All the islands.’ He made up his mind. ‘Yair. I reckon that’s a good idea, Lady Alice. I wouldn’t be comfortable, taking anything away from a nice lady like you. And Madge works hard, she could do with some help in the house, eh, Madge? Send the laundry out? Girl to do the scrubbing? Bit of money’d be nice.’

Madge nodded. A devout reader of romances, she could not see Bill Gaskin as the newly discovered marquess of anywhere, not even Castlemaine. But help in the house would be lovely and would give her more time for her reading.

‘Still,’ said Bill Gaskin comfortably, aware of the joint of beef which had just been wheeled in and a prosperous future which certainly contained more beer, ‘all’s well that ends well, eh?’