Urn Burial (11 page)

‘I was afraid you were going to say that, Miss Phryne.’

‘I don’t think we’re in too much danger, Dot, but after you come back from dinner, shove a chair-back under the doorknob. I’ll knock when I come. Just in case, Dot dear,’ she said hastily. ‘The door doesn’t seem to have a key.’

‘Not only that, Miss, it hasn’t even got a latch.

I had a look at it earlier. The lock’s not working.’

‘How singular,’ Phryne observed. ‘The good old chair it is then. Now don’t worry, Dot. I’d better go down. Enjoy your dinner and keep an ear out for gossip. Find out what everyone was doing before they came here, if you can. I’m especially 103

curious about that remarkable couple, the Hinchcliffs. They’re not the sort of people I would expect to find in the backblocks. Be good.’ Phryne kissed Dot. ‘I’m relying on you.’

Dot said, ‘Yes, Miss,’ and waited until Phryne had gone in a waft of Jicky before wiping the lip-stick mark off her cheek.

‘You’re enough to drive me mental,’ said Dot to the closed door. ‘But you smell so nice.’

Dinner, it appeared, was going to be testing. The gathering in the drawing room was nervous: Miss Cray was muttering prayers in an annoying undertone, Miss Mead was looking like someone who had just discovered the Mother’s Club rehearsing the Black Mass instead of the Wednes-day Play, Tom Reynolds had taken more brandy than was good for him and the poet had not only matched but exceeded his consumption. Mrs Reynolds’ brow was furrowed, Lin Chung looked absolutely expressionless, Miss Fletcher was talking too loudly about the leg-before-wicket rule, Gerald looked crumpled and Jack Lucas short-tempered. The Major’s shirt front was bal-looning out as he declaimed that all women were pests and a curse and no time need be wasted on such a light-headed, irresponsible, fundamentally wicked sex.

‘It’s not money that’s the root of all evil, but women,’ he declared. His wife, wispy in pale-blue, cowered away from him and Doctor Franklin, 104

who was the main recipient of the Major’s discourse, looked harried. Only Mrs Fletcher looked pleased, and that might have been because Judith was leaning ostentatiously on Gerald’s arm. Miss Medenham was remarkable in cyclamen chiffon and amethysts. The poet was offering her a cocktail and drinking her in with what looked like serious, if alcoholically inspired, concentration.

The gentlemen were dressed in the usual panoply; the ladies ranged from Joan Fletcher’s

‘suitable’ grey velvet to Miss Cray’s habitual mourning weeds, dressed up with a multitude of jet brooches with hair in them.

Phryne swept in and Lin Chung detached himself from the gathering with deceptive ease and offered her his arm.

‘You look absolutely beautiful,’ he said softly.

Phryne surveyed him. His clothes, she thought, were made to measure in Savile Row, or perhaps in Oxford. They fitted him like a glove. The linen irreproachable; the links and studs of round unde-corated gold in very good taste. His hair was as shiny as patent leather and he was as sleek and self-satisfied as a black cat.

‘So do you,’ she told him with perfect truth.

‘Shall we go in?’ asked the hostess. Phryne accepted Tom Reynolds’ arm. As the highest-ranking lady, it was her place to go first and be seated first.

Tom was more than a trifle unsteady as the great doors opened into a dining room shining with glass and lit by three chandeliers. The tables were 105

laid with damask as white as snow, on which were displayed glasses in the highest state of gleam; silver polished to extinction, several epergnes full of ferns and a real Sevres dinner service –

Peninsular War vintage. Unless it came with the house, it must have cos

c t

os Tom

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several fortunes.

Phryne hoped that the domestics knew that the penalty for dropping a plate was a shooting at dawn.

She paraded down the length of the room. The decor was, as usual, mixed. Linen-fold panelling lined the walls, but the ceiling was decorated with a frieze of dancing Greek maidens and plaster mouldings in the shape of trailing bunches of ivy and grapes. A Dionysiad, therefore; but a very polite one. No nymph could get into too much trouble when she had such a very tight corset on under her tunic. The floor was parquet and slightly springy, and the windows were draped with full High Victorian curtains, endless falls of heavy velvet and piles of priceless lace heaped carelessly to the floor.

‘Lord, Tom, what a room,’ she murmured, holding her host up with a hand under his elbow.

‘Magnificent, ain’t it?’ he blurred.

‘I’ve never seen anything like it. Come along, old thing, you’re meant to sit here, the head of the table, and I sit here on your left. Downsy-daisy,’

said Phryne, pushing slightly as the butler shoved the chair forward. Hinchcliff flourished his master’s napkin and spread it on his lap. Phryne exchanged a rueful glance with him. How had 106

Tom got so polluted in such a short time?

Although the large man’s face remained perfectly butlerine, she caught a flicker of a wink and a small, very fleeting, smile.

‘That’s the way,’ she encouraged. ‘You have to have something to eat, Tom dear. You shouldn’t drink on an empty stomach.’

‘’M not drunk,’ protested Tom.

‘No, of course not, my dear,’ said Phryne, very pleased that Lin Chung was sitting beside her with Miss Medenham and Jack Lucas opposite. At least she would have someone to talk to.

The rest of the company had entered, each gentleman escorting a lady, and Phryne looked down the board. She could not see far, because of a bank of ferns of Amazonian luxuriance. The Major had been separated from his wife, who was sitting next to Tadeusz. Luttrell was inflicting his opinions on Joan Fletcher who, by the look of her, was about to deliver a mustard-plaster snub.

Phryne hoped that she would be able to hear it.

Miss Cray and Miss Mead flanked the Doctor, and Gerald Randall had accompanied Judith Fletcher and was even listening to what she was saying, or appearing to. Perhaps, Phryne thought, he really was interested in cricket.

‘Hock, Madam?’ asked Mr Hinchcliff, and Phryne nodded. Perhaps Tom Reynolds was wise.

This assortment of people might look much better through the pink spectacles of the slightly shick-ered. She examined the menu card, written in waiter’s French.

107

Pure Mrs Beeton. No one would serve a meal of such richness and variety in the city now, except possibly the Lord Mayor. Phryne sipped the hock, hoped that she was hungry, and joined in politely to Lin Chung’s conversation about Oxford.

The delights of that city lasted through the consomme´ de gibier, game soup composed mostly of local rabbit and possibly pigeon.

‘I suppose that it is difficult to make game soup in Australia,’ she commented, ‘though this is excellent. No partridges or quail, no wild birds.’

‘There’s a recipe for parrot soup,’ Tom Reynolds came awake. ‘You take an old boot and a couple of parrots. You put them in a pot and stew them until the old boot is soft. Then you throw the parrots away and eat the old boot.’

Having delivered himself of this culinary gem, Tom lapsed into his reverie again.

‘Well, they are so decorative that I wouldn’t want to eat them anyway,’ said Miss Medenham with aplomb. ‘Don’t you agree, Miss Fisher? I saw a flight of galahs from my window this afternoon, like a grey cloud. Then they turned, and the cloud was pink.’

‘They are beautiful,’ agreed Phryne. ‘And as you say, very Art dećoratif. Those bold colours – black and crimson, or the red, blue and gold of rosellas.’

‘Greenfinches would make a lovely frieze around a room,’ said Jack Lucas. ‘Flights and flights of green birds, or silver-eyes, perhaps, in that strange grey-green like gumleaves.’

‘Or that chalk-blue of budgies, though perhaps 108

not a frieze,’ commented Lin Chung. ‘The feathers are very fine. Promise me, Phryne, you will not start a fashion? If you wear the bright plumage, all the ladies will emulate you and there will not be a parrot left in Australia, which would be a pity.’

‘I promise,’ Phryne smiled. ‘The feathers I’m wearing are from a seagull, and I picked them up myself on Elwood beach after he had preened them away. Dot put them together – she is a famous needlewoman.’

‘They are quite perfect,’ said Jack Lucas. ‘They seem to set off your silky black hair just as Miss Medenham’s amethysts set off her golden locks.’

‘Do you admire my golden locks, Jack?’ asked Miss Medenham, shaking her head so that all of her purple stones flashed in the chandelier’s bright light.

‘You know I do,’ he said.

There was a pause. The housemaid, moving with extreme care, offered fillets of trout cooked with almonds. The gentlemen had obviously caught some fish.

‘Tom, dear, would you like some truite alman-dine?’ asked Phryne as he stared blankly at the embarrassed maid. ‘You caught them, you know.’

‘Me? No. I never caught nothing. Fish, eh? No.

Don’t want no fish.’

Phryne waved a hand at the butler, who came instantly and leaned down so that she could whisper. He smelt of starch and eau-de-cologne.

‘I think your master might improve with some 109

coffee. Strong, you know, and black. Can you sort of sneak it in so the others don’t notice?’ He nodded, gave her an approving look which left Phryne feeling a little overwhelmed, and went away.

The trout was delicious, though Phryne heard Miss Cray complaining that hers had not been cooked properly. Miss Mead, a sensible woman, explained the concept of bleu in an undertone, which did not stop Miss Cray from observing,

‘How revolting!’ at the top of her not inconsiderable voice.

Phryne let her hand slip under the table to meet Lin Chung’s where it rested on his thigh. It was going to be a long night and according to the menu there were three courses yet to get through. He patted her hand consolingly.

‘Tell me, Miss Fisher, how have the cases been going? Miss Fisher’s a famous detective,’ added Miss Medenham in explanation. Phryne began to tell the story of the cast of Ruddigore and the ghost. It was a good story and she told it with appropriate verve, so that Jack Lucas was fascinated and even Tom was listening.

‘She’s a clever girl, this one,’ he said thickly, as she reached the end. ‘Clever girl. Even though she brought a Chinese lover. I don’t mind that, why should I? I knew a Chinese girl once. Her name was Soong – Song, that was it, she was a song.

That was in Hong Kong, before the war. Pretty little thing. What’s this, Hinchcliff? I didn’t ask for this.’ The butler was offering him a breakfast cup such as is used for soup. The butler did not reply 110

but stood fixed and immovable, looking permanent. Hinchcliff, Phryne felt, would stand there with that cup until Tom drank it or the heavens fell, whichever came first.

‘You just drink it and don’t argue,’ said Cynthia Medenham, unexpectedly firm. Tom gazed fuzzily in her direction and observed, ‘Blondes. Blondes are strong-minded women.’

‘Quite right, my dear. I am strong-minded, so drink up. You should know better than to argue with a blonde, an old newspaperman like you,’ she said, and Tom reached over, tried to pinch her cheek, missed, and swallowed the coffee in one complicated movement. His eyes, for a moment, opened wide. Phryne reflected that it must have been concentrated caffeine.

The saddle of mutton was brought in with some ceremony. There were boiled potatoes and cabbage in butter to accompany this. Phryne was wondering what on earth to do. The host was supposed to carve and she would not have liked to be within knife’s reach of a drunken Tom Reynolds, who was given to wide, all-encompassing gestures.

He might not mean to slash pieces off his guests, but he might do it nonetheless. She resolved to dive under the table at the first sign of mayhem.

But Mr Hinchcliff knew his duty. The mutton had been meticulously sliced in the kitchen, and the housemaid was carrying the platter in triumph along the table before the master noticed that he had been supplanted.

From the end of the table where convention had 111

trapped her, too far away for effective action, Evelyn Reynolds stared at Phryne with desperate eyes, begging her to do something.

Phryne let go of Lin Chung’s hand and said to Tom, ‘These are excellent potatoes. Do you grow them?’

‘Yes,’ said Tom, blinking. ‘The soil’s perfect for potatoes, we got three truckloads out of the north field last year. Lucky, too. You can live on potatoes. Look at all those Irishmen. We might have to, if the river rises any higher.’

‘I’m sure that your wife has the catering well in hand, Tom,’ soothed Phryne.

‘Yes, m’wife is a capable woman, capable. Pity about the boy. She’d have been different if the boy had turned out well. But he went to the bad. Lots of boys do, you know. I went to the bad myself.’

‘Tom, do shut up,’ said Phryne.

‘Ah, Jack.’ He noticed Jack Lucas for the first time. ‘Nice boy, Jack. So was his father. His father was a nice boy. Man.’

‘Have some cabbage,’ urged Miss Medenham nervously. ‘Do you grow the cabbages, too?’

‘Cabbages,’ said Tom owlishly. ‘Babies grow under cabbages, eh, don’t they? Eh, Annie? Did you find them under a cabbage?’

This pronouncement caused the housemaid to drop the dish, clap both hands to her face, and run blindly out of the room. Tom Reynolds gaped after her.

While there was a certain fascination in anticipating what he might say next, Phryne drew the 112

line at cruelty. ‘Tom, you must pull yourself together,’ she said in a fierce undertone. ‘You’re drunk and you’re babbling. Stop it at once. I’m ashamed of you.’

‘I’m ashamed of me, too,’ his face fell and he looked like he was going to cry. Phryne looked around for help. Hinchcliff materialised at her side.

‘I’m afraid that Mr Reynolds is ill,’ she said flatly. ‘He has caught a chill. Lin darling – would you mind?’

Tom was minded to protest, but Lin caught him in an unbreakable hold and he and the butler escorted him firmly out of the dining room.

‘How did old Tom get that drunk that fast?’

asked Cynthia. ‘I’ve never seen him so plastered.’