Urn Burial (23 page)

‘He tied us as loosely as he dared,’ commented the poet, freeing his own hands. ‘He did the best he could. And we have survived.’

‘Praise God,’ said Miss Mead, and Miss Cray echoed her.

‘Well done, Miss Medenham. You almost had him trapped, but I think Lin Chung was too distant,’ said Phryne loudly, helping the woman up.

‘God, and I almost had him, too,’ replied Miss Medenham, shuddering. ‘He would have gone on with it – he was mad with power. Ugh, I can still feel his filthy hands on me. Is there any tea left in the basket? I want to wash my mouth out. Oh, disgusting. It’ll be days before I can bear to be kissed again.’ She caught the poet’s congratulatory gaze and grinned. ‘Well, hours.’

‘How are you, Tom?’ asked Phryne, noticing that the red stain was growing on Mrs Luttrell’s petticoat.

‘All right,’ grunted her host.

‘The bleeding’s slowing,’ said Doctor Franklin.

‘It’s not serious.’

‘See? Only a flesh wound, like in the movies,’

Tom said to his desperately worried wife.

‘It’s time to explain,’ said Phryne. ‘Break out the brandy we brought along for medicinal purposes 230

and hang on to that madman. If I don’t sort this out I don’t feel I can bear to see grass and sky again. Give me his gun,’ she requested.

The poet retrieved it and she broke it open.

‘Eight shots,’ she said faintly.

Jack Lucas and Gerald were talking quietly, and in the sudden silence, as Phryne contemplated how close they had come to eternity, she heard Jack say sadly, ‘It’s just how you are, Gerry. You can’t help it. I can either take you or leave you. You’ll never change.’

‘And what do you choose?’ asked Gerald, almost under his breath.

‘I choose to take you, of course,’ said Jack. He brought up his warm hand and stroked the bruised cheek. Gerald, relieved, burst into tears.

‘Everyone find a seat, light the rest of the torches, pass the bottle around. Dot, fetch my bag, a handkerchief and the eau de Cologne, if you please. Are you all right, old thing?’

‘Yes, Miss,’ said Dot. ‘I knew we’d be all right.

You were up on that Urn and I could see Mr Li in the shadows. Here you are, Miss.’

Phryne saturated the handkerchief in the spirit and passed the bottle to Miss Medenham, who took a swig, spat, and scrubbed at her lips. Mrs Fletcher found the relief of being rescued too great, and fainted. Her daughter pillowed her mother’s head on a convenient rock and took her turn at the brandy bottle. Lin Chung, holding on to one of Black’s arms, said to his bodyguard in Cantonese, ‘It might have worked.’

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‘Never. You were too far away,’ said Li Pen.

‘You would have been shot and then what would I tell your father?’

‘What you should be worrying about is what you would have told Grandmother.’

Both of them fell silent, shuddering.

Phryne sat herself on a conveniently central tomb and began.

‘I came to this house to have a nice little holiday and to solve a small mystery,’ she said. ‘My host was getting blackmailing notes from someone who said they had been cheated out of an inheritance.

Everyone thought it must be Jack Lucas, and some of the notes were sent on his behalf, though not by him or with his knowledge. The others, however, were not. All of them were written in black ink on typing paper taken from the office at Cave House. I was almost killed by a trip-wire and there has been a fair bit of damage and petty mischief around the place. I worked out who was doing some of it, though not all, and that was again a matter which led to no bad effects and need not be considered, especially since I have effected a settlement of the Lucas issue which is acceptable to both parties.’

Gerald drew a deep, quiet breath and leaned on Jack’s shoulder.

‘There were other mysteries. Someone kept leaving urns in my room, and my friend’s, clearly trying to tell us something. What had happened to Lina in the fog, why was she out there, why wouldn’t she say who attacked her, and where was 232

her body? Because I had an advantage over the rest of you, I had seen her corpse, I knew that she was dead, while to the household at large she was just missing, and maids can be missing for a variety of reasons.’ Jack Lucas passed Phryne the brandy and she took a gulp.

‘Someone clearly knew when Lina was expected to recover and to be able to tell us what had happened. The people who knew this were me, the Doctor, Tom, the Major, and Mr Black, who was passing at the time with a lot of leads on the way to mend a flex.’

All eyes turned to the fallen gunman, who did not react. Phryne surveyed the faces. The house party had made up their minds.

‘I thought of the Doctor,’ she went on. ‘He might have reasons to kill Lina, especially if he had assaulted her. There were rumours that he had been too friendly with some of his more sensitive and wealthy female patients.’

Doctor Franklin stiffened and said, ‘That is an outrageous suggestion!’

‘Isn’t it? And fairly unlikely, too. However, you were playing chess with Mr Lodz at the right time.

Tom and the Major were supposed to be fishing.

That seemed to rule out both of them. But, it turned out, my host had felt his old bones aching and had come back early to play billiards with Gerald and Jack. Mrs Croft told Dot that the Major caught no fish – the trout at dinner were captured by the stableboy and Albert, who proudly produced them in an attempt to buy off 233

punishment for skiving when they should have been working. So it might have been the Major after all. He certainly seemed the best candidate for a midnight rapist. He had droit de seigneur in India over the house staff, flirted with every available female and yet treated his wife like a slave. Like most men bent on conquest, he profoundly disliked women.

‘Anyway, I saw the body, closed the door, and came to get Mrs Reynolds. In the space of time it took to track her down in the kitchen garden, Doreen cleaned the room, abolishing a lot of valuable clues. Someone in muddy boots who knew the house walked in, took the body, walked out and into the secret passage, laying the body in a marble sarcophagus in the cellar. I favoured the Major, and such was the case. Wasn’t it, Major?

You knew that she would come if you sent a note signed R, because the girl was in love with Ronald, the disgraced son of the house, and she’d never believed that he was dead. You sent the note, intercepted her in the fog, and assaulted her. Poor Lina. She came expecting to see the man she loved, and she got you instead. She screamed and Dingo Harry, springing to the defence of an oppressed daughter of the labouring classes, fired that shotgun blast. I heard it and I rescued the girl. She wouldn’t have had a chance otherwise, would she, alone in the fog with a murderer?’

‘He killed her?’ demanded Paul Black hoarsely, never taking his gaze from the dead girl’s face.

‘Oh, yes, he killed her,’ said Phryne flatly.

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‘She was mine. She flaunted herself at me, begged me to take her, then she screamed, like all women, bitches, all bitches.’ The Major stopped speaking. Li Pen tightened his grip on his neck.

‘Lina was in love with Ronald?’ asked Mrs Reynolds, shocked.

‘Oh, yes. She loved him before he went away.

He gave her this ring, told her he’d love her forever, then went off to wherever it was he went.

Then he came back, of course, and began writing letters, demanding his inheritance.’

‘He came back? Where is he?’ demanded Mrs Reynolds.

‘He’s here,’ said Phryne. She walked over to Paul Black and pulled his head round by the hair. She applied the cologne-soaked handkerchief to his face, scrubbing vigorously. He bit at her hands until Lin Chung laid one fingertip very gently to his eyelid, after which he froze. Phryne cleaned busily, using up two handkerchieves and the last of the scent.

Then she wiped at the fringe which was flopping over his forehead, and black grease or dye came away. The actual colour of the hair was brown.

‘There. Do you know him?’ asked Phryne, allowing Lin and Li to drag Paul Black to his feet.

Mrs Reynolds made a dreadful, heartbroken noise and her husband clutched her.

‘Oh, Ronald,’ she whispered. ‘Oh, my son.’

‘He has been in prison, which puts lines on the face,’ observed Phryne. ‘And someone tried to take out his eye with, at a venture, a bottle. The scar 235

distorts his mouth. No one would know him from his photographs when he was a young ne’er-do-well and the spoiled son of a great house. An excellent disguise, which he added to with judicious applications of grease. Fooled almost everyone. Not Lina, of course, because she knew him the moment he arrived. Didn’t you think it odd, Tom dear, that such a well-skilled mechanic would want to come all the way out here and work for you? Of course you did. You wouldn’t take the attack on Lina seriously because you thought Ronald had done it. You knew, my dear, didn’t you?’

‘Not at first,’ protested Tom. ‘I didn’t know he was Black. I just knew he was here, somewhere.’

Mrs Reynolds said, ‘Tom?’

‘Yes, yes, m’dear. I was trying to think of a way to tell you, I really was. But I knew it would grieve you so terribly. I was waiting for him to approach me, stop sending those notes, so I could offer him some money to go away. He never did. I didn’t know about Lina. Of course, he wanted to take her with him.’

‘But then she was killed. I thought Ronald found the body and brought it here, but now I don’t know.’

‘I brought her,’ snarled the Major. ‘I made . . .

someone . . . help me.’

‘Oh? Why didn’t you just fling the body in the river?’

‘Might have fetched up. That pool up there is a petrifying well, so the body would stay there, a 236

monument. Poor fools would find her after fifty years and know that she was mine, my mark still on her, and they’d make up stories about the poor girl lost in the dark, who lay down in the cool water and died. But I’d know how she came to be there. I put her there. My creature. Entirely mine,’

announced the Major. His wife stared at him in utter loathing. Phryne went on.

‘You see, Tom dear, you had a houseful of secrets and that played into the disgusting Major’s hands. He knew everything about everyone, probably from the observant Miss Cray, whose confidence could be easily purchased with a hefty donation to her favourite cause. Almost everyone had something to lose. Reputation or honour or some secret that they could not bear to have haled out into the light. Those whom his overwhelming character could not daunt could be blackmailed into silence. Do you realise that he walked through the whole house, down those stairs and out through the back door, without anyone daring to say that they had seen him? God knows what he had on Miss Medenham – perhaps she might tell us later. She saw him pass the library door and said nothing. Jack Lucas and Gerald Randall had their own reasons for silence. Tadeusz wasn’t there, but he has his weak spot also. Miss Cray –

you know, don’t you? Miss Mead?’

‘Oh, yes, dear.’ Miss Mead, unruffled by adventure, looked as though she regretted not bringing her crochet.

‘I thought you did, from that remark about the 237

Acts of the Apostles. Ananias and Sapphira failed to turn all their worldly goods over to the Lord and he struck them down – a fable that soured me on the entire New Testament. Miss Cray’s a thief, isn’t she? All that money went to the Make Miss Cray a Rich Lady Fund, didn’t it?’

‘Oh, yes, Miss Fisher,’ said Miss Mead collectedly. ‘I am concerned in a lot of little charities, and no one knew anything about Miss Cray, not even the more . . . er . . . extreme sects.’

‘No!’ shrieked Miss Cray. ‘The heathen . . . the heathen . . .’

‘Yes, yes, dear, of course,’ murmured Miss Mead. ‘Just sit down on this nice stone and have some tea.’

‘Miss Fletcher was playing tennis with Lin at the time, but Mrs Fletcher failed to notice a fifteen-stone military gentleman carrying a rolled blanket over one shoulder. This may have something to do with Miss Fletcher’s trust fund, and the uses to which some of it has been put. It was not until I had lit a fire under Miss Fletcher that her mother realised that her comfortable existence was threatened by a palace revolution. Silk hangings for your boudoir, I believe you said, and a tour of Europe every year? The Major had encountered you on several trips, and someone had told him that Miss Fletcher’s money was supposed to be spent on Miss Fletcher. Still, I suppose it’s lucky you didn’t put it all into Megatherium. But you aren’t strong enough to carry Lina’s body anywhere, so I had to discount you, much as I 238

think you have the right kind of mind to be a murderer.’

Mrs Fletcher, having recovered enough to hear this dispassionate speech, fainted again and her daughter replaced her head on the rock. Phryne continued.

‘Doctor Franklin – yes, you fit. The Major clearly has a lot of these little extra-marital adventures, and he would need the services of a good abortionist. That is the raison d’eˆtre of your chain of nursing homes, isn’t it, Doctor? There is nothing wrong with your trade.’ Phryne held up a hand to still a protest. ‘You perform a valuable public service. There was that scandal a few years ago, though, wasn’t there, when that girl died?

And I believe that your fees are very high. It must cost you a fortune to pay off the cops, though you would have friends in high places. No wonder you have neurasthenia. Illegal operations are so nerve-wracking. So you helped the revolting Major to carry his hunting trophy here, did you?’

The Doctor, almost sinking with shame, nodded.

‘And there are other secrets. Only Lin, Miss Mead and I appear to be without them. The poet is not who he seems, eh, Tadeusz? You should polish your cigarette case and disguise your seat on a horse. But that can wait. You all covered up for the Major, and we can perfectly understand it.

Now is the time for us all to forgive ourselves and leave this dark place. I don’t know how long it’ll be until we can get a policeman out from Bairnsdale, but we’ve got a commodious cellar for 239

you gentlemen, and I’m sure that you have a lot to talk about to while away the long darkness.’