Urn Burial (24 page)

Lin and Li stood Ronald up. He hoisted the dead body of Lina into his arms. His mother came to him, and he snarled at her, so that she jumped back as if she had been confronted with a wild dog.

‘I came back, Mother,’ he said through bared teeth. ‘Aren’t you glad to see your little boy?’

‘Ronald, why didn’t you tell me?’ she pleaded, stroking the dirty hand.

‘You never knew me, you never even looked at me, Mother,’ he said. ‘I just came back to get my rights, and to find Lina again. She loved me. She was a skivvy, Mother, a servant, and she knew me right away, the moment Paul Black walked through the door. I never cared what happened to him.’ He jerked his head at Tom, walking shakily but under his own steam. ‘But I thought you’d know.’

‘What did you mean to do?’ asked Phryne, as they passed into another cavern, a four-foot broad flat ledge over a deep pit.

‘I meant to go back to America. I meant to take Lina with me. But I can’t do that now. It’s all ruined. That bastard, that bloody bastard killed her.’ His lip quivered. ‘But if I can’t take my girl with me one way,’ he said, ‘I can do it another.’

He threw the corpse away, into the air, and then seized the Major in an unbreakable grip. Phryne hissed, ‘No, Lin, come back,’ as the Chinese grabbed at the struggling pair.

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Phryne heard Lina’s cadaver strike the bottom of the pit; a dull thud. Paul Black had the Major by the neck and the Major grappled Black by the waist. They panted and stamped, purple face to purple face, while Phryne, Lin and Li Pen flattened themselves back against the wall. Mrs Reynolds screamed, ‘My son!’, Dot called, ‘Look out!’ and, almost in slow motion, they fell.

Phryne saw the murderers, clasped as close as lovers, topple off the lip of the limestone bridge and fall, inseparable, into the abyss.

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CHAPTER FOURTEEN

And therefore restless disquiet for the diurnity of our memories unto present considerations seems a vanity almost out of date, and superannuated piece of folly.

Epistle Dedicatory, Urn Burial, Sir Thomas Browne.

SUNLIGHT HAD never looked so bright nor crushed grass smelt so sweet. The house party dragged themselves up the iron ladder and out into the light.

Phryne threw herself down almost at the feet of the horse, who snuffled politely at her hair and courteously refrained from standing on this strange human who was rolling down a slight slope to come to rest on her back, staring up at the sky.

Dot dumped the picnic basket into the cart and observed, ‘Miss Phryne?’

‘Here. This grass smells lovely.’

‘Yes, Miss.’ Dot considered that all grass smelt the same. Sort of grass-scented. Her eccentric employer rubbed her filthy face on the pasture, rolled over, 242

and sat up, picking burrs out of her hair.

‘Quite. I suppose we’d better be going. Have we got everyone?’

‘I think so, Miss. Is Mr . . . er . . .’ it did not seem quite polite to call him Dingo Harry, but Dot didn’t know his other name. ‘Is Mr Dingo coming with us?’

‘He certainly is,’ said Miss Medenham, who had a firm grip on the retiring geologist’s patched jacket.

‘We owe him a bath and a good dinner at least.’

Lin and the Doctor helped Tom Reynolds into the dray.

‘I’ll drive,’ offered Tadeusz. Phryne packed herself in beside Lin and leaned on his shoulder.

He put an arm around her.

‘That was a dreadful ending to the story,’ she said quietly.

‘But a fitting one. Divine Justice would dictate it.’

‘As Proverbs says, ‘‘He that diggeth a pit shall fall therein’’,’ observed Miss Mead. ‘What would have happened if the Major had survived, or Paul Black – pardon, Ronald – to tell their story? Ruin and scandal and the wreck of innocent lives. Far better that they are dead and with God, who will know how to deal with them. That is, after all,’

Miss Mead said gravely, ‘what God is for.’

‘Indeed,’ said Dingo Harry, devoutly.

The return of the house party was marked by a drain on the hot water supplies and a clumping together

of

people

for

mutual

comfort,

expostulation, or absolution. Miss Cray scuttled to 243

Miss Mead’s room to explain what had happened to the church funds. Gerald and Jack, in dressing-gowns, locked themselves into a second-floor bathroom and were incommunicado for more than an hour. Miss Fletcher had a quick wash, scaled the stairs, and hit a tennis ball with great verve against the Cave House dome. Mrs Fletcher was laid down on her bed by her expostulating maid who applied smelling salts and brandy. The poet, Miss Medenham, the Doctor and Mrs Luttrell took over the parlour, smoking cigarettes and sitting close by each other on the huge couch, playing the gramophone and drinking cocktails. Tom Reynolds was escorted to his room, pronounced in need of rest, and put firmly to bed. His wife, in defiance of all custom, shut the door at two in the afternoon and lay down on his unwounded side, crying for her lost son, now definitely dead and gone.

Dingo Harry carried the news of the terrible events at the caves to the kitchen, where he was supplied with endless tea and his favourite cakes as he held the staff agog. Mrs Croft made scones and the kettle boiled, and no one could understand why Doreen sat mute in a corner, would not even taste a morsel, and looked likely to weep.

Phryne and Lin Chung climbed the monumental stair, too tired even to react to the decor. They washed briefly and lay down naked together in the big bed, flank to warm flank, talking quietly.

‘At least you’ll be here,’ said Phryne to Lin.

‘Riddles,’ he sighed into her hair. ‘When will I be here?’

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‘When the nightmares come. I’ll see it all again.

The grip of the hands, the wrestling bodies, and that slow, inevitable fall.’

‘I’ll see that, too. It is a matter of endurance.

Eventually, the memories fade, Silver Lady.’

‘I know they will. It’s just that the process is not comfortable.’

‘You comfort me,’ he said sleepily.

‘You comfort me,’ she replied.

Dot took Li Pen to the kitchen and supplied him with hot sweet tea and scones with strawberry jam. She had decided that he needed feeding. And she wanted to ask him if he would teach her how to put on that paralysing armlock. It was a thing any girl in 1928 might need to know.

Phryne sensed the sweetish smell of rotting flesh again and felt the flaccid corpse in her arms, the head lolling against her breast. She jerked herself out of a drowse and stroked the real head reposing on her shoulder, touched dry warm skin with the pulse of life in the throat. His mouth opened as she touched it, kissing her fingers.

‘Shadows, Silver Lady,’ said Lin Chung, waking up and embracing her.

The party in the parlour had become raucous and drunken. Miss Medenham was dancing a tango 245

with the Doctor when Phryne came in, dressed for dinner in her jade gown. She reflected that if Miss Medenham got any closer to Doctor Franklin they would be wearing the same dress, and that brilliant scarlet might be a little trying for Doctor Franklin’s complexion. Hinchcliff handed her a cocktail.

‘My

special

recipe!’

exclaimed

Tadeusz,

grinning, from his place next to Mrs Luttrell on the sofa.

Phryne sipped cautiously. The cocktail was, perhaps, Slavic. It seemed to be compounded of absinthe, noyau and cherry brandy, a combination she had not heard of before. It was remarkable.

She gulped it down while she was still undecided about the taste and sat down rather quickly under the impact.

The newly made widow was not plunged in grief. She seemed to have become more substantial since the death of her detestable spouse. Her hair was fluffed out, she seemed to have put on weight; her eyes were bright and her hands were steady.

‘I can’t say that I really care for cocktails,’ she observed to Phryne. ‘But Tadeusz makes really unusual ones.’

Phryne, wondering if any of her back teeth were still attached, could only nod.

Lin took his usual small glass of sherry from Hinchcliff, who seemed to be relieved. The burden of care, which had made him resemble a Presbyterian Minister about to rebuke sin, had lifted from him, and he now looked like one of 246

those rosy-cheeked and benevolent bishops who handed out dispensations like confetti in the days before Luther had taken all the fun out of religion.

Phryne wondered what on earth the Major had had on a respectable character like Hinchcliff. She resolved to find out, solely for her own satisfaction.

‘Well, children, it’s time to tell all,’ she said lightly. ‘We have to share our secrets, my dears. If we all know the dirt on each other no one will dare to gossip. It’s our only protection. Secrets have been popping out of the woodwork all over Cave House. I have to know, Miss Medenham –

what on earth did the Major know about you?’

Cynthia Medenham giggled. Jack Lucas and Gerald, who seemed very well-scrubbed, came in at this point and sat down, collecting one of the Slavic cocktails each.

‘It’s not a very bad secret. Only, my stock in trade is mystery. The vamp, you know. Writers sell their personalities just as much as their prose. It would ruin it all to know that I’ve got a dear, uninteresting accountant husband and two delightful children, wouldn’t it? It’s true. I don’t know how he found out, but he knew. He even tried to drag me into his bed, the beast – but then I got together with Letty. I led him on as shamelessly as I could – you saw me – priceless, wasn’t it? A truly awful display. Then I let him take me up to his room, quite sure of his conquest.

I stayed near the door, and there was – you know – a little intimacy, and then . . .’

247

‘Then?’ asked Lin, Phryne, both Fletchers, Miss Mead, Jack, Gerald, the poet and the Doctor, breathlessly.

‘He got quite passionate, the monster,’ said Miss Medenham with delicacy. ‘And I just pointed my finger at it, you know, and I laughed. And I kept on laughing. I laughed myself out of his room and then I ran for my life back to Letty. She was staying with me. God knows what he would have done with her if she’d been there.’

Mrs Luttrell knew and shuddered. Tadeusz put an arm around her.

‘That’s what sent him off into the night,’

observed Phryne. ‘There had to be a precipitating incident. Of course, after you rejected him, he ran to the one woman he had totally under his control.

Completely obedient, of course, because she was dead.’

‘Poor Lina,’ said the company. There was a moment’s silence.

‘Miss Fletcher, for you it was being seduced by the exceptionally seductive Gerald.’ Miss Fletcher blushed but did not look unduly ashamed.

‘Wanted to find out what it’s like – what I’d be missing if I lived alone. No offence to you, Gerry dear, but it’s not much.’

‘No offence taken, old thing,’ said Gerry cheerfully.

‘And he could have blackmailed me, of course, knowing that Lin Chung is my lover. That also applied to him in reverse, if you know what I mean,’ said Phryne, swapping revelation for 248

revelation. ‘Tadeusz, what was in those cocktails?

They’re scrambling my syntax. Let’s go on. The Major had Tom over a whole cellarful of barrels because he knew that Ronald had returned and was demanding money – all he had to do to keep Tom quiet was to mention the name. He didn’t need to silence Miss Mead, she wasn’t in sight, but he probably would have found something.’

‘Yes, dear, I have a dreadful secret,’ said Miss Mead cheerfully. ‘I’m a private detective. I came here to investigate Miss Cray. A very wealthy woman is thinking of donating her estate to the Church, and her lawyer could not find out which denomination Miss Cray supported.’

‘You’re a private detective, Miss Mead? How thrilling!’ said Miss Fletcher. ‘Do you have a gun, like Miss Fisher?’

‘No, Miss Fletcher, I prefer to avoid any violence, though I have been unlucky today. I don’t advertise and I work only for selected clients.

But if my neighbours in South Yarra knew, the Lord knows what they would say. It’s not difficult, you know,’ she added to Miss Fletcher. ‘No one notices old ladies. All I had to do to find out most of what I needed to know was to sit here in this very comfortable chair, get on with my crochet and listen.’

‘Bravo, Miss Mead!’ Jack Lucas was a little elevated on his first cocktail.

‘Mrs Fletcher, you wasted your daughter’s money but that’s over now and need not attract any more notice,’ said Phryne. ‘But you, Tadeusz –

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Ted – how long did it take you to acquire that beautiful accent?’

‘How did you rumble me?’ demanded the poet in a clipped tone, which lapsed back into his usual honey-sweet voice.

‘I didn’t for a long time. You seemed to be taken with Miss Medenham – protective colouration, I assume, for both of you. Miss Medenham had to conceal the fact that she was not having an affair, despite being one of literature’s most notorious vamps, and you had to hide your interest in Letty Luttrell. But you offered me a cigarette from that battered silver case. You’ve obviously had it for a long time, it’s personal to you, and it still has the outline of the Australian Army badge on it. Why didn’t you come back to Letty, after you didn’t die in the Great War?’

‘I was in the cavalry, as you have surmised, and they took away our horses and sent us to the Dardanelles,’ he said. ‘It was butchery. I was wounded, the only one of my trench to survive a night attack. The others were all dead. I was captured. Because they thought I might have some useful information, they kept me alive. Not so much alive as to be happy, but alive enough. When they found that I didn’t know what they needed, they sent me to a prison camp. There were no Empire soldiers there, but a miscellany of Russians,

Poles,

Hungarians

and

Turkish

criminals. I fared badly for a while – I had been shot twice in the head and my mind was confused.

I forgot who I was and where I came from. I did 250

not even remember that I was a soldier. The camp was for criminals and illegal aliens. One of the Hungarians took to me, nursed me like a mother, and taught me words in his own language. I learned fast, because I was like a child again. You do not believe me?’ Phryne looked sceptical. He took her hand and laid it on his head. ‘Feel for the scars. One across the temple and behind the ear, one here, where the bullet still is. No one has dared to try and remove it.’