Urn Burial (4 page)

Bobby had spent it all on infallible betting systems on horses which broke their legs as soon as they left the barrier – or even before.

‘There’s Miss Fletcher.’

A robust girl ran up, tossing and catching a hockey ball in one square hand. She had short yellow hair and bright blue eyes and she cried,

‘Hello! You must be Miss Fisher! I saw them polishing your car – spiffing machine. Hispano-Suiza, isn’t it? Massive torque you must get from those pistons. I understand it did eighty miles an hour at the Chicago Brickyard. Magnificent design.’

‘Thank you. Would you care to go for a drive in her?’

‘Would you – perhaps you would let me drive?’

The girl’s eyes lit with eagerness.

‘No,’ said Phryne. ‘No one drives her but me.

Or my staff. Sometimes. Well, we’ll see,’ she said kindly, as the girl seemed very disappointed.

‘I know you wouldn’t want to risk her,’ said Miss Fletcher, ‘but I can drive. Gerry lets me drive his Bentley.’

‘Does he indeed?’ The girl reminded Phryne of Bunji Ross. ‘Do you fly, by any chance?’

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‘They won’t let me – yet.’ The strong mouth set in determined lines. ‘But I shall talk them round.’

‘Yes, I think you will,’ said Phryne.

Mrs Reynolds led Phryne on. ‘It’s hard for her,’

she said sympathetically. ‘Her mother is . . . well, a womanly woman, and poor Judith is . . . well, not . . .’

‘A girlish girl?’ Phryne asked and her hostess shook her head.

Miss Cynthia Medenham was sitting on the bench under an ash tree, chewing the end of a pencil and staring blankly at the river. She had a silk-bound blank book on her knee, half filled with scribbled notes. She was consciously decorative, clad in a long flowing robe handpainted with pea-cocks, her blond hair carelessly caught at the nape of her neck with a jewelled clasp, her blue eyes abstracted and remote. Mrs Reynolds put a finger to her lips and tiptoed past.

Someone was sitting under the beech tree; a small figure crying softly into a handkerchief. Mrs Reynolds beckoned Phryne to walk on.

‘I don’t know what possessed a nice girl like Letty to marry the Major. He’s very brave, has lots of medals – I suppose that she was dazzled, and of course, her young man was killed on the Somme. But he’s got . . . an imperious nature, and poor Letty just can’t cope with him. Come along, it’s getting cold. There, see? The sun’s going in.

How about a nice cup of tea, Phryne?’

‘Thank you, Evelyn.’

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The parlour contained, reading from right to left, Lin Chung looking impassive, which was a bad sign, and Tom Reynolds mopping his brow.

Evelyn rang the bell, ordered the tea and commented brightly, ‘The river’s still rising, Tom.’

‘Oh, God, the river as well. Everything is conspiring, Evelyn. I tell you, the whole world is spit-ting on its hands and getting on with making my life difficult.’

‘Now, Tom dear, don’t exaggerate.’

Tom rose to his feet and bellowed, ‘I’m not exaggerating! I’ve got a house full of guests, the housekeeping’s gone to pot, the kitchen is full of sobbing maids, I’ve just been condescended to for half an hour by a man who knows much more about everything than I do, and now the river’s rising and threatening to cut off the house so I’ll be trapped here.’

‘We’ll be trapped, too,’ said Phryne, sitting down next to Lin Chung and taking his hand.

‘What have you been doing to Tom, Lin darling?’

‘We were talking about porcelain,’ said Lin, seeming puzzled. ‘Then about ancient writings.’

‘He’s a little overwrought,’ Mrs Reynolds apologised. ‘Pay no attention. He’ll be all right when he has some tea. Tom, dear.’

The publisher sank down into a chair and rubbed his face.

‘Sorry, Lin, old man, I’m sure you’re right about the Tang vase. And doubtless all the other things will be fixed. But it’s too much, Evie, Mrs Hinchcliff has given her notice. That means we’ll lose Hinchcliff as 30

well as Lina, and what will we do for staff?’

Phryne nodded towards the door and she and Lin Chung left unobtrusively.

‘This is the strangest household,’ she commented. ‘Come for a walk?’

He followed her into the rose garden. It was too early for buds, but leaves were beginning to sprout.

‘You look very beautiful against that shiny background,’ he said. ‘It’s the same gloss as your hair –

like very fine silk floss, such as is ordered by clerics to embroider altarcloths. I fear that I have offended our host.’

‘No, he’s overwrought, as his wife says. Can you ride, Lin?’

‘Mostly without falling off.’

‘Come on, then. We’ll see what’s in the stable.’

The stable yielded two hacks, thoroughbreds, well-fed and under-exercised. Lin caught and saddled his choice, a docile-looking brown mare. Phryne slid a bridle over the proud nose of a touchy gelding who danced uncooperatively as the stableman saddled him.

‘He’s a tearaway is Cuba,’ advised the groom.

‘You watch his tricks, Miss.’

‘I’ll watch,’ she said, putting one toe into the stirrup and hopping as Cuba shifted. She feinted, he stood still, and she swung up into the saddle.

‘Fooled you,’ she told him, and Cuba laid his ears back and walked reluctantly to the gate.

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‘Out along the road and then along the riverbank,’ advised the groom. ‘Careful. They’re full of beans.’

Cuba shied violently at a piece of blowing paper, looked back to see if his rider was still there, saw that she was and gave in, trotting amicably onto the verge and turning to await his stablemate.

‘How did you tame him?’ asked Lin Chung. He was keeping his seat with ease and Phryne saw that he was a good rider; light hands and confident balance.

‘I didn’t tame him – he isn’t tame. He’s biding his time. Come on,’ she saw a stretch of road, flat as a plate and grassy. ‘Let’s gallop.’

She dug her heels into Cuba’s sides. He danced, complained, then put his head down and went like the wind. Lin galloped behind, admiring the grace of the flying horse and the rider, who had crouched down like a jockey, high on Cuba’s shoulders. They looked like the pen painting he had seen in Shanghai of the mongol invaders; man and horse melded into one.

It was possible that Phryne never saw the obsta-cle. Cuba certainly didn’t. In one moment, the sepia Ming drawing of fleeting horse and rider was destroyed. Cuba crashed to the road on his knees, and Phryne was flung over his head.

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CHAPTER THREE

Great examples grow thin, and to be fetched away from the passed world. Simplicity flies away, and iniquity comes at long strides towards us.

Epistle Dedicatory, Urn Burial, Sir Thomas Browne.

LIN CHUNG leapt down and ran past the foun-dered horse to where Phryne must have fallen. He shoved aside the dense matted ti-tree, found a gloved hand and then a shoulder, and hauled.

He gathered Phryne into his arms, feeling her over for broken bones. Both collarbones intact, and both legs and arms. He was stroking her hair away from her face, checking for fractures, when she sat up and said crossly, ‘What in Hell’s name happened?’

‘Cuba fell,’ said Lin Chung. ‘I thought you had been killed – you should have been – you fall like a cat, Silver Lady, like an acrobat. Where does it hurt?’

‘Everywhere,’ she groaned. ‘The secret of my 33

miraculous survival is ti-tree. Great stuff. Help me up, Lin, and we’ll see to this poor hack.’

With Lin’s arm around her, she limped back to Cuba, who was struggling to get up, nuzzled anxiously by the brown mare. Phryne called gently to the horse and he managed to regain his feet.

Both his knees were bleeding.

‘Poor Cuba. What on earth made you fall?’ she took up each hoof in turn but there were no stones. Mopping at the horse’s knees with her handkerchief she stared at the wound, silent for a moment. Then she gave the reins into Lin Chung’s hand and said tautly, ‘Tie them to a fence and come and look at this. This isn’t a graze – it’s a cut.’

Lin Chung looped the reins around a handy branch and did as requested. Cuba looked at him mournfully and he stroked his nose.

‘Surely caused by the fall?’ Lin Chung commented.

‘He fell on grass, soft – well, relatively soft, grass. Walk back with me – ouch! God, I hit the ground hard. I saw bloody stars.’ Lin supported her slight weight without trouble, feeling as anxious as the mare now licking at Cuba’s knees.

‘Look,’ she said. A long thin tarred wire stretched from one side of the bridle-path to the other. It had been secured from fence to fence until Cuba’s fall had broken it.

‘More rustic humour?’ asked Phryne, wincing as she straightened.

‘Has it been there long?’

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‘No. The wire’s new, not at all rusted, and it hasn’t had time to bite into the wooden fencepost. What a nasty little mind – I wonder whose it is?’ She coiled up the wire and stuffed it inside her shirt.

‘You’re shivering,’ said Lin Chung, embracing her more closely. She laid her face against his warm chest for a moment, then remembered Cuba’s legs, which would stiffen in the cold wind.

‘I’m shocked. It’s nothing. Bring the horses.

We’d better get back.’

‘The mare can carry you,’ he said. Phryne was lifted without effort into the air and set down on the chestnut’s back as lightly as a falling leaf. She kept her seat by instinct as Lin Chung led the horses back to Cave House.

The stableman rushed to meet them, wailing, ‘I told yer ’e was frisky, Miss! Now look at ’is knees!

Boss’ll go crook, I tell yer that fer free.’

‘I’ll tell you another thing for free,’ snapped Phryne, allowing Lin Chung to lift her down.

‘You’ve got someone playing tricks. Have you seen anyone out along the bridle path today – or yesterday?’

‘Why?’ The gnarled brown face wrinkled with suspicion.

Phryne leaned on Lin and drew the coiled wire out of her shirt. The stableman squinted at it.

‘Have you seen a snare like that before?’

‘Yair. Dingo ’Arry uses that tarred wire for ’is dog traps. What of it?’

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‘That’s what caused Cuba to come down like a ton of bricks and fling me over his head. If I hadn’t been a fairly experienced rider I would have hit the road and been prematurely deceased. Now, be a nice man and stop snarling at me. I’ve had an exciting morning. I’ve got to sit down.’

The stableman, belatedly recognising that the rider was almost as battered as the horse, fetched her his own rush-seated chair and Phryne sagged into it.

‘Ooh, my bruises are all settling down and raising families. Before I go and sink into a hot bath, composed mostly of arnica, I want a few answers. Your name?’

The small man dragged a handful of straw out of his hair and looked at her. This was the toff that the Mistress had been creating about for days, the Hon.

from an aristocratic family in England. The one who had brought the Chow with her and caused a scandal. He was not disposed to liking rich people.

However, she had controlled Cuba well and it did not seem to be her fault that he was now in need of Stockholm Tar and compresses.

‘Me name’s Terence Willis. They call me Terry.

You’re Miss Fisher, ain’t you? Done a bit of ridin’, I see.’

‘A bit. You used to be a jockey, eh, Mr Willis?’

‘How’d yer know that?’

Phryne smiled. He was small, light and bow-legged, with the curiously young-old face of a typical jockey. His hands, deformed from tugging on reins, were caressing Cuba passionately as the 36

horse leaned its head on his shoulder and breathed down his shirt.

‘There is nothing else you could have been, believe me. Someone laid a snare for the first rider along that track. Who would that normally have been?’

‘Why, Mr Reynolds. He takes Cuba out every mornin’ around dawn, ’cept today ’cos ’e slept in.

’E was up late.’

‘Interesting. You say this Dingo Harry uses tarred wire for his dog-snares?’

‘Yair, but he’s all right, the ol’ Dingo. Bit loony, but a lot of the swaggies are, comes of bein’ on their Pat Malone so much. ’Arry’s not the only bloke to ’ave a bit of tarred wire round the place.

We got some ’ere, somewhere.’

‘Indeed. Does Dingo Harry dislike Mr Reynolds?’

‘Had a bit of a barney with the Boss about trespassin’ – Dingo goes where ’e likes, ’e don’t reckernize fences – ’e reckons all property is theft, anyway. Boss went crook and Dingo went crook and that was the end of it, far as I know.’

‘Did you happen to see Dingo Harry on the bridle path in the last couple of days?’

‘Nah,’ the face screwed up again. ‘But I ain’t got all day to be loafin’ about lookin’ at the bridle path. Joe!’ he yelled and a boy came running. ‘Wrap a loose bandage round Cuba’s knees and keep walkin’ him up and down. I’ll be there in a sec. You gonna tell the Boss about this?’

‘Someone has to,’ said Phryne, levering herself to her feet and leaning on Lin’s ready arm.

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Terry Willis adopted the expression of a small nut-brown gnome who has just watched his favourite toadstool being trodden on, hesitated, then said, ‘Miss . . . let’s not be ’asty. The old Dingo, he’s sorta a mate of mine, and . . .’

‘All right. Let’s not leap to conclusions, either.

You find Mr Dingo and see if he set this trap and warn him off if he did. But if it wasn’t him, then I want you to come and tell me. Right away.

Promise?’ Willis nodded. Phryne continued, ‘And it might be an idea if you take a pair of handy boltcutters and ride the bridle path yourself, every morning – just in case. Well, my bath calls. There’s not much harm done, except to my pride – I haven’t been thrown since I was thirteen.’

The old face creased into a thousand-wrinkle grin. ‘Ah, Miss, if you’d been thrown as often as I ’ave, you wouldn’t take it personal.’

Phryne laughed and left the stable.

‘I know you could carry me,’ she said to the hovering Lin Chung. ‘But I don’t need to make such a dramatic entrance. If I keep moving, like Cuba, I won’t stiffen.’

‘Why have you allowed that man to keep such a secret?’ worried Lin. ‘Shouldn’t you tell Mr Reynolds that his life is in danger?’

‘I think he knows, Lin dear. I think he already knows.’