Urn Burial

CHAPTER FIVE

If they died by violent hands . . . whose souls they

conceived most pure, which were thus snatch’d from

their bodies, and to retain a stronger propension unto

them. We live with death, and die not in a moment.

Urn Burial, Sir Thomas Browne, Chapter V.

FOR SOME reason, Phryne’s heart sank.

Tom grunted and led the way, under the magnificent Pre-Raphaelite leadlight windows of medieval scenes, up yet another stair – this time decorated with frescos of dancing Greek maidens – to the roof.

Lin Chung and Judith Fletcher were playing tennis on the court which occupied half of the roof. The other half was paved and it was all edged with a low marble balustrade.

‘Phryne,’ groaned Tom. ‘I’m for it now. I’m shut in with my murderer.’

‘Don’t be silly, Tom dear. I have no intention of allowing you to be murdered; my reputation won’t stand it.’

The prospect was very pleasant. A cool wet wind blew into Phryne’s face. Far away she could see a craggy line of mountains, blue in the distance. Closer there was a ridge of yellowish hue, which Tom said was the Buchan Caves. A tributary of the Snowy River curved around Cave House; gunmetal water, running fast and creamy with foam. It was an uncomfortable neighbour.

They turned away from the sight and watched the tennis players in silence for a moment. Judith Fletcher was robust and reasonably agile; she puffed as she ran and lunged. Lin Chung, in his immaculate creams, moved like a cat, seeming to anticipate every lob, returning it with precise, effortless blows, calculated not to be impossible to reach but to give his partner a strenuous game. He was indulging Miss Fletcher, Phryne decided, which was nice of him.

‘He’s a gentleman.’ Tom had reached the same conclusion.

‘Of course he is. Now, are you going to let me help you or not?’

‘Yes, yes.’ He scrubbed at his forehead distractedly. ‘Of course, that’s why I asked you here, or one of the reasons, Phryne dear. Evelyn wanted to meet you. I owe all this to Evelyn. This was her house, her money.’

‘Yes, I know that.’

‘So I want to please her. This house party was her idea. I’d be perfectly happy to only ask just one or two people – you and Mr Lin for instance, people I like, like Tadeusz. But Evelyn was brought up in the old tradition, tennis parties, cricket parties. They don’t seem to match Australia, Phryne dear, you can’t get a biddable well-trained staff like you can in England. I mean, what would you do if you were offered a choice of working in the pickle factory, where you’d have money in your pocket and be your own mistress, or room and board and two and six a week out here in the bush with Mrs Hinchcliff watching your every move?’

‘The pickle factory,’ said Phryne promptly.

‘Exactly. So I’m practically running an asylum. All the bold intelligent children go to the city. The weak and wambling go into service. I’ve got Lina who’s a neurasthenic, Mrs Croft who has a fetish about cleanliness, Jones who’s got a criminal record, Willis who’s crippled, a housemaid with two illegitimate children and . . . you see? If I proclaim we’ve got a murderer amongst us they’ll all fall to bits so fast there will be shrapnel wounds. Even Mr and Mrs Hinchcliff are worried.’

Phryne patted his arm.

‘So we do it very quietly. I can just drift around and pick up gossip and Dot can do the same, that covers both worlds. And you should pay some attention to your own safety, Tom. Don’t be alone with Jack Lucas, try not to have arguments with Dingo Harry – I must meet him, he sounds most refreshing – and keep your head down. It might all be malicious mischief, not a real threat at all. And for God’s sake, either change your will or give Jack Lucas his money.’

Tom Reynolds stiffened but she went on relentlessly. ‘I’ve never known you to be unjust, Tom dear. It’s messy, leaving someone loose with such a good reason to kill you. If you fall off the house or something, the poor boy’ll be arrested before you can say Jack Robinson. Do something about it, even if he has got right up your nose to an alarming extent. Now I want to talk to Lina.’

‘She’s still having the vapours,’ objected Tom.

‘And she is entitled to have any vapours that she wants. But I want to talk to her. Come along. Take me to her.’

The pock, pock, pock of the tennis game faded behind them as they went down the stairs.

Doctor Franklin was closing the door when they arrived. Paul Black walked past, smeared and unhurried, trailing a bundle of electric flex.

‘She’s asleep,’ he said, in reply to Phryne’s request. ‘She’ll be awake by tea time, then she should be able to talk to you, Miss Fisher. She’s a nervous subject, however, and she’s still greatly shocked by whatever it was that happened out there.’

The Major, passing on his way to the parlour, greeted Phryne and his host. ‘Tom, Miss Fisher.’ His eyes lingered on Phryne. ‘How about a game of billiards, Tom? Do you play, Miss Fisher?’

‘A little,’ Phryne said, knowing that Tom Reynolds had honed his billiards-playing skill to shark levels as a journalist and hoping that he would skin the Major of his entire worldly wealth. ‘Not up to your standard, Major, I’m sure. You’ll excuse me. Tom, I might go and have a nap until tea myself. It’s a sleepy day.’

Dot was catching up the hem of Phryne’s broadcloth coat with tiny, skilled, invisible stitches when her mistress came in and let herself gently down onto her bed.

‘Well, Dot, I’ve been all over Cave House and my aesthetic sensibilities may never recover. How are you getting on?’

‘Very well, Miss. The food’s good and the company’s quite nice. That Mr Li knows a lot about the world. He’s been through the South China Sea with Mr Lin. And he was with him in Oxford. Did you talk to Mr Reynolds?’

‘Yes, after a fashion, but I don’t know if he was listening. Well, I’m going to have a rest.’ Phryne removed her outer garments and her shoes and lay down on her bed. Dot finished her seam, snapped the thread off, and hung the coat in the wardrobe.

‘I might go out for a walk, Miss,’ said Dot artlessly. ‘If you don’t need me.’

‘Oh, yes? With whom?’

‘Mr Li,’ she replied, and Phryne suppressed a number of indiscreet warnings.

‘Good. Have a nice time,’ she said, yawning. Phryne was asleep, snuggled into the eiderdown, when she heard the doorhandle turn. Without moving, she awoke fully. The person opened the door, letting in a streak of sunlight. It was still early, then. She had not slept long.

One footstep sounded on the wooden floor, then was muffled in the carpet. It was heavier than Dot’s tread and sounded like a man.

Phryne waited, breathing like a sleeper and wishing she had not tucked her head into her pillow so that she might be able to see who it was.

Outside, she heard birds singing. The intruder took a deep breath.

Phryne moved fast, flinging herself sideways and rolling off the bed, then leapt up and grabbed. She hooked his feet out from under him without difficulty.

A slim, light body, putting up no resistance, was flung onto the bed with Phryne’s knees on his chest. Someone grunted, ‘Golly, Miss Fisher!’ and she recognised the voice.

‘Gerald, what are you doing, creeping into my room?’ she asked, exasperated, removing her weight from his torso, so the young man could sit up. This he showed no inclination to do, remaining sprawled across Phryne’s bed like an odalisque.

‘You’re strong,’ he cooed, stroking her shoulder and down to the arm and wrist.

‘Good thing too,’ observed Phryne.

At this point the doorknob rattled as it was tried. Someone else was violating Miss Fisher’s siesta. For some reason, which she could not have explained, Phryne was suddenly very unwilling to be found by whoever was at the door.

‘Quick.’ Phryne dragged the young man down behind her bed, smothering his exclamation of surprise with her palm. After a second, he lay passively in her embrace, catching some of her disquiet.

The door opened. A man came in. Phryne could not identify him in the half-dark. He stood still for a while, allowing his eyes to become accustomed to the gloom. Then he walked ten paces, saw that the bed was empty, turned and went out, shutting the door behind him.

Phryne snorted, Gerald sighed. He was lying back in her arms. She replaced herself on her bed and said, ‘I wonder who that was? Did you recognise him, Gerald?’

‘No. Just a shape and a movement. A man, though.’

‘Yes. A man.’ She was sure that it was not Lin Chung, who walked like a cat, but otherwise it could have been any male person in the house. ‘Now, Gerald, you haven’t answered my question. What are you doing here?’

‘Well . . .’ The feather-light fingers processed up her arm again and lingered in the hollow of her collarbone.

‘Well indeed,’ said Phryne, observing his flushed face, glistening eyes and the curly hair fallen back from a marble brow. ‘But it was unwise. I do not like being woken abruptly.’

‘No, you don’t, do you?’ said the young man, leaning up on one elbow. ‘Did your Chinese teach you to fight like that?’

‘No, an apache in Paris taught me – among other people. Get up, Gerald.’

‘But . . .’ he protested. Phryne kissed him firmly.

‘I think you’re absolutely beautiful,’ she told him, extending a hand to help him to his feet. ‘But this is not the way to approach me, Gerald. I’ve spoken to Tom Reynolds about Jack Lucas’s inheritance, although I don’t know what good it will do.’

He leaned into her embrace, trembling with some emotion – lust, perhaps, or gratitude – and whispered, ‘I’ll do anything for you, Miss Fisher.’

‘I’ll remember,’ said Phryne dryly, wondering why she was not seducing this absolutely decorative young man. She reflected that she was either acquiring ethics, which did not seem likely, or just had a preference for the delectable Lin Chung – if she could get him. ‘Perhaps it is time to call me Phryne. Now off you go,’ she said, and firmly pushed him to the door.

She opened it. There was no one in the corridor. Gerald clung and Phryne kissed him again. His mouth was soft and skilled. She melted briefly, then pushed him away.

‘I’ll see you at dinner, Gerald. And we shall see,’ she promised, closing the door and leaning on it, feeling the rush of adrenalin ebb.

‘I could just shove the back of this chair under the door and resume my nap,’ she said aloud. ‘But now I’m far too awake to go back to sleep, dammit.’ She crossly resumed her garments and found her walking shoes.

Who had come into her room? And why?

‘Oh, my darling,’ said the voice in the library. ‘Oh, my own dear.’

‘Hush,’ said the other voice.

Mouth met mouth, lips soft as silk, red as flowers, exploring, tasting. Hands intertwined and clung desperately.

‘It’s no good,’ wailed the first voice. ‘They’ll never let me go – never.’

‘Hush,’ said the second voice tenderly. ‘Hush, sweet love, we’ll be free. There will be a way. I know there will. There must be.’

A golden head and a dark head were laid close together and they stared into each other’s eyes.

‘We love each other so much,’ said the first voice. ‘And there’s no cure for it, is there?’

‘My true love hath my heart and I have his,’ quoted second voice. ‘Hush, love, don’t be so violent. There’ll be a way. Now kiss me again and let me go. I’ll see you at dinner?’

‘At dinner,’ mourned first voice. ‘And after that?’

‘Don’t be so greedy,’ said second voice indulgently. ‘We’re flooded in, remember? They can’t part us yet.’

‘I’ll hope for forty days and forty nights. Perhaps we should start building an ark. I’d like that. Just you and me and a few animals on the wide, wide sea.’

Second voice laughed.

When Phryne came in a few moments later, the library seemed empty.

It was an impressive collection of books, she thought, observing the ranked shelves of leather-bound volumes. All the walls were lined with shelves. A big mahogany table, the legs carved with satyrs in an advanced state of excitement, was laden with newspapers and paperback novels for railway reading, including Midnight of the Sheik, Passion’s Bondslaves and Silken Fetters. Phryne picked one up, amused. She knew the author, the impeccably respectable Miss Eunice Henderson whose mother had been murdered on the Ballarat train. The market for drivel, Eunice had informed her, was always under-supplied.

Phryne was dipping into the lush prose of Midnight of the Sheik and trying not to laugh when a woman appeared from a distant alcove and said, ‘That’s where I left it.’

‘Sorry, Miss Medenham, is this yours?’ asked Phryne, closing the book and holding it out.

‘Yes, I’m halfway through and just got to the bit where her English gentleman comes out to plead with her to return. Have you read it?’

‘Not that one,’ said Phryne, concealing the fact that hell would freeze over before she wasted her eyesight on Midnight of the Sheik. ‘But I always wondered what novelists read.’

‘Oh, as to my art, Miss Fisher, that’s another thing. It bubbles up from inside me, from the deep wells of creativity,’ said Miss Medenham. ‘Sometimes I feel that I am in touch with the other side – with other great writers who long to be reincarnated.’

‘Oh? Who?’

Miss Medenham settled down for a cosy gossip about herself, automatically leaning back to emphasise her unfashionable bosom and crossing her long, slim legs. She was wearing a red jersey dress under the red coat, and champagne-coloured silk stockings. Her fair hair was shoulder length and straight as a drink of water. ‘Emily Brontë, of course. Didn’t you notice the fire and passion of my last novel, the depth, the wind blowing through it?’

Phryne wondered whether to admit that she had stuck fast three pages into the dense prose of Earth, Miss Medenham’s latest offering. She decided that there would be too many ructions about it if she did, meaning that she would subsequently be both forced to read it and endure an inquisition about it from the author to make sure that she had appreciated it properly. Than which she would rather be boiled in oil. Phryne also suppressed the opinion that the bandit-lover had been remarkably clean and well-educated for a Spanish peasant, resembling rather an Oxford gentleman with picturesque trappings. Earth had been a book which cried out to be left lying behind the sofa whence it had fallen from the reader’s nerveless hand.

‘Of course,’ she lied. ‘Are you working on something new?’

‘I’m waiting for inspiration,’ said Miss Medenham. ‘Actually, I was also looking for Jack. I thought he came in here.’

‘An inspiring young man,’ commented Phryne dryly.

‘Yes,’ Miss Medenham smiled suddenly, a complicit gamine grin, and Phryne liked her better immediately. She might write dreadful books, but she had a suitable appreciation of young men.

‘Would a poet do as well?’ asked Tadeusz from another alcove. Phryne decided that the library had never been empty – it had multiple hiding places. She filed the fact for future reference.

Miss Medenham raised her china-blue eyes and gave the poet an assessing glance. She stood up, smoothing down the clinging dress over her curved body, her hand lingering on one hip. ‘Yes, I think you might be just as inspiring,’ she decided. Tadeusz held out his arm and Miss Medenham sidled close to him.

They left the library together. Phryne, wondering if anyone else was tucked into the recesses, toured the shelves. The brewer who built it had probably never read anything but a lading bill in his life. His wife, however, had purchased full sets of all the classics, as well as a row of yellow-covered sprightly French romances and bound volumes of Punch and Country Life. She examined Punch briefly – Mafeking appeared to have been relieved – and read a few heavily satirical lines about Boers. Shoving the volume back onto the shelves, she reflected that nothing dates like topical humour.

The next alcove contained all the books which Tom had published himself, in no particular order. Books on Furniture-making for the Beginner flanked volumes on the Horrors of War, and slim suede-clad poets clung to strong female writings about Higher Thought. Phryne saw a book by an author she liked but The Mysterious Affair at Styles was wedged in between a volume of Victorian sermons and a very solid tome on Sanitary Reform. She slid the sermons out and a slip of paper dropped to the polished parquet.

TONIGHT, it promised in bold black capitals. USUAL PLACE.

Phryne was about to replace it when she was struck with a thought, and sat down to examine the note. She had seen those capitals before, that printer’s Greek E.

The writer of the anonymous letters threatening Tom Reynolds’ life was in the house. Phryne replaced the note in the sermons of the Reverend Patterson – by his prose a great benefactor to the insomniac – and resigned herself to the loss of the murder mystery. She did not want the note-writer to know that anyone had been near his or her correspondence.

Phryne walked the rest of the library. It was bigger than it looked, an oval room with four recesses, deep enough to hide in, two of which were provided with French windows which gave on to the portico. Perfect for conspirators; might have been designed for spies. Easy access from the rose garden on one side and the hall on the other. Phryne was annoyed, worried and wishing she had some support. It might have been possible to keep a discreet watch on the alcove where the message had been left, but it would need three people at least. She did not want to involve Dot, she did not trust anyone else, and there was a coolness with Lin Chung which would naturally extend to his servant Li Pen.

Phryne swore and dismissed the matter from her mind. There was nothing much she could do about it at the moment. Now, which author would be reliable in a country house cut off from the outside world? Finally she found Sir Thomas Browne’s Hydriotaphia and Dickens’ Bleak House. Dickens was an author to travel with, and she had left her copy at home. She needed to occupy a couple of hours until she could talk to Lina.

She took her books into the drawing room, where Evelyn was consulting with Cook. Phryne sat down at the small table near the window and opened Sir Thomas. He always amused her. Such a precise and terribly learned man.

Hydriotaphia, urne buriall, or a difcourse of the sepulchrall urnes lately found in Norfolk, 1658, she read.

‘Very well, Mrs Croft, we shall have egg and bacon pie, the veal chops, crumbed, I think, and the fish, of course, if the gentlemen catch any. I saw my husband and the Major going out with rods – they must have decided against the billiard room. It’s such a nice day.’

‘Yes, Madam,’ said the cook, folding her hands in her lap. ‘Perhaps we ought to do a fricassee, in case they don’t catch anything? The river’s running a banker, Willis says, and Albert brought in some nice rabbits.’

‘If you have time. Creamed potatoes, and have we any peas left?’

‘Only tinned, Madam.’

‘Tinned it will have to be. We’re cut off from Bairnsdale at present, Mrs Croft. How are the supplies?’

‘Well, we’ve got a cellarful of potatoes and onions, and a side of beef hanging. There’s also those partridges and any amount of chooks and eggs, and we could send to Buchan Farm for butter and that soft cheese. I reckon we can hold out for a few weeks if we have to.’

‘Good. What about dessert?’

When the funeral pyre was out, and the laft valediction over, men took a lafting adieu of their interred frendes, little expecting that the curiofity of future ages should comment upon their afhes, read Phryne, trying to block out the conversation.

‘Apple pie, Madam, and cheese, and we’ve got some peaches in the greenhouse, for all that the gardener says they’re too early. Otherwise we can have bottled apricots.’

But who knowes the fate of his bones, or how often he is to be buried? Who hath the oracle of his afhes, or whether they are to be fcattered? The relicks of many lie like the ruines of Pompeys in all partes of the earth; and when they arrive at your handes, these may seem to have wandered farre, who in a direct and median travel, have but few miles of known earth between yourfelf and the pole.

‘Bottled apricots and cream,’ decided Mrs Reynolds.

Phryne took Sir Thomas into the parlour.

When, at three-thirty, she went to the maid’s door and knocked, there was no reply. The door was open. Phryne looked in and what she saw caused her to drop a valuable early copy of Urne Buriall to the floor with a thud which might have broken the spine.

Lina was not going to be able to tell her who had attacked her in the fog. A swollen countenance, blue with suffocation, confronted Phryne’s horrified gaze. Black bruises showed on the throat.

Lina was dead.