Urn Burial

CHAPTER SIX

The certainty of death is attended with uncertainties,

in time, manner and places.

Urn Burial, Sir Thomas Browne, Chapter III.

PHRYNE PICKED up the book, stepped back and closed the door. Then she walked quickly to the drawing room, passing Mrs Croft on her way back to the kitchen.

It took some time to locate the Mistress of the House. Phryne finally ran her down in the kitchen garden, consulting with a grubby gardener’s boy about, it seemed, carrots.

‘Evelyn, I have something to show you,’ said Phryne. ‘Could you come with me, please?’

‘Now, Phryne?’ Mrs Reynolds looked up from surveying a collection of muddy objects which might, or might not, be vegetables.

‘Yes, now, Evelyn,’ she replied. Something in her voice made Mrs Reynolds abandon her discussion and follow Phryne obediently to Lina’s room.

Phryne opened the door.

The bed was made up with clean sheets, drawn close and flat. The blue blanket and eiderdown lay innocent of one wrinkle. The window was open, the curtain flapped.

Of the dead woman there was not a trace.

‘Where’s Lina?’ asked Mrs Reynolds.

‘Where indeed?’ asked Phryne, profoundly shocked. ‘Is this the right room?’

‘Why, yes, her name’s on the door,’ said Mrs Reynolds, pointing out the luggage label with a handwritten ‘Lina’ on it. ‘Where can they have put her? Perhaps Mrs Hinchcliff has moved her to their suite, it’s further along. Let’s see, next door is the housemaid, then the scullery maid . . .’ She opened each door as she passed and Phryne looked in. Each room had the same bed and chair, the same box, and various rather dim or messy oils on the wall facing the window. Servants’ rooms tended to be the destination of pictures and furniture that no one had the heart to throw out but didn’t want to exhibit in any public rooms. Dot’s powdering closet had a large gilt-framed painting of a few vague figures walking through a field which Phryne’s companion had instantly disliked. Phryne had swapped her for Hope, which Dot thought well drawn.

The Hinchcliffs’ suite was larger and well furnished in the standard Cave House melange of styles. It contained a tester-bed, a Turkish carpet, some mock-Sheridan chairs and a Gothic-revival table, a painting of three horses and a multitude of photographs in silver frames. In several of them, a younger Mr and Mrs Hinchcliff stared out, clutching a baby notable for its utterly blank expression. What it did not contain was Lina.

‘I’d better talk to Mrs Hinchcliff,’ worried Mrs Reynolds. ‘She must have ordered Lina moved. Thank you for telling me, Phryne. I can’t have my household shifted about like this.’

‘Not at all,’ said Phryne through lips which were as numb as novocaine.

In another three minutes she had found Lin Chung.

He was sitting in a leather armchair in the small parlour, reading her copy of Bleak House. She paused at the door and looked at him. The weak sunlight gilded his bent head and the long fingers turning the pages. He seemed as self-contained and decorative as a cat.

He felt her presence, lifted his head to speak and saw her expression. Her face was blanched and she looked like an ivory carving of some Buddhist deity. His urbane comment on Dickens’ style died on his lips. He did not exclaim, but she saw hunting alertness sweep through him, so that even sitting in exactly the same pose, he was no longer relaxed but nerved for action. She walked deliberately forward and held out her hand.

‘Come,’ she said, and Lin Chung followed unquestioningly out of the house and across the lawn until she stopped under the beech tree. She led him around the trunk and then scanned the branches narrowly. In all that time she had not spoken and the hand in his was shaking. Then she slid both arms around his waist and held him tight as she began to speak. His arms closed around her.

‘The body was gone?’ he asked, five minutes later. ‘I see. It is perfectly insane, but this is a good setting for the surrealist. Phryne, how dreadful. You are having a difficult day.’

This deliberate understatement produced a laugh, which pleased him. He sat down on the dry grass under the tree and gathered Phryne into his embrace. She tucked her head under his chin. He admired her immensely. She was still trembling with shock but she was reasoning like a sage.

‘She was dead,’ she said firmly. ‘Strangled. How hard is it to strangle someone, Lin?’

‘Easy,’ he said. ‘With sufficient strength of heart.’

‘Show me,’ she requested.

Reluctantly, Lin Chung laid both hands to her slim throat, thumbs at the front. He pressed lightly. ‘You see, here is the pressure point. And here is the great blood vessel that supplies the brain. All I need to do is grip hard enough to cut off that blood supply, and you would be unconscious in – well, maybe a minute – and . . .’ He stopped.

‘Dead in five minutes? Would it take a great deal of strength?’

‘No, just as I said, a strong heart. Firmness of purpose, you say in English.’

Phryne got out her small mirror and examined the faint red fingermarks on her delicate skin, already fading. ‘That’s where the black bruises were. Exactly like that. She’s dead, Lin, someone killed her, and then someone took the body. I don’t understand. But I will. Now, there have been other developments, too. Someone came into my room while I was asleep – a man, that’s all I can say.’

‘There might be many reasons to come to your room, Silver Lady,’ his voice was amused.

‘Yes, and that’s what my previous visitor Gerald had in mind, but the second one – I don’t know, Lin, I didn’t want him to find me. I can’t explain, but I was sure I did not want to be discovered and that he did not intend amorous dalliance. This place is giving me the grues, as Dot would say.’

‘I have also had an occurrence, Phryne,’ said Lin Chung evenly. ‘When my valet came to lay out my evening clothes, he found something on my dressing-table which had not been there when we went to lunch.’

‘Oh? What?’ Phryne declined to guess. In Cave House, it could be anything from a golden bee from the Empress Josephine’s dress to a fresh plate of soupe printaniére made with real springs.

‘An urn,’ said Lin Chung. ‘I believe there are a lot of them in the house – you’d think the English would understand the Chinese better, we both have ancestor-worship – and some maid may have brought it there by mistake.’

‘That sounds very unlikely. Where is it now?’

‘Li Pen replaced it. It was a rather handsome one, marble with a gilded lid. It stood on a plinth in the hall, and now it is back there.’

‘Did anyone see Li Pen replace it?’

‘I doubt it. Li Pen has made something of a profession of not being noticed.’

‘Don’t let me go, and to Hell with my reputation, I’m cold,’ said Phryne, snuggling closer. There was something infinitely reliable about Lin Chung, and moreover he was very warm. The heat of his skin was palpable.

‘What do you make of the urn?’ she asked.

‘A joke, I fancy,’ said Lin slowly, allowing one hand to cup Phryne’s chilled face. ‘Not a very funny one. Is there more?’

‘Certainly,’ she said, and told him all that she could recall about the assignation in the library, mentioning the presence of the poet and Miss Medenham. She added the whole tale of Tom Reynolds and Jack Lucas’s father and the argument about the inheritance.

‘Most interesting.’

‘You’re being inscrutable again,’ accused Phryne.

‘So solly, Missee,’ he apologised and Phryne reached up to clip his ears. He caught her wrist and she twisted her hand free, not amused.

‘Enough of the stage Chinaman. It disconcerts me, stop it. Now, what are we to do? Do we tell anyone?’

‘How can we? I believe you, Silver Lady, but it is unlikely that anyone else will, because you are telling them something they do not want to hear.’

‘True,’ agreed Phryne. ‘But I need to know what happened. We have sufficient resources to solve the riddle between us, Lin dear. Let us consider. I saw the Doctor come out of that room just after lunch. He said that Lina would be awake at tea. That’s now and we are missing it. Can you manage without tea?’

‘I would walk many miles to sit under a tree with you, Silver Lady – and to miss English tea, which is not tea as I know it.’

‘Good. I saw the Doctor about one-thirty. By three-thirty the girl is dead. And by three-forty, at the most, the body is gone and the room tidied.’

‘Yes. The timing is rather strict. What is the next question?’

‘Who wanted her dead? She seems to have been a harmless, if addled, girl.’

‘Too many novels,’ agreed Lin Chung. ‘Li Pen tells me that in the kitchen they say that she was curious about everything, too fond of sweets, especially chocolate, and prone to spin fancies about the guests. Mrs Croft says that she doted on the poet, but I don’t know how far the affair progressed, if there was one. There was only minor resentment about her being the housekeeper’s niece, so she must have been an adroit girl.’

‘And now she’s dead,’ said Phryne. She stared across the lawn at the grey, roiling river, and thought angrily of Lina who had eaten her last chocolate, ripped out of life by someone’s strong hands around her throat. Had she woken and seen the face of her attacker, died hard and in terror, or slipped out of life without a sigh, unconscious in one minute and suffocated in five? Either way, it was intolerable.

‘We must find out where everyone was between one-thirty and three-thirty. Where were you?’

‘I concluded my game of tennis with Miss Fletcher at about two-fifteen and went to my room to change. Then I looked for you and could not find you, so I sat down in the small parlour to read Bleak House. I stayed there until you came in looking like a spirit.’

‘Did anyone else pass through?’

‘Yes, several people. Miss Mead was in the room for a while, just after I got there, talking to Mrs Fletcher about crochet. Mr Reynolds and the Major, I believe, went fishing. Mrs Reynolds was in the adjoining parlour talking to the cook about menus – I could hear her.’

‘Yes, I saw her there. I didn’t look into the little parlour, Lin. Is that where you were? I saw the poet and Miss Cynthia in the library – that place was designed for assignations. Ask Li Pen to find out about the menservants, and Dot can locate the ladies. I mean to see this solved, Lin.’

‘Why?’ he asked. It was not an idle question. Phryne thought about it.

‘Because it is disgusting. I didn’t take to poor Lina, but someone killed her and they are not getting away with it. Also, taking into account the man in my room and the shot in the mist, it might be us, next. This house feels dangerous. Will you help me?’

‘Yes,’ said Lin Chung. ‘I’ll help you.’

Phryne and Lin Chung came back into the house as afternoon tea was being cleared away. The company was all gathered in the parlour. Phryne retraced her steps to Lina’s room, up the grand staircase and then the hidden one.

‘Look,’ she exclaimed. ‘Can you see footprints?’

Lin Chung leaned down and outlined a muddy mark on the stair carpet. ‘A boot – a man’s boot,’ he commented.

‘Yes, and they go all the way to Lina’s room, two tracks – coming and going.’

Lin walked down to the nearest guestroom, which happened to be Phryne’s, and pressed a buzzer. When a panting maid appeared, he said, ‘Send my manservant to me, please.’

‘Wait,’ Phryne interposed. ‘You’re the chambermaid, aren’t you, responsible for the rooms?’ The girl nodded. She was a solid young person with short blond hair and round blue eyes like a doll’s. ‘Did you change Lina’s bed just now?’

‘Why, yes, Miss. I was doing the rooms and saw that she wasn’t there, so I made her bed and cleaned the room. Why, is anything wrong, Miss?’

‘No, of course, what could be wrong?’ replied Phryne. ‘Was the window open?’

‘No, Miss, I opened it. Let in some fresh air, like. Missus’ orders.’

‘Good. That’s all,’ said Phryne, and the girl sped down the back staircase for the kitchen, where presumably Li Pen was taking tea with the rest of the domestics.

‘Why do we want Li Pen?’

‘He can tell me about the footprints. Silver Lady, Li Pen is a great hunter. They call him ‘‘Tiger-slayer’’ in his village because he once followed and killed a man-eater. Hunters track things.’

Lin Chung removed himself punctiliously from Phryne’s room and she leaned in the doorway.

‘Confucian principles holding out?’ she asked, sweetly.

‘Just,’ he admitted, taking in the invitation in her stance.

‘Drat,’ said Phryne, not noticeably annoyed.

Li Pen and Dot answered the summons. Lin spoke briefly in Cantonese to his valet, and Li Pen’s smooth face seemed to sharpen, though his features remained unmoved. He dropped to the floor at the foot of the small staircase, his nose almost touching the carpet, then inched his way up.

‘Break a snake’s back to follow him,’ said Dot. ‘What’s this all about, Miss?’

‘I’ll tell you later, Dot dear. Just now we’ve found some footprints. Who wears hobnailed boots?’

‘Gardener and his boy, Miss, and that Mr Willis who used to be a jockey. The mechanic might, but in any case they wouldn’t wear ’em in the house, Miss. Mrs Croft won’t allow boots in her kitchen, they’ve all got slippers by the door.’

‘Have they, indeed. Dot, you are invaluable.’

‘Miss, you think something’s happened to Lina, don’t you?’

Phryne looked into Dot’s worried eyes. ‘Yes, Dot, I do think that something happened to her. What’s the consensus in the kitchen?’

‘No one knows what to think, Miss. The Hinchcliffs haven’t seen her since this morning. Mrs H thinks she might have wandered off, being troubled in her mind. Mr H isn’t saying anything. They say Mr Reynolds is going to organise a search party for Lina but they’re afraid that . . . with the river so high . . .’

‘Yes.’ They had followed Lin Chung’s straight back and Li Pen’s snaking feet up the stair. Now they stood outside Lina’s door. Li Pen had his hand on his master’s arm and was speaking vehemently in short hissing sentences.

‘Li Pen says,’ translated Lin, ‘that the booted feet came up fast and unladen, and went down more slowly, carrying something heavy. He says that he can follow them down, too.’

‘Then you do that while Dot and I examine this room. Now, Dot dear, I’m relying on you. The room’s been cleaned, but there still might be some clues. Have a look around.’

‘You think that she’s dead, don’t you, Miss Phryne?’ she said quietly. Phryne nodded. Dot drew a deep breath. ‘Well, Miss, the blanket’s new, the bed’s been made by an expert; probably Doreen, she’s the chambermaid. Look, mitred corners.’ Dot pulled the whole bedstead aside and poked at the corner of the rug. ‘This is where she’d hide anything she had to keep secret, Miss. See, there’s a tack missing out of the carpet. The corner comes up easily.’ She lifted it and groped underneath. ‘There, Miss.’ She gave Phryne a small box which had once held Empire Toffee.

‘Good, anything else?’

‘Nothing in the wardrobe, Miss, just a heavy coat and the usual clothes. Nothing much in her box, either, except a towel that’s marked ‘‘Cave House’’ and her washing things.’

Phryne sorted swiftly through a pile of paperback novels by the reading lamp. Sinister yellow faces leered from the cover of Dope and Limehouse Nights. Phryne took up each book by the spine and shook it, yielding a forest of chocolate wrappers (Lina favoured soft centres), scrap paper and bus tickets. Poor Lina, who had loved sweets and sensational literature. No wonder she had panicked when she saw Li Pen. Phryne gathered all the bookmarks. Dot held out her hands to receive the debris and forced it into her cardigan pocket.

‘Come on, let’s see how our sleuth-hound is doing,’ Phryne said, and they left the small cold room, empty now of the merest signs of occupation.

They encountered Tom at the back door, watching Li Pen and his master walking in single file through a wilderness of cabbages.

‘They say the girl was carried out of my house,’ said Tom. ‘Nonsense. I don’t believe in all this Red Indian ‘‘white man speaks with forked tongue’’ gobbledy-gook.’

‘I might point out, Tom dear, that the tracker is actually Chinese and so far hasn’t shown any signs of speaking pidgin English. Lina is gone, Tom. How do you explain that?’

‘Girl’s off her head. She’s run away,’ said Tom stoutly.

‘Oh yes, in bare feet and nightdress? Excuse me, I’d better go and join Chief Lin and his Indian scout. Come on, Dot.’

‘Miss . . .’ Dot whispered in Phryne’s ear, ‘I might be more use in the servants’ hall.’

‘So you might. Go and have a cuppa and a nice sit down, Dot,’ said Phryne.

Leaving Tom on the threshold, a picture of landed gentry in exquisite discomfort, she followed the path through the kitchen garden and caught up with Lin and Li Pen as they traced the heavy nailed boots to the stables.

‘Lost him,’ said Lin, as Li Pen stared down at a flat expanse of mud, churned up by hoofs. ‘We’ll cast around the edge.’

‘Go on,’ said Phryne. ‘I’ll have a word with the stablemen.’

The stables were well built, well littered and sound. They smelt agreeably of horses, straw and leather-dressing with a faint whiff of Stockholm Tar, a compound of lard and black sulphur. Phryne patted Cuba’s nose, noticing that his knees were bandaged with skill.

Mr Willis approached crab-wise and commented, ‘’E’s sparky, is Cuba. I reckon ’e’ll be bonzer in a couple of weeks. What can I do for you, Miss?’

‘Lina’s missing,’ said Phryne, looking straight at the stableman even though both hands were occupied in gentling the noble head. ‘Boot prints lead from the house to the stables. What do you know about it, eh?’

‘Nothin’ – I don’t know nothin’.’ He avoided her eyes. ‘Missin’, is she? Must’a gone off ’er nut.’

‘Possibly. However just to be careful, you are going to search the stables and make sure that she didn’t run away and hide here. It’s cold and she only has a nightgown on.’

‘Boss know you’re ’ere?’ he asked suspiciously.

‘Boss knows,’ said Tom Reynolds heavily, appearing behind her. ‘Get on with it, Terry.’

Phryne and Tom followed as the jockey began at one corner of the building and, pitchfork in hand, probed every wisp of straw in the place. His attendant boy moved the horses from their stalls and held them in the cold corridor as Phryne watched the fork stab down, hitting asphalt with a grating screech each time. It was a trying noise and by the time the stable, the stableman’s quarters and the baled hay had been searched, she had an ache in her jaw from gritting her teeth and stable dust liberally coating her person.

‘Right, Terry, thanks. We’ve got to cover everywhere. If you see the poor wench, hang on to her and call the house right away,’ said Tom.

They left the stable. Lin Chung was out of sight, down the bank towards the river. Phryne heard him yell, ‘This way!’ and Tom Reynolds groaned, ‘Oh, no, not the river . . .’

They mounted the bank and went down to where the two Chinese stood on the brink of a grey torrent. There was no sign of the bundle of nightdress which Phryne had feared to see.

‘The tracks give out here,’ said Lin Chung. ‘Li Pen says that either the booted man walked into the river or he doubled back. The grass is green and springy, very hard to read.’

‘He can’t have walked into that,’ said Phryne, watching as a packing case whisked past at a good twenty knots and vanished around the bend. ‘No one could swim in that water.’

‘No. But a body, thrown in at this point, would not beach until it reached the main river – perhaps not even then,’ said Lin.

Tom Reynolds, who had been enpurpling for some minutes, exploded.

‘Ridiculous! The girl isn’t dead! She’s gone off her head and run away. I’m organising a search party; we’ll comb the grounds. We’ll find her. Now I’ve got to go and muster the men.’

He stomped off. Li Pen looked at Lin Chung and said something which caused Lin to laugh shortly.

‘He says that only the guilty are so angry.’

‘Not necessarily. Tom thought you’d found her and was so relieved that you hadn’t that he lost his temper,’ commented Phryne. ‘Could you thank Li Pen properly for me? He must have been a great hunter.’

To her surprise, Li bowed and said in his hesitant English, ‘It is my pleasure to serve you, Lady.’

Phryne smiled. Lin Chung took her hand.

‘Li, go back to the house and watch and listen,’ he ordered. ‘Phryne, will you walk with me?’ Li Pen bowed and departed.

‘Aren’t you joining Tom’s search party?’ asked Phryne, conscious of the warm hand enclosing her own.

‘Yes, but they must come this way. And we know that they are not going to find anything.’ He drew her away from the swollen river and along the bank which hid it from the house.

‘We have searched Lina’s room,’ said Phryne. ‘She took no clothes and all her shoes are there. And I know she is dead.’

‘Could you have been mistaken? Did you touch her? Was she cold?’

‘No, I didn’t go into the room. But she was blue, Lin – swollen and blue. No living creature looks like that.’

‘Hmm.’ He thought about it.

‘We have no more facts to exchange,’ she said. ‘I’m cold. Let’s go back to the house.’

‘In a moment, Silver Lady.’ He stopped and turned to her. ‘In the presence of death we cling closer to life, to the flesh and the spirit, fearing dissolution.’

‘True,’ she agreed, leaning into his warmth as a skilled hand slid down to caress her breast, sensitive to touch even through her parrot-patterned jumper.

‘I have said that I will not lie with you under our host’s roof.’ His mouth was almost touching her ear, his breath warm on her neck.

‘Yes, I heard you,’ Phryne noticed that her voice was quavering and dragged herself under control. Almost without volition, her hands slipped under the silk shirt and caressed a back as smooth as sun-warmed marble.

‘But there are other places,’ he said, almost inaudibly, and Phryne felt a jolt shoot through her spine.

‘So there are,’ she said, forcing her voice to become light. ‘We shall reconnoitre. Too late for tonight, Lin dear. It’s already getting dark. I think it’s going to storm again.’

She was only taken marginally by surprise when he bent his head and kissed her passionately, soft mouth and silken lips, and the back muscles trembled reflexively under her fingers.

He drew away from her only as they heard the trampling feet of the search party approaching.

She had a lot to think about as she went back to the house. As she entered under the stone portal, it began to rain.