Urn Burial

CHAPTER NINE

For those two which are smooth, and of no beard, are

contrived to lie undermost, as without prominent

parts, and fit to be smoothly covered.

The Garden of Cyrus, Sir Thomas Browne, Chapter III.

IN THE blackest dark, Phryne awoke.

Someone was trying her doorhandle. It had a characteristic creak. Once, twice. Then the door squeaked as someone pushed against it.

Phryne leapt out of bed, seized the poker, and crept to the door. She could hear someone breathing on the other side.

She slipped the chair out from under the handle and pulled the door wide, poker raised.

She was confronted by a shocked young man who jumped back three paces as a naked, heavily armed and undeniably female fury occupied the doorway. Her teeth were bared in a snarl and she seemed perfectly capable of decapitating him with one swipe of the iron rod she was flourishing.

‘No, no, please.’ He raised his hands.

‘Jack Lucas, what are you about?’ demanded Phryne, lowering the poker to shoulder level.

‘I was looking . . .’ the young man blushed. ‘I was looking for Gerry.’

‘And he told you that he would be here?’

‘No, no, I just guessed that . . . I’m so sorry, Miss Fisher.’

He was staring at her. Her body was slim but muscular and with the raised weapon she looked like an Art Décoratif nymph lamp. Phryne was aware that she was naked but saw no reason to do anything about it. While she had her poker she was not in any danger from this utterly embarrassed young man.

‘I think you’d better go back to bed, don’t you?’ she snapped.

‘I’m sorry, I’m really sorry. Please forgive me . . .’ he said. Phryne did not reply and he made an awkward bow and hurried away.

Phryne shut the door, replaced the chair and went back to bed, laying the poker within easy reach on her pillow in case there were any more alarms in the night.

Phryne awoke as Dot placed her cup of tea on the bedside table.

‘Dot, one thing must be done today, and I mean must,’ she said, sipping the healing brew. ‘Ask one of the housemen to find a nice big heavy iron bolt, the sort you put on gates, and watch him as he fits it to the inside of that door. I had two visitors last night, one invited and one very much uninvited. You’d think this was Flinders Street Station.’

‘Yes, Miss. While he’s about it he can fit one to my door, too. I don’t feel safe here.’

‘Neither do I. You can put this poker back with the fire irons, Dot, and find my Beretta. I want some bargaining power with the next intruder. By the way, Dot, did you put that urn on my dressing-table?’

‘No, Miss, of course not.’

‘Not only a bolt,’ decided Phryne, ‘but a new lock with a key as well. And find that gun, too. I’m going to have my bath.’

Dot, who did not approve of guns, laid out Phryne’s clothes for a trip to the caves: black velvet trousers, handmade English hiking boots, a silk shirt and a loose woolly jumper knitted of many colours, with ducks and drakes across the front, before she rummaged for the little gun and the box of shells.

Phryne bathed in the bathroom down the hall, a shameless room with a Dutch water-closet on a dais like a throne, a bathtub big enough to wash a variety chorus, and blue and white willow-pattern tiles on the walls. The floor was of pink marble, chilly to the bare feet, but the water was plentiful and hot.

As her employer dressed, Dot removed the urn and returned it to its proper place. It belonged, she was told, in a niche in the great stair.

By the time she was descending the monumental staircase, Phryne felt human again. The memory of Gerald’s mouth warmed her all through. A well-skilled young man, definitely worth the effort.

Breakfast was, as always, lavish. Several people were missing. Jack Lucas, Miss Fletcher, Mrs Luttrell and Gerald Randall, it appeared, were either breakfasting in decent privacy or had already been and gone. Tom Reynolds and the poet sat together at the big table. Tom looked rough. Phryne poured herself some tea and took a poached egg and some bacon, home-cured and delicious. Tom was staring at a piece of dry toast as though it was a personal enemy.

‘The nasty effects of a hangover,’ said Phryne judicially, ‘are produced by dehydration. Isn’t that right, Doctor Franklin?’

‘Yes, indeed, Miss Fisher,’ replied the Doctor. ‘If I was prescribing for you, Tom, I’d order a gallon of barley water and bed-rest.’

‘Bed-rest?’ Tom barked a laugh which must have hurt his head. ‘Can’t rest. Can’t sleep.’

‘Then drink your tea, have another cup and a few sips of that nice lemonade which Mrs Croft has made for you, and I’ll give you some pills for tonight that I guarantee will put an elephant to sleep,’ said the Doctor. Tom did not precisely brighten, but he did not dull any further. He drank the tea and allowed the poet to refill his cup.

‘How do we get to the caves?’ asked Phryne. Tom blinked at her.

‘We’ll harness up the big dray. The track’s all right that way. We just can’t go back to the Bairnsdale road because it’s still under water.’

Phryne needed to get Tom Reynolds alone, to tell him that Lina had gone out into the night to meet someone called R, but the poet, clearly concerned, was tending his hungover host like a mother.

Phryne sauntered out into the grounds alone to reconnoitre.

She was down by the boathouse when she heard splashing. Surely no one was swimming in that river. It was in spate. Phryne ran to the bank and saw a hand grasping for the remains of the launching ramp. She knelt, grabbed, and hauled with all her strength. Judith Fletcher’s red face appeared, followed by the rest of her. She was considerably bruised and more wet than she had been since she’d been born.

‘Gosh,’ gasped the young woman, wiping her hair out of her eyes. ‘Golly, that current’s strong!’ She staggered and sat down on the grass, as red as her swimming costume.

Phryne exclaimed, ‘What possessed you to go swimming in that?’ She indicated the torrent of grey water foaming past at the speed of a racing horse.

‘There’s a little sandy bay back there,’ panted Miss Fletcher. ‘Out of the tide. I thought it’d be safe, it looked calm enough. But the undercurrent snatched my feet out from under me and the next thing I knew I was drowning. I suppose I ought to thank you,’ she added resentfully.

‘It might be polite,’ said Phryne.

‘It wouldn’t matter,’ Miss Fletcher broke out suddenly. ‘It wouldn’t matter if I was dead.’

‘Wouldn’t it?’

‘I always say the wrong thing and Mother always disapproves of me and I’m sick of this. I’m wasting my life at house parties, trailed around like a slave on a chain to be bid for by bored boys.’

Phryne sat down on the bank and produced her cigarette case. Miss Fletcher had thrown herself face down on the grass and was tearing up handfuls of sedge with her fingers.

‘Then why keep doing it?’

‘I’m an heiress,’ wailed Judith.

‘Yes, so am I.’ This shocked the girl enough to make her look up at the composed figure perched on the bank, smoking a gasper.

‘You are? Why didn’t they marry you to someone, then? Or did they?’

‘They didn’t because I refused to play. They can’t make you marry, you know. They can’t really do anything to you. I ran away to Paris when I was eighteen. How old are you?’

‘Eighteen,’ murmured Miss Fletcher. She sat up cross-legged on the green riverbank.

‘Is it your money?’

‘Yes, I suppose it is, though Mother takes a lot of it to run the house and buy me clothes and all that. The old man left it all to me.’

‘Have you a trustee?’

‘Yes. Nice old bird but Mother never lets me have him to myself.’

‘What do you really want to do? Marry Gerry Randall? He’s a nice boy.’

‘Yes, he’s nice. But I don’t really know yet. He’s dreamy, is Gerry, lazy. But very handsome.’

‘Yes, very,’ said Phryne, visited by a reminiscent vision of the naked young man with the curly hair.

‘But what I’d really like to do is have a little farm somewhere and breed horses. I’d have my chums to visit and then I could shut the door on all of them, light my fire, sit down in my chair and listen to the silence.’

‘Then what you need to do, my dear,’ Phryne extended a hand and hauled Miss Fletcher to her feet, ‘is go and see your nice trustee and tell him that’s what you want to do. If he agrees, then all the mothers in the world won’t be able to stop you. Tell him that you’re tired of all these parties and if he doesn’t comply with your wishes you’ll marry a taxi-driver and fling all your worldly wealth away on gigolos. Tell your mother that, too. It might work. Has it occurred to you that she is actually living off your capital, and making your life a misery into the bargain? Now, get back to the house before you freeze, Miss Fletcher, and next time, think before you fling yourself into deep water.’

Judith Fletcher had the gaffed-cod look of soul’s awakening on her round face. She goggled at Phryne for fully a minute before she lowered her head and ran for the house, whipped along by a chill breeze.

The boathouse would do, Phryne ascertained a moment later. And not only had it stopped raining, but the sun looked like it was trying to come out.

The stableman had the heavy dray out and was backing a stout horse into the shafts as she came past.

‘’Ere, ’old ’im,’ he grunted, thrusting a leading rein into her hands. The piebald carthorse at the end of it was backing steadily away. He knew those shafts. At any moment they might spike him in the behind. They also meant that he would spend the next few hours dragging a heavy weight behind him instead of the leisurely day’s grazing he had planned.

‘Calm yourself,’ said Phryne to the horse, looking it in the eye and keeping a steady pressure on the rein. ‘No use kicking against the pricks, Dobbin dear. We all have our cart to drag and today you are for it.’

The horse, soothed by her voice, stepped a pace towards Phryne and allowed her to stroke his nose.

‘Good on yer, Miss, now back ’im in ’ere.’

Phryne walked Dobbin around in a tight circle, then stood in front of him and laid a hand on his chest. ‘Back, ho!’ she said. ‘Whoa back!’

Dobbin, uneasy, danced a little on hoofs the size of soup plates before stepping back between the shafts. Willis threaded the tug girths and Phryne caressed the fringed ears. Dobbin, once harnessed, appeared resigned to his fate. She handed over the rein to the ex-jockey and walked around the dray.

It was a huge, heavy, lumbering wagon, obviously designed for carrying tree trunks. It had been fitted with benches and could be covered with a canvas hood as seen in all the best westerns. Phryne half expected to hear someone play ‘The William Tell Overture’.

She walked around the vehicle, noting its allover muddiness and resolving to take an oilskin. Then she noticed a clean spot of bright metal in the centre of the front spoked wheel.

‘Mr Willis, have a look at this,’ she called, and the old man tutted, looped the rein over a mounting-block, and came to her side.

‘Someone’s been playing tricks again, Mr Willis,’ she said. The axle nut was missing. Fresh sawdust on the muddy ground indicated that the axle itself might have been partially sawn through. Terry Willis rubbed a shaking hand over his gnome’s face. He looked like a kobold who had just been told that he was mythical.

‘Jeez, it’d take mebbe ten minutes to work loose, then . . .’

‘You know, I’ve lost all my taste for travelling,’ commented Phryne. ‘I think we’d better give Dobbin a holiday and tell the Boss that the trip to the caves is off.’

‘Yair, reckon,’ agreed the old man. ‘You want to unharness ’im? I gotta get my boy and we gotta get this dray back inta the shed. Don’t want every man and his dog ta know.’

Phryne found that unharnessing the carthorse was a lot easier than harnessing him. One just undid every buckle in sight and led the beast forward with his enthusiastic cooperation.

‘There you are,’ she hauled on the rein to bring the big head down low enough so that she could take the headstall off past his ears. ‘And a nice little walk back to your paddock. At least I’ve improved your day,’ she said to the horse, who shook his head at the contrariness of humans and trotted back to his paddock, waited for her to unlatch the gate, and plodded through.

Tom Reynolds was as astonished as a man with a newly recovered hangover could be when he heard Phryne’s news. Stopping only to pull on some gumboots, he rushed out of the house to interview Willis. The house party scattered in search of other diversions and Phryne went up to her room.

‘I’m going for a walk, Dot,’ she yelled to her maid, over the hammer blows of Mr Black, the houseman, who was fitting the bolt. Dot nodded. Phryne pulled on a heavy velvet-lined cape and went to find Lin Chung.

He was standing in the parlour, looking out of the window. When she came in, he asked quietly, ‘How was the beautiful young man?’

‘Beautiful,’ said Phryne carelessly. ‘But only beautiful.’

‘And I?’

‘Ah, you are quite different. Much more than just beautiful.’

Lin Chung sighed. Then he held out a closed hand to her. She opened his fingers and revealed a chess-piece. It was the Red King.

Phryne scanned the board, caught up a small figure and laid the White Queen beside the Red King. The alchemical marriage. The Shanghai ring gleamed on her hand, next to a bright, silver-mounted diamond. Lin Chung took up their intertwined hands and kissed her palm.

Phryne did not care for hunting. Her view was that she had never been personally threatened by a rabbit (unless you took into account a villainous long-dead lapin ragout once served to her by a Marseilles cook of few morals and a penny-pinching disposition), so she saw no need to shoot them. She had sacked the cook, so that took care of him. And the rabbits, she considered, had enough problems without her persecuting them as well.

Wandering out into the grounds, however, she noticed Jack and the angelic Gerald heading out bush with a couple of rifles, apparently intent on slaughtering some of the local wildlife. That disposed of them. According to her careful investigations, the staff were all safely in the house. Tom was in the stables, Mrs Reynolds was arguing with the cook about bottled beans, the Major was apparently still sleeping off his dissipated evening and his wife was sitting on a bench under the beech tree embroidering. Miss Fletcher and Mrs Fletcher were playing the Victrola in the parlour and Miss Cynthia was inducing the Doctor to dance a foxtrot with her. The poet, having been inspired by the sight of Cave House at dawn, absurd amongst the gum trees, was in the library, immersed in ink and swearing under his breath in some Finno-Ugric language. Miss Mead was knitting in the parlour and Miss Cray was in the kitchen, attempting to extract contributions from the staff in aid of missions to the heathen.

The heathens Phryne and Lin Chung were drifting across the lawn toward the boathouse, which had a door that latched, a punt, two boats loaded with cushions, and the requisite amount of privacy.

Phryne found that she was breathing as if she had been running. They slipped inside, into a scent of old mattresses and varnish. The door had barely closed before she was unfastening the buttons of Lin’s shirt, and he had pulled her jumper over her head.

‘We can lie there, in the punt,’ she said, as her shirt peeled away and his mouth came down to her breast. His silk shirt fell open and she wrapped her bare arms around his waist, his skin smooth and warm.

‘And if we are surprised?’ he breathed into her neck.

She laughed and said, ‘We glare.’

They lay together in the boat, squeezed close in the semi-dark, on musty cushions and Phryne’s velvet cloak. She sneezed, chuckled and gasped as his clever mouth found the right place.

She felt his body react to her touch. Under her fingers the jade candle was lit. When she managed to manoeuvre into the right position, it was extinguished inside her and she stifled a cry.

The butterfly danced on the flower. Lin Chung lifted one of her hands to cover his mouth. She felt his jaw clench. Muscles tightened and trembled in thigh and buttock. He was a golden man, a brazen statue. She clutched his shoulders and they were as hard as iron; then she felt his lips thin as his climax bloomed inside her and her bones were filled with honey.

For a while she thought she was seeing stars, then realised that small shafts of sunlight were shooting arrows through the holes in the boatyard roof.

There was a weight in her arms, a beautiful man. The air was redolent of female musk and his hay-scented skin and she leaned up to lick beads of sweat off his throat.

‘Silver Lady,’ his voice was husky and very low, ‘you are full of wonders. I was wrong, I cannot bear to be without you. Let me come to your room tonight. I will not be seen.’

‘Yes. Ah, Lin, don’t move – let me feel you, so close.’

They lay coupled in the boat, dust settling on them, heavy with completion, not yet sated, kissing, endlessly kissing.

The door opened. Phryne and Lin Chung lay still. Phryne had chosen this boat because it could not be seen from the door. And if she was going to be caught, she was not going to make an undignified, shamefaced scramble of the discovery. She would be found lying with her lover, and she hoped the finder would appreciate his truly remarkable beauty and her own.

The footsteps came closer – two people. They heard the sound of a kiss on a long, gasping breath. Someone else, it seemed, had noticed the advantages of the boathouse.

Phryne, moving silently and with great care, edged around so she could see over the gunwhale. The other punt creaked as a young man unloaded the padding and spread it on the floor. He was evidently preparing a bed, and would be making love in Phryne’s plain view. She heard a whisper. ‘No, we can’t.’

‘Yes,’ urged an unmistakably male voice. ‘You know you love me.’ Phryne heard the sound of something heavy and metallic being put down with a clatter.

‘I love you,’ agreed the whisper. Lin Chung had also moved; he was kneeling behind Phryne, his belly against her buttocks, both hands on her breasts. His touch, as always, sent sparks through her.

‘I love you,’ declared the whisper, louder this time. Phryne watched as a male chest was bared by skilled hands, to be mouthed and kissed by . . .

Another man.

Phryne had never seen men make love to each other. She would not have sought out the sight – available for a fee in certain places in Paris, for instance – but she could not move without alerting the lovers, and they were fascinating.

Beautiful. Gently, carefully, Jack peeled off Gerald’s clothes, baring the slight body with olive skin, long thighs and the scribble of pubic hair. Gerald’s dark curly head was drooping as his body relaxed into desire. Jack tore off his own clothes; taller and paler than his lover, and dropped to his knees. He kissed and gently stroked the beloved body, then finally drew Gerald down onto the punt cushions. They kissed, first tentatively, unpractised, then with ferocious passion, locked mouth to mouth, chest to chest, thigh to thigh. They panted, grappled again, the dark arms around the pale back, the blond head sliding down to suckle. Finally they settled, then plunged together with bone-breaking force.

A jolt ran through Phryne at the strangeness and violence of their embrace. She reached behind her and Lin Chung responded, sliding forward until they were joined then moving gently, all noise covered by the ragged breath of the lovers, who drove together as though frantically trying to be one flesh in truth; Hermaphroditus, one body.

They were too passionate to endure long. As Phryne heard Lin Chung catch his breath and say her name in Chinese, as she sank under her own orgasm, she heard the young men cry out together.

Jack was lying on his back with Gerald’s head on his chest as Phryne and her lover found ways to lie more comfortably in their punt. Phryne’s skin was glowing with heat. She felt light-headed with relief and determined to not sleep alone in Cave House again.

Then, in the gloom, she heard Gerald begin to cry.

‘There, Gerry, there . . . my . . . love, my love,’ soothed Jack, stroking the dark hair.

‘It’s no good,’ sobbed Gerald. ‘We’ll never be together – never. We’re monsters, Jack. You’ll never love women at all. I’ll never love them like I love you, want you. We’ll never be normal, they call us pansies – inverts. Oh, Jack, I do love you so.’ He kissed Jack on the shoulder.

‘Hush, love, hush. There will be a way. You’re not . . . you’re not sorry that you’re mine, that we . . .’

‘I’m not sorry.’ Gerald kissed Jack again. ‘You love me, I love you. It was bound to happen . . . Jack, I’ve been thinking about you all night.’

‘Not all night you haven’t. I came looking for you.’

‘Where?’

‘Miss Fisher. She nearly beanedme with a poker.’

‘You went to her room? Golly, Jack, what did you say?’

‘Nothing much. She was beautiful, though. Looks like a Deco nymph with a snarl on her like Nike herself. I can see why you wanted her. Was it better, making love to a woman?’

‘No. Of course not. Different. Lovely. But not this, not love. I had to try, Jack, you can see that.

I had to see if . . . she could help us, and she wanted me.’

‘If you were a woman, Gerry, you’d be a tart.’

‘Probably. I’d do anything – anything at all to have you, Jack.’ They kissed again. Gerry faltered, ‘Could you . . . could you come to me? We can make it look like we sat up drinking and playing cards. No one will know. Come and . . . sleep with me? I . . . can’t bear to lose you.’

‘I’ll come,’ said Jack tenderly. ‘We’d better go, Gerry. We’ve been away a long time and not a single rabbit to show for it.’

‘I suppose so.’ Reluctantly, they found their clothes and dressed. Then they suddenly clasped together in a kiss which took Phryne’s breath.

‘But the hunting was good?’ asked Gerry.

‘The hunting was good,’ agreed Jack.

The boathouse door swung to behind them.

‘We’d better go, too, before someone else comes in to couple in the boathouse. I never saw such a place for assignations, and we’re going to have to recalculate our equation. They have a really good reason for wanting Tom dead. Which is a pity because I have a whole new bundle of news which I must tell you.’ Phryne found her clothes and pulled them on, then searched for Lin Chung’s shirt. As he buttoned it, she said, ‘Watching them was arousing. They were so fierce. Did you feel it too?’

‘A forbidden passion, once indulged, is like a forest fire,’ he quoted slowly. ‘They must have been desiring each other for years. It is a shame that their wedding had to be celebrated in a dusty place such as this.’ He brushed a cobweb from Phryne’s hair. She kissed a smear from his perfect cheek.

‘You’ll come tonight,’ she said confidently.

‘Yes, Silver Lady. I’ll come!’

Half an hour later, Lin Chung was grave. ‘So there was a son of the house who went to the bad. And there are the letters and the ring in the girl’s possession. But who keeps leaving urns all over the place and what is their significance? Who wrote the notes to Reynolds and who sawed through the axle and laid that trap which almost killed you? Who killed Lina and why, and where is her body? And why should anyone take it? An uncomfortable possession, I would have thought.’

‘The body was taken to conceal the death,’ said Phryne. ‘No body, no enquiries about where everyone was. I’ve just had a thought, Lin. I was told that the Major and Tom went out to fish yesterday, and we had trout last night at dinner. Oh, Lord, that dinner.’ She broke off to laugh. ‘Tom said he didn’t catch any. I wonder if he was with the Major? That’s the time we are looking at.’

‘We can ask him,’ said Lin Chung. ‘I can hear him in the stables.’

The master’s voice was indeed audible at forty paces.

‘What do you mean, you didn’t lock it?’ he was bellowing.

‘Listen, Boss,’ returned Terry Willis with spirit. ‘You never told me to lock the flamin’ doors. Oo’s gonna ’alf-inch a dray that size out ’ere? ’E’d need to steal an ’orse as well and we got the dogs. They raise the dead if so much as a fox comes past.’

‘I reckon you’re right,’ said Tom, as Lin and Phryne came into the large, hay-scented shed. ‘Shouldn’t have lost my temper like that, old man.’

‘Right then. You want the flamin’ cart repaired?’ demanded Willis, not entirely mollified.

‘Yes,’ said Tom heavily.

‘Then you get onter Paul to make us a new axle, Boss. Iron one, this time.’

‘Right,’ said Tom, and Lin Chung and Phryne accompanied him out of the stable.

‘We have a question,’ said Phryne, laying a hand on his arm. ‘Tom dear, I know you weren’t yourself last night but you said you hadn’t caught any fish. Did the Major catch any?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Reynolds, patting her hand. ‘You behaved very well at dinner, my dear Phryne, my dear Lin. I might have made a complete idiot out of myself, instead of just embarrassing Evelyn. She’s forgiven me. I owe you a debt.’

‘It’s nothing,’ murmured Lin Chung, and was overridden by Phryne, who said quickly, ‘You do owe us a debt. Pay it by giving that young man his money and let’s be rid of the whole scandal. I feel some responsibility for Megatherium, Tom. I knew the man who did it, and I didn’t hand him over to the cops. He’s in South America and I hope it chokes him and he didn’t have a bean left of all that money, but still. As a favour to me?’

‘I can’t, Phryne. I’d like to but I rashly swore I wouldn’t give him a penny. I gave my word . . . I can’t climb down.’

‘Very well. A curse on all stiff-necked men. I have another plan.’ She leaned on his arm and explained. Both Lin Chung and Tom looked utterly mystified.

‘But how will that set him up for life?’ he asked.

Phryne smiled.

‘Do you agree?’ she asked.

‘Yes, if you say so, Phryne, all right, I agree. That will be the end of the Lucas matter? Really?’ His eyes sought Lin Chung’s, as the only other responsible male present, but the Chinese shrugged in negation. He didn’t understand, either. ‘And that discharges my debt?’ Tom asked.

Phryne grinned. ‘Nobly.’

‘Shake,’ offered Tom, and Phryne shook his hand.

‘If you can get Jack to agree, that will be a weight off my mind,’ he admitted. ‘Now what was it you were asking me?’

‘Did you catch any fish?’ repeated Lin Chung, who was a logical thinker.

‘No. It started to rain and I felt a bit rheumatic so I came back and left him to it. Remarkable if he caught anything, considering the turbid state of the water.’

‘So there is no one to say where the Major was when Lina was killed.’

‘Perhaps,’ suggested Lin Chung, ‘we ought to go and ask the Major.’