Urn Burial

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And therefore restless disquiet for the diurnity of our memories unto present considerations seems a vanity almost out of date, and superannuated piece of folly.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

‘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

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 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 . . .’

‘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 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 – 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 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.’

Phryne felt a lump over the temporal lobe, hard under her touch. Someone had certainly shot him at some time.

‘So when the War was over, I forged some Hungarian papers. I had no clue to my identity. I had arrived at the camp naked in a blanket with an envelope full of meaningless trinkets. They repatriated my friend Han and me to Buda, which we found a cold city, so we went to Poland, and that is when he began to call me Tadeusz, because the name meant something to me. It is, of course, similar to Ted.’

‘When did you get an idea who you were?’ asked Phryne.

‘Not for a long time. I wandered the world, never finding a place where I knew that I belonged. Han was a poet, but also a rich man – most unusual – and when he died he left me his estate. I turned it into gold and started to search, for I knew I had a home somewhere. Then, in London, I heard two men talking and knew the accent. They were Australians. In my little bag which I wore around my neck was a cigarette case with a regimental badge which no one in Europe had been able to identify for me. A number was scratched under it and I realised that it must be a soldier’s identification.

‘I went into Australia House, asked for the records, and found out that I was Private Ted Matthews, who had died in the Dardanelles campaign seven years before.

‘I went back to my hotel near the British Museum and began to remember my own language, my home, and Letty. There and then I resolved to find out what had become of her. English flooded back to me, but now I spoke it like a Hungarian. I had made many friends among the surrealists, had some reputation as a poet, and I was wealthy enough to follow my own inclinations. So I came back to Australia. Letty’s mother would not tell me where she was, just that she was married and happy, so I tried to forget her. I never forgot her face. Even when I was no one I saw her face, but she had no name.

‘So, I had been writing poetry which is soon to be a book, if I can ever get it finished. I came here to complete the work. And Major Luttrell brought his wife here. That is the unbelievable thing, unbelievable, making me wonder if even an adopted Hungarian or Pole is under the special protection of St Stanislaus. Major Luttrell brought his wife, my Letty, here. She knew me after a few days. How did you know me, my own?’ he asked, and Mrs Luttrell, nestling shamelessly against him, said, ‘Your eyes, Ted. I knew your eyes.’

‘We were going to run away together,’ resumed the poet, ‘though that would bring my Letty into social disrepute. We met in the library. I left messages for her there. We were counting on the ineffable Cynthia to distract him sufficiently so that we could make what I believe is called a clean getaway, hmm? However, now the Major is dead and this fortunately is not necessary. Another cocktail, if you please.’

‘What a story!’ exclaimed Miss Fletcher. Phryne, reserving her opinion on the likelihood of this romantic history, rose and stretched. If Letty believed it, who was she to cavil?

‘Well, that’s all the mysteries but two. Hinchcliff, can you bring Doreen in here?’

The Butler’s eyebrows left his control and rose, slightly. He bowed and went out.

Miss Medenham wound up the gramophone. Mr and Mrs Reynolds came in and sat down. Evelyn had cried herself out, washed her face, and looked composed and sad, but not heartbroken. Her boy was dead. Now she could bury him, and mourn.

Tom Reynolds, bulkier than ever with bandages across his shoulder and chest, accepted a cocktail against competent medical advice and swigged it. This took his breath so comprehensively that he could only goggle as a weeping chambermaid was ushered in by the butler.

‘Doreen, you left the urns,’ said Phryne gently. ‘It had to be you. Only you could get into all the rooms without being noticed. You knew Lina’s body was in the Buchan Caves. How did you know?’

Doreen burst into tears and was supplied with a glass of sherry and a handkerchief.

‘He told me,’ she finally managed. ‘The Major. He knew about everyone. He knew about Annie’s babies. He got Mr H in debt to him for hundreds of pounds, gambling on those wicked cards. He knew about me and Mr Jones, he threatened to tell Madam and get me fired, and I’ve got five sisters, I can’t go home. He didn’t want to . . . to . . . he didn’t want me in that way. It would have been easier if he did. He just wanted to talk to me. He liked to come to the kitchen window and boast about it – about the girls he’d strangled in India, about his wife being next after me if I told on him, about Lina and where he’d put her. He said he’d kill me if I told. So I left the urns for you, Miss Fisher, you being so clever and all. Oh, dear.’ She wept with relief into Lin Chung’s silk handkerchief.

‘It was very brave of you to try and help me,’ said Phryne.

‘It’s all right, Doreen, I’m not going to dismiss you,’ said Mrs Reynolds wearily. ‘You go back to the kitchen now, and ask Cook for some hot tea.’

Doreen snuffled, blew her nose, and went out.

Phryne felt a gentle hand on her arm. It was the beautiful Gerald, rosy and angelic, smiling his guileless child’s smile.

‘You promised,’ he reminded her.

‘Oh, yes, so I did. It’s all fixed. Tom, can I take Jack to pick out his paintings now?’ she called. Mr Reynolds assented, and she took Jack Lucas and his lover into the corridor.

‘Paintings?’ he exclaimed. ‘There isn’t anything in this house worth having. It’s all etchings of the Monarch of the Glen and pretty little pastels done by ladies which look like endive salad, dying. What have you sold my birthright for, eh?’

‘Trust me,’ said Phryne crossly. ‘And follow me,’ she added, making her best pace up the stairs to the room which had been the Major’s.

‘The builders of Cave House went on a Grand Tour,’ she told Lucas, opening the door.

‘I know, that’s where they got that near-Boucher and all those naughty prints of naked ladies,’ snapped Jack Lucas. ‘None of it worth more than threepence-ha’penny on the open market.’

‘Yes, but what else was on in Paris in the 1880s?’ asked Phryne acidly, bringing the young man’s nose to surface with the large oil depicting a wobbly church. He squinted. There was a silence. Then Gerald began to laugh. He reeled over, staggering and whooping with mirth, to enfold Phryne in a close embrace, weeping tears of joy down her neck and kissing her gleefully between paroxysms.

‘You mean . . . from the Salon des Refusés?’ said Jack. ‘Yes, there’s the signature . . . It’s a Manet, a genuine Manet . . . My God, why have I never seen these before?’

‘You have spent insufficient time in servants’ bedrooms. In my chamber is what I judge to be a Monet; there’s a very pretty little Renoir of a girl with an umbrella in Lina’s room and a swingeing great expanse of grass and lilies which have to be either Pissarro or possibly very early Sisley in the servants’ hall. Impeccable provenance, by the way – the original bills of sale are in the library. I asked Tom for ten of them and he agreed. It seems that both he and his wife don’t like all this modern stuff, so they put them away out of the public eye. I think they ought to realise you enough for a nice comfortable life, don’t you? Or would you rather go and argue with Tom Reynolds for your thousand pounds?’

‘Miss Fisher, these are worth thousands, we can’t accept . . .’ began Jack and Gerald cried out in protest.

Phryne said, ‘Yes, you can. Tom knows, more or less, what these are worth. But he was very close friends with your father and only his own stubbornness stopped him from giving you cash. This terribly generous gift assauges his conscience and he’ll be very hurt if you don’t take them. Don’t, by the way, miss the tiny little Seurat of an acrobat in Doreen’s room. It’s a gem. Now, for God’s sake, escort me to the dining room. It’s been an interesting day and I’d like a glass or two of wine.’

Gerald and Jack held out an arm each, and Phryne paraded down the monumental stair between two beautiful young men. They made an impressive entrance into dinner.

Dinner was lavish, if scrappily served, the kitchen being still deeply engrossed in enough gossip to last them for years. The company adjourned to the parlour to repair their ravelled nerves with dancing and conversation. The music began to play, a slow foxtrot, ideal for the sleepy end of a dreadful day. Tadeusz drew Mrs Luttrell to her feet, saying, ‘If you dance with me I’ll do the bravest thing man ever did for woman.’

‘Oh, what’s that?’ asked Letty, nestling into his arms. The dark-brown hair flopped over his forehead and she smoothed it back. Tadeusz assumed a grave demeanour.

‘I’ll go and teach Mrs Croft how to make coffee,’ he said solemnly and Letty laughed.

Miss Medenham snared the Doctor. Miss Fletcher was claimed by Gerald and Mrs Fletcher danced with Jack. Phryne reflected irritably that Cave House seemed to be positively oozing with happy endings.

Lin openly escorted Miss Fisher to her room. Dot, full of tea and gossip, had gone to bed. The murdered girl and the death of the murderers would not be banished from Phryne’s mind, and the slow inexorable fall insisted on unrolling itself before her tired eyes like a motion picture. She sat down at the table to remove her makeup, and an open book caught her eye. Urne Buriall, by the very learned Sir Thomas Browne.

Afflictions induce calloufities; miferies are slippery or fall like snow upon us, which nonwithftanding is no unhappy stupidity. To be ignorant of evils to come, and forgetful of evils paft, is merciful provifion in nature, whereby we digest the mixture of our few and evil days and, our delivered senfes not relapsing into cutting remembrances, our sorrows are not kept raw by the edge of repetitions.

Phryne puzzled through the unfamiliar spelling, nodded soberly, and stood up into Lin Chung’s arms.