Dead Man's Chest (3 page)

‘You can be mother,’ Phryne told Dot. ‘Tomorrow we shall have better fare.’

‘If you’ll excuse me, Miss Phryne, I’d better go back to my list,’ said Ruth.

‘Can I help you?’ asked Jane, who was deeply entrenched in her first detective story and disinclined to move. This Miss Sayers. How could Jane have missed her before?

‘No, thanks, I’ve got Tinker for the heavy work,’ said Ruth without irony.

‘I found this cookbook,’ said Jane, much relieved. ‘It looks interesting.’

Ruth took it and her cup and went back to the kitchen. There Tinker was unpacking Miss Fisher’s travelling com- estibles. There were coffee beans and a coffee grinder, a sin- ister packet of that really strong Turkish coffee, bottles of liqueurs, bottles of olive oil and tarragon vinegar, garlic, essences like rosewater and orange flower water, an array of pickles and jams, the cocktail shaker, the port, the red and white wines. Phryne had travelled to the country before.

Tinker was talking excitedly.

‘She’s wonderful! What a bonzer sheila, the boss is! How long have you been with her?’

‘A year,’ said Ruth. ‘Don’t shake those bottles. That’s the port, it goes all muddy if you shake it. You be careful, Tinker. Do as she says and she’s a lovely lady. Disobey her and she’s very scary.’

‘Blind Freddy could see that,’ said Tinker scornfully. ‘What are you doing, Miss? Can I help?’

‘Making a shopping list,’ said Ruth. ‘We need to telephone it to the tradesmen to bring the food tomorrow. Tell you what, it would be nice if you watered the herbs now the sun’s off them. Miss Phryne said they are drying out.’

‘Water’s the problem around here,’ he told her. ‘But you got company’s water, as well as that bl— I mean very big rainwater tank. The old chook only has rainwater and does she create if someone leaves a tap dripping!’ He winced, as if the old scars ached even in this balmy weather. ‘Right-o, I’ll do the garden. You call me if she wants me?’

‘Of course,’ said Ruth. Inwardly she was both elated and very scared. This kitchen was hers. She had chafed under Mrs Butler’s tutelage, longing to reign alone. Now she could, and the idea was both intoxicating and terrifying. She sat down at the scrubbed table, raised her chin and also her resolution. She could do it. The list was complete. She had ordered greengrocery—everything from potatoes to pine- apples; dry grocery—spices and sugar and flour and packet biscuits; dairy foods; such things as ice for the ice chest and replacements for the missing condiments; also toilet paper, kitchen paper, bicarbonate of soda, cream of tartar, salt and soap. Tonight they were dining with the next-door neighbour, Tinker’s Old Chook. Tomorrow belongs to me, thought Ruth.

Then she opened
The Gentle Art of Cookery
, by Mrs CF Leyel and Miss Olga Hartley, and was swept away.

In the breakfast room a puzzled Constable Dawson was attempting to make sense of the vanishment of the Johnsons.

‘They had a good reputation,’ he repeated, onto his third cup of tea and sixth piece of bread and butter. Ruth had sliced the bread thinly with a knife dipped in hot water and buttered it with maître d’hôtel butter, and Constable Dawson had never tasted bread that good. ‘No hint of trouble. This is a small place, Miss Fisher, and we pick up all the gossip. My brother runs the Esplanade Hotel and my sister cooks for the Queens- cliff Hotel so we hear all the news. Sometimes before it’s actually news,’ he admitted. ‘Not a peep.’

‘Well, there are things which you might do,’ suggested Phryne, very gently. ‘You might check to see what mail they received. Also, I need the address of Mr Thomas—we ought to tell him that his old servants have levanted. It might be that he has an explanation.’

‘Don’t you know where he is, Miss?’

Phryne shrugged, a move fascinating in itself.

‘Arnhem Land is the best I can do. He lent me this house on the barest acquaintance. He’s an anthropologist, you know. Studies the Aborigines.’

‘Used to be some of them round here,’ the constable told her. ‘Long gone now. Yair. Mr Thomas used to bring home bones and such. I stopped him once for speeding in that big black car of his, and he had a load of skulls and bones on the seat beside him. Fair turned me up. He said they were blackfeller skulls. They were all red with ochre, he said, and he was studying burial customs.’ The constable was evidently quoting.

Dot crossed herself unobtrusively. Disturbing the dead was not a proper occupation, she considered, for a gentleman. And Mr Thomas must be a gentleman. This was obviously a gentleman’s house. Nice furniture, bit old-fashioned. Everything squared away neatly. Clean and swept. Still, gentlemen would have their hobbies.

‘Indeed,’ said Phryne. ‘You might also enquire as to the vehicle which removed all the Johnsons’ furniture. They must have had a bed and chairs and so on, and they are all gone. Someone might have noticed the truck or whatever.’

‘Good notion, Miss Fisher,’ said Constable Dawson, uncoupling his notebook.

‘And the exchange might have noticed who called the house,’ continued Phryne, prompting.

‘Exchange, yes,’ said the constable, making notes.

‘Now, if you are quite finished, I would like to take my family for a swim,’ said Phryne, getting up.

And despite his private regret for the remains of that excellent bread, Constable Dawson had to take his leave.

Dot caught him at the door and gave him the last slice in a paper napkin, and he walked away munching it.

‘Excellent tea, Ruth dear.’ Phryne entered the kitchen to the divine scent of wet herb beds, watered with skill by Tinker, who had an adroit thumb on the hosepipe. Mint, sage, thyme, basil, tarragon, all exhaled in gratitude as the drops descended. The scent was magical.

‘Arabian Nights,’ whispered Ruth. She lifted to Phryne a face transformed by joy. ‘I’ve got this cookbook, Miss Phryne, and I would like to cook you a dinner from it,’ she said.

‘Go to it,’ encouraged Phryne. ‘Have you got that list? I’ll phone it to the tradesmen and then we ought to go for a bathe.’

‘Oh, yes,’ said Ruth, and added, in her clear cursive, several extra ingredients which might give Jno Handlesman, Grocer, a bit of pause for thought. Where was he going to get Turkish delight and preserved quinces? And why would anyone suppose that he had preserved quinces, in a reasonable universe?

‘I’ll collect Jane and find our bathing dresses,’ she promised and left the kitchen at some thirty mph, moving like a disgruntled blue-tongue lizard.

Phryne shrugged and took the list to the telephone, which like all telephones was in the hall, in the draughtiest and most inconvenient spot. After a certain wrangling with Exchange, who did not seem to be able to use even the available half of her wits, she managed to be connected with the right people, all of whom promised to deliver in the early morning. At which time Phryne was intending to be asleep. She would square Ruth and Tinker to receive the food. And until the ice arrived she was not going to get a cocktail, so she hoped they were prompt. Dinner tonight with Mrs Mason might prove to be trying and Phryne liked a little alcoholic applause for her social efforts.

But she gathered the girls and Dot and conducted them easily on a short walk to the sea baths, when the tide was just on the turn, and the water was fine and clean, and Phryne’s daring red costume—no back and hardly any front—attracted a satisfying number of stares.

Dot, in her respectable bathers with legs and a modesty skirt, attracted no stares at all, which was the way she wanted it. She was a little light-headed with relief that the missing Johnsons were not in the house, in any state, and swam further than she ordinarily did, in the cool clean ocean and the know- ledge that the boy Tinker had lit the pilot light for a reliable supply of hot water.

The girls dog-paddled out a reasonable distance and allowed the tide to swish them back towards the shore.

‘I’m cooking dinner!’ murmured Ruth.

‘I know,’ said Jane kindly. She loved her adoptive sister and could recognise a fulfilled ambition when she saw it. ‘I’ll help you any way I can.’

‘Will you do the carving?’ asked Ruth. ‘You’re good at carving. I want to do the roast duck with cherry jelly.’

‘Certainly,’ said Jane. ‘That is a nice house,’ she added, as they idled in the cool water. ‘Lots of books.’

‘Oh, books,’ said Ruth. ‘Anything interesting?’

‘I haven’t had time to search through them yet,’ said Jane with the happy complacency of someone who knew that, by the end of the holiday, she would have read them all. ‘Did you like your cookbook?’

‘Oh, yes,’ said Ruth. She turned over in the water to embrace her sister. ‘Thank you!’

‘Delighted,’ said Jane, hugging her. Pleasures, as Miss Phryne said, were always intensely personal.

They returned salty but happy for a sumptuous bath and a restoring but unfortunately warm gin squash (Phryne) or cup of coffee (the rest of the inhabitants) before walking next door for dinner with Mrs Mason.

CHAPTER THREE

I like children (except boys).

Lewis Carroll

Phryne surveyed her little family as they waited for the door to be opened. Jane and Ruth, clean and combed, in their holiday cotton frocks (one lavender, one rose, with matching hair ribbons). Dot in her standard beige dinner dress with terracotta-coloured jacket in case of draughts, and an orange geranium in her bandeau. Phryne in her loose purple silk shift with jazz-coloured scallop-shell appliques—silver, black and green. Her headdress was a silvery crown of wire with a soft black plume depending from it. She never took jewellery on holidays so wore none.

‘Very chic,’ murmured Dot, catching her glance.

‘Indeed, we are a handsome group,’ replied Phryne.

The door opened. They were conducted into a reception room by a thin butler who looked like he had just bitten an unripe persimmon. His whole face seemed to be contracted with disgust. Phryne awarded him a cool glance which at least averted his gaze. She had been stared out of countenance a few times, when much younger, and did not mean to have this happen ever again.

Mrs Mason, on the other hand, was pleased. She bustled forward, took Phryne’s hand, and conducted them into a parlour. Drinks, it seemed, were to be served. The butler enquired as to the ladies’ pleasure as though requesting in- formation on their choice of arsenic or cyanide. Phryne allowed him to construct a sidecar for her. The girls had half a glass of muscat each, and Dot took sherry with her usual thrill of the forbidden. She had, after all, signed The Pledge when she was twelve. Mrs Mason had a sidecar also; by her giggle, not the first of the evening. Phryne tasted. Good. Strong on lemon juice, a fine brandy and icy cold.

‘Well, now, what are you going to do on your holiday?’ asked Mrs Mason of the girls.

‘Read,’ replied Jane with perfect truth. ‘Mr Thomas has a very good library. I wonder if there are more books in that locked room?’

‘Oh, I expect so,’ said Mrs Mason. ‘He’s a very learned man, you know. But of course if he locked the room it must stay locked. Even I don’t have the key.’

‘And you such an old friend,’ murmured Phryne. Should she venture on another glass? Why, in fact, not?

‘Yes, we’ve been close friends ever since my husband died,’ said Mrs Mason, affecting a sob and wiping with a miniscule handkerchief at a perfectly dry eye. ‘Such a dear clever scholar and such a comfort to have a man nearby when one is all alone in the world.’

Phryne caught, just for a second, a flicker on the butler’s contracted face. Unseen by Mrs Mason, she winked at him. He maintained the perfect frozen expression of his tribe, but his eyes softened slightly and he filled this distinguished visitor’s glass to the very top with the icy, lemony cocktail.

‘You do make good cocktails,’ she told him. He bowed and did not speak. ‘So there’s just you in the house?’ asked Phryne of her hostess.

‘During term,’ Mrs Mason answered. ‘During the holidays I have my son and his friends staying—if he isn’t staying with them, of course. They are such good chums. And such high spirits!’

The butler winced again and so did Mrs Mason. Both of them, Phryne inferred, preferred the spirits to be found in expensive bottles to the ones which kicked sand all over the floor, ground mud into carpets and played cricket in the kitchen garden, to the merry tinkle of breaking windows.

‘I’ve only passingly been to Queenscliff before,’ Phryne told Mrs Mason, wondering, inter alia, who had persuaded a woman with such a high complexion that cerise satin was her colour and texture. There ought to be some kind of law against dressmakers like that. Crimes against Couture.

‘Oh, it used to be select, very select,’ Mrs Mason answered. She seemed to be listening for something. ‘Mrs Alfred Deakin always stays here, you know. And the dear Archbishop. Lots of church people and politicians. But since the railway went through we have lots of trippers. My dear! Pork-pie hats and trailing braces and eating ice cream in the street!’

‘The working classes,’ said Phryne, ‘have their pleasures, too.’

‘Working class! No, no, these are small shopkeepers. Trade.’

Phryne was selecting one of the three crushing rejoinders and was about to inflict it on her hostess when there was a rush of feet and three boys entered, shoving each other at the door and then standing as though emulating the fate of Lot’s wife. Phryne was thus rescued from social ostracism in the select village of Queenscliff. But she wasn’t a bit grateful.

For there, now shuffling a few feet and looking as though they had been struck repeatedly with a carpenter’s mallet, were her three assailants from the street. Fraser, Jolyon and Kiwi, as she recalled. Fraser was the one with the scowl and the blond hair. Kiwi the taller, all skinned knees and elbows. And the scion of the house, Jolyon, blushing furiously, a well-built lad with brown hair like his mother’s.

Jane looked at them as though they were a specimen she had in mind to dissect. Ruth gaped until Dot moved close to her and nudged. Phryne smiled sweetly.

At that smile the boys shuddered. A jellyfish might have managed more tremble per square inch, but only a jellyfish. They hung on her lips. What was she going to say? All she had to do was peach on them and the rest of the holiday would be close confinement and Good Works.

‘My son, Jolyon,’ said Mrs Mason, who had not noticed anything wrong in the atmosphere. ‘His friends Tony Fraser and John Patterson. This is the Hon Miss Phryne Fisher and her companion Miss Williams. And her daughters Jane and Ruth. You are late, boys! Go and wash your hands, dinner is almost ready.’

The boys shook hands solemnly with Phryne and Dot, stared at Jane and Ruth, and barrelled out to do as they were told. But they were not relieved, not yet. There was still dinner to get through, and that Miss Fisher might yet decide to sneak.

‘Your son takes after you,’ Phryne observed.

‘A little, perhaps, I like to think so,’ Mrs Mason agreed. ‘But he’s going to be as big as his father. It’s as much as his female relatives can do to keep him in socks.’

Phryne, who had never knitted a sock in her life but was sure that if she needed socks she could find someone to knit them for her, smiled an assent. Mrs Mason took another cocktail. Phryne didn’t. Dot sipped her sherry. Ruth was astounded by the advent of the bad boys in a respectable house, and Jane was groping for a conversational topic. Dot had been training her in Suitable Topics for a Lady’s Dinner Table, which did not include Rat Dissection for Beginners or Beastly Customs of the Heathen, which was a pity because Jane knew a lot about both of these.

‘I noticed a cinema down in the town,’ she observed. ‘We haven’t been to the pictures for a month.’

‘Oh, yes, we have quite a good selection of films,’ Mrs Mason replied, a little blurrily. ‘Only two days later than the Melbourne releases. Improving cinema, of course.
The Pio- neers. For the Term of his Natural Life. The Birth of White Australia
. They’re shown at the town hall. I always send the boys to see the Australian pictures, so good for them.’

‘None of the Hollywood films, then?’ asked Ruth, who had a passion for Ronald Coleman shared by Dot, who doted on that thin moustache he wore.

‘Well, yes, the Vue Grand cinema further down the hill shows them. Some of them are quite unsuitable for the young,’ said Mrs Mason.

‘I never censor, of course,’ said Phryne, in such a bright tone that Mrs Mason found herself nodding in agreement. ‘Young people must form their own tastes. Here come the boys, I believe,’ she added, as a thunder of footsteps came to her ear. It was either them or distant cattle stampeding.

‘Madam, dinner is served,’ announced the acidulated butler.

Dinner was, Phryne considered, sticky. The food was excellent of its kind. Conventional vegetable soup. A perfectly acceptable dish of fried fish with its accompaniment of chips. A slice or two of pleasantly cooked roast beef in its own gravy and the proper vegetables. A rice pudding. Anchovy toast.

The feast of reason and the flow of soul, however, lagged. Dot plugged along gamely on pictures she had seen, assisted by Ruth. Jane contemplated the boys with a cool, scientific eye. Mrs Mason ate heavily, as did Phryne. It had been a long day. The boys ate like wharfies who had been unloading coal all night. Conversation languished again. Jolyon yelped as someone—could it have been his mother?—kicked him in the shin.

‘You want to watch out for your hair,’ he told Ruth.

‘Oh? Why?’ she asked. It was an unusual conversational opening.

‘The phantom snipper,’ replied the boy in a deep radio-play tone.

‘Who’s he?’ asked Ruth, as she was required to ask.

‘You’re just walking along,’ elaborated Jolyon, ‘hatless and taking the air, when you feel a sudden pull from behind, and—snip! You turn around and there’s no one there. And when you feel around behind your neck,’ he said, groping at his nape in demonstration, ‘your plait’s gone or hanging by a thread! No one’s seen him, no one knows who he is . . . the phantom snipper!’

‘Jolyon, what nonsense,’ reproved Mrs Mason.

‘So there is no phantom snipper?’ asked Ruth, relieved. She greatly valued her long, thick chestnut hair.

‘Oh, there have been a couple of pranks, childish nonsense. Take no notice of it,’ ordered Mrs Mason. Ruth did not feel comforted.

Kiwi decided that it was his turn to carry the conversational burden.

‘Are you at school?’ he asked Jane, who was sitting nearest him.

‘Why, yes,’ she answered. ‘Are you?’

‘’Course,’ he said. And that appeared to exhaust his ability to chat.

‘I am going to be a doctor,’ Jane informed him.

‘Me too,’ said Kiwi, ‘but I’m a bit of a duffer at maths.’

‘I find chemistry difficult,’ confessed Jane. ‘The school doesn’t treat it seriously.’

‘I know.’ Kiwi was interested—in a girl! He never thought such a thing would happen. A little girl, too, not a glamorous creature. She still had plaits, until the phantom snipper caught her. But, however, she was right. ‘Stinks, they call it,’ he said bitterly.

‘And just as you get your solution hydrated someone comes in and makes you go and play hockey,’ Jane rejoined.

‘Too true! Or football,’ sighed Kiwi.

‘All right for you brainy chaps, I like football,’ objected Jolyon. ‘I’m going into my father’s office so I have to learn languages, and after a few hours of those fiendish Chinese verb forms I’m ready for a good game of footer. Or cricket. Anything that means I don’t have to think in tones.’

‘At least you’ve got your own tutor,’ said Kiwi. ‘I’ve got to share the science lab with a gang of oafs who just want me to make stinks. Rotten-egg gas. For one of their beastly rags.’

‘Hydrogen sulphide,’ said Jane. Kiwi regarded her with approval.

‘I say,’ he said. ‘I’ve got a lot of homework. Maths. Are you good at maths?’

‘No,’ said Jane, with perfect truth. ‘I am a maths prodigy, my teacher Miss Jones says. I am superbly good at maths.’

‘Wait a bit,’ put in Fraser. He pulled Kiwi towards him and hissed, ‘You don’t want to spend the hols reading! What about the treasure?’

‘No, but I need to do the homework,’ said Kiwi. ‘She can help me.’

‘Beastly swot!’ whispered Fraser.

‘I can hear you, you know,’ Jane informed him. ‘And who says I want to spend my holidays helping some boy emerge from his ignorance? As it happens, I don’t.’

She selected another piece of anchovy toast and ate it in a pointed manner. Ruth, almost bursting with laughter, smothered her face in her napkin. Dot smiled. The boys stared at each other, astounded. They had been willing to bestow the light of their countenances on this girl, even asking for her help, and she had firmly and haughtily rejected them. And she had eaten the last bit of anchovy toast.

Jane was rapidly gaining their respect.

Phryne, who had missed this byplay, was rising as her hostess did to retreat to the drawing room for coffee and an end, at last, to this uncomfortable dinner. She was surprised to find that her look of affectionate sympathy to the girls and Dot was being met by muffled giggles.

‘Nice to see the young people getting on so well,’ observed Mrs Mason.

The Phryne party fell over the front doorstep and into the house, shutting the door so they could snicker in comfort. Ruth sat down on the hallstand and almost cried with laughter. Dot chuckled. Jane was puzzled. So was Phryne.

‘What was that all about?’ she asked. ‘Come into the kitchen for a nice cup of cocoa and tell me all.’

They explained. They laughed again. They fed biscuits to Molly, who was ecstatic at their return. They heated the milk and made the hot drinks. Phryne patted Jane on the shoulder.

‘It’s all right, Jane dear, you did just the right thing.’

‘But what did they expect me to do?’ asked Jane, accepting her cocoa.

‘They expected you to be overwhelmed by the honour and spend your holidays doing this boy’s maths for him,’ said Dot. ‘The lazy little toad.’

‘But why should I do that?’ Jane asked, genuinely puzzled.

‘Because he’s a boy to whom no one has ever refused anything,’ explained Phryne. ‘Because he is used to getting his own way and he probably has a doting mother and several doting sisters who jump to it at his lightest whim.’

‘And aunties who knit him socks and nice woolly jumpers,’ added Ruth, mopping her wet face.

‘Oh,’ said Jane. ‘Very well then. I think I’ll just take a few of Mr Thomas’s books and go to bed.’

‘Me too. Tinker’s coming over at seven and I have to be up early for the deliveries.’ Ruth picked up her cup, then leaned over and kissed Miss Fisher on the cheek. ‘Thank you for a lovely party,’ she said, and giggled her way up the stairs. Yawning, Dot followed.

‘I am very proud of my adoptive daughters,’ said Phryne to Molly, who had taken up her usual station on Phryne’s feet. ‘I pity the doctor who tells Jane she can’t do something because she’s a girl. They’ll have to scrape him off the lecture-theatre floor and post him home to Mother. Ah, well, now, I suppose you wouldn’t want to stay here and guard the house, would you, Molly dear? No? Then come up with me,’ said Phryne, carrying her fillet in one hand. ‘It’s definitely time for bed.’