Death Before Wicket: Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries 10 (13 page)

Two poets dragged the combatants apart. Madame Sosostris sat down to her cards again, muttering, ‘Ancient fool!’

Brennan resumed his place amongst the poets, mumbling, ‘Ignorant bitch.’

Honours appeared to be about even. Phryne nodded to Chas Nuttall, who called from his argument about Cubism, ‘No luck with your lady, Phryne! No one’s seen her!’ and the bearded poet Jack, suppressing his usual greeting, dropped a Mallarmé quote in mid-sentence to report the same. Darlo Annie, he said, was missing, but no one at Tillie’s seemed concerned about her.

Joss and Clarence steered Phryne to a seat against the wall, out of the way of thrown objects, and brought someone to sit next to her. He had brown curly hair and brown eyes, an ordinary young man if one overlooked the fact that he was far too thin and vibrating with nerves.

‘I’m Phryne Fisher. Put this on,’ she said, holding his gaze with her own green stare. She looped the white cord over his neck and he put up a shaking hand to touch the amulet. She smelt the bracing scent of rosemary and wormwood and hoped he would inhale frequently. Rosemary for courage and wormwood to repel serpents. Also, while he wore it, he would never get moths. She tucked it briskly under his shirt.

‘There’s a lot of good solid magic in that,’ Phryne told him, thinking of Dot and her touching purchase of the St Michael medal.

‘But Miss Fisher, this will leave
you
unprotected,’ said Adam Harcourt, drawing a deep breath.

‘I have power of my own,’ said Phryne. ‘Don’t concern yourself about me, Mr Harcourt. Now, I am trying to extract you out of the soup, dear boy, and I need some information. So Joss and Clarence will go and fetch us a bottle of the good wine, if this place has any, and a few cups, chaps, if you can find some. Then Adam can decide if he wants to confide in me, and if he does, he can do so without anyone else listening.’

At this hint Joss and Clarence removed themselves. Adam Harcourt quavered, ‘What about Madame and Marrin?’

‘Leave Madame and Marrin to me,’ said Phryne with quiet confidence. ‘What are they threatening?’

‘To suck my soul out of my body,’ he whispered. Phryne laid a hand flat against the young man’s cheek, feeling his tremors. ‘To send an incubus. I am living in Paul’s, for the moment, and they know where I am. I have heard it scratching on my window every night, and sooner or later it will get in.’

‘In what form?’ asked Phryne, familiar with the conventions of this sort of Crowleyite Magick.

‘An owl,’ Adam shuddered. ‘A white owl.’

‘Hmm.’ Phryne was aware that the white owl meant death in most Celtic cultures. She was also aware that real owls appeared white in moonlight, and hunted the sparrows who lived in the creepers which covered old buildings. She had heard an owl beating the ivy with its wings and the sound could not be called comfortable, especially to a haunted imagination in a cold bed.

‘Have you thought of getting a friend to stay with you?’ she asked delicately, not being able yet to diagnose the victim’s sexual orientation. He was leaning his cheek into her caressing hand and she could feel his cold flesh warming at her touch.

‘No, I can’t possibly ask someone else to share the danger,’ protested Harcourt. ‘In any case, the incubus could get me while they slept unaware. Or so they say.’

This young man had been thoroughly bluffed and now was thoroughly terrified. Phryne could smell his fear, a scent as pungent as ammonia. She lit a cigarette to mask it—fear was catching—and asked, ‘How did you get involved with Madame and Marrin?’

‘She read my cards one night. I don’t usually come to Theo’s—it’s a bit out of my way. I’m not one of these privileged ones, you know, I’m a scholarship boy. My father’s a bricklayer. So I haven’t any money to spare for Bohemianism, and precious little time. I earn some extra money working in the library and a little more helping poor Mr Sykes with his books, though he has to pay me from his own pocket and he’s not too well off, either. But Joss brought me here one night, and Madame read my cards, and she saw right through me, into the fear.’

‘Fear?’ Phryne offered Harcourt a gasper and lit it for him. His hand trembled and the smoke went up in a wriggling stream, like a snake.

‘That someone is going to scream, “What are you doing here? Get back to the brickyard, peasant!” I always feel like that.’

‘So did I,’ soothed Phryne. ‘I come from Collingwood and my father was a wastrel. I know that feeling, Adam. It does, after awhile, almost wear off.’

‘It never will.’ Adam Harcourt shuddered again. ‘Then they asked me to the meetings of the temple. I was fascinated. They showed me some amazing things. I…became engrossed in it. In magic. I was an initiate. Then they asked me to steal the papyrus and I realised that I was in a terrible situation. I wouldn’t steal it—don’t think that I did, not in my own mind, I would never do that. But what if they mesmerised me, and I did it in a trance? That’s why I haven’t been able to defend myself properly. What if I am guilty?’

‘I think that very unlikely,’ said Phryne.

‘Why?’ asked Harcourt with the first stirrings of animation, ‘because of my moral character? You don’t know me, Miss Fisher. You don’t know what I’ve done.’

‘I can imagine what you’ve done. Ritual intercourse with a priestess, even Madame herself, perhaps? Ritual sodomy with Marrin? A little animal sacrifice and a great deal of blasphemy? Denied the Christ, trampled on a crucifix, spat on an icon, and kissed a number of unappetising parts of various images?’

Adam Harcourt blushed as purple as his amulet and buried his face in his hands. ‘Some of those things,’ he whispered.

‘Nothing worse than that, eh? That’s not so bad,’ soothed Phryne. ‘God will forgive you, that’s his function. All you have to do is buck up, young man, and defend yourself. And I believe you are not guilty of this burglary for another reason entirely.’

‘What?’ asked Harcourt, breathlessly.

‘If you had been put into trance and told to steal the papyrus, you’d have delivered it, and they would know where it was. They don’t. They’re still trying to buy it from Professor Bretherton. They might have been intelligent enough to instruct you to steal all of the contents of the safe, and they are certainly nasty enough to instruct you to leave the exam papers where any nosy Professor could find them, so that you would be ruined as a reward for your service to evil. But they haven’t got what they wanted, so whatever they tried to do to you didn’t work. And it shan’t work again.’

‘I hadn’t thought of that.’

‘No. Now, I am going to remove the magical threat. You shall sleep sound tonight or my name’s not Phryne Fisher, which, of course, it is. By the Lords of the Sea and the Sky, boy, how could you get involved with black magic without knowing that there is white magic as well?’ Phryne used Golden Dawn phrasing quite easily. ‘In a Manichean universe, they are equally powerful. Wear the amulet and drink some warm milk before retiring. Ask Joss or Clarence to sleep in your room. Assume that any noises off stage are natural. They will be. Is that clear?’

Adam Harcourt seemed relieved and was looking much healthier. Phryne could feel someone staring at her, but declined to dignify their regard by moving.

‘Yes, Miss Fisher.’

‘Do you believe that I will do this?’ she demanded, holding his eyes with her own. Adam blinked, looked down through long eyelashes, then took a deep breath and met her gaze again.

‘Yes, Miss Fisher,’ he said firmly.

‘Good boy. Now, tell me, in order, the events of Saturday morning. You were in the faculty office, helping Mr Sykes with his ledgers?’

‘Yes. We had the whole week laid out carefully and I was collating all the entries to see why we were eleven pounds seven shillings and fourpence out. He’d put an entry into the wrong side of the balance, poor man. If only he’d ask the Dean for some money so that he could employ me to keep the accounts properly, rather than try and fix them after he has made a hash of them, it would be a lot easier. To find that eleven pounds I had to go back to the previous Monday, a boring and laborious task.’

‘But you did it.’

‘Oh, yes. My field is languages but I’m quite good at figures. We’d finished when the Dean started on Mr Sykes about his inefficiency; he is inefficient but the Dean makes him more so, he bellows at him and flusters him and then he makes silly mistakes.

Finally the Dean went away and we stored the ledgers in the safe. Mr Sykes was so upset that he dropped the Book of Hours, and that made Bisset yell at him. Professor Kirkpatrick reproved Bisset for being unmannerly and they nearly quarrelled, too. They don’t see eye to eye with each other on Old Norse borrowings, either. It was one of those prickly days. Mr Sykes wanted to get away to his garden club meeting, so we just shoved everything into the safe and went out. I heard the safe clunk shut, so I’m sure it was locked. And Mr Sykes locked the faculty office, too.’

‘Have you a good memory for figures as well as a good head for them?’ asked Phryne.

‘Yes, pretty good,’ agreed Harcourt.

‘Then you could probably reconstruct the ledger in all essentials,’ she continued.

‘Yes, but they wouldn’t trust me now,’ said Harcourt sadly.

‘Another point in your favour,’ commented Phryne. ‘You could have looked at those exam papers at any time. How long had they been in the safe?’

‘Oh, they’ve been there for weeks,’ said Harcourt. ‘I wouldn’t do that. I’m good. I want…I wanted…to prove to them all that I’m good.’

‘So you shall,’ said Phryne. ‘Is there anything else you would like to confess? Here come our friends with a bottle.’

‘Nothing more. But do be careful, Miss Fisher. These people are dangerous.’

‘So am I,’ Phryne replied. ‘Watch.’

She accepted some of Joss’ red wine, took her cup over to Madame Sosostris and sat down uninvited, looking at the array of tarot cards.

‘You were trying to attract my attention?’ she asked politely. Madame did not speak for a long moment. Phryne sipped her wine—thin, sour and cheap Italian chianti. She lounged, looking bored and garish in her patterned silk coat and her purple dress. The noise of Chas Nuttall passionately defending kitchen utensils as suitable subjects for the depiction of the Beautiful dominated the room. Phryne glanced at the tarot.

‘Interesting,’ Phryne commented, as Madame did not seem inclined to speak. ‘May I see?’

The dark woman in the turban allowed Phryne to sweep the cards together and look through them. This was another indication that she was not a believer. A real gypsy might be in Theo’s reading fortunes, as a real gypsy might be anywhere where there were customers. But a Romany would not allow anyone else to casually handle her cards, believing that thus her own influence would be diluted and her contact with the inchoate future would be lost.

‘That young man,’ said Phryne, laying down a card.

‘The Page of Wands,’ said a voice behind Phryne. She did not turn around. She lifted her eyes to a mirror on the wall and saw a perfectly bald man leaning over her shoulder. His front teeth were filed to a point. His fingernails, she noticed as he put one hand flat on the table, were coloured blood red. This must be Marrin.

‘He neither has your papyrus nor can he lay hands on it,’ she said clearly but softly. ‘There is no purpose in tormenting him further. If you do not leave him alone…’ She put down another card. On it a young woman forced a lion’s mouth closed.

‘Strength,’ said Marrin.

‘… I will be cross,’ said Phryne, looking deep into Madame’s black eyes. ‘And if you were looking for a card for me,’ she added, putting one down with a little slap. On a rose-wreathed throne, a crowned woman stared into a pentacle held on her lap.

‘The Queen of Pentacles,’ said Marrin. ‘A woman of wealth and power. But equally,’ he reached into the pack and drew a card seemingly at random, ‘there is me.’

‘The Devil,’ said Phryne, looking at a pair of naked humans chained at the feet of Baphomet, the alleged God of the Templars, a satyr with female breasts and an inverted pentacle between his eyes.

‘And there is Madame.’ Another card fluttered to the table.

‘Sophia. Wisdom. The High Priestess,’ said Phryne. ‘Sitting between the pillars of light and dark, holding the scroll of the law on her lap. Do you always award yourselves Major Arcana?

Mostly they apply to fates and cosmic events. You should ask Professor Brennan to explain to you about hubris. I’m not impressed and I’m not frightened,’ she said flatly. ‘Not by the pointy teeth or the nail-polish or the sleight-of-hand.’ Marrin moved to stand behind Madame Sosostris. They both stared at her and she neither blinked nor looked away, a Dutch-doll woman with piercing cat’s eyes and a mouth set like a lintel.

‘You’re not,’ agreed Madame in a husky, middle-European voice. ‘You aren’t Hungarian, are you?’

‘No.’

The staring match continued. Phryne, who could outstare a gargoyle, was almost bored. Eventually Madame looked away, and a moment later Marrin blinked.

‘You’re powerful,’ he conceded.

‘Have I made my point?’ asked Phryne.

‘You want Harcourt released?’

‘I do. I don’t want to put any damper on your activities— they are none of my business. Find another playmate, there is a wide selection here. But release Harcourt. I want to find out what happened to the contents of that safe. I want to clear his name. And I want to find that papyrus.’