Death Before Wicket: Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries 10 (25 page)

Phryne shut the door on Brazell and opened the outer door, little gun in hand. Professor Ayers was standing there. He blinked, dragged in a deep breath, and swayed like a palm tree.

‘Miss Fisher, do you know what you’re wearing?’ he asked.

‘Come in, Tom. I can only spare you a moment—my escort must be about to arrive.’

‘Oh, you’re going to the temple, then?’ he asked anxiously. ‘Do be careful, Miss Fisher, I know it must be an honour to be asked, but these are very dangerous people.’

‘No, I’m going to the Artist’s Ball, and although they may be drunken wretches I doubt if they are dangerous. What did you think I was doing?’

He leaned on a chair back and fanned himself with his open hand.

‘That’s all right then. I thought, when I saw you wearing all the badges of Isis…’

‘Yes, Hathor might have been better, but I would rather be Mistress of Magic than Goddess of Love and Music, and in any case, I never will understand the Egyptian affection for cows,’ said Phryne, who had researched the matter—in point of fact, from
The Golden Bough
. ‘I have no intention of indulging in magic tonight, except the usual kind made of music and wine. What are you intending to do?’

‘I’m going to write a little more of my paper on Khufu, lie back in the luxurious bed allowed me by your largess, imagine that I am a
houri
and invite the sandman in,’ said Ayers.

‘Just so long as it isn’t the hall porter,’ said Phryne, grinning at his shocked expression, and allowed him to leave. ‘Good night, Mr Sanders.’

Bowing over her hand, Ayers said, ‘Dance well, Lady of Spells,’ and was gone.

Phryne went into her bedroom to collect her cloak and found Brazell tucked up in her bed, smiling.

‘Are you sure that you’ll be all right, Edmund dear?’ she asked. Against the white sheet, he looked rather like a deceased pope: beaked nose, hollow eyes and black beard.

‘Miss Fisher, you have transformed me from a S-Stoic in good s-standing to an Epicurean in bad s-standing,’ he said, without opening his eyes. ‘And I don’t know when I’ve been s-so happy.’

‘Sleep well,’ said Phryne.

She went out into the parlour, brewed herself a cup of café Hellenico on Dot’s spirit stove, and drank it carefully, feeling the essence of coffee racing through her veins. This might prove to be an interesting evening. In any case, it was the social event of the season.

Chas Nuttall met her in reception and looked just as taken aback as Phryne would have wished.

‘You look…’ Words failed him. He was attired in a canvas smock and leggings which someone had painted like a playing card. He wore a Tudor bonnet and crown and a remarkably realistic pointed beard.

‘The Knave of Hearts he stole some tarts,’ said Phryne, walking around him. ‘Very pretty, Chas.’

‘Of course, I know I broke my word about shaving.’ He grinned knavishly. ‘But it’ll come off tomorrow, I promise.’

‘If you want to keep that spiffy little pointed beard, I release you from your oath. The uncut version looked like stuffing from a horsehair sofa, and I only wanted you to remove it in the interests of public amenity in Sydney,’ said Phryne. ‘Let’s go, shall we?’

‘You’re going to make a stir in that dress,’ prophesied Chas. ‘Have you got anything on underneath it?’

‘That’s for me to know and you not to even think of attempting to find out,’ said Phryne firmly.

The Town Hall was lit with electricity, a Romanesque pile with pretensions. Phryne wore her cloak into the building and into Centennial Hall and up to the balcony. The place was so full of people that it was hard to guess what it usually looked like. Hundreds of helium balloons were ascending ceiling-ward bobbing around the organ. Streamers hung from improbable vantage points. The noise of voices easily drowned the attempts of a jazz band to lend a little atmosphere to the ball. Notwithstanding this fact, a lot of couples were dancing. Some were dancing the Charleston, some the Bunny-hug, and some that indiscriminate sliding embrace known as the Nightclub Shuffle. Each, Phryne noticed, were dancing to their own private tunes and some were gravitating to corners and alcoves where other music was playing. The pipes of Pan, perhaps.

‘Are you carrying anything?’ asked Chas. Phryne wondered if he was asking for drugs and was preparing to squash him when she reflected that she was in Sydney, where there might be a dialect difference. Phryne had tried cocaine once. She had spent almost a day and night unable to shut her eyes, compulsively talking, and had woken from nightmares with the only real episode of depression in her life. The price, she thought, was too high for the rush. There were many other ways of getting thrills, and most of them were legal, available, and did not rot the nasal linings.

‘What, precisely, should I be carrying?’ she asked.

‘Why, a little bit of a drink to wet the whistle,’ said Chas. ‘There’s a bar in the basement but the price is ruinous.’

‘Sorry, Chas. I have drunk quite enough for one night. I am not going to insult Chateau Petrus by adding punch on top of it. Go and buy a beer or three,’ said Phryne, stuffing a note into the Knave’s hand. ‘I’ll be down there if you are looking for me.’

‘You’re a good fellow, Phryne,’ said Chas and rattled down the steps.

So now she was on her own, with an effect to make.

Phryne handed the cloak to a girl and received a ticket, ducked behind a solemn-faced policeman to straighten her cobra’s head fillet, and came out to stand at the head of the stairs.

This had, of course, been done before, most notably in 1924 by Dulcie Deamer in a rather daring animal skin. But Phryne was a stranger. No one knew what to expect of her. The crowd on the dance floor shuffled to a halt. The band tootled itself into silence. Everyone looked at the shameless woman at the head of the stairs.

The poets turned as one man as she stood there. Jack gaped. Bill grabbed George’s arm.

‘Chris said she was Lilith,’ he gasped.

Phryne seemed naked under the columnar fall of the Egyptian cotton gown, which descended in a straight line from throat to feet, almost transparent with the strong light behind her. The heavy collar of red and green faience beads seemed to be the only thing holding the gown on (though this was not, in fact, the case) and her neat black head was crowned with Isis’ symbol, a blue faience construction rather like an L. Her face was white, her eyes circled in black. Her mouth was red as blood. She lifted her chin to survey the crowd. Proud. Wise. Beautiful. Worshipful. The Mistress of Magic.

‘She is not Lilith,’ said Marrin, pushing George aside. ‘She is Isis.’

Phryne smiled very slightly at the applause then began to walk slowly down the stairs, holding herself with regal stiffness.

All of her bruises were crying aloud for attention and reminding her that she could have stayed in bed with Edmund Brazell, a man with whom it was definitely worth staying in bed. But not even the remarkable professor could have given Phryne that accolade: the moment of silence as all the men in the room desired her at once.

Worth stretching a few joints and leaving a lover for a few hours. Something she would only be able to do a few times in one lifetime.

Chas Nuttall fought his way up through the rabble with two glasses of beer in time to see her reach the bottom of the stairs and look around for an interesting person. None of the immediate human offerings seemed to attract her. Jack, George and Bill overcame their astonishment quickly and shoved through the mass.

‘Miss Fisher? You look splendid,’ babbled Bill. Phryne turned her head, having to move carefully under the headdress.

‘You owe me a shilling,’ she said to Jack, who looked puzzled.

‘It hasn’t been a week,’ said Phryne, ‘but our acquaintance is no closer.’

‘Fair go,’ said Jack, recovering quickly and aware that his pockets held exactly ninepence. ‘I haven’t seen a lot of you. Not as much as I’m seeing now,’ he grinned.

‘And this is as much of me as you will ever see,’ said Phryne implacably.

‘Besides, I say that to all the girls,’ said Jack. ‘Just in case one…er…wants to lose a bet. Well, it worked once,’ he added. ‘And you never know your luck in the big city.’

‘Uniformly bad, I should say,’ replied Phryne.

The jazz band had recovered from its amazement and picked up approximately where they had left off, more or less. It was getting late and the band were, along with the dancers, both tired and emotional. Not their fault, as they later pointed out to a policeman whose profession had hardened him against sad stories of human frailty. People kept buying them drinks. Bringing them drinks. And, naturally, they had drunk the drinks so charitably provided. People might have got offended if they hadn’t, officer.

The drummer was playing in a time that was being estimated by his critics at two-and-a-quarter per bar, variable, the trombone player was yawning, the cornet was asleep and competent medical advice might have declared the banjo player to be clinically dead, except that he was still strumming. The fact that he was strumming ‘Bye, Bye, Blackbird’ while the rest of the band was playing ‘Tiger Rag” was going unnoticed in the general clamour.

Phryne accepted an invitation to turkey-trot from George and slid away into the mass of dancers. George might have been a good dancer—there was simply no way of telling. Phryne wreathed her arms around his neck and tried to keep her feet out of the way of boots as beggars, rabbits, someone who was probably impersonating a pixie and presumably meant well and the poet Villon in someone’s tights milled and swayed.

This crowd was drunk, thought Phryne, slipping a sandal out from under a descending thigh-high boot which belonged to a rather tasty Robin Hood. So far they were drunk and cheerful, drunk and amorous, drunk and morose perhaps but not drunk and belligerent or drunk and disorderly. Various policemen who stood around the walls were also blinking gently and had probably absorbed a good deal of the old familiar juice. One, in fact, was so glazed that he had allowed a large lady dressed as a kangaroo and carrying a whole bottle of gin in her pouch past him without saying a word. As Phryne watched over George’s shoulder, he slid bonelessly to the ground and lay there unregarded, a small smile on his face and his helmet resting at the foot of a marble plinth.

Interesting, thought Phryne. I cannot imagine this happening in Melbourne.

The temperature in the hall was high. Phryne was glad that she was so lightly dressed, and that she had not worn greasepaint. Everyone who had was sweating profusely. Though it was educational to see just who was wearing make-up.

A young man in a toga, wearing rather too much eyeliner, slid Phryne from George’s arms and carried her away into the crowd. ‘Such a press,’ he said into her ear. ‘Would you care to come out onto the balcony?’

‘Not at present, Caligula,’ Phryne replied, fending off hands which showed a tendency to wander and conscious of Professor Brazell waiting in her bed at the hotel. ‘I mustn’t be greedy,’ she added, to the young man’s evident puzzlement. Then his mascara’d eyes widened and he stepped away from Phryne, allowing another to move into his place. Someone dressed in a black silk robe with moons and stars on it and a tall pointy hat. He removed it and bowed.

‘Lady Isis.’ Marrin smiled his shark’s tooth smile, and Phryne spoke sternly to her skin, which crept under his clammy touch. Then the room went blurry, and Phryne heard her own voice speaking as though it belonged to someone else.

‘Marrin,’ she said sadly. ‘I’m very disappointed in you.’

‘Lady?’ he asked.

‘You are supposed to be my worshipper,’ said Phryne, wondering what on earth she was saying and when this strange state would wear off.

‘Lady, I worship you,’ replied Marrin, alert for some trick but trapped by Phryne’s persona and the strange gaze of her kohled eyes.

‘Then you should have trusted me,’ said Phryne, opening her mouth to see what came out. ‘I never demanded human sacrifice, Marrin. To use my own serpent for such a purpose will defeat your working. You must come to Isis with a pure heart,’ she went on, not knowing what was inspiring this line of dialogue but agog to hear what she would say next.

Perhaps it was more than a bottle of Chateau Petrus in one evening.

‘Lady Isis, forgive your slave,’ said Marrin. He did not have room to kneel, but he bent his head, revealing an unexpectedly vulnerable nape of the neck, shaven clean and shining.

‘It is my will that you undertake what this woman asks,’ Phryne heard herself say. ‘Then, perhaps, what you seek shall be found.
Apocaljpsos
,’ she said. Phryne did not know the word. She shook herself and the room clicked back into focus.

‘Marrin,’ said Phryne, herself again. ‘Did you do that?’

‘No,’ said Marrin. ‘You were possessed.’

Phryne gave him a sceptical look and drew them both towards an alcove she had spotted under the stairs. The other couple there were far too advanced in the worship of Dionysius to pay them any attention.

‘It is true,’ insisted Marrin. ‘You wear Isis’ symbols and perhaps you yourself are a Mistress of Magic as she is. You are a woman of power,’ he said.

‘Nonsense. What does
apocaljpsos
mean?’

‘It’s Greek for “that which is revealed”,’ said Marrin. ‘She’s here, all right, she chose you, and now I have sworn to do as you instruct. What is your will, Lady?’