Murder on a Midsummer Night (22 page)

‘Can you see him, Vern?’

‘Yair, I can see him, Curly. Clear as day. And I can see the moonlight through him, too.’

‘D’you reckon he’s a crusader?’

‘Nah, they had them big pots on their heads and all that metal. He’s only got a tin helmet like ours and that sort of string vest knitted out of wire. Horse’s a bit hairy round the hocks, too.’

‘What’s he doing here, then?’

‘I reckon,’ said Vern, lighting his stub of a cigarette, ‘I reckon he’s saying, the poor bugger, “About time you blew in, you blokes. It’s been seven hundred bloody years.” ’

‘Well, we got here in the end,’ said Curly.

‘Yair. And we took the Holy Land back.’

Solemnly, with strict, formal movements, the soldiers saluted the ghost.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

O Lord! methought what pain it was to drown!
What dreadful noise of water in mine ears!
What sights of ugly death within mine eyes!
Methought I saw a thousand fearful wrecks;
A thousand men that fishes gnaw’d upon;
Wedges of gold, great anchors, heaps of pearl,
Inestimable stones, unvalu’d jewels,
All scattered in the bottom of the sea

William Shakespeare
King Richard III

Phryne woke feeling as though she had been dragged through several hedges backwards. Her recollections of the night before were clear but confusing. Which part of those fascinating manifestations had been Lin’s magic? Which had been your actual Augustine?

She bathed at length—not in Ocean, she was going to have to get over that drowning first—dressed and ate her croissant and puzzled while Dot kept the girls occupied by planning what they would take on holiday. A very pleased Jack Robinson came with another orchid and a report on events. Gertrude was distraught. She had thought that Simon was a baker and that they would marry. Veronica Collins, however, was bearing up. Simon was perfectly unrepentant and had cursed his own father when the old man came to visit him.

‘He’s a piece of work all right,’ he said, accepting a glass of beer. ‘He’s been mad about this Temple treasure—thought the prof was searching for it, as he might have been, of course. There was a rumour that some of it was found during the war. Soldiers’ tales! Simon believed it. Burgled your house on the off chance there was a code in your Greek plays. Walked a tightrope telling that Atkinson mob about pirates. Ran all those women against each other to find out all he could and then finally killed poor old Augustine for knowledge he didn’t have. He’ll hang,’ said Jack Robinson, finishing the beer. ‘And good riddance.’

When Lin arrived at eleven Phryne sat him down with a brandy and soda and demanded, ‘All right, explain.’

‘If you explain how you knew it was Simon,’ he bargained.

‘Deal. I didn’t precisely know it was him,’ she added. ‘I just thought it might be, if it wasn’t the Atkinsons. It was being drowned in soapy water, you see.’

Lin did not see.

‘Two places you find standing water with soap in it. One, in a bathroom. I thought they might have tortured Augustine by plunging his head under the water, then pulling him out again, and left him under once too long. Schoolgirls do it to unpopular girls.’

‘And unpopular boys,’ said Lin, taking a gulp of his drink.

‘But then I thought, if it wasn’t them, where else would you find soapy water? In the copper on a Sunday, where the maids leave their smalls to soak until Monday, which is wash day. I knew that Gerald would have his linen sent out, so I asked Dot to ask Gertrude about it, and she agreed that the washtub would have been full of soapy water on Sunday night—which is when Augustine disappeared. Simon collared him on his way out, and dragged him into the backyard. The questions which the Atkinsons asked him must have made Augustine suspicious so Simon knew he was about to be exposed. Simon filled Augustine with whisky to make him drunk and confess. He got drunk, but he didn’t confess because he didn’t know. Then Simon tortured him for the location of the Temple treasure, and held him under too long. When he realised that Augustine was dead, he strapped the body to his own back, zoomed off to the sea, and threw him in. Just as the spirits said, if it was the spirits. Now you.’

‘A certain level of sound makes animals nervous,’ explained Lin Chung. ‘We have known this for many years. There are places where the earth makes this sound, too low to hear, where men cannot live and cattle cannot graze. I rigged up a generator for my electricity for my lantern slides, and also to send out this sound, which gives everyone the . . . what was the word?’

‘Willies. It worked. I was afraid, all right. And the dreadful smell?’

‘Just an incense I made from wet earth, carefully aged ox liver and essence of roses. Blown into the house by a fan. The sounds were records on a wind-up gramophone. They are used for radio plays. I borrowed them from my cousin. The images were cast onto a screen, which was canvas but painted to look like plaster with which I replaced a section of parlour wall. The initial voices were me. The later ones—well, they weren’t me. That’s all I can say.’

‘Brilliant,’ said Phryne, and kissed him. ‘I am going on holiday,’ she said. ‘After my birthday. Any chance that you might take a trip to Queenscliff?’

‘Every chance,’ he said fondly.

Mrs Manifold received Phryne in her decorated parlour. There was Morris paper on the walls and Morris tapestries on the chairs and an array of Pre-Raphaelite paintings on the walls. The tea, however, was herbal and thin, though hot. Mrs Manifold sat as straight as a poker in her hand-woven daisy smock and her bare head.

‘You have found the murderer?’ she asked in her harsh voice.

‘I have,’ said Phryne.

‘Who is he?’

‘Simon Rosenberg, who used to deal with your son. He made him drunk then drowned him in a washtub and threw the body into the sea.’

Phryne did not mince her words. Mrs Manifold was owed the truth and would not have welcomed any polite evasions.

‘The police have been here to speak to Sophie. They say that she helped this murderer.’

‘No, you misunderstood. He is a very pleasing young man. Two other women were fooled by him, and one of them is distraught. He seduced Sophie to let him into the shop. That is all she did. And I have no doubt that she is very sorry.’

‘She is very sorry,’ conceded Mrs Manifold.

‘Will you dismiss her?’

‘No,’ said the old woman. ‘She knows the business. And she has backbone. She will not be fooled again.’

‘Indeed,’ said Phryne, a little chilled despite the tea.

‘Will he hang?’ asked Mrs Manifold.

‘Oh, yes, he will hang,’ responded Phryne.

‘Go down into the shop,’ Mrs Manifold said slowly. ‘Take anything you want. Thank you. Goodbye,’ she said.

Phryne went into the shop, where Cedric Yates was awkwardly patting a sobbing Sophie on the shoulder.

‘You have a go, Miss, she won’t listen to me,’ he said.

‘Wouldn’t matter who was patting her,’ Phryne replied. ‘Her heart is broken. Sophie? You go up to your room, now, and lie down for a while. You’ll have to mind the shop, Mr Yates. I’m to choose my reward for finding Augustine’s murderer.’

‘You did a bonzer job, Miss. Cec said you was clever. What do you fancy, then? A painting? An ornament? Some of that jewellery?’

‘Yes,’ said Phryne, wanting to get out of this place. ‘There’s a Fabergé necklace with mistletoe and pearls. Ask Mrs Manifold to box it up and send it to me.’

‘If you can wait, I’ll do it now,’ he told her. ‘Just a tick. I got Sophie’s keys.’

Phryne identified the necklace and trailed around the room, noting the Dulac lady with the bears and the dynamic Fauve sketches. So much beauty. So much waste. And poor Augustine murdered, not knowing anything about the Temple treasure. She hoped that it had been him speaking through the medium and that he had forgiven the Atkinsons, who were guilty of nothing more than greed and drug abuse . . .

‘Here you are,’ said Cedric Yates, handing her a parcel. ‘All done up nice. You did good, Miss,’ he said, as he opened the door for her. ‘You did real good.’

Phryne went home for a nap. When she came in she heard Priscilla’s voice in the parlour.

‘You can come back,’ she was telling her brother. ‘It’s all right now. And Stephanie is leaving us to join a guru in India. It’s all been a shock for us. And Luke was only joking, you know, with the knife.’

‘I’m not going back,’ said James firmly. ‘Nor are you, if you have any sense. But I’m glad it’s all settled, Pris. I’ll be waiting at the old house, if you want to come home.’

‘I’ll give you a lift,’ said Priscilla. James passed Phryne at the door, said, ‘Er, thanks, Miss Fisher, goodbye,’ and left. Mannerless, but at least he had gone.

‘Hello, Mr Butler, I’ll just settle down here at the phone for a while,’ said Phryne. ‘I need to ring the Queenscliff Hotel, and then the Windsor. It’ll be my birthday soon.’

‘I’m sure it will be very happy, Miss,’ observed Mr Butler.

As he would, with a month on board wages and no drinks to serve. He went to direct the Thursday housemaid to change the sheets in the spare bedroom and clean thoroughly. The chief virtue of that somnolent young man, Mr Butler considered, was that he had gone.

Dear Professor

I am afraid that you will be thinking me such a fraud so I will explain what has been going on with Mr Atkinson’s people. Mr Atkinson, who is a dear friend, has enthusiasms and it does me no harm to indulge them. I have allowed them to believe that I have some line on this treasure, assisted by Simon, who is otherwise not in my confidence. But just lately I have begun to think that he is playing some sort of double-game, I no longer trust him, not that I ever really did. So I am telling you all about it. If you will allow me to trespass on your time.

When I was looking around the ruins of an old hotel in Bendigo, looking for any little bits and pieces I could repair and sell, I came across a big iron pot, still sealed. I bought it along with a lot of other old wares, and it was some time before I got around to opening it. The lid had been welded on. Inside was a bushranger’s hoard of gold dust, already beginning to melt around the edges. It was enough to keep Mother in comfort and allow me a house of my own, which as you know was what I have always wanted. There was no way of finding the owner, anyway. I reckon the pot was hidden in about 1853.

So I got a pal of mine—no names, no pack drill—to melt the gold into ingots, and they are beneath the floor in my work room under the board that creaks. If something happens to me, can you make sure that Mother gets the gold, and that my workman and the girl are looked after?

I’m probably worrying you for nothing. But still.

Yours faithfully,

Augustine Manifold

PS I got a clue to your Temple treasure, too. I got the vendors to trace out the carvings. I’ll give it to you when we next meet. AM

It was a very merry party. The Windsor had been Phryne’s home before she had found her little house, and she doted on every curlicue in the Grinling Gibbons-like carving on every little chequer of coloured glass in the windows, and every black and white tile on the floor.

She had chosen the Grand Ballroom for her tiny party, as her guest list had become alarmingly long. The company would not have fitted into the Esplanade house, even if Mrs Butler could have cooked for so many.

The dinner had been good, with all her favourite dishes. Lobster mayonnaise.
Goujons de poulet Princesse
. Her birthday cake had towered like a wedding cake. Now her guests were dancing, and Phryne, leaning on Lin Chung and sipping champagne, watched them.

Jane and Ruth had been taught dancing at their select academy, but they had never thought that it could be fun. Now Ruth was in the arms of Mr Archibald Lawrence, who was telling her about great romances of the theatre, which so enthralled her that she forgot about her feet. Jane was dancing with Mr Palisi the undertaker, doubtless swapping reminiscences of dead people they had met. Dot swept along, dancing with Hugh, her intended, who danced very well for a policeman. Cedric Yates danced with Sophie, who seemed to have recovered a little. He was awkward with his one leg but Sophie did not seem to mind. Mr Wright danced with Mrs Manifold. He had always been a brave man.

Her friends from the circus were present, as the illness of the premier elephant had stalled their circuit and they were all in town. Strong man Samson, gypsy Alan Lee, Farrell himself, Doreen without her snake. Mr Burton, an eminent and elderly dwarf, was dancing with Dr MacMillan and conversing about Border ballads.

‘Lovely party,’ said a hurried voice. ‘But we’ve got to go. We’ve heard of the most astounding physical medium, my dear, and she ought to lead us to the Temple treasure!’ Gerald Atkinson, breathless, kissed Phryne’s hand and led his entourage out of the room.