Murder on a Midsummer Night (7 page)

‘What d’ya want ter know me name for?’ he growled.

‘So I can attribute your quote. How long have you been working here, Mr . . . ?’ She paused invitingly.

‘Burwood,’ he snarled. ‘Kev Burwood. You want to know what it’s like working here? It’s crook. Out on the steps in all weathers, rain or shine. I asked ’em for an umbrella or even a chair and they turned me down flat. Suffer chronic with me chest in the cold.’

‘And with the heat?’ asked Phryne, having successfully tapped into a rich vein of complaint.

‘Yair. I sweat buckets in this serge uniform in the summer, and can I get a lightweight one? Not in the budget, they say. And then there’s the smell. You smell it?’

‘I can smell it,’ agreed Phryne, making fraudulent pot hooks in her notebook.

‘Turn a man’s stomach. Mind you, the Lord High Mucky-mucks don’t smell it, not them, they’ve got those gauze masks. Whole place is swilled down every night with phenol as if it was a piggery. Can’t smell a thing but phenol for hours and it makes me tea taste crook. Missus says it don’t matter what she cooks ’cos I can’t taste it anyway. I told ’em, what about carbolic, it’s a nice clean smell, they even put it in them soaps that ladies use, but they says, too expensive and phenol does the job. You gettin’ all this down?’ he demanded.

‘Every word,’ lied Phryne.

‘Then there’s the people. There’s a mob up and down these steps all the day long—cops, doctors, relatives, and most of them ain’t good company. Blubberin’ widows, sons whose old man has just kicked the bucket, girls whose young feller has just thrown a seven. All that stone motherless misery gets me goat.’

‘Why do you stay?’ asked Phryne, who had seen Jane returning with the curly-headed boy, Mike. She slipped Jane a coin to hand on and saw it trousered by the future driver of the Indian Pacific.

‘You mad?’ asked Mr Burwood belligerently. ‘It’s a job, lady. Long as I stay on these steps I’ve got a job. And they ain’t too easy to come by, these days.’

‘That’s true. Well, thank you, Mr Burwood, it’s been nice talking to you.’ She really was going to go to hell for fibbing, she thought.

‘Lady!’ the gnarled hand came out to grab at her arm. ‘I need this job. Don’t put me name in the paper, eh?’

Phryne, feeling a little ashamed of herself, agreed that it was highly unlikely that it would appear in any newspaper, and, gathering Jane, went back to the car.

‘You’ve got it?’

‘I’ve got it,’ said Jane, alight with purpose.

‘Then off with us to Dr MacMillan at the Queen Victoria Hospital. Want me to wait?’

‘Oh, no, Miss Phryne,’ said Jane, shutting her eyes again as the big car slid into traffic. ‘I can catch the tram.’

‘You’re sure?’ asked Phryne, avoiding immolation by police van by two inches.

‘Absolutely sure,’ promised Jane, conscious of a sixpence in her knicker leg. Petty theft in the name of medicine was one level of risk. Driving with Miss Phryne was another thing altogether.

Phryne arrived home feeling as though she had been simmered on a stove, probably with vegetables. The heat was making her sluggish. She had a slight headache after absorbing gin during the day. Also, the air felt impatient and portentous, as though a storm was brewing. From the hall table she took Mr Adami’s parcel. It was a well-wrapped box, starred all over with sealing wax into which someone had repeatedly impressed a signet ring.

This will never do, she said to herself. A mystery of my very own and I’m so tired and grimy and hot that I’m not excited by it. Well, this box has waited a long time to be opened. It can wait until I have had a little nap and am feeling more the thing.

The admirable Mr Butler had noticed how his employer felt about the weather and had decided to compensate for the temperature. As Phryne opened her boudoir door after a brief wash in lukewarm water, a rush of cold air caressed her undraped form. For a moment she stood naked in the cold blast and smiled seraphically, though seraphs generally wore more clothes. How had this miracle come about?

Mr Butler had placed a large lump of commercial ice in a washtub on a chair, and directed over it the breeze from the tall electric fan. Phryne sank down supine on her bed and let the cool air flow over her. The Roman emperors, she recalled, had caused slaves to run ice convoys from Mount Hymettus to cool their rooms in the same way. Utterly content and mildly imagining the matched Circassian twins she might have bought for her own delectation in the old days, she fell into a light doze.

She woke to a growl of thunder outside and went down under paw as Ember crossed her body on his way to her wardrobe. Ember had been found by Jane as a mere slip of a soaking wet kitten, lost in a tempest, and this had evidently caused the feline equivalent of shell shock. As far as Ember was concerned, the only place from which to watch a good thunderstorm was inside a closed mahogany wardrobe within a stone-built waterproof house, preferably with a few crushed silk blouses to repose upon. If they weren’t crushed silk to begin with, he was happy to provide that service. Phryne heard the
ping
as the shirt parted company with its hanger and the click as the door closed behind the fleeing black tail. Ember was earthed for the duration.

Phryne rose and dressed and pulled back her curtains. She opened the window. A louder growl muttered across the horizon. The hot air outside was as heavy as wet velvet and full of expectation. There was a flutter of sheet lightning across the sea. Phryne turned off the lights and the electric fan.

With a high explosive thud and a crash the storm arrived. Water impacted the window as though thrown from a bucket. The skies lit, once, twice, with fierce actinic light. Trees thrashed under contrary winds. The vine raked the window as though desperate to get in out of the wind. The temperature dropped twenty degrees, flooding the house with the scent of hot asphalt doused in rainwater, one of the premium scents in the world. The flies that had been tormenting Phryne all day whisked away and vanished. Rain poured down in a constant stream.

Phryne laughed, wrestled the window closed, bade Ember to stay where he was, and went downstairs. Now that someone mentioned it, she was hungry, and that was the dinner gong sounding in the hall even now.

Mrs Butler opened the kitchen door and ordered Mr Butler to put out all the house plants so that they could get some refreshing rain. She herself added a tub to catch rainwater for washing her own hair. Then she modified her menu. The cold salad dinner was transformed into a thunderstorm change-of-temperature dinner by the simple expedient of heating up the cold potato and leek soup and the vegetable hash to go with the rewarmed corned beef. Phryne’s family sat down to an ideal dinner for the change, with both cold and hot components, and sweet, sour, salty and bitter elements. Mrs Butler had never heard of the theory of the four humours, but she knew what made a good table.

And when in the middle of the soup course the lights went out, Mr Butler lit branches of candles and continued serenely on his butlerine way.

‘Isn’t it romantic?’ breathed Ruth.

‘It’s a lovely light,’ agreed Phryne. ‘My great-grandmother was a beauty in her day, and she always refused to have the electric lights on when she came down to dinner. She said that women over a certain age should never allow themselves to be seen in electric light. Far too harsh, like the Australian sun.’

‘Bit difficult to manage now,’ commented Jane.

‘And an awful lot of work,’ said Dot. ‘Someone has to clean and polish all the candlesticks and pare, snuff and replace all the candles.’

‘Yes, I imagine there was a candle boy,’ said Phryne airily. The soup was superb, the corned beef in its blanket of mustard sauce was just the ticket, and she was feeling refreshed. ‘Before my time, of course. No, thank you, Mr Butler, just some more lemonade. Well, we have advanced in our case, with the help of Jane doing the Sexton Blake and me doing the distracting. Did Dr MacMillan allow you to watch the tests, Jane?’

‘Oh, yes, in the hospital laboratory, it was so interesting! She let me do the testing. She’s wonderful,’ said Jane dreamily.

‘And after dinner you shall tell us all about it. Dot, dear, are you well?’

‘Just a bit off-colour, Miss. I got a headache and then I fell asleep. I’ll drink some coffee and I’ll be fine.’

‘Good. I have Mr Adami’s package, which we shall open later.’

‘Tell us about your great-grandmother,’ said Ruth. ‘Was she very beautiful?’

‘Oh, indeed, Arcadia was a tall, strong, robust woman, big bosomed like the last century preferred, with china blue eyes and golden hair which almost reached her knees. She was an American, a rich heiress, but they say that after a few years she was an English aristocrat to a T. She fell in love with my scapegrace ancestor when he was rusticated to Chicago for some mad gamble on a cross-country horse race. She just bundled up her hair and kilted her skirt and followed him, despite what her papa said about penniless noblemen. And eventually her papa forgave her and handed over the dowry.’

‘And did they live happily ever after?’

‘Tolerably so,’ said Phryne, not wanting to bruise Ruth’s romantic heart. ‘They had eight children, and she transformed the big house: heating, lighting, plumbing. When she was old she used to have her chair pushed to the top of Dewberry Hill to watch all the lights put on at once, so that she could see the house lit up like a birthday cake. I’ve got some of her jewellery: the diamond tiara, parure, clips, earrings and bracelets. And the big ruby.’

‘Eton mess!’ exclaimed Dot as dessert and coffee were brought in. ‘Wonderful.’

Phryne stuck a pleased spoon into the mixture of raspberries, cream and broken meringues. Despite the feral weather, she felt that she was very lucky to be living at 221B the Esplanade, St Kilda, Victoria, Australia.

Jane stood herself on the hearth rug in the standard gentleman’s position, back to an imaginary fire, and began to expound.

‘With Mike’s help I managed to get two ounces of . . . the fluid.’ She was about to mention the absorption ratio of water into lungs in drowning and decided that her audience was far too squeamish. ‘Dr MacMillan said that there are two tests for saltiness. One is the silver nitrate test and one is the electrolysis test. We did the electrolysis test first because it doesn’t diminish the specimen. It’s easy. You just put the fluid in a chamber and pass a current through it and measure the amount of electricity which passes through it on an ammeter. Salty water conducts electricity while fresh water doesn’t. We had a standard seawater sample and ran a current through it with a set voltage. The ammeter showed point four of an amp. The same current passed through the sample would not necessarily mean it might be seawater, but it would be salty. In this case, we only got two thousandths of an amp.’

The flickering light was making even Jane’s round childish face hollowed and strange. No doubt, thought Phryne, the sibyls of the oracle of Apollo at Delphi had looked so, in their laurel-scented cavern over the abyss. And this was a modern sibyl, proclaiming the manner of a man’s death.

‘Then we took a small part of the sample and added silver nitrate, which, if there is salt, will precipitate a thick white paste like office glue. It didn’t. So from the tests, we knew that it didn’t conduct electricity and it didn’t precipitate silver,’ ended Jane, triumphantly.

She noticed that she had failed to carry her audience. Phryne, Ruth and Dot were looking at her in mute incomprehension.

‘So, what does that mean?’ asked Phryne, after a pause.

‘Oh,’ said Jane, making a mental note not to underestimate the scientific ignorance of the layperson. ‘He was drowned in fresh water, not salt. Dr MacMillan did a few more tests, which I would be happy to tell you about—’

‘Perhaps later,’ said Phryne. ‘What conclusion did you two alchemists come to?’

‘Oh, it was clear,’ said Jane. ‘Beyond doubt. He was drowned in fresh water with soap in it.’

The thunderstorm, feeling itself about to die, gave one last shattering crash which seemed to shake the house. The candles flickered.

Dot crossed herself. ‘He was drowned in the bath,’ she said. ‘God have mercy on his soul.’

The priest at St Mary’s was about to knock off for a cup of tea with maybe a whisker of the cratur, for it had been a long night confessing the lost and strayed, when he heard someone come into the confessional and pulled the stole back over his shoulders.

‘Bless me, Father, for I have sinned,’ came the whisper through the grating.

An elderly man, he diagnosed. Ragged-voiced with strain. Educated accent. Well, the middle class were as sinful as anyone else, God forgive them.

‘God bless you, my son. How long has it been since your last confession?’

‘Ten years, Father. I have just found out . . . found out something . . .’

‘Yes?’ asked the priest testily, longing for his tea and whisky, as he heard nothing for some time. He got up slowly and pulled the curtain aside.

The confessional was empty.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Good night, good night! Parting is such sweet
   sorrow,
That I shall say good night till it be morrow.

William Shakespeare
Romeo and Juliet

‘Miss Phryne?’ Jane was looking concerned, her pale face white in the candle light.

‘Yes, Jane?’

‘Why does Dot think it’s better that Mr Augustine was murdered rather than it being a suicide?’

‘Ah, there you have me,’ Phryne temporised. What to say about this touchiest of all touchy topics? ‘Dot’s religion tells her that killing yourself is a mortal sin.’

That was not going to be enough, Phryne could tell.

‘What do you think?’

‘Well, if you would have my plain answer, however brutal, Jane dear, I think that someone who has decided to die should be allowed to make their own choice. I stopped a suicide once, in Paris. Etienne. His father was making him leave his life in Montparnasse. He was going to have to work in a bank, marry a suitable lady, and be a
bon bourgeois
. He said he would rather die, and he took a lot of chloral, and I found him and called an ambulance and they pumped his stomach. The next day he went home to his father and married as required. I met him a few years later, walking his children in the park, and he gave me a look of such hatred that I can still feel the sting of it. So my advice is, try not to get involved.’

‘And if you can’t help getting involved?’ asked Jane keenly.

‘Then just do the best you can,’ said Phryne.

Jane thought about this. She nodded. She collected Ruth, and they went to play an engrossing game of snap. Mr and Mrs Butler cleared and cleaned and retired for the evening. Phryne and Dot took a branch of candles into the small parlour and sat down at Phryne’s little table. Outside the storm had gone, and a cool wet wind swept in through all the windows, which Phryne had personally opened and would, in due course, personally close and lock. Dot had put on a cardigan and Phryne was enjoying the cool.

‘Whoever sealed this wanted it to stay sealed,’ said Phryne, slicing through another wad of wax with her sharp letter knife. ‘If the lady has left her daughter a letter which mentions the child and his or her fate this will make our job a lot easier, Dot.’

‘Things are never that easy,’ said Dot practically.

‘True. But I feel fine! The rain is over and done and I am expecting the voice of the turtle to make itself heard any moment now.’

‘I think I’ve got this corner undone,’ said Dot.

She slipped the stout paper aside and turned the box around in her hands.

‘Pretty thing,’ she said admiringly.

‘It is a very pretty thing,’ agreed Phryne. ‘A jewellery box, I suspect. Rosewood, eighteenth century, inlaid with maple, oak and mother of pearl. Chinoiserie at its best. The Prince Regent would have swooned over it. Let’s get it open.’

‘Don’t wrench it, Miss Phryne, here’s the key.’ Dot applied a delicate little golden key to the golden lock. ‘There. What’s this?’

‘Draw it out carefully, it’s been there a long time,’ instructed Phryne.

Dot pulled out and unfolded over her hands a bundle of some soft thread. She slung it deftly over a chair and it fell in a spiderweb tracery, the colour of milk or ivory, unstained by its long confinement.

‘A cashmere shawl,’ said Dot soberly. ‘For the baby, perhaps. Lovely work! You can’t hardly see the lace-maker’s knots. It must have taken ages to make.’

‘Nine months, possibly? What else is in this box? We have letters.’ She laid out the artifacts as they came to hand. ‘One bundle, tied with pink ribbon. We have a little painting. We have some jewellery. We have some coins. And some cuttings, they look like newspaper. A little bound book. Drat this candlelight! I’ve got used to electric light, Dot.’

‘Might have to wait till morning,’ said Dot. ‘This writing is a real scribble and it’s crossed. No, we’re going to need sunlight to read it. What about the jewellery, Miss?’

Phryne sorted rapidly through the glittering pile, holding each piece up to the candle. Little reflections of coloured lights blinked on and off in the lacquer of the Chinese box.

‘It looks good, but not excellent. A garnet set, they used to be very popular, especially for young women and those who could not afford rubies. Like the box, the setting is eighteenth century, as is this bracelet, and these rings, one of which is a gentleman’s signet.’ Phryne peered at the bezel, squinting in the candlelight, then shook her head. ‘Might be an armorial bearing. Eliza would know. Some kind of beast, I think. And this necklace made of sunstone daisies would be a lovely present for a little girl. Quite nice things, might have been an eldest daughter’s share of the family boodle. But this is entirely trumpery.’

She gave Dot a pot metal ring in the form of two hands holding a crowned heart between them.

‘I’ve seen something like that before,’ said Dot. ‘But I can’t remember where.’

‘It’s not the sacred heart, is it?’ asked Phryne, who relied on Dot’s knowledge of all things religious.

‘No, and that’s what’s missing, Miss Phryne. There’s no crucifix, no rosary, nothing religious, like she might have left to a daughter who’s a nun. She might have left her the jewellery because they have to go to the eldest daughter, like you said, and I can see her sitting there making that shawl for her baby, poor girl. And maybe the letters will tell us more. But where is her rosary, Miss Phryne?’

‘Nothing else in the box,’ said Phryne, taking it up carefully, inverting it, and shaking it over the table. ‘Nothing but a little dust. Drat. I was hoping to get some clue to be going on with tonight.’

As though her petition had been heard by some electrical goddess, the lights winked on. Dot laughed and began to blow out candles.

‘Leave us one,’ said Phryne. ‘I don’t entirely trust the weather. Or the supply. Come now, Dot dear, you can have first go with the magnifying glass. Let’s have a look before the lights go out again.’

They worked silently for half an hour. Then Dot put down the letters and rubbed her eyes.

‘Love letters?’ asked Phryne, hoping that Dot’s delicacy was not going to be outraged by long ago evidences of Irish passion.

‘No, they’re from her friend, a female friend. She lived in St Kilda, I think, from what she says about going down Acland Street for cakes. Or perhaps she was on holiday here. People used to come to St Kilda as a watering place, you know. So far it’s just gossip, schoolgirl’s gossip.’

‘Well, if you don’t mind, can you spend tomorrow morning making a fair copy for those without your pinpoint vision?’

‘Yes, Miss, of course. What’s in the little book?’

‘It’s in code,’ said Phryne. ‘Alphabet substitution, I think. I’ll break it. In all probability,’ she added, in case the goblins of obscurity could hear her. ‘The cuttings are from the
St Kilda Times
, and either she wanted a knitting pattern or a review of
Romeo and Juliet
as put on by the St Kilda Players, an amateur group who look absolutely dire. What was her girlfriend’s name?’

‘Margaret,’ said Dot, pouring herself a glass of lemonade.

‘Might be the Miss Margaret O’Rourke who played the nurse in this production. The little painting is good. A water-colour of a young man in costume. No title or signature that I can see. Still, Dot, I suspect that this is the father of the child.’

Dot turned the little unframed sketch to the light. It had faded and foxed over the years but it was still a fine-spirited piece. The young man was wearing tights and a doublet. In his hand was a skull. His face was alive: wide mouth, bright blue eyes, prominent nose and jaw. Not beautiful, but very attractive. And very young.

‘An actor. Looks like a wild boy,’ she commented.

Phryne, something of an expert on wildness in both genders, agreed. ‘A wild boy, indeed.’

Dot yawned and took herself off to bed. Phryne hastily scribbled the alphabet on two strips of paper and began to attempt the breaking of the cipher. She surveyed the page, which seemed to have a lot of
b
s in it, assumed
b
would be
e
and slipped the alternative alphabet along. This yielded, at the first try, from
QEFP YLLH YBILKDP
to
THIS BOOK BELONGS
and constituted the fastest time in which Phryne had ever broken a code. Admittedly, it was a code only used by children under the age of sixteen, but she was proud of herself anyway.

The girls came to say goodnight and went off to their own room. Molly assumed her usual place on Phryne’s feet. She gently altered this by slipping off her shoes and putting her feet on Molly. The dog was warm, like a breathing, affectionate hot-water bottle. Phryne read on, writing out the decoded pages as she went in the sea-green notebook which she assigned to each new case. From notebook to notebook her pen went flying. She fell into the cipherine’s trance whereby she was merely the bridge between the code and the clear, not truly aware of what she was writing, only of the words unfolding under her fingers. By the time the storm returned and the lights went out again, she had finished the diary and was unstiffening her maltreated wrist.

‘Phew,’ said Phryne, and loaded all the goods, except for the shawl, back into the rosewood coffer. She took the box to the foot of the stairs and left it there as she lit a few more candles and carried them with her as she carefully closed and locked every window. Then she bore Kathleen O’Brien’s legacy up to her own boudoir. If there were any more burglars, thought Phryne, they would have to fight her for the treasure. Tomorrow she would attend Augustine Manifold’s funeral. Tonight she would read the diary of that sixteen-year-old who had left her children such a puzzle to solve.

Phryne washed briefly, donned a nightgown and took the Fisher silver candelabra which she had salvaged from her family’s trove when she left old England forever. She sat down by the window. With a little help from lightning, she ought to be able to read her own writing, starkly black against the bone-white page.

ABXO AFXOV
it began. Dear Diary. Phryne settled down, took a soothing mouthful of gin and lemonade, and started reading with attention.

Dear Diary. It is the 25th of May in the year of our Lord 1863. Today is my fifteenth birthday and I was given this diary by Miss Beale and told that I ought to write an account of my thoughts every day, and also copy down any poetry or observations I make. She said this would allow me to examine the state of my soul and my affections. So I am doing as she said because Miss Beale is a very wise lady. My name is Kathleen Julia O’Brien and I live in Saint Kilda in the house of my father Daniel. My father is a lawyer who argues in court. Soon he is to be a member of the Governor’s Council. He is a very important man. I live with my mother Brigid and my sister also called Brigid and my brothers James and John who are all older than me. My favourite occupations are reading and playing music on my piano which my father bought for me. I am reading Shakespeare and Carlyle and working on a nightcap for my father. It is of Italian trapunto work and I am finding it quite difficult. Miss Beale says I will be a good housekeeper once I learn to add up properly. My household accounts always come out wrongly and besides I have rubbed them out so often they cannot be easily read. Otherwise I learn geography with the globes, mathematics, geometry and algebra, literature, cookery, tatting, lace-making, music, Proper Supervision of Servants and dancing. I love music more than anything. I am learning a Chopin polonaise for our school’s afternoon tea for the parents and I love it so much. Even though it is so difficult that I could not get my stupid fingers to do as I asked and I felt like slamming the piano lid down on them. Miss Brougham, my teacher, found me in tears and told me that I was too ambitious in my choice of piece. But I will learn it.

Phryne stopped reading and gazed out the window. A strong-minded young woman, this Kathleen. Not daunted by advice to try something easier. Not a survival trait, necessarily. The little book was not so much a diary as a commonplace book. And Kathleen had an irritating habit of not dating her entries.

Sunday. After we came back from mass we settled down to Sunday occupations, which means no noisy games or running about. Papa found my brothers playing cards and thrashed both of them, so they are in disgrace for gambling on a Sunday. Or gambling at all, Papa is very set against gambling. We girls were lucky to avoid his wrath because we were trimming a hat, which would be frivolous and worldly, but when we heard him coming we put it aside and took up the altar cloth which we are mending. He grumbled a bit about sewing being work but agreed that mending an altar cloth was a suitable occupation for a Sunday. In fact he was pleased with us and sat down to read to us from O’Reilly’s
Consolations
while we sewed so we had to mend the whole cloth and it was so scratchy and dusty! It just served us right for our improper intentions! But I really cannot like Father O’Reilly’s book. He is so dreary. And he does not console me at all. But when we finished the cloth Mama came in and told us to put on our jackets and we all went out for a walk in the garden. Except for the boys who were confined to the house. Papa is rather severe with them. I’m sure they never meant to be impious.

Phryne shook her head. Papa was severe, but thrashing bad boys was not uncommon. And it was pure defiance to play cards on a Sunday. Phryne’s own grandmother had considered even jigsaw puzzles to be unacceptably frivolous. Oh, those long Sundays, with nothing to do but stare out the window or read sermons. Phryne was willing to bet that O’Reilly’s
Consolations
were just as dire as
Christian Thoughts For Little Ones
, her own Sunday reading. She had beguiled the tedium by filling in all the
o
s and writing
I hate Sunday
in very small writing over all blank spaces. For which, come to think of it, she had been spanked.

‘Dear Diary,’ resumed Miss Kathleen, some days later,