Urn Burial (13 page)
‘Miss Medenham seems to,’ said Phryne as the pair danced past, close together and talking.
‘True. An eccentric woman – I believe that novelists often are,’ said Lin. ‘Well, perhaps Miss Fletcher and Gerald. And maybe I am wrong about Miss Medenham – I think she fancies Jack Lucas.’
‘The woman fancies everyone. As you say, novelists. And Lucas is certainly good-looking. But very young.’
‘You prefer experience, perhaps?’ asked Lin, sliding a hand down the back of the velvet dress.
‘Infinitely,’ agreed Phryne, clasping his waist.
The gramophone whirled to a halt.
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‘Check and mate,’ said the poet into the silence.
‘You are off your game, Doctor.’
‘Yes, Tadeusz, I don’t feel well. I think I’ll just sit here and play the gramophone.’ The spare figure reached out a long hand and picked up the next record. ‘Here’s a Charleston.’ He wound the machine up and placed the needle on the spinning wax platter.
‘There is something macabre about the gramophone,’ observed the poet. ‘It preserves the voices of the dead, as cherries are preserved in confiture.’
‘And are thus exalted,’ commented Phryne. ‘Jam is the highest state to which cherries can aspire.
Good cherries become jam, and bad cherries become compost.’
The poet laughed.
‘Down on your heels, up on your toes, stay after school, learn how it goes, that’s the way to do the Varsity rag,’ sang the gramophone.
The Charleston was not a complicated dance. It merely required strong ankles and good balance.
Phryne could dance the Charleston all night.
She found herself next to Gerald. Two steps forward, two steps back. He was singing along with the next record.
‘In olden days a glimpse of stocking was looked on as something shocking, now heaven knows, anything goes.’
‘The world’s mad today and good’s bad today and black’s white today and wrong’s right today and most guys today that women prize today are just silly gigolos,’ sang Phryne.
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‘Although I’m not a great romancer I know that you’re bound to answer when I propose,’ sang Gerald, staring into Phryne’s eyes.
‘Anything goes,’ she replied. He really was a very pretty boy.
The Doctor, perhaps influenced by Mrs Reynolds’ silent disapproval of modern dancing, put on a waltz. Gerald bowed and said, ‘May I have this dance?’ and Phryne smiled.
‘Shouldn’t you be dancing with Miss Fletcher?’
she asked, moving closer to him. He was slim and smelt of port and the hand taking hers was smooth and strong.
‘She doesn’t waltz. In any case, I don’t belong to her,’ he said, his arm encircling Phryne’s waist.
‘I would much rather belong to you.’
To the sugary strains of ‘The Blue Danube’, Phryne waltzed with Gerald. Lin Chung was dancing with Mrs Reynolds. Jack Lucas had left the room. Letty Luttrell had presumably gone to bed. Judith was sitting next to the Doctor and leafing through the records. The poet had abandoned his surrealist principles and had led out Mrs Fletcher, and Miss Medenham was hanging on to the Major with grim determination.
‘What does Miss Medenham see in the Major?’
she asked idly, noticing that Gerald Randall was a very good dancer.
‘God knows. Though I believe that she used to know him in Melbourne. She’s rather marvellous, isn’t she – so vivid.’
‘Yes. You dance very well.’
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‘Only with you. You’re as light as the feathers in your hair.’
Phryne smiled and noticed that her partner, who was leading, was moving them unobtrusively towards the door into the little parlour. As they passed under the carved Gothic lintel, the record wound to a close, but Gerald did not release his hold.
‘Beautiful Phryne,’ said the young man very softly. ‘Most beautiful lady.’
‘Exceptionally decorative Gerald,’ she replied.
‘Let me come to your room tonight,’ he whispered. ‘Last time, we were interrupted.’
‘So we were,’ she agreed. ‘I’ll think about it,’ she temporised. ‘This is a strange gathering and I’m worried about what happened to Lina. I don’t know if I’m really in the mood, Gerald.’
‘I can change your mood,’ he said confidently.
‘Can you, indeed? Perhaps,’ she said. The music started again, a slow foxtrot, and Gerald gathered her close. There was little light in the small parlour, just a shaded pink lamp on one Victorian table. The bodies moved together, clung and slid, jade velvet against sable broadcloth.
Then they were no longer alone. Cynthia had manoeuvred the Major into the half-dark, her bright blond head leaning on his massive shoulder, and Gerald and Phryne slipped away, back into the general dance.
Before they parted, Phryne put her mouth to the young man’s ear and breathed, ‘Yes.’
Phryne captured Lin Chung three dances later 127
and said quietly, ‘Dance us into the little parlour.
I am very curious about Cynthia Medenham and the Major.’
‘Her attentions to him have been marked,’ he agreed, moving the pair of them towards the door and turning so that Phryne could see over his shoulder into the half-dark. The strange couple were still there, clasped close together. Miss Medenham was crushed in a strong embrace, and the Major was evidently much attracted. He lifted his head as Phryne and Lin Chung appeared, and glared.
Phryne smiled seraphically and nudged her partner back into the parlour. ‘Interesting,’ she commented.
‘Phryne, are you really going to seduce that boy?’ asked Lin Chung, sounding slightly offended.
‘Possibly. I am wondering why he is making such a dead-set siege of me,’ she replied.
‘One can carry investigation too far,’ he commented, avoiding Mrs Reynolds and the Doctor, who were deep in conversation, and swinging Phryne around the protruding edge of a large table against the wall.
‘Not if one seeks the truth,’ she said senten-tiously, and Lin Chung snorted.
‘Come, come, my Confucian. If it were not for your exaggerated sense of ethics I would be sleeping with you,’ she said. ‘One must suffer for one’s beliefs.’
‘You,’ said Lin Chung admiringly, surveying the 128
dark head with the panache of feathers, ‘are a woman who could corrupt a monk.’
‘So I would, if he were a pretty monk who didn’t really think about his vows when he made them.’
Lin laughed.
Golden hair said to dark hair, ‘It’s no use. I’ll never be free.’
‘Yes you will,’ said dark hair to golden. ‘I’ll make you free.’
‘Kiss me again.’ There was a sound of mouths meeting, frantically, and hands slid under a white shirt and dark coat to find skin damp with desire.
Golden hair broke away from the embrace with a groan. ‘It’s immoral, it’s improper, we can’t do this. What would people say?’
‘Who cares what people say?’ asked dark hair flatly. ‘My love, my own love. Say it.’ They kissed again. ‘Say it, I want to hear the words.’
‘My . . . love,’ faltered golden hair. ‘My dear love, my own.’
The party wound down. Phryne found herself sitting next to the poet, looking through the family photograph albums.
‘The Edwardian Indian summer,’ he said in his accented voice. ‘Here is the whole house party. By the rabbits I deduce that they have been hunting.’
‘Gosh, Hinchcliff hasn’t changed, has he? Or his wife. And there’s Tom, looking every inch the 129
Lord of the Manor, and Evelyn, she looks so young, and who’s that?’
‘Her son,’ said Tadeusz. ‘Young Ronald. He went, as they say, to the bad.’
‘Not Tom’s child, then?’
‘No. She had another husband. He died. She doted on that boy – doted on him, and that is very bad for the young.’ Phryne stared at Mrs Reynolds’ face in the fading sepia. She looked soft and happy and vulnerable, holding the hand of a tall young man with her sharp features and strong bones.
‘I believe that he stole money from Tom – Tom forgave him, but then he stole from his employer and went to prison for two years. I remember him, this Ronald. He was sure of his worth, sure that he had droit de seigneur over the housemaids –
Mrs Reynolds put him straight on that fast enough. The world owed him a living, like the grasshopper in the Aesop fable. He did not want to work but he was not prepared to forgo the good things – so he stole. A common tale,’ said the poet, looking sad.
‘What happened to him?’
‘He ran away to America, I believe, where he worked on a cattle ranch. He wrote, for some little time, to his mother – always asking for money. She cried lamentably over those letters. Then –
nothing. I believe that he is dead, but his mother keeps hoping. Poor Evelyn. A tragedy,’ said the poet.
‘So it is,’ said Phryne, turning the pages. ‘ ‘‘She’d 130
have been different if the boy had turned out well.’’ That’s what Tom said at dinner.’
‘So she might. I am worried about Tom Reynolds, Miss Fisher.’
‘Me, too. I’ve never seen him that drunk. Who gave him that much juice?’
‘I don’t know. It was not me. A glass of this and a glass of that, even several bottles of that and this – I will indulge, happily. But sodden drunk at my wife’s dinner party, no. I have never known him to display such bad form.’
‘He’s worried about Lina.’
‘So am I. She is a nice girl, if a little fantastical, but that is no excuse for Tom to drink himself into social disgrace.’
‘No. I do not like this house party, Tadeusz, and I wish I could get away.’
‘I do not like this party either, Phryne, and I cannot write poetry in this atmosphere.’
‘There are consolations,’ she replied, and the poet grinned wickedly.
‘There are, but mine appears to have taken up with another.’
‘Mine has developed a deep concern for my reputation,’ she confessed, and Tadeusz laughed and clasped her hand.
‘There are others,’ he chuckled, and Phryne smiled and patted his cheek.
‘Jack and Gerald have been coming here for a long time,’ she said, turning another page of the large leather-bound volume.
‘Yes. There is old Mr Lucas – Jack’s father. That 131
falling-out – it was a pity. They were such old friends. Yet it was not really Tom’s fault. And there,’ the broad finger stabbed at the page, ‘that is the tramp, the one they are all scared of. Harry.’
‘Dingo Harry?’ Phryne peered at the picture. A stocky man in a collarless shirt and stockman’s moleskins held up a long string of what must be dingo scalps. He was wearing a shapeless hat and grinning into the camera. His face was concentrated and intelligent, as far as one could tell through the mane of uncut hair and forest of beard.
‘He is interesting; an educated man. When he wants to talk, which is seldom, he is worth the listening. I had a long conversation with him about the fall of the Paris Commune once, sitting on a rock in his little camp. Now there is a man who needs no material possessions. He is, regrettably, quite mad, but a poet should talk to the insane. Is not insanity just another way of looking at the world?’
‘I suppose it is. Is he dangerous?’
‘He has rages,’ admitted Tadeusz. ‘I have seen him seize a great branch and beat the walls of the cave with it, bellowing about the voices. Once I saw Evelyn tend him when he had beaten his head against a stone to let out the demons. But in between he is perfectly civilised.’
‘Oh, good,’ said Phryne, hoping that, if she met this character, he would be in one of his tolerant moods. ‘Where is his camp?’
‘Down by the caves. I fear, in fact, that he might 132
be flooded out by this storm. Is it still raining?’
Phryne listened beneath the music and heard the relentless swish of falling water. She nodded.
‘Tomorrow we go to the caves; they are miraculous. Almost they could make me believe that a Divine Spirit and not chance ruled the cosmos.
Almost. You are going?’
Phryne rose and smoothed down the jade velvet.
‘Yes, I think I’ll go to bed,’ she said. ‘Thank you for showing me the pictures. Good night, Tadeusz.’
He kissed her hand with a continental flourish.
Phryne found her hostess and bade her good night, waved a hand to the rest of the company and turned at the door. Lin Chung bowed a little from the chess table, where the Doctor had just made the first move. Gerald smiled at her, a breathtaking, glittering smile. The Major and Miss Medenham were still missing, presumably in the little parlour. Miss Mead smiled, a rather meaning smile.
Phryne climbed the monumental staircase, blew a kiss to the lady and the knight in the Morris windows, and came to her own room.
She tapped softly and called, ‘It’s me, Dot.’
There was a scraping as the chair was pulled away and Phryne slipped inside.
Dot had dined well, accepted one glass of light white wine, and was unaccustomedly flushed and pleased. Phryne dropped into a chair, pulled off the silver shoes and rolled down her stockings.
Wiping the cold cream off her face with a cotton-wool swab, she asked, ‘What’s happened, Dot?
You look excited.’
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‘Miss, you remember all that paper we took out of Lina’s books? And her little box? I’ve been looking at it.’
‘Good. What have you found?’ Phryne slicked her face over with milk of roses, dried it and followed Dot into her own room, where she surveyed neat little piles laid out on the single bed.
‘These are just chocolate wrappers and bus tickets and things, Miss, nothing written on them.
But I’ve found some letters and this.’
Dot showed Phryne a diamond ring. The silver mounting was discoloured from having lain in the brass box, but the stone twinkled as bright as ice.
‘That’s a good diamond – a couple of carats at least,’ commented Phryne. ‘Where would a housemaid get fifty quid’s worth of jewellery, do you think?’
‘I don’t know, Miss. And there’s a letter.’
Phryne scanned it. It was written in an educated, flowing hand, in very black ink on cream-laid vellum. Lina, I’ll never forget you, R. ‘Hmm. No date, of course, or address, or anything betraying like that.’
‘And this,’ Dot produced her most important find. It was a torn sheet of typing paper lettered with black capitals. LINA, COME TO OUR OLD
PLACE, R.
