Urn Burial (25 page)

Phryne felt a lump over the temporal lobe, hard under her touch. Someone had certainly shot him at some time.

‘So when the War was over, I forged some Hungarian papers. I had no clue to my identity. I had arrived at the camp naked in a blanket with an envelope full of meaningless trinkets. They repatriated my friend Han and me to Buda, which we found a cold city, so we went to Poland, and that is when he began to call me Tadeusz, because the name meant something to me. It is, of course, similar to Ted.’

‘When did you get an idea who you were?’ asked Phryne.

‘Not for a long time. I wandered the world, never finding a place where I knew that I belonged.

Han was a poet, but also a rich man – most unusual – and when he died he left me his estate.

I turned it into gold and started to search, for I knew I had a home somewhere. Then, in London, I heard two men talking and knew the accent.

They were Australians. In my little bag which I 251

wore around my neck was a cigarette case with a regimental badge which no one in Europe had been able to identify for me. A number was scratched under it and I realised that it must be a soldier’s identification.

‘I went into Australia House, asked for the records, and found out that I was Private Ted Matthews, who had died in the Dardanelles campaign seven years before.

‘I went back to my hotel near the British Museum and began to remember my own language, my home, and Letty. There and then I resolved to find out what had become of her.

English flooded back to me, but now I spoke it like a Hungarian. I had made many friends among the surrealists, had some reputation as a poet, and I was wealthy enough to follow my own inclinations. So I came back to Australia. Letty’s mother would not tell me where she was, just that she was married and happy, so I tried to forget her. I never forgot her face. Even when I was no one I saw her face, but she had no name.

‘So, I had been writing poetry which is soon to be a book, if I can ever get it finished. I came here to complete the work. And Major Luttrell brought his wife here. That is the unbelievable thing, unbelievable, making me wonder if even an adopted Hungarian or Pole is under the special protection of St Stanislaus. Major Luttrell brought his wife, my Letty, here. She knew me after a few days. How did you know me, my own?’ he asked, and Mrs Luttrell, nestling shamelessly against him, 252

said, ‘Your eyes, Ted. I knew your eyes.’

‘We were going to run away together,’ resumed the poet, ‘though that would bring my Letty into social disrepute. We met in the library. I left messages for her there. We were counting on the ineffable Cynthia to distract him sufficiently so that we could make what I believe is called a clean getaway, hmm? However, now the Major is dead and this fortunately is not necessary. Another cocktail, if you please.’

‘What a story!’ exclaimed Miss Fletcher. Phryne, reserving her opinion on the likelihood of this romantic history, rose and stretched. If Letty believed it, who was she to cavil?

‘Well, that’s all the mysteries but two.

Hinchcliff, can you bring Doreen in here?’

The Butler’s eyebrows left his control and rose, slightly. He bowed and went out.

Miss Medenham wound up the gramophone. Mr and Mrs Reynolds came in and sat down. Evelyn had cried herself out, washed her face, and looked composed and sad, but not heartbroken. Her boy was dead. Now she could bury him, and mourn.

Tom Reynolds, bulkier than ever with bandages across his shoulder and chest, accepted a cocktail against competent medical advice and swigged it.

This took his breath so comprehensively that he could only goggle as a weeping chambermaid was ushered in by the butler.

‘Doreen, you left the urns,’ said Phryne gently. ‘It had to be you. Only you could get into all the rooms without being noticed. You knew Lina’s body was 253

in the Buchan Caves. How did you know?’

Doreen burst into tears and was supplied with a glass of sherry and a handkerchief.

‘He told me,’ she finally managed. ‘The Major.

He knew about everyone. He knew about Annie’s babies. He got Mr H in debt to him for hundreds of pounds, gambling on those wicked cards. He knew about me and Mr Jones, he threatened to tell Madam and get me fired, and I’ve got five sisters, I can’t go home. He didn’t want to . . .

to . . . he didn’t want me in that way. It would have been easier if he did. He just wanted to talk to me. He liked to come to the kitchen window and boast about it – about the girls he’d strangled in India, about his wife being next after me if I told on him, about Lina and where he’d put her.

He said he’d kill me if I told. So I left the urns for you, Miss Fisher, you being so clever and all. Oh, dear.’ She wept with relief into Lin Chung’s silk handkerchief.

‘It was very brave of you to try and help me,’

said Phryne.

‘It’s all right, Doreen, I’m not going to dismiss you,’ said Mrs Reynolds wearily. ‘You go back to the kitchen now, and ask Cook for some hot tea.’

Doreen snuffled, blew her nose, and went out.

Phryne felt a gentle hand on her arm. It was the beautiful Gerald, rosy and angelic, smiling his guileless child’s smile.

‘You promised,’ he reminded her.

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‘Oh, yes, so I did. It’s all fixed. Tom, can I take Jack to pick out his paintings now?’ she called. Mr Reynolds assented, and she took Jack Lucas and his lover into the corridor.

‘Paintings?’ he exclaimed. ‘There isn’t anything in this house worth having. It’s all etchings of the Monarch of the Glen and pretty little pastels done by ladies which look like endive salad, dying.

What have you sold my birthright for, eh?’

‘Trust me,’ said Phryne crossly. ‘And follow me,’

she added, making her best pace up the stairs to the room which had been the Major’s.

‘The builders of Cave House went on a Grand Tour,’ she told Lucas, opening the door.

‘I know, that’s where they got that near-Boucher and all those naughty prints of naked ladies,’

snapped Jack Lucas. ‘None of it worth more than threepence-ha’penny on the open market.’

‘Yes, but what else was on in Paris in the 1880s?’ asked Phryne acidly, bringing the young man’s nose to surface with the large oil depicting a wobbly church. He squinted. There was a silence. Then Gerald began to laugh. He reeled over, staggering and whooping with mirth, to enfold Phryne in a close embrace, weeping tears of joy down her neck and kissing her gleefully between paroxysms.

‘You mean . . . from the Salon des Refuseś?’ said Jack. ‘Yes, there’s the signature . . . It’s a Manet, a genuine Manet . . . My God, why have I never seen these before?’

‘You have spent insufficient time in servants’

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bedrooms. In my chamber is what I judge to be a Monet; there’s a very pretty little Renoir of a girl with an umbrella in Lina’s room and a swingeing great expanse of grass and lilies which have to be either Pissarro or possibly very early Sisley in the servants’ hall. Impeccable provenance, by the way – the original bills of sale are in the library. I asked Tom for ten of them and he agreed. It seems that both he and his wife don’t like all this modern stuff, so they put them away out of the public eye.

I think they ought to realise you enough for a nice comfortable life, don’t you? Or would you rather go and argue with Tom Reynolds for your thousand pounds?’

‘Miss Fisher, these are worth thousands, we can’t accept . . .’ began Jack and Gerald cried out in protest.

Phryne said, ‘Yes, you can. Tom knows, more or less, what these are worth. But he was very close friends with your father and only his own stubbornness stopped him from giving you cash.

This terribly generous gift assauges his conscience and he’ll be very hurt if you don’t take them.

Don’t, by the way, miss the tiny little Seurat of an acrobat in Doreen’s room. It’s a gem. Now, for God’s sake, escort me to the dining room. It’s been an interesting day and I’d like a glass or two of wine.’

Gerald and Jack held out an arm each, and Phryne paraded down the monumental stair between two beautiful young men. They made an impressive entrance into dinner.

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Dinner was lavish, if scrappily served, the kitchen being still deeply engrossed in enough gossip to last them for years. The company adjourned to the parlour to repair their ravelled nerves with dancing and conversation. The music began to play, a slow foxtrot, ideal for the sleepy end of a dreadful day. Tadeusz drew Mrs Luttrell to her feet, saying, ‘If you dance with me I’ll do the bravest thing man ever did for woman.’

‘Oh, what’s that?’ asked Letty, nestling into his arms. The dark-brown hair flopped over his forehead and she smoothed it back. Tadeusz assumed a grave demeanour.

‘I’ll go and teach Mrs Croft how to make coffee,’ he said solemnly and Letty laughed.

Miss Medenham snared the Doctor. Miss Fletcher was claimed by Gerald and Mrs Fletcher danced with Jack. Phryne reflected irritably that Cave House seemed to be positively oozing with happy endings.

Lin openly escorted Miss Fisher to her room. Dot, full of tea and gossip, had gone to bed. The murdered girl and the death of the murderers would not be banished from Phryne’s mind, and the slow inexorable fall insisted on unrolling itself before her tired eyes like a motion picture. She sat down at the table to remove her makeup, and an open book caught her eye. Urne Buriall, by the very learned Sir Thomas Browne.

Afflictions induce calloufities; miferies are 257

slippery or fall like snow upon us, which nonwithftanding is no unhappy stupidity. To be ignorant of evils to come, and forgetful of evils paft, is merciful provifion in nature, whereby we digest the mixture of our few and evil days and, our delivered senfes not relapsing into cutting remembrances, our sorrows are not kept raw by the edge of repetitions.

Phryne puzzled through the unfamiliar spelling, nodded soberly, and stood up into Lin Chung’s arms.

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ALSO FROM ALLEN & UNWIN

The Castlemaine Murders

Kerry Greenwood

Phryne Fisher is back—as smart and sassy as ever.

Phryne Fisher, her sister Beth and her faithful maid, Dot, decide that Luna Park is the place for an afternoon of fun and excitement with Phryne’s two daughters, Ruth and Jane. But in the dusty dark Ghost Train, amidst the squeals of horror and delight, a mummified bullet-studded corpse falls to the ground in front of them. Phryne Fisher’s pleasure trip has definitely become business.

Digging to the bottom of this longstanding mystery takes her to the country town of Castlemaine where it soon becomes obvious that someone is trying to muzzle her investigations. With unknown threatening assailants on her path, Phryne seems headed for more trouble than usual.

Meanwhile, Phryne’s lover Lin Chung has his own mystery to solve. Feuding families and lost gold fill his mind until he learns that Phryne herself has become missing treasure.

‘Greenwood is the class act of local crime writing.’

—Weekend Australian

ISBN 1 74114 074 9

Murder in Montparnasse

Kerry Greenwood

The divine Phryne Fisher returns to lead another dance of intrigue.

Seven Australian soldiers, carousing in Paris in 1918, unknowingly witness a murder and their presence has devastating consequences. Ten years later, two are dead . . .

under very suspicious circumstances.

Phryne’s wharfie mates, Bert and Cec, appeal to her for help. They were part of this group of soldiers in 1918 and they fear for their lives and for those of the other three men.

It’s only as Phryne delves into the investigation that she, too, remembers being in Montparnasse on that very same day.

While Phryne is occupied with memories of Montparnasse past and the race to outpace the murderer, she finds troubles of a different kind at home. Her lover, Lin Chung, is about to be married. And the effect this is having on her own usually peaceful household is disastrous.

‘Phryne Fisher is young, wealthy, beautiful, smart, confident and independently minded . . . and she has a knack for solving murders when she is not sipping a strengthening cocktail or planning another seduction.’

—Australian’s Review of Books

ISBN 1 86508 806 4

Away with the Fairies

Kerry Greenwood

Phryne Fisher — dangerous, passionate, kind, clever and seductive. She drinks cocktails, dances the tango, is the companion of wharfies, and is expert at conducting an elegant dalliance.

It’s the 1920s in Melbourne and Phryne is asked to investigate the puzzling death of a famous author and illustrator of fairy stories. To do so, Phryne takes a job within the women’s magazine that employed the victim and finds herself enmeshed in her colleagues’ deceptions.

But while Phryne is learning the ins and outs of magazine publishing first hand, her personal life is thrown into chaos.

Impatient for her lover Lin Chung’s imminent return from a silk-buying expedition to China, she instead receives an unusual summons from Lin Chung’s family followed by a series of mysterious assaults and warnings.

‘Snappy one-liners and the ability to fight like a wildcat are appealing in a central character.’ —City Weekly ISBN 1 86508 489 1

Death Before Wicket

Kerry Greenwood

The sassy Phryne Fisher sets the seamy side of Sydney alight in her tenth adventure.

Phryne Fisher has plans for her Sydney sojourn — a few days at the Test cricket, a little sightseeing and the Artist’s Ball with an up-and-coming young modernist. But these plans begin to go awry when Phryne’s maid discovers her thoroughly respectable sister has left her family for the murky nightlife of the Cross. And Phryne is definitely not the woman to say ‘no’ when two delightful young men come to her on bended knees, begging for her help in finding their friend innocent of theft. Phryne’s plans for a simple day or two of pleasure are postponed for good.

It all sounds simple enough as Phryne sets investigations into motion, but when greed and fear are the motivating factors, people become ruthless and Phryne finds herself enmeshed in blackmail, secrets, lies and the dangerous influences of deep magic.