Death by Water (17 page)

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was frankly horrified, and Phryne herself had a string of amber beads dangling unnoticed from her fingers.

‘Not really. He just . . . well, he’s a masterful man. And now we’re always travelling, and what I wanted was a nice little house and a garden. And perhaps a cat. Of course, we don’t . . . and I wouldn’t expect to have children at my age, anyway. But it would be nice to settle down. I do my best to please him,’ said Mrs Singer sadly.

‘I know,’ soothed Phryne.

‘But it doesn’t seem to make him like me any better,’ Mrs Singer said pathetically, groping for a handkerchief. Phryne supplied one of her own.

‘Come along,’ said Phryne. ‘Buy the beads, and let’s go and have a cup of tea. You’re tired, Mrs Singer.’

‘No,’ said Mrs Singer, pushing Phryne’s hand away with feeble violence. ‘No, I can’t. He doesn’t like me to talk to people. But thank you for telling me about the beads,’ she said, with a sad little gesture. ‘I’ll have these,’ she said to the sales clerk. ‘Put them on the Singer account, please.’

Phryne put the amber beads back. She had gone off beads.

She looked around. Mrs Cahill was examining a doll dressed in a crinoline as though she suspected it of concealing cocaine in its skirts. Professor Applegate had taken down a thick book and was scowling over it. Mr Forrester had selected a view of the SS
Hinemoa
and came forward to purchase it. Dot was still staring, and Mrs West rolled two pairs of stockings together and put them down. Mr West was smiling an unpleasant little smile.

‘Found anything, Dot?’ asked Phryne.

‘I never heard anyone talk like that in a shop, never,’ said Dot.

‘Poor woman doesn’t have a chance to talk anywhere else,’

said Phryne. ‘You heard what she told me. “He doesn’t like me to talk to people”. Poor woman!’

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‘She made her bed,’ said Dot disapprovingly, ‘and she must lie on it.’

Phryne chuckled. ‘Don’t be censorious, Dot dear, it gives you wrinkles. Let’s have a look at the books.’

‘I don’t need any, Miss, I’ve brought all those mysteries to read. You can borrow some if you like.’

‘Very kind. Hello, Professor.’

‘Miss Fisher.’ Professor Applegate moved aside a little to allow Phryne full view of the bookcase. ‘A nice selection of classics here, and a reasonable number of sensational novels.

Which attracts you?’

‘Oddly enough, classics,’ said Phryne. ‘I know the author of those three.’ She pointed to
Night of the Sheik
,
Poisoned
Passion
and
Flowers of Sin
. ‘A very pleasant woman who kept her elderly mother in Irish linen and lavender water by writing them. But that does not mean I have to read them. Ah, Dickens.

My favourite.
Bleak House
.’

‘A very charming author,’ conceded the professor, ‘if you are in the mood to be charmed.’

‘I almost always am,’ rejoined Phryne. ‘But I am also reading Chaucer.’

‘Poor Mrs Singer ought to read the Wife of Bath’s pro-logue,’ said the professor.

Phryne thought about it and located the quote. ‘Ah, yes.

“To speak of the woes that are in marriage”, indeed. I am not intending to try matrimony.’

‘Wise woman. I never did and I have been very happy.’

‘Are you going to buy that?’ asked Phryne. The professor examined the thick book. ‘I picked it up to cover my confusion,’ she said. ‘It’s a gazeteer of New Zealand and I think it can go back into its place.’

Professor Applegate took her leave and presently Phryne
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collected Dot, went to the library, and they both spent the rest of the time until dinner reading: Dot was almost finished
The
Case of the Blonde in the Library
, and Phryne was researching New Zealand wildlife. It seemed even stranger than Australian wildlife, and that was saying something. Though there was nothing as strange in New Zealand as the platypus, a beast composed of leftover bits of duck, snake, beaver, mole and seal.

Then again, there was quite possibly nothing as strange as a platypus anywhere in the world.

Dinner was an occasion for Phryne to exhibit another of her blue gowns. Her wardrobe was extensive, and it had not been hard to find fourteen dresses which matched the Maharani. This one was very pale blue, almost ice-blue. Mrs West remarked on it immediately.

‘Don’t you find that shade very trying to the complexion?’

she shrilled.

‘No,’ said Phryne.

Mr Aubrey hurried into speech. ‘Miss Fisher could wear any colour,’ he said. ‘What have you ladies been doing all day?’

‘A little shopping,’ Phryne replied. ‘And some reading, and lots of watching the ocean.’

‘Really? What are you reading? I’ve got a box of Agatha Christie and the Detection Club,’ offered Mrs Cahill generously.

‘Thank you,’ said Phryne. ‘Who do you like best, Miss Christie or Miss Sayers?’

The merits of the two crime-writing ladies lasted through the celery soup and the cream of chicken vol-au-vent.

‘The only trouble with Sayers is that I have to stop and go back and check that all those timetables and so on work,’ said Mr Aubrey. ‘But she writes a dashed fine yarn. I, however, prefer Rudyard Kipling and John Buchan.’

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‘I like them, too,’ said Mrs Cahill.

Mr and Mrs West were having a sotto voce argument, conducted in hisses. Mr Singer was staring at his omelette with an expression of settled despair. Jack Mason decided to cheer the company.

‘I say, I saw dolphins today. And a huge big bird. I wonder that the sailors don’t have a few pot shots at some of them.

Must have been feet across the wings.’

Phryne spared a moment to send up a fervent prayer to whoever it was responsible for hunters that Jack Mason not be allowed to get his hands on a gun.

‘Big bird, you say?’ asked Professor Applegate. ‘White or brown? Pink beak and feet?’

‘Yes, white, black edges to its tail, sort of clown face with a big pink hooter.’

‘Ah,’ said Professor Applegate with a certain edge to her voice. ‘That, my boy, is a wandering albatross. Diomedea exulans, to be precise, and God forbid that you should ever shoot one.’

‘Why not? I bet the fishermen would thank me. That thing could empty an ocean in one gulp,’ protested Mr Mason.

‘Haven’t you read ‘‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner’’?’

asked Mrs Cahill. ‘I learned it at school. It’s by Coleridge.’ She stood up and declaimed, ‘‘‘God save thee, Ancient Mariner, from the fiends that plague thee thus! Why look’st thou so?’’

“With my cross bow I shot the albatross”. It’s a famous poem.

Awful things happen to the ship.’

‘Sit down, Mum, do,’ said Mr Cahill. ‘You’re showing off.’

‘And you have every right to do so,’ approved Mr Aubrey.

‘A good memory is a wonderful thing. I’ve been on a lot of shikars in my time, young man,’ he added to Jack Mason. ‘And at the end of my hunting days I found myself thinking that
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the whole thing was a massacre and I had rather had the tiger skin I brought home with such pride back where it belonged, with the tiger still inside.’

‘But the tigers were man-eaters,’ protested the young hunter, feeling that the table was ganging up on him.

‘One, maybe. The rest were just doing what tigers did before the small holders cut down their forest.’

‘I’ve been reading about New Zealands birds,’ interjected Phryne smoothly. ‘They seem very singular.’

‘Islands,’ said Professor Applegate. ‘Cut off a population for long enough and it evolves out of all knowledge and resemblance. Look at the rock hyrax, whose nearest relative is—’

‘The elephant,’ said Phryne, who had been told this important piece of information by her adoptive daughter Jane.

Jane liked knowing things, and shared her knowledge freely.

The professor nodded, as though Phryne was an intelligent pupil.

‘And the nearest relatives of the weka, which is about the size of a hen, are the emu and the cassowary. On the other hand they have the largest flightless cricket, a weta, which is the size of my hand and eats anything,’ she added.

Mrs West gave a faint scream. ‘Oh, I shouldn’t like to see any of them.’

‘That is highly unlikely,’ Professor Applegate assured her.

‘New Zealand never really developed mammals,’ the professor went on. ‘Instead of the wolf there is the kea. Instead of the badger there is the kiwi.’

‘I thought keas were parrots,’ said Phryne, dissecting a delicious slice off her veal and chicken galantine and spearing it on a piece of cucumber.

‘They are,’ said the professor. ‘Big strong parrots with beaks of iron who could, I believe, bring down a sheep. The farmers
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have almost shot them out because they have seen them feeding on dead lambs, though I suspect that they are just opportunistic carrion eaters.’

‘Not during dinner,’ said Mrs Singer, patting her husband’s hand.

‘Let’s talk about unknown animals,’ said Mr Aubrey. ‘Sea serpents, eh?’

‘Have you ever seen one?’ asked Jack Mason.

‘I regret to say that I have not. Lot of reputable people have, though.’

‘Nonsense,’ said Mr Singer, taking another swig of beer and grimacing.

‘I reckon there’s a deal of unknown beasts out there,’ said Mr Cahill, unexpectedly. He had a strong outback drawl. ‘The blacks tell stories about the bunyip and the nargun. They ought to know. Been there thousands of years. Talk about a rainbow snake, too. Australia’s a big country, she’s a big country all right.

Plenty of room for a rainbow snake or two. Wouldn’t write it off right away.’

‘Especially since animals like the platypus really do exist,’

Phryne put in. She had always found platypuses irresistible proof that God likes a joke as much as anyone else. ‘A platypus is intrinsically much less likely than a unicorn or a sea serpent.’

‘Plenty of sea out there,’ agreed Jack Mason. ‘But I’ve never seen one.’

‘Have you ever seen a devil fish?’ asked Mr Aubrey. ‘Wings yards across, horns like a devil, tears up anchor chains and demolishes boats?’

‘No,’ said Jack Mason.

‘Do you believe that they exist?’

‘Yes,’ said Jack Mason.

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‘Why?’ asked Mr Aubrey, plunging a fork into a pile of volcanic curry. It smelt so spicy that Phryne wondered if it would dissolve the cutlery.

‘What are we all wearing to the masquerade?’ asked Mrs West. ‘I’ve been trying to think of something new, and I can’t.

Have you managed a costume, Miss Fisher?’

‘Yes, from odds and ends of my own wardrobe,’ said Phryne. ‘I understand that Mr Forrester is dressing a lot of the beauty shop girls as naiads and dryads.’

‘And very decorative they will look,’ he said, smoothing his curly hair.

‘And the girls are making masks. Perhaps you might like a mask, Mrs West?’ asked Phryne. ‘I’m sure that they will make one for you. If you ask them nicely.’

‘What sort of masks are they making?’ asked Jonquil West, interested.

‘Well, animal masks,’ answered Phryne. ‘One lady mask.

They offered to make animals. You could be a bird, perhaps?’ offered Phryne, though personally she felt that Mrs West would be admirably represented as a female canine.

‘Or a cat,’ said Jack Mason. ‘You’d look very pretty as a cat.’

Mrs West fluttered her eyelashes at Jack Mason. Then she jumped as though someone had nudged her.

‘What about you, Mr Aubrey?’ asked Mrs West. ‘What are you wearing to the masquerade?’

‘Oh, I’ve got my rajah garb. Always one of these dress-ups on every voyage. What about you, Professor?’

‘The usual Maori clothes. Hope it won’t be too cold. Those feather cloaks are very decorative but they aren’t very warm.

The same goes for flax. What about you, Mrs Cahill?’

‘Oh, I haven’t thought of anything at all. I was wondering,
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Miss Fisher, if I might borrow your companion for a little? I’m told she’s a fabulous dressmaker.’

‘I’ll ask,’ said Phryne. ‘What were you thinking of?’

‘I have always wanted to be a princess,’ confessed Mrs Cahill, and suddenly Phryne liked her. This was a woman who had worked hard all her life and probably deserved to be a princess, at least for one night.

‘We’ll have a costume making session on Monday,’ she agreed. ‘And you will look lovely. Are you wearing a costume, Mr Forrester? Do you need any help with it?’

‘Oh no, Miss Fisher, thank you for asking, but the dear girls insisted that I match them, so they are going as nymphs and I am going as—’

‘Let me guess,’ said the professor. ‘Amyntas the shepherd?’

‘Wrong,’ grinned Mr Forrester.

‘A river god?’

‘Wrong.’

‘Silenus,’ said Phryne and the professor together, and Mr Forrester clapped his hands.

‘Got it,’ he said.

‘Who’s Silenus?’ asked Jack Mason.

‘The Roman form of Pan,’ Phryne told him. ‘And very suitable too. Mr West?’

‘I don’t do this sort of nonsense,’ Mr West pointed out sulkily. ‘I will just wear a domino, as a gentleman should.’

Phryne ignored this.

‘And you, Mr Mason?’

‘I’m going as Death,’ said Jack Mason, and took another serve of sorbet.

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Miss Alexandra Williams

Utah

Dearest Miss Williams, I am so glad to be able to tell you that my
financial endeavours at the London office have met with considerable success. I am sailing home soon and I hope—dear Miss
Williams—if your heart remains unaltered towards me—to be
able to speak to your father when I return.