Death by Water (6 page)

‘Maybe we better call the steward,’ said Dot. ‘He’s a ratter, they might be looking for him.’

Dot used the telephone, not without her usual trepidation that it might fizz sparks through the earpiece, and a voice said that he would be right there.

There was a knock some five minutes later. Phryne had managed to make a closer acquaintance of the cat, who had put down his rat to allow her to scratch him behind the ears and under the chin. He purred rustily. Whatever it was that constituted confident, easy maleness, he had it by the oodle. And Phryne had always liked aged roués. This one had certainly been well battered in the lists of love.

‘Good evening, ladies,’ said the steward. ‘I’m the night steward, Nick Jones. What about a little late supper to stave off those bad dreams? Or perhaps another drink?’ He was a stocky, personable young man with an agreeably breezy manner. ‘Or maybe some tea?’

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Then he noticed Phryne and the cat. He staggered. His voice went up a full octave.

‘Scragger? What are you doing here?’

Scragger gave the steward a disgusted look and a deep, commanding ‘mew’. Then, recalled to his duties, he shook off Phryne’s hand, picked up his lawful rat and exited, saun-tering past the steward with his insolent tail as straight as a taper.

‘I’m so sorry, ladies, I can’t think how he got in here. Does anything need . . . er . . . cleaning up?’

‘No, he took his rat with him,’ Phryne pointed out. ‘Has Scragger been with you long?’

‘He stowed away on the first voyage,’ Nick replied, mopping his face with a very white handkerchief. ‘Resigned his ticket on a South Sea freighter, or so they say. I know you’ll want to complain about this, ladies, but could you sort of say that he didn’t soil your cabin or bite anyone? We’re all fond of old Scragger . . .’

‘I haven’t seen anything to complain of,’ said Phryne. ‘Have you, Dot?’

‘No,’ said Dot. ‘I’d much rather he had the rat than it was still in here.’

‘He might have brought it with him,’ replied the steward.

‘He shouldn’t be up on this deck at all but there isn’t a lot you can do to confine cats to quarters. Thanks very much, Miss Fisher, Miss Williams. That’s really nice of you. Now, can I bring you a little light plate of something tasty?’

‘Yes. Biscuits and cheese, please, and a fruit salad. What about you, Dot?’

‘I had a big dinner,’ said Dot doubtfully. ‘But the sea makes you really hungry. I’d like a fruit salad too. And,’ said Dot, greatly daring, ‘another glass of sherry.’

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She wasn’t going to become a lush, but the burglar handling her unmentionables had shaken her.

When Nick came back, Phryne piled strong mousetrap cheese on her biscuits, and Dot fished bits of mango out of her fruit salad. Dot loved mango. They sat for a while in silence.

‘Tell me about your dinner in the second class dining room,’ said Phryne.

‘It was very nice,’ Dot said, swallowing a piece of unexpected pawpaw. ‘I met the other maids and Mr West’s valet, Mr Thomas. He’s just come to Mr Mason, the others are old hands. The food was really good. Beautiful fried fish and chips, lovely salads, that soup in jelly which Mrs Butler makes as well.

Cold roast beef. Caroline says that the food in Second Class on the
Hinemoa
is better than First Class on any other ship.

Lots to drink if you wanted beer and two drinks each for the ladies. I gave mine to Caroline.’

‘A good idea,’ said Phryne. ‘So, what was the on-dit?’

‘Miss?’

‘The gossip?’

‘Oh, there was lots of it. Mr West is terrible jealous and Mrs West flirts a lot—and they say her dresses are more like bathing slips than something a lady would go to dinner in.’

‘So they are,’ said Phryne.

‘They talked about the thefts,’ said Dot. ‘All the maids think it must be one of the crew but they can’t work out how he gets the stones off the ship. The crew say they’re sure it isn’t them. What else? That Mr Forrester is a bit of a ladies’

man. Mr Charles, the head steward, he’s been on ships all his life, he says that he walked into the cabin and saw rows of pictures all spread out. Bring a blush to a policeman’s face, he said.’

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‘Did you get the impression that these were—how shall I put this?—pictures of men and women together in displays of marital affection, or were they just nude ladies?’

It had been a good try at delicacy, but when Dot puzzled through the question she blushed as red as a poppy could do, after its second sherry.

‘No!’ she gasped. ‘Just ladies with no clothes on.’

‘Ah,’ said Phryne. Mr Forrester might have been taking anything from the sort of feelthy postcards one was offered in the Place Pigalle to Art Studies for the Connoisseur (ten shillings a packet, twelve different poses) or even real art.

‘And what about the elderly but charming Professor Applegate?’

‘They say she’s nice. She’s got a lot of Maori stuff in her cabin,’ said Dot, very thankful to have escaped the photographer and the nudes. ‘Caroline says that some of the things are
tapu
to her—she isn’t allowed to look at them or she won’t ever have any children—so another steward looks after the lady.

Caroline was very serious about this heathen
tapu
nonsense.

And she’s supposed to be a Christian.’

‘Never mind, Dot dear, haven’t I seen you throw salt over your shoulder? Refuse to open an umbrella indoors? Say “touch wood”?’

‘I suppose,’ said Dot grudgingly. ‘Well, let’s see. Mr Mason is the son of a famous lawyer. He doesn’t get on with his dad.

He’s kept on a short allowance until he does as his father wants, which is to go to university and study law. But he wants to be a footballer. His father won’t hear of it. Says football is low. No one knows much about the Cahills, except he’s quiet and she does the talking. They say he’s a nice old bushie and his wife’s very moral, but all right really.’

‘That was my impression too,’ Phryne agreed.

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‘The Singers, they never go to dinner on the first night, but take a sleeping pill in case they get seasick, even though they never have,’ said Dot. ‘Mr Charles says Mrs is very wrapped up in Mr, but he doesn’t care for her so much. The old man, Mr Aubrey, everyone loves him. Always good-natured, never cross, lots of interesting stories. Mr Charles says that the company ought to keep him on every voyage just to make things pleasant for the passengers and crew.’

‘Did you hear anything about the musicians?’

‘Mavis and the Melody Makers? Only that they’re no better than they ought to be. But everyone thinks they are good at music. There’s one of them, Jo, a woman, she always wears men’s clothes, and they say—’

‘I can imagine,’ soothed Phryne, not wanting to watch Dot blush again.

‘Anyway, that’s about all. I stayed for a couple of games of pontoon, then I came back here, and I knew right away that someone had been in the room. And that’s how Scragger must have got in, of course. When the burglar opened the door.’

‘Thoughtfully bringing his own rat, too. I wish we could ask Scragger who our burglar was.’

‘We can ask him,’ Dot pointed out. ‘We just wouldn’t understand the answer.’

‘True,’ said Phryne. ‘So, the hunt begins, Dot.’

Dot looked at her in comfortable dismay.

‘Here we go again,’ Dot agreed.

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To Isaac Mcleod

Mull

Dear Brother

Our brother John has sent the money for the tickets and we are
sailing from Southampton on the morrow. Please comfort our
mother as well as you can John. When we get to America it should
surely not be long before we can bring her to us.

Your loving sister

Mari

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CHAPTER THREE

They hear a voice in every wind

snatch a fearful joy.

Thomas Gray

Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College
Friday

Morning was announced very gently by Caroline knocking on the door and bringing in a beverage tray. Dot, who had slept the sleep of the virtuous (ensuring a continuation of that virtue by locking her bedroom door and putting a chair under the handle in case the burglar came back to finger her chemises again), was sitting on the private balcony, brushing her hair.

Phryne was half awake.

‘Good morning,’ whispered Caroline. ‘There’s coffee made by Leo for Miss, he made it special because Teddy says she likes that sort of coffee, and tea for you. Breakfast’s on in both parlours as soon as you like, or I can bring it. Which do you want?’

‘Come back in half an hour and I’ll tell you,’ Dot informed her.

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‘Right you are,’ said Caroline, and left silently.

‘What’s the time?’ asked Phryne sleepily.

‘Eight o’clock and a fine morning,’ said Dot, flicking back the curtains. Cool salt air rushed in through the French windows. Phryne stretched like a cat.

‘I’ll just have a shower,’ she told Dot. ‘I had the strangest dreams. Is that coffee I can smell?’ she called over her shoulder, dropping her nightdress as she went.

‘Italian coffee,’ replied Dot cunningly. That should guarantee a swift return. Phryne loved coffee with a deep and sincere passion.

Miss Fisher was back in minutes, wrapped in a large towel.

She drank a couple of cups of coffee reverently. Dot was reminded of a cat drinking milk. There was the same sense of almost religious fervour.

Dot had already dressed in a sensible beige skirt, coffee coloured blouse and brown cardigan.

‘Shall I have breakfast served in here or do you want to go out?’ she asked.

‘At this hour?’ Phryne asked, shocked at such a suggestion.

‘Croissants, Dot dear, or hot rolls, with butter and jam. You go and have a proper breakfast.’

Dot who could not understand anyone who could afford to eat porridge and eggs and bacon and kidneys and mushrooms and kedgeree every morning of her life opting for flaky sort of French bread things, shrugged, smiled and went out. She left Phryne with the coffee pot. Early in the morning, the coffee pot was always Phryne’s favourite companion. Not only did it yield coffee, it did not talk. Phryne was in entire agreement with Oscar Wilde about people who were witty at breakfast.

Presently Caroline brought a fresh pot of coffee, croissants which were perfectly canonical, the usual preserves and the ship’s
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newsletter. She did not say a word, indicating either that Dot had warned her or that she knew about people who liked to approach mornings gently and by degrees, instead of vulgarly pouncing on them.

The ship’s newsletter—they must have their own printing press, how enterprising of them!—was a single sheet which announced that today they were at sea, there would be a deck tennis tournament and a swimming race for those interested, that the weather was expected to be calm, that Mr Valdeleur was taking on all comers at a simultaneous chess exhibition in the library, and the Palm Court would be open for morning tea, lunch, and afternoon tea with music from the Melody Makers.

Phryne tore a croissant apart and ate it meditatively. It was very good. A little heavy on the butter but that could be expected of a Sicilian baker with a generous southern Italian nature.

Birds glided past the windows, matching the ship’s speed so exactly that they could be examined as clearly as if they were museum specimens hanging on wires. A silver gull, perfect to the pencilled red eyeliner around its bright blue eye, examined her coldly, decided that she was neither threat nor prey, and abruptly decelerated towards the aft disposal of the breakfast detritus, flicking up and back on cupped wings like an acrobat.

Phryne dressed in a lounging robe and took her last cup of coffee out to her private balcony. There she assembled a glass of water, a pencil, the packet of briefing papers, a smoker’s friend and her cigarettes. To the soothing accompaniment of the water and the distant cries of passengers playing deck tennis, she began to read and make notes. By the time Dot came back she was ready to talk.

‘Good breakfast, Dot?’ asked Phryne, seeing that her companion was pink with food and nice fresh air.

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‘Eggs made in three ways, sausages and very good bacon, and lots of chafing dishes with everything you could ever want,’

said Dot dreamily. Food made her sentimental. ‘It was lovely.

And as much tea as you could drink.’

‘Good,’ said Phryne. How did people eat like that in the morning? It was vaguely obscene. ‘I’ve gone through all the notes they gave me.’

‘And?’ asked Dot, sitting down in the next wicker chair.

‘Why don’t you get your embroidery and I’ll talk about the previous thefts. It helps me remember them.’

‘All right, Miss. I know what you mean. When my mum sent me for messages, I used to make them into a little chant, like in church. Lard, loaf, onions, ask Mr Johnson for some sage when you pass his garden.’

‘And you were having roast chicken for dinner,’ suggested Phryne absently. Dot gaped. Phryne looked up.

‘It was simple, Dot,’ she explained. ‘They are all the ingredients for chicken stuffing.’

‘It sounds easy when you explain it,’ said Dot. ‘But it’s magic if you don’t.’

‘Sherlock Holmes had the same problem,’ Phryne returned.

‘I’ve definitely got to stop explaining.’

Dot fetched her sewing. Phryne settled down to expound.

‘The first theft was from a young American lady with the unlikely name of Florence Van Sluys,’ she said as Dot threaded her needle expertly. ‘She had brought aboard a very valuable diamond necklace given to her by her doting father, a Midwest person involved in some oil enterprise, on the occasion of her eighteenth birthday. One minute she was dancing in the frol-icking throng bedecked with enough ice to cut out a cathedral window, the next—poof!’