Murder on a Midsummer Night (18 page)

‘Dinner’s all ready, Miss, all cold, even the strawberry shape has set,’ Mrs Butler informed her.

‘Wonderful. I hope we have only four more people to come, just Eliza and Lady Alice and Bert and Cec. Then we bar the doors and loose the dogs and inform the sentries that they are to shoot on sight. I want a nice quiet evening, and I expect that you do, too.’

‘It’s been fun,’ Ruth told her.

Jane nodded. She had been allowed to dissect the cooked roast duck with cherry jelly which was the centrepiece of Mrs Butler’s cold collation. She found it strange that while Mrs Butler had no anatomical knowledge per se, she knew how a duck fitted together and how to take it apart. And Jane had smuggled a lot of scraps to Ember, who was now sitting in the middle of the sacred kitchen table, on a tea towel, washing himself with greasy, overfed languor.

‘Time we all got ready,’ said Dot, finishing her drink and putting the glass in the sink. ‘Come along, girls, you can have first wash. Is that young man all right?’ she asked Phryne.

‘Perfectly so, and in any case I’ve locked him in,’ Phryne replied. She did not know anything about James’s preferences, but they were not going to include Jane or Ruth.

‘Then we thank Mrs Butler for a nice afternoon and off we go,’ Dot instructed. ‘And we take the cat,’ she added.

Jane gathered Ember to her unformed bosom and carried him, purring, out of the room and the others followed.

‘All right, Mrs Butler?’ asked Phryne.

‘Oh, yes, Miss,’ said the cook, wriggling her toes in her lisle stockings. ‘Nothing to what Mr B and I did in the old days—there were always a string of visitors hanging on the bell. The afternoon goes fast. It’s all right being flat out like a lizard drinking, once in a way.’

‘But only once in a way,’ said Phryne, who had got the message. ‘Right, I’m off. Thank you so much, Mrs Butler. Pink flowers on the hat, am I right? And perhaps white feathers?’

‘Right you are, Miss,’ said Mrs Butler.

Phryne, bathed and scented, dressed in her favourite at-home dinner dress. It was ankle length, modest in cut, with a sweetheart neckline and thin straps. She smoothed down the material, a fine claret coloured silk which draped like velvet. It had been an interesting day, and further revelations were to come. She heard the bell ring for what she hoped would be the last time today, and Eliza’s voice in the hall. Good.

She sat down at her window to watch the sun set, smoke a meditative cigarette, and get her thoughts into order. She scribbled for some time in her notebook.

A little later she rose and descended to find her parlour augmented with Eliza and Lady Alice, accepting cocktails, and Bert and Cec, accepting beer.

‘There she is!’ Bert raised his glass. ‘You look bonzer, Comrade!’

‘Thank you, Comrade Bert,’ said Phryne, wondering if he had been imbibing already.

‘You always look lovely in that dress, Phryne,’ her sister told her. ‘We are celebrating our first successful mission as spies.’

‘Oh?’ asked Phryne. ‘Did you enjoy it?’

‘Rather,’ said Eliza, seconded by Lady Alice. ‘I’ve always loved driving fast, but father would never let me drive the Rolls, you know, and the gardener’s car would go about twenty miles an hour, even down Dewberry Hill.’

‘You drove down Dewberry Hill in that old rattletrap?’ Phryne was amazed. ‘You’re braver than I! How very enterprising of you, Eliza!’

‘It wasn’t so much going down,’ replied Eliza thoughtfully, ‘as stopping at the bottom without brakes. I ended up in the hedge about three times out of five. But it was a stout hedge.’

‘She is very enterprising,’ agreed Lady Alice. ‘We even managed to make the accounts balance—well, almost—while we were lurking.’

‘Miss Fisher, Mrs Phillips reports that her father has returned safely. And dinner is served,’ announced Mr Butler.

The table was laid buffet style, an invention which Phryne approved of, because you could see the whole choice of food at once and collar your favourites. Mr Butler approved of it, because it meant that he did not need to wait on the diners, and his feet hurt. Dot and the girls liked it because it seemed so luxurious to have all that food in view. Mrs Butler was not sure. Bert had never seen such a thing before, but his opinion was formed in a moment.

‘You beaut!’ he enthused. ‘What a spread! Come on, Cec mate, pass me the cold steak and kidney pie.’

Lady Alice and Eliza were so hungry that they didn’t even murmur a protest about how many poor families this feast could feed. Everyone found a plate and began to help themselves. Cold chicken, cold duck with cherry jelly, five kinds of salads, three kinds of bread. A French cheese and egg pie. A steak and kidney pie. A pork pie filled with delicious seasoned jelly. Small cups of chilled bouillon.

There was a general sigh of delight as the company found their particular tastes and indulged. Jane found that dissecting the dinner didn’t change the taste at all.

‘I like this eggy pie,’ observed Bert.

‘And this is wonderful chicken,’ said Dot. ‘So tender! I didn’t think we’d be hungry after all the scraps the girls and I have eaten today.’

‘Whereas Cec and me have been doing Boy Racer all through the city,’ Bert replied, reaching for another slice of—pork pie, this time? ‘And he had the hardest yakka, ’cos that old van ain’t up to much these days.’

‘It’s all right,’ said Cec, replenishing his plate with
salade russe
, for which he had acquired a taste on the very first occasion that Phryne Fisher had irrupted into their lives. ‘Just a bit old and a man can’t get the parts for it, so we had to make a few of them. The door stays on all right if you remember to tie it up. But I almost lost you, Bert. That Harley was breaking all the speed limits.’

‘Yair, where’s a copper when you need one?’ grinned Bert.

‘All right, Eliza, what happened?’ asked Phryne, who had ordered a plate of delicacies conveyed to Lin Chung, who was still designing and did not want to be disturbed. James Barton was still asleep. Phryne had taken the plate of alligator pear vinaigrette to herself. No one else had had the nerve to try it yet. It was buttery and perfect. ‘We are agog to hear your adventures!’

‘Oh, Phryne dear, it was fun,’ confessed Eliza. ‘And Comrade Bert is a most expert driver. The big motorbike ridden by the man we are calling Simon came first to the Manifold shop. Comrade Cec went in to talk to his cousin Cedric first,’ she said, trying to keep her facts in order.

‘Ceddie,’ said Cec, ‘told me that this Simon was always hanging around Sophie, and Ceddie didn’t like his looks. Had seen him off a couple of times, but what can a man do when the sheila lets the mongrel in? Says he told Soph the bloke was a wrong ’un but she didn’t listen.’

‘They’re good at that,’ observed Bert. ‘Women. Not listening. My landlady—’ He was suddenly aware of a silence and looked around a table entirely populated by women. The silence lengthened. Dot, Phryne, Eliza, Lady Alice and both girls stared at him. ‘Can someone pass me some of that thin soup?’ he asked desperately.

‘He kissed Sophie goodbye, the hound. Then we started off,’ said Eliza. ‘The bike roared through the night and we followed. If we talk of breaking speed limits, Comrade, I don’t like to think how fast we were going.’

‘Ah, well,’ said Bert, burying his blushes in bouillon. ‘Not that fast. We had to keep Cec in view, and the bloke on the Harley as well. Luckily he never thought to hare off down some of them lanes, or we would have lost him.’

‘Then we raced through to Kew, where he stopped outside the Atkinson mansion. There he loitered with intent until a maid came out and threw herself into his arms.’

‘Gertrude,’ said Phryne. Her heart sank. Gertrude had tended her kindly when she had arrived at the Atkinson home soaking wet. She had even sold Phryne her new pink slippers. Somehow the thought of the slippers made Phryne feel sad. And hadn’t she said that her young man was a baker and they were saving up to get married? That must have been what Simon told her. The hound.

‘They were clearly well acquainted,’ continued Miss Eliza delicately. ‘He spoke to her and then he kissed her goodbye—and then we were off again. This time to Richmond, it transpired. He really let the bike out on those curves.’

‘Going like a bat out of hell,’ agreed Bert, who had recovered his spirits.

‘That’s where I nearly lost you,’ Cec informed him.

‘But luckily there was a traffic lock on Studley Park Road,’ continued Eliza. ‘And he had to slow down. He actually got off the bike and rolled a cigarette and waited for the cars to go past. A truck, I believe, had shed its load and there were peaches all over the road.’

‘Not a lot of traction in stone fruit,’ said Bert.

Jane immediately began calculating. If a standard peach was crushed under a weight of, say, one ton, how slippery would it be under motorcycle wheels?

‘So that when he went on we could easily follow,’ said Eliza. ‘And then—he went home. You’ll never guess where he lives, Phryne, not in a million years.’

Phryne had an idea but she wasn’t going to spoil her sister’s triumph.

‘Can’t imagine,’ she said, putting down a forkful of tomato salad with basil and olive oil. ‘Where?’

‘With Miss Collins,’ said Eliza. ‘Veronica Collins. She is one of them. I saw her at the funeral.’

‘Oh, yes, I heard her mother kept a boarding house. Gosh,’ said Phryne. ‘That young man does spread himself around, doesn’t he?’

‘By the way he was embracing Miss Collins,’ said Eliza primly, ‘I’d agree with you.’

‘Fervently?’ asked Ruth, who loved romances.

‘Most amorous,’ said Lady Alice, to whom they were a secret vice.

‘Gosh,’ said Ruth. ‘That’s three!’

‘Indeed it is,’ agreed Phryne. ‘Well, Simon is a bounder. How very useful you have been, Eliza dear. Can I make a small contribution to the charities to express my gratitude?’

‘This dinner is enough,’ protested Eliza. ‘And it was very exciting!’

‘You want to put six quid into the Provision of the Works of Marx and Engels Fund,’ said Bert, who had been listening to the accounts in his back seat. ‘Then everything will balance proper.’

‘That would be very generous,’ agreed Lady Alice. ‘And they would balance.’

‘Six quid it is,’ said Phryne. ‘And cheap at the price.’

Dessert was Ruth’s chocolate ice cream, fruit, cheese and coffee. The girls helped Mr Butler clear the table. Dot was under the influence of some strong emotion but did not respond to Phryne’s inviting glance. Therefore, the dessert was consumed—with many compliments on the ice cream—and the visitors were farewelled with money and thanks. The girls took their hot milk and put themselves to bed, to play a game of ludo until they were drowsy. Phryne and Dot sat at the denuded table over their last drinks, Dot with her hot chocolate and Phryne with her liqueur, her coffee and her cigarette.

‘A long day, Dot dear, and I forgot to ask you about Father Kelly.’

‘Poor man, he is so homesick. I had to listen to him talking about his Donegal for an hour. Such a long way from home. I did tell him that there is a Gaelic speaker at the Caledonian Inn. The publican. My dad knows him. He’s homesick too. At least he can listen to his own language there, and get a drink of Irish whiskey. That must be so hard,’ said Dot. ‘I’d hate it if I never heard Australian again.’

‘Indeed,’ coaxed Phryne.

‘Anyway, I asked him what the inscription meant and he said it was Irish all right and he told me what it meant. And I lit a candle for the boy Patrick and for the poor girl Kathleen as well, and paid for a few masses. It didn’t cost much, Miss.’

‘Dot dear! You may pay for as many masses as you please,’ said Phryne. ‘What did the message say?’

Dot told her.

Phryne took a long gulp of coffee. ‘Well,’ she said at last. ‘We’d better set up a meeting with the Bonnettis, Dot dear, as soon as possible, don’t you think?’

‘But who is the child, Miss Phryne?’ asked Dot.

‘Oh, I think I know that,’ replied her eccentric employer. ‘We’ll do it tomorrow if we can. Pack up all the things we have of both parties, Dot dear. And we can, at least, as Mrs Bonnetti says, drag it all out into the sun and deal with it.’

‘If you say so, Miss Phryne. I’m going to bed—unless you need me?’

‘No, you’ve had a long day, sleep in tomorrow. Nothing—God willing—will happen until the afternoon. I’ll just see how James Barton is, and Lin Chung. Good night, Dot, sleep tight.’

Dot trailed away up the stairs. Having given Miss Phryne the translation, she felt relieved of a burden. And she was so tired. She washed briefly, donned her softest cotton nightdress, and fell asleep as she was saying her prayers.

Phryne prowled to James Barton’s room, but he was sleeping like a baby. She saw that he had a chamber pot and a supply of snacks and a carafe of water. The cigarette box was full and there were matches in the box. He would do for the night and she locked him in again.

The she joined Lin in the smaller parlour. He was surrounded by sheets of screwed up paper and he had clearly eaten his dinner while writing. But he turned to her a face alight with accomplishment and showed her a page of specifications and sight lines and wiring.

‘I shall make for you, Jade Lady,’ he said, ‘a journey of nightmare and terror.’

She kissed him rather thoroughly.