The Castlemaine Murders (15 page)

‘Yes, Miss Fisher,’ said Mr Butler. ‘Lunch is at one, Miss Fisher.’

Phryne climbed the stairs. It was time that she had a talk with Eliza. She would be no use to the household in an emergency if she was still having the vapours. What dreadful choice had she made that Father should send her all the way to Australia to forget? Eliza had never shown any interest in fortune hunters. Or rather, they had shown no interest in her. Of course, she had no money of her own, but when she turned twenty-five she would have a respectable settlement from Grandmother’s trust, not to mention a fair whack when Father finally failed to bully Death into waiting on the stairs for one more moment.

Phryne tapped. No answer. She tapped again. A bleary voice half screamed, ‘Go away!’

Phryne retreated to gather some supplies. When she returned, she was carrying a key, a flask of cognac and two glasses, a bucket of water, a bottle of Dr Proud’s Anti Hysteria Nervine (containing rare Indian herbs, and which Mrs Butler kept to hand for moments when souffles fell flat), a novel, an ashtray and a chair. She put her bucket and tray on the floor, sat down on the chair, and said to the door, ‘I’m going to sit here, Beth, until you let me in. Sooner or later you are going to come out, and then I am going to come in. No hurry, I’ve got all day.’

She poured herself a drink, opened the novel, lit a cigarette and began to read.

An hour passed. Phryne had heard the footsteps approach and knew herself perused through the keyhole. She read on. This Dorothy Sayers was a superb writer. To dare to have a detective who had come back from the Great War shell-shocked, a frail, breakable human being instead of the usual Sexton Blake superman—wonderful. She was rereading
Who’s
Body?
and was just getting to the most audacious Lord Peter’s song about insisting on a body in the bath when the door creaked open and a defeated voice confessed, ‘I have to go to the lavatory.’

‘Off you go,’ said Phryne, shifting her chair a little to one side and rising. ‘But I’m coming with you.’

She escorted Eliza to the guests’ lavatory, waited for a decent interval and escorted her back to her room, where she displaced all her impedimenta into the room.

‘The cognac and the Nervine are for you. The bucket is also for you if you decide to have hysterics,’ she informed her sister. ‘Though I hope you won’t because Mr Butler will give me hell about water on his polished floor.’

Eliza sat down on her bed and began to weep.

Phryne picked up the bottle and flask, poured her a slug of Dr Proud’s concoction and then a slug of cognac to take away the taste of valerian and mistletoe, and said, ‘Come along, old thing, you can tell me. You’ll be making yourself ill if you keep this up. Really, my dear, it cannot be that bad, whatever you’ve done. What is it? Stable boys? Horses? A scandal about racing drivers? Did you get exasperated with a lover and plug him with a .45? Duelling? Drug addiction? Necrophilia? Methodism? I’ve really heard it all, what with one thing and another. Cough it up,’ she advised, inelegantly.

‘I’m a socialist!’ blurted Eliza through her clenched hands.

‘Yes,’ prompted Phryne. That appeared to be it. There was a silence. Eliza peeped out between her spread fingers.

‘I said, I’m a Fabian socialist,’ she restated. Phryne utterly failed to reel in horror.

‘That’s nice,’ she said.

‘I believe in the greatest good for the greatest number! I’m against inherited wealth! I believe that all means of production should be in the hands of the workers!’ Eliza’s voice was gaining strength, either from the Nervine, the cognac or the lack of reaction from her sister.

‘Good,’ said Phryne. ‘Now, what is worrying you?’

‘Father said I was a traitor to my class!’ Eliza began to sob again. ‘He dragged me out of the waltz at the Hunt Ball and denounced me to the county! He said I was no daughter of his and told me it was all Mother’s fault! He forbade me his house! He threw me out! He told me to go and live in London with Alice and never darken his door again!’

‘He always was a fool,’ said Phryne. ‘Never mind, Eliza. Do you want to darken his door—why darken, anyway? I’m sure I never darkened a door. Not just by standing there. Dry your eyes,’ she suggested. ‘So you’re a Fabian. How interesting. I thought you might have been, you know. Getting on so well with Mabel, not the first lady of the night that you’ve met, I’ll wager. Instinctively almost telling me that my dinner could feed a hundred paupers. Quoting Beatrice and Sydney Webb. And reading
The Intelligent Woman’s Guide to Socialism and
Capitalism
. My copy just came out from England. Shaw has such a clear way of putting things, hasn’t he? It was the first time I felt I understood how capitalism worked.’

‘But, Phryne,’ Eliza began, anxious to make sure that her sister knew the worst. ‘You don’t understand. We have rejected revolutionary Marxism. We stand for evolutionary socialism, for gradualism. And in the meanwhile, I want to work with Alice and live in the East End and help the poor until they can find justice. Until the system evolves to support them.’

‘I know a couple of wharfies who’ll love to meet you,’ said Phryne.

‘You don’t mind?’ Eliza whispered. Phryne patted her shoulder.

‘Of course I don’t mind. Just don’t try to redistribute my capital.’

‘It’s all right for you,’ muttered Eliza. ‘You’ve got your settlement from Granny and your French pension and all that money from all those pictures you bought in Paris. I’ve got a year to go before I’m twenty-five and Father won’t give me a penny. He sprang for the trip to Australia provided I didn’t come back until I “got over these preposterous notions” and was ready to marry the nice man he’s picked out for me.’

‘Oh? And which nice man did Father find for you? Leaving aside my serious doubts as to Father’s taste in men, the last time I looked the English aristocracy was entirely composed of married men, those unlikely to marry at all, the effete and the brutes—not a wide choice. All the good ones were snaffled early and the remains—well. They are remains. Or possibly dregs is a more exact description.’

‘Oh, Phryne, it’s terrible,’ Eliza wept afresh. ‘I only got two offers in my second season, which Father said was the last, he wasn’t going to pay for another. There was Roderick Cholmondeley, the sole heir of the Duke of Dunstable, a mere boy—he’s eighteen, younger than me. And he’s only interested in football. Or cricket. Or hunting, or polo, or hockey or fishing. And he’s stupid. They couldn’t get him into university, even though he was a good chance for a Blue in about three sports. He can hardly read and write.’

‘So, one is an oaf,’ said Phryne. ‘And the other?’

‘He’s elderly,’ wailed Eliza.

‘But an old friend of Father’s?’ hazarded Phryne. She could see how this was going. Disappointed in his eldest daughter, who had turned out to be Phryne and could not be married off, even under chloroform, Milord had decided that the much more pliable Eliza could be sold to the highest bidder. And the highest bidder had been . . .?

‘Oh, Phryne, he’s awful. It’s the Marquess of Shropshire.’

‘Ugh,’ said Phryne. She remembered Theodoric, Marquess of Shropshire, which otherwise was a rather nice county and deserved better. A thin, acidulous widower (twice) with pinpoint pupils and a sidelong approach which had always reminded Phryne of a spider. He did not drink or smoke and his sole amusement appeared to be making money and outliving his wives. The young Phryne had instinctively recoiled from him when she was fourteen. The twenty-eight year old Phryne was fairly sure that his other recreations involved opium smoking and probably the sacrifice of young virgins to Mammon in some underground temple lined with banknotes. Wasn’t there some scandal about a parlour maid? And another about vast war supplies fraud? Was it not, in fact, the Marquess of Shropshire who had supplied to the War Office, at huge expense, rainproof coats which proved to be as absorbent as tissue paper? The Blotting Paper Marquess, the semi-frozen soldiery had called him (amongst other things). That was the man. And there was some Australian connection, was there not, some ancestor who had come back with a fortune? Or was that someone else? Eliza would know, and she appeared to be talking to Phryne again. And, come to think of it, waiting for a response.

‘Outrageous,’ said Phryne. ‘You shall not marry him, or the oaf, or anyone else, if you don’t want to. Father must have taken leave of his senses, not that he ever had many. Is he still getting through a bottle of port a day?’

‘More, sometimes,’ said Eliza. ‘Just before I left he had a bottle of claret and a bottle of port at lunch, double that at dinner. Mother was worried, but . . .’

‘Mother always is,’ concluded Phryne.

‘And it never makes the faintest difference,’ agreed Eliza.

She was sitting up, mopping her face, ordering her curls. Apart from the scoured complexion of the fair, who look like skinned rabbits if they are so unwise as to cry, she was looking better. Her voice, too, was firmer.

‘So apart from being an exile and a class traitor, is there anything else you would like to tell me?’ asked Phryne. This got a watery smile.

‘Oh, yes,’ said Eliza. ‘But I can’t tell you that, yet.’

‘All right, you can keep your other secrets for now, you socialist you,’ said Phryne. ‘And what gave you such a shock at Luna Park?’

‘Why, I saw two people that I knew. It’s always a surprise, seeing people in another place when you expect them to be home in England.’

‘Who did you see?’

‘About the first one I’m probably wrong, but I thought I saw Alice, in a flowered hat, but when I looked again she was gone. She would come and see me if she was in Australia, don’t you think? We parted in friendship. It’s probably because I so want to see her. You do that sometimes, eh, Phryne, mistake a stranger for someone you miss?’

‘Certainly,’ agreed Phryne.

‘But the other I am sure about. It was that halfwit Roderick. His father must have sent him out here to try and make me change my mind. And Father probably encouraged it. He likes him—what did you call him?—the oaf.’

‘Like calls to like,’ said Phryne.

‘But, Phryne, it’s serious,’ urged Eliza, grabbing Phryne’s cognac hand and almost spilling her drink. ‘Before Father sent me away Roderick was threatening all sorts of things—to kidnap me, to make me stay with him, to . . .’

‘Rape you?’ prompted her sister.

Eliza blushed purple and nodded.

‘Have no fear,’ said Phryne. ‘Come downstairs and I will introduce you to Li Pen. He is Chinese, you must make up your mind to that. But if he is told to guard your body, nothing short of an army will get to you and I would put good money on Li Pen against even a biggish army. He’s a Shaolin monk, devoted to chastity, vegetarianism and martial arts. And, incidentally, Vegemite. He’s staying here with you and the household while I go to Castlemaine and get to the bottom of this business about the mummy. And Lin Chung needs to find four hundred ounces of gold which went missing on that goldfield in 1857, so I shall probably meet him there.’

Eliza had formed an opinion on Lin Chung, who had always been very polite to her. For one trained on Madame Lin, Eliza was a mere passing annoyance.

‘He’s very nice, isn’t he? So elegant. Like a big cat—a panther, say. And his clothes are divine.’

‘Come along,’ said Phryne, making a note to ask Ruth to share her romantic novels with Eliza, who clearly had similar tastes. ‘You need to meet Li Pen and then you will feel a lot more secure. If Roddy gets past Li Pen I shall personally join a monastery, and think of the shock for the poor monks.’

‘Father is quite wrong about you,’ said Eliza as they descended the stairs.

‘Why, what does the old buffalo say?’

‘He says you don’t care,’ said Eliza. ‘But you do, or you wouldn’t have been so patient with me.’

‘Shh,’ said Phryne. ‘Don’t tell anyone, or I shall lose my air of fashionable languor. Li Pen? This is my sister Eliza.’

Li Pen got to his feet from his sitting position without moving through any intervening space, a trick which never failed to enchant Phryne. He bowed politely to Eliza, who took in his shaved head, his neat blue garments and his beautiful, remarkably bright eyes. She smiled tentatively. Li Pen looked very, very foreign, like an extra from a Sax Rohmer novel.

‘She is being pursued by an unwanted suitor who has threatened assault, kidnapping and worse,’ Phryne went on while Eliza blushed again. ‘If you see him, twist his head off.’

‘As the Silver Lady says,’ responded Li Pen. ‘The lady her sister need have no fear.’

‘But Roddy’s awfully strong,’ protested Eliza, surveying the light, lithe monk.

‘Shall I have to do penance for boasting?’ asked Li Pen of Phryne.

‘No, this is a demonstration for the purpose of making Eliza feel safe. Go ahead. And make it impressive.’

Li Pen took the poker from the fire irons and stroked it between his hands, which suddenly made a complicated motion. He held the poker out, knotted in a decorative bow.

Eliza hefted the artifact. The poker was made of good solid iron and she had only seen a little flurry of movement, not the heave-ho of a fairground strongman. She stared.

Li Pen took the poker back, twisted it the opposite way, and straightened it out again.

‘I’m convinced,’ said Eliza. ‘Thank you for looking after me, Mr Pen.’

‘Mr Li,’ corrected Phryne. ‘Now, come for a walk along the seashore and let us talk of many things, including whose coats of arms have mermen as supporters and why that detestable young man is in Australia.’

‘And other things,’ agreed Eliza.

There was still a shadow over her, Phryne thought; we aren’t through this by a long chalk, but a beginning has been made. A Fabian socialist in the family, she added to herself. Father must have had whole litters of kittens. How I wish I’d seen it. She chuckled quietly, collected her hat, Li Pen and Eliza, and went out for a walk by the sea.

. . .

The Lin family holdings were much greater and more diverse than Lin had ever imagined. On the reluctant instructions of his grandmother, Lin was being conducted through the business by his eldest uncle, who had survived the reign of Grandmama by being jovial and cheerful, enjoying his wife, playing with his children, relishing his excellent dinners and consuming his many cups of wine, and never taking any criticism personally. It was well known that Uncle had the hide of a hippopotamus, but he was a jolly chap and it was a pleasure to be instructed by him.