The Castlemaine Murders (7 page)

‘That’s the Gold Rush,’ said Jane.

‘So it is,’ said Phryne. ‘A very good time for a murder, and a very easy place in which to disappear.’

In the thirteenth year of the reign of the glorious Emperor Lord of
the Dragon Throne Kwong Sui of the Ching Dynasty, Mid
Autumn festival, 15th day of eighth month.

To his younger sister Sung Mai the ku’li Sung Ma sends greetings.
We seem to be travelling so fast that the clouds trail behind us,
trying vainly to keep up. I can hear the sailors shouting over a fantan
game below, smell the stench of the rancid pork fat our fried
cakes are being cooked in and the fish which the ship’s cat, whom
I have named Dark Moon because of her black fur, has dragged
out of the bilges and is now devouring on my bit of deck. The ropes
which hold the sails are singing.

There ought to be a poem in this.

A small village, dinner is cooking, men are gambling.

The sea gods noose it and sling it across the waves.

Not one of my best. We have been thirty days at sea and they
say that we will arrive before fifty days are gone.

The elder brother bids farewell, with love, to the younger sister.

CHAPTER FOUR

In her new dress, she comes from her vermilion
towers;
The light of spring floods the palace.

Liu Yuhsi, translated by Lin Yutang

Phryne and Jane returned home with the ticket and pieces of newspaper carefully preserved between two sheets of glass. Jane was quiet all the way home in the Hispano-Suiza. Phryne wondered if anything was wrong. Delayed shock?

Her fears were dissipated when Jane remarked, ‘Perhaps I might rather be a pathologist, like Professor Glaister.’

‘Perhaps,’ said Phryne. ‘Think about it when you have finished your medical training. Dr Treasure does say that it is one speciality where the patients don’t complain.’

Jane chuckled. ‘Who is coming to dinner?’ she asked eagerly. ‘Did you say he was a dwarf, Miss Phryne?’

‘Yes. A very educated and dignified person, and I have to warn my sister not to insult him. I know you and Ruth too well to think that you might stare and giggle as silly Misses might do. Though, now I come to think of it, neither of you giggle much. And you may not ask him personal questions, Jane. I know that you would really like to and that you mean no offence, but he’s a guest and guests are not to be either anatomically examined or interrogated.’ Phryne paused. ‘Unless they want to be, of course,’ she added.

Jane bit her lip. ‘You’re thinking about Mrs Behan, aren’t you?’ she asked. ‘I did apologise.’

‘I know, and that the question of the real colour of her hair was only to be expected if one insists on dyeing grey-brown hair that very metallic shade of red. But it’s a known middle-class fact that ladies do not dye their hair. Only actresses and prostitutes dye their hair. So your innocent question, “What dye do you use to get that lovely red colour?”, was loaded with social criticism. Conversation is a minefield until you learn the conventions, Jane dear.’

‘I’ll never learn all the rules,’ muttered Jane.

‘Yes, you will,’ said Phryne. ‘Then you can bend them. The best advice I would give you is, “If under attack, cause a diversion”.’

‘A diversion?’

‘Yes, trip over the dog, spill a glass of wine on your attacker, burst into song, challenge your attacker to a duel. And the angrier you get, the lower your voice should be. Never shout unless you are shouting “Fire!” Enough of this . . . I am not cut out to be a guide to youth. I think youth can get itself into enough trouble without my help, don’t you, Youth?’

Jane grinned and agreed.

Lin Chung arrived at the door, dead-heating a gentleman in faultless evening costume whose top hat came up to the level of his second coat button. Lin, whose savoir-faire was legendary, bowed slightly. The top hat bent in his direction.

‘Do I have the pleasure of meeting Mr Burton?’ he asked.

‘And you, sir, must be Mr Lin. Delighted.’

It was such a deep, cultured voice that Lin regretted that he could not see the gentleman’s face. Mr Butler opened the door and admitted them, taking the gentlemen’s coats and conducting them into the drawing room with his usual suavity.

Phryne had been thinking about this visit, and the fact that her entire house was built for people two feet taller than her guest. After a consultation with Mr Butler, a suitable chair had been fixed to a wooden crate, covered with blue velvet. This would allow Mr Burton to sit almost at eye level with the guests and incidentally obviate the crick in the neck which Phryne always got from conversing with her friend.

‘How kind of you to come,’ exclaimed Phryne, allowing Mr Burton to kiss her hand and leading him to his throne. She wanted him to be able to see and appreciate her new dress.

Phryne expected to entertain often in her sea-blue, sea-green rooms and she needed a cocktail dress which complemented the rooms. In blue or green the clothes had a regrettable tendency to meld into the general colour scheme, so guests saw an uneasy Gustav Klimt vision of their hostess’s head and limbs as if emerging from the wallpaper. This clearly would not do. But red or purple were too garish and shocking in the soothing greens and one could not wear cloth of gold all the time.

She had taken the problem to Madame Fleuri, High Priestess of the Mode, who had surveyed the rooms, scribbled notes, accepted a glass of wine, scribbled more notes and then vanished into her atelier for three weeks, emerging with a dress she called ‘Opalescence’. It had cost Phryne a fortune. She had not grudged a penny of it.

Josiah Burton surveyed Phryne with deep appreciation. She had always been elegant, even when—as he had first seen her— wearing a Woolworth’s fuji dress with half the fringes torn off. Now she was clad in a slim sheath of steel grey silk. Over it was a cloud grey silk georgette wrap which was almost transparent, sewn with paillettes of mother of pearl down to the weighted handkerchief points of the skirt, along the scoop neck and the shoulder straps. A string of pearls swung nearly to her knees, knotted halfway. A panache of pearl shells was in her black hair. Grey silk stockings and shoes completed the ensemble. She turned to be admired, chiming a little.

‘A sea-nymph,’ said Mr Burton.

‘A mermaid,’ said Lin Chung.

‘Isn’t she absolutely beautiful?’ asked Ruth of Jane. Jane nodded. She would never be as interested in clothes as Phryne was, but she knew an effect when she saw it. Phryne shone with a moonlight gleam against the blue and green, like the mermaid to which Mr Lin had likened her. The paillettes glinted when she moved, as though she were shedding drops of sea-water. Ruth thought that she looked even more beautiful than the heroine of her latest romance,
A Fisher Maid
.

Phryne perched on a chair to allow Mr Butler to distribute glasses of his gin cocktail, a drink which ‘promotes ease and eloquence, Miss Fisher, while avoiding any sense of excess’. Phryne had asked which ingredient took away any extravagance in the drink and he had replied with a definitively straight face, ‘That would be the lemon juice, Miss Fisher.’ Whereupon Phryne had given up, reflecting that every religion has its mysteries.

Jane found that by carefully aligning herself with one of Phryne’s many mirrors, she could gaze on Mr Burton without seeming to stare, and was lost to fashion thereafter, even forgetting to drink her orange juice.

Which didn’t mean that Mr Burton hadn’t noticed. He felt the avid eyes and traced their source. He said, ‘Miss Jane?’ and she blushed.

‘What would you like to ask me?’ he enquired calmly. ‘Don’t be concerned. I am used to being an object of interest in any gathering.’

Jane gathered her courage and looked him in his highly intelligent, dispassionate eyes.

‘I beg your pardon, sir,’ she said. ‘And I wasn’t looking at you as though you were an object. But I am curious. I want to be a doctor.’

‘A useful attribute for a doctor. I have achondroplasia, which is an inherited abnormality. Characteristic of this disease are the short limbs, and therefore short stature. The skull vault and clavicle, and the facial structure, are also retarded in development, giving this dished-in appearance.’ He ran a stubby, powerful finger along his tip-tilted nose. ‘But I am as strong as a taller man with a much lower centre of gravity and lighter body. This gives me advantages as an acrobat: thus.’

Mr Burton, still holding his glass, executed a perfect somersault, coming down into his sitting position again without spilling a drop. Phryne and Ruth laughed and clapped. Jane said, ‘Thank you! That was wonderful. And I promise not to ask any more questions. Really,’ she protested, when Ruth nudged her.

‘You are with the circus?’ asked Lin Chung easily.

‘Dwarf heaven, they call it. Where else can the Small People be at home in a world of giants?’ Mr Burton smiled. ‘There I met Miss Fisher.’

‘Are you still with Farrell’s?’ asked Phryne. ‘How I remember falling off Missy every day! My bruises had bruises.’

‘But you did learn to do a handstand on a horse’s back,’ he reminded her. ‘Also, you found out who was trying to ruin the circus and you freed an innocent woman from prison. Everyone sends their love,’ went on Mr Burton, allowing Mr Butler to refill his glass. ‘Farrell himself, Dulcie, Wallace and Bruno, Samson, Doreen and Alan Lee, the Catalans, the Shakespeare brothers—you recall the clowns.’

Phryne did. The memory of making love in a caravan to a man with a painted face loosened her joints, but she took a sip of her drink and a deep breath.

‘And it took two days to get the tar off your skin,’ put in Dot, who had noticed this reaction and was distracting attention from Phryne. ‘Not to mention them awful clothes. Filthy places—beg pardon, Mr Burton.’

‘No offence taken,’ said Mr Burton. ‘They are filthy places indeed. But fascinating. I miss them. When my thesis is accepted I will go back on the road. My caravan is presently in my college’s stable, as is my gallant steed Balthasar. He is appreciating the rest. One of the students takes him out for a sedate ride every day in Royal Park and the university has the best grass. But to return to what I was saying, they all hope that you will come to a performance when they get back to Melbourne in December. They want to express their gratitude for saving the circus.’

‘Just a good investment,’ said Phryne, waving her cigarette dismissively.

A lesser man might have said, ‘Bah!’ Mr Burton shot Phryne a sharp look and said in a voice loaded with more irony than an ore truck: ‘Oh, indeed, Miss Fisher. An investment.’

Then he leapt to his feet as Eliza came in.

Phryne had warned her sister that if by any means—word, look, intonation, drawn breath, squint, raised eyebrow or avoidance of gaze—she conveyed any disapproval of Mr Burton she, Phryne, would give her sister, Eliza, a clip over the ear which would take a week to stop ringing, and referred to their mutual childhood for proof of her competence in ear-clipping. Eliza, who had seemed subdued during this speech, had agreed rather listlessly to be good.

Eliza wore a cocktail dress in a drab shade of brown and a bunch of silk pansies on a headband, and she carried a bound book. She had dragged her hair back into an unbecoming bun and walked as though her feet hurt, which indeed they might, due to her refusal to wear sensible shoes. She allowed Mr Burton to kiss her hand without a blink, smiled at the company, and took her seat next to the girls. She accepted a cocktail from Mr Butler, gulped it down, and accepted a refill which also vanished with disconcerting speed.

‘We were talking about the circus, Miss Eliza,’ said Mr Burton.

‘Do you work in a circus, Mr Burton?’ asked Eliza. Even her voice had lost its ‘haw-haw’ edge. Phryne thought her greatly improved. ‘I thought that my sister said that you were a scholar.’

‘One can be both, Miss Eliza. I am completing my doctorate of philosophy at present, studying the literary depictions as opposed to the real social conditions among the poor.’

‘I don’t quite follow,’ confessed Eliza. Neither did Phryne. Lin Chung shook his head. Both young women looked blank. Mr Burton explained.

‘Well, for instance, if the ladies will forgive my breach of taste, authors who write about prostitutes always follow Dickens’ lead in saying that they come to bad ends, suicide and so on—you will remember Little Em’ly and her cry of “Oh, the river!” Admittedly Dickens saved Little Em’ly’s life and sent her to Australia, a favourite literary device for removing inconvenient members of the cast to a place where No One Will Know.’

‘Still is,’ put in Eliza unexpectedly, starting Phryne on quite a novel train of thought. But Eliza had always been the good daughter, she told herself. Stayed in the manor and did the flowers. Went to the hunt balls. Poured tea for the county. Had memorised Debrett.

‘Indeed,’ agreed Mr Burton. ‘Whereas most prostitutes stop being prostitutes when they have, for instance, paid off their debts, saved enough to open a business, accepted a proposal of marriage, got diseased, educated their children, divorced their husband, inherited money or decided to move to another city and get a straight job. Prostitutes do not kill themselves at a greater rate than the general population. But what is even more curious is, from Dickens onwards, the authors know that they are not depicting the truth. If they have done any research at all, actually talked to any of these women, they know that they are just people, and have all the varied motives which people have.’