Dragging the marathon couple to their feet he proclaimed, ‘The winners!’
They smiled sketchily as he hauled them bodily off the floor. After dancing for what seemed like years, they were so limp Phryne wondered that they did not sag out of Signor Antonio’s grasp and melt down into aching puddles of ruined muscle. Both their faces were white and drained and they trembled as they stood on agonised feet. Blood seeped slowly out of the girl’s shoes and stained the Green Mill’s celebrated sprung floor.
‘Percy McPhee and Violet King are the winners of the baby Austin car! They have danced for forty-seven hours and twenty-one minutes! Show your appreciation ladies and gentlemen, if you please!’
The patrons clapped appreciatively, Tintagel Stone’s drummer gave a roll and a sting, and two waiters assisted Miss King and Mr McPhee off the floor and into an alcove, where they were at last allowed to collapse. Miss King had begun to cry uncontrollably and Mr McPhee did not seem far off it. They were set down on a sofa and fell instantly asleep.
‘Signor, Signor Antonio, what about him?’ asked a nervous waiter, pointing at the man on the floor. The signor flapped a dismissive hand. He had no patience with losers.
‘Take him outside and revive him,’ he said. The fallen man’s partner, a girl in pale blue worn to a frazzle, ran her hand over his chest, made the discovery that Phryne knew she would make, and screamed.
‘He’s dead! There’s blood! He’s murdered!’ She fainted.
And after that, of course, there was no more dancing.
The lights came up, revealing the Green Mill’s dainty Dutch murals, all milkmaids and trees. Pallid faces, over-rouged or under-coloured, blinked in the glare. Nothing looks worse, thought Phryne, than a brightly lit hall which should be dim. And by God, most of the patrons looked as if they had crawled out from under the Green Mill, rather than entered through the door with a two-shilling ticket.
The girl in the pale blue dress was carried by the band to a couch, where a waitress attempted to revive her. Three bandsmen remained staring down at the corpse, the cornet player still holding his instrument out in front of him as if he had never seen it before. Phryne’s escort was not proving to be of that sterling mettle which is expected of a Gentleman in a Crisis. Normally cold and aloof, he had cracked. Knuckles between teeth, he backed away from the dead man until he stumbled on the lower step of the bandstand, dislodged a cymbal, and sat down with a thump.
‘I’ve never, I’ve never seen . . .’ he whimpered. ‘I’ve never seen a corpse before! I’ve never . . .’
‘Well, well, pet, don’t take on. Corpses can happen to anyone, you know,’ soothed Phryne. ‘You sit there quietly and have a little tot of this, and you’ll feel better.’
She produced the flask of liqueur and unscrewed the top, pouring a liberal measure into it. This Charles took, trembling so much that Phryne had to hold both his hands and tip the spirit into his mouth. He choked, his eyes bulging like a fish, and Phryne patted him impatiently. Corpses, per se, did not discompose her. The evening looked like being more interesting than she had expected when she had accepted Charles Freeman’s invitation to dance at the Green Mill, and she was not minded to be distracted by her escort developing the vapours.
‘Bear up, man, it is not the dead you have to be afraid of. The living are much more dangerous.’
This produced another sob.
The blue eyes which had been observing her so closely all night were fixed on her now, and she turned from Charles to face Tintagel Stone’s intense gaze. A pretty man, she thought, smoothing down her decorative dress, very pretty. Midnight-black hair and pale skin and lapis-lazuli eyes. She smiled and held out the flask.
‘Have some?’ she offered, and Tintagel accepted gratefully. He poured out a drink, gulped it down, and went back to the bandstand, putting his banjo carefully on its stand before holding out a hand to the bass player, who looked shocked. Phryne nodded, and Grand Marnier was served all round.
The band retreated to their dais and looked around helplessly at the hysterical throng. The patrons, primed with gin brought into the Green Mill in defiance of all the licensing laws, were shrieking like an aviary full of bad-tempered tropical birds.
‘What happened, Miss?’ asked Tintagel Stone gravely, returning the depleted flask. ‘Is that chap dead?’
‘Oh yes,’ said Phryne evenly, suppressing Charles’s next whimper with a firm hand on his shoulder. ‘And he has been murdered. Therefore we shall have to stay here until the police come, all very inconvenient.’
She heard a gasp behind her, and wondered which member of the band found this surprising.
‘My name is Phryne Fisher,’ she added, surveying Tintagel Stone with appreciation. ‘Are you Mr Stone? We may as well get comfortable. It is going to be a long night. Not, may I add, the sort of long night I envisaged, but a long night nevertheless.’
Charles gave another, more pathetic, choke, and shoved Phryne aside as he leapt up and ran. She was minded to be offended until she saw that his destination was the gentlemen’s cloakroom, and was pleased that he still retained sufficient social grace not to be sick in company.
Tintagel Stone caught and steadied her. His forearms were very strong. A consequence of being a banjo player, perhaps? She rested both palms lightly against a beautifully muscled chest. Close to, his eyes were not lapis but sky-blue, and the wide mouth curved humorously. He smelt of wilting starched collar and orange liqueur, a combination new to Phryne.
‘I can stand up by myself, you know,’ she commented. ‘And here come the cops. Oh, super!’
‘Super? What’s super about the cops?’ snarled the cornet player, voice rising in mockery. ‘What’s good about the cops?’
‘It’s a nice cop,’ said Phryne. ‘It’s Detective Inspector Robinson.’
Detective Inspector John ‘Call me Jack, Miss Fisher, everyone does’ Robinson entered the Green Mill with three attendant constables and was struck deaf by the noise. Voices ranging from lowest bass to shrillest soprano were clashing in a discordant symphony worse than Schoenberg. The huge hall was blindingly bright with every possible jazz colour. His entry caused a brief silence, then the din broke out again, voices exclaiming and crying and babbling on the edge of hysteria.
‘If I handle this wrong,’ thought Robinson, preserving his calm with an effort unperceived by his constables, ‘there will be a riot, and the chief will have my guts for garters.’ He walked into the middle of the hall and raised his hands.
‘Quiet!’ he bellowed in a great voice, and silence fell. He swallowed to regain his hearing and continued.
‘Ladies and gentlemen, would you all sit down. There’s no danger. I won’t keep you long. But we’ll all get home earlier if I have your full cooperation and some quiet. Thank you.’
There was a brief flurry as the dancers left the floor and conversation began again, more softly, and without the presage of panic. The crowd had drawn away from the figure lying quite still on the floor in front of the bandstand, as though fearing contamination.
‘They needn’t worry,’ Detective Inspector Robinson remarked as he approached the corpse, regulation boots thudding like hammers on the sprung floor. ‘Diphtheria’s catching, but death ain’t. Now, Sir, are you the manager? What’s happened here?’
Signor Antonio, shocked out of his Italian accent, was wringing his hands and almost weeping with chagrin.
‘In my establishment!’ he whispered. ‘It is too much!’ His voice rose to a shout. ‘You must find out who did it at once!’
‘Oh, woe, alas,’ quoted Phryne, perched on the bandstand. ‘What, in our house?’
‘Put on thy gown, look not so pale,’ capped Tintagel Stone unexpectedly. ‘I tell thee, Duncan’s dead, and cannot come out of’s grave.’
Phryne looked her surprise, and he smiled a devastating smile, showing white teeth. Tintagel Stone, Phryne thought, would bear watching.
Detective Inspector Robinson sighted Phryne, sighed, and beckoned to her. He was an unmemorable policeman, with mid-brown hair and mid-brown eyes, and he looked worried. ‘Well, well, Miss Fisher, I ought to run you in for complicity; corpses bloom like daisies wherever you go, don’t they? Did you see this?’
‘Hello Jack, nice to see you, too. Yes, I saw it. Well, I was next to him, but I didn’t see anyone stab him. Unless you think that it was really me, in which case you’d better put the cuffs on, guv’nor.’
Jack Robinson did not smile. He did not like mysteries. He was not wild about sudden deaths either.
‘Police surgeon is on his way,’ he commented.
‘Why?’
‘To pronounce life extinct.’
‘I can pronounce to you now, Jack, that life is as extinct as it can possibly get. Poor man.’
The dead man was comely, youngish, with dark wavy hair on a round, childish head; a high-bridged Roman nose; full, rather sensual lips, and a bluish chin. Phryne had noticed him sagging into his partner’s embrace, his face a mask of exhaustion and pain. Now he lay on his back with his feet to the band, his hands open and lax, his face calm and empty like the faces of all human husks in which the enlivening light has been doused. The only sign of injury was the round red spot on his left shirt-front where some long blade, expertly wielded, had pierced his heart.
Phryne bit her lip. He looked different from the first time she had seen him dead, but she could not bring to the surface of her mind what fact told her this.
‘Dead as a doornail,’ agreed Jack Robinson. ‘But it’s the procedure. What killed him?’
‘A thin knife, I think, unless he just died of exhaustion. These dance marathons are a scandal. More like the good old days of the Colosseum than anything worthy of the twentieth century. I wonder that Signor Antonio hasn’t brought in the lions.’
‘He was in the marathon?’
‘Yes, Jack, there were only two couples left. They had been dancing for two days, two days and nights. Criminal, isn’t it? They were next to each other, blundering round in a circle, poor things, and then he fell. I tripped over him, the other two realised that they had won and slumped to the floor, and the manager came and proclaimed them the winners. I saw that this one was dead; he had that look, Jack, but before I could do anything sensible the partner discovered he was dead and screamed the place down. And there was something . . .’
‘Something?’
‘Something different about him, but I can’t recall what. The band came down to see what was happening, and the girl collapsed and was borne off to a sofa. She’s over there, in pale blue. Then we all stood about and waited for you to arrive.’
‘Who could have stabbed him?’
‘Anyone, really. They had the lights down for the foxtrot and we were all moving.’
‘Ah, dear, this is going to be one of those cases,’ said Detective Inspector Robinson resignedly. ‘They always are when you are involved, Miss Fisher. I’ll get my constable to take all the names and addresses of the patrons, and you rack your brains to remember who was near you, and we’ll ask them to stay.’
‘Only me and Charles, and the plump lady in puce with that stout gentleman, and the other marathon dancers. The band might have seen something.’
‘All right, I’ll speak to you later, Miss Fisher. Ladies and gentlemen!’ he announced in his big, confident voice. A sigh of relief went up from the apprehensive crowd. At last, someone who could Take Charge and tell them what to do. ‘I’m afraid that I’m going to have to cut short your evening’s dancing. If you would all proceed in an orderly manner to the foyer. There’s a policewoman to search the ladies. Then if you would leave your details with the constables, you can all go home. I would like a word, however, with anyone who saw this poor chap fall, or was near when he did.’
A swift sort and a scurry of footsteps, a flourish of robes and coats and furs—some chinking suggestively as though glass bottles might be concealed therein—and the throng in the Green Mill was reduced to a few witnesses, Phryne, some recumbent bodies, and Tintagel Stone and the Jazz Makers.
The foyer of the Green Mill was huge, as large as the great hall of the Exhibition Buildings. The patrons were recovering from their shock and beginning to speculate, gossip, go into hysterics, faint, laugh or feel quietly nauseous, according to temperament. The constables wrote busily, and Signor Antonio stood at the door handing out apologies and tickets for next week’s dance with distracted generosity.
The main doors swung shut. The huge hollow space which was the inside of the mill made itself felt. Someone was stopping the sails, which turned when the hall was open, and their noise was also cut off.
Detective Constable North was suddenly and piercingly conscious of the squeak produced by his new boots every time he moved. He was an experienced and somewhat battle-scarred cop, recently transferred from Vice.
Phryne went back to sit with the band and for the first time remembered her escort.
‘Where’s Charles? He should have thrown up his heart and been back by now.’
‘Is he your husband?’ asked Mr Stone, with every appearance of really wanting to know.
‘He does not have that honour,’ said Phryne absently. ‘No one does. I promised his mother that I’d look after him and he is a passable dancer. Damn it, where can he be? Oh, Constable,’ she called to Detective Constable North, whom she had met in one of her forays into Fitzroy brothels to search for lost girls. ‘There’s a gentleman in the . . . er . . . Gentlemen’s who was a witness. He might still be sick, he has never seen a corpse before. Can you hale him out? He’s been gone a long time.’