‘It was a difficult problem,’ said Phryne, beginning to enjoy herself. ‘I never had such a puzzle. The first problem was, how was the man killed? There was no one near enough to stab him but Charles. Charles didn’t stab him. Neither did the marathon dancers, nor the lady in puce, nor, of course, I. How, then, was almost as difficult a problem as who and why. There was something different about the body, something had changed, between the time Bernard fell and the time the cops arrived. What? It niggled at the edge of my memory. Then I remembered, finally. The knife had gone, and it was an odd knife. Instead of a proper hilt it had a round handle, like a wooden plug. Unusual for a knife as sharp as this must have been, because it would give no grip—it was only about an inch long. Useless to stab with. But purpose-made to shoot with,’ she said, and observed her auditors narrowly. Hugh Anderson blinked. Jim Hyde drew in a breath. The drummer drummed with his fingers again. Iris stared with a puzzled frown. Tintagel Stone looked away. Only Ben Rodgers and Nerine stared straight at Phryne, without moving. Even their stillness was charged with significance. ‘So who, I wondered, had removed it? Then I found blood on Tintagel’s sleeve. He had withdrawn the knife and hidden it, then smuggled it out of the Green Mill, and I rather think it was in that bottle of wicker-clad Chianti he insists on drinking.
Vin trés ordinaire,
eh? A very good place to hide a bloody knife. On the spur of the moment, it speaks of a quickness of mind which is rarely to be found. Did Tintagel do it, then? I concluded not. Besides, I don’t sleep with murderers if I can avoid it,’ added Phryne artlessly. ‘Bernard was shot from the front, and he fell, when I came to think of it, with his feet to the band, straight back under the force of the blow, supine, arms outflung. That is how soldiers fall who have been shot through the heart. Who shot him? I considered the front rank of the band. A clarinet is not suitable, and in any case, it is played by Mr Anderson with the bell towards the ground. A trombone is a possibility, but surely the sound would be badly affected if some contrivance was built into the mouth. It would have a muting effect, and Jim Hyde was playing loud and clear. No, it was . . .’
‘Stop!’ said Nerine. ‘It was me. I killed him.’
They all gazed open-mouthed at her. Under this concentrated regard she shook her head defiantly, and her hair struck coppery sparks in the half-dark. ‘He was blackmailing me too.’
‘How did you do it?’ asked Phryne.
Nerine, clutching at Ben Rodgers as though to keep him in his seat, said rapidly, ‘I knew he’d be there. He told me. I changed places with a waitress. I smuggled a gun into the hall through the kitchens. I waited until the lights went down and I stood against the wall, behind the band. No one knew I was there. When everyone was watching the dance marathon, I fired, and I got him.’
‘Very nice,’ said Phryne. ‘But . . .’ She paused. No one spoke. Phryne’s lips thinned. Her opinion of trumpeters had been confirmed.
Ben Rodgers had not moved. Only his eyes flicked to one side, as if sizing up a possible retreat.
‘No, Nerine, a nice try, but it wasn’t you.’
‘How do you know?’ Nerine’s voice was ragged. ‘How do you know that thing? Who notices a waitress?’
‘Nerine, you couldn’t hit the side of a barn with a bucket of bran,’ said Jim Hyde patiently. ‘I could believe that you wanted to kill the chap, or even that you went there intending to kill him, but not that you took aim in that gloom and hit him in the heart.’
‘That does not follow,’ said Phryne. ‘I saw a little girl in the park do just that, and she had both eyes shut. No, it was Tintagel taking the knife. Why should he do that, if he didn’t know you were there? No, good old Ten saw the murder, and he knew who did it and was protecting them. Of course, there is the murder weapon to find and produce. Have you still got it, Tintagel?’
‘Yes. I didn’t have a chance to get rid of it, what with the cops coming to search, and other distractions,’ said Tintagel. ‘I’ve still got it, Miss Fisher.’
‘Go on,’ said Iris Jordan, intent on the problem. ‘Who did it, and how, and why?’
‘Do me the favour of going over to those instruments and bringing me the echo cornet,’ said Phryne to Hugh, and he obeyed, bringing back the case and opening it.
‘This echo cornet,’ said Phryne, turning it over, ‘has a mute. A special tube; see, here, with its own valve. Might have been designed for the purpose. I don’t know what pressure a good trumpeter can build up, but it must be enough to propel a thin knife quite a long way. And land with enough force to kill, if you happen to hit just the right place and don’t rebound off a rib. Ben Rodgers, who is so good at metalwork that he makes his own jewellery, didn’t find it too hard to modify a stiletto. He could have bought an embroidery stiletto quite legally, though he doesn’t quite look the type for needlecraft, and fixed a wooden plug, perhaps a bead, of exactly the right diameter to fit into this narrow opening. It was then just a matter of lifting the cornet, as he invariably does, so that his eyes were almost over the tube, and pressing the valve that cuts in the mute. And striking the wrong man dead at bar thirty-five in “Bye Bye Blackbird”.’
‘The wrong man?’ Hugh Anderson, who had been gnawing his fingernails, uncorked his mouth long enough to speak.
‘Yes. He meant to kill . . .’
‘That bastard Charles,’ spat Ben Rodgers, leaping to his feet and overturning his chair.
‘That bastard, as you say, Charles. Nerine led you to believe that he was chasing her with, er, sexual importunities. Your violent jealousy excites her. As a parlour game it no doubt gave you both a lot of amusement,’ said Phryne icily. ‘And I would not like to grudge you your fun. Sit down, if you please, Mr Rodgers. I have no patience with tantrums. You see where your indulgence of your temper has led you. I could almost wish that your aim had been better, except that the unlamented Bernard Stevens does not seem to be much of a loss. However, presumably someone loved him, perhaps that poor partner of his who is still in hospital, and even if no one wanted him, you still had no right to kill him. Had you anything against him?’
‘No. I didn’t even know him,’ muttered Rodgers, righting the chair and sitting down again. Nerine had drawn away from him. He put his hand on her shoulder, and she slid under his touch as a cat does under an unwanted caress.
‘And Charles? Exactly why did you mark him down for execution?
‘Nerine,’ said Ben. ‘First I thought that he was giving her the rush, and then it turned out he wanted to steal her from me to sing in another band, and that was worse.’
‘And you wanted to smuggle him out of the country so that all blame should fall on him, and not on you? I did not think that disinterested benevolence was one of your virtues.’
‘All right. It was me. Now what are you going to do about it? Have you got the cops waiting outside?’
Speaking quietly, Ben was much more threatening. The Jazz Club was buzzing with noise. The group by the door was still wrangling over the nature of jazz, a topic on which every jazz player had an opinion they would defend to the death. Phryne wondered on whom in the band she could rely if Ben attacked her. She wondered most about the delightful Tintagel Stone.
‘Do? Me? I shall do nothing about it. I have left a full account of this in safe hands, by the way, so it would not advantage you to lose your temper on me. I was hired merely to free Charles and to find his brother. If a full confession, together with the echo cornet and the murder weapon, is delivered to the police within a reasonable time then I shall have earned my fee. Should you think of melting down the cornet and flinging the knife into the river and denying it all, I am held in sufficient regard by the investigating officer to be able to reconstruct and prove my case anyway.’
Ben Rodgers roared and dived for her. Tintagel, who was nearest, grabbed him by the back of the jacket. Phryne had her little gun ready in her hand. But the stoutest defence came from Nerine, who threw herself in the way and slapped Ben across the face with enough force to make his head snap back.
‘Swine!’ yelled Nerine at the top of her voice. ‘You yellow cur! Ben Rodgers, how dare you! Sit you down this minute and listen to what Miss has to say!’
Ben Rodgers, engorged with wrath, shook his head like a bull struck with an unexpected bandolier. Nerine shoved him back, both hands on his shoulders.
‘You and me have things to settle,’ she threatened huskily. ‘You let me confess. You would have let me be hanged, for that was a good story and could have been true, except Miss Fisher saw through it. You are no gentleman, Ben Rodgers, but that doesn’t matter for the moment. You listen! Just you stop bellowing and listen! Did you do it for me, Ben honey?’ she asked softly. ‘Did you really do it for little me?’
‘I did it,’ muttered Ben. ‘I did it like she said. I made the plug airtight, out of a bead. Like she said. I aimed it and I missed. I wanted to put out his eye,’ he added viciously. ‘I practised it, I could hit the ace in the ace of diamonds, but he moved, and the other bloke got in the way.’
Phryne recalled how vaguely her partner Charles had steered her around the floor of the Green Mill, and shivered. It could just as well have been Phryne that Ben Rodgers had shot. She imagined it so vividly that she could almost see the blood stain, the size of a hand, spreading over the back of her pale evening dress. Tintagel Stone had released Ben, now that he seemed subdued. Phryne was refreshed by the fact that he had come to her aid.
‘What did you see, Tintagel?’ she asked.
He winced. ‘I heard the “pfft” of the knife from the cornet, saw the flash of silver, saw the chap fall. I knew Ben had done it. When he rushed down to look at the body I slid out the knife and put it in my sleeve, and then, as you say, into the wine bottle. The cops didn’t search us that carefully because they knew that we had been playing when it happened. No one else would have thought of him being shot, rather than stabbed. But the shape of the knife was a dead give-away, so I collared it.’
‘But why?’
‘Why, what?’
‘Why protect Ben?’
‘He’s the best trumpeter in Australia,’ said Tintagel, as though his actions were self-explaining, and the Jazz Makers groaned in chorus.
‘What did you see, Mr Anderson?’
Hugh removed his thumbnail from between his teeth and said, ‘Nothing. I wasn’t looking. But I had wondered why Ben looked so stricken, especially when he said he didn’t know the chap.’
‘All right, then.’ Phryne stood up. ‘A confession, a rather full and detailed confession, the murder weapon and the cornet delivered to Detective Inspector Robinson in, shall we say, two days? No more than three, anyway. No need to mention your part in it, Tintagel. But get that sleeve cleaned. Do you accept?’ she asked formally. Tintagel Stone surveyed Ben, Nerine and the rest of the group thoughtfully.
‘We agree,’ he said politely. ‘Let me escort you to your car.’
Phryne threaded the maze of tables and found him at her side when she emerged into a cool and bracing night.
‘I don’t know what to say,’ he confessed.
Phryne patted his mouth with one forefinger. ‘Don’t say anything,’ she replied. ‘Three days at the most, Tintagel.’
‘Will I see you again?’
‘Do you want to?’ came her voice out of the cool darkness. ‘I’ve lost you the best trumpeter in Australia, you know.’
‘Even so,’ he said, and heard her laugh.
‘You may telephone,’ she said, and started the big car with a shattering roar that split the never-quiet Fitzroy night.
The Hispano-Suiza slid away. Tintagel Stone turned on his heel and went back into the Jazz Club.
Phryne woke muzzy and haggard, after bad dreams, to the ringing of the phone. Mr Butler answered it, and she heard him come up the stairs and have a brief conversation with Dot
at the door of her suite.
Dot came in and pulled back the curtains.
‘It’s Detective Inspector Robinson on the phone, Miss, and perhaps you’d better talk to him. Mr B says that he sounds wild.’
‘Oh, very well,’ agreed Phryne, groaning. ‘Get me some coffee.’
She swirled down the stairs in a purple dressing gown and took the receiver from Mr Butler. The hall tiles were chill under her bare feet.
‘Miss Fisher?’ The voice sounded angry.
‘Yes, Jack, it’s me.’
‘I’ve just had a delivery.’
‘Oh?’ Phryne was about to ask whether it had been a happy event and decided not to.
‘Yes. This minute. And you had something to do with it.’
‘Did I?’
Phryne took the cup of coffee from Dot’s hand and sipped.
‘Yes.’
‘What was this delivery, then?’
‘A thing called an echo cornet and a full confession to the murder of Stevens written in a shaky hand on the back of a lot of sheet music for “Bye Bye Blackbird”. There was a strange little dart, made to fit into the cornet, as well. Is this your doing?’
‘To a certain extent. I was hired, you know, to get Charles Freeman out of the jug, and I did tell you that I would reveal all. I was going to do that today.’
‘So you knew that it was Ben Rodgers.’
‘Yes.’
‘You’ve allowed a murderer to escape, you know that?’ the policeman roared. ‘You must have told ’em last night, them Jazz Makers.’