Death Before Wicket: Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries 10 (24 page)

‘Nah. Sorry,’ said the voice.

‘Put it to yourself, my dear troglodyte,’ said Phryne. ‘Who would the cops believe? You, a lowly miner with a criminal record, or Mr Hart, head of Hart and Co., rich, powerful and terribly respectable?’

‘Ow’d yer know I ‘ad a docket?’ demanded the voice.

‘Stands to reason. You wouldn’t get involved in something like this unless you had. In fact, Hart probably wouldn’t have involved you unless you could be made the scapegoat.’

There was a pause in which Brazell opened the second bottle of wine. One more glass, he told himself, and no more. It wouldn’t do to get drunk, of course. Chap needs his wits about him in circumstances like these. But one more glass might ease his headache. The well heard the pop of the cork and asked hopefully, ‘Yer ain’t got any beer up there, ‘ave yer?’

‘Edmund, do we have any beer?’

‘S-Should be s-some.’ Brazell scouted about, searching the crates on the ground. ‘We used to keep a few bottles down here for visiting barbarians…Ah yes, here we are. Foster’s s-suit you, barbarian?’

‘Yair,’ said the well, thirstily.

‘Here we go, bit of string round the neck, lower gently, and—got it?’ asked Phryne.

‘Thanks,’ said the well. There was a glugging noise and the string in Phryne’s hand tugged. She drew it up, replaced the bottle, and lowered it again.

‘What d’yer want ter know, lady?’ asked the well, much refreshed.

‘Who hired you? What did he hire you to do?’ asked Phryne.

‘Hart hired me,’ said the well darkly. ‘But not for any murder—murder didn’t enter into it, not murder.’

‘Why?’

‘Boss was only paying me five nicker. Murder’s…’

‘Much more expensive?’ asked Edmund Brazell, sweetly.

‘Yair, well, yair, sort of. Boss Hart says to me, get the prof and the tart, sling ‘em down the well, then lock the door and guard ‘em till Monday, then yer can leave. Tol’ me where yer’d be, too, ‘im comin’ out of the library and ‘er standin’ under the jacaranda tree. But now I thinks about it, ‘e was makin’ me inter the goat. Yer mightn’t ‘ave got out of the well in time, before the water rose. Then yer’d be dead, and who’s in the frame? Me. Gotta docket, like yer say, lady, I’d be just nacherally pie for the jacks.’

‘And he didn’t tell you what was to happen to us after Monday?’ asked Phryne.

‘Nah. ‘E didn’t mention that. Along with yer being bloody good in a stoush and in the habit of kickin’ a man’s head in. Nah,’ said the well bitterly, ‘that’s another one of them things he didn’t mention, Mr Boss Hart didn’t.’

‘How much do you think you owe Mr Hart, then?’ asked Brazell, interested in this anthropological specimen.

‘Nothin’,’ said the well, spitting noisily.

‘Feel like giving me the keys to the door of the wine cellar?’ asked Phryne, hopefully.

‘Nah,’ said the well, spitting again. ‘You’ll just call the cops and then I’ll be a gone gosling.’

‘What if I make a deal with you…what is your name?’

There was a long pause, then the well said, ‘John Black. They call me Blackjack.’

‘Mr Black, think about a deal. You give me the keys. I promise on my honour not to call the police. This is going to require delicate handling and I don’t want to involve the police and neither does the University. Isn’t that so, Professor Brazell?’

‘Oh, indeed, that is s-so, Miss Fisher,’ agreed the professor.

‘The bad side is that you have to stay in the well until I can finish my investigation. The good side is that we have—let’s see—three cases of beer here, and you can have it all in return for the keys,’ said Phryne.

‘I dunno,’ said Blackjack.

‘Or I can just close the lid and leave you there alone in the dark until you either suffocate or drown,’ said Phryne. ‘Then I can come down and get the keys off the corpse; I won’t even have to climb if you drown, just catch the body as it floats. And believe me, the dark down there is very dark indeed. Like being caught in a collapsed mine, in the blackness under the earth.’

Blackjack appeared to be thinking about this. Phryne raised her eyebrows at Professor Brazell. He nodded. Extensive research into the human animal encouraged him in his belief that this was working.

‘You promise not to call the cops?’ asked Blackjack from the depths.

‘I promise.’

‘The toffy bloke, too?’

‘I promise not to call the police,’ said Brazell, gravely.

‘Send down the beer,’ said the well. ‘I’ll tie the keys on your bit of string. But listen, lady, when are you gunna get me out?’

‘Tomorrow night at the latest,’ said Phryne. ‘And on that you have my word.’

The exchange was made, the crates being lowered down on a sling to the raging thirst below. Phryne finished the glass.

‘Shall we go?’

‘Taking the keys with us,’ said Brazell. ‘Can I offer you the hospitality of my College?’ He bowed.

‘Even better, you go and pick up a change of clothes and I’ll offer you the hospitality of my hotel,’ said Phryne. ‘I need a bath and some clean knickers.’

‘I will be delighted if you will let me watch you put them on,’ said Brazell.

‘My dear professor,’ said Phryne. ‘I will be delighted if you will then take them off.’

Professor Brazell began to wonder if he had—s-so to s-speak—bitten off more than he could chew.

Dot accompanied Mrs Hart, Professor Bretherton and a rather large porter to the infirmary. It smelt, Dot thought, just as an infirmary ought to smell: carbolic and floor polish. The starched sister led them to Joss Hart’s room and opened the door.

A huge man rose from his seat at the side of the bed and stared at the woman in sober garments who looked familiar. He gaped at the respectable Dorothy Williams, who looked just like what she was, a good girl. He flicked his gaze to include Professor Bretherton, the epitome of academic presence, and a large economy-sized porter behind him in the University’s livery. For a moment rage robbed him of speech. Then he managed a smothered shriek.

‘Dolly, you dare!’

‘I dare,’ said Mrs Hart shortly, not even looking into the reddening face. ‘I dare anything. You sit down, Viv. I’m not here for you. I don’t care about you. I’m here to see my son.’

She walked to the other side of the bed. Dot fetched her a chair and she sat down, taking one of the boy’s hands in both her own.

‘Now, Mr Hart,’ said Bretherton. ‘Let’s not have a scene. Not here.’

‘But she…’ Hart strangled on his own shout, suppressing it with great difficulty. ‘How dare she be here?’

‘Is she the boy’s mother?’ asked Dot briskly.

‘Yes, well, yes, she is, but she’s…’

‘I don’t think there’s any doubt about why she’s here, then, is there?’ asked Bretherton quietly. ‘If I were you, Mr Hart, I would be thinking not of my own sense of outrage, but of Joss. How is he?’

‘They say there’s nothing to do but wait,’ Hart groaned. ‘He’s no worse, they say, but I reckon he’s quieter. He tried to speak a while ago but I couldn’t understand him. All right. I won’t go crook. But after this is over I’ll have a word with you, woman!’

‘You can have as many words as you like, Viv Hart,’ said Mrs Hart implacably. ‘It won’t make a blind bit of difference. I got nothing to say to you. Now sit down, do, and shut up. I’ll be all right, Professor,’ she said to Bretherton. ‘You don’t need to stay. Nor your porter chap.’

‘I’ll just take my leave then, Dolly,’ said Bretherton. ‘I’ll be back later to see how he is.’

Dot wondered if she should go too and decided to sit for awhile and make sure that Mr Hart wasn’t going to cut up rough after all. She drew up a chair a respectful distance from the bed and the two parents, took out her best go-to-church pearl bead rosary and began to pray.

Dot did not subscribe to Phryne’s view that the best thing to be said for prayer was that it gave the bereaved something to do. In Dot’s view, prayer worked. She had prayed for her sister and Joan had been given back to her, alive, whole and with her virtue intact. What else could one ask of any god? It sounded like prompt and efficient service to Dot, as expected of the best stores.

She had always found solace in the rosary, and began on the Five Joyful Mysteries. They all related, now she thought of it, to motherhood. The Annunciation, the Visitation, the Nativity, the Presentation and the Finding of the child Christ in the temple. ‘For this my son who was lost now is found,’ thought Dot from quite another part of the Bible, and began to recite: ‘
Pater noster, qui es in caelis
.’

Thirteen

Parties have degenerated these days. The old time shivoos and picnics where there was tea and scandal for the women, and ginger beer and sticky toffee for the kids and beer and fights for the men, were better than the modern version…A fight livens up the evening and weeds out the undesirables, and if modern hostesses only had the enterprise to arrange a brawl among the guests the present boredom of the social round would not exist
.

Lennie Lower,
Here’s Luck

P
hryne dived into her bath, dragging the professor with her, and began to lather him with jasmine soap. His scalp wound had been examined by the hotel doctor and pronounced bloody but trivial. He was afloat on a cushion of aspirin and stolen Chateau Petrus and laughed helplessly as bubbles burst in his beard.

‘What are we doing tonight?’ he asked hopefully.

‘We are going to have a brief but restorative nap,’ said Phryne, surfacing between his knees, ‘and then we are going to the Artist’s Ball. Or at least, I am. Would you care to accompany me?’

Bruises were rising on her knees and her hands were grimed and torn by climbing walls, s-she had just flung a fellow human down a well after being abducted and imprisoned in darkness, s-she ought to be quite prostrated, and s-she was proposing to go to a ball, he thought. Every muscle in Professor Brazell’s body, including quite a few of whose existence he had previously been happily unaware, twinged at once and he gave a complicated, wet, all-over wince.

‘Would you mind terribly much if I just lay down and s-slept?’ he asked. ‘For about three thousand years?’

‘Not in the least,’ said Phryne promptly. ‘In that case, I shall have a brief nap and you can go byes and I’ll come back later. Dot!’ she called, then remembered that Dot was not among those present. ‘Of course, she must still be with Mrs Hart. Never mind.’

‘Did you s-say Mrs Hart? I didn’t know that Mr Hart had married again.’

‘He hasn’t, it’s Joss’ mother.’ Phryne rinsed foam off her face.

‘I thought Joss Hart’s mother was dead.’

‘No, she’s been somewhere else.’

‘Phryne.’ Brazell grabbed the edge of the bath and wrung out his beard. ‘S-So did Joss Hart.’

‘What?’ Phryne sat up abruptly and a bow wave sloshed onto the marble floor.

‘His father told him that his mother went to London and died there,’ said Brazell. ‘It’s a very affecting s-story. He told me all about it. S-She’s been missing s-since he was a little boy.’

‘That’s what Adam told me, too, now that you mention it. Oh, lord, what a tangled web we weave,’ sighed Phryne. ‘Well, either he’ll recognise her or he won’t and there’s nothing we can do about it now. Are you clean, Edmund dear?’

A face like a Roman coin turned to her and smiled bravely. Perhaps Brazell was a little mature for these athletic games, Phryne reflected. However, with any luck he would be back in mid-season form with a little rest.

Meanwhile she had a costume which would astonish even at the Artist’s Ball and she meant to wear it. The silk body stocking would conceal her bruises and the costume itself was daring, verging on indecent, without being actually obscene enough to attract police prosecution.

She dusted herself with rice powder and slid into the body stocking. It was of milk-white silk and matched her skin. Over it she slipped the pleated Egyptian cloth, the heavy necklace, and the fillet. She loaded her left arm with bracelets, stiffening it to the elbow. On her feet she had flat sandals. She outlined her eyes with kohl and reddened her lips.

‘You look wonderful,’ said Brazell, reflecting that it had been an interesting day. When he got up that morning all he had been expecting in the way of excitement was actually locating a reference which had eluded him, for a letter he was intending to write to dear James Frazer about an inaccuracy in
The Golden Bough
. There was a c-certain interest in s-such things, of course, though his private opinion was that the more excitable form of classical author wanted to be hunted across the hills and torn to pieces by the maenads, while in that event James Frazer would be up a tree, taking notes.

Being assaulted, abducted, pitched down a well, frightened half to death then ravished out of his remaining s-senses hadn’t entered into his calculations. Nor had ending the day s-sitting on a luxurious bed in the Hotel Australia, clad in a fluffy towel and bruises, watching an astoundingly beautiful woman get dressed.

‘Do you like it? Oh, drat. Someone at the door. Perhaps you might like to go into the bedroom, Edmund. If you hear me scream, do something brave.’