Murder in the Dark (3 page)
‘
Alea jacta est
,’ said Phryne, and rang for a gin and tonic.
Lin sighed. The die was, indeed, cast.
The Joker fanned the cards. The movement was practised and deft.
They were hand-painted Italian playing cards from the eighteenth
century, when decoration was arcane and whimsical. He smiled
as he looked at their faces. They were all joker
s.
Now bring us some figgy pudding,
Now bring us some figgy pudding,
Now bring us some figgy pudding,
and bring some out here.
For we all like figgy pudding,
For we all like figgy pudding,
For we all like figgy pudding,
so bring some out here.
Trad
Tuesday, 25th December
Ruth usually slept like a small, plump cat, neatly and easily. She and Jane had gone to bed early in their jazz coloured bedroom in order to wake up earlier. Jane had read three pages of her copy of
Origin of Species
before sighing, putting out her light and folding her hands. Ruth had laid aside
Carême on Cuisine
, with its hard French words, and closed her eyes. She did not fall asleep. She tried counting sheep leaping over a fence. She got to three thousand one hundred and eleven before she gave up. Then she tried recollecting every recipe she knew and found that she really knew a lot of recipes. But it was no good. She was excited about Christmas, a foreign concept in her previously mean and straitened history.
Her previous guardian had made a watery fruit pudding for her lodgers, it is true, and scorched the smallest chicken she could find in the market. But none of that provender had come the way of Jane or Ruth, the scullions. This was fortunate, because Ruth had never been very good at the Christian virtue of gratitude and had copped many a belting for not saying thank you sincerely enough for some noxious tidbit. Life with Phryne had been so full of treats that Ruth feared she might be becoming spoiled.
Then there was the lunch, which was her responsibility and hers alone, and Ruth gave up. She was not going to get any sleep. She rolled and sighed and bounced in a way that made the springs of her mattress squeak, and finally Jane awoke and asked, ‘Can’t you sleep?’
‘No,’ said Ruth.
‘Well, come into my bed and we can tell stories,’ offered Jane, who always considered sleeping a bit of a waste. She might miss something. ‘I heard a new one today about a queen called Hecuba . . .’
Christmas Day 1928 dawned clear and cool, with a breath of north wind which might turn hot later. Jane and Ruth had waited, tucked up in Jane’s bed, watching the sky for the very first hint of light before they left their bed, stubbed a toe on Molly, apologised, banged into the door, finally found the electric light switch, chided each other to be quiet several times in ascending tones and at last made it into the hall.
They had almost managed to tiptoe into the parlour without another sound until Molly, for some reason, let out a loud wuff. Ruth suppressed her with a hand around her muzzle and the dog allowed herself to be shut outside. Jane and Ruth had never had what Phryne called a ‘proper’ Christmas, with a tree and presents and far too much to eat. They were determined to enjoy every scrap of it.
Gaily wrapped presents of intriguing shape were piled up under Phryne’s beautiful silver and gold tree, but they were for later. Ruth collared the two holly-decked football socks from the mantelpiece and they ran back into their own room. Molly joined them, leaping onto Jane’s bed. She was not ordinarily allowed on anyone’s bed but she shrewdly suspected that the two young ladies were not going to object just this once.
Not only did they not object, they didn’t appear to notice. And when they did, they didn’t remove her but fed her black jelly beans.
Molly licked hands. She was altogether in favour of Christmas.
‘What’s this?’ asked Jane, as Ruth popped a tidbit into her mouth. ‘Mmm! Crystallised pineapple! I didn’t know you could crystallise pineapple. And this is a cherry,’ she added, rummaging. ‘A chocolate cherry. And some ginger. Boiled lollies. Musk sticks. What have you got there?’
‘A purse,’ said Ruth. ‘With five shillings in it. A pair of real stockings—
real
ones, Jane. A comb. Some honeysuckle soap. And some more lollies.’ She bit thoughtfully into a crystallised cherry. ‘You know, Jane, I really don’t think I have ever been this happy. You?’
‘No,’ said Jane, after some thought. ‘No, this is the happiest I have ever been.’
She kissed her foster sister on the cheek. Molly licked her, in case any trace of sweetness lingered. They truffled through the wrappings together, looking for more jelly beans.
‘I hope everyone else is having a day as good as ours,’ said Ruth, who was feeling generous after her third piece of crystallised ginger. Jane gave the matter her full consideration.
‘Mr Lin doesn’t have Christmas, of course. Mr Bert and Mr Cec are going to be with their families,’ said Jane. ‘So it depends on how they get on with them. Some families are not at all nice,’ she added, shuddering slightly.
‘But we’re fine,’ said Ruth, and fed her sister another chocolate cherry.
Bert raised his glass and looked through it at a happily distorted view of his auntie’s pub. Closed to the patrons, of course, open to the family. Auntie Joan always cooked a turkey for Christmas, and Bert and his dad were delighted to accept her invitation to lunch.
Bert’s father said one of the things he invariably said as he sat down in the cool, darkened parlour: ‘She’ll be a hot one today with that wind.’
Bert nodded and sipped his beer. Three small children raced past, firing cap guns. Bert drank some more beer, unmoved. The bar parlour reassumed its serenity as the cries of ‘I got yer! I did! You have to lie down! You didn’t! I won’t! It’s not fair!’ died away with the kiddiewinks into the kitchen, to be swatted at by overheated women.
Then Bert’s father said the other thing he always said: ‘Joanie puts on a good spread, but it ain’t a patch on what your mother used to do.’
Bert nodded again and poured his father another beer. Conventions had been observed. It was now Christmas in Bert’s world. All other events, like turkey and pudding and mottoes and silly hats and Bert’s uncle Les dancing the tango with a hat-stand, would now follow inevitably.
Bert raised his glass to his father. ‘Cheers,’ he said.
Cecil Yates, invariable companion of Bert, was engaged in a fierce game of cricket with the smaller members of the Yates clan. There seemed to be hundreds of them. Cec’s grandmother had taken to heart the biblical injunction to increase and multiply and, of her sixteen children, eleven had lived to marry and produce children of their own. This meant that in any country town in Victoria there would be at least one Yates cousin, and the Yates children were constrained to behave because, wherever they went, there was no chance that they would escape notice if they were naughty.
Cec underarmed a gentle throw to a pint-sized wicketkeeper, watched him take off the bails with dashing enthusiasm, and declared himself out for the moment. The wind was picking up. It was going to be a hot day. The Yates family Christmas party was taking place on a large property in Hoppers Crossing belonging to Zephaniah Yates, who farmed it with his brothers Hezekiah and Ishmael. The farmhouse was stuffed with women of the Yates clan, managing the last minute cooking and arranging, though the early work had been done by Hezekiah’s wife, Betty.
The Yates women were at present, Cec knew, admiring the engagement ring he had bought for his intended, Alice Greenham. Miss Fisher had got him a real good price on that diamond. Cec had brought Alice along even though she was desperately shy about meeting his family. ‘Might as well get it all over at once,’ said Cec cheerfully. But he had been worried. What if they didn’t like Alice? For if he couldn’t have Alice, there was no one else for Cecil Yates.
Fortunately, after one long, raking study which took in her neat dress, her shy demeanour and the excellent-looking shortbread she had brought—such a useful present, you can always use more shortbread—all of them, including Cec’s strong-minded mother Rosalita, decided to like Alice. And when the Yates clan decided to like you, there was no use kicking against the pricks. They were planning her wedding dress as Cec crossed the dusty yard.
Wiping his forehead, he went up onto the verandah to join his brothers Aubrey and Trevelyan and his cousins Hez and Ish.
‘Take the weight off, King of the Kids,’ said Trev. ‘Here’s my Terebintha with a beer for you.’
‘She’s an angel,’ said Cec gratefully. He sat down. Immediately, three dogs and a cat joined him on the swinging seat. A standard Yates maiden—tall, slim and blonde—produced a jug. Cec swigged and Terebintha refilled.
‘So how’s tricks?’ asked Cec.
‘No worse than usual,’ said Ish. ‘Got a lot of green feed stored from that wet spring, might last us through the dry. How’s things in the city?’
‘Not bad,’ said Cec. ‘Still working the taxi lark with Bert. Do some rough work for Miss Fisher, sometimes.’
‘That’s the lady detective that Mel’s Lisbet met on the cruise ship? She sounds like a cracker,’ said Hez.
‘Oh, she is,’ said Cec, thinking of bright colours and noise and sparks and explosions. ‘She’s that, all right.’
He tickled the big ginger cat behind the ears and wondered how Miss Fisher’s Christmas Day was going.
Mrs Butler joggled her grandchild. A nice piece of work, she thought critically, well formed, solid, with the blue Butler eyes and the rosy Butler complexion. Already the strong little legs were flexing and pushing, eager to grow, to crawl, to walk. None of those pasty-faced weaklings for her daughter Sally. Then the baby—Phryne—smiled an adorable gummy smile and Mrs Butler melted.
‘Oo’s an ickle pretty den?’ she cooed.
For once, she herself was not working. She spared a worried thought for Ruth left with Miss Phryne’s goose, then resolutely turned her thoughts away. Just for today, she said to herself, I’m not cooking and Tobias isn’t waiting on people, and I’m not going to say a word about how Sally is mistreating that pair of chickens. Not one word. I shall eat it and be grateful.
She accepted a cooling sherry cobbler and smiled on her son-in-law, who was a grocer.
‘So, Bill,’ she said. ‘How’s business?’
Dorothy Williams surveyed the table and pushed back her hair. It looked lovely. She had twined long strings of jasmine around everything, in the way she had seen in one of Miss Fisher’s
Home Beautiful
magazines. The scent was heavy in the air. Everything was prepared, the plates and glasses gleaming, the array of cutlery set out next to the head of the table where her father would presently carve the turkey. Any moment now everyone would be back from church and the feast would be ready for them. Dot had said her rosary while she was decorating. She was in a perfect state of grace as she embraced her sister Joan and her two small children, come down from Sydney for the festivities. Everything was in order in Dot’s world.
Phryne Fisher rose betimes and bathed, remembering just in time not to ring for breakfast. She had been aware of some surreptitious activity and a few barks early in the morning, but what else was five am on Christmas morning for? She remembered creeping into her family’s English parlour in freezing darkness, feeling for the filled stockings and running back to bed before her feet froze. She also remembered the entirely disproportionate value, in her impoverished childhood, of a tin bangle, a packet of boiled lollies and an orange. Phryne’s daughters were going to do better than that.
She dressed in a bright red suit and went down to find that Ruth was in charge of breakfast. Both her daughters were wearing, for the very first time, silk stockings, and were terribly aware of snags, edges and Ember, who knew what a threat he posed and was standing over them as neat as a Fitzroy Street bully for more than his fair share of bacon. Phryne picked him up and put him in the garden, along with a whole rasher for his very own in case he should feel affronted. He was affronted, but he ate the bacon. Molly sat alertly under the kitchen table, humbly waiting for largesse.
‘Oh, thank you!’ gasped Ruth. ‘I was so scared he’d stick a claw into my new stockings! Coffee in the pot, Miss Phryne, and toast in just a jiff. Would you like eggs and bacon?’
‘No, thank you,’ said Phryne. ‘But keep frying, here comes Eliza and Lady Alice, and I bet they haven’t eaten.’
Phryne answered the bell and admitted her sister, in a flowered frock and hat, and her companion Lady Alice, in shabby brown with a beige felt hat which had seen better centuries. But Phryne gave her points for trying. She had pinned a sprig of holly to the front and resembled a rather vague and elderly member of Santa’s gnomes.
‘Oh, Phryne dear, how nice,’ she said. ‘Is that bacon cooking? We had a bit of an emergency with some of the girls and haven’t eaten a crumb.’
‘Sit down,’ said Jane, delivering Phryne’s toast. ‘Tea in that pot, Lady Alice. Merry Christmas!’
‘And a merry Christmas to you too,’ said Lady Alice, which went against all her Socialist principles. But one could not disappoint this nice child.