Kerry Greenwood - Tamam Shud

‘No, I didn’t know him. I don’t know anything about him. If I did there are people I would have called, things I would have done, which I won’t burden you with. But I didn’t call anyone and I didn’t do anything because I honestly did not know the man. To my knowledge I’ve never seen him before. Now have some tea and tell me more. Why all this mystery?’

Hammond took some tea, which was excellent, and said slowly, ‘we don’t know who he is. There’s no identification on the body – no labels, no tailor’s marks, nothing in his pockets.’

‘Nothing at all?’

‘No. No keys, no wallet. Just a little bit of paper with TAMAM SHUD written on it. In his watch pocket where it might have been overlooked by whoever searched him, if anyone did. I say, this is good tea.’

‘Ceylon,’ said Phryne absently. ‘Well, well, Tamam Shud, eh? That, as I recall, is the last word in The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam , A Persian version of ‘The End’. How… symbolic. Of something. Did he suicide, then?’

‘No – or if he did, the pathologist can’t find a cause of death. He seems to have just sat down and . . . and died, Miss Fisher.’

‘Heart failure?’

‘Yes.’

‘Hmm. That’s medical jargon for ‘Died of Death’. Interesting.’

‘Thing is,’ said the police officer slowly, ‘there is something about his face.’

‘Something?’

‘Yes, he doesn’t look like a suicide. No despair. The pathologist says that he has an educated face, but that’s not just it… he looks… like he has a secret, like he died well. I’m too fanciful, that’s what my sergeant says.’

‘No, you aren’t. I saw it too,’ Phryne winced. ‘The smug and unassailable face, the Knight with his Quest achieved. Safe in death with his secret unbetrayed.’

The young woman stared at Phryne, astonished to hear her own thoughts so cogently expressed.

‘Yes, Miss Fisher, that is it. Safe and pleased. And a good-looking man, too, hazel eyes and a fine well-cut jaw, nice fair hair and broad shoulders. The pathologist says that he was terribly healthy and athletic and there was no reason for him to die.’

‘Well. Let’s look at it. Suicides usually leave a note. No note?’

‘No, unless you call that scrap of paper a note.’

‘Was it handwritten?’

‘No, Miss Fisher, torn out of a book.’

‘Then find the rest of the book. And he has been searched. One could conceivably remove all the labels and things from one’s clothes – that has been done for many reasons, I have done it myself. But everyone has something in their pockets – a coin or two, a ticket… How did he get out to Somerton Beach? By car? The tram? A handkerchief, a pen, a watch – did he have a watch?’

‘No, Miss.’

‘I can’t think that this was just an ordinary robbery. If there was nothing wrong with him, why did he die?’

‘He might have been scared to death,’ suggested the young woman.

Phryne tutted.

‘Did he look scared to you?’

Police Constable Hammond looked away, recalling the dead face.

‘No.’

‘Nor to me, and I saw him a couple of hours earlier. It’s a mystery, all right.’

Constable Hammond finished her tea. She stood up. ‘Miss Fisher…’

‘Yes, Constable?’

‘I’ve heard about you. You were a famous detective back before the war, weren’t you? For years and years you solved mysteries, they say.’

Phryne smiled. For an old woman, thought the police constable, she had a beautiful smile.

‘I have had my successes.’

‘Well – the war bods say that you are clear for any level of security. Could you could you help me? If I can solve this, I’ll be in line for promotion. It’s not been easy, being a woman in the police force. And it’s all I ever wanted to do. I’d be good at it if they would only give me a fair go. I turned down two good offers of marriage to stay in the cops. Nice blokes but I’d have to give up work. I’m on my own; no relatives. And I could be a really good cop, I’m sure. But I’m not going to get any help from my sergeant or any of the others. They don’t like women PCs all that much.’

‘My dear girl,’ began Phryne, then looked at the young woman. Dedicated, earnest, dark-eyed and plain. She would make a good sergeant, and Phryne might be able to help her. The social forces keeping women down were intensifying, as they had after the first war. Soon it would be ‘Back to the kitchen, girls’ again. Phryne was also struck by a sudden image of the dead man on Somerton Beach, and the young Wehrmacht soldier dying proudly in his ditch. She shivered.

‘All right, if there is something that I can do, I will. Come and see me when you have some more info, and we’ll talk about it. But don’t tell your sergeant, there’s a dear. I have met enough sergeants to last me a lifetime.’

WPC Hammond left feeling happier than she had been since she caught sight of that strange dead face. Phryne Fisher was old, of course, and possibly not as sharp as she had been in the late 1920s, when Hammond had been a child. But Miss Fisher might be able to help her find a murderer and solve a mystery and get the promotion she felt she deserved.

Marie closed the door after her with that peculiarly Gallic sniff which sounds like ripping linen and expresses extreme disdain.

‘She means to use you, Madame,’ she scolded Phryne. ‘Use your skill to get advancement!’

‘Yes, so she does,’ agreed Phryne. ‘And why shouldn’t she?’

Marie sniffed again, and went back to the kitchen.

Phryne spent two days restraining herself from calling any of the people whom she had known in France because she had a strong compulsion to do so, and she had always distrusted strong compulsions. She did not want to get involved. The papers were full of the unknown man on Somerton Beach; his face confronted her from every newsstand and every paperboy cried his mystery.

But she did not call until WPC Hammond returned with a code.

‘Here it is, Miss Fisher. You any good at code-breaking?’

The young woman was excited, her face flushed, though that might have been caused by the weather. A scathingly hot north wind was blowing. Phryne was clad only in a thin cotton shift and felt that she would really like to remove her skin and soak her bones in cold water.

‘No. I was involved in… other duties. But I know someone who is,’ she said, remembering Bernard Cooper, who had been at a place called Bletchley doing something awfully Top Secret involving codes. Bernard was in Adelaide, in the Hills. And she had not seen him since 1945, in London.

‘Here it is.’

Phryne studied the paper. It looked like complete gibberish and, therefore, was probably a code.

‘It was found in a doctor’s car. He left it parked above the beach and he found the book in it the next morning. The tamam shud in the dead man’s pocket matches it, the tears match, and the typeface, it was torn out of the end of this book. I couldn’t bring you the book, Miss Fisher, but it’s a standard pocket edition. No name and no other marks than these. And all of the top security bods have been puzzling over it, no one has managed to make head nor tail it of it. What do you think?’

‘Hmm. You’re sure that it is all there? What about this peculiar cross over the O in the third line?’

‘I copied it exactly. That’s how it is set out and that cross is there in the original. Can you break it?’ asked WPC Hammond eagerly.

‘I can’t, no, but I know someone who might be able to. I’ll take it to him. And don’t worry about security,’ she added, ‘he had the highest clearance of all of us. He worked on something codenamed Enigma, which no one but Winston Churchill was allowed to know about. I should be able to get you an answer in a day or two, provided he’s willing to help. Has anything else happened?’