Kerry Greenwood - Urn Burial

Phryne let her hand slip under the table to meet Lin Chung’s where it rested on his thigh. It was going to be a long night and according to the menu there were three courses yet to get through. He patted her hand consolingly.

‘Tell me, Miss Fisher, how have the cases been going? Miss Fisher’s a famous detective,’ added Miss Medenham in explanation. Phryne began to tell the story of the cast of Ruddigore and the ghost. It was a good story and she told it with appropriate verve, so that Jack Lucas was fascinated and even Tom was listening.

‘She’s a clever girl, this one,’ he said thickly, as she reached the end. ‘Clever girl. Even though she brought a Chinese lover. I don’t mind that, why should I? I knew a Chinese girl once. Her name was Soong – Song, that was it, she was a song. That was in Hong Kong, before the war. Pretty little thing. What’s this, Hinchcliff? I didn’t ask for this.’ The butler was offering him a breakfast cup such as is used for soup. The butler did not reply but stood fixed and immovable, looking permanent. Hinchcliff, Phryne felt, would stand there with that cup until Tom drank it or the heavens fell, whichever came first.

‘You just drink it and don’t argue,’ said Cynthia Medenham, unexpectedly firm. Tom gazed fuzzily in her direction and observed, ‘Blondes. Blondes are strong-minded women.’

‘Quite right, my dear. I am strong-minded, so drink up. You should know better than to argue with a blonde, an old newspaperman like you,’ she said, and Tom reached over, tried to pinch her cheek, missed, and swallowed the coffee in one complicated movement. His eyes, for a moment, opened wide. Phryne reflected that it must have been concentrated caffeine.

The saddle of mutton was brought in with some ceremony. There were boiled potatoes and cabbage in butter to accompany this. Phryne was wondering what on earth to do. The host was supposed to carve and she would not have liked to be within knife’s reach of a drunken Tom Reynolds, who was given to wide, all-encompassing gestures. He might not mean to slash pieces off his guests, but he might do it nonetheless. She resolved to dive under the table at the first sign of mayhem.

But Mr Hinchcliff knew his duty. The mutton had been meticulously sliced in the kitchen, and the housemaid was carrying the platter in triumph along the table before the master noticed that he had been supplanted.

From the end of the table where convention had trapped her, too far away for effective action, Evelyn Reynolds stared at Phryne with desperate eyes, begging her to do something.

Phryne let go of Lin Chung’s hand and said to Tom, ‘These are excellent potatoes. Do you grow them?’

‘Yes,’ said Tom, blinking. ‘The soil’s perfect for potatoes, we got three truckloads out of the north field last year. Lucky, too. You can live on potatoes. Look at all those Irishmen. We might have to, if the river rises any higher.’

‘I’m sure that your wife has the catering well in hand, Tom,’ soothed Phryne.

‘Yes, m’wife is a capable woman, capable. Pity about the boy. She’d have been different if the boy had turned out well. But he went to the bad. Lots of boys do, you know. I went to the bad myself.’

‘Tom, do shut up,’ said Phryne.

‘Ah, Jack.’ He noticed Jack Lucas for the first time. ‘Nice boy, Jack. So was his father. His father was a nice boy. Man.’

‘Have some cabbage,’ urged Miss Medenham nervously. ‘Do you grow the cabbages, too?’

‘Cabbages,’ said Tom owlishly. ‘Babies grow under cabbages, eh, don’t they? Eh, Annie? Did you find them under a cabbage?’

This pronouncement caused the housemaid to drop the dish, clap both hands to her face, and run blindly out of the room. Tom Reynolds gaped after her.

While there was a certain fascination in anticipating what he might say next, Phryne drew the line at cruelty. ‘Tom, you must pull yourself together,’ she said in a fierce undertone. ‘You’re drunk and you’re babbling. Stop it at once. I’m ashamed of you.’

‘I’m ashamed of me, too,’ his face fell and he looked like he was going to cry. Phryne looked around for help. Hinchcliff materialised at her side.

‘I’m afraid that Mr Reynolds is ill,’ she said flatly. ‘He has caught a chill. Lin darling – would you mind?’

Tom was minded to protest, but Lin caught him in an unbreakable hold and he and the butler escorted him firmly out of the dining room.

‘How did old Tom get that drunk that fast?’

asked Cynthia. ‘I’ve never seen him so plastered.’

‘I expect he’s worried about Lina. What do you think happened to her?’

‘My dear,’ Miss Medenham leaned forward conspiratorially, ‘they haven’t found a trace of her, except for that trail of boots that your Mr Lin’s man followed. He sounds exciting. Is he really a hunter?’

‘Yes, he’s called ‘‘tiger-slayer’’ and he can track like a hound.’ Phryne also leaned closer.

‘I’d love a tiger skin. To lie on, you know.’ Miss Medenham had obviously been reading Elinor Glyn and her own fiction. ‘But about the maid, it’s too spooky. I’m locking my door tonight, I can tell you. It might be that old tramp, that Dingo Harry. But what does he want with her? It’s too deliciously exciting.’

A vision of the girl’s dead face rose before Phryne’s eyes and she gulped the remains of her hock. Jack Lucas said, ‘You think something awful happened to Lina, don’t you? Well, it won’t be old Dingo Harry. He’s a red-ragger. If he was breaking into houses and stealing girls, it would be one of the ladies, not an oppressed daughter of the labouring classes.’

Miss Medenham suppressed a shriek and Phryne said, ‘That sounds familiar,’ as the returning Mr Hinchcliff filled a glass with claret and set it before her. Lin Chung sat down again and nodded at Phryne’s inquiring glance. ‘I know a couple of wharfies who think like that.’ She suddenly missed Bert and Cec and wished that she had them here. They were infinitely reliable. What they would have made of Cave House would have been worth hearing, also. She imagined the stocky Bert taking off his hat and saying, ‘Strewth!’ and Cec behind him echoing, ‘Too right’, and felt immediately better.

‘You know this Dingo Harry then?’ breathed Miss Medenham, hoping not to be disappointed of her monster.

‘He’s all for the working man,’ said Jack. ‘Gerry and I used to meet him quite often at the caves.

He knows all about them. He used to be a geologist, then the grog got him and he came out here, prospecting. That fell through and he makes a living out of dingo trapping. He likes caves. He says there’s miles of them, all through the hills, and tunnels and seams of metals and maybe even ores. Best-educated swaggie I ever met. He looks a bit wild and woolly but he’s all right. I can’t imagine him hurting anyone.’

‘Then who was it?’ Cynthia accepted a piece of lemon tart and poured cream onto it with a distracted hand.

‘Don’t know,’ said Jack Lucas shortly.

‘Tell me what you think of the decor,’ said Phryne, searching for another topic. The young man smiled and his blue eyes lit with mirth.

‘It’s amazing, isn’t it? It can’t really date, because it’s such a mixture. I mean, the medieval panelling and the marble fireplaces and those magnificent Morris windows.’

‘Are any of the antiques really antique?’

‘Oh, yes. The original owner bought up big at the Paris Exhibition. The settle in the hall is fifteenth-century. The big chippendale table in the parlour is genuine, as is the Sheridan love-seat in gold-coloured satin in the little parlour. These are real Sevres plates, ghastly as they are, the whole set from soup to dessert. Have you got a battle on yours?’