Kerry Greenwood - Urn Burial

It was possible that Phryne never saw the obstacle. Cuba certainly didn’t. In one moment, the sepia Ming drawing of fleeting horse and rider was destroyed. Cuba crashed to the road on his knees, and Phryne was flung over his head.

CHAPTER THREE

Great examples grow thin, and to be fetched away

from the passed world. Simplicity flies away, and

iniquity comes at long strides towards us.

Epistle Dedicatory, Urn Burial , Sir Thomas Browne.

LIN CHUNG leapt down and ran past the foundered horse to where Phryne must have fallen. He shoved aside the dense matted ti-tree, found a gloved hand and then a shoulder, and hauled.

He gathered Phryne into his arms, feeling her over for broken bones. Both collarbones intact, and both legs and arms. He was stroking her hair away from her face, checking for fractures, when she sat up and said crossly, ‘What in Hell’s name happened?’

‘Cuba fell,’ said Lin Chung. ‘I thought you had been killed – you should have been – you fall like a cat, Silver Lady, like an acrobat. Where does it hurt?’

‘Everywhere,’ she groaned. ‘The secret of my miraculous survival is ti-tree. Great stuff. Help me up, Lin, and we’ll see to this poor hack.’

With Lin’s arm around her, she limped back to Cuba, who was struggling to get up, nuzzled anxiously by the brown mare. Phryne called gently to the horse and he managed to regain his feet. Both his knees were bleeding.

‘Poor Cuba. What on earth made you fall?’ she took up each hoof in turn but there were no stones. Mopping at the horse’s knees with her handkerchief she stared at the wound, silent for a moment. Then she gave the reins into Lin Chung’s hand and said tautly, ‘Tie them to a fence and come and look at this. This isn’t a graze – it’s a cut.’

Lin Chung looped the reins around a handy branch and did as requested. Cuba looked at him mournfully and he stroked his nose.

‘Surely caused by the fall?’ Lin Chung commented.

‘He fell on grass, soft – well, relatively soft, grass. Walk back with me – ouch! God, I hit the ground hard. I saw bloody stars.’ Lin supported her slight weight without trouble, feeling as anxious as the mare now licking at Cuba’s knees.

‘Look,’ she said. A long thin tarred wire stretched from one side of the bridle-path to the other. It had been secured from fence to fence until Cuba’s fall had broken it.

‘More rustic humour?’ asked Phryne, wincing as she straightened.

‘Has it been there long?’

‘No. The wire’s new, not at all rusted, and it hasn’t had time to bite into the wooden fencepost. What a nasty little mind – I wonder whose it is?’ She coiled up the wire and stuffed it inside her shirt.

‘You’re shivering,’ said Lin Chung, embracing her more closely. She laid her face against his warm chest for a moment, then remembered Cuba’s legs, which would stiffen in the cold wind.

‘I’m shocked. It’s nothing. Bring the horses. We’d better get back.’

‘The mare can carry you,’ he said. Phryne was lifted without effort into the air and set down on the chestnut’s back as lightly as a falling leaf. She kept her seat by instinct as Lin Chung led the horses back to Cave House.

The stableman rushed to meet them, wailing, ‘I told yer ’e was frisky, Miss! Now look at ’is knees! Boss’ll go crook, I tell yer that fer free.’

‘I’ll tell you another thing for free,’ snapped Phryne, allowing Lin Chung to lift her down. ‘You’ve got someone playing tricks. Have you seen anyone out along the bridle path today – or yesterday?’

‘Why?’ The gnarled brown face wrinkled with suspicion.

Phryne leaned on Lin and drew the coiled wire out of her shirt. The stableman squinted at it.

‘Have you seen a snare like that before?’

‘Yair. Dingo ’Arry uses that tarred wire for ’is dog traps. What of it?’

‘That’s what caused Cuba to come down like a ton of bricks and fling me over his head. If I hadn’t been a fairly experienced rider I would have hit the road and been prematurely deceased. Now, be a nice man and stop snarling at me. I’ve had an exciting morning. I’ve got to sit down.’

The stableman, belatedly recognising that the rider was almost as battered as the horse, fetched her his own rush-seated chair and Phryne sagged into it.

‘Ooh, my bruises are all settling down and raising families. Before I go and sink into a hot bath, composed mostly of arnica, I want a few answers. Your name?’

The small man dragged a handful of straw out of his hair and looked at her. This was the toff that the Mistress had been creating about for days, the Hon. from an aristocratic family in England. The one who had brought the Chow with her and caused a scandal. He was not disposed to liking rich people. However, she had controlled Cuba well and it did not seem to be her fault that he was now in need of Stockholm Tar and compresses.

‘Me name’s Terence Willis. They call me Terry. You’re Miss Fisher, ain’t you? Done a bit of ridin’, I see.’

‘A bit. You used to be a jockey, eh, Mr Willis?’

‘How’d yer know that?’

Phryne smiled. He was small, light and bowlegged, with the curiously young-old face of a typical jockey. His hands, deformed from tugging on reins, were caressing Cuba passionately as the horse leaned its head on his shoulder and breathed down his shirt.

‘There is nothing else you could have been, believe me. Someone laid a snare for the first rider along that track. Who would that normally have been?’

‘Why, Mr Reynolds. He takes Cuba out every mornin’ around dawn, ’cept today ’cos ’e slept in. ’E was up late.’

‘Interesting. You say this Dingo Harry uses tarred wire for his dog-snares?’

‘Yair, but he’s all right, the ol’ Dingo. Bit loony, but a lot of the swaggies are, comes of bein’ on their Pat Malone so much. ’Arry’s not the only bloke to ’ave a bit of tarred wire round the place. We got some ’ere, somewhere.’

‘Indeed. Does Dingo Harry dislike Mr Reynolds?’

‘Had a bit of a barney with the Boss about trespassin’ – Dingo goes where ’e likes, ’e don’t reckernize fences – ’e reckons all property is theft, anyway. Boss went crook and Dingo went crook and that was the end of it, far as I know.’

‘Did you happen to see Dingo Harry on the bridle path in the last couple of days?’

‘Nah,’ the face screwed up again. ‘But I ain’t got all day to be loafin’ about lookin’ at the bridle path. Joe!’ he yelled and a boy came running. ‘Wrap a loose bandage round Cuba’s knees and keep walkin’ him up and down. I’ll be there in a sec. You gonna tell the Boss about this?’

‘Someone has to,’ said Phryne, levering herself to her feet and leaning on Lin’s ready arm.

Terry Willis adopted the expression of a small nut-brown gnome who has just watched his favourite toadstool being trodden on, hesitated, then said, ‘Miss . . . let’s not be ’asty. The old Dingo, he’s sorta a mate of mine, and . . .’

‘All right. Let’s not leap to conclusions, either. You find Mr Dingo and see if he set this trap and warn him off if he did. But if it wasn’t him, then I want you to come and tell me. Right away. Promise?’ Willis nodded. Phryne continued, ‘And it might be an idea if you take a pair of handy boltcutters and ride the bridle path yourself, every morning – just in case. Well, my bath calls. There’s not much harm done, except to my pride – I haven’t been thrown since I was thirteen.’

The old face creased into a thousand-wrinkle grin. ‘Ah, Miss, if you’d been thrown as often as I ’ave, you wouldn’t take it personal.’

Phryne laughed and left the stable.

‘I know you could carry me,’ she said to the hovering Lin Chung. ‘But I don’t need to make such a dramatic entrance. If I keep moving, like Cuba, I won’t stiffen.’