Part 17 (2/2)

'Which is why he has come down to two such biddies as us, eh, Beth?' chuckled Lady Alice. 'Anyway, he has someone to look after him. His batman, before he was asked to leave the regiment. Thin, dark man. Wallace? Yes, Wallace, I think. He seems perfectly all right, but the fact that he has chosen to be a friend to Roddy puts a black mark against his sanity too. Anyway, I agreed, so that I could see you again. I took the ticket and came over on the Orient and stayed in my cabin most of the voyage to avoid those two. Then I found the lawyer's office for them and found them a private enquiry agent to conduct the searches and put advertis.e.m.e.nts in all the newspapers.'

'I saw them,' said Dot. 'Seemed to be in every paper I picked up. Must have cost a good deal.'

'That was irrelevant if the t.i.tle was in question. Then-of all unlucky things! I told them that I was going to Luna Park- you know how I love such places, Beth-and they insisted on coming too. They were suspicious of me. They were right! But that put us in the right place at the right time to...'

'See Miss Phryne find the mummy,' said Dot. 'They must have seen the crest on the forearm and known it instantly. For an idiot, your Roderick thinks real fast! Or p'raps it was this Wallace bloke. And since then they have been trying to frighten Miss Phryne off.'

'And to find the descendants of Amelia Gascoigne,' said Lady Alice. 'And they have, and he's living in Castlemaine, and they've burgled the lawyer's safe and burned the doc.u.ments, and gone to buy him off or to frighten him off or even...but surely even Roddy would not go that far... and your sister is there as well.'

'Miss Phryne is clever,' said Dot. 'And she's very hard to catch off guard. But I'll phone right away. What are you going to do now, Lady Alice?'

'Well, since I am not going to be welcome back in England, and since I am now just plain Miss Beaconsfield, I think I'll stay here,' said Lady Alice comfortably. 'I was never happy with being t.i.tled anyway. I'll have my small income and get a room somewhere cheap and continue with my work. Will you join me, Beth?'

'You know I will,' sobbed Eliza and fell into Miss Beacons-field's arms.

Dot went to the phone. Li Pen went with her.

Phryne listened carefully to the whole sorry tale.

'Well, that explains Eliza,' she commented. 'I can just imagine what Father would think of a Sapphic in the family. Better he has his apoplexy out of spitting distance from us. That only leaves Thos, our little brother, and Thos has always been a perfect little thug. I'm sure he will marry and breed. Very good-looking, Thos. Once he gets past the pimples and puppy-fat stage he'll be gorgeous, and Eton is teaching him to conceal the essential unpleasant ba.n.a.lity of his character. Go on, Dot dear.'

'Miss Phryne, that Roderick is in Castlemaine and Lady Alice says he's dangerous,' Dot yelled.

'So am I,' said Phryne, holding the earpiece a little further away. 'But he can't get up to too much in the stable yard of a respectable hotel. At least, I expect not. But I shall take care. I've talked to our Tichborne Claimant, Mr Bill Gaskin. He doesn't want the t.i.tle. He's a socialist. The place is positively rife with socialists lately. And I've got an a.s.signation later. This matter has taken up far too much of my holiday time. But at least I'll be able to bury the poor mummy properly, as I promised Sister Elizabeth. And under his own name. Call Jack Robinson for me, will you, Dot, and ask him to alert the local cops to anything odd happening to me. This Roddy and his valet Wallace sound unsightly and essentially harmless, but you never know. Never trust a man who bites the heads off chickens is probably a good sound rule of practice.'

'Mr Li wants to ask if Mr Lin is all right.' Dot gave up trying to tell Phryne to be careful.

'Perfectly, if a little overfed. He has every hope of finding the gold and he's been spreading good cheer amongst some old Chinese people here. He also looks gorgeous in a ca.s.sock, though Li Pen might not appreciate that comment, so don't tell him. I'll call you tomorrow, Dot dear. Not early. If anything happens, you can find me here.'

Phryne rang off, biting her lip. This Roderick Cholmondeley sounded like a dangerously unstable little petal. Even for a Hunt Ball, where perfectly respectable men performed a dance called 'the c.o.c.king of the legs' and exclaimed 'Och, aye!' while doing so without public reproof, mutilating animals-even chickens- was extreme. No wonder he was having trouble finding a t.i.tled wife. Mothers with daughters to sell might be desperate after the second unsuccessful season, but probably not that desperate. Someone had married Lord Greystoke, admittedly, but he was just a large ape, and Phryne had seen behaviour in Belgravia which would have drawn pursed lips and adverse comment in the worst conducted of baboon cages at the zoo.

Perhaps this was not such a good idea after all.

Still, the idiot Roderick had to be faced, and he had to be informed that Gaskins never never would be aristos, and how else was she going to catch him? If he was the pink-cheeked muscle man in the Imperial dining room last night, blond hair cut unbecomingly en brosse like a prize fighter, she might just catch him at dinner and tell him it was all off and he could go home. If he dined early.

And would he believe her?

Phryne went upstairs for her bath, lay for a long time dreamily splas.h.i.+ng Floris Tea Rose bath oil with her fingers, and emerged boiled pink and strongly scented. She dressed carefully, including her petticoat pocket and her small gun in its garter holster, just in case. She had once been dropped into a deep pit by persons who were afterward very, very sorry, and the presence of that petticoat pocket, an invention of her grand-mother's time, had meant that she had not been without matches to make light or a soothing smoke while contem-plating escape.

Thus accoutred, she went down to the dining room at seven, but the large young man and his dark-haired friend were not apparent. Drat. That means we will have to do this the hard way, thought Phryne, and went into the stable yard.

It was getting towards dusk. Bill Gaskin, cleaned up to meet his new neighbour, was waiting for her in the shed. He was wearing a clean s.h.i.+rt and had combed his hair and Phryne saw with approval that he had that good solid Australian face, k.n.o.bbly around the nose with a chin you could break flints on. A face, she had thought, which had died out in Gallipoli and Pa.s.schendaele. And here it was, cleaned of cinders and very personable too, not to mention historic. He approved of her low-heeled shoes.

'Difficult walking in that old ruin,' he commented. 'Missus is about to have it pulled down so she can build a proper garage. Almost no one has horses any more.'

'What, even here? It's time, Bill. Come along,' said Phryne, and walked into the darkness. 'We need to tell them loudly that you don't want their t.i.tle. That will defuse them.'

She shut her eyes and when she opened them she could see. The late sun shot golden bolts of light through the holes in the galvanised iron roof. Not a creature was stirring, not even a pa.s.sing rat, and she was about to speak when a lot of things happened at once.

She was grabbed in arms which felt like they were made of iron, bound and wrapped in something like a sack, before she had time to react. A shout of dismay near her ear made her aware that Bill had been similarly treated. A huge engine roared. Phryne was lifted and flung, landing painfully on someone's knee or elbow. The car or truck roared and took the road at a dangerous speed. There was a shriek of tortured metal which told Phryne that part of the Imperial's decorative wrought iron gate had come too.

Around a corner, slung against the k.n.o.bby projections, around another corner, slung the other way. Phryne was dazed. First thing to do: think. Roddy had better have his wits about him when Phryne got out of this sack. She was seriously displeased.

The thing she was lying on was struggling. Phryne wriggled, trying to guess which end of this bundle was his head. 'Lie still!' she shrieked at what she thought might be a face. 'Try and get your hands free!'

Her only answer was an inarticulate growl which informed her that her guess was correct. That was the head end. Phryne sneezed. This sack had contained flour. Her nose started to run and she fought to get a hand free from the enclosing material. This never happens to s.e.xton Blake, she reflected, managing to slide a hand up inside the bag and scratch her nose. Bliss. Now to release the rest of her.

She could detect a change of light through the bag. The world appeared to be getting darker. Out of the street lights of Castlemaine into the gathering night. Where were they taking them? Towards Melbourne? Towards Bendigo? And what on earth did this Roderick think he was doing?

Probably not murder. Not in the first instance. If he had meant to murder both of them he could have shot them down in the stable where they stood artlessly outlined against the dusk. Phryne spent a useful minute castigating herself for breaking her own cardinal rules, viz, a.s.sume everyone is dangerous until proven otherwise and expect the unexpected. Then she forgave herself because she needed to think and plan, and kicking oneself is difficult inside a tight-fitting sack.

She had left notes and people would be looking for her. It was just a matter of surviving until rescued.

Phryne hated the idea of being rescued, but from the depths of her sack it had its attractions. The car swerved, turned, went around what was apparently a very tight corner on one wheel, squealed and fishtailed back onto the road again and drove on.

Breathing was not easy inside the bag and every time she took a breath she got a lungful of flour. Bill had ceased strug-gling and was making the complex, rhythmical movements of a man trying to work one hand out from underneath when he is stuffed down beside a car seat and is being lain upon by a small but inconvenient woman.

How long was this blighted journey going to take? Think, Phryne told herself. The journey will end somewhere and you have to be prepared. What is the best tactic to use on a bone-headed son of the n.o.bility? What, in fact, did Roderick Cholmondeley know about women?

Probably not a lot, if he thought that tricks with chickens were going to make the girls agog at his strength and skill. Boys' school, s.p.a.ce of time with the regiment-I wonder why he was asked to leave? Those regiments usually have quite strong stomachs; Roddy must be a cad as well, or that most d.a.m.ning of judgments, 'not quite a gentleman', even though he was quite definitely a lord.

Phryne was aware that the restricted air supply was making her woozy. She tried to focus. Pay attention, she told herself, breathe through the nose, you get less flour that way. How to tackle Roddy, that's the question. The batman may be the brains of the outfit, of course. But then, Roddy had spent a lot of his time slaughtering the beasts of the field and the pursuit of deer taught one patience. And exactly how heavy a fully grown stag is when you have had the good fortune to kill it, which would have built up the muscle, of course. Mind wandering again. Another howling turn. This must be a high-powered car. Probably a Bentley or one of the new Rolls Royces.

Now, he would only have met officers' wives and daughters, the available daughters of the aristocracy, and probably a few wh.o.r.es. The officers' wives would not have approved of this wild young subaltern, and the daughters would have been kept well away from him. The Misses of the season would have snubbed him, especially after the chicken incident, which would have taken fully ten minutes to run from mouth to ear the length and breadth of Polite Circles. That left only wh.o.r.es, and they were what their clients wanted. Roddy would know about wh.o.r.es, and so would his batman. That might be a useful piece of information.

A screech and the car shuddered to a halt. On, by the sound of it, gravel. Off the beaten track, then. Not that there were a lot of beaten tracks around here anyway. Hands were laid ungently on Phryne. She decided to collapse. With any luck she might give her captor a nice hernia. She was slung over someone's shoulder and carried ten paces into a house. She was dropped unceremoniously on a hard floor. She allowed herself to roll a little, getting her free hand on her garter and thus almost on her gun when she heard the footsteps coming back and relapsed into immobility. Let Roddy make the first move, so she could find out what he was planning.

Adrenalin poured into her bloodstream. In the sack, she bared her teeth.

The Elder Brother Sung Ma to the younger sister Li Mai, affec-tionate greetings.

I have been here in my own village for six months now. I have been setting up our jewellery workshop. We already have several commis-sions and I have secured the services of a famous enameller. Venerable Uncle has been very helpful. He a.s.sures me that my prospective wife is a pleasant person. I have seen some of her paintings, which are quite in the antique style, and her calligraphy is also very good. I cannot marry until my year's mourning for our mother is pa.s.sed. But when I do I am convinced that I shall be much happier than I deserve to be.

The Elder Brother sends some poor poems which might amuse the younger sister.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN.

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