Urn Burial

‘We have no more facts to exchange,’ she said. ‘I’m cold. Let’s go back to the house.’

‘In a moment, Silver Lady.’ He stopped and turned to her. ‘In the presence of death we cling closer to life, to the flesh and the spirit, fearing dissolution.’

‘True,’ she agreed, leaning into his warmth as a skilled hand slid down to caress her breast, sensitive to touch even through her parrot-patterned jumper.

‘I have said that I will not lie with you under our host’s roof.’ His mouth was almost touching her ear, his breath warm on her neck.

‘Yes, I heard you,’ Phryne noticed that her voice was quavering and dragged herself under control. Almost without volition, her hands slipped under the silk shirt and caressed a back as smooth as sun-warmed marble.

‘But there are other places,’ he said, almost inaudibly, and Phryne felt a jolt shoot through her spine.

‘So there are,’ she said, forcing her voice to become light. ‘We shall reconnoitre. Too late for tonight, Lin dear. It’s already getting dark. I think it’s going to storm again.’

She was only taken marginally by surprise when he bent his head and kissed her passionately, soft mouth and silken lips, and the back muscles trembled reflexively under her fingers.

He drew away from her only as they heard the trampling feet of the search party approaching.

She had a lot to think about as she went back to the house. As she entered under the stone portal, it began to rain.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Oblivion is not to be hired.

Urn Burial, Sir Thomas Browne, Chapter V.

PHRYNE WAS dressing for dinner. The search party, defeated by the weather and the approach of night, had returned wet and grumbling. They had found no trace of Lina. It was pouring outside the bow windows, a steady drumming against the glass. Phryne yawned. Rain made her sleepy. She had bathed and was wearing her padded silk robe, a present from Lin Chung. Splashes of bright gold chrysanthemums across a background of dark-green leaves cheered her, and the silk wadding was as warm as fur. The smooth fabric caressed her skin like a hand.

She was sitting in her Sheridan chair, feet towards the fire, staring at the vague oil painting which had been in Dot’s room. It was an improvement on Hope. Ladies with parasols were walking down a flower-strewn slope towards the artist. There was a breeze; their hair was blown back and one parasol had turned inside out. Although filthy from long exposure to soot – it must have hung over a mantelpiece – it had a certain internal light which Phryne felt she had seen before, somewhere. She idled with the idea but could not pin it down. Europe, somewhere. A French voice came back to her, talking about clarity.

Dot came in briskly, turned on the light, and the impression vanished.

‘Dinner, Miss,’ she said. ‘What would you like to wear?’

‘The jade dress, I think. It’s cold.’ Phryne dismissed her train of thought and watched as Dot laid out the gown of the season.

Being a dinner dress, it was only ankle length. The fishtail train on Phryne’s ball dress, which seemed, sadly, to be unlikely to see society, at least at this party – was designed for dancing and to overawe the servants. It also provided a convenient test for a clumsy young man to demonstrate just how awkward he was, thus saving Phryne’s feet from many a trampling. If he stood on the train she didn’t dance with him. Dot smoothed the velvet and fluffed up the squirrel-fur collar and cuffs, then found gunmetal-coloured stockings and the silver shoes.

Phryne donned black silk underwear and allowed Dot to drop the dress over her head. She made up her face with a few precise licks of a powder compact, sketched in her eyebrows, painted her mouth, shook her fluid hair into place and surveyed herself narrowly in the wardrobe mirror.

The jade-green velvet, cut by a master, flowed from the furry collar down to her neat ankles and well-shod feet. Phryne turned and walked, watching the movement of the fabric. Beautiful. The dress depended from her shapely shoulders. It was decorously cut, more from considerations of pneumonia than morality, with a high neck and no unseemly display of vertebrae. Poitou had sent it from Paris with his personal compliments to la belle Anglaise, and Phryne thought that he would have been pleased with it. The gown draped over her body, emphasising just what she wanted emphasised, and was remarkably decent while having a wholly indecent effect.

Dot set a fillet onto the black hair. It had a small panache of seagull’s feathers caught in an ornate silver clip. Phryne slid onto her left middle finger the big silver ring she had bought in Shanghai, the dragon and the phoenix, symbolising the mating of yin and yang, male and female, sun and moon, darkness and light.

‘Perfect,’ she said, and smiled at her reflection. It smiled back. ‘What’s the news from the kitchen, Dot?’

‘Mrs Croft thinks Lina’s run away and so do most of the others. Mr Hinchcliff is worried, though – so’s his wife. We only see them at dinner, Miss. Mr Reynolds ordered that all the outside staff have dinner at six. He says they work hard and need their food. We’ll eat after you do, Miss. Looks like a good dinner, too. Mr H hardly ate anything and Mrs H has been crying. Doreen says there was nothing strange about the room, except that the bottom sheet and the blanket were missing, so she put new ones on the bed. She’s upset because she reckons she must have missed Lina by a minute and might have been able to help her.’

‘She couldn’t have helped her, Dot,’ said Phryne soberly.

‘You think she’s dead, Miss. Why?’

‘I saw her dead. All Doreen has done is spare herself a dreadful sight.’

Dot was silent. ‘I don’t s’pose we can just go away, Miss?’ she asked hopefully.

‘Not a chance,’ said Phryne. The reflection’s red mouth hardened into a straight line and the green eyes narrowed. Dot sighed.

‘I was afraid you were going to say that, Miss Phryne.’

‘I don’t think we’re in too much danger, Dot, but after you come back from dinner, shove a chair-back under the doorknob. I’ll knock when I come. Just in case, Dot dear,’ she said hastily. ‘The door doesn’t seem to have a key.’

‘Not only that, Miss, it hasn’t even got a latch. I had a look at it earlier. The lock’s not working.’

‘How singular,’ Phryne observed. ‘The good old chair it is then. Now don’t worry, Dot. I’d better go down. Enjoy your dinner and keep an ear out for gossip. Find out what everyone was doing before they came here, if you can. I’m especially curious about that remarkable couple, the Hinchcliffs. They’re not the sort of people I would expect to find in the backblocks. Be good.’ Phryne kissed Dot. ‘I’m relying on you.’

Dot said, ‘Yes, Miss,’ and waited until Phryne had gone in a waft of Jicky before wiping the lipstick mark off her cheek.

‘You’re enough to drive me mental,’ said Dot to the closed door. ‘But you smell so nice.’

Dinner, it appeared, was going to be testing. The gathering in the drawing room was nervous: Miss Cray was muttering prayers in an annoying undertone, Miss Mead was looking like someone who had just discovered the Mother’s Club rehearsing the Black Mass instead of the Wednesday Play, Tom Reynolds had taken more brandy than was good for him and the poet had not only matched but exceeded his consumption. Mrs Reynolds’ brow was furrowed, Lin Chung looked absolutely expressionless, Miss Fletcher was talking too loudly about the leg-before- wicket rule, Gerald looked crumpled and Jack Lucas short-tempered. The Major’s shirt front was ballooning out as he declaimed that all women were pests and a curse and no time need be wasted on such a light-headed, irresponsible, fundamentally wicked sex.

‘It’s not money that’s the root of all evil, but women,’ he declared. His wife, wispy in pale-blue, cowered away from him and Doctor Franklin, who was the main recipient of the Major’s discourse, looked harried. Only Mrs Fletcher looked pleased, and that might have been because Judith was leaning ostentatiously on Gerald’s arm. Miss Medenham was remarkable in cyclamen chiffon and amethysts. The poet was offering her a cocktail and drinking her in with what looked like serious, if alcoholically inspired, concentration.

The gentlemen were dressed in the usual panoply; the ladies ranged from Joan Fletcher’s ‘suitable’ grey velvet to Miss Cray’s habitual mourning weeds, dressed up with a multitude of jet brooches with hair in them.

Phryne swept in and Lin Chung detached himself from the gathering with deceptive ease and offered her his arm.

‘You look absolutely beautiful,’ he said softly. Phryne surveyed him. His clothes, she thought, were made to measure in Savile Row, or perhaps in Oxford. They fitted him like a glove. The linen irreproachable; the links and