ANNIE, the housemaid.
A scullery maid, two gardeners, a knives and boots boy called ALBERT and a stableman’s apprentice called JOE.
‘But man is a noble animal, splendid in ashes, and pompous in the grave, solemnizing nativities and deaths with equal lustre, nor omitting ceremonies of bravery in the infamy of his nature.’
CHAPTER ONE
We present not these as any strange sights or spectacle
unknown to your eyes, who have beheld the best of
urns and the noblest variety of ashes.
Epistle Dedicatory,
THE SHOT boomed out of the mist.
Phryne slowed the Hispano-Suiza to a halt. Dot, from the back, where she was sitting with Lin Chung’s manservant Li Pen, said tremulously, ‘Someone hunting?’
‘In this weather and after dark?’ asked Phryne. ‘Does that seem likely, Dot dear? That was a shotgun.’
Then someone screamed.
It was a female voice, ragged with terror, even though the sound was blanketed by the fog which curled into the big car, chilling the heart. Li Pen leaned forward. Dot emitted a squeak of fright.
‘What do you want to do?’ asked Lin Chung. ‘It might be a private fight.’
Phryne grinned at him. ‘The last private fight I leapt into was very rewarding,’ she commented. ‘I would otherwise never have met you. Can you use a gun?’
‘Not as well as you, I suspect.’
‘All right, change places. You take the driver’s seat.’ She clambered over him, taking the passenger seat. The scream came again, closer and louder, and Phryne heard feet running. Dot whimpered. Li Pen, hoping he was doing the right thing, put a reassuring hand on her arm, which she was too frightened to shake off.
Phryne found her Beretta and loaded it methodically. Lin Chung heard the click of bullets snapped into their grooves, and the clunk of the mechanism as she closed it.
‘Turn the car until the headlights point directly behind me,’ she ordered. ‘That should blind anyone coming this way. Keep the engine running – I won’t be a tick.’
She was gone from beside him. Lin engaged the gears and very carefully and skilfully backed the Hispano- Suiza and turned it, hoping that he was not about to run Phryne’s beloved car into an unexpected ditch. The powerful fog lamps outlined Phryne’s small determined figure; the slim body clad in trousers and a jumper, her stance easy and alert, and the cameo-cut shape of her straight profile and cap of black hair. Li Pen commented in Cantonese, ‘She would make a warrior. She has the heart of a lion.’ Lin Chung agreed.
‘Oh, Miss, be careful!’ wailed Dot.
The road was rough. Three-foot high ti-tree scrub lined it, full of thorns and snakes. Phryne called into the mist, ‘Here!’ and for a moment there was complete silence. Chill as the heart of darkness, thought Lin Chung, his hands ready on the wheel. Cold as the silence at the heart of unbeing.
Scarves of fog lay tangled in the low-growing scrub. Phryne strained her eyes. She could see only about ten paces into the virgin forest and could smell only wetness and chill earth and the faint scent of water. Then she heard a crashing scramble straight ahead as someone tried to run through the ti-tree.
This, of course, could not be done. Only a bulldozer could run through there, she reflected, holding the gun out steady in both hands. ‘Here!’ she yelled again, and was answered by a sobbing shriek, ‘Help!’
Out of the fog came a woman, completely out of her mind with pain or fear, stumbling and falling as the roots caught her feet, getting up and clawing herself forward again. She staggered, fell and got up again, orienting herself by the car’s headlights, drawn by the bright light like a moth.
Phryne swung her aim away as the girl fell panting at her feet. She was dressed in black and white, and a frilly cap was still pinned, jaunty and incongruous, on her torn hair. It was an unusual situation in which to find a parlourmaid.
Phryne listened hard, trying to block out the maid’s whimpering, trying to hear beyond the sound for any following feet. The attacker must still be out there. Phryne and the maid were perfect targets in the Hispano-Suiza’s glare. But nothing moved, no gun fired. She could discern no other person out in the chill darkness.
‘Come along,’ she said, pocketing the gun and hauling the girl to her feet. ‘Get in the car. You’re safe now. Lin, get us out of here,’ she added, shoving the maid into the back seat and Dot’s concerned arms.
The parlourmaid’s sobbing increased once she knew she was safe. Li Pen removed himself to the far side of the seat as she caught sight of his face and whispered, ‘A Chink!’
‘You’re safe,’ said Dot briskly. ‘It’s all right. What’s your name? Where did you come from? Where can we take you?’
‘Lina,’ whispered the girl. ‘I’m Lina and I’m from Cave House.’
Dot soothed, ‘Good, that’s where we’re going.’
Lin Chung, navigating carefully through endless ti-tree, said, ‘It can’t be far, then.’
‘Oh, God, another Chink!’ exclaimed Lina as she heard his voice.
‘Lina, would you like to walk home?’ asked Phryne, her voice as chill as the fog.
Dot said, ‘Oh, Miss . . .’ and the parlourmaid gave a small scream. ‘No Miss, please Miss, I’m sorry . . .’
‘It’s Miss Phryne Fisher,’ said Dot, giving the girl a small shake. ‘We’re going to Cave House for a house party. Mr Reynolds invited us. I’m Miss Williams and that is Mr Lin and Mr Li. Pull yourself together, girl. You’ve been rescued and we’re taking you home. You were lucky that we came along. No call to be insulting your Master’s guests now, have you? Are you hurt? We heard a shot.’
‘No – no, he missed me, I’m just a bit scratched by all them thorns. I was so scared. I’m sorry, Miss Fisher, Mr Lin, I’m sorry.’ She started to cry. Phryne was unsympathetic.
Lin Chung said softly, ‘You see, Phryne, I told you this would be difficult, importing an exotic like me into your world. She’s just reacting as all the rest will.’
‘She’s shocked and she’s been reading too much Sax Rohmer,’ snapped Phryne. ‘At last – they look like the gateposts.’
‘Yes, Miss. It says ‘‘Cave House’’ on the fence,’ Dot said, supporting the sobbing girl on her shoulder and feeling tears trickle down her neck. Phryne got out to open the gate and the car rolled onto a gravelled drive. She snibbed the wooden stockyard shutter after the car had passed through and listened again.
No sound in the dank air, yet she shivered. Someone was watching her. There were inimical eyes on the back of her neck. She pulled up the collar of her jumper and got back into the car.
Even the fog could not disguise the monstrous oddity of Cave House.
In the closing years of the nineteenth century, a wealthy brewer had been dragged protesting on the Grand Tour by his wife, who had artistic yearnings. There was no doubt that they had visited Greece, and also delighted in a profusion of Gothic cathedrals. Cave House was both. It was an amalgam so outrageous, so amazing, that even Phryne, in possession of a distraught housemaid and a searing fit of bad temper, sat and gaped.
The Parthenon, she recalled, had nine columns with decorous Ionic capitals. Cave House had twelve and they were capped with Corinthian designs in white marble. York Cathedral had ten Gothic grotesques over the door; Cave House had twenty, all fanged and with unpleasantly lolling tongues as well.
It was too much for the end of a long drive. Lin Chung sat as though stunned, every canon of design known to him, both Chinese and Oxford, thoroughly outraged. Li Pen reflected that even the legendary Yellow Emperor on an overdose of hallucinogenic mushrooms had never conceived anything like this. Dot thought it was overdone, but interesting.
‘Miss, we ought to get Lina inside,’ she said, and Phryne pulled herself together. Artistic criticism of Cave House could wait. Now she was cold and furious and needed to suitably dispose of Lina, who was working herself into a proper fit of hysterics by the sounds from the back seat.
