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?’
Phryne scraped away the
‘I’ve got Albuera,’ said Miss Medenham.
‘You’re lucky – I’ve got a portrait of Blucher, enough to sour cream.’ Jack poured some over his
‘So this would be your profession, would it?’ asked Phryne. ‘Antiques?’
‘I never thought of it, actually,’ he said, holding a spoonful suspended in the air. ‘I suppose it could be.’
‘Think about it,’ said Phryne, suddenly remembering a French voice talking about plain air. ‘I think I can see a way out of your little difficulty, Mr Lucas.’
‘You can?’
‘I think so, but perhaps we can talk about it another day. There is no hurry. What about you, Miss Medenham? Are you interested in antiques?’
‘My dear, I just had my flat entirely renovated and threw all of the old things away. I want something madly
‘What did you do with your old furniture?’ asked Jack.
‘I sold it to a rag-and-bone man, my dear. I just wanted the space. Now I’ve got oodles of light and air, free of all that heavy brass and cedar and mahogany.’
‘I see,’ said Jack Lucas.
Mrs Reynolds cast her glance around the table and rose.
‘Lord, I forgot about leaving the gentlemen to their port,’ exclaimed Phryne. ‘Come on, Miss Medenham. You can tell me all about your new flat.’
‘I’ve got red walls in the parlour,’ said Miss Medenham as the gentlemen rose with a scraping of chairs. The ladies filed out, and Mr Hinchcliff put two crystal decanters on the table.
The drawing room contained the apparatus for coffee and tea and small plates of nuts and biscuits. Phryne listened with half an ear to Cynthia’s extremely detailed description of her new furniture and eavesdropped shamelessly on the other conversations.
Judith was sulkily drinking coffee and trying not to hear her mother’s lecture on proper behaviour. Phryne heard, ‘You’ll never catch a young man if you continue to beat them at tennis,’ before deciding that she could guess the rest and passed on. Miss Cray had sought her virtuous couch early and Miss Mead was sitting next to Letty Luttrell, discussing – of all things – adulterous love. Phryne edged her chair closer.
‘But it was a very sad book,’ Letty was saying.
‘She had to go back to her husband and he had to go back to his wife.’
