Introducing the Honourable Phryne Fisher

gardens, finding the turn without backing more than enough to ruin the temper. The track down to the boathouse was rough but not too muddy, and the big car negotiated it with ease. She stopped and got out, and the first thing that she saw was a long wooden shell with eight pairs of legs, locomoting down to the water.

A further glance showed her that this was a racing boat being carried by its crew. She waved, and a forest of hands waved back; evidently the crew were not used to being watched while training, and appreciated the company. A small man, thin, with a red face and fanatic’s eyes, was climbing onto a very new and shiny bicycle.

He gave Phryne a disapproving glare in passing, and wobbled down onto the towing path. The crew had dropped their boat neatly into the water, where it seemed to float as light as a leaf, and then they all hopped in with scarcely a ripple, oars extended. Phryne saw the beautiful Lindsay and Alastair, who was rowing stroke. He still looked nervous and strained. Phryne heard the command: ‘Racing start! Three quarter!’ the boat slid quickly into the stream. ‘Half!’ and the oars feathered and dipped with speed. ‘Three quarter and go!’ and the boat was moving swiftly down the waterway, the coach toiling alongside on his bicycle. They were under the bridge, and Phryne had to strain her eyes to see them. By one of those freaks caused by the combination of sound and water, she heard the command ‘Bow and two!’ and the boat spun on its axis and sped down the river towards her. It seemed to be travelling quite fast, and the coach was toiling over his handlebars. This did not interrupt his breath in the slightest, and he was shouting opprobrious epithets like a sergeant-major.

‘Jones, pull your stomach in! Get your hands round that oar, Hoskins! You aren’t stirring soup! What’s the matter with you, Herbert, dreaming about your lady friend? Put your back into it! Catch! Finish! Catch! Finish!’

He roared to a halt and glared as the crew regained the boathouse. ‘You row like a lot of schoolgirls! How do you row?’

‘Like schoolgirls, sir,’ came the obedient chorus, and Mr Ellis grunted, seeming to breathe fire through his nostrils. ‘That’s right! That so-called racing start was slower than a nurse and a pram! So we do it again! And if you are still thinking about your lady friends,’ here he gave Phryne a furious look, whiffling the ends of his bristly black moustache, ‘or your breakfasts, you’ll never make the team! All right! Racing start! And this time, keep your minds on what you are doing!’

The crew lifted the oars again, and Phryne wandered away from the bank and found a seat and lit a cigarette. She had a book in her pocket and was just wondering whether Lindsay would be mortally offended if she read it, when she glanced up and saw the sight of the year, which more people claimed to have witnessed than would have fitted on the bank, even standing on each other’s shoulders.

The choleric coach, aroused to apoplexy by some fault in the crew’s performance, raised his megaphone to curse them heartily and found that there was a dip in the towing path. With a final, full-throated cry of ‘schoolgirls!’ he careered down the bank, losing control of the bike but retaining his grip on the megaphone, and with a muffled ‘Argh!’ was seated on the bicycle and clutching the megaphone in seven feet of water. The boat swept past, full of rowers so paralysed with shock that they did not know how to react, and so appalled that they did not dare to laugh. They turned at the bridge and came back, extending an oar for Ellis to hang on to, but he had struggled to the shore by then and was standing by the boathouse, muddy and dripping, dredging river weed from his megaphone.

‘Be here tomorrow, and be on time,’ was all he said, and stalked away, while Phryne bit her finger to still the hysteria which threatened to choke her. The crew carried the shell out of the water and stowed it and the oars, by which time the coach had disappeared around the corner. Lindsay howled with mirth, followed by all but the serious Alastair.

‘Oh, oh, my ribs will crack!’ protested Lindsay, hanging on to Phryne’s shoulder as she wiped her eyes. ‘He’ll never live it down, never. Poor old Ellis! Schoolgirls! Well, Miss Fisher, you can’t say that we aren’t amusing company. I’ll just have a shower and change, and then I’ll be at your service. If you don’t mind waiting?’

Phryne inclined her head, and was instantly the centre of a vocal group. It appeared that her reputation as a detective had gone before her.

‘Would you come along and talk to some of the fellows, Miss Fisher?’ asked an eager young man. ‘We’d love to hear about your experiences.’

I bet you would, thought Phryne. But you aren’t going to.

‘I am talking to the fellows,’ she temporised, ‘and you should get an introduction to a real detective. I’m just an amateur. Are you all students?’

‘Yes, Miss Fisher, but in different faculties. Edwards and Johnson are Music, Herbert and Tommy Jones are Commerce, Thompson and Connors are Medicine, and the other Herbert is Law. I’m Arts, unlike all these blundering oafs. Just now we are pondering whether it would be better to request the ladies to join us in song and beer, but mostly song, as our glee club is running out of glees which sound good with only tenor and bass.’

‘The trouble with scoring the Elizabethan stuff for the male voice is that it all sounds so Russian,’ complained one of the music students. ‘And a little of that goes a long way, you know.’

‘I agree entirely. What’s wrong with asking the ladies to join?’

‘Well, it seems silly, but we are all friends together, and we get drunk together and no one minds, and we tend to sing rather rude songs, and the ladies. .’

‘Shall we make a little bet?’ suggested Phryne. ‘Put your groups together for some madrigals, and I’ll bet you five pounds to a row down the river in a real boat that they know much ruder ones.’

‘Bet,’ said the Arts student instantly. ‘My name is Black, Miss Fisher, Aaron Black, and I’m by way of being convenor of the glee club. We’ll ask the girls, because we want to do the Brahms Liebeslieder, and we shall have a bit of a sing in the boathouse on — say, Friday? Yes? And will you come, too? I know that the ladies would love to meet you — and I’m sure that you can sing. Unlike Tommy over there, who is tone deaf.’

‘Yes, I can sing,’ agreed Phryne. ‘What time? And shall I bring anything?’

‘Some beer would be nice,’ said Aaron Black. ‘You will come, then?’

‘If that place has any heating, yes.’

‘It shall be heated, if I have to bribe the furnace man with gold,’ said Aaron. ‘Till then, Miss Fisher.’

Alastair passed her on his way into the boathouse, but he did not say a word. Phryne went back thoughtfully to sit in the car and was presently joined by Lindsay, clean and dressed in old flannels and a cricket jumper.

‘I never thought that you’d really come,’ he said quietly. ‘I am honoured, Miss Fisher.’

‘Get in,’ invited Phryne, ‘I’m freezing here. What nice fellows your crewmates are. They’ve invited me to a singsong in the boathouse on Friday. Are you coming? Can you sing?’

‘Yes, and yes,’ agreed the young man, slicking back his hair. ‘Nothing would keep me away from you, Phryne. And I carol a very neat stave, if I do say so myself.’

‘Sing to me,’ requested Phryne. ‘Shall you come home with me?’ she added, with such hidden emphasis that Lindsay’s admirable jaw dropped.

‘Yes,’ he stammered, and Phryne started the car.

As they negotiated the muddy path, the young man began to sing, in a pure, unaccented tenor:

Since making whoopee became all the rage,

Its even got into the old bird cage,

My canary has circles under his eyes. .

CHAPTER EIGHT

‘I never put things into people’s hands — that would never do — you must get it for yourself.’

Lewis Carroll Alice Through the Looking Glass

‘I should like a word with you, if you please,’ said an undistinguished man courteously, flashing a badge. Alastair was leaving the boathouse in search of any vehicle which was going to Carlton when a hand fell on his shoulder. ‘I’m Detective-inspector Robinson, and I’m investigating the murder of Mrs Henderson. I gather that you know her daughter.’

‘Yes, I do, we are engaged to be married. I don’t know anything about the murder.’

‘Just for the record, sir, where were you on the night of the twenty-first of June?’ asked the policeman, taking out a notebook. ‘Perhaps we might sit down on this seat here, you look tired.’

‘I’m not tired,’ snapped the young man. ‘And I’m not telling you anything. I don’t have to tell you what I was