Murder on a Midsummer Night Read online

  Murder on a Midsummer Night

  A Phryne Fisher Mystery

  Kerry Greenwood

  Poisoned Pen Press

  Copyright

  Copyright © 2008, 2018 by Kerry Greenwood

  E-book Edition 2012, 2018

  ISBN: 9781464209789 ebook

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in, or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the publisher of this book.

  The historical characters and events portrayed in this book are inventions of the author or used fictitiously.

  Poisoned Pen Press

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  Scottsdale, Arizona 85251

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  Contents

  Murder on a Midsummer Night

  Copyright

  Contents

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Epigraph

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Afterword

  Bibliography

  More from this Author

  Contact Us

  Dedication

  This book is dedicated to Mark Pryor.

  A verray parfit gentil knight—and a good judge of wine, as well.

  Acknowledgments

  Many thanks to Ann Poole for Mr Palisi, Tom Lane for his ancestor Mr Adami, and with gratitude to the usual suspects like David and Dennis and Alan and Samantha of Dragonfly. To my mother, Jeannie, whose memories and library I ransacked without pause. To Annette and Patrick, and to the amazing Beth Norling whose line would have made Erté scream with delight. And to my friends, for all those parties I never got to, all those birthdays I forgot, all those lunches we never had…thank you for forgiving me.

  Epigraph

  From the Greek of Tymnes

  She came from afar, and her master said He had not such a dog in all his days. We called her Moll: she went into the dark. Upon those roads we cannot hear her bark.

  And in devoted, loving memory of Monsieur, the elegant, gentlemanly, stripy cat, now residing in Bubastis.

  Set me as a seal upon thine heart, as a seal upon thine arm: for love is as strong as death…Many waters cannot quench love, nor can the floods drown it.

  The Song of Solomon 8:6–7 The Holy Bible

  Chapter One

  What if a little paine the passage have

  That makes frail flesh to feare the bitter wave?

  Edmund Spenser

  The Faerie Queene

  It had been such an agreeable day until then.

  The year, aware that it was very new and ought not to put itself forward, was beginning its career as 1929 modestly. There were mild blue skies. There were sweet breezes (in St. Kilda they were scented with Turkish lolly and old beer, admittedly, but one could perceive that the year meant well) and cool water. Phryne Fisher had bathed early then plunged herself into a bracing shower. She had cleansed her admirable form with pine-scented soap and patted it dry with the fluffiest of towels. Her breakfast, prepared by that jewel of cooks, Mrs. Butler, and served by the gem of the butlering profession, Mr. Butler, had included homemade lemon butter for her toasted baguette and real coffee made from real coffee beans and not from a bottle with a man in a fez on the front.

  Her household this sunny morning was disposed to be quietly industrious, from her two adopted daughters, Jane and Ruth, making a recipe file in the parlour to Dot mending stockings in the garden under the jasmine. Ember the black cat was hunting sparrows and Molly the black and white almost-sheepdog was guarding the kitchen door. It was not perhaps very likely that burglars would come in through the back door in broad daylight, but if they did, Molly was ready for them, and she was also within easy reach of a cook whose generosity with meat scraps was legendary in canine circles.

  Mr. Butler was updating the cellar book, one of his favourite occupations. He had the drinks tray ready for when Miss Phryne might call for citron presse, a jug of which reposed in the American Refrigerating Machine with the shaved ice, lemon slices and mint sprigs.

  Phryne was making a list of invitees for her birthday party. She would be twenty-nine on the thirteenth of January. A serious age. Most of her contemporaries were long married and rearing children, husbands, and tennis coaches in utter suburban happiness. She caught a glimpse of herself in the drawing room mirror as she reached for a Turkish cigarette and her lighter. A small young woman with a boyish figure, dressed in a house gown of scarlet and gold. Her hair was as black as a crow’s feather and cut in a cap, just long enough to swing forward in two divinely modish wings. Her skin was pale and her mouth red and her eyes a strong shade of green.

  ‘You don’t look twenty-nine,’ she told her reflection. ‘You’re lovely!’

  She blew the mirrored Phryne a kiss and rang for a lemon drink.

  Just as Mr. Butler had borne in the tray with its icy jug, the front doorbell rang several times, sounding so abrupt in the silent house that in the garden Dot jumped and pricked her finger, Jane dropped the paste on the carpet, and Mrs. Butler lost control of an egg. It hit the tiled floor and smashed, where it was rapidly cleaned up by a grateful Molly. Ember swore as his sparrows flew off, chattering.

  Mr. Butler shimmered away and returned with the news that Miss Eliza was at the door ‘with a…person’.

  ‘Right,’ sighed Phryne. Her sister, Eliza, had taken to social work like a natural, and sometimes brought her most mysterious cases to Phryne with all the smugness of an Irish terrier producing a dead rat. But she did love Eliza, really, so she stood up to receive her visitors.

  Eliza was a plump, bouncing daughter of the aristocracy, a fervent Fabian socialist and a woman whose claim to the title of worst hats in the world could only be challenged by her soul mate, Lady Alice Harborough. Today’s production was of rigid yellow straw, plonked straight down onto the wearer’s head like a candle snuffer. Someone devoid of any artistic sensibilities or shame had secured a dried hydrangea to it with a Bakelite pin.

  Eliza ushered her guest into a soft corner of the sofa and dragged off the offending headpiece.

  ‘Oof! It’s hot outside. Thank you for seeing us, Phryne,’ she said, wiping strands of her fine brown hair off her rosy face.

  ‘Lemon drink?’ asked Phryne. ‘Or shall we make some tea?’

  ‘Lemon,’ said Eliza. ‘Gosh, thanks, Mr. Butler. Mrs. Manifold?’

  ‘Nothing,’ said the woman on the sofa.

  Phryne looked at her and found herself examined by shrewd parrot eyes in a wrinkled face. Mrs. Manifold had long grey hair worn in a braid around her head, a loose brown dress made apparently of sacking, and sandals on her stockingless feet. Phryne searched for a fashion reference point and found the Pre-Raphaelites, which seemed unlikely. She sipped her drink and
endured Mrs. Manifold’s inspection.

  ‘Phryne, Mrs. Manifold has a son,’ began Eliza.

  ‘Had a son,’ said Mrs. Manifold in a flat, harsh voice.

  ‘He was found drowned at St. Kilda beach,’ continued Eliza. ‘Wearing an old army overcoat with his pockets full of stones and the police think it’s suicide.’

  ‘Impossible,’ grated Mrs. Manifold.

  ‘So Mrs. Manifold told them and told them and made such a fuss that the police finally ordered a coroner’s inquest, so there was an autopsy,’ Eliza went on, finishing her drink in a gulp and holding it out for a refill. ‘Here is the report.’

  ‘Eliza, this is scarcely my business,’ protested Phryne, taking the document. ‘The coroner will have to decide what happened to…’ She read the name on the file, ‘Augustine.’

  ‘The coroner has decided,’ said Mrs. Manifold. ‘He decided that my Augustine fell in by accident while he was drunk.’

  ‘Death by Misadventure?’

  ‘Yes, the fool.’

  ‘I see here that when they…sorry…opened his stomach they found seven ounces of alcohol. Whisky, apparently.’

  ‘And why should Augustine have whisky in his belly?’ cried Mrs. Manifold. ‘He never drank but a glass of sherry at Christmas! And if he wanted to die, he wouldn’t have tried to drown. He could swim like a fish! He’s been murdered,’ she declared in a fierce, heartbroken undertone. ‘My son was murdered.’

  ‘Tell me more about him, and how you know Eliza here, and you shall have a brandy and soda and maybe a few small sandwiches,’ instructed Phryne. Mrs. Manifold was haggard with hunger, and Mrs. Butler’s small sandwiches would slip easily past the lump in a grieving mother’s throat. Phryne was impressed by the utter certainty of the bereaved woman. But utter certainty in the matter of suicide was always suspect. Suicide, of all deaths, was the most unchancy and dangerous. And one which could render the survivors mad with guilt. ‘If only he’d talked to me,’ people would say. ‘If only I’d dropped in on him that night…’

  But Phryne knew from her own experience that someone bent on death cannot be deflected, and it is cruel to try. Because she had tried, once.

  Mr. Butler brought in a tray of crustless ribbon sandwiches and distributed plates and napkins. Eating the first one taught Mrs. Manifold how hungry she was, but she did not grab or gulp. She was not disconcerted by being served by a butler. Mrs. Manifold had evidently been raised in rather different circumstances than the ones in which she now found herself. Dot came in and sat down, accepting a cool drink.

  When Mrs. Manifold had eaten most of the tidbits and absorbed the strong brandy and soda which Phryne had prescribed, there was colour in her face and her eyes were less weary.

  ‘Now, tell me all about Augustine,’ prompted Phryne.

  ‘He was my only son,’ said Mrs. Manifold. ‘My last baby. The girls have all grown up and married. But Augustine stayed with me. His father died ten years ago; poor man, he never did amount to much. He had a little junk shop, reclaimed copper, old wares. Dirty stuff. Augustine didn’t object to getting his hands dirty, mind you! But when he took over the shop he said to me, “We have to move in better circles, Mother, than these rag picker’s gleanings and bits of old metal. There’s good stuff to buy and sell and we need to make a good profit, so you can live as you deserve.”’ She sobbed briefly, her hand to her mouth. ‘So he started with a cart, going round looking for old furniture to mend and resell. He had a lot of that colonial homemade stuff which is now so popular.’

  ‘Indeed,’ murmured Phryne, who could not understand the fashion for stuff knocked up by an amateur hand in the legendary Old Bark Hut. ‘Prices have been rocketing lately.’

  ‘But he was educated, my Augustine,’ said Mrs. Manifold. ‘You only have to look at him. He wasn’t strong,’ she said with a sharp grieving sigh. ‘His poor chest wasn’t good. My mother said I’d never raise him. But I did.’

  Phryne looked at the cabinet photograph which had been thrust into her hand. So this was Augustine. A weak, badly proportioned face, an absent chin, what might well have been watery blue eyes, a pouting mouth. A face only a mother could love, and this one evidently did. Phryne had lately been within a hair’s-breadth of assassination by a very pretty young man and had almost gone off prettiness in young men. Augustine must have had virtues. And he could never have used his physical beauty to get what he wanted.

  ‘I thought it was lucky when his chest kept him out of the war,’ sobbed Mrs. Manifold.

  Dot supplied her with more tea and a fresh handkerchief. Eliza took the photo.

  ‘I’ve met him,’ she told Phryne. ‘Not a word to say to a goose but a perfectly nice man. Valued those sapphires for Alice, and when she came to sell them to the city jeweller, she got exactly what he estimated. That’s when I met Mrs. Manifold. And I never saw Augustine drink, and he didn’t go around with my ladies. They’d know,’ she added.

  Phryne nodded. Eliza had a flourishing friendship with all of the ladies of light repute in St. Kilda, and perforce had become acquainted with their clientele, if in a distant and disapproving way.

  ‘Of course he didn’t!’ Mrs. Manifold had surfaced from her abyss of mourning at an inconvenient juncture. ‘My Augustine wasn’t interested in women. You’re woman enough for me, Mother, he used to say. I never saw him ever look at a girl in that way. Mind you, he would have married, I expect. But not yet. Always working, my Augustine. He built that business from scratch, nearly. Got rid of the old metal. He was employing a man to do the carpentry and a girl to work in the shop, and he was always travelling. Buying, selling. It was a good business.’

  ‘So he moved into paintings, then, and stamps, perhaps, small wares?’ asked Phryne.

  ‘Yes. I knew some artists once. In England. Before the War.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Phryne encouragingly.

  ‘I was a model. No funny stuff,’ she added hastily. ‘I was a good girl. My sisters and I were all models. They called themselves a Brotherhood. Mr. Hunt was my artist. Mr. Morris was one of them. You’ve got some of his paper on your wall.’

  ‘So I have,’ said Phryne, enjoying again the mysterious complications of the William Morris design called Golden Lily, which gave her parlour its undersea greenish mystery. ‘You were a model for one of the Pre-Raphaelites? How very interesting. I see now that your dress has a pattern, too—Daisy, is it?’

  Mrs. Manifold almost smiled, smoothing the russet garment over her bony knees. ‘Daisy it is,’ she agreed. ‘We used to help with the embroidery when they were doing a new design. Tapestry, too. We were good with our needles. Difficult, those Morris designs. All curves and waves. And precise to a stitch! It was worth our life to be one thirty-second of an inch out.’

  ‘Very hard on the eyes,’ sympathised Eliza.

  ‘But so beautiful,’ said Phryne.

  Mrs. Manifold gave her a shrewd, appreciative look.

  ‘Just so,’ she answered. ‘If you have to have the headache, better have it from making something ravishing. When Mr. Hunt didn’t need us, we would all sit together and work on a big piece. We used to sing, sometimes. And Mr. Morris insisted on regular breaks, and the factory had a tea room, and lots of windows and very good light. It was a lovely place to work and a lovely time, before we all married and went away from each other and all this sorrow landed on us. Deborah dead in France and her husband and baby with her; a stray shell landed on her house. Me, a widow in Melbourne. Might as well be at the ends of the earth. And Lizzie, well, Lizzie went down the wrong path and we never spoke of her. And I thought I was the lucky one. Until now.’

  ‘Quite,’ said Phryne.

  ‘Sometimes when the artists couldn’t pay us they gave us a painting. I brought a lot of them with me. Augustine was going to sell some of them.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Phryne. The Pre-Raphaelites were good solid artists. Definitely w
orth collecting. Outmoded now, but might easily come back into fashion. Phryne herself loved them, and might be putting in an offer for some of Mrs. Manifold’s store, though now was not the time to mention this. The widow was speaking of her son once more.

  ‘But he was educated, Augustine was. His father wouldn’t let him go to the university, said it was above our station—he was a fool—so Augustine read books. In Greek. And Latin. And he was selling coins and antiquities. And someone killed him,’ she insisted, returning to her original point.

  ‘How old was Augustine?’ asked Phryne.

  ‘Twenty-nine,’ said Mrs. Manifold.

  Something decided Phryne.

  ‘Very well,’ she said. ‘I will look into it. First, I wish I could tell you that I will find out what you want me to find. But I might not. I might not be able to solve this, or I might find that Augustine killed himself. I can’t skew the results. Do you agree?’

  Mrs. Manifold fixed Phryne with her savage eye.

  ‘I know he didn’t kill himself, so it doesn’t matter. You look into it, and I’ll pay you whatever you ask. I’ve got the shop and Augustine left me well off.’

  ‘We shall see if I deserve any payment,’ said Phryne, unaccountably depressed. ‘I’ll come around to the shop this afternoon. About three? Good. Eliza, can you look after Mrs. Manifold? I’ll see you later.’

  Mr. Butler escorted the visitors to the door and returned, looking grave and ushering Jane and Ruth before him.

  ‘Yes, Mr. Butler?’ asked Phryne, expecting some important announcement or serious confession.

  ‘Miss Jane wishes to apologise for spilling paste on the parlour carpet, Miss Fisher,’ he said.

  ‘It’s only a carpet,’ said Phryne, and laughed with relief. She hugged the culprit, admired the recipe file, and recommended that Mr. Butler call the excellent Mrs. Johnson, cleaning lady supreme, to come and remove the stain.

  Phryne ascended the stairs to put on junk shop visiting clothes: a light summer suit in a mixed pattern which would be easily cleaned. She had never met a junk shop which didn’t specialise in various forms of dust, from greasy oil-soaked dust to floating varnish dust to the fine oatmeal coloured powder of vellum, which stuck to all fabric and clung like a suitor.