Dead Man's Chest Read Online Free PDF Page A

itself.
    ‘Arnhem Land is the best I can do. He lent me this house on the barest acquaintance. He’s an anthropologist, you know. Studies the Aborigines.’
    ‘Used to be some of them round here,’ the constable told her. ‘Long gone now. Yair. Mr Thomas used to bring home bones and such. I stopped him once for speeding in that big black car of his, and he had a load of skulls and bones on the seat beside him. Fair turned me up. He said they were blackfeller skulls. They were all red with ochre, he said, and he was studying burial customs.’ The constable was evidently quoting.
    Dot crossed herself unobtrusively. Disturbing the dead was not a proper occupation, she considered, for a gentleman. And Mr Thomas must be a gentleman. This was obviously a gentleman’s house. Nice furniture, bit old-fashioned. Everything squared away neatly. Clean and swept. Still, gentlemen would have their hobbies.
    ‘Indeed,’ said Phryne. ‘You might also enquire as to the vehicle which removed all the Johnsons’ furniture. They must have had a bed and chairs and so on, and they are all gone. Someone might have noticed the truck or whatever.’
    ‘Good notion, Miss Fisher,’ said Constable Dawson, uncoupling his notebook.
    ‘And the exchange might have noticed who called the house,’ continued Phryne, prompting.
    ‘Exchange, yes,’ said the constable, making notes.
    ‘Now, if you are quite finished, I would like to take my family for a swim,’ said Phryne, getting up.
    And despite his private regret for the remains of that excellent bread, Constable Dawson had to take his leave.
    Dot caught him at the door and gave him the last slice in a paper napkin, and he walked away munching it.
    ‘Excellent tea, Ruth dear.’ Phryne entered the kitchen to the divine scent of wet herb beds, watered with skill by Tinker, who had an adroit thumb on the hosepipe. Mint, sage, thyme, basil, tarragon, all exhaled in gratitude as the drops descended. The scent was magical.
    ‘Arabian Nights,’ whispered Ruth. She lifted to Phryne a face transformed by joy. ‘I’ve got this cookbook, Miss Phryne, and I would like to cook you a dinner from it,’ she said.
    ‘Go to it,’ encouraged Phryne. ‘Have you got that list? I’ll phone it to the tradesmen and then we ought to go for a bathe.’
    ‘Oh, yes,’ said Ruth, and added, in her clear cursive, several extra ingredients which might give Jno Handlesman, Grocer, a bit of pause for thought. Where was he going to get Turkish delight and preserved quinces? And why would anyone suppose that he had preserved quinces, in a reasonable universe?
    ‘I’ll collect Jane and find our bathing dresses,’ she promised and left the kitchen at some thirty mph, moving like a disgruntled blue-tongue lizard.
    Phryne shrugged and took the list to the telephone, which like all telephones was in the hall, in the draughtiest and most inconvenient spot. After a certain wrangling with Exchange, who did not seem to be able to use even the available half of her wits, she managed to be connected with the right people, all of whom promised to deliver in the early morning. At which time Phryne was intending to be asleep. She would square Ruth and Tinker to receive the food. And until the ice arrived she was not going to get a cocktail, so she hoped they were prompt. Dinner tonight with Mrs Mason might prove to be trying and Phryne liked a little alcoholic applause for her social efforts.
    But she gathered the girls and Dot and conducted them easily on a short walk to the sea baths, when the tide was just on the turn, and the water was fine and clean, and Phryne’s daring red costume—no back and hardly any front—attracted a satisfying number of stares.
    Dot, in her respectable bathers with legs and a modesty skirt, attracted no stares at all, which was the way she wanted it. She was a little light-headed with relief that the missing Johnsons were not in the house, in any state, and swam further than she ordinarily