Chapter One
Senior Detective Inspector Jack Robinson was fighting a really ugly customer in a dark alley. He'd managed to trip the assailant and gain a slight advantage, but then his legs were unaccountably heavy as he ran to the light and reinforcements. He tripped, and could feel the thug dive on him from behind; he flung out an arm to fend him off, and promptly woke up.
It wasn't quite dark; which allowed him to establish that the violent dream had failed, in one very specific way, to cause a problem.
Mrs Robinson hadn't been smote in the face by his flailing arm, because her place in the marital bed was notably vacant.
In a normal household, this would have resulted perhaps in the assumption that the lady of the house had risen early, dressed quietly and begun her morning chores. The grates could, even as his consciousness reconnected tenuously with the new day, be enjoying a raking out and relaying with fresh kindling. Or perhaps the kettle was singing on its hob, as the day's first pot of tea was on its way to blessed creation.
This, however, was not a normal household, so the Inspector started by checking the room for signs of missing items.
Bathrobe: missing.
Jewellery: present and correct. Including, he noted, a plain gold wedding band and a very pretty "dearest" ring. He flattered himself that her departure from the room was, on this basis, planned rather than otherwise.
A brief peer through the curtains showed that there was in fact a reasonable amount of dawn light available; which led him to examine the drawers of Mrs Robinson's wardrobe.
Mystery solved.
A short personal debate ensued, which resulted in a shave and the donning of slacks, a long sleeved cotton shirt and a pair of canvas shoes. He picked up the largest towel he could find (he did, after almost a year of marital harmony and rather longer than that in non-marital confusion, know his wife quite well) and let himself quietly out of 221B The Esplanade. The stroll to the beach was short and bracing, and his quarry identified itself by a lazy crawl, fifty yards offshore.
He sat down on the folded towel, admired the rising sun and waited for the athlete to get bored; the first sign that he'd timed his arrival well was when she rolled over onto her back, crossed one ankle over the other and floated to admire the wide blue sky above. The buffeting of the waves appeared not to distress her in the slightest – this was a child of the ocean, happy in her ambience.
He, on the other hand, was rather interested in coffee, and put some Richmond childhood training to good use. A two-fingered whistle had the bather resume the upright position.
"HELLO, JACK" it shouted, and dived into a more energetic crawl shore-wards. The welcome embrace of cotton towelling was greeted as a duckling would its mother's wing.
A very cold nose got a kiss.
"What brought this on?"
"I swim sometimes. Why shouldn't I? Given where we are?"
"No reason not to, but equally, I'm looking for a reason not to be inhaling some of that Turkish coffee you're so fond of instead of this healthy but really rather bracing sea air. Can we …?"
The Honourable Phryne Fisher was apparently completely fine with the idea of coffee, a fry up and a gasper, which might rather reduce the beneficial events of the early morning exertions, but all those present were too polite to point out the anomaly.