Chapter 10: Algae
Miss Fisher peered into the darkness, before pulling her head back and smiling at her speechless Detective-Inspector.
"Are you coming, Jack?"
He nodded, watching her pull a small torch from her handbag.
"What?" she asked, seeing his look.
"You just happened to know that we would find a secret passageway today?" he laughed, stepping through the door into the half darkness after her.
"A lady never goes out of the house without being prepared," she replied, carefully feeling with her toes for the first step of the staircase leading into the thick blackness. Jack couldn't help but smile at this, wondering how many ladies in Australia would walk out of the house with a torch in their pearl embroidered handbag.
"You wouldn't happen to also carry your pistol in there, Miss Fisher?" he whispered into the darkness, while trying not to fall down the steep steps.
"Whatever do you think of me, Inspector? Of course I do."
That comforted him somewhat. He would hate to think they would walk into a killer down here and she wouldn't be armed. Jack suddenly felt utterly naked.
Water trickled down the stone walls, making the stairs underneath his feet slippery and he worried about Phryne and her heels. A second fall today might prove far less enjoyable. But she marched on slowly and steadily, her fingers running along the damp walls to steady herself. His own hands felt along the slimy surface with much less vigour. The smell of mould and algae lingered in the air, giving him a faint idea what the green fuzz under his fingertips contained. It didn't make their stumble through the shadows any more pleasant. Despite that, he could feel the rush in his veins, heard her heavy breathing in darkness her torch barely beat back and felt oddly happy. When the made the next turn in their long, steep walk downwards, light shimmered at the other end of a hall and Jack breathed a sigh of relief to be able to leave the claustrophobic passage. They stepped through a narrow hole in the wall and found themselves confronted with a thick wall of bushes, hiding them from the eyes of the world.
"There are some broken branches," he pointed out, crouching on the ground. One of them had a piece of fabric fluttering in the wind.
"Definitely a piece of Miss Spencer's frock," Miss Fisher concluded.
"Well, I think we established the exit route of our body and the killer," The Inspector said, getting to his feet. He resisted the urge to wipe his slimy fingers on his grey suit and instead picked up the piece of evidence, before battling his way through the bush the same way the killer had taken. Jack Robinson didn't even want to think about how he looked right now. He would have to return to the villa and change before going to see Miss Spencer's sister, he had no doubt about that. A sharp thorn scratched along his cheek, causing his hand to fly up. When he finally stepped out of the thicket, he recognised the place instantly.
"The westside," he stated. Over here the forests came right down to Wombat Hall, covering the hills raising behind it in a thick cover of lush green trees.
"The body could be anywhere," Miss Fisher pointed out, turning on her heels. She looked rather dishevelled too, he found with fond amusement.
"We won't find her on our own," Jack decided, climbing a shallow hill to get a better view. After a moments thought, Miss Fisher followed him. A small creek gurgled in soft curves down through the bushes, parting a bed of moss and colourful rocks. Jack crouched down to wash the grey-green slime of his hands.
"It has drawn blood," he heard Miss Fisher saying, as she ran her fingertips gently over the scratch on his cheek. He flinched.
"Not quite how I imagined a romantic getaway," he smiled.
"Nothing romantic about meeting the in-laws, Jack," she replied, wiping the rest of tree from his cut with her fingertips. Jack looked rather wild, she found herself thinking, his hair touselled, his clothes creased and his face stained with grime and blood. Her stomach did a small flip. What a shame she had to share him with the rest of the world again soon. As if he had read his thoughts, the Inspector checked his watch.
"We ought to head back, Phryne." His voice held a hint of regret that reconciled her somewhat with the idea of more hours of small talk. "There is nothing we can do out here anymore today. There are square kilometers of forest and fields. The body could be anywhere."
"If the killer even left it here," Miss Fisher pointed out, getting to her feet. "Why go through the trouble of dragging it down hidden stairways, just to dump it somewhere in the forest behind the house?"
Jack nodded, pulling himself upright.
"Which brings us to the question, why he went through the trouble at all? Obviously he had been discovered, so why let the body vanish?" he pondered, while they trod down the hill.
"Maybe he was hoping that we'd think Mrs. Roman hysterical."
"But he would have to know that when we realised the assistant's disappearance, we would come to the conclusion that she wasn't."
"Maybe he was playing for time?" Miss Fisher wondered, as they stepped around the corner of the grey stone building. They had obviously missed the beginning of the afternoon tea, as there was loud chatter and laughter coming from where a long, white table was set between the trees in the Cox-Stafford's favourite part of the garden. The detectives crept closer like two naughty children who had played in the mud in their Sunday clothes, when Jack froze. Phryne's eyes followed him to the table, where between Walter and Esmeralda there sat a man who seemed rather familiar. Miss Fisher realised why a second too late.
"Jack?!" Aunt Esmeralda exclaimed excitedly. "There you finally are. Look who arrived." The way her voice almost flipped let Miss Fisher know that she was also nervous about this meeting.
"Hello father," Jack said calmly. Nobody but Phryne could hear the light tremble in his voice. John Robinson had turned, looking at them with knitted brows. Miss Fisher suddenly wished she had worn her best dress, her newest lipstick or at least had freshly brushed hair and didn't look like she just stumbled out of a basement – even if she had.
"Hello son."
Mr. Robinson stood, slowly unfolding his limbs like a gnarled tree trunk and stretched his hand out, without tearing his eyes off his son. They shook hands like strangers and Phryne watched on as if through a dream. Then the attention turned to her.
"Miss Fisher." Jack said, with no explanation. A sparkle in his father's eyes told her that he didn't need one. John Robinson Senior's hand was warm and strong and gripped her's just a little too hard. They traded some meaningless greetings and then he returned to his chair and Phryne felt her fiancé let the breath he had been holding go.
Her fingers found his somewhere between their bodies. His hand was sweaty, his breath ragged, as if he had just run a marathon. She pressed his fingers lightly, reassuringly, before releasing him to take their place at the table. This time they were actually seated together. Obviously Esmeralda felt no need anymore to question them separately, which was a relief.
"So what happened to you two?" Hazel asked between mouthfuls of sandwich. "You look like you have been rummaging through the attic."
Jack took a deep gulp of wine, before answering.
"Actually, quite the opposite my dear cousin. We discovered a secret passage leading into the basement."
An egg sandwich hit a plate, with little elegance.
"You're kidding? Hidden hallways in this old box?"
Jack smiled wryly. "Behind a bookshelf in Uncle Walter's office. Very cliché."
Other people had been listening into the conversation and now attention rose.
"A secret passage?" Laura asked, surprising many of them with her sudden liveliness. "Did you know about that, father?"
Walter Cox-Stafford had to swallow his food, before he could provide an answer.
"I had no idea, my girl. So I have been sitting in my office every day, unaware that I am staring at a secret door? Makes me look like a right idiot, does it not?" he laughed. Some uneasy giggles joined in, but mostly people were too enthralled in the story the detectives had to tell. Miss Fisher let Jack take centre-stage. It was his audience after all. She used the opportunity to watch their reactions. Jack's father was sitting almost still, chewing quietly, but she couldn't shake the feeling that he was listening nevertheless.
And someone else was watching him, she found. While everybody hung on Jack's lips, Jane's eyes were glued to John Robinson and Miss Fisher couldn't help but wonder, what her foster daughter made of him. Jane had a good sense for people. Which was probably, why she blindly trusted Jack, even though he was a copper and therefore a species of men she had learned to fear and despise during her years on the street. The girl was distracted from whatever was happening in her mind about her future grandfather by little Lizzy asking for her attention. Miss Fisher smiled and let her eyes wander further, to where Mac had found a chair again beside Hazel Morgan. It might have been Miss Fisher's imagination, but their chairs seemed to be a little closer than they had been ten minutes ago and Hazel was whispering something to Mac. With a satisfied feeling in her stomach, Miss Fisher returned her thoughts to Jack, who was just describing the evidence they had found in the bushes.
"Have you thought that maybe the killer is playing with you?" a calm, deep voice asked. Eyes flew up to watch the two John Robinsons lock eyes over the table.
"What do you mean?" Jack asked his father.
"It's quite convenient, don't you think? The hidden passageway, the damp stair case and the nice little piece of dress hung into the bushes."
Under the eyes of everyone the retired policeman finished the last bite of his sandwich and swallowed it down with a gulp of wine. "Someone sent you on a little adventure trip."
"So how else do you propose the killer has escaped the office with a corpse? Did he hide the woman under his trench coat?" Jack asked hotly. Phryne found her hand rubbing his knee in an attempt to calm him. John Senior shrugged.
"She might be still in the house somewhere. Maybe she is hidden in the passageway and you walked right past her. Or maybe there is another set of keys that the killer got hold of and she's somewhere inside a cabinet."
"Sorry, John, but there are exactly two keys," Uncle Walter pushed in at this stage, holding up a ring on which a dozen glittering keys dangled. "This one here and the other one in your son's pocket."
"No offence, but you have lived here for what, 45 years, Walter? And you never noticed a secret doorway behind your bookshelf? You don't think you might have possibly missed a third set of keys?"
Silence dropped like a heavy blanket over the table. How could you argue with that? Jack opened his mouth like a fish on dry land, obviously wanting to say something, then close it again, defeated. People returned to eating and for a while cutlery was the only thing to be heard other than a bird with little feeling for occasion, who was singing melodically in one of the pear trees.
"It is a new lock though."
Phryne was the first to look up, then the rest of the table followed. The last one to do so was John Robinson, as if he couldn't trust his ears.
"What did you say?"
"It's a new lock. No older than two years."
Jane had noticed all the attention she drew and refused to blush.
"And how would you know that, young lady?"
She swallowed.
"Because I read a lot. And I know locks." Jane lifted her chin meeting the man's eyes with determination, while neglecting to mention the reason for her intimate knowledge of all kinds of locks.
"So you expect me to believe that looking briefly at a lock, you can determine how old it is?"
"Easy with that one," the teenager prompted. "It's a brand new brass lock, hardly any patina to be found on it."
"That could be due to regular polishing," the old policeman argued.
"True, but the rest of the door does have a slight coverage, meaning it was only the lock that was replaced."
Jane looked at Esmeralda Cox-Stafford who nodded inperceptibly with a slight smile on her face.
"That and the company, who made that lock, changed the design slightly in 1928," the girl smirked, setting the last hit. "So it could only have been fitted recently."
"It was," Esmeralda finally pushed in, as her brother-in-law seemed to have lost his will to speak.
"Someone broke into the office a few months ago. Nothing went missing, the burglars had obviously hoped for something more interesting than paperwork on lavender harvests. But we had to have the lock replaced. It was badly damaged."
Jack and Phryne looked at each other, filing this information away for closer inspection later. Mostly, they were forcused on a shared feeling of parental pride.
"All very well and good," Mr. Robinson grumbled in a tone that implied that in his opinion it was neither. "But may I ask who on earth you are, young lady?"
For the first time in the conversation, Jane seemed to lose her ground for a bit. Looking for help to explain her attendance to this family meeting, she locked eyes with her guardian. But the Inspector had seen it too and a dangerous boldness grew in his chest.
"As things stand," Jack said, his eyes glittering dangerously, "this young lady is soon going to be your granddaughter."
In collective silence fell around the table as everyone held their breath. John Robinson seemed for the second time in mere minutes to have lost his ability to speak. When he finally did, his voice sounded hoarse.
"You must be joking?"
Jack leaned back in his chair, displaying a nonchalance he did not feel.
"Jane is Miss Fisher's ward," he explained coldly, watching every breath his father took. "And therefore she will be mine soon, as I have asked Phryne for her hand in marriage."
John Robinson opened and closed his mouth a few times, with nothing coming out. Then he stood up stiffly.
"Congratulations my son. Now please do excuse me."
His chair hit the ground, as he walked off without looking back.