Chapter Four

"Let's go home." Phryne nudged Soo, and they made their way to the Hispano. The maid was usually taciturn, so her lack of verbal response was unremarkable. However, when they returned to St Kilda, Phryne took the unusual step of following her to the kitchen, where Mr Butler, enjoying a quiet cup of tea, immediately sprang to his feet.

"May I be of assistance, Miss?" he asked. In doing so, he glanced at Soo, and stiffened.

So, thought Phryne, I was right.

"A brandy would be welcome, thank you, Mr B," she said cheerfully. "Soo might want one too."

"Thank you, I would like tea," the girl disclaimed, and busied herself with the kettle while Mr Butler went in search of the brandy. Phryne was, it appeared, meant to take herself off out of the servants' quarters.

Phryne, on the other hand, had no such plans, and was quite prepared to be Surly with Servants (as the Bard had so beautifully put it) when the need arose. She drew out a chair, put both elbows on the table and rested her chin on them. Soo affected not to notice any of this, and gazed at the kettle intently.

"A watched pot never boils, I'm told," remarked Phryne conversationally. "I, on the other hand, am prepared to wait until hell freezes over to find out what it was you said when you saw the injury on that corpse."

Soo turned to face her employer with a hunted expression.

"I could have sworn you whispered the name of your uncle, my former lover," Phryne said quietly. "Why was that?"

But Soo was already shaking her head violently. "No! No, on the grave of my grandmother, No!"

Mr Butler returned to the room and placed a glass of amber liquid in front of Phryne, who had elected to ignore the fact that, emotion set to one side, Soo's grandmother (or at least, the one she knew best) was pointedly extant. She sipped it gratefully and looked up at him.

"Normally, Mr B, I'd do you the courtesy of inviting you to leave the room at this point. As I'm not a complete fool, nor oblivious to your loyalty to Soo, I would suggest you stay. But keep out of it, please."

"Thank you, Miss," was all he said in reply, and removed himself to the corner of the room, folding his hands before him and showing every sign of relaxing – if a guard dog could be said to relax when its asset was so plainly under threat.

"Soo?" Phryne turned back to her maid. "You were saying? Or rather," she said with a hint of acidity, "denying?"

"I did not say my uncle's name," said Soo in low, vehement tones.

"No? Then what did you say, if not 'Lin Chung'"

There was a short silence. Soo pressed her lips, and gazed unseeingly at the window for inspiration. It came, though, from the opposite corner of the room, in direct contravention of Miss Fisher's order.

"You might as well tell us," said Tobias Butler. "Miss Fisher will find out eventually, and someone's died. It may have been just, but it must be discovered, my dear."

Phryne didn't lift her eyes from her maid for an instant, but did resolve to let her butler decide for himself in future when he should and should not intervene.

Soo looked back at them both; but if Phryne had been expecting tears, she was disappointed. There was a fierce anger in her eyes that made them almost black.

"Very well. I did not say Lin Chung. I said Ling Chi."

"Ling Chi?" Phryne's brow furrowed, perplexed. "I don't think …" she turned to look at Mr Butler but he appeared to be equally lost.

"The death of a thousand cuts," said Soo. "It is a punishment in my country. Others do not use it, I think. It is a torture most inhuman. The prisoner is bound, and sections are cut from their skin, gradually, and they are in great pain. The process begins with …"

"The chest," realised Phryne. Soo nodded. "So you think this was a ritual killing, perhaps interrupted?"

Soo could only nod again.

"Do you know who it might have been?" asked Phryne carefully.

Soo looked up, and Phryne had to give her her due. She considered. She winced. But when she had thought, she said, quietly, "No."

And Phryne believed her. She stood, and murmured her thanks; they had all been through quite enough for one night, and she wanted to do some thinking before the Inspector returned. Taking her brandy with her, she decamped to the parlour, where a fire had been lit in the grate; sinking onto one end of the couch, she propped her cheek on her fist and gazed into the flames, her mind working furiously.

An hour later, the rest of the household was abed. Mr Butler had stoked the fire and bowed his way out, and Phryne was nodding over the remains of her brandy when the front door opened quietly.

She didn't call, but looked up; attracted by the lights, a well-loved face appeared around the door. Seeing the person he sought, he crossed the room to exchange greetings that had become habitual, but never offhand. Then he straightened, and smiled.

"Hello."

"Hello."

Sometimes love didn't need to be more eloquent.

"Jack, I spoke to Soo, and there's something you need to know."

He'd gone to pour himself a whisky, and turned with it in his hand. "Oh?"

"She thinks it was a ritual killing. The death of a thousand cuts. I've been trying to work it out, and all I can conclude is that they must have been interrupted by our red-raggers."

He sipped from his glass. "Go on."

She hesitated. "Well, that's sort of it. Soo says she doesn't know who it might be, and I believe her. Should we go and see Lin, do you think?"

He moved to perch on the other end of the couch, and lifted her feet to his lap. Then surprised her by shaking his head.

"No, I don't think we should do that."

"Jack, whyever not?" she started up in astonishment. Surely he wasn't letting jealousy of her former lover take control of his thinking?

"Two reasons," he said, stretching an arm along the back of the couch, the better to relax, and sipping his whisky. "First, if it was a ritual killing, the chances are the killer would have left the body parts behind. After all, this is a criminal. Why keep souvenirs?"

A brutal point, but a valid one, she concluded. "And the second?"

"It wasn't the chest wound that killed him. Mac says he was dead already from the stabbing."

A short silence while Miss Fisher processed information that didn't match her own investigation. She sifted it. She rejected everything she had thought she'd known. She had only one remaining question.

"So, who was he?"

Jack smiled a little. "We need to do some checks in the morning, but I'm hoping we'll be able to get a close acquaintance to come to the morgue to confirm that the recently deceased is an accountant from Prahran by the name of Seth Tombs."

Mildly affronted at having an interesting case become apparently prosaic, Phryne scowled. "Your reasoning?"

"The little matter of the wallet with his calling card, among other things," said Jack mildly.

"Which the murderer happened to forget to take away, despite having coped brilliantly with lifting body parts?" she asked scathingly. "Come on, Jack, you're going to need to do better than that!"

He drained his drink, and stood. "I can do a great deal better than that, but would prefer to demonstrate in greater privacy than this, if you don't mind."

She glared at him. He relented. "You're right, of course. There are still lots of questions to be answered, but I don't plan to waste hours of fruitless energy if I can start tomorrow with certain knowledge of the identity of my victim. So, in the meantime, Miss Fisher?"

The question was more finely judged than it appeared. A "Mrs Robinson" at that point would have been fatal to his purpose.

Miss Fisher, on the other hand, saw the logic of his argument, and the attraction of the gentleman before her with his hand outstretched, inviting her to join him at the marital couch.

Despite occasional appearances to the contrary, she was – in some matters at least – enthusiastically human.