They watched as the body was lifted onto a stretcher and loaded into the ambulance for its trip to the morgue. Jack pressed his lips together, thinking. "At this stage there's no telling where the body might have entered the water, beyond 'upstream'. Once the photographs are developed we'll circulate his image around the stations: see if anyone recognises him. Other than that, our only lead is that word: 'AMNON'."

"And we still have no idea what it means, or even what language it is," Phryne observed.

"Mmm. A pity it's Sunday, or we could at least have tried the foreign language dictionaries at the library."

A slow smile dawned on Phryne's face. "I don't pretend to have a complete library, but I do have a number of dictionaries in my study. Perhaps one of them will offer a clue?"

Up until that point, Jack had been doing well. With a dead body in front of them and Collins looking on, he and Phryne had fallen back into their familiar working rhythm, and he had managed – almost – to forget that less than an hour earlier their bodies had been entwined on her bed, her tongue tangled with his, as they made love for what was, by his count, the fourth time in a little over twelve hours. At the thought of returning to her house to conduct research in what he presumed to be her private study, however, a number of vivid and highly erotic recollections flashed across his mind's eye, and it was all he could do not to moan.

Instead, he cleared his throat. "Very good. Constable Collins, I will accompany Miss Fisher back to her residence and see if her books can shed any light on the situation. You are to return to the station and look for reports of missing persons matching our victim's description filed in the last 48 hours. If you don't find anything, widen it to 72 hours, but beyond that don't bother. That body was fresh, so he can't have been missing long."

"Yes, sir. And I'll ask around the other officers, see if 'AMNON' means anything to any of them."

He nodded. That was good thinking on his constable's part, and something he should have thought of himself. "Good idea, Collins."

They made their way back to the car arm in arm once again. Phryne's quick eye hadn't missed Jack's reaction to the thought of returning to her house, and she smiled to herself, loving the effect she was having on him, and the effect that observing it was having on her.

A short and, as always, terrifying, drive later, and they were headed back through her front door.

"Only us, Mr. B," she called airily as approaching footsteps indicated that her butler was coming to see who had arrived. "We'll be in my study. Could you have Dot bring some tea through?"

"Of course miss," Mr. Butler replied as he retreated back to his kitchen.

The study was towards the back of the house, and was not a room that Jack was familiar with, so he couldn't help but gape slightly in astonishment upon entering what was very obviously a working room lined with book-laden shelves. Phryne smirked at him.

"Well, you didn't think I spent all my money on pretty dresses, did you?" she asked.

"Of course not," he managed. "After all, you had to spend some of it on that absurdly powerful motorcar that you insist on torturing people with."

She laughed, and crossed the room to one of the shelves. "Now, as I said, I don't have a complete library, but I can cover the major European languages, as well as Russian, Chinese, Maori, Latin, and Hebrew."

He wasn't really listening, but instead walked up behind her and wrapped his arms around her waist, mouthing gently at her neck.

"Jack!" She laughed again, stretching out his name to two syllables as she tilted her head to allow him better access to her skin. "Dot will be here any moment with the tea, and we have a case to work on."

"When did you become the voice of reason and restraint?" he grumbled, lips still busy on her neck.

She arched back against him in pleasure. "Around the time you decided to abdicate the position in favour of reckless abandonment."

His hands had now begun to caress her as well, and he pressed his hips against her, letting her feel his response. "And I can see why you find it so appealing. I should have tried it years ago."

She turned her body into his, wrapping her arms around his neck and smiling coyly up at him. "I wasn't here years ago." She pressed a soft kiss to his lips. "But I'm here now." A kiss to his neck. "And I have no plans to go anywhere else." A quick flick of her tongue across his earlobe, drawing a gasp of surprised pleasure from his lips before she suddenly twisted out of his grip and moved away, merriment in her eyes. "So we can continue this another time. When we've done our homework and don't have to worry about Dot walking in."

He huffed in frustration, knowing that she was right, but also conscious that this was his day off, and that if he had only ignored Collins' summons he might at this very moment be enjoying a bit more of the reckless abandon that had so suddenly seized him. He drew a deep breath, re-establishing his self-control, and threw her a slightly abashed look. She smiled tenderly and stepped closer again, brushing a chaste kiss across his lips before returning her attention to the shelves.

He accepted the books that she lifted down and piled into his arms, and was carrying the first load over to her impressively large and business-like desk when a knock at the door informed them that Dot had arrived with the tea.

"Thank you, Dot. On the desk will be fine," Phryne smiled, as Jack busied himself with the books in an effort to provide cover for the way he kept his body subtly turned from the young companion's gaze.

"Yes miss. Will there be anything else?"

"No, that's all. Unless..." Dot turned back, attentive to what Phryne had to say. "I don't suppose the word 'amnon' means anything to you?"

Dot frowned in concentration. "I don't think so, miss, but I will think about it. Would you like me to ask Mr. Butler as well?"

"Yes please. Tell him it could be a name, or foreign, or even an acronym. We don't know at this point."

"Yes miss."

Maori, or 'te reo Maori' (lit. 'The Tongue [of the] Maori [People]') is the language of the indigenous people of New Zealand. Following European colonisation, large numbers of Maori men began to work on ships, particularly between New Zealand and Australia, and in 1929 many of them would still have used te reo, amongst themselves if nothing else. It therefore seemed reasonable that Phryne might have a Maori dictionary to hand, in case she encountered the language during a case. Happily, the language is currently enjoying something of a renaissance.