The Green Mill Murder (19 page)

‘Thinking of getting one,’ admitted the young man, to general astonishment. Evidently he had not shared this notion with his fellow Talbotvillians. ‘Be bonzer for getting up onto the High Plains.’

‘Yes,’ agreed Phryne. ‘But not many places to land, except here. I came from Mansfield today, and it’s very difficult country.’

‘Yair,’ said the young man. ‘But so fast!’

‘Also, speed depends on weather and on fuel. Has Shell delivered my fuel, by the way?’

‘Yair, fuel cans came in by packhorse from Dargo this morning,’ said a stout gentleman in a waistcoat. He was a person of some authority and Phryne guessed he was the postmaster.

‘Good. What’s the weather report?’

The whole room looked at Albert Stout. He inclined his head, as though listening to the wind.

‘Clear for two days,’ he opined magisterially. ‘Only very high cloud. I doubt even you would fly that high, Miss Fisher!’ He paused to chuckle, ‘Then, I think, it will close in. There may be more snow, there will certainly be rain.’

‘In that case, if some of you would like to come and help me refuel the plane, I had best be off.’

Phryne jammed her warmed feet into her sheepskin boots, reclaimed her jacket from under a sleeping cat and her helmet from an inquisitive child, and stood up.

‘You said you’d take me for a ride,’ said the young man, identified only as Dave. Phryne took his hand.

‘So I shall, but not quite yet. I will return,’ she promised, looking with appreciation at the warm room and collaring a scone as she went out. ‘Then we shall joyride all around Mount Howitt.’

Refuelled, the Moth was heavier, and Phryne wondered if she had sufficient lift to attain flying speed before she hit the fence.

‘Hang on to the wings, friends, and let go when I say “now”,’ she screamed above the roar of the engine to four straining stockmen. The revs mounted, the Moth shook and rocked. ‘Now!’ screamed Phryne. They released the wings.
Rigel
hopped and bounced, approaching the fence at a perilous rate, then leapt into the air.

Phryne gained altitude, breathed a brief prayer of relief, and circled, waving. She mounted the wall of Mount Cynthia, found the Wonnangatta Valley and flew up over the Snowy Plains.

She turned sharp north, heading for Mount Howitt dead ahead, and was looking out for the small nick in the flat High Plains which marked MacAlister Springs when she flew directly into low cloud and lost all sense of direction, along with her sight.

‘Oh, Lord!’ she exclaimed ruefully, remembering the
Regulations for Operation of Aircraft.
Do not fly in cloud, it warned sternly. She diverted herself by recalling that it also warned pilot officers not to wear spurs, and wondered what other useless advice it had to offer. Freezing fog flowed past her face. Clouds look so soft from a distance, she thought; up close they were like wet cotton wool. She could not see at all. No light gleamed through to show her where the sun was, and she was rapidly losing remembrance of where it had last been. Her cigarette lighter showed her compass bearing to be due north. She let the little plane drop gradually, hoping to find clear air down lower, not wishing to end her aviation career by being the first woman to fly a Gipsy Moth into Mount Howitt, for which she was still heading at fifty miles an hour. But where was the ground? She lost height, sideslipping a little, her hands numbing on the stick, ice forming on her face.

The wings were getting heavier. The Moth was icing up! Time to land. ‘I might even be able to get down in one piece if I could only find where the bloody deck is!’ Phryne swore, bit her lip, and strained forward into white murk, colder than the grave. She blinked, noticing that her eyelashes had frozen, and wondered suddenly and horribly if she could have flipped the Moth over in the disorienting cloud, and was even now approaching a nasty and terminal landing, wheels in the air. Is that why she couldn’t find the ground?

She fumbled for her lighter and dropped it. To her great relief, it fell down at her feet. She was still the right way up, but that seemed to be the only good thing about the situation.

Appearing with the speed and unreality of ghosts, trees happened in front of her. She throttled the Moth back to stall, and the plane wobbled, complaining. Phryne heard branches crack as the fixed wheels scraped them, saw a clear space in front of her which was evidently placed there by providence, and dropped
Rigel
neatly into the centre of it. The Moth rolled along grass so flat that it might have been mowed to a perfect landing. Phryne turned off the engine and sat quite still for a full minute. Landed safe, she thought, and I really don’t deserve it. I shall have to be a better woman in future.

Brimming with good resolutions, she began to climb out of the Moth, and was doubly astonished to be seized in hard hands and dragged forth, carried over a shoulder, and flung down under a male body ten seconds later.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Bunty:
It’s such fun, being reminded of things.

Nicky:
And such agony, too.

Noel Coward
The Vortex

‘Keep down!’ hissed a voice in response to her outraged squeak. ‘Keep your ears covered. She’ll go up in a minute.’

Phryne, relieved that she was not going to have to fight either for her honour or her life, relaxed under the male body and said politely, ‘It’s unlikely to explode. I wasn’t carrying bombs, you know. And that was a very good landing, considering everything. Well, it was a very good landing for me.’

‘A woman?’ gasped her assailant, and sprang away from her.

Phryne was facing a stocky man, dressed in bush clothing, with long pale hair and a red beard. On top of the Howitt Plains, she reflected, was an odd place to meet the Ancient Mariner.

She stood up carefully and brushed grass off her flying suit.

‘I’m a visitor,’ she said affably. ‘That’s my plane,
Rigel
.’

‘The desire of a moth for a star,’ quoted the Ancient Mariner in a perfectly normal voice. ‘Glad to meet you. Sorry about that. I thought . . .’

‘Yes. Where did you see an exploding plane?’

‘In the war,’ said the man.

‘I’d better tether her,’ said Phryne, walking back to
Rigel
over meadow grass. ‘Take this side, will you, and we’ll peg down the wings.’

‘I never heard of hobbling a plane,’ said the man, fascinated. ‘Will she take off and fly away herself, or does she get lonely for other planes?’

‘Ground wind,’ explained Phryne. ‘She’s fragile.’ Running a gloved hand along the wings, she realised that each edge had been carrying a load of ice. She wondered how much longer she would have been able to fly if she hadn’t found the ground. Not very long, she decided, and drove the tent-peg down hard into a crack in the rock. She had landed on alpine meadow, sweet-smelling and flowered, with only the occasional boulder showing through the blanket of herbs. Mount Howitt loomed. It looked very close. So close that Phryne shut her eyes for a moment, aware that she had been only a few minutes’ flying time from a very permanent smash.

‘I say, are you all right?’ asked the Ancient Mariner. ‘Sorry about collaring you like that. I thought that the plane would go up. Did I hurt you?’

He had completed the tying down of his wing and now came to support Phryne with a solicitous hand under her elbow. She opened her eyes and looked at him.

‘A trustworthy face,’ Dot had said. Under the bristling beard and the flowing hair, it was a strong, bony face with a heavy jawbone and a strong, solid skull. He had a broad nose, a wide mouth, and the most beautiful clear eyes of a shade between green and grey, speckled with golden flecks like sunlight on a trout stream. He was smiling uncertainly. Phryne smiled back.

‘No, no, you didn’t hurt me at all, and you would have saved my life if I had been carrying explosives or a lot more fuel. Quick thinking indeed! My name is Phryne Fisher.’

‘I’m pleased to meet you,’ he said as if he really meant it. ‘Up here they call me Vic’

‘Nothing else? Just Vic?’

‘Vic the hermit,’ he explained. ‘The cattlemen employ me in autumn to help with the muster. Otherwise I only see people when I go down to Talbotville for stores. This is a treat! But you must be cold, and you can’t take off again while the mist is down. Would you like to come to my house?’

‘Very kind of you, Mr Freeman,’ said Phryne.

The hand dropped away from the elbow. He stared at her, his face flattening into a mask. He was not the Ancient Mariner, Phryne realised, but the golden mask of an old Viking. She gathered her resources. She did not fancy going to this hermit’s cave under false pretences.

‘I’ve come to find you, Mr Freeman, but I’ll go away again as soon as the weather lifts. I don’t want to ruin your solitude. In view of your history I perfectly understand it. But you cannot shut out the world altogether, you know. Some things have to be settled, after which I will go away and you can forget all about me, and the world, if you want to.’

He turned and walked away, hands clasped, until he was lost in the mist. Phryne sat down collectedly and groped for a cigarette, realised that her lighter was in the plane and delved for it. He was back before she had smoked half the gasper.

‘I knew, I knew that someone would come eventually. I suppose I am lucky that it’s you, Miss, Miss Fisher. What has happened? Is my father, my mother . . .’

‘Your father is dead,’ said Phryne gently. ‘He died six months ago. Have you been receiving your mother’s letters?’

‘Yes, well, yes, I have been getting them, but I haven’t been answering. She never cared for me, you know, and I thought that if I vanished it would give Charles a chance. How, how is Charles?’

‘Charles is fine,’ lied Phryne. ‘He could not be said to be an excellent specimen of manhood, but so few are in these parlous times. He thought that you were dead.’

‘Yes, that’s what she told him. I wrote to my father a few times, but he kept wanting me to come back. I couldn’t live in a city again. I couldn’t! So I stopped writing to him, too. And I found a source of income on my own, and didn’t need money any more. Poor Dad. She led him a dog’s life. He’ll be glad that it’s over. Let’s get off the plain, Miss Fisher, it’ll snow soon, more than likely.’

‘I asked Albert Stout what the weather would be like and he said it would be clear,’ said Phryne rather indignantly as she unloaded her small case and the hamper from the plane. Vic chuckled, heaving the hamper up in his arms without effort.

‘You should have asked him for the weather for the High Plains. In the valley it’ll still be clear. He’s never wrong, but you have to give him precise instructions. He isn’t used to the idea of aeroplanes. Can’t say that I am, either. How were you going to find me, Miss Fisher? I’m only up here because the packhorse slipped his head rope and I have to get him down before it gets too cold. Lucky loves mountain grass. And I got some yams, too. Good feed for a change.’

He whistled, and a very self-important dog came out of the fog, escorting a packhorse with an unusual gait.

‘What is it, half kangaroo?’ asked Phryne as the pony hopped forward with both front hoofs together.

‘No, hobbled. He can cover a long distance like that, the rascal.’

The horse stood obediently while Vic unfastened the hobbles and slung the hamper, the case, and a sack onto its back. The dog sat with its paws precisely in line, radiating the consciousness of being a good dog.

‘There. Now, off we go, before we freeze. Come on, Mack. Can you walk all right, Miss Fisher?’

‘Suppose you call me Phryne and I’ll call you Vic, eh? How far?’

‘About a thousand feet,’ said Vic, walking through the mist-shrouded wattle to the edge of what looked like a precipice. ‘Not far. Watch your step, though.’

Phryne thanked the Lord that she was wearing boots and followed Vic down a boulder-strewn path, just wide enough for horse and man to walk abreast, which plunged in a swooping curve down the side of the High Plains. It was a strange journey. Trees higher than any she had ever seen soared up out of sight. She concentrated on her footing. The low cloud had produced silence, except for the rustle of unknown creatures in the undergrowth. All of her life had been spent in cities, or in the polite woods of England and the tamed bush of Melbourne. This cold wilderness was utterly unfamiliar, but it did not feel hostile, just indifferent to her fate. If she fell off this path and was broken into a hundred pieces nothing up here would be one whit interested. Phryne kept her eyes on the rocks and tried not to grab at passing trees. Leather was not the ideal medium for boot soles. Every surface appeared to be slippery. Already a little trickle of water was running down these stones. Phryne suspected that when it began to rain on the High Plains, the path would be the bed of a stream.

‘Vic, slow down, I can’t keep up,’ she called in sudden panic as the packhorse rounded a bend and went out of sight. She heard him stop.

‘Come up here to the front and take the bridle,’ he said, and just the sound of another human voice was a relief. ‘It is a bit difficult, but it’s really hard going through the trees. Take it slowly, now, just edge around Lucky here. He won’t kick.’

Phryne grabbed a tree branch and showered herself with icy water. She spluttered, swore, and found the rear of the horse by touch. There was not much room between the pony and the edge of the path, but she managed and the creature snuffled her companionably as she leaned around and took the bridle.