He sat down on a seat. She strolled past him. As she did, he took off his hat and gave a massive grimace. The audience looked puzzled. The young lady-who was actually, Phryne realised, a young man, and wasn't that Sabine in the flannels and straw hat?-gave an atrocious wink. Phryne had the word but didn't want to upset the play.

'Whole word,' signalled the players. Now a man, stripped to the waist and wearing someone's green theatrical tights, came on stage with a longbow made of a curtain rod. He raised an imaginary arrow-Phryne's favourite kind-and aimed and fired into the wings. Someone there said, 'Well done, archer!

You win the cup!' Then the players all came back to the stage and bowed.

'Bull's eye,' announced Phryne. Sylvanus stood up from Gerald's throne and caught sight of the speaker.

'Oh, well done, most sagacious Miss Fisher. Will you favour us with a charade?'

'I'll just go and find some props,' said Phryne, and went out as three people began to pull imaginary vertical ropes in what was probably the first part of a word beginning with 'ring'. Phryne had a wonderful charade word. She had stumped her family circle with it. All she needed was the small carpet from her room, a comb, and something to approximate a gown and coronet.

When she came back, laden with her props and a borrowed theatrical costume (Iolanthe, if she was any judge), the second part of the word was being acted. A smiling gentleman was opening a door and ushering a lady into a house, perhaps, and accepting a large envelope with RENT written on it in big cray-oned capitals. It was as Phryne had thought, but it was someone else's turn to guess.

208.

*209 'Ringlet,' pronounced Jonathan. Sylvanus congratulated him and sent him off to assemble his own little play.

There followed a hilarious skit which involved a lissom Amelia, in sola topee, attempting to catch a butterfly with an invisible net. She danced very well, Phryne thought. The collector danced off to be replaced by Sad Alison in the sola topee as the Great White Hunter, scowling at a blacked-up boy who seemed to be reading out a list to him. As the audience remained entirely blank, the hunter stalked off to be replaced by a person who mimed, with accompanying noises, a cat being released from-a bag, of course. Phryne was not sure if sound was canonical.

The second part of the word involved the Great White Hunter relaxing after a long day's shikar. He dispatched the blacked-up servant for a drink, sending it back repeatedly until the trink-wallah finally staggered in under the weight of a bucket, then packed and lit a soothing and well-deserved pipe.

Whole word, and all the participants marched onto the stage, skirling and hooting in mime. Bagpipe, and Phryne had hopes of Sad Alison, who had unexpected thespian abilities. Her Great White Hunter had just the right blend of parody and acute observation which made him really comic.

An American voice near Phryne said very quietly through the laughter, 'Well, will you look at that! The girl's a natural.'

Someone else murmured, 'Yes, sir, a natural.'

A man near Phryne nodded. Who were these people?

Phryne didn't remember seeing them before. However, the charades continued.

Jonathan had assembled a choir of four. They were all dressed alike in hastily gathered white garments and boaters.

They signalled first syllable, and then began to make some sort of inaudible music. Not singing. Their lips did not move. But they were clearly making a musical noise.

209.

*210 'Hum,' suggested a bright spark amongst the women. This was correct. The hummers went off. On stage came a person dressed in an approximation of a soldier's uniform (Iolanthe again?). He beat frantically with invisible sticks on an invisible drum. Whole word. Three people leaned back in chairs.

A book dropped from one slack hand. Sewing lay untouched in a woman's lap. The third player yawned behind her fan. The tedium was practically crystallising on the air.

'Humdrum,' said Sabine. There was general applause.

'They're good,' said the American voice again.

'That they are,' said the second voice.

The third man just nodded.

Phryne went to the stage with her impedimenta. That might make a good charade word, too, she thought, as she faced the audience and signalled first syllable, squeezing her thumb and forefinger together.

'First syllable, very small,' said the audience. 'In? An? On?'

Phryne signalled that 'on' was correct. Then she made the finger and thumb again.

'Small? Smaller?' as she squeezed them together. 'A?'

Phryne nodded. Then she took out her comb and tried to comb her hair. She swore under her breath. Her hair really could have done with a good combing, and possibly a rosemary and egg rinse. Or beer, of course, there was a ready supply of beer. From the stage she could see the three Americans. One very well dressed, rather corpulent man with a watchchain, two followers in neat grey suits. They stood out like three black dogs on a white counterpane. The audience called out sugges-tions: 'Tangle? Snarl? Mat?'

'Mat' it was and Phryne did the little word gesture.

'A?'

210.

*211 'A' was accepted and Phryne enveloped herself in a rich red robe and stuck the fairy queen's crown on her head. Then she adopted a look of lordly condescension and waved a hand at the peasants. They went though all the variations of queen and lord before someone finally happened upon 'peer'.

And now it was time for the whole word. Phryne took off her robes, laid out her carpet, sat down cross-legged upon it in imitation of a yogi, and folded her arms. There was a dumb-founded silence.

Then Gilbert, the young man with the scented bath fetish, began to laugh helplessly.

'What?' demanded several voices.

'Can't you see it, you dolts? It's the cleverest today,' he giggled. 'Onomatopoeia. On-a-mat-appear. Oh, well done, Miss Fisher!'

Phryne bowed and went back to her place.

The last charade of the afternoon was Sylvanus's. He came on stage with a tall young man who was holding a branch above his head. The young man swayed and bent. 'Wind?' the watchers guessed. 'Breeze?' Sylvanus unshipped something from his shoulder and began to chop. The young man shrieked silently. Phryne was unsettled. This was far too cruel for an afternoon's amusement. This was charades, not grand guignol.

'Tree,' she called. Sylvanus grinned at her.

Then the stage was set for a family dinner. Several people were sitting on the floor on cushions (probably for tonight).

Sylvanus was draped in a long rich garment and had a blue kefiyah on his head. He looked surprisingly authentic as a sheik of the desert. His concubines offered him tea and he drank it, sighing and putting a hand to his head theatrically.

If it had had a caption the scene would have been entitled 'Oh, woe!'

211.

*212 Then running, stumbling, came a half-naked man, clothed only in a sheepskin. His hair was long and disarrayed, his body striped with mud, his feet filthy. Husks still clung to his skin.

An unprepossessing sight but Sylvanus leapt to his feet, cast his robe around the boy, and started shouting orders. One of the men objected, but was sent off immediately. The prodigal had returned to his father.

'For this my son is come home . . .' said Phryne.

'Son!' called Marie-Louise.

Whole word. Sylvanus, wrapped in a black cloak, lurked in a corner. Another person, equally wrapped, approached him.

Sylvanus handed over an envelope marked 'CASH' and received in return a roll of paper marked 'SECRETS'.

'Treason!' exclaimed Sabine.

Everyone applauded, then began to stand. Five o'clock and the hearties and horsemen would be out of the bar by now.

Everyone felt they had done well and deserved the drink of their choice. They needed a wash and brush-up before they dressed for the Arab feast, and someone was going to have to charm some butter from the housekeeper to get the burned cork off Minou.

'Remarkable,' said the American.

'Yes, sir,' said the second man.

The third man nodded.

Phryne decided on a swim. The water was cold, her hair needed a wash, and there was something about lying in water, supported and buoyant, staring idly at the sky, that assisted her thought processes. She lathered and rinsed her hair before she went into the water. Definitely an egg shampoo when she got home. That fierce combing had pulled out what felt like handfuls of hair.

Meanwhile she had a riddle to solve and an assassin to foil.

212.

*213 Phryne rocked in the cradle of the deep, half asleep, not consciously thinking . . .

When she swam ashore she had no clue as to the identity of the assassin, but she thought she might know where Tarquin was. And who had kidnapped him.

Her bath was scented with roses, for innocence. As usual, Gilbert was waiting for her, and slipped inside saying, 'Oh, divine! Heaven must smell like this.'

'If it doesn't, I'm not going,' replied Phryne. 'But then, I might not have the option.'

She liked her Arab clothes. Fortunately the weather had cooled a little, or they might have been too heavy to endure.

She had a loose white shift, ankle length, a loose dark red robe, a lot of tin jewellery and several filmy black veils. Presumably these were to be disposed as the wearer thought fit. Phryne let them drift down over her head and pinned them where they fell. It made a fluid and elegant effect. She left a long edge so that she could cover her face. She remembered being mistaken for a man in Egypt, when she had been dressed in drill trousers suitable for investigating dusty tombs. Women washing at a well, unveiled, had thrown the skirts of their gowns over their heads, revealing their salient attributes but covering their faces.

Strange place, Egypt. Phryne had not liked it much. The antiquities were fine but the weather was atrocious and the veiled women made her uncomfortable. What was seething behind those blank exteriors?

Nicholas joined her, looking like an extra from The Son of the Sheik, though his butter-coloured hair and fine blue eyes rather ruined the illusion. He looked, in fact, just like one of the romantic heroes in railway novels. Phryne said so.

'Thanks,' he murmured. 'I think. Tell me how to comport myself at an Arab feast, Phryne.'

213.

*214 'Simple. Eat with your hands, but only your right hand.

Easy way to remember is to sit on your left hand. Your left hand is unclean. The food will be very tasty and easy to eat with the fingers. You will like it,' instructed Phryne.

And she was right, thought Nicholas, scooping in another mouthful of saffron rice and roast lamb. No one had asked him to eat a sheep's eye, though he was willing to do anything once.

The mood of the gathering was affable. The flat bread was odd but tasty, and so were the beans in oil, and those little red peppers that packed such a punch. Forewarned by his wasabi experience, he had tasted them very gingerly and had escaped with merely a second degree burn to the soft palate.

Gerald Templar, looking very fit after his day in the saddle, had announced that there would be no karez that night, so Nicholas could afford to relax a little.

Phryne, reclining next to him, was remarkably attractive, though she was just a bundle of garments, sketchily hinting that there might be a womanly shape under them. The hash scent of the hubble-bubbles was almost subsumed by very strong incense, smelling of sandalwood.

The poetry recitation was beginning, and since they knew what poem Nicholas would recite, he had not been asked.

Phryne had a poem prepared. The theme was 'regret'. Gilbert stood up to recite, draping his robe gracefully. What he recited was unbearably sad, but he showed no sign of being affected, speaking as clearly and unemotionally as a child.

'So we'll go no more a-roving 'So late into the night.

'Though the heart be still as loving 'And the moon be still as bright 'For the sword outwears the sheath 214.

*215 'As the soul wears out the breast 'And the heart must pause to breathe 'And love itself have rest.

'Though the night was made for loving 'And the day returns too soon 'Yet we'll go no more a-roving 'By the light of the moon.'

Gilbert sat down. The whole company was on the verge of tears. He smiled a faint, amused smile.

Sylvanus leapt to his feet. 'Oh the harems of Egypt were fair to behold . . .' he began.

Oh, good old 'Abdul the Bul-Bul Amir', thought Phryne, blinking back tears. Crass, crude, and very biological, and it utterly destroyed the air of complete despair that Gilbert had generated.

Phryne had no time for despair. She had solved her riddle, and seated across from her, triumphantly unveiled, sat Alison, sad no longer, occasionally stroking the glossy tresses of her beautiful chestnut hair.

The Joker had gone for a little swim in the lake, avoiding the hearties. It was a pity that the hunt had not killed, but he could wait for his taste of blood.

215.

*216

CHAPTER FIFTEEN.

For they waddied one another till the plain was strewn with dead, While the score was kept so even that they neither got ahead.

AB Paterson 'The Geebung Polo Club'

After Abdul had come to his well-deserved conclusion, Phryne stood up to speak her deceptively artless Verlaine. Written about what he could see from his prison window, it had always moved her by its simplicity, speaking of the blue sky and the branch shaking above the roof, the bell ringing, the peaceful murmur from the village, and the prisoner's cry, 'My God!

This is what life is!'

'Le ciel est, par-dessus le toit 'Si bleu, si calme!

'Un arbre, par-dessus le toit, 'Berce sa palme.

'. . . Mon Dieu, mon Dieu, la vie est l.