'Then we will go that way,' he said.

Somewhere in a suppressed part of Phryne's mind terror ran round like a mouse in a wheel. She let it run.

'I believe I know what you are looking for,' she said.

'Indeed?'

'The child,' she said. 'The little girl.'

'Saw me sharpening my knives,' he said. 'I put her out of the way until this was all over. Now I will have to remove her as well, and you, of course, Miss Fisher.'

'Of course,' Phryne replied. Hope leapt in her heart. The old scullery where Marigold had been imprisoned was on the direct path to the kitchen door, and some preparations must have been made there by now. 'Satisfy my curiosity. How do you mean to get away? The place will be swarming with policemen any moment now.'

'No, there are only two of them at Werribee. They will have to telephone Melbourne, which is half an hour's journey even if they set out right away and use one of the new high speed cars. By the time they arrive I shall have clothed myself in my own riding garments, borrowed a pony and got to my car, which is hidden some miles from here.'

'And if you can't steal a pony? Those horse lines have valets and stablemen camped beside them and they can't all be drunk.'

'Then I shall take Templar's horse,' he said promptly. 'Acorn is a nice steady beast, unlike that demon Miss Isabella rides.'

'I see. Did you have an agreement about both of them, or was it just Gerald?'

'Just Templar,' he said. 'Not that I mind killing women.

They are only disappointing in that they are so easy to kill.'

254.

*255 This one won't be, vowed Phryne grimly. One knot slipped under her frantic tugging. What she really needed, of course, was a knife. How foolish of her not to carry one at all times.

But of course, she did have a knife. All medieval persons had eating knives. Hers was in a decorative sheath hanging down from her belt. With great care she began to draw it up.

It might not be sharp, but it was a weapon. Phryne's teeth ached from keeping her jaw and thus her voice steady. And they were approaching the back scullery where Marigold had been imprisoned. Marigold was gone, which might give Phryne a moment of inattention in which to avoid being skewered.

'I believe this is the place,' she told the Joker, grabbing for the sheath and extracting the blade. She jagged it across the thongs. It did not cut. She tried again. It was as blunt as a bottle and not even half as much use.

The Joker's attention was diverted for just a moment as he considered the prison, which was littered with broken planks.

Phryne flung herself to one side and screamed 'Help!' His casually brutal slash cut a streamer from her long sleeve.

The kitchen door crashed open. Sam shouldered out. Ted and Rob sprang into the half-lit yard, armed with an axe and a shovel.

'Ah,' said the Joker. 'You surprise me, Miss Fisher.'

'Oh, I do hope so,' said Phryne. 'Sam, Ted, we need to disarm him. Be careful-he's really good with that knife.'

'Years and years,' said the Joker in a singsong voice, the knife making patterns in front of their eyes. 'I trained for years for my profession. If you think I am going to end it here, in this godforsaken country at the end of the world, you are wrong.'

'Don't watch the knife, block the exits,' said Phryne practically. 'Tell me, did you send the coral snake?'

255.

*256 'Yes, I went to some trouble to deter you,' he said, the knife still making patterns, a snake hypnotising birds. 'I like snakes and it was rather expensive. What became of it?'

'I'm sorry,' said Phryne. 'My cat killed it.'

The Joker gave an angry hiss. 'I hate cats,' he said.

'Yes, I thought you might. Now, tell me who hired you to kill Gerald. You promised,' she reminded him.

'I was paid by a blind trust called Adventures Limited,' he said. 'Is that enough for you?'

'No,' said Phryne. They weren't out of the woods yet. This was a dangerously slippery person and even now, as Ted covered one exit and Rob stood guarding the kitchen door, he could kill and get away, striking like the snakes he loved and slipping into the undergrowth of huts and sheds. 'Oh, and incidentally, did you really expect Marigold to still be alive? You shut her in that old laundry five days ago now. She wasn't exactly well fed to begin with.'

'So she's dead? That is a relief,' he said, and Sam roared and charged.

The Joker stabbed him in the upper arm as he was gathered into a gorilla embrace. Sam didn't seem to notice the wound.

'You bastard,' bellowed Sam, holding the Joker around the waist, shaking him as a dog shakes a rat and slapping the knife out of his hand. 'You left my little girl in there to die? You mongrel bastard!'

He snapped the Joker in mid-air like a snake and threw him away to lie crumpled against the smashed boards of Marigold's prison.

Phryne ran to the body. The head lolled on the broken neck. He was still warm. But he was completely dead. Dead in an instant. And his hood had slipped back from his face.

256.

*257 'Oh dear,' said Phryne to the corpse, even now hearing that detestable light voice discussing her imminent death. 'And I let you share all those baths, Gilbert.'

'Jeez,' said Sam shakily. 'I never meant to kill him.'

'You don't know your own strength, mate,' said Ted, removing his hand rolled cigarette from behind his ear and relighting it.

'Much better this way,' said Rob, reaching out to help Phryne up. 'Did you hear what he said about Australia? Godforsaken, he said. Foreign bastard.'

Phryne's teeth began to chatter. She was flooded with cold.

Her knees were now entirely failing to support her. She leaned on the wall.

'It's all right,' said Phryne to Sam. 'Pure self defence. There will not be a charge. You just saved all our lives, Sam, and Marigold's as well.'

'Here, Miss,' said Sam, worried by her pallor. 'I think you'd better take me up on that free carry I offered you once.'

'I think I should,' said Phryne, and was borne into the kitchen in strong arms.

Mrs Truebody was a veteran housekeeper and thought she had seen it all: hunting accidents, fowl pest, hysterical pregnancies, carriage accidents, and even that Patent Steam Pressure Cooker which had patently exploded so impressively, taking out all the windows of the kitchen and leaving everyone hard of hearing for three days. But a murder, a mass poisoning, and several stabbing injuries were trying her patience and extending her expertise. She had turned the back kitchen into her dressing station, and the Werribee doctor, McPherson, was there now, swabbing and stitching, assisted by Minnie.

257.

*258 As soon as Sam had been stitched, he had put on Gabriel's shirt (which was unbloodied) and gone to fetch Marigold.

Then-of all things-he had shown her the body of that terrible young man and said, 'That's him, Marigold. He can't hurt you no more. He's dead.'

And Marigold, instead of screaming and weeping, had just touched Sam very gently on the face and gone back of her own accord to her room, where she was now, apparently, soundly asleep.

'It doesn't seem right somehow,' complained Mrs Truebody to Miss Fisher, who was also patched with plasters on two small wounds. Miss Fisher was dressed in her page's costume with the addition of a soft cotton blouse as her jerkin was soiled with mud, slime and blood. She was drinking strongly sedative valerian tea and smoking a gasper.

'It is necessary for the child to know that the monster is dead,' she said soothingly. 'Now she knows that, she can sleep.

You are doing a wonderful job, Mrs T.'

'The old lady used to call me that,' said Mrs Truebody.

'What she'd think of these goings-on! Half the guests doped and sleeping on the ground!'

'How are they?'

'Doctor says they're just asleep,' said Mrs Truebody. 'They arranged them comfortably and left them where they were.

Except Mr Templar and Miss Templar, of course. They got carried to their beds. The doctor says that none of the injuries is serious. Even your young man, Mr Booth. He's in the front parlour with the police. He asked if you could join them at your convenience, Miss Phryne.'

'Which will be when I have finished this tea. I have had a strenuous evening.'

258.

*259 Mrs Truebody approved of this attitude. Miss Fisher's face had regained much of its colour but the cigarette smoke betrayed a faint tremor in her hands. Mrs Truebody applied her best remedy for anything short of actual death. 'We've still got lots of food. How about a tiny little slice of my game pie?'

'It's very good game pie,' conceded Phryne. 'Just a sliver, then. Or maybe a bit more than a sliver. And perhaps some of that fruit salad? And did I tell you that you make wonderful apple snow?'

Mrs Truebody preened. Phryne ate her supper with the relish of one who had been unsure whether her future would hold any more game pie, cigarettes or, indeed, life.

The doctor reported most casualties had been attended to and was, it seemed, offering Minnie a job.

'You've got a nice neat hand and you aren't squeamish,' he said. 'Call on me when you finish this task. Nurse attendant pays a bit better than housemaid,' he added.

'Good,' said Minnie. 'I'm saving up to get married.'

Dr McPherson left to attend to others. The kitchen gradually emptied of staff, as Mrs Truebody sent them to bed.

By midnight, Phryne Fisher was presiding over a miscellaneous feast into which Jack Robinson, his sergeant Hugh Collins and a bandaged Nicholas were tucking as though they had not eaten for days. Phryne joined them.

'Good pies these,' remarked Robinson with his mouth full.

'Not as good as Mrs Butler's, but good,' said Phryne, brushing crumbs off her blouse.

'Now, what have you been up to, eh?' asked Robinson indulgently.

'Well, since you ask, I have been threatened, nearly bitten by a venomous reptile, and chased all round the houses by 259 *260 an internationally renowned murderer with a knife. Other than that, it's been quiet. Now tell me something-have you ever seen that man before, Jack?'

'No,' said Robinson, looking, as directed, at Nicholas.

'He's Secret Service, isn't he?' she asked. 'I kept inserting your name into the conversation and he kept not reacting to it. But I knew he must be something in the policeman line, because of the things he was able to find out.'

'Ah,' said Robinson, taking another piece of apple pie and dousing it in cream.

'You didn't think I might be the Joker?' asked Nicholas.

'No,' said Phryne. 'Not after I saw you in that tree with the rifle. You had a perfect shot. The Joker would not have been able to resist it.'

'Probably not,' said Nicholas.

'So, what is it-are you in the Secret Service?'

'I can't tell you,' he said uncomfortably. 'Neither confirm nor deny.'

'He's high up,' said Robinson. 'His letter of accreditation isn't from Scotland Yard. Anyway, he's never a police officer.

I'd know.'

'Right,' said Phryne. 'Are you staying for the rest of the party?'

'Phryne, you and Sam between you managed to catch and kill an assassin that no one else has been able to even identify, and because I was here being useless, I'll get the credit.

Honourable wounds and all. I don't need to go home just yet.'

Jack grunted. 'I spoke to that huge bloke. They build 'em big in Werribee! If you can vouch for what he said, then it's a clear case of justifiable homicide.'

'I can vouch for every word. I never got so close to death, Jack, not even in France in the Great War. Gilbert would have killed me without a thought.'

260.

*261 'He must have been a kind of . . .' Jack groped for the word, '. . . those lizards that change colour and go insane when you put them on plaid?'

'Chameleons,' said Sergeant Collins. 'Though I believe the story about the plaid isn't true, sir.'

'Never mind that. Chameleon. He just fitted into the company he was in.'

'He was a very convincing artist in an artists' colony,'

Nicholas said, sipping his whisky. 'A believable mechanic in a motor yard.'

'An aesthete who likes scent,' said Phryne. 'For a while I thought that Sylvanus might have shut Marigold up, because he always wears that dire freesia scent. But Gilbert smelt sweet because he wanted to blend in-he even used to borrow my baths.'

'He ran out of Rose de Gueldy,' Sergeant Collins informed Phryne. 'There was an empty bottle in his bag. Plus a lot of other things,' he added.

'Like an address book and diary which I handed to the correct authorities . . . and a lot of drugs, weapons, knives.

Beautiful knives, sharp as razors,' said Robinson.

Phryne did not want to think about the sharpness of the Joker's blades.