He would have married a small town princess and been very happy as a big fish in a little pond. But he could never match you, Gerald, and he knew it, and it rankled, and then it fes-tered. He heard about the Joker from some of Paris's more dangerous underworlders, and from then on the whole thing has an air of Greek tragedy.'

'He was a small man, but I need not have told him so,'

mourned Gerald. 'I lacked kindness and have been punished for it.'

'I reckon you have,' said Jack Robinson. He had spent an illuminating morning with the ledgers and invoices, fuelled by 269 *270 moral outrage and tea. Robinson liked accounts. Although they might lie, they never hid around corners and fired guns at the investigator. Mr Ventura had kept two very clear sets of books.

'You might be able to get some of your gelt back from Adventures Limited, though you'd need a court order,' he said, taking off his glasses and rubbing his eyes. 'And perhaps a good accountant might find some of the money he's squirrelled away in various bank accounts. But as it stands at the moment, Mr Templar, your remaining capital is-' he scribbled a few calculations-'three hundred and seven pounds five shillings elevenpence ha'penny.'

Gerald looked crushed for a moment. 'That isn't a lot,' he said, 'to keep all these followers. Yet I can't turn them away.

They have been faithful. Some will manage by themselves, I am sure, but some won't. Isabella has no money of her own.

What am I to do?' he asked rhetorically.

The parlour was silent. Phryne had nothing to suggest, though selling some of the younger acolytes did occur to her.

Jack Robinson was sorry for Gerald. The description of the bloke did not convey what a nice man he was.

'Never mind,' he said. 'Something may turn up. I mean, you're still alive,' he told the disconsolate victim. 'The smart money would have been on the Joker, you know. You would have been skewered if it weren't for our Miss Fisher here.'

'That is true, and very wise,' Gerald replied. 'If only I could find Tarquin I would not be so easily discouraged. Cautious optimism, then. We still have tonight's New Year's Eve party, and all of the rest of the time is paid for and arranged. One thing to be said for him, Tom Ventura is very efficient.'

'He was,' agreed Robinson, using the past tense deliberately.

The blanket-wrapped, foam-flecked and screaming lunatic 270 *271 who had been carried out of the house into the waiting police car had not been even marginally recognisable.

And the slight body of the Joker, carefully photographed for the first time in his career, had been taken off to the Coroner's Court for an autopsy. The coroner thought that evil people had organic brain damage or some other physical disease. Phryne did not think so, and neither did Robinson.

Some coots were just naturally evil, was his view. And Sam's action had just saved the state the expense of a trial and hanging. Not to mention that the Joker had a talent for escap-ing. No, a good result all round.

Robinson closed the ledgers and shuffled the papers into order, with his neat handwritten summary on top. Someone would have to take over to pay the remaining staff. Phryne said she would send him the replacement accountant.

When Sylvanus Leigh appeared, pale as cheese with his hunting hangover, Robinson lent him his indelible pencil to make his own notes. Sylvanus came to the same conclusion.

The Templars were, effectively, broke.

Phryne Fisher had used that same pencil to inscribe doggerel verse on her gummed pink paper, and Nicholas accompanied her as she went around the camp site and house, licking and gluing them at eye-height to trees, tents and walls.

'Tarquin alive not Tarquin dead/Or Phryne Fisher breaks your head,' read Nicholas. Under that was 'Hornbeam, noon'.

He shrugged. 'You are trying to flush the kidnapper out?'

he asked.

'Evidently,' she replied. The next one read: 'Tarquin lost or come to harm/Phryne Fisher breaks your arm/Hornbeam, noon'. This was to be attached to the bar tent.

'Hornbeam at noon and I'll find means/So we don't have to spill the beans', warned another. 'Tarquin hurt or in disgrace/ 271.

*272 Phryne Fisher breaks your face,' she added, securing it on a monkey puzzle tree. 'Return the boy to me I beg/Or Phryne Fisher breaks your leg.' She gummed that threat to a tree near the horse lines.

'Yes, but if you know who it is, Phryne, why all these threats? Nice scansion, though,' added Nicholas.

Phryne looked at him. He was not as well as he was pretending. His face was flushed, his golden curls crisp with sweat.

That knife had almost gone right through his shoulder and stuck in his scapular. He must have been in agony now that the excitement had worn off.

'You,' she said, in a voice which totally refused to believe that things could be otherwise, 'are going to Dr McPherson for a change of dressing and a morphine injection, and then you are going to lie down in my bed again. You want to be in good form for the party, don't you? Well, then . . .' She stifled his muted protest with a kiss. 'Here's the key. Are you going by yourself or do I have to get a nurse for you?'

'I'll go. Provided you promise not to do anything dangerous.'

'I promise,' she said blithely.

He was deeply suspicious, but he went. Phryne watched him until he was safely in the house and proceeded to gum her last label: 'At noon under the hornbeam tree/Who loves to lie with me?'.

It was almost eleven. Phryne had her book. She sat down under the hornbeam tree to await events. She had just got to the part where Hercule Poirot lines up all the suspects and harangues them in fractured English as to their degrees of guilt when the kidnapper came in under the low boughs and sat down at her feet. She closed the book, put it in the Pierrot bag, and laid 272 *273 her hand on her little gun, which would never again be placed in any purse where the catch might tangle or jam.

'Well, here we are,' she said.

' Viciste, Galileae!' he quoted in an exhausted tone. 'You have conquered. I saw your riddles. Not as good as mine. Glad to find some way out of it.'

'This way we can do it quietly,' she told him. 'You tell me what happened.'

'I really can't,' he said. 'I don't know a lot of it.'

'Well, let's start with Marigold. Gilbert grabbed her and shut her in the old laundry, meaning to come back and finish her off later. She had seen him with his knives-you know, those knives all had names? That's why Marigold vanished. But Tarquin was snatched on orders to remove from Gerald everything that he loved. I found the place where he dropped the tray he was carrying and all the glasses broke. Also I found his shoe. But that wasn't you, was it?'

'No,' said the sad voice by her knee.

'No, you found the boy where Gilbert had hidden him.

Is he alive?'

'Yes.'

'Good. Gilbert did rather enjoy a drawn-out gloat. So you freed Tarquin from wherever he was . . .' she stopped invitingly.

'The coal cellar. I heard him screaming. I let him out and sent him into a bathroom for a wash. Poor boy was filthy with coal dust. I got him some clean clothes and washed out the gold suit. But when I went back I couldn't find the other shoe. So you had it! While he was washing I . . .'

'Thought of a scheme to extract money from Gerald.'

'Well, yes, but not for me. For the others. Ventura said that Gerald was spending his fortune hand over fist and there would be nothing left.'

273.

*274 'He certainly tried to make it so,' Phryne conceded.

'So I talked to Tarquin, and we agreed that he should hide until the banks open on Wednesday, and then he could come forth, and I would have the money to get everyone home.'

'So you're Triceratops?'

'My brother. I have two brothers in Melbourne and a sister in Brisbane. But then this Gilbert thing happened and it doesn't seem fair on the boy . . . but I don't know how to get him back.'

'There once was a lady of Niger/Who smiled as she rode on a tiger,' said Phryne.

'Exactly. "At the end of the ride the lady was inside and the smile on the face of the tiger". I really do love Gerald.

I wouldn't hurt the dear fellow for the world. And if he finds out that I betrayed him, he will be shaken. Can you get us out of this, Phryne?'

'Certainly, Sylvanus. If you do exactly as I say.'

'When did you know it was me?'

'I suspected you all along,' said Phryne. 'No one else has the right kind of mind to make up riddles. Gilbert wouldn't have the patience. I was rendered more suspicious when I saw you carrying two lunch boxes. Then I saw you rowing on the lake when I know you can't swim. Everyone else played consequences but you, and the riddler's neat script wasn't in the consequences, though that's negative evidence and might not have meant anything. But finally, I just saw the riddler's handwriting on those notes in indelible pencil on the Templar accounts.'

'Oh,' said Sylvanus. 'Well, what shall we do?'

'Can Tarquin swim?'

'Yes, why?'

'This is what you do,' said Phryne, and gave careful, clear instructions.

274.

*275 'And this will work?'

'It will,' said Phryne.

Sylvanus kissed her hands, and left the tree. Phryne got up.

She had to interview Isabella, and this was probably as good a time as any.

The Lady was lying back in a hammock, listening to Sabine reading French poetry, when Phryne, Sam, Minnie and Marigold came in. Marigold was dressed in a cut-down and re-sewn shift with roses on it that Phryne had never really liked. Phryne attracted Sabine's attention and pointed to the door. Sabine's eyes widened as she saw the girl. She closed the book and went.

Isabella became aware that the soothing voice had stopped and opened her ice blue eyes.

'I've found Marigold,' said Phryne. Isabella sat up in the hammock and swung her feet to the floor. Marigold went to her and hugged her briefly.

'Phryne, you really are amazing,' murmured Isabella. 'Are you well, child?'

'Yes, but . . . I want to go and live with them,' blurted Marigold.

'Do you?' asked the Lady. 'Why?'

'They saved me,' said Marigold. 'And Sam killed the man who tried to murder me. And Mr Gerald.'

'Oh, you are that Sam,' said Isabella, rising to her feet. She was almost as tall as Sam. She put both hands on his shoulders.

He swayed. Being this close to a deity was overwhelming.

'You saved Gerald's life. Thank you,' she said, and kissed him on the cheek. Then she turned her gaze on to Minnie, standing at attention in her black dress.

'And you love this Sam?'

'Yes, madam,' said Minnie.

275.

*276 'For what you have done,' said Isabella, 'you could have asked anything of me. If Marigold wants to be with you and you will undertake to love her, then she may go. The Melbourne lawyers will arrange the adoption. Take this to remember me by,' she added, detaching a sapphire brooch from her shoulder and pinning it on Marigold's flat chest.

'Thank you!' said Marigold. Then she took Sam's hand in one grasp and Minnie's in the other and the three walked out of the tent, dazed but happy.

'That's good,' said Isabella unexpectedly. 'I'm glad the child is settled. They seem to be nice, solid, peasant stock. I'm glad she has someone else to love her.'

'Why?'

'Well, we are broke,' Isabella told Phryne. So much for Gerald trying to protect her. 'That worm Ventura has stolen every centime we have. I had thought of a Teutonic ending- Wagnerian, you know. Brunhild has always been one of my heroes. But I don't suppose Gerald will allow it, and I can't leave him. I am not going to enjoy being a hausfrau, Phryne. We have always eschewed the bourgeois.'

'Something may come up,' said Phryne.

'That's what Gerald says,' she responded, combing her pearly fingers through her flaxen hair.

'And sometimes it is true,' said Phryne, and went out, sending Sabine in to continue with her rendition of Verlaine.

' Il pleutre dans mon coeur: It rains in my heart, as it rains in the city . . .'

276.

*277 Fallen Angel 3 parts gin 1 part lemon juice 2 dashes of green creme de menthe dash of angostura Stir gently with ice.

277.

*278

CHAPTER NINETEEN.

Now the New Year reviving old Desires, The thoughtful Soul to Solitude retires, Where the White Hand of Moses on the Bough Puts out, and Jesus from the Ground suspires.

Edward Fitzgerald The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam of Naishapur After lunch, Phryne decoyed Gerald down to the lake. Gerald swam as he did all athletic things, with style and grave efficiency. The water was cool and several people were bathing.

Even Sylvanus was out in one of the rowing boats. There was a hat over his eyes and he was leaning back, apparently half asleep. Gerald swam into the middle of the lake and lay back in the water.