Fisher 02 Flying Too High by Kerry Greenwood

Author:Kerry Greenwood [Greenwood, Kerry]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0100-12-31T23:00:00+00:00

‘Can’t have important clues lying about. See,’ he said, opening the grey cardboard box and exhibiting a squarish block of bluestone. ‘It was brought down with great force. Much more than any woman could muster. There’s blood and matter on the obverse, but none on the back, indicating the blood did not spurt. The murderer might not have had a spot on him. Seen enough?’

Phryne looked very carefully at the sides of the stone, and especially the blotch of blood on the striking face.

‘Doesn’t that bloodstain fade toward the middle? Have a look. There seems to be less blood in the centre than you would find at the sides. What could cause that, do you think?’

Benton came to look.

‘No, I can’t see that, Miss Fisher. Is that all?’

‘Was there anything on the stone apart from blood and brain?’

‘Hair, Miss, a clover burr, a few hemp strands, a few leaves, a bit of bubblegum. Nothing important.’

‘No. Thank you, that was most interesting.’

‘Here’s the Coroner’s Report. Cause of death: massive head injuries.’

Phryne skimmed through the report. ‘Body of well-nourished middle aged man…cleft cranium.’

‘It seems to have fallen on the top of his head rather than the back,’ she observed.

‘Depends on how you look at it. Now I think he was donged from behind. The fact that the rock is a flat surface makes it difficult to say. The cranium is quite cloven through the middle.’

‘Hmm. Well, thanks a lot. Have you found those witnesses yet?’

‘No,’ muttered the detective-inspector, straight-faced.

‘Thank you so much for your time,’ said Phryne politely, and left.

She sat in the car and wrote a hasty note to Bert and Cec, then drove to Carlton to drop it into their boarding-house. She wondered what Bert would do when Cec got married at the end of the year, and decided that he would manage. Cec’s intended was a sensible young woman who understood the bond between the two men. There would be no separating Bert and Cec this side of the death which they had so often faced together. They were skilled, if rather direct, investigators and Phryne left her problem in their hands with a certain relief.

She arrived home very tired and ate the lunch served to her by Mrs Butler with an easy mind. A telephone message in Dot’s neat schoolgirl hand informed her that Paolo was with Amelia, that Mrs McNaughton was as well as could be expected and that Bill had arrived and was behaving like an angel. Phryne decided that she had done enough detecting for one day, and went to take a long hot bath with her Nuit de Paris bathsalts. After that she took what she considered to be a richly-deserved rest.

Jack Leonard rolled off the couch in the Maldons’ living room and strove to unkink his muscles. It had been the most uncomfortable night of his life, equalling in discomfort the Turkish brothel with the bedbugs, but without the compensating atmosphere.

Molly and the baby had retired fairly early. Molly had slept because her husband had poured a sizeable slug of chloral into her chocolate.

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