‘Hammond, I should like to have had you with me in France,’ said Phryne. ‘You have a fine sense of security.’
Bernard Cooper was home. The sound of his gentle voice made Phryne feel safe for the first time since she had encountered her dead man.
‘Bernard dear, it’s Chatte Noire.’
‘Phryne!’ he sounded astonished. ‘What are you doing here? When can you come to dinner?’
‘Tonight, if you like. Where are you?’ He gave the address.
‘Come early, ma chere chatte – the road’s a bit rough and the turning is hard to find in the dark. Nothing wrong, cherie?’ he asked, sounding worried. ‘No need for me to alarm the legions?’
Phryne smiled. Bernard could probably summon up the entire army, navy and air force if he felt the need.
‘Nothing like that,’ she assured him. ‘I have a puzzle to show you.’
‘Oh, dear, and I had thought it was for the pleasure of my company.’
‘It is that, as well. I’ll come now, if you like.’
‘Yes,’ he said firmly. ‘I do like.’
Phryne hung up, gathered a shady hat and sunglasses, and called upstairs, ‘Marie! I’m going out. I won’t be back tonight. I’ve written down where I’ll be and the telephone number. All right?’
‘Oui, Madame, I am going to the pictures.’
‘Oh? With that nice greengrocer?’
‘Oui, Georges.’ She pronounced it in the French manner. ‘He is dreamy.’
Phryne smiled and went out into the searing street. She unlocked the Sprite and drove carefully up into the Adelaide Hills, concentrating on the uncertain surface of the road and hoping that higher up it might be cooler. A little thing like petrol rationing would never worry Phryne Fisher.
Bernard Cooper lived in a large colonial house with verandahs, perched on the side of a cliff. It looked vaguely uncertain, as though at any moment it might slide into the abyss. He was waiting for her as she negotiated the steep drive and parked the car at the back door.
‘Come in, come in, ma chatte, ma cherie! You must be parched. I have a nice bottle of the local champagne cooling at this moment.’ He put a hand under her elbow. ‘All right, Phryne?’
He had aged, Phryne thought, and he thought the same thing about her.
War had not been good to Bernard Cooper. It had furrowed his brow and lent a faint trembling to his hands. Phryne, he noticed, had white streaks in her black hair, and lines around her mouth and neck that had not been there before she went to France. He cleared his throat.
‘You look splendid,’ he said, and Phryne grinned at him.
Suddenly the original Phryne was there: impudent, confident and beautiful, her green eyes shining. He caught his breath.
‘Come in,’ he repeated. ‘This weather is really enervating. I hardly do anything in the summer,’ he added, closing the door against the harsh sunlight and leading her into a cool panelled study. ‘Just aestivate and pray for rain. Here we are, a nice bottle of bubbly.’
‘Bernard,’ said Phryne, sitting down and casting aside her sunglasses and hat, ‘you are babbling.’
‘Quite right, cherie, I am,’ he confessed.
‘What are you covering up for?’ she demanded, putting a hand on his arm.
‘Oh, Phryne,’ he said, looking at her quite without artifice, ‘I never thought that we would grow old.’
‘No, neither did I. But I’m not old yet,’ she added briskly.
‘Give me a glass of champagne and pull yourself together, Bernard, my dear. You are not old, either. You are still the shaggy bear I loved in London, and I still love you.’
Bernard smiled and poured the wine.
‘I still love you, Phryne. I have never been able to get you out of my mind.’
‘Are you alone here, Bernard? Where’s Stephanie?’
‘Stephanie’s dead. Didn’t you know? She died of heart disease. Two years ago. We got all the way to Australia, bought the house that she always used to talk about – you remember, during the Blitz, we used to talk about the hills and the rosellas and the wine? We’d only been here a year and she died.’
‘Oh, Bernard, I’m so sorry…’
He smiled again, ruefully. ‘At least she got here. She got what she wanted, even if she only had it for a little time. There were so many others who never knew what it was to be free and at peace.’
‘That’s true.’ Phryne reached across and took his hand. The strength was still there, the tension of strong muscle under the thinning skin. His hair was still shaggy and blond, his beard almost white; his eyes were still the colour of a trout stream, pale grey flecked with gold.
‘I am glad to see you again, Phryne,’ he said quietly, and she kissed him.
‘Well, what about this puzzle?’ he asked, as she drew away.
‘Take some more wine and tell me about it.’
Sensing that her kiss had started something that Bernard would need time to adjust to, Phryne produced the paper and he laid it flat on a solid oak table, under a strong electric light.
mrgoadard mtbimpanetpmliaboaiaqc
ittmtsamstgab
‘Hmm. Not an alphabet code, I think,’ he said.
‘How can you tell?’ asked Phryne, who had never understood codes.
‘Not enough letters. I mean, not enough different letters. An alphabet substitution uses all of the letters of the alphabet and there are several which don’t appear. A box code, possibly, or an ETAIONSHRDLUCWME’
‘Sounds Greek,’ she commented.
‘It’s based on the frequency of the letters in the English language. Where was this found or shouldn’t I ask?’
‘It’s the code relating to the dead man on Somerton Beach. They’re calling it the tamam shud mystery. You haven’t heard of it? Don’t you get newspapers up here?’
‘What, news? I don’t want to hear any news’, he said in horror, as though Phryne had offered him nice, fresh axolotl salad. She shook her head at his isolationism and sipped more wine. It was quite passable, and blessedly cool.
‘Hmm, yes. Can you see a pencil? And my glasses? Yes, thanks, yes, I’ll just run through the alphabet and see…’
He found a long strip of lettered paper, laid another one beside it, and began to check code letters against their equivalents. Phryne could see that he was about to become totally absorbed, so she wandered off to explore the house.
It was large and furnished with an odd collection of whatever someone had thought worth hauling up the mountain along with boxes of books and household items which the late Stephanie had brought from England and had never got around to unpacking. Phryne had liked Stephanie, which was why she had not persisted in the affair with Bernard, although he had always attracted her and had been a warm and delightful lover. She found some English magazines and sat down on the balcony to read them. The wind was not so hot here in the hills; the leaves were brushed, not lashed, by the moving air. She was engrossed in a report of a debate in the House of Commons about the Employment Prospects of the Returned Serviceman when she was summoned by a shout from inside.
‘It’s unbreakable, unless we have the code word,’ announced Bernard in tones of rising wrath. ‘Is there something you haven’t told me, Phryne?’
‘Yes, there is,’ said Phryne. ‘The code word must be TAMAM SHUD, and I should like to make love with you.’
‘TAMAM SHUD, eh? I’ll just make a note of it,’ he scribbled on the alphabet strip, ‘and then, as to your second proposal…’
‘Yes?’
‘Yes,’ he agreed, and enveloped her in a huge hug.