Free Death by Water by Kerry Greenwood

coat. ‘Can you help this distressed lady out and fetch her a nice drink? And me too? I really am so very sorry,’ he said again, paddling to the side like a puppy deeply conscious of a suspiciously wet spot on the Axminster.
    ‘I’m all right,’ Phryne told the steward as he reached for her.
    In one lithe movement she hauled herself out of the pool and wiped her face. ‘Get me a Singapore sling, please. And one for the idiot,’ she added.
    Jack Mason leapt to her side, putting a solicitous arm around her shoulder. Phryne shook him off. She had left her bag and towel on one of the sun lounges which was, regrettably, just out of sight around a corner. But she heard the snap of metal and a soft exclamation. Slipping out of the penitent’s clutch, she padded to her lounge and found that two people had joined her. They were the professor and Mr Aubrey. The Pierrot bag was just where she had left it, under her towel. It did not seem to have been disturbed.
    Phryne pulled off her bathing cap, dried her face and arms and wrapped the towel around her. It was a first class bath sheet and would have wrapped the stouter form of a matron without trouble. It went round Phryne twice.
    ‘My dear Miss Fisher!’ cried Mr Aubrey. ‘What has this young brute been doing to you?’
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    ‘Spirited attempt to drown me,’ Phryne replied. ‘But he’s buying me a drink to compensate.’
    ‘I should think so, indeed,’ said Mr Aubrey. He had both hands under his steamer rug, intending to snooze in the sun.
    The professor was engaged in reading a very thick book. Her hands were an old woman’s hands, patched and blotchy. Phryne could not tell which, if either, had encountered that spring-loaded mousetrap that was the last thing she had put into the Pierrot bag. It had definitely caught someone. Scragger was not the only rat catcher on the SS Hinemoa . Phryne spread out the towel, lay down on the sun lounge and delved in her bag for smoked glasses, her cigarettes and a lighter. Yes. The mousetrap had been sprung.
    She allowed Mr Aubrey to light her gasper.
    ‘I don’t approve of young women smoking,’ the professor said severely. ‘Ah, here is your drink.’
    ‘And your apology,’ said Jack Mason, flinging himself down beside her and almost spilling her off the sun lounge. He took up one of Phryne’s pale bare feet and kissed the toes. ‘Abject,’
    he said.
    ‘Oh, very well,’ said Phryne crossly. If she didn’t forgive him he would go on making awkward demonstrations of remorse all day. ‘You’re forgiven,’ she said, taking a sip of the cherry flavoured drink.
    ‘Anything from the char-wallah?’ Mr Aubrey asked the professor, who shook her head. ‘Tea, Steward, if you please,’ said Aubrey to the older man. ‘Chai for me, Bob, as usual.’
    ‘That’s tea with spices, isn’t it?’ asked Phryne, shoving Jack Mason off the foot of her sun lounge. ‘Get your own chair, Mr Mason, if you please.’
    ‘Since I nearly drowned you, you ought to call me Jack,’
    he said, grinning.
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    ‘Attempted murder does not constitute an introduction,’
    she told him severely, which made the professor laugh.
    ‘Quite right, Miss Fisher. Now, let’s change the subject.’
    ‘Oh yes, let’s,’ agreed Phryne. ‘What about the name of the ship? It’s a Maori name, isn’t it? Can you tell us the tale?’
    Professor Applegate seemed touched. ‘She’s one of my favourite stories. You know that the Maori had clans, and each clan not only had a clan chief but an aristocracy, a royal family?
    They were given the best food and great respect, but their lives were constrained by many more tapu than those of the com-moners, and especially the girls. Some of the princesses were required to stay in their huts, out of the sun. They weren’t allowed to do things the ordinary girls did, like fish or wander the forest or take lovers. Maori girls