Away With The Fairies (11 page)

Lin Chung had shown her how to produce an ambient scent with a lamp sleeve. Where was he? His family were clearly worried about him. If they hadn’t been worried about him Phryne would never have been allowed alone into the Lin family mansion, much less sold extra fine quality silk for a pittance. He could have sent her a postcard of Stanley market or the Peak from Hong Kong, at least, where the mails worked with British regularity. Phryne was incubating a nasty suspicion that something might have happened to Lin Chung which even the presence of a Shao Lin monk could not prevent.

Still, nothing to be done for the present. The tram clacked busily past the barracks and she dragged her mind away from the picture of his face and on to a consideration of other faces. So. The murderer got to Miss Lavender before the maid came with her breakfast on the Sunday morning. But it would be no use finding out where everyone was on Saturday, because if the poison had been put in, say, the corner of the toothpowder tin or in some staple in the kitchen, it might linger there for weeks until Miss Lavender found a need for vanillan sugar, drank the last of the lemon cordial or ate the last piece of cake. Indeed, one could inject cyanide solution into a raisin in a jar of raisins and then settle back, secure in the knowledge that, sooner or later, Miss Lavender would write her last episode of ‘Hilda and the Flower Fairies’, eat a few raisins as a celebration, and suddenly die.

Drat. The field was wide open. It would have to be a matter of finding out why, and then possibly one might ascertain how.

What were the usual reasons for murder? Greed. Passion. And in the case of the severely afflicted, of course, fun. Poisoners were usually women. They might start off by killing for a reason, but then they seemed to acquire an addiction and kept on. Phryne recalled Mary Anne Cotton, who, a century before Dr Stopes, might never have been a murderer if she had been fitted with a diaphragm. But she killed her children because she could not feed them, then a few husbands for the insurance, then more children. ‘They get a taste for it,’ Jack had said about one of his captives, a nice old lady who had wiped out half of her family and quite a few visitors by putting arsenic in their tea. No one would have thought of suspecting her until Jack Robinson, suspicious by both nature and calling, had distracted her attention and slipped the cuppa which the charming old lady had made for him into a providential jam jar. It had contained enough poison to slaughter an elephant. Unable to provide any reason, she was judged unfit to plead and had been taken happily away to a quiet institution for the criminally insane, where she sang hymns, knitted booties for the warders’ children, and was never, never, allowed near the kitchen.

Cyanide acts by blocking the oxygen-carrying capacity of the blood. Thus the victim dies of suffocation. How volatile was it, Phryne wondered. I must get out Glaister when I get home. Perhaps it had to be put into the house within a certain time. That would be helpful.

Clack, clack, the tram groaned around the bend and Phryne lit a gasper, blowing smoke out between the legs of a strap-hanging clerk and enjoying his horrified expression. He was going to go home to his mother, Phryne knew, and tell her what he had seen on the tram today. A woman
smoking
. In public! Phryne hoped that it would lead to a productive discussion on the changing status of women, but knew it wouldn’t.

Who might make a nice murderer in Miss Lavender’s circle?

Mrs McAlpin? She had that strange photographer’s detachment and access to poisons. Phryne understood that photography would provide the practitioner with a reason to buy cyanide. Another thing to check. Miss Herbert? Not unless murder had suddenly become the stylish woman’s most modish accessory. Miss Prout? She certainly had the fanatical eyes of someone who might kill for a cause, but dragging
Women’s Choice
into the twentieth century didn’t seem to require the removal of Miss Lavender, though that would have to be investigated. Miss Nelson, the office girl, was certainly guilty about something, though what she had managed to get up to in sixteen blameless years was unlikely to concern the constabulary.

Mrs Opie wanted that letter back, whatever it was, and mothers had been known to be entirely ruthless if they perceived that their children were threatened. Phryne remembered the Parisian woman who had stabbed her assailant though the eye with great force. The skewer had actually pierced his skull. She was a sparrow-boned slavey who had been willing to lie down under a rapist to save her children, but when he said that he would kill her first and then them, she had taken a skewer and—snick. Not to protect herself— she didn’t think she was worth protecting—but to protect them she would dare anything. ‘
Le bon papa capable du tout
’ also applied to the
bonne mama
. Had Miss Lavender threatened anyone’s children? If so, how? She had lived quietly and, apart from an unwise indulgence in whimsy, appeared unexceptionable as a neighbour.

Who else? Mrs Charlesworth could rid herself of her unwanted staff by firing them. Killing them did appear to be taking the new vigorous policy in industrial relations a little too far. Miss Phillips was an unknown quantity, except for her tendency to burst into tears, which seemed to indicate insufficient firmness of mind for such a cool, clever murder. Miss Gallagher had a flirtatious manner and a grumpy friend. Had a flirtation gone too far? Miss Grigg was strong enough to keep back a bull from staling, and Miss Gallagher might easily have taunted and teased her into doing something which she might later regret. She showed no signs of it, however.

Perhaps Mr Bell had decided that someone who inflicted that many garden gnomes on the world was an enemy of humanity, and had taken condign action.

Phryne chuckled, butted out the gasper, and alighted from the tram with due regard for her stockings. St Kilda was simmering quietly in the strong sunlight. She might go for a bathe when she got home.

Just as she stepped out from the tram stop, a black car sped through a red light and passed so close to Phryne that the wind of it whipped off her hat. She swayed, grabbed the rail, and hauled herself to safety again.

‘The hooligans!’ exclaimed a woman behind her. ‘They nearly ran over you!’

‘So they did,’ said Phryne. ‘Did anyone see the number?’

‘J something,’ said a young man. ‘Here’s your hat, Miss. JV, I think.’

‘Chinks,’ said an old man’s voice.

‘Come along, Dad.’ A harassed, middle-aged woman was leading an old man by the elbow. ‘It wasn’t Chinks, Dad.’

‘Chinks, I say!’ declaimed the old gentleman. ‘I saw their slanty eyes. You can’t trust ’em,’ he added, as his daughter tried to steer him away.

‘Don’t pay any attention, Miss,’ said the woman, grabbing at the old man and a straying toddler and dropping her shopping bag. ‘He’s been out in the East, see, and he sees Chinks everywhere these days. It don’t mean nothing. Oh, come here, Elsie, do! Come along, Dad. Nice cup of tea at home. Not far now. I wouldn’t usually take him out with the child,’ she explained, ‘but we had to go and get his eyes tested and my girl only comes in in the morning.’

‘Of course.’ Phryne recovered the shopping bag and hung it on the woman’s arm, reattached the small child and smiled at the old man. This woman had more than enough to occupy her attention without Phryne insisting on names and addresses. The ancient gentleman was undoubtedly dotty. Even now he was reminiscing about the old days in Sarawak with dear old Brooke—‘Fine women, the Dyaks! Fine breasts! Like mangos!’—in a voice too loud for the street. His daughter was wincing with embarrassment and the toddler was whining to be carried.

Phryne put on her hat, thanked her helpers, and crossed the road. She was definitely going for a swim in the nice cold water.

But the double negative resounded in her mind. ‘It don’t mean nothing.’ Which meant, of course, that it did mean something. Chinese? What reason would a Chinese person have for wanting to kill Phryne Fisher? An inch closer, and she would have been featured in a lecture from the Police Minister on Careless Driving Costs Lives. And, come to think of it, perhaps that flying bit of road metal had been an actual bullet.

The closeness of the escape sent a thrill of pure adrenalin through her. She felt more alive than she had for weeks. Something was moving.

She arrived home, collected her costume, bathing cap, sandshoes, adoptive daughters and a robe and crossed the road to the sea. Dot did not swim unless the temperature was over a hundred and the tide on the ebb. Jane and Ruth raced across the sand and into the water, shedding robes and Jane’s glasses on the way. Phryne flung off her covering and ran, wading into the embrace of the cool water with relish, diving like a dolphin, only coming up occasionally for air. She set her sights on the horizon and began to swim for it, allowing the water to scour fear and sweat from her body.

She was a long way out when she turned and began to duck dive back, surprising a passing seal. For a moment it back-paddled as neatly as a rower, head out of the swell, whiskers quivering, its soft brown eyes and appealing wet nose exactly like those of a Labrador dog who had got lost from Labrador and stayed in the sea for a few thousand years. Phryne in her black bathing cap had caught its attention.

‘Hello,’ said Phryne affably.

The seal thought about it. Hmm … Moves like a seal. Same colour as a seal. Wrong kind of voice. Not a seal after all but—a human! It gave a snort and dived. Phryne ducked under to watch it flipper quickly away, leaving a broad margin around the human in case Phryne should suddenly manifest harpoons.

She was briefly saddened that it should be afraid of her, but charmed by the encounter. Then she swam decorously back to where the girls were lying under a palm tree, discussing mathematics. Phryne leaned on the other side of the tree and listened.

It soon appeared that Jane was discussing mathematics and Ruth was thinking about something else.

‘The Fibonacci Sequence,’ said Jane, ‘is expressed in a wavering line—plus one and minus one.’

‘Mmm,’ agreed Ruth. ‘Were you listening in history when Taggs was going on about the Opium Wars?’

‘Er … not really,’ confessed Jane. ‘I was thinking of the elegance of—’

‘The Fibothingy sequence, yes. It’s just that when Mr Lin told us about the Boxer Rebellion, he didn’t put it like that. I mean, I don’t remember him saying that the Great Powers were invited in to loot China and steal everything they could lay their hands on.’

‘I bet Taggs didn’t say that!’ said Jane, abandoning her educational attempt. Ruth, despite her manifold virtues, would probably never understand the true beauty of numbers. Devoid of politics, of emotion, thought Jane, just pure ways of expressing the symmetry of the universe, a numerical law in the spiral of seeds in the centre of the sunflower. ‘She would have said, “The Chinese were causing trouble and such was the indignation of the country that the government was forced to take forceful action in order to protect trade, the lifeblood of the British Empire. And every girl in this class may hope that she may do something to advance the cause of this most successful and just colonising and conquering Empire, which combines Empire and Liberty”.’

‘Well, all right, that’s what she
said
,’ conceded Ruth, ‘but that’s what the soldiers did. And they burned everything else.’

‘That’s how armies behave,’ said Jane matter-of-factly. ‘They kill people and destroy cities. Mr Lin would naturally have another view. It was his country they were looting and pillaging. And from the papers it is happening again. The Japanese have invaded Manchuria and have a puppet Emperor. The small generals are all fighting each other. Sun Yat Sen is dead and Chiang Kai Shek hasn’t got enough people on his side, and then there are the Communists. And, you know, Ruthie …’

‘You have been paying attention after all!’ exclaimed Ruth.

‘Miss Howard lets me read the paper in maths, you know that. She calls it “Social Studies”. She says I can read until the class catches up with me and they’ve been absolute duffers this week,’ replied Jane.

‘Of course,’ said Ruth affectionately. No one caught up with Jane in mathematics. She was always over the horizon, chasing stars.

‘I hope Mr Lin is all right.’

‘Why shouldn’t he be?’ asked Ruth, standing up and brushing sand off her legs.

‘Things are pretty bad there, and Miss Phryne’s worried about him,’ said Jane, fumbling for her glasses. They were new. Phryne had caught her holding a book up to her eyes and marched her to an oculist. They improved her vision and the squint line between her brows was vanishing but they did give Jane, whose possessions already had a tendency to stray, one more thing to lose.

Ruth had a spare pair in her school locker, in case Jane lost her own and had to go a whole day without reading. That, for Jane, would be unmitigated torture.

‘Shall we return, ladies?’ asked Phryne. ‘You’re right. I am worried about Lin Chung. But there is nothing we can do about it from here.’

‘Taggs—I mean, Miss Taggart would send a gunboat,’ said Jane.

‘Oh, how I wish I could,’ Phryne replied. ‘Now, listen, girls. I don’t want to alarm you but I had a rather unnerving encounter with a car this afternoon, and one of the witnesses said it was driven by a Chinese. Admittedly my informant was completely gaga, but just in case, I want you to go to a state of caution. Nothing to be really worried about, but make sure the windows are locked or the screens are up, let Mr Butler answer the door, and make sure someone knows where you are if you aren’t here.’

‘A Chinese? Is this something to do with Mr Lin?’ asked Jane.

‘I can’t imagine why it should be,’ said Phryne honestly. ‘Now, a drink, and then some dinner. I’ve been working for a living and I’m starving.’

Phryne sat down in her cool parlour after a light salady dinner with egg and bacon pie, one of Mrs Butler’s specialties. Mr Butler had mixed her a soothing cocktail, stressing orange juice and ice, with a little gin and perhaps a touch of Cointreau? She had a pile of texts before her and the box of letters on the floor. Her pencils were as sharp as daggers, a new notebook was open in front of her, the air temperature was warm but not hot, the girls were playing with their puppy in the garden, Dot was mending stockings and listening to the wireless in the front room, Mrs Butler had finished the washing up and retired to her own apartment to take off her corset, Mr Butler was reading the paper over his after-dinner port and all was right with her world.