Away With The Fairies (22 page)

‘I was on the
Sunming
,’ said Pirates. ‘I can’t never forget. I been tryin’ to forget ever since.’

‘But for me, you will remember,’ said Phryne.

‘’Er name’s Lai Choi San. Means Mountain of Gold. Good name.’ Pirates was about to lapse into semiconsciousness again when Bert held a cup of coffee to his mouth and he gulped. His voice strengthened. ‘She runs the whole of Bias Island. She’s Queen. She’s got a whole fleet of junks. They even take on big ships now. They took the SS
Irene
last year and would have got her away but the navy torpedoed her and got all the passengers off. And the SS
Hopsang
. She disappeared. They say Lai Choi San’s a tiny madam with a golden crown and a mean hand with a rifle. But I never seen ’er. I only seen what they did to my ship.’

‘Tell me,’ said Phryne.

As though he had been wound up like a music box, Pirates told the story of the
Sunming
. Bert noticed that the words, even the phrasing, were identical to the story he had told the night before. The dreadful story of the
Sunming
had etched itself on the poor bugger’s brain, Bert thought. You just put on the gramophone and it played the record all the way through. Phryne listened, making notes.

‘What happens to the hostages?’ she asked.

‘They call ’em
p’iao
,’ said Pirates. His recitation had made him more confident. ‘Tickets, you know, like a lottery ticket. The family pay up, they let ’em go. No hard feelings.’

Phryne bit a fingernail. ‘What could interrupt this exchange?’

‘Nothin’ I know of. They ’ave to deliver the package, or they’ll lose face. And trade. No one’s gonna give money to a pirate if he’s not gonna deliver the ticket back. The families might just talk to the British and get the navy to drop in with a warship and burn the settlement. That’s what they did last century. Set piracy back fifty years. Course, if Queen Lai wants your ticket, then you ’ave to give him to ’er.’

‘Why would she want him?’

‘I dunno. Fancy boy? Better offer? Some families might pay to have him killed, if they don’t like ’im. But if your friend’s been in China, they could have got rid of ’im there easy as kiss your ’and. Terrible place, now, China. Even the treaty ports are none too safe. Seems like a lot of trouble to go to just to get rid of one man.’

‘Yes, it does,’ said Phryne thoughtfully. ‘What do the pirates do with the ships? Burn them?’

‘Nah,’ said Pirates scornfully. He was on his fifth cup of coffee now. The strength of the brew was such that it had obliterated his trademark scent of methylated spirits. ‘They phantom ’em.’

‘Ghost ships?’ asked Phryne.

‘Phantoms,’ said Pirates. ‘They steal the ship, strip off all the identifying marks, repaint ’er, maybe change the superstructure so she don’t look the same, and then they send off for a registered name in Algiers or Liberia. Then they doctor up some false logs in the new name. The Chinese are real good at false logs. Then they take up a cargo contract from Honkers, say, or Bangkok, and deliver it and then they sell the ship. She’s got papers and a registration and she’s completed a cargo voyage, so it’s ryebuck and they’ve got a deal. Lot more money in your actual ship than there is in cargo, unless it’s gold. ’Course, if the ship’s a real rust-bucket they can just insure ’er for a lot and then scuttle ’er. Lot of good sailormen go down in insurance frauds. They say you can stand on the Peak in Hong Kong and see one phantom for every ten straight ships.’

‘I see,’ said Phryne thoughtfully. An inkling was itching at her mind. Ordinary pirates wanted money for their ticket. They got it. A sound commercial transaction. We have something you want and we will sell it to you for so much. But then the Queen of Pirates suddenly interrupts this time-honoured procedure, seizes the prisoner, and asks for the Lin family lands. Breaking the contract with the original kidnappers. She would not do that without a good reason because, as Pirates said, pirates needed to be trusted to keep their word or no one would deal with them. Did Lai Choi San want to set up her own little kingdom in disintegrating China? Piracy seemed to be a good business with expanding horizons and many opportunities for increasing profit. Why should she leave it? The possibility of the royal navy visiting with big guns? Or had she fallen in love with Lin Chung? He was definitely worth the effort and the Queen was a widow.

For a person of this lady’s acumen, that seemed unlikely. And why were the Lin family trying to kill Phryne?

‘Pirates, I want to employ you,’ said Phryne. ‘I’ve looked through the shipping lists and there’s no sign of SS
Gold
Mountain
. She was supposed to be on her way from Hong Kong but she never arrived. I’m interested in what you say about phantoms. The cargo they would have stolen isn’t of much value in Chinese waters, but would command a big price in Australia with one of the rival silk firms. So I want you and my colleagues here to comb the waterfront for
Gold Mountain
. Would you know her if she had been phantomed?’

‘Know ’er like the back of me ’and,’ said Pirates, examining the back of his hand with great interest, as though it were a novelty. ‘Did two voyages on ’er.’

‘All right. I’m giving Bert drinking money for you. No more Fitzroy cocktails for the duration, Pirates. Stick with beer. I’ll give you a pound if you find her. But you have to be positive and that means you have to stay off the metho. If you sneak out on Bert and Cec again and fill yourself full of poison, then the deal’s off. And the horrors you’ll get from metho will be pleasant dreams compared to what I’ll do to you,’ she added with a sudden cold ferocity which took all of the company by surprise.

‘Yessir,’ said Pirates automatically. ‘Beer it is, sir.’

‘Double rates,’ said Phryne to Bert and Cec. ‘This will not be amusing.’

‘Fair enough,’ said Bert. ‘On the wharf, we get dirt money for handling noxious cargoes.’

‘They don’t come a lot more noxious,’ said Phryne. ‘But if he can find Lin Chung for me, I’m willing to kiss him.’

‘I don’t reckon we need to go that far, Miss,’ said Bert. ‘If yer feel like kissin’ anyone, it might as well be Cec and me. Yer might catch something offa Pirates.’

Phryne admitted the truth of this and watched them cart their prisoner away, one on each side, like jailers.

Jack Robinson passed them on the steps.

‘Taking him in for questioning?’ he asked, struck by their resemblance to two arresting officers and a miscreant.

‘Nah,’ said Bert, who did not like policemen. ‘We leave that to the jacks. Miss Fisher’s just given him a job, and we got to keep him sober to do it.’

‘Good luck,’ said Robinson, noting that their prisoner had all the earmarks of a man so far down the road to Grog Country that Sobriety couldn’t have reached him unless it was on the telephone.

‘Thanks,’ Bert grunted. As Robinson was admitted, he heard the drunk begin to sing in a high, sweet tenor, ‘Show me the way to go home, I’m tired and I wanna go to bed, I had a little drink about an hour ago, and it’s gone right to my head …

’ ‘Strange visitors,’ he commented to Dot.

‘Another case,’ replied Dot. ‘Come in and let’s swap stories. I’ve been investigating,’ she informed the Detective Inspector.

‘Did you like it?’ he asked.

‘Sort of. It’s interesting. But it takes a lot of front to just go up to someone and demand that they tell you all their secrets.’

‘I know,’ said Robinson, handing over his hat and coat to Mr Butler.

Ten minutes was enough to summarise the developments so far.

‘So it’s not the Keiths. We know their secret. It ain’t Anne or the cleaning lady. Or so Miss Dot says, and I trust her judgment.’ Dot blushed at the compliment. ‘And here’s the address of “Desperate”.’

‘Oh, well done, Jack, dear!’ exclaimed Phryne, shaking herself bodily out of Pirates’ horribly vivid narrative. ‘However did you manage it?’

‘My chief and the Postmaster General play golf together,’ said Jack. ‘I also brought what was in the safety deposit box in the Commonwealth Bank.’

‘The manager is another golf partner?’

‘Every Saturday,’ agreed Jack. ‘If the chief takes up chess instead, like he’s always threatening to do when he has a bad round, we’ll be in dead trouble. Mind you, the chaps who’ve had to go and fetch him from the tee reckon that you can only look at his knickerbockers through smoked glass, so it might be a bit of a gain for the aesthetic life of Melbourne. But we had the key of the safety deposit box. They had to let us look at it.’

‘Good,’ said Phryne. ‘I hope we have a will.’

‘We have. Drawn up by herself, I think. Typed on her Corona. Documents don’t reckon it’s been tampered with. Trouble is, she leaves all her money to the Lost Dogs’ Home and the Presbyterian Church.’

‘Oh dear. Not a lot of motive there, is there? I’ve heard of fanatical dog people, but I doubt they’d kill someone just to get the money. Though there have been a lot of dogs in this case. That awful beast Ping, and Mrs Corder’s McTavish. I don’t think it’s relevant, however. The only people we know who go to the Presbyterian Church are Mrs McAlpin and— are the Hewlands Presbyters? We’d better find out. That reminds me, Dot, we need to look through the letters I brought home the first time. Which one, I wonder, was Mrs Opie groping for? She’s not in the clear. In fact, none of the cast is.’

‘Especially now we know that Miss Lavender used her knowledge of someone’s secrets to put pressure on them,’ said Dot. ‘That’s not a good idea. What if someone gets angry?’

‘Yes, but she would have known when to draw back,’ Phryne mused. ‘When Miss Keith defied her, she did nothing. Though of course we don’t know what she intended to do. What else is in the box, Jack?’

‘Bundle of letters, a couple of photographs and this.’ Robinson exhibited a scrap of cloth with some dark reddish marks on it.

‘Blood?’ asked Phryne.

‘I don’t think so. Wrong colour. Blood as dry as this turns black. Feels like canvas. Might be paint.’

‘The edge of a painting, perhaps,’ said Phryne. ‘And she was trying to force Margery Keith into spying on Mr Bell. We need to know more about that interesting young man. Add him to your list, Jack, if you please. Have you found Marshall and Co. yet?’

‘Got a clerk onto it at the Companies Register. Not a Victorian company. We’ve called Sydney and they’re searching.’

‘More letters,’ said Dot.

‘Yes, this is an excessively epistolatory case, isn’t it? I never want to see another missive, Dot, I agree. Now what have we here? Letter from Pater to Mater about education. Letter in superfine linen envelope with splashing red seal on the back. It’s from …’ Phryne’s eyebrows rose. ‘A lady who signs herself “Devoted” to an unknown gentleman. Nice turn of phrase, if a little gushing. “If I can’t see you and touch you, I go cold and blank. The world turns grey and the people are all sad. Even the birds do not sing, the fish sleep in the water and the trees shed their leaves in the autumn of your absence. Lacking you, I have nothing at all.” Not Miss L’s writing, posted in Sydney. Is that why you are looking there for the company, Jack?’

‘Partly. It’s always a next step.’

‘Letter from “Devoted” complaining of her lover’s cruelty in staying away so long across the sea. How provoking. She doesn’t say which sea. Not much to identify the lover. Chestnut hair. Eyes like stars. “Come back before the vine bears grapes”.’

Dot gave a squeak of excitement. ‘Miss, it sounds like she’s talking about the garden at Tintern Avenue. Fish in the pool, leaves on the trees, the vine. Miss Grigg has a vine.’

‘And I cannot imagine Miss Grigg writing this, Dot. Though love makes poets of us all, I believe.’

‘Miss Gallagher,’ suggested Robinson.

‘Bingo,’ said Phryne. ‘Just her style. Check it with her handwriting. But the letters are not recent. Postmark’s illegible but I can just see the twenty-six at the end. Two years ago. One would have thought that the lover would have come back across the sea by now.’

‘Maybe he has,’ said Robinson. ‘But Miss L kept these letters for a reason, we may be sure of that.’

‘True, and tied with a blue ribbon. And what we have here is a bundle of bills of lading for the Melbourne waterfront. Marshall and Co. Delivery of various crates containing, and I quote, “art objects”. Despatch note says “Origin: Napoli”. Marshall and Co. buy things from Naples. Seems an unobjectionable practice.’

‘Depends on what they buy. Would it be drugs, perhaps?’ asked Robinson.

‘Perhaps. Is Italy a well-known source of illegal drugs?’

‘No, Miss, it don’t have to be. Drugs from other places come into Naples, a rough port, they say, and they are transhipped here.’

‘It must be something illegal,’ Dot pointed out, ‘or Marshall and Co. wouldn’t be paying Miss Lavender to keep quiet about the trade.’

‘True. Well, Jack, thanks for the display. I’ll go and see “Desperate” tomorrow.’ Then, observing Dot’s disappointed face, she said, ‘Or rather, I will go to
Women’s Choice
, where they should be all relaxed because the paper’s gone off to the printer. I’m meeting Madame Fleuri there, to start remaking the Worth. Dot will go and see what happened to “Desperate”. Poor girl. Will that suit?’

‘Yes, thanks, Miss,’ said Dot.

‘You keep looking for Marshall and Co. and get Mr Bell’s service record, and I’ll go over those letters and find Mrs Opie’s. Someone is fibbing to us about what went on in that garden the night Miss Lavender died, Jack.’

‘Of course they are, Miss Fisher. But the fact that they’re lying doesn’t make them a murderer, and we’ve made some progress to tell the chief. At least we’re getting a better idea of who it wasn’t.’

‘That’s what my mother used to say,’ said Dot. ‘You always find the thing in the last place you looked.’

‘Because that’s when you stop searching,’ said Jack, and took his leave.

When he’d gone, Dot brought the box of letters and sat down next to Phryne as instructed.

‘Look at me,’ said Phryne. ‘You’re sitting on a rustic bench and it’s nearly dark so you can’t see, and in any case you don’t want me to notice that you’re feeling around in my … er … property. Feel over the letters and take out each one which seems different.’