Away With The Fairies (24 page)

‘Six months ago,’ said Miss Prout sullenly. ‘I noticed that Artemis never handled the really important letters, the ones about sex and death, the ones about life. She stuck to divorce and interior decorating and advice about the complexion. The readers needed to know about the real things.’

‘So you got Miss Nelson to take out the “hot” letters and give them to you. What did you do?’

‘I couldn’t get them published, so I answered them,’ said Miss Prout. ‘Better than Artemis would have, with real advice.’

‘And froze onto the fees, as well?’

‘Well, yes, I was earning it.’

‘It never occurred to you that there was a reason why Artemis didn’t answer the “hot” letters?’

‘Just timidity,’ said Miss Prout scornfully. ‘She was too scared and too old-maidish to tackle the real things.’

‘Let’s see what your track record was,’ said Phryne with ominous gentleness. ‘You advised Anne to seduce a husband who had entered into a marriage on the understanding that it was to be companionate, which means, of course, no sexual contact. You counselled her to break her word, compromise her husband’s trust and behave, as she said, like a tart. Do you know what happened?’

‘No,’ said Miss Prout.

‘Her husband walked out on her,’ said Phryne. ‘And she sent a letter threatening death to Miss Lavender, who was the stalking horse for your mistakes. That is how I found out about you. I was reading the returned post, looking for murderers. Anne was not only misadvised, but laid herself open to the danger of being accused of murder.’

‘It was good advice,’ muttered Miss Prout. ‘She must have done it wrong. All men can be attracted by a pretty gown and a nice dinner.’

Miss Grigg giggled. It was such an unexpected sound that everyone’s eyes turned to her. She hid her face in her wiring.

‘You know very little about the big bad world,’ said Phryne. ‘And then when a cleaning woman who desperately needed some money asked what she should do about the ten-shilling note she’d found, you counselled her to ’fess up.’

‘Yes,’ said Miss Prout, aggressively.

‘And she lost her job, as might have been expected, and she wrote to Miss Lavender saying she was going to kill her, thus exposing herself to the same charge as Anne.’

‘It’s better to confess,’ said Miss Prout pompously. ‘Theft in the lower orders cannot be condoned.’

‘Your moral standards do you credit,’ said Phryne with frightening irony. ‘Are you beginning to see a pattern here, Miss Prout? From your very minor knowledge, you are presuming to advise women on all manner of problems of which you know nothing. You’ve never lain down with a man, you’ve never borne a child, you’ve never kept a house, you’ve never been poor or hungry or tempted beyond bearing. Miss Lavender gave safe advice, which could not cause harm. Counselling Christian resignation to a beaten wife is only what society is saying to her and perhaps may be what she wants to hear. If she is to take action, she must do it on her own, not because some magazine sibyl tells her to. What did you say to “Desperate”? Because that’s what brought the wrought undone, isn’t it? Getting that returned letter with “Deceased” on it?’

‘She wrote to me seven times,’ said Miss Prout defiantly. ‘I was encouraging her. Telling her to pull her socks up.’

‘Yes, I thought you might have been,’ said Phryne.

The rest of the office was staring at Miss Prout in silence. She looked around for the first time, from face to face. Miss Gallagher avoided her eyes. Miss Herbert stared at her in horror. Mrs McAlpin looked disgusted, Miss Phillips blank, Mrs Opie nervous, Mr Bell ironically amused. Miss Grigg, after her lapse, kept her regard on her magneto. Miss Prout’s gaze was drawn to Mrs Charlesworth’s face. For the first time the younger woman registered fear. Her defiance drained away. Mrs Charlesworth was beside herself with rage.

‘Get out,’ she said through her teeth. ‘Pack your things and get out. Your actions have brought women into danger and my magazine into disrepute. You are a fool. What’s more, you are a malicious, hot-headed, self-important fool. You have influenced the most easily led of my staff to betray her duty and exposed my magazine to calumny. Who will believe in our assurance of confidentiality now? If it had not been for Miss Fisher you might have continued in this course and caused more deaths. Why did Miss Lavender give anodyne advice? Because that is the only safe advice to give. Even the Delphic oracle wrapped her words in obscurity.’

‘But what will I do?’ asked Miss Prout.

Mrs Charlesworth grew another inch in height and said, ‘I do not care, but if you are not out of my office in ten minutes I shall—’

‘Call the police?’ sneered Miss Prout. ‘They’d like to hear what I have to say.’

‘Would they?’ asked Phryne. ‘Tell me. What have you to say?’

‘About all this,’ said Miss Prout, growing desperate. ‘About the letters.’

‘Is there anything else about the letters to which you would draw my attention?’

‘I wasn’t the only one who took letters out of the book.’

‘Oh? Who else?’

‘All of them.’ Miss Prout made a broad gesture.

‘If there was a gardening letter, it was sent to me,’ said Mr Bell in weary explanation. ‘If there was an enquiry about child care it went to Mrs Opie, and so on. Is that what you mean, you silly woman?’

‘So all of you wrote replies to letters relating to your special interests,’ said Phryne. ‘Nothing else to tell the cops, Miss Prout?’

Miss Prout subsided, shaking her head.

‘Right, then. Off you go,’ said Mrs Charlesworth. ‘Miss Phillips, make up her pay. Miss Grigg, make sure that she only takes what is hers.’

‘I’ll help you with your things,’ Phryne offered. Miss Prout, who seemed stunned, allowed Phryne to assist her with a large straw basket and a handbag. Miss Grigg, embarrassed, had nevertheless watched it being packed. It contained no letters or documents. Miss Phillips handed over a small envelope containing her pay up to that day, calculated on the outside in black ink.

From the exclusion order to the stairs, Miss Prout was out of the office in under ten minutes. Behind her, Phryne felt the tension ease. Whatever the person had feared had not come to pass.

Phryne hefted the basket, looked both ways in case of Chinese assassins, and helped Miss Prout across the road and into a tea shop.

‘I only wanted to help,’ wailed Miss Prout, the full horror of her situation dawning upon her at last.

‘I know,’ said Phryne. ‘But you didn’t help, did you? “Desperate” is dead. You must not tell depressives to buck up and stop blubbering. Anne’s marriage nearly broke up. The cleaning lady was sacked and she has a sick child. If you want to give advice, you have to know something first. Now drink your tea,’ said Phryne, ‘and tell me what you wouldn’t say in that office with them all staring at you.’

‘Why should I do that? You got me sacked.’

‘No, you got you sacked,’ said Phryne patiently. ‘And if you’ll allow me to say so, you have no talent for intrigue. You gave yourself away by reacting when I said that Miss Nelson had confessed. I’ll give you a pound to tide you over until you can get another job. And an introduction to the editor of the first Australian
True Confessions Magazine
, which is starting up as we speak. You ought to find a niche there. Here it is,’ said Phryne, laying a letter and a pound note on the table. ‘Now, talk.’

Dot drew confidence from the big car and the presence of Mr Butler, as Phryne had hoped that she would. As the Hispano-Suiza rolled along Dynon Road past the railway yards, she rehearsed some platitudes which might get her past the door. Nothing like a smooth sentence which might slip past a sore mind without rasping the nerves. The sort of thing one always said. Regret. Sorrow. Resignation. God’s will.

Mr Butler drew up at the door of a large house on the road which curved past the Williamstown railway line. There were mock orange bushes blooming as Dot walked up the path to a front door shrouded in black crepe.

‘Yes?’ a man opened the door. ‘If you’re from the newspapers you can bloody well go away.’

‘I’m not from the papers,’ said Dot. ‘I come from—’

A wail inside turned into a shriek and a crash. Dot sprinted into the house and extracted a small child from the remains of a large jardinière which had been filled with ferns. Now it was broken and the child was emerging from the compost, bleeding from the forehead and screaming with shock. A baby yelled in the back of the house. The noise was appalling.

The man sat down abruptly in an easy chair and began to cry.

Knowing that he would never forgive her if she took any notice of his tears—it was well known that men did not cry— Dot hefted the child out of the shattered china, brushed it off, and carried it into the kitchen. The house was not filthy but dingy, as though it had been years since it had been properly cleaned. Dot sat the child on the sink and washed its forehead. There was only a small cut and a big bump. The child stopped screaming and settled down to a solid, cadenced sobbing.

‘There now,’ said Dot. ‘We’ll just patch up your head and then we’ll see if we have a biscuit.’

‘Mummy!’ sobbed the child.

‘Oh dear,’ said Dot. ‘Here’s a biscuit,’ she said, finding an ancient ginger one still in the grocer’s bag. ‘Now you shall go back to Daddy while Dot goes and finds that baby.’

‘Dot?’ hazarded the child, trying out the new word. He walked beside Dot and scrambled up into his father’s lap, demanding that he kiss the bump better. Dot left them there and located the baby by sound. It was wet, hot, cross and hungry.

These faults could be mended. Dot found the means and worked with unthinking efficiency. She took the baby and the bottle into the parlour and sat down in a straight backed chair to feed it. The hungry gums clamped onto the teat and the bottle emptied rapidly. Silence filled the house.

‘Are you an angel?’ asked the man.

‘No, I’m Dot Williams. I’m investigating another matter and I need to ask you some questions. But haven’t you any assistance?’ she asked, which was not on her brief.

‘My sister was supposed to be here by now,’ said Mr Green helplessly. ‘I haven’t ever touched the children. Alex wouldn’t let me. Said men couldn’t know anything about it. Now she’s gone and I’m useless.’

‘Just unpractised,’ Dot said. ‘Your sister will show you what to do. But until she comes I have to tell you never to leave a two year old alone. It’s amazing how fast they move and they’re always pulling things down. They can get anywhere, climb like a monkey, and they’ve got no sense of danger at all.’

‘I can see that. I only looked away for a minute.’

‘Long enough,’ said Dot, joggling the baby expertly.

‘Thank you, Miss Williams. What do you want to know?’

‘Tell me about how your wife passed on.’

‘Not much to tell. She was always nervy. Ever since Tommy was born. Then she got better for a while, and then after Elsie she got worse again. Of course, her parents cut her off, so we had a bad start.’

‘Oh? Why?’ Dot burped the baby and nursed it in her lap as Mr Green talked.

‘For marrying me,’ said Mr Green with a wry twist to his mouth.

‘What was their objection?’ asked Dot.

‘I’m one-eighth Aboriginal,’ he said bitterly. ‘They said it would come out in the babies. It hasn’t, has it?’

‘No,’ said Dot. ‘Wouldn’t matter if it did,’ she added. ‘Perfectly sweet,’ she said to the baby in her lap. It gooed and pawed at her face.

‘But the Hewlands said that if she married a man with a touch of the tar brush they’d cut her off and never speak of her again, turn her picture to the wall, all that melodramatic rubbish, and they did it. Not a word, not a Christmas card. Things she sent to them came back “refused by addressee”. It upset her, though she said it didn’t.’

‘That’s terrible,’ murmured Dot.

‘But she was all right until the babies came. She kept finding some trace of blackness in them, the palms of their hands were too pale, their eye colour changing from blue to brown.’

‘All babies do that,’ Dot told him.

‘She wrote to that bitch Artemis from some women’s magazine and she believed the answers when she wouldn’t believe anyone else. Artemis kept telling her that it was nothing, just a passing mood.’

‘Did she keep the letters?’

‘I burned them,’ said Mr Green savagely. ‘Artemis told her to ignore the doctor who told her to go and talk to a psychiatrist because she had post-natal depression. So she refused to go. When I took her to see the man the doctor recommended she screamed at me that I was trying to lock her up in the madhouse.’

‘How did you feel about that?’ asked Dot.

‘I was angry. I lost my temper. I told her that if she didn’t do something to help herself I would send her to the hospital. I shouldn’t have said that. But the house was always dirty, there was never anything to eat, I couldn’t bring anyone home. The children were always grubby and crying. Some days she didn’t even get out of bed and I’d come home to the babies screaming and nothing to give them. And then she wouldn’t let me help. She’d drag herself out of bed in her old nightie and haul herself around the house dropping things and crying. Almost as though she was doing it for revenge. Almost as though she hated me.’

‘She didn’t hate you,’ said Dot.

‘Then one day I came home and the babies were crying and the house was filthy and I stormed up the stairs to yell at her and she was dead. And cold. She’d taken an overdose of chloral. The doctor said she must have taken it as soon as I left for work in the morning. I called the police and they took her away.’

‘And left you with two babies and no idea of how to cope.’

‘Yes.’

‘Did you know who Artemis was?’

‘No, but once I get a housekeeper settled in and the house running again, I’m going to hunt the bitch down and kill her. If she hadn’t interfered, I might still have a wife and the children might still have a mother.’

‘Too late,’ said Dot. ‘Someone already has. She’s dead. Murdered.’

‘Oh,’ said Mr Green, blankly. Tommy, who had spread his biscuit all over his face and his father’s shirt front, wriggled off his lap and headed for the fire irons. Dot fended him expertly and sent him back towards his father. ‘Is that what you are investigating?’