Away With The Fairies (25 page)

‘Yes. Grab Tommy, Mr Green, and send him back this way. That brass pot is none too stable.’

‘Back to the lady, son,’ said Mr Green, who was getting the idea. ‘Well, if someone killed that woman, she had only herself to blame.’

‘Perhaps,’ said Dot. ‘Tell me, have the Hewlands been told of their daughter’s passing?’

‘I sent them a letter,’ said Mr Green, catching Tommy and directing him towards the window. ‘They live in a fancy boarding house in Toorak.’

‘Tintern Avenue?’ asked Dot.

‘Yes, that’s the place. But I’ve not heard a word. I’m sure they won’t come to the funeral either. Not that I want to see them.’

A key turned in the lock and a large, dark-haired, robust-looking woman came in, laden with bags. She set them down in time to catch Tommy as he made a spirited attempt to fall out the window.

‘I can’t imagine how anyone survives being two,’ she exclaimed. ‘Up you come, my lad. Hello, Bob, I’ve got the supplies. A couple of women are coming tomorrow to start the cleaning and I can stay until you find a housekeeper. Cheer up, old chap.’

Tommy grabbed at her hair and secured a long lock.

‘This is Miss Williams,’ said Mr Green. ‘This is my sister Joan. Miss Williams came to ask me about Artemis. It seems that she’s dead.’

‘Good,’ said Joan. ‘Now you can stop thinking about her.’

‘Baby’s asleep,’ said Dot, handing her over. Miss Green took her with an offhand gentleness which boded well for the Green children. She looked Dot up and down and approved of what she saw.

‘Thanks for coming,’ she said. ‘It’s a weight off his mind and he’s got enough to worry about, poor chap.’

‘Not at all,’ said Dot, and saw herself out of the house.

‘How did you go?’ asked Mr Butler, easing the big car away from the kerb.

‘Dead end,’ said Dot, and was shocked at her callousness.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

The third line, divided, shows the subject straitened
before a frowning rock. He lays hold of
thorns. He enters his palace and does not see his
wife. There will be evil.

Hexagram 47: Khwan
The I Ching Book of Changes

Dot was driven back to the city. She was glad of the silver-mounted thermos to which Mr Butler directed her attention. Really, that Artemis had made a hash of things! Although Dot’s sympathy lay with the bereaved father and, if pressed, she also might have told Mrs Green to get up and at least feed the children and wash the floor, she did see that in some cases this was not useful advice. Vapours were one thing, real mental illness another, and who could hope to tell the difference from a letter? Artemis had been either very daring or very stupid, and neither sounded like Miss Lavender, despite her fascination with fairies.

Women’s Choice
was largely occupied with watching Mrs McAlpin take a photograph of Miss Herbert in a very old-fashioned dress. In order to take advantage of the big theatrical floodlights, Miss Herbert was standing insecurely on a chair in her high heels, bustle and train, and Mrs McAlpin was paying no attention to anything at all except the placing and focusing of her camera.

Dot sidled in. Phryne drew her to stand by the door.

‘Is she going to fall off that chair?’ asked Dot. ‘And what a horrible old dress!’

‘I hope not, and it’s a Worth model and I won’t hear a word against it,’ said Phryne. ‘You wait and see what Madame Fleuri can do to it.’

‘Oh, if it’s Madame,’ said Dot. ‘She can do anything. She could make an elegant ensemble out of two sugar sacks and a hay bag for a hat. Miss, I met Mr Green. Poor man. His wife killed herself and left him with two small children. It was all Artemis’s fault. He said he’d hunt her down and kill her when he got his house settled.’

‘But he hasn’t got his house settled yet?’

‘No, Miss.’

‘And therefore he hasn’t started hunting?’

‘No, Miss.’

‘That will be a relief to Miss Prout. Much as she might enjoy being hunted down by a good-looking man,’ said Phryne venomously.

‘Miss Prout wrote the letters? I thought they were wrong for Miss Lavender.’

‘You thought right. And I have some other things to try. Miss Prout voluble but useless. What a distressingly stupid young woman! And yet I suspect she is right about what women want. Scandal broth, with envy and malice
en crouton
. Oh, well,’ said Phryne, dismissing the future of women’s magazines with a wave of her cigarette holder. ‘Some will survive to hand out book reviews, recipes and gardening hints, with a few sly bits of information on man-management and divorce. For, Dot, have you ever thought what will happen when the present generation of little boys grow up? They’ll want the world back, and we’ll probably be fools enough to give it to them.’

‘Maybe,’ said Dot.

Miss Herbert wobbled perilously but did not fall. Mrs McAlpin finally said, ‘Stay just like that,’ and vanished under her black hood. A shutter clicked. Mrs McAlpin emerged.

‘That might be quite passable,’ she said. ‘Could someone help Miss Herbert down? And we can switch off the floods now. They do make the room so hot.’

She took her precious plate and disappeared down the stairs to the darkroom.

‘Well, Madame,’ said Phryne, helping Miss Herbert onto terra firma and dusting her a little, ‘what do you think?’

Madame Fleuri was a small woman, clad in deepest black. Her figure was that of a cottage loaf, stuck about the bosom with pins and threaded needles. Scissors hung at her belt on a piece of tape. Her hair was drawn straight back into a chignon. She was brisk, intelligent and an acknowledged priestess of the mode, which she served with grim devotion.

She had been head forewoman in the
ateliers
of Poitou when she had fallen in love with an Australian soldier as he rode through the Champs Élysées with feathers in his hat. She had followed him to Melbourne. Such, as she liked to say, was the power of
l’amour
, for she still missed Paris badly, especially in the autumn.

The aged Frenchwoman clicked her tongue. ‘The muslin is
inutile
and must go. Then we unpick a little—such stitching! It seems an offence!—and then we relay the fabric over your model. We can use the beaded front panels, yes, they will do.’

‘I’ll leave you to it,’ said Phryne.

‘You see, ’ere,’ said Madame Fleuri. ‘The fabric ’as been discoloured by sunlight. It ’as made a
charmant
effect, turning the red towards blue. We shall use it.’

Something chimed in Phryne’s head. There had been something out of place in Miss Lavender’s Wee Nooke. What had it been? Among a sea of pink, something of another colour?

The connection refused to be made. Phryne watched Dot sit down with Madame and begin to undo the side seams. Swathes of heavy satin spread themselves over half the room. Mrs Charlesworth had retreated to her office. Miss Nelson, much comforted by having come through her ordeal with her honour intact, sat peacefully unpicking the hem. Phryne threaded her way through the rampant dressmaking and arrived at Miss Grigg’s desk. She and Mr Bell were sorting through the remaining bulbs and packing them in a smaller box.

‘What’s wrong with the other ones?’ asked Phryne.

‘Small flaws,’ said Mr Bell. ‘Too immature, worm-eaten or frostbitten. I plant them in the nature strip, so they’re not wasted.’

‘How difficult is it to grow primroses in an Australian climate?’ asked Phryne. He raised his head quickly and looked her in the eyes. He had been good-looking before the burns had disfigured and distorted his face. Now it was hard to guess his expression.

‘You can’t grow them except in places where there is a reasonable snowfall,’ he replied. ‘One might keep the seed-tray in the bottom of the ice-box, of course. The rest of the household mightn’t like it, though. Why do you ask?’

‘Just curious. What sort of bulbs are these?’

‘Daffodils,’ said Miss Grigg. ‘Doubles. I always put the bulbs in when the tomatoes come out.’

‘This year I thought we might try some of the smaller, more delicate flowers under the elm tree,’ observed Mr Bell. His hands on the bulbs were tanned and coarse, gardener’s hands. ‘Sparaxis, blue bells, ixia, maybe cyclamen.You remember them in the Toscana, drifts of purple points in the coarse grass?’

‘My word I do,’ said Miss Grigg.

‘When were you last in Italy?’ asked Phryne. ‘I was there in twenty-four. In spring.’

‘Lucky,’ said Miss Grigg. ‘That’s when I left. Couldn’t stand that bounder Mussolini. Me and Gally packed up the house and home we came, like swallows to Capistrano.’

‘Boomerangs,’ chuckled Mr Bell. ‘That’s what they say. Australian girls are boomerangs. They always come home. And before you ask, Miss Fisher, I returned to these shores in twenty-six, when my father died.’

‘Was your father in the antiques business, too?’ asked Phryne, selecting a bulb and turning it in her fingers. Amazing. Packed into this onion-shaped little package was force enough to hammer a shoot through a cobbled street and beauty enough to adorn a palace and scent a whole room. Mr Bell took the bulb, politely but firmly.

‘If you wouldn’t mind not handling them while you are smoking? Tobacco contains little germs which don’t do plants any good. Mosaic leaf, for instance. Yes, my father was in the antiques business. Not in a major way. I’ve managed to improve trade with a bit more import and export.’

‘I see. What do you make of Miss Prout’s actions?’

‘Silly bi—’ Mr Bell caught himself in time. ‘Sorry, ladies. Foolish young woman. She might have known that someone would find out. And she hasn’t the brain God gave to geese.’

‘Amen,’ said Miss Grigg. ‘Well, that’s your bulbs, John. I’m not a lot of use in sewing, so I’d better be getting back to my wiring. I don’t think this new amplifier is going to work, you know. But I’m not making any judgments in advance.’

‘I can’t sew either,’ said Phryne. ‘So I might just go and watch. Like the idle rich.’ She smiled and clambered back over what seemed to be acres of plum-coloured satin, faded by sunlight into a attractive bluish sheen.

An idea had taken root and was growing like one of Mr Bell’s bulbs. But premature action would ruin all. She needed the information from the Companies Register in Sydney. In the meantime, she would go and talk to the Hewlands about their dead daughter. Could they really be as unconcerned as Mr Green supposed?

Mrs McAlpin came back with a wet proof sheet, which she held by the corners.

‘Not bad,’ she said, allowing Phryne to see it.

‘You have this remarkable talent for revealing the soul of the model,’ exclaimed Phryne, peering over her shoulder. ‘There’s Miss Herbert, a little frightened, a little unsteady, but terribly pleased with herself and rather innocent.’

‘Thank you. Shall I pencil you in? I should like to photograph you,’ said Mrs McAlpin.

‘I don’t know if I want to be revealed,’ said Phryne frankly. ‘You might show me something about myself which I don’t want to see. Like that portrait of Miss Lavender. And I would have said that you liked her, if anyone did.’

‘That is true,’ said Mrs McAlpin. ‘I did. But the camera sees things differently. And in your case, Miss Fisher, it won’t show you anything you didn’t know was there. I fancy it might have come as a surprise to Miss Lavender, though.’

‘Yet she kept the picture,’ wondered Phryne.

‘It was a good picture,’ said Mrs McAlpin.

Miss Herbert, invited to inspect her likeness, gave a squeal of delight. Mrs McAlpin plastered the picture against a bundle of advertising spills to dry.

‘I’ve read Miss Lavender’s will,’ said Phryne. ‘Did you know she left half of her estate to your church?’

‘Her church as well. Did she so? That is interesting. Poor Marcella. Trying to buy her way into heaven. Not that others haven’t had the same idea.’

Phryne collected the letter book, retrieved Mr Butler from downstairs, and had herself driven to Toorak.

Mr and Mrs Hewland were sitting in their absolutely clean, absolutely neat front parlour when Phryne came calling. Both pairs of calm eyes turned on her as she was shown in by Mercy Porter.

‘I have come to offer condolences on the death of your daughter,’ said Phryne.

‘We have no daughter,’ stated Mr Hewland.

‘Yes, you have. Well, you had. I’m talking about Alexandra, the one who married Mr Green and gave you two fine grandchildren,’ said Phryne.

‘Bastard slips shall take no root,’ said Mr Hewland. His face was as responsive as a terracotta Etruscan warrior. Beside him, his wife nodded agreement.

‘Unless, there’s something you’re not telling me, she wasn’t a bastard. She was your legitimate daughter. She developed post-natal depression and drank chloral to cure it, which it has. You must remember,’ Phryne urged.

‘No,’ said Mr Hewland, with a curious, martyr’s smile beginning to dawn on his stony face. ‘We have no daughter. A young woman who was related to us married against our wishes to a man from an inferior race. Thus she demonstrated that she was not of our blood and we cut off all contact with her and her debased brood. “Thou art cast out of thy grave like an abominable branch”,’ he added, for emphasis.

‘Well, in that case,’ said Phryne, on whom scripture lessons had not been wasted, ‘all I can say is “Though I speak in the tongues of men and angels and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal”, 1 Corinthians 13:1, and I will bid you good day.’

‘I will see you out,’ said Mrs Hewland.

Once she was out of sight of her husband, Mrs Hewland grasped Phryne’s arm.

‘How did she die? Was it suicide?’

‘More like accident,’ said Phryne. ‘She was so depressed that she wouldn’t have remembered how many swigs she had taken from the chloral bottle. Her husband is coping. But the children—who, by the way, are as white as I am, no shame to them if they were not—could do with a grandmother.’

Mrs Hewland dragged in a deep breath. ‘She sent me a photograph. I steamed open the letter before I sent it back.’

‘Why didn’t you keep it?’

‘Mr Hewland would not allow it. If he felt that I was carrying on a clandestine correspondence he would be very angry. And the doctor says that he’ll die if he bursts an aneurysm. I can’t let him upset himself. Perhaps, after …’