Introducing the Honourable Phryne Fisher (12 page)

‘I’m not ready for something as quiet as that. What about this one?’ she asked, patting the bright red enamel of a Hispano-Suiza racing car. It was built rakishly low, wide-bodied to hold up an engine of fiendish power. The young man looked Phryne up and down, attempting to gauge her nerve.

‘Take it out for a spin, shall we? Then you will see that I can drive her all right. I wouldn’t harm a lovely lady like this—but I need a fast car. Come on.’

The young man threw down the cotton rag and followed helplessly.

He watched Phryne narrowly as she choked the engine, swung the starter with a skilled flip, and started the engine. The cylinders cut in with a roar; the muffler was not a standard piece of equipment on this car. Phryne took the wheel, released the brake, and the car rolled out into Spencer Street. She achieved a neat turn to the left.

They were a mile out along past the cricket ground when she opened the throttle and allowed the full power of the engine to surge forward. The mileometer flicked up into the red; the mechanic leaned forward and bellowed, ‘That’s fast enough, Miss! I’m convinced! You can have her!’

Phryne allowed the car to slacken speed and, for the first time, took her eye off the road. She seemed a little disappointed.

‘Oh, very well,’ she grumbled, completed a screaming U-turn, and proceeded to whisk the mechanic back to his garage with more expedition and skill than he had before experienced.

They swept into the garage, and Phryne stopped the engine. ‘I want it for a week, to begin with,’ she said affably. The young man observed that her shining cap of black hair was not even ruffled. ‘I don’t mind what it costs,’ she added. ‘And if you really jib at hiring it out, I’ll buy it. A lovely vehicle . . . how much?’

‘I don’t want to sell it, Miss, I’m going to race it myself . . . I rebuilt the engine, took me two months . . .’

‘Fifty quid for the week?’ offered Phryne, and the mechanic, with a celerity not entirely induced by this monstrous offer, tossed the starting handle into the car and received the bundle of notes.

Phryne restarted the warm engine, set the car at Spencer Street as she would set a hunting hack at a hedge, and roared out, scattering pedestrians. The young man picked up the card, noticed that his client was staying at the Windsor, and closed the shop early. He needed a drink.

Phryne rolled to a halt at the main entrance to the hotel and called to the doorman. ‘Where can I leave her?’

The man’s jaw dropped. He hurried forward. ‘Park her just here, Miss, and I’ll keep an eye on her. Beautiful car, Miss. Lagonda, is she?’

‘Hispano-Suiza; see the stork on the radiator cap? First one was built for King Alfonso of Spain—this is the 46CV, isn’t she splendid?’

Phryne eased the car into the indicated kerb and switched off the engine. She swallowed to regain her hearing. The Hispano-Suiza had been roaring like a lion.

She ran up the steps and ascended the great staircase, reached her own suite, and surprised Dot in the middle of darning a stocking, so that she ran a needle into her finger.

‘Leave that, Dot, we’re going for a ride.’

‘A ride, Miss? In a motor-car?’ Dot sucked her finger and draped the stocking over the chair back. ‘What shall you wear?’

Phryne was already rummaging in the wardrobe, flinging clothes out by the armload.

‘Trousers, perhaps, and a big coat. I know that it’s May, but it’s freezing out there. Shall we go for a picnic?’

‘It might rain,’ said Dot doubtfully, rehanging the garments as Phryne tossed them away.

‘Never mind. The car’s got a hood. Ring down and ask the kitchen for a luncheon basket. And an umbrella.’

Phryne found her greatcoat and donned trousers in dark, respectable bank-manager’s serge, while Dot obeyed.

‘Ten minutes, they say, Miss.’

‘Good. And what are you going to wear? Would you like to borrow some trousers?’

Dot shuddered, and Phryne laughed.

‘Take your winter coat, the blue cloche, and the carriage rug, then you’ll be warm enough. I don’t know how far we’ll be going.’

‘Why, Miss, there’s all the parks to have picnics in, we don’t have to go out of the city,’ protested Dot, who had no love for open, unsafe spaces with no conveniences.

‘Now then, off we go!’ said Phryne. ‘Got everything?’

Dot picked up her handbag and the coat and the carriage-rug, which was of kangaroo-skin, and trailed her excitable employer down the stairs.

The kitchen had provided a hamper, which the doorman had already loaded into the rear of the auto, and Phryne leapt into the driver’s seat as Dot ensconced herself, very gingerly, in the passenger’s seat.

‘Miss, do you mean to drive?’ she whispered, and Phryne laughed.

‘Miss May Cunliffe, champion of the 1924 Cairo road race, taught me to drive, and said that I had the makings of a racer,’ she declared, as the doorman swung the engine over and it caught with a throaty roar. ‘You’re safe enough with me, Dot. Thanks,’ she screamed to the doorman, tossing him a two-bob bit. He bowed.

‘All clear, Miss,’ he yelled and Phryne steered the car out into the road. Dot shut her eyes and commended her soul to God.

‘Eight litre engine, overhead cam, multiple disc clutch, live axle drive,’ Phryne was yelling over the noise of the car, which sounded to Dot like a big gun. ‘Won the challenge at the Brickyard seventy miles an hour for eighteen hours—oh, it’s a spiffing machine! One hundred horse power at 1600 revs per minute—I wonder if he’d change his mind and sell it to me? Dot? Dot, open your eyes!’

Dot obeyed, saw a looming market van skid to a halt, and shut them again.

‘It will be better when we’re out of the city. I need to pick up a couple of friends of mine. They should be waiting at the corner of Spencer Street . . . ah, there they are!’

She jammed on the brakes, and waved. Dot, thrown forward, peered apprehensively at a battered taxi-cab, and saw an arm wave, giving some sort of signal; then Phryne pushed the Hispano-Suiza into a higher gear. The railway yards shot past, and Dot, surprised to find herself alive, squinted under her hat-brim, tears filling her eyes as the wind whipped past. Landmarks were flowing away from her. They were on Dynon Road, heading West with tearing speed. The long, grey-green swamps, owned by the railways, were almost gone; the bridge slipped under the fleeting wheels, and the roar of the massive engine, vibrating, seemed to enter Dot’s bones. Half an hour passed in this way.

‘Where are we going?’ yelled Dot, surprising herself with the volume she could produce. Phryne’s gaze did not move from the road.

‘Just along the river here, and then we’ll stop,’ she shrieked. ‘Look back, Dot, and see if they’re following . . .’

Toiling in their magnificent wake, motor labouring gallantly, the Morris taxi-cab was visible only as a spot in the road. Phryne slowed the Hispano-Suiza and they trundled along the unmade road by the river, where many craft were moored, mostly small yachts and pleasure-boats.

On the other bank, the market gardens stretched as far as Dot could see. She sighted the flat cane hats of the Chinese working among the winter-cabbage and broccoli.

‘Oh, we’re going to the Tea Gardens!’ Dot exclaimed, as the Morris jounced and turned the corner, and the two cars proceeded at a more decorous pace.

These gardens had been well-planned, and put to use the excellent soil to be found by the river in planting beds of exotic flowers, augmenting the pleasance created by groves of lemon-scented gum and wattle. It being May, the gardens were silent and a little bedraggled. Even evergreens look depressed in the winter, Phryne thought, as she brought the car to a standstill and told Dot that she was safe. The Morris halted and seemed to sag on its wheels, while the bonnet gave forth a cloud of steam.

A resident peacock surveyed the newcomers, considered displaying his tail, and decided against it. A voice was heard from the other side of the Morris.

‘Cec! Give a man a hand, can’t yer?’

‘Whassamatter?’ asked Cec, who sounded sleepy.

‘Bloody door’s come undone again. Got a bit of wire?’

There was a scuffle as Cec found a piece of wire and secured the door, and they both got out and surveyed their vehicle.

‘I reckon she’s about had it, mate,’ observed Cec, sadly. Bert took off his hat, wiped his forehead, and replaced it.

‘No, mate, she’ll be apples. She just needs a spell. We can fill her up again before we go—plenty of water in the creek.’

They walked over to where Phryne knelt, offering Dot a sip of brandy.

‘Come over all unnecessary, has she?’ asked Bert. ‘I reckon a drop’s the best cure. Always cures me, eh, Cec? That car’s a bit of all right, though, goes like a bat out of . . . I mean, goes well. Lucky there aren’t no coppers round.’

Dot sat up, refused the brandy, and declared her complete fitness for anything.

‘Well, gentlemen, I’ve brought a picnic lunch. Where shall we eat it?’ asked Phryne, stowing the flask in a side-pocket of the car. Bert looked at Cec.

‘There’s the thingummy,’ he suggested, indicating a gazebo evidently shipped direct from Brighton Pavilion.

‘Well, it has a roof, and there’s not room for us all and the picnic in the car,’ sighed Phryne, who loathed Rococco architecture. ‘Come on.’

Bert and Cec picked up the basket, and Dot gathered the rug and the handbags. It was not until they were seated in relative comfort, with the plates loaded with pheasant and ham and Russian salad, that she broached her subject.

‘I want your help, gentlemen, and you want mine,’ she said. ‘More salad?’

Bert, to whom
salade russe
was a novelty to which he would like to become accustomed, accepted more and nodded.

‘Where did you two meet?’ Phryne asked on impulse. Bert swallowed his mouthful and grinned.

‘In the army first. Then I was working down the docks, and Cec was too. Me and Cec palled up, because we were on the same gang. The Reds, they called us. The Party ain’t too popular with the bosses, so we found we didn’t get picked up at the Wailing Wall anymore, the bucks sorta looked over our heads.’

‘Wailing Wall?’ asked Phryne, fogged. ‘Bucks?’

‘The pick-up point, that’s the Wailing Wall, and the foremen, they’re the bucks,’ explained Bert. ‘So me and Cec, we give it up as a bad job, and a mate of ours lent us the cab, and we been making a crust as a taxi. Hard yakka, but,’ observed Bert, sadly. ‘And all that “yes sir” and “no sir” is against our nature. Still, it’s a living,’ he concluded. ‘Any more of that fowl? And what do you want us to do, Miss? And what’s your game? Being polite, you know.’

‘Fill up your glasses and I’ll tell you some of the story.’

Suppressing the matter of the poisoning of Lydia Andrews, which Phryne now regarded as an excellent idea, she told the cab drivers the tale of the Russian dancers, the Bath House of Madame Breda, the police search, and the packet of real cocaine. She disclosed her only clue: Seventy-nine Little Lon.

‘Little Lonsdale Street!’ exclaimed Bert. ‘And you reckon that these counter-revolutionaries ain’t tumbled to it?’

‘I don’t think so,’ temporised Phryne. ‘They would not have asked anyone else, and they assumed Little Lon. was a person. It might be a trap, though. I suspect that Gerda is playing the Princesse along for what she can get—I’ve got no evidence against Madame Breda except Sasha’s insistence that he was following her when he was stabbed. That was the night you picked us up in Toorak.’

‘Yair, and you stuck a gun in me ear,’ chuckled Bert, not at all abashed by the memory. ‘Would you recognise the gangsters again, Miss?’

‘Yes,’ said Phryne. The repulsive faces of Thugs One and Two were imprinted on her memory. ‘Did you see them?’

‘Nah, but we might a’ seen ’em earlier. You saw Cokey Billings, eh, Cec?’

‘When? and where?’ demanded Phryne.

Cec rubbed his jaw. ‘About half after midnight, in that street, too. With Gentleman Jim and the Bull.’

‘Who are they?’

‘Bad men, Miss. Cokey Billings never worked with us—he’s a tea-leaf—lift your roll out of your kick without a qualm. He’d do anything for coke, since he started on it. Dentist gave it to him to pull a tooth, and he’s been mad for the stuff ever since. Gentleman Jim is a con artist—they called him Gentleman because he keeps saying, “A gentleman should not mix with low company”, and things like that. Used to carry a shiv, and could use it—some eytie in the blood, I reckon. And the Bull—he’s a big bloke, real big, and dumber than an ox. Strong? He’d pull a door off its hinges rather than work out how to turn a key. No brains at all.’

‘Cokey and Gentleman Jim sound like my gangsters,’ observed Phryne. ‘But they had guns as well. Why, come to think of it, did they stab Sasha instead of shooting him?’

‘Quiet, a shiv in the ribs, and he should have been dead as a doornail. Not a sound. When he got away, they had to risk the St Valentine’s Day massacre stuff. But if it’s them we’re up against, then we’re in real trouble. Bad men, as I said.’

As Bert only appeared to use the phrase ‘bad men’ for multiple murders, Phryne was inclined to agree.

‘What I want to do is to go to Seventy-nine Little Lon. and see what, and who, is there. Do you know the place?’

‘Yair. Behind the Synagogue, it is. Near the corner of Spring Street. Boarding houses, mostly. Do you know Seventy-nine, Cec?’ Cec emptied his glass and set it down with great care.

‘It’s the dark stone place, mate, with the shop in front. Sells all them remedies, Beecham’s Pills and them. Next door’s old Mother James’s.’

‘Amazing, Cec is. Got a map in his head, he has. Just have to ask and he knows where any place is. It’s a chemist’s,’ added Bert superfluously. ‘As if they needed one in Little Lon.’

‘Yair. All-in and any up the last, that’s Little Lon. Bricks, shivs, boots, broken bottles—and every gang in Melbourne goes there for settling any little disagreement that they might have. You can’t go there, Miss.’

‘Oh, can’t I?’ asked Phryne ominously. ‘Are there no women in Little Lon.?’

‘Yair, well, there’s tarts all right, but they ain’t like the sorts in the movies. I don’t reckon there’s a heart of gold in any moll in the street. And they fight, them sheilas, like bloomin’ cats—the hair-pulling and the scratching and the shrieks! Turn a man’s stomach to hear ’em.’