Introducing the Honourable Phryne Fisher (16 page)

‘He’s getting the jumps,’ thought Phryne, crooking cold fingers over a likely sill and removing a knife from her jazz garter. She found the latch by touch and forced it easily, raising the window with only a few heart-stopping creaks and drawing herself up. She stepped into a dark room, closed the window behind her, and sat down on the sill, listening.

She had not replaced her knife, and when attack came upon her without warning, she stabbed upwards with all her force, and caught the sagging body. Although trained in street fighting by apache masters, she had never stabbed anyone, and she fought back nausea as she rolled out from under her attacker and allowed the body to slump to the floor. A little street lighting seeped through the window, and as she turned the body over she saw that her assailant had been Madame Breda’s maid, Gerda. This was evidently her bedroom. Gerda’s limp hand released the cook’s chopper which she had been holding. Phryne listened at her breast. She was not dead. The knife had caught her under the collarbone and delivered a nasty but non-lethal wound, and Phryne’s teachers would have been disgusted by their pupil’s relief.

Phryne lit a match, located Gerda’s candle, and stripped a pillowcase off her bed to bind the wound. Because Phryne had let go of the knife once it struck, as she had been expressly told not to do, not much blood had been spilled. She ascertained that Gerda had merely fainted. She bound her up like a mummy, and used the rest of the woman’s garments to tie her to the bed and gag her. Phryne had the notion that Gerda would not wake up in a pleasant mood. Meanwhile, there was Sasha downstairs, still screaming, and the King of Snow to interview.

Phryne crept to the door and listened, Gerda’s knife in hand. She hefted the chopper experimentally and decided that it really was too heavy for agile use, and laid it under Gerda’s bed. No sound from the kitchen, now, but there were footsteps pacing up and down the hall. She caught a puff of the delicious scent of the bath which was the specialty of Madame Breda, and longed to go to the front of the house for a quick wash. Gerda had a water-jug and washstand, and Phryne removed the filth of the yard with good soap as she listened to the feet in the hall, passing, and re-passing.

Opening the door a crack after she had extinguished her candle, Phryne saw Cokey Billings. Gnawing his nails, he approached the front door, opened it, looked out, sighed, and closed it. Apparently it had been some time since his last dose. It would be impossible to slip past him. Sasha was silent—what were they doing to him? Had they killed him? Phryne rummaged through Gerda’s clothes and found a bathrobe. She stripped off her holed stockings, put her gun in the pocket, and peeped out again. Cokey had been joined by Gentleman Jim.

‘Stop pacing about like a caged animal,’ snapped the Gentleman. ‘His Majesty said you were to have four doses a day, and you’ve had them. It’s three hours until tomorrow.’

‘It doesn’t last like it used to,’ whined Cokey. ‘Just a sniff . . . just a whiff . . . me nerves is bad . . .’

‘No, I told you the King said four doses,’ he retorted.

‘Just . . . a pinch . . . it’ll never be missed . . .’ begged Cokey, and the Gentleman relented, taking a paper from his pocket.

‘Just this once, mind,’ said the Gentleman, stalking away to the kitchen. Phryne waited until Cokey was sitting on the stairs with his eyes closed, then flitted past into the front of the house. Cokey was off in his own world and did not see her go.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Of langours rekindled and rallied Of barren delights and unclean Things monstrous and fruitless, a pallid And poisonous Queen

Algernon Swinburne ‘Dolores’

Dr Macmillan, roused from her bed, accepted yet another mysterious parcel from a laconic messenger, and padded downstairs to the laboratory in her slippers to apply the usual tests. She ascertained that it was common salt, cochineal and about five per cent cocaine, then wrote a brief analysis, wrapped sample and script up in a bundle and placed it in the laboratory safe.

‘I hope that she’s nearing the end of this adventure,’ muttered Dr MacMillan, making herself tea on the gas-ring in the night nurses’ kitchen. ‘I worry about the child.’

She had nearly finished the cup, when an excited probationary nurse came calling for her. Still worrying, she gulped down the rest of the tea and lumbered away to attend to the breech delivery in Ward Four.

. . .

Dot, asleep in her bed with the door bolted, heard a brief tapping, then a click as the door was unlocked. She froze, trying not to breathe, as the door was gently pushed twice, against the restraining bolt. There was an exasperated sigh, and the lock was turned into place. Nothing else happened for the rest of the night, but Dot did not sleep. She pulled the blankets over her head and wished she had never left Collingwood.

Phryne found herself in Madame Breda’s office, out of Cokey’s line of sight, and continued as far as the steam-rooms, just to assure herself that it was the same place. The delicate scent was all about her. She returned to the office, leaving the door just ajar, and began to search by the light coming in through the hall. She found a locked drawer, forced it, and brought a wad of documents to the light. Bills of lading for bath salts and cosmetic preparations from France.
Chasseur et Cie.
Packets of pink powder. She returned the papers to the drawer, and backed away as Cokey Billings threw the door open with a crash.

‘Who are you?’ he demanded. Phryne adopted an accent.

‘I am the cousin of Gerda. I got lost, looking for the convenience.’ She looked down, so as not to catch his eye, and drew her bathrobe closer across her bosom. She would have succeeded if Cokey had not had his intelligence restored by his recent dose.

‘You’re that tart I saw in Toorak!’ he exclaimed, and lunged for her.

His yell attracted the Bull and the Gentleman, and all three pounced together. She eluded the Bull with ease, but just as she was reaching for the knife in her garter, Gentleman Jim threw a towel over her head and struck her sharply with a blunt instrument. The world receded, but she did not lose consciousness. She sagged in her captor’s arms, listening hard.

‘I tell you she’s the tart I met in Toorak Road, the night we stabbed that dago!’ she heard Cokey explain.

‘Well, we shall put both the birds into one cage, and His Majesty shall deal with both of them. Come on, Bull; stop slavering. She’s only a little tart. No lady would wear those undergarments,’ Gentleman Jim replied.

The Bull’s hands roamed over Phryne’s flesh, and she had to remind herself not to shudder.

‘Throw her in with the other; we may get something if they talk—hurry up, Bull, the King’s due in an hour!’

Phryne was aware that she had been dropped on a cold oil-cloth covered floor, and that a light was shone on her face at some stage in the next few hours.

It was not until dawn had brought an end to the most frightful night of her experience that she returned to full consciousness. She was lying in Sasha’s arms, and she had a terrible headache.

‘I must give up mixed cocktails,’ she said muzzily, turning her face against his chest. ‘My head hurts.’

Realisation had flooded in on her as soon as she had woken. Sasha opened his mouth to speak and she covered it with a firm hand. She moved up in his embrace and put her mouth to his ear.

‘We don’t know each other,’ she mouthed, then groaned and dropped into her Australian accent.

‘Who are you?’ she demanded, sitting up cautiously. Sasha had taken the hint.

He replied stiffly, ‘I am Sasha, mademoiselle. Who are you?’

‘Janey Theodore,’ answered Phryne, grasping at the first name that entered her head, and thus libelling a prominent politician.

‘My head hurts. Where are we?’

She looked around. It was a small room with a high leadlight window in blue and red. The room was relatively clean and was furnished with two couches and a cabinet. It appeared, from the smell of liniment, to have been used as a massage-room. Phryne examined herself. They had found her gun, the knife in her garter, and her bathrobe was gone. She was clad in French camiknickers and the rags of her dress, which left her with less clothes than are generally considered sufficient to go bathing in. Sasha was sitting on the floor, where he had been cradling Phryne all night. He was dressed in flannels and a dark shirt, much cut about and torn, and his eyes were hollow with shock.

‘They left us some water; have a drink,’ he suggested. Phryne washed out her mouth with the liquid and then spat it out.

‘Never know what might be in it,’ she said. ‘What happened during the night?’

‘After they locked me in here, they brought you, as well. I feared that you were dead, mademoiselle, but you were not. Two hours or so later someone looked in; I could not see who they were, but they flashed a torch on your face, seemed to recognise you and shut off the light. Since then, nothing.’

‘What did they do to you?’ asked Phryne in her own voice. Subterfuge was not going to be of any more assistance. Sasha opened his shirt, and Phryne saw deep blisters on the smooth skin.

‘Cigarette end?’ she guessed. Sasha nodded.

‘They wanted to know where Gran’mere and Elli are. I did not tell them. But I expect that they will be back.’ His voice was heavy with Slavic fatalism. Phryne felt the stirrings of anger, and wavered to her feet.

It’s morning; they could at least give us some breakfast. Hello!’ she yelled, kicking the door and instantly regretting it— she had bare feet. ‘Hello, yoo-hoo! How about some breakfast!’

The door was wrenched open. The Bull seized Phryne in one giant paw and Sasha in the other. He bore them, unresisting, out of the massage-room, through the hall, and into the room with the pool, where he thrust them into cane chairs.

‘Wait,’ mumbled the Bull, and slammed the door behind him. Phryne at once got out of her chair and began inspecting the exits. The windows were barred, the door locked, and the furnishings were rudimentary. Phryne discovered her feathered mantle flung over a chair. The gun was gone, but her cigarettes were still in the pocket. She lit one for Sasha and they smoked in silence.

‘What are they going to do with us?’ asked Sasha.

‘Probably something pointlessly hideous to make us realise the depths of our stupidity in attempting to dethrone the King of Snow, and then the good old river with the dear old brick, I suspect. Dear me, I wonder who inherits my money? I haven’t made a will. I should have liked to have left it to the Cats’ Home.’

‘No time,’ grinned Cokey Billings from the doorway. ‘But it ain’t the river—too many bodies turn up that way. We’ve got what the King calls “a nice scandalous demise” planned for you, Miss Fisher, and this gigolo.’

‘Do you mean that I’ve waited all this time and I’m not going to meet his Majesty?’ demanded Phryne, outraged.

At that moment, Cokey was pushed aside and the King of Snow came into the room, taking a cane chair with the suggestion of royalty. Sasha gaped. Phryne lit another cigarette.

‘Hello, Lydia,’ she said indifferently. ‘Recovered from your little bout of arsenic overdose?’

Lydia Andrews stared with fevered eyes at Phryne, insulted by her lack of surprise. Sasha grasped Phryne by the arm.

‘The King of Snow—she is him?’ he asked, bewildered.

‘Oh, yes. And she was setting up ever such a neat murder of her husband. Admittedly he is a lout and is wasting the family fortune, but arsenic is such a foul way to die. I would not be astonished if dear old Beatrice and Ariadne weren’t planning a similar demise for their unsatisfactory spouses. These things do tend to run in threes—like indecent exposure and plane crashes. You could at least offer me a cup of tea, Lydia, before you kill me!’

‘What do you mean about my husband? He’s trying to poison me—you suggested it yourself.’

‘Lydia, I may have been caught by your thugs by an elementary mistake—I should never have tried to break in without help, but Sasha is my lover and your friends were torturing him . . . you must allow for the natural feelings of a woman. But I’m not stupid. When your maid reported that you had a packet of arsenic in your dressing case, and your hair and fingernails are chock-full of the stuff, any idiot would have seen what you were doing. Little doses, carefully graded, just enough to make you sick, building up your resistance, and then—demise of prominent businessman, arsenic found, wife suspected, then arsenic found in wife, evidence to show that she switched cups on him while taking the evening cocoa, and
voilà
!
Businessman was trying to murder wife, death by misadventure, lots of sympathy and all of the estate. Quite neat, Lydia, quite neat. Now can I have a cup of tea?’

‘Fetch tea, Cokey,’ ordered Lydia. ‘Bull, stand there and break Miss Fisher’s arm if she makes a move towards me.’

Sasha had caught sight of the bird brooch which adorned Lydia’s overdressed person. He leaned closer to stare at it. When he had seen it last, it had been holding an orchid on his mother’s shoulder.

‘But why the murder, when you must be making a mint out of the coke trade?’ asked Phryne, to keep the conversation going.

Lydia shuddered. ‘He was making . . . demands upon me. He called it his marital rights. He is . . . disgusting. He must go,’ concluded Lydia.

Phryne stared at her. She still looked like a porcelain doll: curly blonde hair, pink cheeks, baby-face. There was something indescribably horrible about the dainty way she ordered her men about. Phryne leaned against Sasha, who put an arm around her.

‘You know, I could have sworn that you had designs upon me yourself,’ she commented softly. ‘Do your tastes lie in my direction, Lydia?’

The tea trolley arrived, pushed by a sour-faced Cokey.

‘Shall I be mother?’ smiled Lydia, and poured out. ‘Sugar and milk?’

Sasha and Phryne looked at each other in bewilderment. ‘Milk, but no sugar,’ said Phryne. ‘Strong, if you please, I think I’ve had rather a shock.’

She drank the tea thirstily and ate two cucumber sandwiches. She wondered if the Bull had cut them and muffled a laugh. Sasha drank his tea in complete astonishment.

‘Now, you have a choice, Miss Fisher,’ said Lydia formally. ‘Come in with me, or . . . er . . . die.’

‘Come in with you? Does that include going to bed with you?’ asked Phryne coarsely. ‘If so, no thank you.’

Lydia blushed. ‘Not at all. It is an excellent business. Overheads are low, shipping charges moderate, and the personnel trustworthy.’

‘How did you get to be the King of Snow?’ demanded Phryne. Lydia fingered the Fabergé brooch.

‘I was looking for a good investment, when I was in Paris in the first year of my marriage. I made an acquaintance, a woman, who was thinking of retiring from the Kingship. She had all her markets in Europe, and had never thought of Australia. I had some money from Auntie to invest, and I had to make myself independent of my husband. So I bought the business, outright. The stockists deliver to Paris—I have nothing to do with that—and the merchandise enters as
Chasseur et Cie
bath salts. We have a very exclusive clientele, all wealthy ladies, and Gerda delivers the beauty powders when she is taken with Madame to do massages.’

‘Is Madame Breda in on this?’ asked Phryne.

‘No. She allows us to use her rooms to store the cosmetics of
Chasseur et Cie,
for a consideration. She would never be a party to anything so unhealthy as drugs. Gerda, her maid, is our main sales agent, as I said.’

‘And the chemist’s shop in Little Lon.?’ prompted Phryne, accepting her second cup of tea.

‘Yes, that is our street outlet,’ agreed Lydia, sipping delicately. It was an excellent tea. ‘Come, Miss Fisher, with your connections, we could have a worldwide trade, not just Paris and Melbourne. Millions of pounds are spent on drugs every day. It seems a pity that we cannot . . . I believe the term is “corner the market”.’

‘An interesting proposition. What is the alternative?’

‘We will strip you both and put you in the Turkish bath together,’ said Lydia, biting a precise semicircle out of her sandwich. ‘You should suffocate in about three hours.’

‘Won’t that be a little difficult to explain to Madame Breda?’ asked Phryne. Lydia considered.

‘No. We will tell her that you particularly wanted to enjoy your new diversion—I mean him,’ she pointed to Sasha with a pearly forefinger, ‘in a jungle atmosphere. You were so exhausted by transports of lust that you fell asleep—and a terrible accident happened. They may close the Turkish bath, but they will never suspect the truth.’

‘Good. Now I feel it only fair to tell you that I have left a full statement of your part in this ring: your attempt to murder your husband, plus samples of your wares; to be delivered to that nice policeman, whose name escapes me, if I don’t return to the Windsor at noon. Put that in your pipe and smoke it. More tea, please,’ requested Phryne. Lydia refilled her cup and sat staring at her.

‘Now where would you have left it?’ With that disagreeable suffragette doctor? Or in your room with your maid? I can’t get in to your room, the girl has bolted the door—no doubt on your orders. But I think that’s a blind. I think that the doctor is the one.’

‘Oh, do you? And where do you suppose I dined last night?’ misdirected Phryne.

Lydia paled. ‘Mr Sanderson’s?’

‘What do you think? Where would such a commission be safest? In the hands of a silly girl or an old woman, or with a parliamentarian and statesman, who moreover has a safe? Your goose is cooked, Lydia. Better give it up.’

Lydia stood up, rigid with fury. ‘Come,’ she snapped at the hovering men, and led the way out of the room.