Introducing the Honourable Phryne Fisher (36 page)

‘Well, I’ve told Miss Henderson, and it’s time for you to keep your part of the bargain,’ she said brightly. The crows, alarmed by the extreme redness of her coat, rose flapping in a body, making raucous comments.

‘Very well, Miss Fisher, I’ve got a car, come along. It’s not far,’ added the depressed sergeant. ‘And blessed if I can see how she was got out. I’ve walked every inch of the line, both with a lantern and in daylight,’ he said, helping Miss Fisher into the battered Model T and cranking the engine into a sputtering semblance of life. ‘And there isn’t a footprint or a mark of where she fell.’

CHAPTER THREE

‘So young a child,’ said the gentleman sitting opposite to her (he was dressed in white paper), ‘ought to know which way she’s going, even if she doesn’t know her own name!’

Lewis Carroll
Alice Through the Looking Glass

‘That’s where they found the body,’ said the sergeant as they stood beside the track. ‘A good ten yards. She can’t have fallen that far, and there is not a mark, Miss Fisher . . . look for yourself.’

Phryne stepped away from the track and surveyed the ground. The water tower with its wooden scaffolding stood about fifteen feet high, with the cloth funnel that fed the train hanging down. The ground was firm but moist red clay, the consistency of an ice-cream brick, and certainly there was no sign of anyone walking on it. Further away, along the path, were the multiple tracks of the searchers, the clay reproducing their bootmarks and even the round indentation where someone had set down a lantern, and the cup-shaped prints of knees next to the body. There were multiple marks there, but the ground was all cut up, churned and confused by the searchers so no individual print could be discerned.

‘She was trodden into the mud,’ said the sergeant. ‘They near had to dig her out. Over there, Miss Fisher, you can see.’

‘Yes, what a mess! No chance of finding anything there. Have you walked along a bit further?’

‘Yes, Miss, a good half-mile, but this is where she landed, however she got out. A bit further back I found the glass where you broke your window, and that must mark the beginning of the whole thing. Before that, Mrs Henderson was alive.’

‘Hmm, yes. Has anyone climbed the water tower?’

‘Yes, Miss, I thought of that, but the canvas funnel isn’t long enough to catch, and the train-men were using it to refill the boiler. There’s nothing unusual up there, Miss.’

‘It was just a thought. Well, we might go back to Ballan, then, Sergeant, and have a look at the first-class carriage.’

‘All right, Miss. Er . . . how did Miss Henderson take the news of her mother’s death?’

‘She was very distressed. Not that I think that she liked her mother at all; indeed, the old lady was fretting the life out of her. But she has hired me to find out who killed her, and I don’t think that she did it, I really don’t.’

‘Hired you, Miss? Will you take the assignment?’

‘Oh, yes, I think so. I want to find the murderer too. I don’t like having my journeys interrupted by chloroform.’

The Model T made the short journey to the rail siding without shedding any of the more essential of its parts, and they shuddered to a halt. A very large constable was on guard next to the train. He stood up hurriedly when he saw the sergeant and endeavoured to hide his doorstep cheese sandwich behind his back.

‘Anyone been about, Jones?’ asked the sergeant, elaborately not noticing the sandwich. ‘All quiet?’

‘Sir, that Mrs Lilley came and collected some of the children’s clothes, but I made sure that she only went into her compartment, sir.’

‘And that’s all?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘All right. You can go and get some breakfast—take half an hour, you must be hungry.’ The sergeant smiled laconically, and allowed Phryne to precede him onto the train.

‘The smell’s almost gone,’ she commented. ‘Thank good- ness. Here’s where I was sitting, and Dot. Nothing there. Here is the lair of those awful children. Mr and Mrs Cotton were here . . . tell me, has anything been touched?’

‘No, Miss Fisher, except when Miss Henderson was removed. Why? Something missing?’

‘The cloth, the one that was laid over her face. It isn’t here. Perhaps they took it with Miss Henderson. Otherwise it looks just as it did. Now, see, Sergeant, look at these marks.’ The sergeant came fully into the compartment, which had two long padded seats. Both ladies had evidently been reclining, almost or fully asleep. A woolly rug was flung from the seat nearest the engine and was crumpled on the floor. The shawl on the other seat was thrown to the end, as though the sleeper had arisen hurriedly.

‘See, they were both lying here, heads to the outside wall, with the window open like that. At least I suppose the window was open. I must ask Miss Henderson. I heard her mother complaining about the window quite a lot, but she didn’t seem to have a preference really. She was just doing it to irritate. “She only does it to annoy, because she knows it teases’’.’

The sergeant, who was evidently unfamiliar with
Alice in Wonderland
, looked blank.

‘Then,’ continued Phryne, bending close to the windowsill, ‘see? Those scrape marks. She was pulled out the window after she was drugged—I hope—and . . .’

‘And?’ prompted the sergeant with heavy irony, ‘carried up into the air by angels? Lifted up by aeroplane?’

‘Yes, that is a problem, I agree, my dear police officer, but it’s clear she was dragged. Look at the marks! Plain as the nose on your face.’

‘Yes, that is what they look like, as though something has been pulled through that window, and even a little of her hair has caught, Miss, I believe you are right. But what happened then I can’t imagine. She was thrown a long way, Miss.’

‘What if the murderer were on the roof of the train?’ asked Phryne suddenly. ‘Has it rained since last night?’

‘Well, yes, Miss, there was a shower at about five, quite a heavy one, that’s why everything is so soggy.’

‘Blast! That will have washed all the marks off the roof.’

‘But you could have something there, Miss! If he was on the roof that would account for the marks, and even for where the body was found. She was a light little thing.’

‘And the injuries?’

‘Maybe the doctor was just indulging a diseased imagination. Not much happens in Ballan, you know.’

‘So she could have been that damaged by such a fall?’

‘I reckon so, Miss. That train builds up speed. She’d hit the earth with a fair old thump.’

‘Well, there’s not much else to see in here,’ commented Phryne, noting that the old lady had a lurid taste in reading matter. Next to her place was an edition of
Varney the Vampire
,
which Phryne remembered from her youth to be fairly blood-chilling. Miss Henderson had been beguiling the journey with
Manon Lescaut
, in French, the unexpurgated edition. By the bookmark she had nearly finished it. Phryne reflected that the woman who chose
Manon
and the woman who preferred
Varney
were hardly likely to be soul mates.

Most of the hand-baggage had been taken to the hotel, but Phryne picked up one parcel which seemed to contain paper and was addressed to Miss Henderson. She weighed it in her hands and put it down again—just paper.

The sergeant escorted her out of the train to the hotel. The constable was returning from what, to judge from the crumbs which he was brushing off his uniform, had been a very good breakfast.

‘Keep watch for a bit longer, lad,’ said the sergeant, and looked hungrily towards the kitchen. Phryne interpreted the glance correctly.

‘Good heavens, man, have you not eaten? You can’t deduce things on an empty stomach. Mrs Johnson makes an excellent omelette,’ she added, and gave him a push.

She then walked back to her own room to see if Dot had extracted any information from the unknown girl.

She had been comprehensively washed and was enduring a punitive combing of her long hair, and bearing it pretty well, it seemed. Dot had obtained a very plain skirt and blouse in a depressing serge dyed with what appeared to be bitumen, but even in these unpromising clothes the girl was rather pretty.

As Phryne entered, the hair was at last drawn back from her face and Jane sat up and sighed with relief.

‘I always hated having my hair dressed,’ commented Phryne. ‘That’s why I cut it short as soon as I could. How do you feel, Jane?’

‘Very well, Miss,’ said Jane calmly. ‘But I still can’t remember anything. It’s like there’s a hole in my memory. As though I was just born.’

‘Hmm. There are several things about you that we know. One is that you are an Australian; the accent is unmistakable. You speak English. And there are things that you have not forgotten: how to eat with a knife and fork, how to read, how to converse. I therefore conclude that you will get your memory back in time if you don’t worry at it.’

Jane looked relieved. Phryne left her to play a quiet game of solitaire, which she also remembered, it seemed, and drew Dot aside.

‘Dot, those clothes!’

‘Yes, Miss, I know, but that’s all they had in the general store, and I had to dress her in something. You would have liked the other clothes even less than these. They don’t have no style in the outback,’ said Dot, to whom all places more than four miles from the GPO were country. Phryne smiled and forebore to comment.

‘Never mind, they will last her until we get back to the city. How does she strike you?’

‘I reckon that she is telling the truth,’ said Dot twisting her plait. ‘Every time she tries to think about who she is she starts to tremble and to sweat, and you can’t fake that. Why she can’t remember is more than I can tell. She’s healthy, though skinny, and I reckon she’s about thirteen. There’s no bruise or mark on her and I couldn’t find a lump on her head. Her eyes are clear so I don’t think that she’s been drugged.’

‘If we can rule out trauma and drugs then I think it has to be shock, and that is something that wears off, it can’t be broken through. Like Mary’s Little Lamb, we leave her alone and she’ll come home, bringing her tail behind her.

‘Meanwhile the mystery deepens. I can’t imagine how Mrs Henderson was got out of the train—at least, she was dragged out of the window, but all the signs seem to indicate that she was dragged up, and unless the murderer was on the roof of the train, I don’t know how that can be. Any ideas, Dot?’

‘No, Miss, not at the moment.’

‘Very well, let’s have a brief chat with the others who were on the train and then I think that we shall go back to Melbourne. There’s nothing more to do here, and somehow I’ve gone right off trains, and Ballarat, too.’

‘Me, too,’ agreed Dot. ‘Next time, can we take the car, Miss?’

Phryne smiled. At last, her nervous maid had been converted to the joys of motoring. But it had taken a murder to convince her.

The surviving passengers were all grouped in the pink-and-black breakfast-room. The pregnant woman looked washed-out and leaned on a husband who had lost all of his bounce. Mrs Lilley’s appalling children had been stuffed with so many sweets and cakes by a distracted mother and a sympathetic cook that they sat, bloated and queasy, quiet for the moment. Miss Henderson had risen and dressed and was the calmest of the group. The burns had blistered during the night and she was obviously in pain. Mrs Johnson had served tea and coffee, and Miss Henderson was sipping milk through a straw.

Phryne took her seat and accepted a cup of coffee from the hovering landlady.

Sergeant Wallace came in—a massive presence which seemed to fill the doorway—and everyone looked up, falling silent. He raised a hand, embarrassed.

‘Nothing new, ladies and gentlemen, but a couple more questions and then you can go on, or go back, whatever suits you. First: did anyone notice a young guard?’

Mrs Lilley looked up. ‘Yes, a blond young man, rather good looking? He passed me twice. The first time he stopped and said hello, then the next time that I saw him he seemed to be avoiding me, but I didn’t think anything of it.’

‘Why not, if he was pleasant the first time?’

‘Johnnie bit him,’ admitted Mrs Lilley shamefacedly. ‘He was being a dog and the young man wouldn’t pat him, so he bit him—I don’t know why my children aren’t like anyone else’s!—so after that, of course, I wasn’t surprised that he didn’t want to talk to us again. It would be different if my husband hadn’t died,’ said poor Mrs Lilley. ‘And he had shell-shock so he couldn’t discipline them. But oh, dear, I wish I had stayed home!’

Mrs Lilley burst into tears. The children, shocked, clustered around her and patted her, Johnnie delivering a fierce hack to the ankle of Sergeant Wallace, whom he perceived as a persecutor of his mother. The sergeant, to his credit, winced in silence and merely held the child in a tight but comforting grip.

‘You take a hold of yourself, young feller-me-lad,’ he admonished. ‘You be nice to your mum, now, and don’t drive her mad with all your pranks. Mrs J., perhaps you could come up with some sal volatile. Anyone else see this guard?’

Mr and Mrs Cotton shook their heads. They had been involved, it seemed, in an engrossing quarrel over whose duty it was to lock the back door, and this had kept them going until they had both fallen asleep. They had not noticed the young guard.

Mrs Johnson had produced the sal volatile and Mrs Lilley appeared to be recovering. She was, it appeared, taking her little demons to her relatives in Ballarat, and Phryne fervently hoped that they were prepared for the invasion.

‘Now, if you will all give me your names and addresses and a telephone number if you have one, you can all be on your way. I’ve hired the station taxi to take all the stuff and the Ballarat train will be through in an hour.’

‘Miss Fisher, can I ask you a question?’ asked Mr Cotton. ‘Did you see this guard? And do you think that he was the murderer?’

‘Yes, I saw him, and I think he might have been the murderer,’ answered Phryne carefully. ‘And I have a question for you. Has anyone seen this girl before?’

She nodded towards the door, where Dot was escorting Jane into the room. All the passengers looked at her narrowly, and she blushed and hung her head.

‘I call her Jane,’ said Phryne, making a broad gesture. ‘She can’t remember who she is. Can anyone help?’

The Cottons shook their heads. Mrs Lilley looked up from her sal volatile to sigh. Little Johnnie, however, gave a whoop of joy and ran forward to embrace as much of Jane as he could reach, which was about knee-level. Jane’s face lit up, and she lifted the child and embraced him.

‘Johnnie!’ she cried. ‘Your name is Johnnie!’ Then the young brow clouded, and she bent her head, as though the weight of her hair pulled it down. ‘But I don’t know any more,’ she mourned.