Introducing the Honourable Phryne Fisher (40 page)

‘Silk,’ said Phryne, pulling down her skirt so that it almost reached her knees. ‘It is supposed to be smooth and I’m glad that you like it. I think that it’s about time that I flung you and your friend into the snow, Lindsay. I’ll see you tomorrow. What time?’

‘Nine in the morning,’ said Lindsay, reluctantly releasing Phryne. ‘At the boathouse. Why are you throwing us out? Have I lost my charm, already?’

‘No, my dear, you have all the charm you came with. But I have to go and read a post-mortem report, and talk to a policeman.’

‘Can I come too?’

‘No. I’ll see you tomorrow.’ She rang the bell. ‘Mr Butler, will you see the gentlemen out? And bring the car around. I’ve got to go into Russell Street.’

Lindsay collected his friend and left, not without a backward glance.

‘Well, what did you think of them?’ she asked Dot.

Dot grinned. ‘Lindsay is all right, Miss, if you like tom cats.’

‘You know that I do,’ agreed Phryne.

CHAPTER SEVEN

‘You’ll be catching a crab directly,’ said Alice.

Lewis Carroll
Alice Through the Looking Glass

Phryne steered the red car into the city. Detective-inspector Robinson (call me Jack, Miss Fisher, everyone does) had taken over the investigation and was anxious to interview her. He had promised the post-mortem report and any more information that came to hand.

She parked her car in the police garage and ascended the dank stairs to the small bleak office which Jack inhabited. He looked up as she entered; an undistinguished youngish man with mid-brown hair and mid-brown eyes and no feature which one could remember more than three minutes after he had gone. It was this anonymity which had made him a relentless shadow of some of Melbourne’s most wary crooks. They were now languishing behind bars, wondering how they had been detected, still not recalling the ordinary man on the street corner who had followed them doggedly for days. In private life he was a quiet man with a doting family, who grew grevilleas and rare native orchids in his yard. He would talk learnedly of mulch unless instantly and firmly dissuaded.

‘Ah, Miss Fisher. I hope that you are well? How nice to see you again. I won’t offer you police-station tea, because I’m sure you’ve tasted it before. I want you to tell me all about the murder on the Ballarat train.’

‘Delighted,’ said Phryne promptly.

As usual, she told her tale with dispatch and not an unnecessary word. Detective-inspector Robinson took notes attentively.

‘Dragged through the window, eh?’

‘Absolutely. I’m almost sure that she was pulled up, because of the hair caught in the crack in the sill, but where the murderer was, I cannot tell.’

‘And the blond young guard. Describe him.’

‘About five-ten, blue eyes, a pleasant smile, looked well built but slender, no distinguishing marks except a scar on his forehead. A cut along the brow line. All healed over. I think he was about twenty-five but he could have been younger, the cap is very disguising. I didn’t pay much attention,’ apologised Phryne. ‘I was rather tired.’

‘I could hope that all the witnesses that I interview weren’t paying attention like that,’ said the detective-inspector. ‘What about motive?’

‘The daughter had the best motive,’ Phryne crossed her legs and tugged her black skirt down, lest she should distract the policeman. ‘But I don’t think that she did it. She could have shoved her mother out of the train and then doped herself. She might not have known that chloroform burns skin. I met her fiancé today, and he didn’t know, and he’s a medical student.’

‘What did you make of him, Miss Fisher?’

‘An arrogant young man, but most doctors are like that. About medium height, with pale hair and blue eyes—as was his pretty friend, they could be twins. Both strong, I should say, and active. It might be an idea to ask the attentive Mr Thompson where he was on the night in question.’

‘You didn’t take to him, Miss Fisher?’ asked the detective. ‘What about the other one, his friend?’

‘Lindsay Herbert. A very nice, if rather gushing and naive, young man. I took to him, and he took to me, and stuck to me like glue, almost as if he had been instructed to do so.’

‘What, Miss, did the young hound try to take advantage of you?’ gasped the detective-inspector, and Phryne chuckled.

‘If there is any advantage to be taken, Jack, you can rely on me to take it. I can cope with Master Lindsay. I didn’t really have a chance to talk to Thompson. Perhaps you will have more success.’

‘Perhaps. I shall certainly do so, and that at the earliest. Where do they live, these students?’

‘In digs in Carlton, I fancy. But I know where they will be at nine tomorrow morning.’

‘Where?’

‘Rowing. I am going down to the boathouse to watch them practice. Perhaps you would like to come too?’

‘Yes, Miss Fisher, I think that I might.’

‘Good. Now, the autopsy report.’

Phryne scanned the buff folder critically, attempting to translate the medical terms into something that might relate to the broken body of the old woman. It seemed that all of the gross fractures had been inflicted after death, including the massive blow which had cracked the skull. The cause of death had been . . .

‘Hanging? That’s what that means, isn’t it, Jack? Fracture of the cervical vertebrae?’

‘Yes, Miss. Hanging it is. The hyoid bone in the throat, which is always broken when there is a death by strangulation, was fractured but the doctor says that it was a broken neck. That’s how you die if you are hanged, Miss. The sudden jerk.’ He mimed the rope pulling taut and the sickening flop of the broken neck, and Phryne shuddered.

‘Don’t, Jack, please, it’s too awful. What could have happened? The first bit is clear. Someone doped the carriage and sent us all to sleep, and perhaps we were meant to sleep forever. Then no one would be able to tell when the body was removed, or how, but I woke up too soon. How that murderer must be disliking me, for I foiled his little plan proper. All right, the carriage is full of people all asleep, and the old woman is dragged out—with a rope around her neck?—suspended, and dropped.’

‘Don’t forget the Ballan doctor’s theory.’

‘The man is deranged, it’s too ghastly to contemplate.’

‘And how is the girl, the one who lost her memory?’

‘Jane? I call her Jane, she hasn’t remembered. I shall have a photographer take some pictures of her, and perhaps you can have them distributed among the stations and your staff. Someone must have lost her. I’m keeping her anyway, she’s been molested, and if that is what triggered her off, then I am going to skin the man alive if she remembers who he is. She’s a very clever girl and I expect to have her recalling her past any day now.’

‘Sexually molested?’

‘So Dr MacMillan says.’

‘Poor little thing. You’ll let me in on the arrest, Miss Fisher, as usual?’

‘You will have to be quick,’ said Phryne grimly, and Jack Robinson nodded.

‘You didn’t kill that child-molesting bastard we arrested in Queenscliff,’ he said gently. ‘Even though you did shoot him a bit.’

‘That’s because I promised to deliver him to you in a plain brown wrapper,’ said Phryne reasonably. ‘This one is all mine.’

Wisely, the detective-inspector decided not to pursue the subject, and returned to the matter of murder on the Ballarat train.

‘I’ve checked up on all the guards and railway employees on that train, by the way, and Wallace was right—not one of them under forty. You are sure that it was a young man?’

‘Positive,’ said Phryne, recalling the smooth, unlined throat and chin.

‘I shall see you tomorrow, then, Miss Fisher—at the Melbourne University boathouse,’ and the policeman escorted Phryne out of the building and down the steps. She was restless, aroused by the ardent young man’s attentions, and decided to pass some blameless hours in the museum and art gallery. There she spent some time before the Apollo, a copy of the Belvedere, and tore her salacious mind away with some difficulty.

Phryne was home in time for a pleasant dinner and a bath, then put herself to bed early, sober and alone.

Dot woke Phryne with a cup of Turkish coffee at eight-thirty, and informed her half-asleep mistress that it was a nasty damp, chill morning, but that it was not actually raining. She added that Mr Butler had taken Jane to the photographer and that Miss Henderson was still asleep. Phryne absorbed the coffee, which was as close as one got to neat caffeine, washed and dressed in boots, trousers and a heavy jacket. Dot found a suitable hat and an umbrella and gloves, and assisted Phryne to start the huge car.

‘I must have been mad to agree with this,’ she commented. ‘Steady she goes, Dot. Thanks, go inside quickly before you freeze to the spot. Back directly,’ she called, and put the Hispano-Suiza into gear.

She drove without haste, threading the traffic through the city and out onto the road which circled the gardens, finding the turn without backing more than enough to ruin the temper. The track down to the boathouse was rough but not too muddy, and the big car negotiated it with ease. She stopped and got out, and the first thing that she saw was a long wooden shell with eight pairs of legs, locomoting down to the water.

A further glance showed her that this was a racing boat being carried by its crew. She waved, and a forest of hands waved back; evidently the crew were not used to being watched while training, and appreciated the company. A small man, thin, with a red face and fanatic’s eyes, was climbing onto a very new and shiny bicycle.

He gave Phryne a disapproving glare in passing, and wobbled down onto the towing path. The crew had dropped their boat neatly into the water, where it seemed to float as light as a leaf, and then they all hopped in with scarcely a ripple, oars extended. Phryne saw the beautiful Lindsay and Alastair, who was rowing stroke. He still looked nervous and strained. Phryne heard the command: ‘Racing start! Three quarter!’ the boat slid quickly into the stream. ‘Half!’ and the oars feathered and dipped with speed. ‘Three quarter and go!’ and the boat was moving swiftly down the waterway, the coach toiling alongside on his bicycle. They were under the bridge, and Phryne had to strain her eyes to see them. By one of those freaks caused by the combination of sound and water, she heard the command ‘Bow and two!’ and the boat spun on its axis and sped down the river towards her. It seemed to be travelling quite fast, and the coach was toiling over his handlebars. This did not interrupt his breath in the slightest, and he was shouting opprobrious epithets like a sergeant-major.

‘Jones, pull your stomach in! Get your hands round that oar, Hoskins! You aren’t stirring soup! What’s the matter with you, Herbert, dreaming about your lady friend? Put your back into it! Catch! Finish! Catch! Finish!’

He roared to a halt and glared as the crew regained the boathouse. ‘You row like a lot of schoolgirls! How do you row?’

‘Like schoolgirls, sir,’ came the obedient chorus, and Mr Ellis grunted, seeming to breathe fire through his nostrils. ‘That’s right! That so-called racing start was slower than a nurse and a pram! So we do it again! And if you are still thinking about your lady friends,’ here he gave Phryne a furious look, whiffling the ends of his bristly black moustache, ‘or your breakfasts, you’ll never make the team! All right! Racing start! And this time, keep your minds on what you are doing!’

The crew lifted the oars again, and Phryne wandered away from the bank and found a seat and lit a cigarette. She had a book in her pocket and was just wondering whether Lindsay would be mortally offended if she read it, when she glanced up and saw the sight of the year, which more people claimed to have witnessed than would have fitted on the bank, even standing on each other’s shoulders.

The choleric coach, aroused to apoplexy by some fault in the crew’s performance, raised his megaphone to curse them heartily and found that there was a dip in the towing path. With a final, full-throated cry of ‘schoolgirls!’ he careered down the bank, losing control of the bike but retaining his grip on the megaphone, and with a muffled ‘Argh!’ was seated on the bicycle and clutching the megaphone in seven feet of water. The boat swept past, full of rowers so paralysed with shock that they did not know how to react, and so appalled that they did not dare to laugh. They turned at the bridge and came back, extending an oar for Ellis to hang on to, but he had struggled to the shore by then and was standing by the boathouse, muddy and dripping, dredging river weed from his megaphone.

‘Be here tomorrow, and be on time,’ was all he said, and stalked away, while Phryne bit her finger to still the hysteria which threatened to choke her. The crew carried the shell out of the water and stowed it and the oars, by which time the coach had disappeared around the corner. Lindsay howled with mirth, followed by all but the serious Alastair.

‘Oh, oh, my ribs will crack!’ protested Lindsay, hanging on to Phryne’s shoulder as she wiped her eyes. ‘He’ll never live it down, never. Poor old Ellis! Schoolgirls! Well, Miss Fisher, you can’t say that we aren’t amusing company. I’ll just have a shower and change, and then I’ll be at your service. If you don’t mind waiting?’

Phryne inclined her head, and was instantly the centre of a vocal group. It appeared that her reputation as a detective had gone before her.

‘Would you come along and talk to some of the fellows, Miss Fisher?’ asked an eager young man. ‘We’d love to hear about your experiences.’

I bet you would, thought Phryne. But you aren’t going to.

‘I am talking to the fellows,’ she temporised, ‘and you should get an introduction to a real detective. I’m just an amateur. Are you all students?’

‘Yes, Miss Fisher, but in different faculties. Edwards and Johnson are Music, Herbert and Tommy Jones are Commerce, Thompson and Connors are Medicine, and the other Herbert is Law. I’m Arts, unlike all these blundering oafs. Just now we are pondering whether it would be better to request the ladies to join us in song and beer, but mostly song, as our glee club is running out of glees which sound good with only tenor and bass.’

‘The trouble with scoring the Elizabethan stuff for the male voice is that it all sounds so Russian,’ complained one of the music students. ‘And a little of that goes a long way, you know.’

‘I agree entirely. What’s wrong with asking the ladies to join?’

‘Well, it seems silly, but we are all friends together, and we get drunk together and no one minds, and we tend to sing rather rude songs, and the ladies . . .’

‘Shall we make a little bet?’ suggested Phryne. ‘Put your groups together for some madrigals, and I’ll bet you five pounds to a row down the river in a real boat that they know much ruder ones.’

‘Bet,’ said the Arts student instantly. ‘My name is Black, Miss Fisher, Aaron Black, and I’m by way of being convenor of the glee club. We’ll ask the girls, because we want to do the Brahms
Liebeslieder
, and we shall have a bit of a sing in the boathouse on—say, Friday? Yes? And will you come, too? I know that the ladies would love to meet you—and I’m sure that you can sing. Unlike Tommy over there, who is tone deaf.’