Introducing the Honourable Phryne Fisher (43 page)

Bert gave the kitten a polite pat and said, ‘Well, Miss, what’s the go?’

‘Jane was given to me to mind, because she was found on the Ballarat train in a skimpy little dress I wouldn’t have clothed a dog in, with a second-class ticket in her pocket and no memory of who she was or how she got there. Today a frightful woman arrived and demanded her, saying that Jane was her niece, and she has left me papers that seem to prove that this is true. I’m keeping her anyway, because she was misused in that woman’s clutches, and I’m adopting her. However, I have a good reason for wanting to know exactly what happened to her in Miss Gay’s house—was ever a harridan worse named—and I want you to find out.’

‘You say you got a reason,’ said Bert slowly. ‘Can you tell me what it is?’

‘No. But it has to do with the murder I’m investigating.’

‘What, the murder on the Ballarat train? You was on the train, Miss?’

‘I was. And I’ve got the victim’s daughter here, too. She has hired me to find the murderer, and so I shall. However. Find out all you can about dear Miss Gay. Who lives with her—especially men—who visits her, all of her background. Can you do it? Usual rates,’ she added.

‘The question is not, can we do it, but will we do it,’ observed Bert. ‘What do you think, mate?’

‘I reckon we can do it,’ agreed Cec, and Bert put out his hand.

‘We’re on,’ he said, and Phryne poured them a beer to celebrate.

Phryne took a nap that afternoon, and passed a quiet evening playing at whist with Jane and Miss Henderson, who had greatly recovered. Her blisters were drying, and Dr MacMillan had hopes that her liver was not damaged after all. Jane showed an unexpected ruthlessness, and won almost seven shillings in pennies before they broke up and went to bed. Jane took Ember with her, as usual, and he slept amicably on her pillow.

Lindsay Herbert lunched at the ’Varsity, went to his Torts lecture where he learned more than he thought that he needed to know about false imprisonment, and went home to dine with Alastair, who seemed subdued. His outburst in Phryne’s house had profoundly shocked him, and when the young men had stacked the dishes in the sink for Mrs Whatsis to clean in the morning, he lit a nervous cigarette and tried to expound.

‘I don’t know how to apologise to you, old man, for that appalling bad show at Miss Fisher’s.’

‘That’s all right, old fellow, think no more of it.’ Lindsay was sleepy with remembered satiation, and disinclined to listen to self-pity or even explanations.

‘But it’s not all right. I lost my head completely—just like those fellows in the Great War—shell-shocked, they used to call it.’

‘Why, what shocked you?’

‘First there was Eunice—poor girl, her face is all burned, she looks dreadful—then you taking up with Miss Fisher and just wafting off without a word—then a policeman had the infernal nerve to ask me—me!—where I was on the night of the murder.’

‘Well, I could scarcely say, “Sorry, old boy, must rush, I’m being ravished by a beautiful lady”, now, could I? Especially if I wasn’t sure if she was going to ravish me or not. I mean, a fellow would look a fool, wouldn’t he? And I suppose the police chappie has his job to do. Where were you, anyway?’

‘Here,’ snapped Alastair, butting out his cigarette as if he had a grudge against it. ‘Did she?’

‘Did she what?’

‘Ravish you?’

‘Old man, since the beginning of time, few men have been as completely ravished as I have been.’

‘Hmm,’ grunted Alastair. ‘Are you seeing her again?’

‘Friday night.’

‘Well, ask her how she is going on the murder. She’s taken possession of my fiancée and my friend, but she won’t solve the murder by sex appeal. No, Miss Fisher,’ commented Alastair savagely. ‘Not as easily as all that.’

‘Well, well, I’ll ask her,’ said Lindsay peaceably.

‘If you can spare the time,’ snorted his friend, and stalked out to go to bed, slamming the door.

CHAPTER TEN

‘Then two are cheaper than one?’ Alice said in a surprised tone, taking out her purse.

‘Only you must eat them both, if you buy two,’ said the Sheep. ‘Then I’ll have one please,’ said Alice
. . .
‘They mightn’t be at all nice, you know.’

Lewis Carroll
Alice Through the Looking Glass

Bert and Cec found the large and imposing house at Railway Crescent, Seddon, without much difficulty. It was in a fine state of studied disrepair. The iron lace which decorated the verandah was both unpainted and broken, and the bluestone frontage had been whitewashed by some past idiot. The distemper was now wearing off in flakes and tatters, and no maintenance had been done on the roof since the Father of All was a callow youth. The gate sagged on its hinges, the front garden was a wilderness of hemlock and slimy grass, and the bell-pull, when pulled, emitted a rasping screech and fell off in Bert’s hand.

A sign had been painted over the whitewash next to the door. It said ‘Rooms to Let. Full Bord’ in red lead. Bert had an idea.

‘Quick, you get down the path, Cec, and I’ll ask for a room. I don’t want her to see you.’

Cec caught on and retreated into the bushes, and a scatter of footsteps announced that someone was coming.

The door creaked open on unoiled hinges, and a small and slatternly girl answered, ‘What do you want?’

‘I want a room,’ rejoined Bert roughly. ‘The missus at home?’

The girl nodded, knotting an apron stained with the washing up of several years, and swung the door wide.

‘Come in,’ she parroted tonelessly. ‘It’s ten shillings a week, washing extra, and no drink or tobacco in the house.’ In a small voice, she added, ‘But you’d be better to go elsewhere.’

Bert heard, grinning, and patted the girl on a bony shoulder. ‘I got my reasons,’ he said portentously, and the girl’s eyes lit for a moment with an answering spark.

‘What’s yer name?’ asked Bert, and the small voice said, ‘Ruth. Don’t let her know I been talking to you.’

There was such an undercurrent of fear in her voice that Bert did not reply aloud, but nodded.

‘Who’s at the door, girl?’ demanded a screech from the back of the house. ‘I don’t know, girls these days can’t do a good day’s work, not like it was when I was a girl. Twelve hours a day I used to work, and hard, too. Now they snivel and fall ill if they’re asked to serve tea. Well? Who is it?’

‘Please, Missus, it’s a man,’ faltered Ruth. ‘He wants a room, Missus.’

‘Oh does he? Have you told him about it?’

‘Yes, Miss, I told him.’

Ruth’s eyes implored Bert not to say anything critical, and he began to feel a strong sense of partisanship with this overworked skivvy. Poor little thing! The woman was evidently a tartar.

‘Yair, she told me. So, have you got a room or haven’t yer? I ain’t got all day.’

Miss Gay emerged from the kitchen, wiping her hands on a dirty tea towel. Bert looked her up and down and classified her instantly as Prize Bitch, filthy class. Prize bitches came in two classes: the fanatically clean, who smelt of bleach, and the slatternly, who smelt of old, boiled cabbage. Miss Gay was also redolent of yellow soap and sour milk. She was not a prepossessing sight, clad in down-at-the-heel house slippers, a faded wrapper in what appeared to be hessian, no stockings and a yellow cardigan draggled at the hips. Bert smiled his best smile and was rewarded with a slight softening of the rigid jaw and mean, thin lips.

‘Here’s me money,’ he offered, handing over a ten-bob note that vanished into the unacceptable recesses of her costume. ‘Show me the room.’

The small maid accompanied them up the unswept stairs to a room which had once been fine. The ceiling was high and decorated with plaster mouldings, and the walls had been papered with Morris designs. A plasterboard partition had been erected, cutting off the window, and the room contained a single iron army cot with two blankets, a dresser which had originally come from a kitchen, still equipped with cup-hooks, a table with one leg shorter than the others and an easy chair so battered that its original form could hardly be guessed. Bert concealed his loathing and said easily, ‘This’ll do me, Missus. What about meals?’

‘Breakfast at seven, and lunch at twelve, if you come home to it. Dinner at six. If you want a packed lunch, tell me the day before. Put anything to be washed in that bag and it goes out on Monday. Washing is extra.’

‘Latch-key,’ suggested Bert, and one was detached from Miss Gay’s jingling belt and handed over.

‘No alcohol or tobacco in the rooms, and lights out at ten. No women, either. Visitors are to stay in the parlour. Board is due every Friday, at twelve noon, sharp. Anything you want, ask Ruth here. She’s a stupid, worthless girl, but I can’t abandon my own flesh and blood.’

Ruth twisted her dirty apron around a grimy hand and gulped back a sob. Miss Gay sailed away down the stairs, and Bert felt in his pocket.

‘Here, take this,’ he whispered, pressing half-a-crown into the girl’s chapped hand. ‘And not a word to a soul, eh?’

Ruth nodded. Her brown eyes were bright and shrewd.

‘You ain’t one of her usual lodgers,’ observed Ruth curiously. ‘What are you doing here?’

‘Go downstairs and get a broom and sweep this floor,’ ordered Bert in a loud voice, and Ruth scurried down and returned with an article which could technically be called a broom, though it had scant three bristles left. With this, patiently, for she was a diligent girl, Ruth began to sweep the floor, while Bert explained what he was doing in a fast undertone.

‘There’s this girl, see, her name is Jane Graham. The Hon. Phryne Fisher has got this Jane in her care, because she’s lost her memory—I mean, Jane has. Your Miss Gay turned up there this morning and demanded Jane, saying that she was her niece. Now my Miss Fisher reckons there is something wrong, and she sent me to investigate it. Do you know Jane?’

‘Yes. She’s my best friend, Jane is. She was here for about six months, after her grandmother died. First her mother died and then her grandma, and her father’s a sailor and he ain’t never come back from his last voyage, so Missus took Jane.’

‘Out of kindness?’ asked Bert artlessly.

Ruth laughed, a small slave’s laugh. ‘Kindness? Her? You’re joking. She took Jane like she took me, for the work she could get out of us. But Jane was funny.’

‘How, funny?’

‘She had nightmares,’ said Ruth. ‘See, her grandma hanged herself, and Jane found her—in this house, it was, by the window upstairs, I durstn’t go there. Then there was the mesmeric man.’

‘The who? Look out, she’s coming back. Hook it, Ruthie,’ warned Bert, and shoved the girl out of his room.

‘Come back with a broom that sweeps,’ he said roughly, and Ruth ran down the stairs, passing the Missus. Miss Gay slapped at her, but Ruth was quick, and the blow missed.

‘Girls!’ snorted Miss Gay. ‘Everything all right, Mr . . .’

‘Smith,’ said Bert. ‘Bert Smith.’

‘I’ve brought your rent book, Mr Smith.’

‘Thanks. Send up that girl with a real broom, will you? There’s plaster all over this floor—a man could break his neck.’

Miss Gay departed, and Bert shut the door. His room had no outlet except the doorway, and he felt stifled. At some time a leak had started in the roof, and water had trickled down the wall, leaving a great rusty stain like a grinning face.

‘A real palace,’ observed Bert sardonically, and sat down gingerly on the army cot to wait for Ruth.

It was half an hour before she returned, this time with a reasonable broom, and she had been crying. Bert observed the marks of tears on the child’s face and said, ‘She been knocking you about?’

Ruth nodded. ‘She told me not to talk to you, but I’m going to,’ she said defiantly. Bert shut the door and leaned on it, occluding the keyhole in case Miss Gay should decide to eavesdrop.

Ruth took the broom and began to sweep noisily, and Bert asked, ‘What was this man?’

‘The mesmeric man, the hypnotist. On the halls, he was. At the Tivoli. He tried to hypnotise me, but I just pretended. He mesmerised Jane lots of times. He could make her think that ice was a red-hot poker, and after he touched her with the ice a red blister would form on her arm. He made her think that she was talking to her grandma, and telling her how the missus beat her, and then the missus would punish her when she came round. It was horrible,’ confessed Ruth, sneezing in the plaster dust. ‘But I was glad it wasn’t me.’

‘He still here?’ asked Bert, shocked, and Ruth nodded.

‘He’s her fancy man,’ she said gravely. ‘That’s what the lodgers say. He’s got the best room and the window and all, and he gets all the good food—bacon and eggs and rolls and that.’

‘You hungry?’ asked Bert. ‘Where did she get you?’

‘From the orphanage. I’m
not
her flesh and blood! She adopted me. My parents are dead. I wish she hadn’t,’ said Ruth sadly. ‘I liked the orphanage. The nuns were letting me teach the younger kids their ABC. I didn’t want to leave, but she took me . . . there,’ she added in a loud voice, ‘I’ve swept up all the plaster, Mr Smith.’ Ruth’s hearing, sharpened by pain, had picked up the approach of Miss Gay before Bert had heard her. He opened the door, and Ruth went out, carrying the broom and the dustpan. Bert emerged into the passage.

‘I’m just going out for a couple of hours, Missus,’ he said flatly, and walked down the stairs and out at the hall door to where Cec had been lurking in the unkempt garden. Bert felt that he had been dipped neck-deep in sewage.

He found the cab, with Cec in it, around the corner in Charles Street, and Cec started the engine.

‘To the pub,’ ordered Bert. ‘I never, in all my born days, saw such a place as that. It’s filthier than a pigsty and God alone knows what would happen to a girl.’

‘So, we don’t go back,’ said Cec, stopping the cab outside the Mona Castle, and Bert shook his head.

‘Oh, yes we do,’ he said grimly. ‘Something nasty is going on in that place, and I’m going to get to the bottom of it.’

‘What was Miss Fisher not telling us?’ asked Cec, when they had glasses in their hands, and Bert rolled another smoke.

‘I don’t know, but I’m beginning to guess, and I don’t like what I’m thinking, Cec, I don’t like it one bit.’

Bert told Cec what he was thinking, and they bought another beer.

‘So I’ve taken a room there, Miss,’ reported Bert on the pub telephone. ‘And I gotta go back tonight. I want to meet this hypnotist chap.’

‘Yes, you do want to meet him,’ agreed Phryne. ‘But be careful, won’t you? They sound like very unpleasant people.’

‘So am I,’ growled Bert, baring his teeth. ‘Me and Cec is very unpleasant people, as well.’

‘All right, my dear, but keep in mind that I want to know all about the man before you pulp him. You have guessed about Jane, haven’t you?’

‘Yair, Miss, I guessed. As soon as I heard about the mesmerism.’

‘So I want him alive,’ said Phryne urgently. ‘He might be able to give her her memory back!’

Bert reluctantly accepted the justice of this. ‘All right, Miss, I see what you mean. Me and Cec will be gentle with him. And there might be another waif, Miss. Orphan called Ruth. That bitch don’t treat her right—beg pardon, Miss.’

Phryne sighed. Suddenly her life seemed to have become over-populated.

‘Oh, well, one more won’t make any difference, bring her along. When?’

‘Termorrer, Miss, if we can manage it, and you might have your tame cop standing by.’

‘Perhaps,’ said Phryne, and Bert felt a chill go through his spine, the remembered over-the-top thrill.

‘All right, Miss, I’ll see you then, goodbye.’

He hung up, paid the publican for the call, and returned to Cec.

‘She said that we can take the little girl as well,’ he commented. ‘Your shout, mate. No alcohol allowed in me new place of residence.’

Phryne stared at the photograph which had been delivered. Had this man mesmerised Gabrielle Hart? It was time that Miss Hart was found. She would go to see Klara in Fitzroy.

Bert went back to Miss Gay’s house, and found that dinner was on the table. Cec had returned to their own lodging house to explain Bert’s absence to their excellent landlady.

The dining vault was as cold as a Russian military advance and not as well provisioned. The great table, which was made of mahogany which had not been polished in decades, was laid with a spotted off-white cloth and a harlequin range of dishes. Quite of lot of them were cracked or chipped, and the silverware was Brittania metal and not clean. Bert observed that one place was set with clean, new dishes and real silver, and in front of it was the cruet, the bread and the butter.

The five other occupants of the house were already seated. They seemed a forlorn collection, with all the spirit crushed out of them by a combination of life, circumstances, and their landlady. Bert thought of his own Mrs Hamilton, all dimples and a dab hand with pastry, and envied Cec his dinner. There were two old men, vague and possibly senile; a young man in the last stages of consumption, who was as thin as a lath; a labourer or small tradesman with a missing arm, who seemed to retain some individuality; and a sleek and roly-poly gentleman in spotless evening costume, waistcoat and white tie, and probably evening pumps, though Bert did not look under the table. His manicured plump white hands cut the bread and buttered it as though there were no starving men at the same table. He had brown eyes like pebbles and that thick, pale skin which speaks of too much greasepaint at an early age. Miss Gay came in, bearing a tureen of frightful soup (which the gentleman did not take), and Bert was introduced.

‘This is Mr Smith,’ announced Miss Gay, dispensing pig swill. ‘Mr Brown, Mr Hammond,’ she said gesturing at the old men, who made no sign—‘Mr Jones,’ to the young man—‘Mr Bradford,’ to the tradesman, who nodded and spooned up his soup as though he was used to the taste. ‘And allow me to introduce Mr Henry Burton.’

‘I saw you once,’ commented Bert, pinning down an elusive memory, ‘on the Tivoli. You were on the same bill as that Chinese magician, the one who used to catch bullets in his teeth.’