Introducing the Honourable Phryne Fisher (49 page)

‘I can do it. Why is he going to your house?’

‘Because he’s found out that Jane has seen him before.’

The car rolled to a silent halt in the cold street. Rain washed the cobbles and slicked the asphalt. Phryne buttoned her coat and pulled her cap down over her eyes, leaned over, and kissed Lindsay hard on the lips.

‘Good luck,’ she said, and got out of the car.

‘Over the top,’ said Lindsay, remembering a hundred woeful movies.

He tasted Phryne’s kiss on his lips all down the dark alley at the side of the house.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

‘Somehow it seems to fill my head with ideas,—only I don’t exactly know what they are! However, somebody killed something, that’s clear, at any rate . . .’

Lewis Carroll
Alice Through the Looking Glass

There were no lights in the house, and it was getting on for one in the morning. It was so quiet, except for the swish of the rain in the leaves, that Phryne could hear Lindsay on the other side of the house, singing in his pleasant tenor ‘Swing low, sweet chariot’ interrupted by the occasional hiccup. He really had a talent for acting, which his arrogant friend would never suspect. It was dark, and wet, and Phryne had not realised how many lumpy objects, just at shin height, were stored in her sideway. She banged into what seemed to be a spade, to judge by the clatter, and caught it up, using it to mark her steps and make as loud a noise as possible.

Perhaps she was wrong. Perhaps he had gone to call on Eunice, perhaps he had taken a female glee-er into the bushes (though surely even students were not that lusty on a night like this), or perhaps he had gone blamelessly home to bed.

A branch struck Phryne across the face and blinded her; when she could see again she had been seized in a bone-breaking hold and there was a hand over her mouth.

She did not struggle, since this was futile; she gave a gasp and allowed herself to go limp. Her attacker was not expecting this; he had to change his grip to bear her up, and he grabbed her around the waist, leaving her hands and her mouth free. She was carried for a few paces, the strength of her captor surprising her. Phryne was a light weight, but this man carried her as if she weighed no more than a feather.

‘Fainted, have you?’ snarled a distorted voice. ‘Miss fine-airs Fisher, stealing my friend away like a poor dog to a flaunting bitch. I’ll show you, Miss Fisher, who thinks you are so clever. Then I’ll kill you, and leave you lying splayed for your lover to find. I can hear him, stumbling and singing, the drunken loon. Playing hide and seek, were you? First you, then him, then the little bitch, and the money is all mine.’

He dropped Phryne on her back and began to tear at the buttons of her sheepskin jacket. Phryne was cold with horror; the man was ten times stronger than she, and she had little time before she would be pinned like a moth.

Quickly, neatly, she rolled, drew up her legs, and kicked out with all her strength. She felt her heels sink into something soft. Her attacker gave a roar like a wounded boar and fell to his knees, catching Phryne’s neck with his right hand. His agony was measureless, his grip like that of an ape, and Phryne tore at the fingers. His one hand was not wide enough to encompass her throat, but he had his thumb on the carotid, and the air began to redden before her eyes.

‘Oh, there you are, Alastair, old chap,’ burbled Lindsay, a little breathlessly. He had heard the shout and had broken the land speed record for running around houses in the dark.

‘A fine night, isn’t it? Oh, I love these cool nights, to repose on the pale bosom of winter,’ he carolled, lifting his full bottle, which he had found in the car. ‘Have you seen Miss Fisher? Lovely girl. Oh, there she is.’ He stared owlishly at Phryne’s purpling face. ‘Sorry, old chap,’ he added, and brought the bottle down with all his force on his housemate’s head.

The bottle cracked and broke, the scalp split, and blood blinded Alastair. He released Phryne, who crawled away, groping for the side of the house to haul herself to her feet.

‘Alastair, are you dead?’ asked Lindsay, bending low, and falling headlong as the strangling hands shot up out of the dark and fastened on his neck. He was dragged close to the blood-blubbered face, and did not have time even to cry out.

Phryne fired a bullet from the small gun and hit Alastair in the thigh. The body jerked, but he did not relax his grip. Lindsay thrashed, suffocating. Phryne raised the gun again and shot Alastair neatly in the forearm, disabling the wrist, so that she could pull the choking Lindsay away, and they stood embracing each other as the monster writhed on the leaf-mould.

‘Go in, call the police, quick!’ cried Phryne. ‘Hurry!’

And Lindsay, coughing, stumbled away and she heard him pounding on the door. Lights went on in the hall. She could see the attacker clearly now. Alastair had been a good-looking young man; now he had the terror-mask of a beast, and Phryne retched when she looked at him. She held the gun unwaveringly, aware that it was glued to her hand with drying blood, and the moments crept on. More lights, and voices, and the ‘ting’ of the telephone taken off its hook. The thing on the ground stirred. Phryne backed, raising the gun.

‘Kill me,’ it muttered, blood bubbling from its nose.

‘No,’ she said, noticing that her voice trembled.

‘Kill me. I wanted to kill you. I tried, and failed. It is the natural law. You must kill me.’

‘No,’ said Phryne. Her knees felt weak. If someone did not come soon, she would fall, and be within reach of that creature on the blood-spattered leaves.

‘You killed the old woman,’ she said, bolstering her courage.

‘I did. She was useless. All women beyond childbearing are useless. She never trusted me, anyway. It was easy. I stole a uniform, got on the train, chloroformed Eunice and the old woman, then when the train stopped at the tower, I flung up my rope and a grapple, and there we were. She was no weight at all, really. And the power! I felt that I could rule the world. That’s what murder does for you, Miss Bitch Fisher. It gives you the power of a god.’

‘You came here to kill Jane,’ said Phryne. ‘She hasn’t reached childbearing yet. Wouldn’t that be a waste?’

Alastair heaved and thrashed, trying to sit up. ‘Come and help me,’ he demanded.

Phryne did not move.

‘You’re afraid of me, aren’t you? And you should be. I am the superman.’

‘I’ve heard of it,’ commented Phryne.

‘It would be a waste, but there is a lot of waste in nature. A million sperm to make one cell. A thousand little turtles hatched and only seventy reach the sea. Nature is prodigal. It would make more girls, and she had remembered. She was a danger to me . . . to me! No little tart could stand in the way of my destiny! All of those under protection shall flourish. All else shall be destroyed.’

‘Eunice didn’t flourish,’ said Phryne, wondering if she had a fever or the night was getting hotter. ‘You burned her face.’

‘A trifling error. I never used the stuff; it’s old-fashioned, but I needed it because it is heavier than air, I wanted something that would drop down onto the faces of the sleepers. If you don’t help me sit up, I’m going to choke on all the blood that is running down the back of my throat,’ he added.

‘Choke then,’ said Phryne as Mr Butler, Lindsay and Dot rushed out of the house, and she fell into Dot’s arms.

‘Better tell the cops to bring a doctor,’ she gasped. ‘Or his deathwish will be fulfilled.’

Dot bore her into the light, and Phryne caught sight of herself in the hall mirror. Her face was white, her eyes surrounded with black hollows, and there was no colour in her lip or cheek. She had, however, ample colour in the purple marks of fingers, so clearly deliniated that Jack Robinson later suggested dusting her for prints. Phryne laughed at this, because they had taken away the unspeakable Alastair, strapped to a stretcher, raving, but alive, and she was contemplating a very stiff brandy and soda.

Dot had revived the parlour fire, and Lindsay cast himself down on the hearth rug and closed his eyes. He was smeared with leaf-mould and blood, and was as bruised as Phryne was, from the grasp of those terrible hands. Mr Butler brought him a drink mixed to the identical recipe. When he had absorbed this and another, a little pink came back to his face and he was able to focus again.

He saw Phryne decorously divested of her jacket and trousers, and dressed in a flowing woollen gown, grey-green as gum leaves, after Dot had sponged the mud and blood spatters from her face and hands. Lindsay was treated likewise by Mr Butler, who washed his face as though he was five years old and still unreliable with chocolate. He gave up his tweed jacket, damaged (he feared) beyond repair, and his smeared trousers, and assummed a dressing-gown and slippers. He was back in his place before the fire, newly washed and dressed, feeling as he had when he was a child and his nanny had brought him into the drawing-room for an hour before dinner.

Phryne cradled a steaming cup of strong black coffee in both hands, and Lindsay took his with a bewildered thank-fullness, as though he had been woken out of a bad dream. A sip taught him that it was Irish coffee made with very good whisky. He drank a little, wondering why his throat was so sore, then became aware that Phryne was telling a story.

‘He thought that Eunice Henderson’s mother had a lot of money,’ she was saying, staring into the depths of the cup. ‘He was wrong, as it happens; the old woman was broke, she lost all her fortune in the Megatherium crash. Eunice has money of her own. She was supporting her mother. He read Eunice all wrong,’ she added thoughtfully. ‘She didn’t like her mother—well, no one could—but she was content to wait until nature took its course. She didn’t want to kill the old lady. I think that Alastair expected Eunice to be grateful, not mournful. He certainly didn’t expect her to hire me to find out who killed her. That upset him. I thought he was just jealous of me because I seduced his friend.’

‘Here, I say, Phryne!’ objected Lindsay, waking up a little. Dot was smiling at him. Mr Butler was refilling his cup. The policeman, who had evidently dressed in a hurry, as the bottoms of his pyjamas were visible beneath his trouser hems, was unmoved. Lindsay subsided. He was too tired, anyway, to worry about the rags of Miss Fisher’s reputation.

‘But I was wrong. He wasn’t jealous—at least, not in that way. He was annoyed that any woman could take him on—could be so impudent as to attempt to fathom his motives! But I did. I caught sight of that guard’s face, you know, and even with the scar and the cap I almost knew him. Then when he produced that alibi I was convinced that I must have been wrong, and then Lindsay exploded his Mills Bomb right under my chair. They are identical to a physical description.’

‘You should have seen it,’ said Lindsay sleepily. ‘She swung down the boathouse porch like a monkey and drove back here like a demon. It was like riding the whirlwind.’

‘Well, I didn’t think we had time to spare,’ Phryne drained the Irish coffee, touched her throat, and winced. ‘And we didn’t, either. Are the girls all right?’

‘Yes, Miss, I checked, both as cosy as bugs in a rug, them and their cat.’ Dot took one of Phryne’s feet into her lap and began to rub it. She was sensible of the fact that while there were two sets of masculine arms to fall into, and one of them her current pet, Phryne had fallen into Dot’s. Phryne’s beautiful feet were colder than stone. Dot rubbed assiduously.

‘I found out how he knew that little Jane knew him, Miss Fisher,’ admitted Jack Robinson, vainly attempting to haul up his pyjama hem without seeming obvious. ‘He overheard our conversation. My end of it, I mean. He was at the counter, signing the bail book, when I was talking to you. It won’t happen again, I tell you,’ he added fiercely. ‘They will have to give me a phone in my office when I tell ’em about this. You could have been killed, Miss, not to mention the girls. What happened when you got to the house?’

‘Well, I knew that he wasn’t far ahead of us, because he’d been at the boathouse earlier, and I also knew that he could not get into the house. I had those windows fitted with strong diagonal bars, ever since Ember arrived and I realised how dark and little overlooked that sideway is. I thought that he would be prowling about the house, seeking those whom he might devour,’ she shuddered and swallowed painfully. ‘And I thought that Lindsay and I would be a match for him. And we almost weren’t, eh, Lindsay?’

‘If you hadn’t shot him,’ opined Lindsay, ‘he would have killed me. And I’m his oldest friend. Makes a man think, that does. Will he live, Detective-inspector?’

Jack Robinson laughed grimly. Three o’clock in the morning was not his favourite hour, and he was not in the mood to mince words. ‘He’ll live to hang. Miss Fisher wasn’t trying to kill him, so she didn’t. He’s got the constitution of an ox.’

At that moment, the telephone rang. Mr Butler went to answer it. ‘Miss Henderson, Miss Fisher,’ he intoned. Phryne leaned on Dot’s arm and staggered out to the phone.

‘Hello, Eunice, what can I do for you?’

Phryne listened for a long moment; she thought that they might have been cut off. Then Eunice whispered, ‘You know who killed Mother, don’t you, Phryne?’

‘Yes, my dear, I know.’

‘I know too. It was Alastair, wasn’t it?’

‘Yes.’

‘I knew his back, you see. I saw that blond guard, and I didn’t recognise the face or the voice, but I knew his back. I’ve known all along, Phryne, and hoped it wasn’t true.’

‘Yes, Eunice.’

‘Have they caught him?’ The whisper was desperate.

‘Yes, they’ve caught him.’

‘Why?’

The voice was a wail. Phryne was too tired to think of a tactful reply, and talking hurt her throat.

‘Money.’

‘And Mother didn’t have anything to leave but this house,’ Eunice began to laugh. ‘I would have given him everything I had.’ There was a pause. ‘Well, that’s the end of that,’ she said sadly.

‘Eunice, have you no one to stay with you?’ urged Phryne.

‘No, dear, I don’t need anyone. I shall be all right. I am on my own now—no mother, no relatives, no lover. It might be a rather interesting experience. I won’t keep you in the hall on this cold night, Phryne. Thank you for everything.’

‘Goodnight,’ said Phryne, and Eunice hung up.

‘That was Eunice Henderson,’ she told her company. It seems that she suspected it was Alastair all along. Well, that’s the end of that, as Eunice says. Give me some more of that Irish coffee, Mr B., and then I think that we can all go to bed, again.’

‘You’ll be in touch, Miss Fisher? Have to make a statement about the capture of the felon,’ said Jack Robinson. ‘Nice work, Miss Fisher. We shall have to get you in the force, ha, ha.’