Introducing the Honourable Phryne Fisher (7 page)

Privately, Phryne agreed with him. There was no one in the gathering who surpassed her in style and elegance, unless it was these two dancers in their plain garments which proclaimed the essential beauty of their bodies. The Princesse de Grasse, about whose title Phryne had serious misgivings, was small and wizened and Russian, dressed in a flaming red gown and a sinfully lengthy sable cape. She laid a chill claw on Phryne’s wrist and smiled a sardonic smile; wonderfully expressive, it seemed to take in their hostess, the room, the food and the unlikelihood of her title, plus a generous admira- tion of Phryne, all without a word. Phryne’s answering smile deepened, and she pressed the small hand.

‘I cannot remove the cloak,’ whispered the Princesse in Phryne’s ear, ‘since I have no back to my gown. You must come and visit me. You are the first person in this godforsaken place with an interesting face.’

‘I will,’ agreed Phryne. She had no time to say more, for her hostess was waiting with manifest impatience to show her off to some other parvenu. Phryne went placidly, carrying her head high, and deriving a certain amusement from Mrs Cryer. That lady was expounding social theory, a subject for which she was not qualified.

‘All of these horrid communists,’ wailed Mrs Cryer. ‘I live in no fear, of course. All my servants love me,’ she declared. Phryne did not say a word.

Faces and hands—the night was full of them. Phryne nodded and smiled and shook hands with so many people that they began to blur. She was becoming fatigued, and was longing to sit down, obtain a strong cocktail and light a cigar- ette, when her attention was recalled.

‘This is Lydia Andrews, and her husband John,’ Mrs Cryer was saying, and Phryne perked up and inspected her subject.

Lydia Andrews was well-dressed and had been made up by an expert, but was so limp and lifeless that she might have been a doll. She had fluffy fair hair and pink ostrich feathers curled childishly over her brow. She wore a beautifully beaded gown in old rose and a long string of pink pearls that reached to her knees.

It was only the momentarily sharp, penetrating glance that she gave Phryne as she was introduced that recalled the girl of the letters at all. This young woman could not be as languid as she seemed, not with a mind that could collect information on a grasping accountant. Phryne was wary. If this was the pose Mrs Andrews decided to affect, then who was she to interfere?

Lydia exuded deep apathy, boredom and a strong desire not to be where she was, which Phryne found curious. This was said to be the social event of the season. Behind her, her husband loomed, a portly young man, his corpulence straining his well-made evening clothes. He had thinning dark hair, balding towards the crown, and a large, unpleasantly warm and damp handshake. His eyes were a particular pale shade of which Phryne had always been suspicious, and he urged his wife forward with a hidden but painful tweak of the upper arm. Even then, she did not particularly react, though a look of surprised hurt crept into her china-blue eyes. Phryne disliked them both at sight, particularly John Andrews, whom she recognised as a domestic tyrant. But that did not make him a poisoner.

After the rest of the introductions had been completed and she had freed herself from her hostess, she found Lydia Andrews, according to her brief, and began assiduously to cultivate her, suppressing her private predeliction for Sanderson or the dancers.

Lydia proved difficult to separate from her husband, to whom she clung with the perversity of a limpet attaching itself to an ocean liner, where it knows that it is both unwelcome and unsafe. John Andrews finally undid his wife’s fingers from their clutch on his arm with no great gentleness, saying abruptly, ‘Talk to Miss Fisher, there’s a good girl. I want to see Matthews, and you know you don’t like him!’ and then deserted Lydia, disregarding her little cry of pain. There was something very odd indeed in this relationship, thought Phryne, and possessed herself of Lydia’s hand and such of her wavering attention as she could command.

‘John’s right, I don’t like that Matthews boy,’ she said suddenly. Her voice was flat and stubborn. ‘I know that he has grand relatives in England, but I don’t like him and I don’t like John having any business dealings with him. I don’t care how plausible and charming he is.’

Phryne could not help but agree, though she could see that the stubborn repetition of the words, over a few days, could cause the kindest man to lose his accustomed suavity. She doubted that John Andrews was ordinarily in possession of many manners, as he favoured the ‘I’m a common man, I am’ stance of those born to wealth inherited from several generations of land-snatching squatters.

Phryne found a couple of chairs and sat Lydia down, collecting a brace of cocktails from an attentive waiter on the way. Her feet ached to dance—it was one of her best accomplishments—and she had marked out the dancer Sasha as a partner. He was presently dancing with his hostess, who moved with the rigidity of a museum specimen, and he was contriving to do impressive things, even with such a companion as Mrs Cryer. However, she had come to cultivate Lydia. Phryne lit a cigarette, sighed, and asked, ‘What brings you to this gathering, Mrs Andrews? Evidently, it does not amuse you.’

Lydia’s eyes took on an alarmed look. She clutched at Phryne who fought an urge to free herself as ungently as John Andrews had; too many people had been seizing her for one night.

‘No, no, I’m sure it’s perfectly delightful; I’m not very well, but I am enjoying it, I assure you.’

‘Oh,’ said Phryne politely. ‘I’m not. Such a crush, is it not? And so many people whom I don’t know.’

‘Oh, but everyone is here—it’s the social event of the season,’ parrotted Lydia. ‘Even the Princesse de Grasse. She’s fascinating, isn’t she? But alarming, such bright eyes, and I’m told that she’s very poor. She escaped the revolution with only the clothes she stood up in. Since they came with the
Compagnie des Ballets Masqués
everyone has been inviting them, but they wouldn’t accept—the Princesse brought them, so now Mrs Cryer owes her a favour. They’ll dance for us later.’

Phryne was shocked. This was very bad. One invited artists to social events, but only for the pleasure of their company. To invite singers or dancers to perform for their supper was inexpressively vulgar, and deserved a prompt and stinging rebuke. Phryne wondered whether the Princesse would deliver it, and if so, whether Phryne would have the pleasure of hearing it.

‘Yes, it’s very bad,’ agreed Lydia, reading Phryne’s thoughts. ‘One would not do such a thing at home, but things are different out here.’

‘Manners are the same all over the world,’ said Phryne, sipping her cocktail, which was agreeably powerful. ‘She should not have done it. However, I shall be enchanted to see them dance again. I saw them in Paris, and they were strangely compelling. They danced Death and the Maiden; did they do that here?’

‘Yes,’ said Lydia, a trace of animation creeping across her features. ‘It was very strange, full of meanings which I just couldn’t grasp, and the music was odd—almost off key, but not quite.’

‘I know what you mean,’ agreed Phryne, reminding herself that Lydia was not of such profound stupidity as she chose to appear. She offered her a cigarette, and lit another for herself. The dancers had completed their foxtrot, and Sasha was making for Phryne. Lydia pressed close to her.

‘I like you,’ she said confidingly in her little-girl voice. ‘And now that Russian boy is coming to take you away. Come to luncheon tomorrow—will you?’

The little powdered face turned up with a pout to Phryne. She felt a sudden sinking of the stomach. She had met women of this cast of mind before—the clingers, fragile and utterly ruthless, who wore down friend after friend with their emotional demands, always ill and exhausted and badly treated, but still retaining enough energy to scream reproaches at the retreating friend as she fled, guilt-stricken, down the hall. And the next week to replace that friend—always female—with another. Phryne recognised Mrs Andrews as an emotional trap, and had no choice but to throw herself in.

‘Delighted,’ she said promptly. ‘What time?’

‘One o’clock,’ sighed Lydia, as the Russian boy emerged from the sea of people as sleek as a seal, smiling enchantingly. He took Phryne’s hand, kissed the knuckle more lingeringly than was necessary, and gestured at the dancing. The band were essaying a tango, with shuddering atonal shriekings added to make the sound modern, and Phryne smiled on her companion. The tango was a dance she had learned in Paris from the most expensive gigolo on the Rue du Chat-qui-Pêche, and she had not had an opportunity to dance it in polite society. They attracted general attention as he led her out on the floor; both slim and pure of line, and the young man so unadorned that he could have been naked.

The whole room had stopped to watch them as they began to dance, so fluid their movements, so highly charged the sacramental caresses. Sasha slid, moved, turned, with the effortless grace expected of a dancer, but there was more in his tango than mere practice. The more impressionable of the ladies in the audience were reminded of a panther; and one of the serving-maids, clutching her silver spoon to her bosom, whispered to her companion, a waiter, ‘Ooh, he’s a sheik!’

The waiter was unimpressed with Sasha, but Phryne’s dancing, as the satin and fur flowed ahead and behind her, affected him profoundly. She could combine the grace of a queen with the style of a demimondaine, and he had never seen anything like her in his life.

‘Oh, if I could ’ave ’er!’ he whispered, and the serving-maid rapped him sharply with the spoon.

Dancing with Sasha, Phryne decided, was almost as exciting as doing a loop-the-loop in a new plane in a high wind. He was graceful, and she could feel the ripple of excellent muscles beneath the leotard which fitted him like a second skin; he was exceedingly responsive to her slightest movement, but he led with confidence; she had no fear that he would drop her, and he smelt sweetly of a male human and Russian Leather soap. Her emotions were stirred, but she could not afford to become infatuated with him. She was explaining patiently to herself that she was not infatuated, but merely sensibly attracted to one who was personable, graceful and an excellent dancer, when they swept to a synchronised stop, and bowed to the applause which broke out all around them.

Sasha was holding her hand and drawing her down into yet another bow. Phryne woke up, resisted the pull, and removed her hand from his, not without an inward pang. The boy turned her gently by the shoulders as the band lurched into a foxtrot, and Sasha said his first words.

‘You dance very well,’ he commented. ‘I have seen you dance before.’

‘Oh?’ asked Phryne, resisting the urge to move into his embrace. He had the muscular nervousness of a highly bred horse; intensely alive, and reacting to every touch.

‘Yes, in the Rue du Chat-qui-Pêche,’ continued Sasha, ‘with Georges Santin.’

‘So it was,’ agreed Phryne, wondering if the young man was attempting to blackmail her. ‘It was Georges who taught me to tango, and it cost me a pretty penny, I can tell you. I saw you in Paris too, with the
Compagnie des Ballets Masqués
in the old Opera. Why did you leave so suddenly?’ she asked artlessly.

If the young snake was intending to ask embarrassing questions, then he would learn that Phryne had a fair battery of them too.

‘It . . . it was expedient,’ said Sasha, missing a step and recovering instantly. He spoke thenceforward in French, in which he was fluent, but with a heavy Russian accent. Phryne’s French was suitably Parisian, but in her Left Bank days she had picked up a number of indelicate apache idioms, and used them with alarming candour.

‘I find you very attractive, my beautiful boy, but I cannot be blackmailed.’

‘The Princesse told me that it would not work,’ admitted Sasha ruefully. ‘And I should not have persisted against her wisdom, but I did, and see what a fool I am revealed to be? Beautiful, charming lady, forgive your humble suppliant!’

‘Before I forgive you, tell me what you wanted,’ said Phryne.

Sasha paused, quivering, then led her to where the old Princesse sat perched on a golden metal chair, nibbling caviar russe and surveying the dancers with a sardonic eye, like an old parrot on a perch. She eyed Sasha and Phryne, and cackled.

‘
Et puis, mon petit
,’
she cackled. ‘Next time you will listen to me. Always I am right—infallibly right. It runs in the family; my father told the Tsar to attend to Rasputin and not declare war, but he did, and came to a bad end. As did poor Russia. And now I come to think of it, me. And you. Foolish boy! Is mademoiselle still speaking to you, worthless one? I told you she is not one to yield to pressure! But she might have reposed in your arms and agreed to your every wish had you used what charm the Lord God saw fit, for some reason, to endow you with!’

Phryne, observing that her partner was thoroughly chastened, and rather at a loss as to how to react, claimed a cocktail and some of the Princesse’s caviar russe, and resolved to wait until the old woman’s attention could be diverted from the hapless Sasha to explain.

‘I still might—they are very pleasant arms to repose in,’ she agreed placidly. ‘But I need more information. What do you want? Money?’

‘Not precisely,’ said the old woman. ‘We have a thing to do, and we believe that you can help us. You are investigating the strange illness of that female in rose, are you not? Colonel Harper—’e is an old friend of mine.’

‘I can give you no information until you reciprocate,’ temporised Phryne through a mouthful of the excellent caviar. The old woman cackled again.

‘Bon.
You suspect the snow, do you not?’

‘Cocaine?’ asked Phryne, thinking that it was a surprising question. It had not entered her head that Lydia was a drug-fiend.

‘We came from Paris in pursuit of the trade,’ stated the old woman calmly. ‘We of the
Compagnie des Ballets Masqués
are chasing the king of the trade. We believe that he is here—and you will help us find him. You cannot approve of it?’