Murder in Montparnasse (26 page)

Ruth’s heart sank. She knew where he’d gone. Back into the station, of course, and onto another train. They had failed. She looked so stricken that a kindly passing lady gave her a penny and told her to go home to her mother.

Ruth accepted the penny. It was never a good idea to discourage a charitable impulse, Miss Phryne said. Suddenly she caught sight of a flash of scarf mounting a tram.

Thanking the nice lady, Ruth gripped the penny and boarded the Wattle Park tram, sitting boldly in the open carriage with the night air rushing in. She had seen Jane and the basket tucked away at the back and, almost hidden by the conductor, the boy with the straw-coloured hair. Except now he didn’t have straw-coloured hair, but darkish red short curls, sweat dampened from being confined under the blond wig, and he was carrying a canvas bag. Aha! A disguise!

He still had the terrible scar which made people’s eyes slide off his face, though. Poor boy.

The tram clacked along St Kilda Road—back the way they had come. The boy’s destination would have to be somewhere fairly close. This must be almost the last tram. Ruth knew that they stopped at midnight.

She surrendered her penny to a jovial conductor whose ticket bag rested at an angle on a fine solid belly. He patted her and asked her where she was going and did her mother know she was out this late?

‘Certainly,’ said Ruth in her best imitation of her schoolmates. ‘But it is very civil of you to enquire,’ she added. The conductor chuckled and moved on. Where on earth was this boy going? This was like one of those paper-chases which they had at school. A game of hare and hounds. Ruth and Jane always came in first at hare and hounds because they worked so well together. Now they were doing it in real life and it was unbearably exciting. If only she wasn’t so
sleepy
.

Swan Street, Richmond. The boy was engrossed in a big heavy book. Ruth was too far away to read the title. Past the railway bridge’s inky shadow, Colliseum-Treadways loomed, still brightly lit though the shop, of course, was closed.

Jane was trying terribly hard not to look at Ruth. Where was this chase going? This tram was taking them completely off Jane’s mental map. She was journeying into an unknown region. It was very exciting.

She had stowed the scarf, a bright, metallic blue, in case the boy had noticed it. He was paying very close attention to his book. Jane puzzled out the title.
Ma Cuisine
. By Escoffier. A cookery book. Not surprising in a cook’s boy. Perhaps the deaf-mute wanted to be a chef. At least he wouldn’t yell at the staff, as Miss Phryne said was common in cooks. Though he could still throw pots.

The tram was almost empty. The boy shut the book and pulled the cord. Neither girl moved. The scarred face scanned both of them. Jane wished she had brought a book, too. It’s easier to avoid attention when you are reading. Ruth looked back at him, allowing her mouth to drop open in a way deplored by her teachers, then abruptly looked away. That should simulate a good ‘horrified’ response so that he wouldn’t suspect that she had been looking for his scarred face for what seemed like hours.

It seemed to work. When the tram stopped, he got off. So did Ruth. Jane was to stay on the tram one more stop and then walk back, as arranged. Where were they?

Glenferrie Road, the sign said. It was empty and dark. Ruth watched the boy walk to another tram stop and collected Jane as she hurried past. They broke into a run in order to reach the next stop before the tram came.

Jane surrendered the basket to Ruth, who ran better. She took off her hat and put on Ruth’s unused headscarf.

‘Different enough?’

Ruth surveyed her critically. The plaits were tied at the back of Jane’s neat head. She had no basket. Her coat was an ordinary shade of navy blue. Her scarf was a prissy shade of pink. Nothing notable about her.

‘I think so. Your hair’s hidden. And you can take off your glasses.’

‘Then I can’t see,’ said Jane, taking them off and folding them.

‘Don’t need to see fine detail,’ said Ruth, giving her a friendly push. ‘Go on! Here’s the tram! I’ll be right behind you,’ she added, hefting the basket and stepping back into shadow.

Jane managed to get up the steep tram steps without disaster, surrendered yet another penny—this trip had cost a terrible lot of pennies—and sat down with her back to the body of the tram. The boy was there. On they clacked into the night. Jane was wondering where this would end. Were they going to wander forever, like gypsies? My mother said, I never should, play with the . . . her head nodded.

Three stops later, end of the line. Cotham Road, Kew. Jane had never been to Kew. Ruth would be on the next tram, which would probably be the last one for tonight. The boy paced slowly up the road under the streetlights, as though he was tired now, and confident that he had eluded all pursuit. Jane trailed after him, keeping to the shadows of high fences and dark trees. These were the biggest houses she had ever seen. Biggest fences, too. Great iron constructions which might have fended off invasion from a Norman keep. Who did the people in these houses think was going to attack them?

The boy paused at a corner. Jane froze in the shadow of a huge plane tree. She was close enough to see the boy actually shrug, then turn away and proceed down the street.

Jane was tiring, as the boy was. When he came to one big, dark gate and swung it open, she was glad to sit down on a convenient fire hydrant cover two doors down. She heard the boy stumble as he went down the side way, and a door opened and closed. He was home at last.

Jane went to the corner of Cotham Road to intercept Ruth and lead her to the place. Ruth walked wearily along and then plumped herself down beside Jane on her fire hydrant cover.

‘We got him,’ breathed Ruth. ‘This basket is flamin’ heavy. How did you carry it so far on your own?’

‘I wasn’t thinking about it,’ said Jane vaguely. ‘Have you got my glasses?’

Ruth handed them over and Jane blinked as the world came into focus again.

‘I’m starving,’ said Ruth. ‘We’d better wait here a while to make sure he doesn’t come out again. Have you looked at the number?’

‘No,’ said Jane. ‘I can’t see without my glasses. You look at it.’

Ruth did so. There was no light in the huge house. She came back. Jane offered a rather squashed brown paper packet.

‘Have a sandwich. They’re egg. Or there’s ham. Which would you like?’

‘Both,’ said Ruth, grabbing. ‘Hard work, this private detective lark.’

They ate companionably for a while in the warm darkness under the huge trees. When they finished the sandwiches they rolled the paper bag and put it tidily into the basket. Ruth took a long swig of cold tea.

‘Well, we’ve done as she asked,’ she observed. ‘How do we get home? I think I can remember the way, but I definitely caught the last Cotham Road tram, the conductor told me so. What did Miss Phryne want us to do next?’

‘She will have thought of it,’ said Jane comfortably. ‘Isn’t it nice to sit down? My feet hurt.’

‘Mine too,’ said Ruth. ‘So we just sit here, then?’

‘We just sit here,’ said Jane, with perfect faith.

Ruth drank some more tea. She wasn’t good at perfect faith. The plane leaves rustled overhead. A breeze was picking up.

‘I can hear a car coming,’ said Jane.

‘Probably one of the people who live in these houses. You know, we probably go to school with some of them. I never realised. This is really rich country, Jane.’

‘It’s a taxi,’ said Jane, and walked into the middle of the road, holding up her hand.

‘He’s not going to stop for us,’ said Ruth scornfully. ‘Two little girls out on their own in the middle of the night?’

‘He’ll stop,’ said Jane. ‘Because he’s Mr Bert. And Miss Phryne.’

‘Oh,’ said Ruth. ‘Well, that’s different.’ Jane’s perfect faith appeared to have been justified. Ruth filed the fact for future reference. The taxi drew to a halt. Phryne got out and hugged both girls with admiration.

‘Oh, well done, my dears!’ she exclaimed. ‘You shall think of a really nice present as a reward. Bert’s been trailing that boy for days and always lost him—how did you manage to follow him off the train?’

‘Because there were two of us,’ explained Jane. ‘I think he might have seen Ruth, because she was closest to him on the tram, but when I took off my glasses he didn’t know me.’

‘And on the train,’ said Ruth, ‘he didn’t notice Jane.’

‘You’re very, very clever,’ said Phryne. ‘Now, are you so tired that you want to go straight home, or would you mind waiting for about—oh, I don’t know, half an hour? You can have a picnic with our co-conspirator while I interview the people in that house.’

‘Miss Phryne,’ asked Ruth tentatively, noticing that her benefactor was wearing black trousers and soft shoes, a black pullover and headscarf and was holding a soft canvas bag, ‘are you really going to burgle the house?’

‘Yes,’ said Phryne. Were these sterling young women going to disappoint her by developing scruples? Had all that public school education actually changed their attitude to a little light crime in a good cause? Surely they weren’t going to tell her that burgling houses was unladylike? Ruth’s next words relieved her adoptive parent’s worried mind.

‘Can we come too?’ asked Ruth.

Phryne laughed and hugged her again. She might be dressed in men’s clothes and about to commit a felony, Ruth thought, but Miss Phryne always smelled of Jicky or Floris Honeysuckle. Her voice was brisk and amused.

‘Not for the moment. One person is quieter than three. But don’t be cast down. You’re my rescue party. If something goes wrong, I’ll shine my torch through a front window, and you can come and rescue me. All right, Bert dear?’

‘All right,’ grunted Bert.

Phryne left them, sliding through the gap in the unclosed iron gate without stirring a leaf. They watched until she was swallowed up in the darkness.

‘She’s got a lot of cat in her, I reckon,’ said Bert, roused to the need to entertain the girls. ‘Can see in the dark and move like a shadow. No need to worry about Miss Phryne, girls. Never needed to be rescued in all the time I’ve known her. But that doesn’t mean we don’t follow her instructions. One of us has to keep watching the front of the house in case she shows her light. You can take first watch, Ruthie. Jane and me’ll get us some food. And you can tell me how you followed that young hound to his kennel. I always used to lose him in Flinders Street.’

‘We might have been lucky,’ said Jane, sorting out a box of the little pies which Mrs Butler always made for parties. ‘Ruth thought that he might have gotten out onto the track, climbed onto another platform and taken another train.’

‘P’raps,’ said Bert. ‘I like these eggy pies, they’re grouse. You want one, Ruthie? But another train wouldn’t get him anywhere near Kew. Capitalists don’t want trams belting down their expensive streets. Only sensible way is the bus down Studley Park Road or the tram. And if he wasn’t trying to lose followers, why would he come into the city anyway? Easier to catch a tram in St Kilda.’

‘Not to mention crossing the tracks, which is very dangerous,’ said Jane with her mouth full. ‘Ooh, good, ribbon sandwiches. This is a very nice picnic. Ruthie? Salmon mayonnaise or ham and lettuce?’

‘One of each,’ said Ruth, who had not taken her eyes off the huge house. Not a spark lit the darkness. ‘And is there anything to drink?’

‘Raspberry vinegar,’ said Jane, handing it over. Mrs Butler had provided cups but it was more fun to drink out of the bottle.

‘How did you follow us?’ asked Jane. ‘Were you in Flinders Street?’

‘Yair. Been up and down dunno how many times, trying to nail the boy, but I never could see him. So when I saw Janey here wave that scarf, I just trailed the tram. Then it was easy to follow either one of you, even when you changed your hat and took off your glasses. But I never twigged that straw hair was a wig. That’s why I never caught him. I was looking for that hair. Got any more of them pies for a starving man?’

‘We were looking for it too,’ said Ruthie, extending a hand without looking. Jane gave her another ribbon sandwich. ‘We only got him because we were on foot and close. It was a good disguise.’

‘My turn to watch the windows,’ said Jane.

Ruth leaned back against the smooth leather seat. ‘But why was he disguised and working in the Café Anatole?’ she asked.

‘Miss Phryne knows,’ said Jane, taking off her glasses, polishing them and staring at the darkened windows.

‘And maybe she’ll tell us all about it,’ agreed Bert. ‘Pass over the raspberry vinegar, will yer?’

Phryne walked very carefully, toe first and then heel, as she had been taught. Stalking was an exercise in patience, the handsome young ghillie Hamish had told her one long, sunlit summer in the Highlands. The beast has no appointments to keep. It is not concerned with time. So we have to forget time, too.

Phryne was not in a hurry. The undergrowth yielded, as Hamish had taught her, to a slow gentle advance, when it would have tripped the feet and torn the face and arms of haste. Leaves and tendrils flowed around her. The trick was a sort of benign self-confidence which allowed the stalker to move through the landscape like a slow, unthreatening shadow. The path was both under- and overgrown, but she negotiated it with no noise that a moderately alert guard dog would have heard. It brought her to the side door.

She explored the surface with gentle fingertips. Usual sort of door, usual sort of lock, scent of . . . she sniffed a finger. Sewing machine oil. The door was in use. No cobwebs over the latch. The hinges had been recently oiled.

How very charitable to adventitious burglars. She took out a lockpick and worked slowly, her ear against the door listening to each tumbler fall, trying to feel her way into the mechanism. Deprived of sight, her hearing had become acute. Somewhere a small beast was moving, probably a cat, possibly a rat. Phryne hated rats. She tried not to think about it.

Then a pounce and squeak told her that another silent hunter was abroad in the night. The rat threat had been removed by a feline associate. The door yielded at that moment and Phryne allowed it to open then glided inside like a shadow.