Murder in Montparnasse (4 page)

Phryne Fisher, 1928, looked back on Phryne Fisher, 1918, and marvelled at how young she had been, how tired, how fragile, how unwise. And how lucky. She still had one of the dresses Madame’s friend had made for her, and she still remembered how safe she had felt, snug in her flannel nightie in the steam-heated shelter of that hotel, knowing how cold and dangerous the world outside could be.

Phryne shivered and got up. The memory of Paris seemed very close and somehow threatening.

‘Dot? How are you going with
Table Talk
?’ she called.

‘I looked in,’ said Dot from the doorway, but you seemed to be asleep. I’ve found another bit of news. I went back to when the wife died. Suddenly, it says, of a heart attack. She was only thirty-five.’

‘And the gossip columnist in
Society Spice
,’ replied Phryne, trying to shake off her dream, ‘suggests that he is intending to marry again. “Hector C wants Julia C to change her name but not her initial.” You don’t think that could be Julia Chivers, do you?’

‘She doesn’t look more than eighteen,’ said Dot, scandalised.

‘The same age as Elizabeth,’ said Phryne. ‘There might be more than one explanation for why Elizabeth Chambers ran away, Dot dear. That would be an uncomfortable situation, a stepmother of the same age.’

‘But he’s practically a dwarf!’ objected Dot. ‘And fifty if he’s a day!’

‘He’s rich,’ said Phryne. ‘Wealth can add inches to one’s height. And I’ve known some very civilised dwarves. Perhaps he’s a nice man, Dot.’

Dot looked at the picture again. Mr Hector Chambers smirked into the lens, pot-bellied, double-chinned, thin-mouthed and narrow-eyed.

‘No,’ said Dot. ‘I don’t think so, Miss Phryne. Not a nice man.’

The prisoner woke and opened her eyes. She was secured to the
bedposts by her wrists and ankles. There was matted blood on the
side of her head where he had struck her, and it itched as it dried.

She did not scream.

CHAPTER THREE

Life is as others spoil it for us.

Natalie Barney,
The Woman Who Lives With Me

Mr Butler announced Detective Inspector Robinson at seven, just in time for a pre-dinner cocktail (though he usually preferred sherry), and Phryne watched him sit down in her sea-green parlour with her usual pleasure in his company.

Even Phryne, who had a good memory for faces, found it hard to recall his face if she looked away from him. Mid-brown hair, mid-brown eyes, standard number of features, middle height, middle weight. He might have been anyone, a fact which he had found useful in a career in which not being noticed could save your life, or at least spare you a belting. He stretched his legs and sighed. He knew that he was in for the usual Phryne interrogation, but he also knew that as a reward he would get an excellent Spanish sherry and a superb dinner.

‘M’wife’s in the country with her sister,’ he said, accepting a small glass of Amontillado. ‘New baby. So I’m back to my bachelor days and I was never very good at catering. Still, with a tin of beans and some toast you’ve always got dinner,’ he said cheerfully, causing Mr Butler to shudder slightly.

‘We can manage something better than that, Jack dear,’ said Phryne, sipping her cocktail. ‘Now, would you like your interrogation before dinner or after?’

‘Before,’ he said. ‘As soon as I’ve had this sherry.’

He sat sipping nervously, eyeing Phryne as though he had never seen her before. He exhibited, in short, all the hallmarks of a Man Grappling With An Ethical Dilemma. Phryne decided to sit him out. At last he spoke.

‘Got a favour to ask,’ said Jack bashfully.

‘Ask,’ said Phryne.

‘My missus . . .’

‘Yes?’ said Phryne encouragingly. Was the estimable Robinson about to confess to adultery? Surely not.

‘She’s always wanted to . . .’

He stuck again. Phryne gestured to Mr Butler to refill his glass.

‘Well, you see, she knows that I often work with you, and she knows that you’re one of the nobs, and she wondered . . .’ He was actually writhing. He was, she reflected, an extremely honest policeman and this looked too much like bribery. What was he going to ask for?

‘Spit it out, Jack dear. Even unto half my kingdom. What can I do for the worthy and charming Mrs Robinson?’

‘I mean, I’d pay for them and all. But you have to be asked. Invited. Tickets to the Lord Mayor’s Ball,’ said Robinson, very fast.

‘And supper afterwards?’

‘I don’t know,’ he confessed. ‘Is that usual?’

‘If you’re a nob,’ said Phryne affectionately. ‘I’ll telephone the Mayor tomorrow. Anything else?’

‘No. Rosie will be so pleased. She’s always wanted to go to the Lord Mayor’s Ball. You’re sure you can do this?’

‘Oh, yes,’ said Phryne, who was sure. The Lord Mayor had been attempting to get her to go to the ball for some time. A couple of extra tickets would be cheap at the price in return for Miss Fisher’s presence. She could suffer a few hours of having her toes trodden on by St Kilda’s Best and Brightest— a small return for Jack’s friendship and help. ‘The invitations shall be delivered in the next couple of days. Was that all, Jack?’

‘Quite enough,’ said Robinson, who felt that he was walking a perilous line on the edge of peculation. ‘Now, what can I do for you?’

Phryne told him about the two dead soldiers.

‘I can get the inquest reports easy enough, but they probably won’t tell us much. Did they get the number of the car that attempted to run them down?’

‘No, they were trying to extract their friend from my hedge. I can’t judge whether this is a real case or not, but Bert and Cec think it is and they are not prone to panic.’

‘No, they ain’t.’ Robinson did not approve of red-raggers, but Bert and Cec had been in some tight places and seemed stable enough. Besides, they were diggers, and Gallipoli diggers at that. Any small tendency to diffidence or anxiety they may have had would have been burned out of them on those hot cliffs.

‘Then there is the disappearance of Elizabeth Chambers.’

She explained again.

‘She’s over eighteen, still a minor though,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘Can’t do much. Most runaway girls come back after a year or so with a husband . . . or a baby . . . or both, sometimes. I can put out the word to the Vice chaps and make sure she isn’t in a “house”. Not much I can do about the other states, though. I can ask,’ he said dubiously.

‘Also, was there any investigation into the death of Miss Chambers’ mother?’ asked Phryne. ‘Died young and unexpectedly.’ ‘If there was an inquest there’ll be a record. Someone must have signed a certificate. I’ll look into it.’

‘Good.’

‘Anything more?’ asked Robinson, who could smell savoury scents drifting in from the dining room. He personally never wanted to look a baked bean in its good, nourishing face again.

‘A funny thing, possibly nothing. Standover men in Fitzroy Street. Sabotage in the form of a burning rubbish bin and paint thinners in the butter. One was thrown through a window this morning. Anything leap to mind about them?’

‘I know a bloke who’d know,’ said Robinson, trying not to drool. ‘And I used to be on that beat myself when I was a youngster. I’ll inquire.’

‘Very confidentially,’ warned Phryne.

‘Of course.’

‘Dinner is served,’ announced Mr Butler. Jack Robinson leapt out of his chair like his namesake.

Mrs Butler, who had overhead Miss Phryne enthusing about Café Anatole, had decided on an aggressively English dinner, just to demonstrate that not all good cooking resided on the right-hand side of the Channel. The saddle of lamb sat oozing pink juices in the middle of its complement of perfectly baked vegetables: potatoes, onions, parsnips, carrots and turnips. A large bowl of green peas steamed in the middle of the buffet, butter melting into them. A silver gravy boat full of claret-enhanced gravy accompanied it, and Mrs Butler’s sister’s own home-made mint jelly cast little crystalline flashes from its perfectly faceted surface.

To begin, there was a light vegetable julienne in chicken bouillon. Jack Robinson inhaled it in a trice. When his plate was laden with a little of roast everything and gravy and mint jelly, he stared at it for a moment of perfect silence that was a benediction and a delight to any cook’s heart.

Mrs Butler retreated from the kitchen door, satisfied.

The other diners fell on the feast as though they hadn’t eaten a good meal for days, though this was only the case for Jack Robinson, whose diet of baked beans and ‘’Ot pies! Dead ’orse on ’em! Get ’em while I’m ’ere! ’Ot pies!’ from the pie cart in Russell Street had not been a satisfactory substitute for even his usual warmed-over meals. Jane and Ruth had childhood starvation to avenge and had still not really come round to the view that there would, infallibly, be dinner every day. This also applied to the ex-stray Ember, tucking in to roast meat scraps in the kitchen. It even applied to Dot, who had a healthy appetite, and Phryne, who had spent a lot of her childhood in a state of semi-famine.

They were a pleasure to cook for, they were, Mrs Butler said to herself, and drew out her apple pies from the oven. The steam rose, smelling of cloves. Perfect. Those French cooks knew a lot about cooking things which no mortal would eat unless they had to—snails, for the Lord’s sake!—but they couldn’t dish up a good roast to save their lives.

Some five minutes elapsed before anyone at the Fisher dining table said anything but ‘May I have some more gravy, please?’ and ‘Good meat this’ and ‘If you could pass the bread?’ but gradually the fever eased and they began to converse.

‘Miss Dot says that you’ve got a new case,’ said Jane. ‘About a missing girl.’

‘Yes. However, she may have just run away,’ said Phryne.

‘Was she badly treated?’ Jane wanted to know. This was the thought which would instantly occur to both girls, of course, thought Phryne. They had been badly treated, so badly treated that they had not even dared to run away.

‘I don’t know,’ she answered. ‘If so, it’s recent. She just came back to Australia from a finishing school outside Paris. Her father wants her to marry a fifty year old man with a moustache, so she might have run.’

‘She might have a boyfriend,’ said Dot. ‘From France.’

‘And she’s eloped!’ said Ruth.

‘Possibly. I don’t know enough about her yet. I didn’t go to a finishing school.’

‘Where did you go after you left school, then?’ asked Jane.

‘To a war,’ said Phryne. ‘Have some more lamb, Mr Butler?’

She waved her glass at him and he refilled it with a light hock. Phryne found herself violently unwilling to consider that war. She wondered at her own reaction and decided to think about it later.

‘She fell in love with him in Paris,’ said Ruth dreamily. ‘A dark southerner, full of passion. She was torn away from him by her stern father and sailed off in tears. Then he took a job as a deck hand and climbed up to her window one night and . . .’

There was a short silence as Ruth’s voice trailed off.

‘Ruth, what have you been reading?’ asked Phryne.

‘Romances,’ replied Jane, scornfully. ‘There’s a whole shelf of them in the library and she’s read them all.’

‘I’m sure she hasn’t taken any harm, Miss,’ said Dot. ‘They’re just books.’

Phryne was about to say that a lot of harm was wrapped up in inoffensive covers with embossed flowers on them, caught sight of her expression in the mirror over the mantle and laughed.

‘I’m in no position to censor your reading,’ she told Ruth. ‘You may bathe in romances if you like. Just don’t act on them yet.’

Ruth blushed and took more potato. At least indulgence in railway reading hadn’t ruined her appetite. At this delicate juncture Jack Robinson exclaimed, ‘Of course! Billy the Match!’

‘Sorry?’ asked Phryne.

‘The burning rubbish bin, Miss Fisher, and the thinners on the butter. When I was a young constable there was a rash of house fires. Each one the same: started with thinners on something in the kitchen. Took us weeks to find him, too. He was my first real good collar.’

‘Tell us about it,’ breathed Ruth, and the subject of romance faded.

‘I was told to watch out for smoke while patrolling along the Esplanade—in fact, Miss Fisher, I walked along outside this house every night for almost a year. I’d heard about arsonists from this bloke who’d been on the Force for donkey’s years, seen everything, he had. Taught me a lot, Sergeant Patterson did. He said that arsonists got a real charge out of the fire, and he’d likely be among the crowd, watching. Look for the gleam in his eyes, the old Sarge said. So when I smelt smoke just along here, I blew my whistle and got the fire brigade, and then instead of continuing on my beat I hung around in the shadows, watching the mob.

‘Well, everyone was there. The house was burning like a torch. The people had got out all right and the lady of the house was standing on the pavement in her nightie going crook—I saw her point, of course—and most people were looking sad or sympathetic except this one bloke, towards the back. His eyes were gleaming, all right, and he was excited. My word, he gave a jump when I came up and put the arm on him. I arrested him for being knowingly concerned and took him back to the station. He stank of thinners and told us all about it, casual as you like. He liked fires, he said, they made him feel alive, and when no fires happened natural like, he had to start them himself. Billy the Match, they called him. I don’t remember his real name, but that was his style—thinners every time.’

‘Did he go to jail?’ asked Jane.

‘My word he did, despite his lawyer telling the judge that he was insane. Ten years, he got. Which would mean, now I think about it, that he’d be out. I’d better see what’s happened to our Billy,’ said Robinson grimly. ‘It was only luck that he didn’t kill anyone. He didn’t care if there were people in the house or not. And if he’s up to his old tricks in Fitzroy Street, I want to know about it.’

‘He might be in league with someone else,’ said Phryne. ‘The gentleman who left Café Anatole through the window, perhaps?’

‘Yeah, well, you meet a mixed group of people in jail,’ said Robinson, ‘not select company, Miss Fisher.’