Murder in Montparnasse (7 page)

Thug One examined the card. Engraved, not printed. ‘The Hon. Phryne Fisher. Investigations.’ ‘Did Mr Chambers call you?’

‘No,’ said Phryne patiently. ‘Tell him it’s about his daughter.’

At this, the men were galvanised. The gates swung open. Phryne was joined by Thug One in the front seat of her car, much to her annoyance. She drove up to the house along a carriage drive which had been both asphalted and swept. Green lawns sloped away on either side, bordered with flowerbeds and old elm trees. Phryne stopped the car by the front door and got out.

‘Well?’ she asked.

‘This way, Miss,’ grunted Thug One. Clearly Mr Chambers had given orders that anyone who came inquiring about his daughter must be instantly admitted. Maybe he was concerned about her, after all. Thug One opened the front door, which was magnificent, and handed Phryne over to the indoor Thug Two. Phryne wondered whether there was a factory somewhere which turned out big, solid men with no necks and muscles like bags of walnuts.

The hall was carpeted and there was a general air of plush and chestnut furniture in the grand salon through which she was conducted. Then a door was opened, Phryne was almost pushed through, and the door slammed and locked behind her.

This was unusual behaviour, even for a racing identity. A small, red-faced man was sitting at the desk, surrounded by papers and refreshing himself at intervals from a large decanter of ruby port.

‘Yes?’ he growled.

‘I’m Phryne Fisher,’ said Phryne, sitting down composedly on a near-Morris chair. ‘I’ve come to talk to you about your daughter’s disappearance.’

She had looked away for a moment. When she looked back she was staring down the barrel of a large handgun, backed by a steady hand and a scowl.

‘Where is she?’ demanded Hector Chambers. ‘Where’s my little Lizzie?’

The prisoner was drinking cold tea. It tasted vile. There were deep
rings around her wrists and ankles and she was far too afraid to
complain. If she did, he would come back and hit her again. The
memory made her cringe and whimper.

CHAPTER FIVE

Our daily lives betray us.

Natalie Barney,
Little Mistresses

‘Let’s not be hasty, Mr Chambers,’ said Phryne.

She had looked down her fair share of gun barrels in her time, and the experience had not improved with repetition. Mr Chambers’ hands were steady, the gun was a large one and the barrel appeared to be quite as deep as a well and twice as wide as a church door.

‘Lizzie! Where is she? If you’ve hurt her, I’ll—’

‘Let’s take this one point at a time,’ said Phryne very gently and clearly. ‘One, I don’t have Elizabeth. Two, I don’t know where she is. Three, I’m trying to find her. Four, put down the gun, Mr Chambers. I know how distraught you must be, but killing me won’t help.’

‘Why are you looking for her? No one knows she’s missing!’ snarled Mr Chambers, not lowering the gun.

‘M’sieur Anatole is concerned about her,’ answered Phryne. ‘He asked me to investigate quietly, so as not to produce a scandal. If you still have my card, you will see what it says.’

Mr Chambers allowed the barrel to slide away from Phryne. She opened her purse. The barrel moved back.

‘You really are in a state, aren’t you?’ she asked in a friendly tone. ‘How about pouring me a glass of that red ink and sitting down for a chat? And do you have a light?’

Of all the various responses to being menaced with a firearm which Mr Chambers had met, a request for a drink and a light for a cigarette was unique. Finely honed hospitality reflexes were already snapping the cigar lighter before he realised what was happening. His visitor breathed in, blew a perfect smoke-ring, accepted a glass of port and smiled.

Mr Chambers emptied his glass at a gulp, sloshed himself another, and said, ‘Lizzie is all right. She’s on a holiday with friends she met in Paris.’

‘Nonsense,’ said his visitor composedly. ‘You wouldn’t have been doing that startling impression of the Gunfight at the O.K. Corrall if Lizzie was all right and holidaying with friends. Wouldn’t it help if you told me about it?’

‘How can you help? You’re a sheila,’ diagnosed Mr Chambers, zoology expert.

‘Yes, true, well done, I can see you are an acute observer. Tell me, what was it that gave me away? The hair? The lack of Adam’s apple? The intelligence? Let me ask you a question. With all your big men and big guns, all your bullying and sticking people up, has it produced any clue to Lizzie’s whereabouts? Hmm?’

Mr Chambers had to shake his head.

‘Then perhaps we can try it another way,’ said Phryne.

‘Well, you’re cool enough, Miss . . . er . . . Fisher,’ said Mr Chambers. ‘But I can’t tell you anything about Lizzie. They say they’ll . . .’

‘Ah. Kidnapped. Now you don’t need to say anything. Just nod or shake your head. For ransom?’

Nod.

‘Money?’

A nod.

‘Five hundred pounds?’

‘If you’re guessing, you’re a real good guesser,’ snarled Mr Chambers, his suspicions back at full-bore. His pistol had replaced itself in his hand as if by magic.

‘A five year old child could have guessed that much,’ responded Phryne. ‘You’re rich, but that doesn’t mean you have the stuff lying around in sackfuls. Five hundred is about as much as anyone could raise in a couple of weeks without selling real estate or—a horse, perhaps. Now put away that cannon and talk to me. There’s a time limit to this, isn’t there?’

‘Two weeks from Sat’day,’ muttered Mr Chambers. ‘I got to wait until they tell me how to deliver it. Personal column in the
Argus
. Under the name of Jaunty Lad. The name of my best horse, dammit.’

‘And what do they say they will do to Elizabeth if you don’t pay?’

Mr Chambers stared at Phryne, face blank with despair, and did not need to answer.

‘And you don’t know who these people are? I ask,’ explained Phryne hastily, ‘because you look like you have some reasonably expert help with the rough work and they should have been able to track down any known extortionists.’

‘No idea. No one’s heard anything. Not a whisper round the pubs, like you’d expect. I’ve had blokes in every dive, in every sly-grog shop and SP pub, and not a clue.’

‘How about enemies?’ asked Phryne. ‘Other racehorse owners?’

‘I thought of that,’ groaned Mr Chambers. ‘Most of ’em are straight—straight as a die. Nothing iffy about most of ’em. And I ain’t done nothing to the ones who ain’t straight. Can’t see any of ’em pulling a stunt like this anyway. I mean, we compete all right, but we buy each other a drink in the Members’ after the races. We’re all in the same business.’

‘No owner with whom you might have had a quarrel? Someone to whom you sold a horse with re-done teeth, or a vicious brute warranteed free from vice? Such things happen,’ she said soothingly, as Mr Chambers’ fingers twitched towards his gun again. ‘Horses occasionally develop bad habits after they have been sold.’

‘I’ve known that to happen, yeah,’ admitted Mr Chambers. ‘No, I haven’t sold anything in the last six months. Not so much as a donkey. And I ain’t done no one in the game no bad turns that I can remember.’

‘Think about it,’ urged Phryne. ‘I don’t imagine Elizabeth has had time to make any really strong-minded enemies. You hold the key. Now, when did Elizabeth disappear?’

Mr Chambers had given up his resistance. ‘She was only back four days. Then she went out to a dance with a friend of mine—a girl. At a private house. She didn’t go out to dances much but I reckon she wanted to show off her Paris clothes. She and Miss Chivers went off in the car about eight. Dance went on and on and the driver got bored and slipped out for a drink. I’ve already skinned him for that, the lazy idle hound. When he came back the car was gone and this was pinned to a lamppost.’

He rummaged in a drawer and produced a letter. Pinholes in each corner, Phryne noticed. It was written in a bold backhand in very black ink: ‘If you want Liz back in one piece collect five hundred in 14 days and watch the personal columns in the
Argus
under Jaunty Lad. No cops, no snoopers, or no daughter.’

‘No signature either,’ murmured Phryne. ‘Good bank paper, expensive. The backhand probably disguises the person’s real handwriting. Have you checked all the handwriting? Especially of—as it were—employees who feel that you haven’t treated them as well as they deserve?’

‘I treat my men as they deserve,’ grunted Mr Chambers.

‘Yes, I expect that you do. Which of them might have resented your judgment of their deserts?’

‘What?’ Mr Chambers blinked.

‘Let me put it more clearly. Who have you flung out of your stable or household lately, neck and crop, without wages, and told them that you’d set the dogs on them if they ever returned?’

Mr Chambers blinked. His hand was reaching yet again for the gun. Phryne had wearied of this autonomic reaction. She reached over and grabbed the revolver, rotated the chambers to unload it, clicked the mechanism together and offered it, butt first, to the startled man.

‘How many times do you have to be told? I’m not a kidnapper and I’m not reading your mind. You, my dear sir, are a Type, and one can usually predict Types. Now, who did you sack?’

Mr Chambers huffed, turned pink, then replied, ‘Three or four. One stable boy, a rider, and my butler.’

‘And did you throw them out in the manner described?’

‘Yes, well, yes, I did my block. The boy left a horse without water—a valuable horse—should have known that he always kicks over his bucket. The rider disobeyed me and gave me backchat about it, and the butler, well, I sacked the butler.’

‘Did you? Because?’

‘He told me that he would have to give his notice if I got married again. He don’t like married households or children, and I told him to boil his head and he tried to quit before I could sack him. But I sacked him first. Without a character. The cheek of these servants!’

‘Indeed,’ agreed Phryne, warming to Mr Chambers for the first time. ‘I do understand. Do you have his address?’

Hector Chambers bellowed ‘Jenkins!’ and a small rabbity man scuttled in. If he had pulled out a gold watch and exclaimed, ‘Oh, my paws and whiskers!’, he could not have resembled the white rabbit more without surgically enhanced ears.

‘Mr Chambers?’ he said nervously.

‘Give this lady all the information she wants. All right, Miss Fisher. Do what you can. You’re so good at second-guessing, perhaps you can second-guess this. Here’s your retainer,’ said Mr Chambers, peeling notes off a roll the size of which could have choked a racehorse. Phryne waved a dismissive hand.

‘No money. I’m in this for another reason. I’m not working for you, Mr Chambers, but M’sieur Anatole.’

‘He wants to marry her,’ said Mr Chambers. ‘Dunno what she wants. But I want her back,’ he said fiercely. ‘She’s
my
daughter.’

‘Quite,’ said Phryne. ‘I’ll let you know what I find out. Oh,’ she said as she turned from accompanying White Rabbit Jenkins to the door, ‘these are yours, I believe.’

She poured into his hand the bullets from his revolver, and closed the door quietly behind her.

Mr Chambers stared at the closed door for a bit, then swore.

‘Bloody women!’

Mr Jenkins wrinkled his pink nose and asked, ‘What do you need to know, miss?’

‘I would like you to show me Elizabeth’s room,’ said Phryne.

‘Oh!’ he gasped. ‘I don’t know if Mr Chambers would—’

‘He told you to give me all the information I needed,’ Phryne reminded him. ‘You wouldn’t want to disobey him, would you?’

‘No!’ squeaked Mr Jenkins. ‘He gets very nasty when he’s crossed. Sometimes when he isn’t crossed, as well.’

This sounded promising. Mr Jenkins had a sense of humour.

‘Have you been with him long?’

‘All my life. My father worked for his father and it made sense that I should work for him in my turn. I started out as a stable boy but I wasn’t strong enough and I didn’t like the horses, so old Mr Chambers sent me to business school.’

‘So you do all the accounts, investments, that sort of thing?’

‘Yes. Ever since I graduated.’

‘Are his business affairs in good order?’ asked Phryne, following the White Rabbit up a set of richly carpeted stairs and along a gallery hung with indifferent oils of horses; horses with jockeys, horse races, more horses and, just for a change, horses. All by himself, Phryne reflected, Mr Chambers was keeping the horse painting, framing and picture hanging industry in business. Mr Jenkins glanced at the decor.

‘He is very proud of his horses,’ he commented. ‘And his business is in excellent order. Any enterprise involving livestock and’—he raised a finger—‘the element of chance is risky, but with sale of bloodstock and some good returns, he is doing quite well. We also have great hopes of Jaunty Lad. Possible Cup winner there, so they say. He’s a stallion and his stud fees, should he win . . .’ He allowed the sentence to trail off, lingeringly. The stud fees for a Melbourne Cup winner were obviously beyond the dreams of accountants.

He tried the handle of the third door on the right and found it locked.

‘Odd,’ he murmured.

‘This door wasn’t locked before?’ asked Phryne.

‘Well, no, I don’t believe so . . . but possibly I never checked. No matter, I have all the keys here.’

He dragged out a large ring of keys and tutted over them until Phryne took them out of his hand, separated off the large outer door keys and found one marked ‘3’, which was the number on the lock. The door opened easily. The household was well maintained. The lock had been oiled recently.

‘Wait out here,’ she instructed him.

‘Oh! Er . . . well . . . if you say so, Miss Fisher,’ he stammered, stepping away.

Phryne did not know what she was going to find when she entered Elizabeth’s room. A body, possibly. Therefore she was relieved when all she saw was a young woman’s room, richly appointed, which had evidently suffered either hasty preparations for a dance or sack by a major Viking invasion. Clothes were tossed everywhere, most of the drawers in the large tallboy were pulled out, and a disembowelled shipping trunk spilled silky undergarments into shameless public view.