Murder in Montparnasse (8 page)

‘Has Miss Elizabeth a maid?’ asked Phryne, coming to the door.

‘Oh . . . well, yes, so to speak, one of the housemaids helped her with her clothes, but she . . .’

‘. . . has been dismissed by Mr Chambers?’ guessed Phryne.

‘Quit,’ said Mr Jenkins. ‘Yesterday. Said she wasn’t going to stay where her character was called into question every five minutes. Went off this morning with her wages and— why?’

‘I wondered if this is how Miss Elizabeth usually leaves her room,’ said Phryne, allowing Mr Jenkins to edge past her into the boudoir. He let his glasses drop to the end of their tape in surprise.

‘No, well, I don’t think so, she was a very neat child. I remember her lining up her dolls on the windowsill, every fold in place. And she liked the pretty clothes she bought in Paris. She wouldn’t leave them all strewn about like this.’

He picked up a blue silk nightdress, cobwebbed with exquisite embroidery, as though he had never seen such a garment before, then blushed and dropped it onto a chair.

‘Girls get careless,’ Phryne told him, ‘as they get older.’

‘I suppose so,’ sighed Mr Jenkins. ‘But really—it looks like the room has been ransacked.’

‘Yes, it does, doesn’t it?’ agreed Phryne. ‘And no one to tell me if anything is missing since the maid is so conveniently gone. Well, I should know what constitutes a Parisian wardrobe. You can help me, Mr Jenkins. Stand that trunk up and we’ll put everything back into it.’

Mr Jenkins blushed pink again and temporised. ‘Really, Miss Fisher, shouldn’t I go and get one of the maids?’

‘No, you’re here and you’ll do and the fewer people in here the better. Get on with it,’ she advised, kindly.

Mr Jenkins, inured to long obedience of insane orders, obeyed. Phryne sorted clothes and piled them into his shrinking arms.

‘Ten pairs of camiknickers, nine present, six petticoats, six nightdresses, should be ten pairs of silk stockings, no, eight and a half, there’s a stocking missing.’

‘Three stockings,’ ventured Mr Jenkins. It might have been the first time he had ever said the word, but he was an accountant and figures were important to him.

‘She was wearing one pair when she vanished. Likewise one pair of camiknickers, saving your presence, Mr Jenkins. But the dress must have had its own underthings, because all six petticoats are here. Dinner dresses, two. Ball dress, one. Shawls and stoles, six. Pairs of shoes—nine. Dressing gowns, one warm, one light. Day dresses—the girl must have had such fun choosing these, they’re definitely made in one of the better studios. How tall is she, Mr Jenkins?’

‘Smaller than you, Miss Fisher. Five feet tall.’

Mr Jenkins received a load of frilly garments and deposited them in the shipping trunk. The sweet, clean scent of the clothes was making him a little giddy.

‘Is that a French scent?’ he asked, greatly daring. Phryne paused and sniffed. ‘Lavande de Provence,’ she answered. ‘Very suitable. Trés jeune fille. Right. That’s the clothes. Let’s do the drawers next. I wish I had my maid here! She’d know what to make of all this. Toiletries—soap, washing things—all Lavande de Provence. Such a clean smell, is it not? Hmm. Nothing unusual here.’

Phryne felt around the back of each drawer before she shut it.

‘What are you looking for?’ asked Mr Jenkins, emboldened. He had endured a quarter-hour in a lady’s bedroom and was feeling no end of the devil of a fellow.

‘Anything she might have hidden. And under or at the back of a drawer is a good place. No, nothing here.’ She shut the last drawer.

‘Purses,’ she said. She opened a small pouchy evening bag, a leather satchel, a Russian leather purse and a large silk drawstring bag. All contained nothing but lost handkerchiefs, metro tickets, stray francs and one cough sweet glued to the lining.

‘Books?’

A small cedar bookcase under the window revealed Elizabeth’s taste had largely run to books on French grammar and vocabulary, a few novels of the modern persuasion, possibly unread, a lot of detective stories and a comprehensive collection of cookbooks in both French and English. They were well used and opened easily. Phryne took each one and shook it over the bedspread, releasing a sheaf of bits of paper, metro tickets, chocolate wrappers, a postcard of Notre Dame and a few letters.

Phryne sat down to examine them all. Nothing to be learned from the chocolate wrappers except that Elizabeth liked hard centres. One metro ticket was much like another. The letters were a disappointment. She read through each one carefully, looking for codes or underlinings, but they were so innocent that she grew suspicious and read them again. To no avail.

‘Two schoolfriends, female, and one from her father enclosing her pocket money. The postcard is from her chère amie, Adeline. Oh, well. Push that chair over to the wardrobe, Mr Jenkins, if you please.’

‘Why?’ asked Mr Jenkins, doing as he was bid.

‘Well, unless she has a cache under a floorboard or something of that sort, which is unlikely given how little time she has spent here recently, the best bet is the wardrobe. People often hide things on wardrobes. Give me a hand.’

Mr Jenkins, breath held, watched Phryne climb nimbly onto the chair and sweep the top of the cedar wardrobe with her hands. He averted his eyes from her knees, which were on shameless display.

‘Nothing up here but dust,’ she said. ‘I’d have a word with the maids, if I were you, Mr Jenkins.’

She hopped down.

‘The desk,’ she said.

This was a slender-legged escritoire meant only for the production of little notes of condolence or very small thank you letters. The tiny desk space would have constrained any writer to be brief, if not minuscule. Phryne extracted sheets of scented notepaper, visiting cards, a few leftover ribbons and one spray of artificial baby’s breath, a packet of nibs and a bottle of royal blue Williams Superfine Ink. Elizabeth had written out several favourite recipes on square white filing cards in a small, very neat hand. Someone who wrote like that did seem an unlikely candidate for such wholesale, almost deliberate, untidiness.

‘I see what you mean,’ she commented. ‘She seems to be a tidy wench.’ Mr Jenkins winced at the word. ‘No sign of a lover, no passionate letters, no contraceptive devices— oh, Mr Jenkins, I am sorry, forget I said that.’

‘Miss Elizabeth,’ quavered Mr Jenkins, ‘is a good girl. She wouldn’t even have heard of . . . such things.’

‘If she has been to school in Paris she would have heard of them, but I agree that there is no sign of her having taken such measures. She likes hard centres, which argues good teeth and a good digestion. She likes cooking, ditto. Her favourite perfume is the unexceptionable lavender of Provence, not the scarlet passion of Jicky. Her clothes are very modest, considering her age and her position and the persuasive talents of French dressmakers. She is a young woman of decided tastes and strong character. She might have inherited that from her father.’

‘But she has sweetness of disposition from her mother,’ said Mr Jenkins, sounding much more certain. ‘She was a saint, that woman. When she died Elizabeth was shuttled off to Paris. Almost as though her father couldn’t bear to see her. Of course, she is not beautiful,’ said Mr Jenkins sadly. ‘That might have made a difference to him. But she is a good girl,’ he said firmly.

‘My opinion exactly. Now, Mr Jenkins, there are two matters to which I would draw your attention, and one question.’

‘Ask,’ said Mr Jenkins, squaring his rounded shoulders.

‘Did Elizabeth have any jewellery or money?’

‘Her mother’s. But it is all in the safe in Mr Chambers’ office. She had a small gold cross she always wore. Otherwise, no. Money? She would have had her month’s allowance. I paid it myself. Five pounds in one pound notes.’

‘That’s a reasonable sum.’ Phryne seemed to be examining the window. Mr Jenkins coughed to attract her notice.

‘And you were going to draw my attention to . . .?’

‘Oh, yes. One, her passport is missing. And two, someone has forced the lock of this window. Just here, see? With a screwdriver, I’d hazard.’

‘But the dogs . . .’ whispered Mr Jenkins. ‘What about the dogs? And the guards?’

‘What about them indeed,’ said Phryne.

The prisoner tried to guess what time it might be. Getting on for
afternoon, perhaps. All morning she had lain and watched the
sunlight move from right to left, which argued that the house was
aligned east–west. She was so frightened that fear had become part
of her world, a black cloud, settling on her eyes, dimming her senses.

Then she heard the door open, and writhed as a bolt of terror
shot through her.

CHAPTER SIX

It was not a very cheerful winter.

Gertrude Stein,
The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas

Something was gnawing at Phryne all the way home. Something was missing from Elizabeth’s room. Her passport, of course. But she might have had that in her purse when she was kidnapped. She had been living in France for a long time and one always carried a carte d’identité in France. And she might easily have had her allowance in her purse. Things accumulated in purses. Unless they were deliberately unloaded and all contents examined for utility occasionally, one could find oneself transporting around in one’s daily life three lipstick cases each with just a crumb of lipstick left, an old eyebrow pencil sharpener without a blade, pieces of defunct watch, odd earrings, handkerchiefs (three crumpled, one uncrumpled), two grubby powder puffs, bent hairpins, patterns of ribbon to be matched, a cigarette lighter without fuel (and two with fuel), a spark plug, some papers of Bex and a sprinkling of loose white aspirin, eleven train tickets (the return half of which had not been given up), four tram tickets, cinema and theatre stubs, seven`pence three farthings in loose change and the mandatory throat lozenge stuck to the lining. At least, those had been the extra contents of Phryne’s bag the last time Dot had turned it out.

The thought refused to coalesce into anything useful. Phryne allowed her mind to drift. Someone had broken into the room, evading guards and dogs. They had gone to the trouble of bringing their own screwdriver to prise open the snib and had flung all those expensive garments to the wind. What had they been looking for? And had they found it?

She needed more information. But right now, she needed a cup of coffee and another look at Café Anatole. Fitzroy Street beckoned. For the first time, Phryne did not want to go home to her bijou residence. The Butlers had given notice, Lin Chung was getting married, and she was troubled by memories of Paris and the thought of René Dubois . . .

She turned the big car into the Strand. Coffee. Real coffee. French conversation. And at least one cheeky French waiter. Things could, she considered, be a lot worse.

Coffee was instantly forthcoming as soon as she walked in the door. The glass window had already been replaced, and a sign painter was standing on a ladder outside, blocking in the curly script of Café Anatole, ready for the gilt leaf on the morrow. The air smelt of impatience and painter’s size.

Inside, the air smelt of freshly baked pastries—almond, if she was any judge—and coffee. Made in a coffee pot, with ground beans which had not been through the bleaching process which was evidently specially designed to remove all trace of unpalatable coffee flavour from the bottled product. Phryne shucked her coat into the ready hands of Jean-Jacques, or possibly Jean-Paul, and sat down at a small table. There sat M’sieur Anatole, scowling over a menu, his sister Berthe, and a Jean of some denomination who brought a tall coffee pot on a tray with cups, scalded milk and loaf sugar.

‘Non, non, non!’ protested Anatole. ‘It is insupportable! How may I make my renowned quails with white grapes if there are no quails!’

‘There are also no white grapes. They are out of season, and you have forgotten that you are on the other side of the world,’ said Madame composedly, settling her bosom on her crossed arms. ‘It is time for spring dishes, mon brave.’

‘You could consider lobster,’ offered Phryne hungrily. ‘Homard à la Newburg? or maybe Thermidor? What’s wrong with lobster in the French manner, à la Française? Plenty of fishermen just down the road, m’sieur.’

‘Homard Victoria,’ decided the chef. ‘With sauce Normandy— yes. We still have some truffles. And we will need also scallops. A good idea, madame.’

Madame Phryne inclined her head. ‘What else are you thinking of, chef?’ she asked. ‘I’d be delighted to try anything you are experimenting with.’

‘For the other fish course, I have found the most delicious local fish—flathead. Good for bait, these barbarians say. It is as full flavoured as sole or whiting and twice as fine. Flatheads aux fines herbes, I think. Of course, I call them merlans, but they are flatheads just the same. Then since these Australians insist on steak, we could have a Parisian dish—tournedos Béarnaise, that should satisfy the carnivores. And perhaps a duckling with cherries—sweeter, to my mind, than orange and delicate of savour. Of course, one must have a game pie—rabbits here are the equal of anything in Europe and I’m sure that we can find a few pigeons.’

‘Just ask a small boy with a slingshot,’ said Phryne, sipping. Ah, coffee. She had never liked living pigeons. No mere bird ought to be able to grumble like that. They seemed to view the human race with a beady, almost reptilian and always jaundiced eye. Besides, when Ember caught one he had a tendency to tear it wing from wing all over the house and it was amazing how many feathers there were on one small pigeon. But cooked— that was another matter, as the cannibal said to the missionary. M’sieur Anatole was continuing.

‘For soups—a printaniere, of course, a vegetable soup, and also a consommé Mireille . . . then perhaps ices for dessert. Mandarins glacés and something lush—I have it! Fraises Romanoff. Will you have more coffee?’

‘I will,’ said Phryne, and did. ‘What are fraises Romanoff?’

‘Strawberries, the large ones. Soaked in orange juice— freshly squeezed orange juice, you understand—and Curaçao. Served with crème Chantilly. Truly seasonal . . .’ The chef ’s moustache whiffled in ecstasy. ‘I would make them au Petit Trianon—La Reine Marie Antoinette loved strawberries like that—but I cannot get fraises du bois in Australia—they just do not taste the same, these tended fruits.’