Queen of Flowers (14 page)

Phryne felt a qualm of nausea and put down her glass.

Mrs Weston refilled hers and knocked it back. Phryne supposed that it still had some alcohol content.

‘She wasn’t missing on the day you came looking for her,’

said Phryne. ‘How did you know she’d run away? Was there a note?’

Mrs Weston froze.

‘If you want me to find her I really must have the truth,’

said Phryne in her snake charmer’s voice. ‘You do see that, don’t you? Give me the note,’ she said, holding out her hand.

Mrs Weston dived a hand into her bosom and brought out a
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folded note. Phryne put it into her bag. ‘Who lives here?’ she asked in a more everyday manner.

‘Myself, my father. My husband . . . left . . . last year.’

‘Was Rose very attached to her father?’

‘No, I would have said, no, not really. They were great chums when she was younger. He used to take her with him wherever he went. Then something happened and she seemed to draw away from him. She never really talked to him after she was about—twelve? And he went not long after.’

‘And my client Mr Johnson was your husband’s friend?’

‘Oh no, Miss Fisher, he’s Father’s friend. Jacob, my husband, never liked him. Father has a lot of financial interests in common with Mr Johnson.’

‘Did Rose like Mr Johnson?’

‘I suppose so. Well enough. She was all right at school, you know. It’s when Father said that the fees were too high to have her continue as a boarder and made her come home that she became . . . uncontrollable.’

‘Who else lives here?’ asked Phryne, continuing her line of questioning.

‘Well, my son Elijah, little ’Lije. You’ve met him. Bridget.

Little Mary. A woman comes in to clean. A kitchen maid called Ethel. We haven’t a cook at present. The last one left a week ago. I’m off to the employment agency again tomorrow. They don’t seem to have many people who would suit me on their books, I must say, even though the papers go on about unem-ployment being so bad.’

‘I see. And your father, of course.’

‘Yes, it’s Father’s house. Jacob wasn’t a very good businessman. We had to sell our house to pay his debts. Then Father offered us a place here, provided I ran the house, and it seemed like a good idea.’

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‘I’m sure. Did Rose get on with her little brother?’

‘No, she almost seemed not to like him. Unnatural girl!

And he’s such a sweet little boy.’

Phryne suppressed any comment. ‘Did she talk to Ethel?’

‘I shouldn’t think so,’ said Mrs Weston. ‘Rose never tried to help in the house.’

‘Right. Now, I need to see her room, if you please,’ said Phryne, rising. Mrs Weston emptied the decanter into the carnival ware tumbler and tossed the contents off.

‘It will be in a mess,’ said Mrs Weston.

‘I don’t mind,’ said Phryne relentlessly.

Mrs Weston led the way out of the room. Another mud-coloured corridor took her towards the noise of another domestic disaster, though under it Phryne could hear the girl Bridget singing ‘She Moved Through the Fair’ in a small, sweet, true voice, interspersed with commands and lamentations.

‘Last night she came to me, my dead love came in. Ethel, take that knife away from ’Lije. Holy Mary Mother of Sorrows, we’re never going to get this supper cooked, so we shan’t. And so softly she entered, her feet made no din, and she put her hand on me, and to me she did say, Ah, but it will not be long, love, till our wedding day. Mary! Where’s your handkerchief? There now. Blow!’

Mrs Weston led Phryne up an uncarpeted staircase to the first floor landing, where an old man pounced so suddenly out of the darkness that Phryne had to bite her lip to suppress a cry. This was the child-beating grandfather, was it? Drown them in honey, was Phryne’s philosophy, the mean and cranky have no defence against the old oil poured upon them in sufficient quantity.

‘Hello,’ she said, gracious as a duchess receiving a tattered,
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damp bouquet from a snotty peasant’s child. ‘I’m Phryne Fisher. Mr Weston, is it? How very nice to meet you at last.’

The reflexes of courtesy were still there. Old Mr Weston, resplendent in what was probably the very last Jaeger suit in captivity and carpet slippers much worn at the heel, took Miss Fisher’s hand and bent over it politely. It was too dark on the landing to get a good look at him. His face was very thin, nose sharpened like a pencil, his cheeks fallen in from lack of teeth. He had a few remaining hairs scraped unconvincingly across his scalp and he smelt, oddly, of methylated spirits, flour and water paste, sulphur and roses.

‘Mr Weston’s hobby is chemistry,’ said Mrs Weston.

‘How engrossing,’ said Phryne. She would have thought necrophilia if it hadn’t been for the roses. Why did he smell of roses? It was a perfectly clear scent and Phryne had never had occasion to doubt her nose before.

‘You gave us a fine wine,’ she said. ‘A Margaux, was it?’

‘The last of the forty-eight,’ said the old man creakily. ‘Laid down by my grandfather. I fear that it is past its prime.’

There was a bright, malicious gleam in the old eyes. Phryne declined to pander to outright fibs.

‘A little elderly,’ she said. The eyes blinked. He had not been expecting a prompt and accurate reply. ‘I have been engaged by your friend Mr Johnson to find Rose,’ she told him, in no doubt that he already knew all there was to be known about the transaction. ‘I am just going up to look at her room.’

‘Yes, yes, she must be found,’ he said, grasping her ungently by the hand. ‘She must be found. Johnson is paying your fees. Spare no expense. Dinner is late,’ he said severely to Mrs Weston.

‘You discharged the cook, Father,’ she said, with some unexpected spirit. ‘You can’t expect much out of Ethel and Bridget.’

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‘Eating, always eating. Filthy habit,’ grumbled Mr Weston.

He let go of Phryne’s hand and limped down the stairs, muttering.

Mrs Weston led the way to the second floor and opened a door.

‘This is Rose’s room,’ she said sullenly.

‘Good. I won’t be long, and perhaps you had better see what is happening in the kitchen,’ urged Phryne. ‘Off you go, now.’

Mrs Weston allowed herself to be ushered out. Phryne shut the door on her. It had, she noticed, no lock or even latch. The overhead light was predictably dim and Phryne wished she had brought a flashlight. However, she noticed some candlesticks on the mantel and by dint of lighting all of them, she got a reasonable look at Rose Weston’s room.

It was a spare, plain, amazingly uncomfortable room. Furniture which was not used anymore but was too good to throw away had gravitated here. A dressing table with a cracked mirror.

An unmatching stool. A canvas stretcher with one blanket. A table and unpadded wooden chair which might have come out of the kitchen. A wardrobe in a horrible fumed-oak finish. This was where Rose slept. But where did Rose live?

Half an hour later Phryne had searched the room thoroughly by the Pinkerton method and had found five paperback romances for railway reading, a secret hoard of cheap chocolates and an illicit flask of Woolworth’s rose scent, leaking. So that was where the old man had picked up the scent of roses so foreign to his hobby of chemistry. He had been searching Rose’s room. Hoping to find—what? Some clue to where she had gone? There were no letters or pictures. Her schoolbooks must have been at school. Her toiletries were spare and plain, her clothes and underclothes of the cheapest. There was no way
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of knowing if Rose had taken anything with her when she ran away, because she had so little to take. As she was leaving, Phryne felt a floorboard give a little under her louis heel. She knelt and found that the board had been neatly sawed so that a foot-long section could be lifted up. Phryne did so. Underneath was a purse with ten pounds in it and a bound book which looked like a diary. Phryne put both in her bag and came downstairs.

When Phryne entered the kitchen she saw that Mr Butler had had his usual calming influence on the household. Elijah and little Mary were engaged in making toast. Hoping that they would drop some, the fat cross dog was in attendance. Ethel, a thin, middle-aged woman in a stained apron, had made, with Bridget’s assistance, a creditable omelette with some stewed tomatoes and the remains of a rind of cheese. Dinner was ready and it was time for Phryne to take her leave.

She informed Mrs Weston in the hall that she would try to find Rose and left. Mr Butler accompanied her and closed the front door with a thud. ‘Phew,’ said Phryne as he handed her into the car. He started the Hispano-Suiza with the starting handle and allowed the big car to idle. He did this in so leisurely a fashion that Phryne smelt a rat.

‘Mr B,’ she said, ‘for whom are we waiting?’

‘She can’t get her bag out in the daytime,’ he replied, smiling. ‘Won’t be a moment, Miss Fisher.’

Running footsteps scattered the gravel. Ethel flung her bag into the back seat, threw herself after it, and said, ‘Oh please, let’s go!’ in a high, tense voice.

Mr Butler swung the great car around, the headlights falling like searchlights on the iron grey house, and then they were out of the drive and into New Street, and Ethel started to cry with relief.

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Phryne handed over a clean hanky and the car’s emergency flask of the good cognac and was rewarded with a sniff and a gulp.

‘I can’t believe it,’ said Ethel. ‘I’m actually away. I’m actually out of that pest hole! Can’t thank you enough,’ she said brokenly to Phryne and Mr Butler. ‘They knew I couldn’t afford to buy new clothes and things and they wouldn’t let me get my bag if I left without notice and I couldn’t stand it any longer, I really couldn’t.’

‘I know,’ said Phryne soothingly. ‘It’s like being in the last few pages of
The Fall of the House of Usher
. I kept looking for a tarn, myself.’

Ethel had no idea what Phryne was talking about.

‘Where shall we take you, Miss Ethel?’ asked Mr Butler jovially. It was a pleasure to get anyone out of that house. He was only sorry that he couldn’t take Bridget and little Mary as well.

‘My mum lives in St Kilda. Just drop me at the station.’

‘We’re going to St Kilda,’ said Mr Butler. ‘Enjoy the ride.’

‘Miss,’ said Ethel, greatly daring. ‘You wouldn’t have an aspirin, would you? That old devil won’t allow “drugs” in his house and I’ve got such a headache.’

‘You’ll need something to take it with. Stop at that grocer’s, Mr B, and get Miss Ethel a bottle of—ginger beer?’

‘Oh, yes please,’ said Ethel. ‘Ginger beer was another of them things he wouldn’t have. I been a kitchen maid all me life and I never been in such a place, never. Well, I don’t care what Mum says about pubs being low places. They want a cook at the pub and I reckon a pub is going to be real comfortable after what I’ve been through. And once Mum hears about it she’ll agree with me. And I’ll get me wages without being put off and put off and niggled and paid in old pennies which look like they’ve been dug out of a tomb.’

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The car stopped. Phryne asked, ‘How much do they owe you?’

‘Almost six pounds,’ confessed Ethel miserably.

Phryne produced her purse. ‘Here we are. I’m being paid to find Rose and we shall just add it to the expenses. Don’t argue with me, there’s a dear. It’s a mean way of hanging on to people, not paying them. I shall have it out of the old skinflint’s hide, I promise you,’ said Phryne. Ethel looked into her hard, jade eyes and believed her.

‘And I didn’t like leaving Bridie,’ said Ethel, folding the notes and putting them into her corset. ‘But she’ll understand.

She’s a good girl. They’re not really mean to her because that nasty kid Elijah dotes on her.’

‘Leave Bridie to me,’ said Phryne. ‘Now, tell me all about Rose Weston.’

‘She’s a strange one,’ said Ethel, faint with relief and recovered wages. She kept talking while Mr Butler started the car again, through the consumption of a bottle of ginger beer and two aspirins. Her headache, she knew, would soon fade.

Wonderful how this big car just glided through the night. It was like riding in a cloud. ‘Well, what could she be, in a place like that? She had some fight with her dad, and he did like her. Her mother dressed her and spoiled her until the boy was born and then sort of forgot about her. She was all right at school but then the old miser said she had to come home and it’s no home for a girl, no wireless, no dances, no pretty clothes, just old Mr Mean telling her not to waste electricity. She’s run off before.’

‘Do you know where she went?’ asked Phryne.

‘No,’ said Ethel. She racked her brains, trying to be helpful.

‘I heard her talking to one of those school girls, outside the door—she was never allowed to bring anyone in and she didn’t want to, you saw what a shambles the place is—about Anatole’s.

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And . . . something about the carnival. Carnival wagons, was it? She wouldn’t have been allowed to go near a place like that.

That’s where I’d look for her,’ said Ethel. ‘She’s not a bad girl,’

she added, somewhat to her own surprise. ‘She’d give me a chocolate once in a way. Mister Weston didn’t allow sugar in the house.’

‘You’re well out of there,’ said Mr Butler. He drove Ethel to her mother’s house and conducted Miss Fisher home. He thought about his own excellent working conditions, high wages and comfortable quarters, and felt a pang of contentment.