Queen of Flowers (16 page)

‘You can’t feed elephants too much sugar,’ Dulcie told them, ‘but a bit of what you fancy does you good. Now, Phryne, what would you like to see? The big cats?’

‘No,’ said Phryne. ‘I don’t like to see them in cages.’

‘Then we’ll walk you back to the carnival,’ said Dulcie agreeably. ‘This way, ladies.’

120

Queen of Flowers - Pages 16/3/04 4:38 PM Page 121

KERRY GREENWOOD

The elephants turned briskly and began to walk back down the beach.

‘Dulcie, I’m looking for a missing girl. Were you about on the beach at around midnight?’ asked Phryne hopefully.

‘No, I was comfortably tucked up in my caravan in blameless solitude,’ replied Miss Fanshawe. ‘Hang on, though.

There was a bit of a barney of some sort on the beach at about midnight. The lions woke up, and that always wakes me. Something about a roaring lion, you know.’

‘Yes, it does attract attention,’ agreed Phryne.

‘Zips straight down the spine and reminds us of a common heritage as prey,’ said Dulcie. ‘Don’t know any more about it, though. Tell you what, I’ll ask around amongst the circus folk.

You’ll have to do the carnies. We don’t speak. Foolish, but there it is. Is the girl in real trouble, Phryne?’

‘I’d say so, yes.’

‘Some of those carnies can be a bit uncivilised,’ said Miss Fanshawe. ‘Want me to lend you some muscle?’

‘What did you have in mind?’ asked Phryne, expecting a couple of big strong men.

‘Bounce,’ replied the elephant woman. ‘She’s my mastiff.

Confidentially, she’s a big soppy girl, but like most big dogs she’s a great bluffer. Likes to remind people that she’s one meal away from the wolf. She’s about the size of the Hound of the Baskervilles. I got her as a puppy. She was destined to die in a pit, fighting. Men,’ snarled Miss Fanshawe with bottomless scorn. ‘And she took to the elephants right away. They like her because she’s big enough to see properly. Elephants hate little things yapping around their feet. That’s where people got the idea that they hate mice.’

‘I’ll keep Bounce in reserve,’ said Phryne. ‘But I think I might attract less attention on my own. Thanks for the
121

Queen of Flowers - Pages 16/3/04 4:38 PM Page 122

QUEEN OF THE FLOWERS

lift,’ she said. ‘That was lovely, wasn’t it?’ she appealed to the others.

‘Oh, yes,’ said Dot. ‘So high up! And so nice and safe!’

‘Lovely,’ agreed Ruth.

Kali put Ruth and Dot down and Flossie deposited Phryne on the sand.

‘Good night,’ said Miss Fanshawe. ‘Do call again. We are always in,’ she added, and the elephants walked away with surprising speed and quietness.

‘Suddenly I feel earthbound,’ said Phryne.

‘And much shorter,’ agreed Ruth. ‘Can we have a go on the darts?’

‘A good plan,’ said Phryne.

The darts stall was alive with bobbing balloons. Break a balloon and you won a prize. Either the darts were very blunt or the balloons were very tough, for somehow the missiles slid off their targets and the row of kewpie dolls glittered unclaimed above the stall. Phryne watched as Ruth expended her three darts for a penny.

‘Tell me,’ she said to the stall holder, a slim young woman with very blonde hair. ‘Are the Lees here?’

‘Nah,’ she replied. ‘They’re away with Farrell’s. You a friend?’

‘Of Doreen, and Samson and Alan,’ said Phryne. The darts girl grinned.

‘That Alan Lee. He’s got a lot of friends,’ she said. ‘I’m Bet.

Come on. Have another go,’ she said to Ruth, holding out a dart. ‘For free. Have to do this once in a way, otherwise the punters get all suspicious. Might as well be a friend of Alan’s.’

Phryne observed that this was a slightly different dart.

Longer, for one thing. And sharper.

Ruth threw and the dart burst a balloon with a satisfac-tory bang.

122

Queen of Flowers - Pages 16/3/04 4:38 PM Page 123

KERRY GREENWOOD

‘There you are,’ said the girl. ‘Pick a doll.’

‘I’m looking for a missing girl,’ said Phryne. ‘Did you hear a disturbance on the beach at about midnight, Bet?’

‘No, I was asleep. But they did say that something woke the lions. And you gotta understand, this is a campsite for all the performers and not just us carnies. We’d know if something bad was happening. But there’s all these musicians, jazz men, dancers, all sorts of riffraff. Not what we’ve been used to at all.

There’s already been a couple of fights about what a carny girl means when she says “no”. This isn’t a good place for a stray girl to be wandering around.’

‘I’d guessed that. Here’s my card. If you hear anything about her—her name is Rose Weston—call me. There is a reward.’

Bet looked at the card. ‘Prin Fisher?’ she asked.

‘Phryne, ph as in physician and Phryne to rhyme with briny,’ said Phryne. ‘But when I was with Farrell’s circus they called me Fern.’

‘Dancer?’ asked Bet.

‘Rider,’ said Phryne.

‘All right, I’ll ask around. But she might have left, you know. Been taken somewhere else.’

‘That is my next line of enquiry,’ said Phryne. ‘What now, Ruth?’

‘We’d better find Jane,’ said Ruth, unhooking a kewpie doll on a cane from the roof of the stall. ‘Can I have this one?’

Bet nodded. ‘I don’t like the idea of a stray girl loose in the carnival,’ she said. ‘Can only lead to trouble.’

‘As the sparks fly upward,’ agreed Phryne. ‘Back to the street, Jane must have finished her experiment by now.’

‘I’ll wait for her,’ offered Dot. ‘There’s a seat and I’m a bit tired.’

123

Queen of Flowers - Pages 16/3/04 4:38 PM Page 124

QUEEN OF THE FLOWERS

Phryne assented and she and Ruth strayed further into the carnival.

‘My mother told me the name of my father,’ said Ruth unexpectedly.

‘Yes,’ said Phryne.

‘But I think she said he was dead,’ Ruth continued. ‘So he can’t be alive now, can he?’

‘No,’ said Phryne. ‘Why, do you think he might be?’

‘I got . . .’ began Ruth, and was swept aside by a rush of minstrels. Phryne was pushed against the side of a booth as banjos strummed and a rather strained tenor declaimed

‘Ma-a-a-my! Ma-a-a-my! The sun shines east, the sun shines west, but I know where the sun shines best!’ Teeth flashed white in blacked-up faces. Presumably they meant well. Phryne disbursed a coin into the hat and they passed on, bleating about their old Kentucky home.

When she rejoined Ruth she found the girl examining her kewpie doll and disinclined to resume the conversation. Drat those minstrels, thought Phryne. That Stephen Foster had a lot to answer for.

At the edge of the carnival, where the electric lights ran out, there was an expanse of tents and lean-tos, the homes of those too poor to have a caravan. Occasional thin plumes of smoke showed where someone was cooking a late supper of fish over a small hot fire. Washing flapped on lines stretched between poles.

Just so must the armies of the camp followers have appeared in the Peninsular War. Babies wailed. Somewhere two men were having a loud argument, punctuated by the smash of glass.

A scatter of children dodged around Phryne and Ruth. There was a scent of humanity, frail and incidental and almost unprotected from the elements. And a fiddle playing sweetly in the gloom.

Not a reel, not a ballad. He was playing a Bach étude with great
124

Queen of Flowers - Pages 16/3/04 4:38 PM Page 125

KERRY GREENWOOD

accuracy and feeling. It was pure, precise music, stepping note by note up and down a celestial ladder. No one else could possibly be playing Bach in a carnival. It had to be him.

Phryne cupped her hands and called, ‘James Murray!’

The fiddle stopped abruptly. A dog barked. Then, from the middle of the tents, someone called, ‘And who would be wanting him?’

‘Phryne Fisher,’ announced Phryne.

‘Och, there’s no one here by that name,’ said the voice unconvincingly.

‘James, if you do not come out right now, I shall roust the whole camp,’ threatened Phryne. There was a silence. Ruth was embarrassed. She tugged at Phryne’s sleeve.

‘Come away, Miss Phryne,’ urged Ruth. ‘Everyone’s looking!’

‘And they are welcome to look,’ replied Phryne. ‘James?’

‘A wilful woman will have her way,’ said the voice, and a man came out of the camp carrying his fiddle and bow. He looked Phryne up and down without a smile.

‘It is you,’ said Phryne. ‘I knew no one else would be playing Bach in a carnival.’

‘And you were right,’ he informed her. ‘James Murray, m’lady, at your service. I’d know you anywhere,’ he said. ‘You were on the beach this morning, were you not, singing along to the cuckoo’s nest? But when I looked out I only saw the horses.’

‘That was me. You’re looking well,’ she added. ‘Are you here alone?’

‘I am,’ he said.

‘Then come and have a drink with me. I owe you a whisky.

This is Ruth, my daughter,’ she added. James Murray took Ruth’s hand. He had the most beautiful brown eyes, she thought. His hand was strong and warm.

‘You might as well do as she says,’ Ruth told him.

125

Queen of Flowers - Pages 16/3/04 4:38 PM Page 126

QUEEN OF THE FLOWERS

‘Aye, so I might,’ he agreed.

Phryne tucked a hand under James’s unoccupied elbow in case he bolted. She was dying to know what had brought him to Australia.

Jane and Dot were waiting and she introduced her guest.

‘I knew James a long time ago, in Orkney,’ she told them. ‘And now we are going home. How did the experiment go, Jane?’

‘I’ll have to write it all down,’ said Jane. ‘Most of it was very general. Madame Sosostris was the most specific. Which Orkney island?’ she asked James. ‘There are seventy, I believe.’

‘Main island,’ he replied. He was suffering from a serious case of Phryne Fisher. How could these girls be her daughters?

Had she borne children before he met her? That seemed unlikely. And while one girl was a nice plump wee birdie, this blonde one was examining him as though he was an anatomical specimen she was minded to dissect. Not to mention the companion, Miss Williams, in the straw hat, who was giving him a very old-fashioned look. Time to shake off his puzzlement and exert some charm, because Phryne had captured him fair and square and there was no going back to his incognito.

‘Main island it is,’ he said to Jane. ‘In the town of Stromness I was born. My father is a teacher and I am a fiddler.

I teach music.’

‘Then what are you doing here?’ asked Jane. Phryne had tried to explain to her about the propriety of asking indirect questions but although Jane had understood the convention, she had no time for it. If Jane wanted to know, she asked.

James Murray did not seem to be offended.

‘The Folk Song Society,’ he explained. ‘I had taken a place on a cruise ship to earn a little extra—times are cruel in Orkney these days—and when I came into the port of Melbourne I looked them up. They have six concerts and they pay well.

126

Queen of Flowers - Pages 16/3/04 4:38 PM Page 127

KERRY GREENWOOD

I can save money by camping on the sand and I’ve slept in far worse places. And in worse company, too.’

‘The carnival is rough,’ said Dot with distaste. She did not approve of Miss Phryne just picking people up out of that milieu. Even if they were old friends. What sort of old friend?

And what would Mr Lin say if . . . but that was not to be thought of, of course.

‘It’s a little rough, yes,’ said James Murray easily. ‘But I keep myself to myself. The circus don’t mix with the carnival and the carnival look down on the performers and we, in turn, look down on the petty criminals, the thimble riggers and the three-card trick men. Just like the world outside. Everyone has someone to despise. I never thought to meet anyone I knew here, much less the remarkable Miss Fisher. What brought you to Australia, Phryne girl, of all places in the world?’

‘I wanted to get as far away from my father as I could,’ said Phryne. ‘I came out here to investigate a prospective murder.

And I liked it here and I stayed. I’m a private detective. This is my house. Do come in. Mr Butler? Mr Murray would like a little of the Highland Park whisky.’

‘A lot,’ responded James, and smiled.

In the light of her own parlour, Phryne could see that he had aged. The red hair was brown now, and greying at the temples. His face was tanned and lined. But the smile was the same slightly cynical James Murray smile and she was very pleased to see him.

‘Sit down, dear man, let’s catch up. By the way, I am looking for a missing girl. Did you see anything on the beach at midnight last night?’

‘This wouldn’t be a fair girl in a long gown?’ he asked. ‘I saw one such go past my tent early this morning, just before you turned up and sang me out of my tent like a seal from the sea.’

127

Queen of Flowers - Pages 16/3/04 4:38 PM Page 128

QUEEN OF THE FLOWERS

‘And you didn’t try to speak to her?’ demanded Phryne.

James shrugged. ‘Why should I? She was with a man.

Generally such ladies do not need assistance.’

‘Oh. That sort of lady. Would you know her again?’

‘Probably,’ said James.

Phryne produced the picture of the four flower maidens.

James shook his head.

‘It was dark,’ he said. ‘It would be this one if it was any of them. But I really can’t say, Phryne. I’m sorry.’

‘No matter.’ Phryne had not expected instant success. James had picked Rose’s picture.

Mr Butler arrived with the good whisky and two glasses of orangeade for the girls and a sherry for Dot. He filled glasses.

Phryne raised hers.

‘To happy meetings,’ she toasted, and James Murray, still bemused, drank.

Miss Anna Ross to Miss Mavis Sutherland 24 February 1913

Oh Mavis, I am so happy! Rory came back from Sydney and he
said he had a question to ask me and I said what was it and
he said you know what it is and I did, but I was blushing so
hard that I couldn’t speak, so he dropped to one knee and asked