Queen of Flowers (21 page)

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went out. She found Li Pen and Lin in the garden, discussing philosophy.

‘The yang of the bright sunny wall is balanced by the ying of the wet shaded fernery,’ explained Li Pen. ‘It is indeed a beautiful garden. Her use of bamboo to block out the strong winds is very clever. When the vines grow there will be a place to sit on the hottest day, while that side will always be warm, even in winter.’

‘I haven’t even begun to appreciate Camellia’s talents,’

admitted Lin. ‘She wants to make a lotus pool. Great Uncle is delighted. He says that lotus flower tea is the greatest of all teas.

Apparently you put the tea-leaves in the flower as it closes at night, and then take them out again when the sun rises and the flower opens again . . . ah, Phryne. We are sorry to have shocked your patient.’

‘She’s a silly girl who reads too much Sax Rohmer,’ said Phryne, confirming Lin’s diagnosis. ‘Also, she seems to have lost her memory.’

‘That can happen with a sudden blow,’ said Li Pen, mollified.

‘Yes, but it strikes me as very convenient. Still, there is no rush. I will have to get someone to nurse her. I can’t take Dot away from the girls. I’ve thought about Bridget but she’s too identified with the Weston household. Perhaps Jack will have something to suggest. Now we need to improve the shining hour by writing out statements for our dear Detective Inspector Robinson. I’ve brought paper and pens; here is a nice place to recall such horrors. What was your impression, Li Pen? You saw it from a different angle. Were those two people trying to help Rose, or trying to harm her?’

‘I really could not tell,’ he said, after deep thought. ‘It could have been either. They could have been trying to drag her further up the beach, or pressing her into the sand.’

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‘Drat. I can’t decide either. So we’ll write it as we saw it,’

said Phryne, and sat down to do so.

When Jack Robinson arrived an hour later they had three well-written statements. Jack accepted tea and a paper of aspirins. He rubbed his eyes.

‘Been a long night,’ he said. ‘Big fight in Chinatown over a fan-tan game.’ He mentioned two family names, neither of which was Lin. ‘Buggers fight with hatchets. Sorry, Mr Lin.

There were arms and ears all over the shop and everyone was screaming. Then there was a robbery at the brewery, they came with shotguns and held up the night shift payroll. Not to mention the usual run of husbands strangling wives, whores rolling sailors and young bloods belting the living daylights out of other young bloods and stealing their personal property.

What a city! If the Sodom and Gomorrah police force was hiring, I’d be a shoo-in.’

‘Tea,’ said Phryne soothingly, and poured it out into a policeman-sized mug.

Detective Inspector Robinson added sugar and milk, imbibed, swallowed his aspirin, imbibed some more, then went on an intensely focused amble around the tiny garden, stroking the occasional leaf and sniffing flowers. Li Pen nodded. This was very proper behaviour for rebalancing the soul. He would have suggested an hour’s meditation instead of the aspirin, but he knew that westerners preferred drugs. Lin and Phryne drank some more tea and watched, a little bemused. Robinson came back and Phryne refilled the mug.

‘Those azaleas are going to be beaut,’ was, however, his only comment.

‘Detective Inspector, Camellia asked me if you would like to see her garden,’ said Lin on impulse. He was rewarded by a genuine smile from the tired face.

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‘I’d like that,’ said Jack Robinson. ‘That’s real kind of Mrs Lin. Just tell me when and where. Now,’ he said, squaring his shoulders, ‘let’s see the statements.’

He read through them twice.

‘How is the girl today?’ he asked.

‘Still alive and recovering, but short on memory,’ Phryne told him. ‘This may be true or it may be feigned, time will tell.

I’m going to need a discreet nurse if I’m going to keep her here. Can you suggest anyone?’

‘Know just the person,’ said Jack. ‘I’ll send her along this afternoon if she’s available. Name’s Mrs Jackmann. Lily.

Nice woman.’

‘How do you know she’s discreet?’ asked Phryne.

‘She worked for an abortionist for seven years,’ said Jack.

‘Never said a word. Not even to us. Nearly went to jail for her discretion. She’s got a job lined up at the Queen Vic but she doesn’t start for a couple of weeks and she can do with a little extra. I can pay her out of the “contingencies” fund, Miss Fisher.’

‘Well, if the Queen Vic are willing to employ her she’s fine for me,’ said Phryne.

‘She can live out,’ said Jack Robinson. ‘Got a husband. He’s a mate of mine.’

‘He’s a policeman?’ asked Phryne, amazed.

‘Orchid grower,’ said Robinson, and smiled again. ‘Now, I’m off home to get some sleep. I’ll be back tomorrow with the pathology report. Old Page was very impressed with you, Miss Fisher. Said you kept a cool head in a crisis.’

‘Thank you,’ said Phryne, and saw him out.

Li Pen and Lin also took their leave. Lin wondered how he was going to explain to the very shy Camellia that he had asked a policeman to see her garden. Phryne was wondering why a cool head in a crisis, a thing which most women possessed, was
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such a compliment, when a small barking missile collided with her ankles and Dot, James and one girl came home.

‘Where’s Ruth?’ asked Phryne. ‘Yes, yes, Molly, I’m glad to see you, too.’

‘Said she’d like to follow the Salvos,’ said Dot. ‘She’ll be back before lunch.’

‘Good. Now, do come in. As you might have noticed, we have a guest. Her name is Rose Weston and no one is to know she is here, not the postman, the milkman, the friends at school, the idle pub acquaintances, anyone who calls asking for her, no one. She’s been badly beaten and is in a state of shock.

I’ve got a nurse coming this afternoon who will sit with her.

Now, do I have your word, all of you? This is really important.’

‘I swear,’ said James immediately, fighting down the urge to salute.

‘So do I,’ said Jane.

‘And me,’ said Dot. ‘On the bible, if you like. Poor girl!

When Miss Phryne brought her in last night I didn’t think she would live. And she cried all night, something pitiful. Now, Jane, you’ve got all that holiday homework to do, and I’m going to do my mending. You want to share the blue parlour?’

‘Yes,’ said Jane. Dot liked to mend, and she also liked the interesting facts which Jane unearthed and brought to her attention with as much charming assiduity as a dog with a bone or a ferret with a rabbit. Dot was learning a lot from Jane. Jane loved finding things to tell Dot.

Phryne had various small tasks to do which could not be put off any longer—bills to pay, accounts to clear, household sums to add. James Murray took his violin into the garden and limbered up his fingers. The Folk Song Society crowd might be argumentative but they were good judges of a fiddler. He had missed several notes in the reel last night and fudged several
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more, and did not mean to do so again. It was scales for him, and those tricky slidhes which the Irish fiddlers found so easy.

He started playing softly, not wanting to disturb the house.

After an hour he had everyone listening. He really was, Phryne decided, a fiddler who could make telephone poles dance.

Lunch came but Ruth did not. Mrs Lily Jackmann arrived.

She was a jolly plump woman, younger than Phryne had imagined. Phryne explained Rose’s condition.

‘Let’s have a look at those pupils, then,’ the nurse responded. ‘Got a flashlight?’

Phryne provided one. Rose murmured at the sudden light.

‘Very nice. Identical. Come on, old thing, take my hand, and we’ll walk you to the convenience,’ said Lily, and Rose grasped her hand, moaning a little, then managed to stand and walk.

‘Good. We’ll soon have you comfortable,’ said Lily cheerfully. ‘What’s your name, then?’

‘Rose,’ said the patient. ‘My name is Rose.’

‘One foot in front of the other, Rose,’ urged Mrs Jackmann.

Feeling much better about her patient, Phryne went back to her bills, but her unease was growing. It was getting on for four, and Ruth had not returned. She had never stayed out late before. Still, it was a carnival, and there were a lot of things going on. But Ruth had been in a strange state of mind lately . . .

Unable to concentrate, Phryne took herself out for an exploring walk. She covered the foreshore, the main streets, the ice-cream shop and the town hall, but there was no Ruth to be seen. She had gone out wearing her lilac dress, sandals, a straw hat with a purple ribbon and her amethyst beads. Phryne strained her eyes for a gleam of purple, but saw none.

She went home cross. When Ruth returned she would have no other outings except school for three weeks. Six weeks.

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Time went on and there was no sign of her. When it got dark, Phryne really began to worry. Dinner was good but barely tasted and when it ended Ruth had still not returned.

Jane knew that she was for it when Phryne called her into the parlour. She had promised not to tell. But now it looked like there had been trouble and Ruth was missing and perhaps that meant she ought to break her promise? She bit the end of her plait.

‘Jane,’ said Phryne. ‘Where has Ruth gone?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Jane with perfect truth.

‘But you know where she was going,’ said Phryne, who had been born in Richmond, but it wasn’t yesterday.

‘She said . . . I promised,’ said Jane miserably.

‘I don’t counsel anyone to break a promise,’ said Phryne grimly. ‘You must decide for yourself. Possibly you should not have made the promise in the first place.’

‘No,’ said Jane. ‘I shouldn’t have. But I did.’

‘This has to do with her search for her father,’ said Phryne.

Jane nodded.

‘Did she think that she had found him?’ asked Phryne.

Jane nodded again. James, passing the door, was moved to stop and listen. Like most musicians, while there was music he didn’t notice much else, but the air in that room was crackling.

‘What is his name?’

‘Rory McCrimmon,’ faltered Jane. ‘He sent her notes. He left the roses. He’s been asking her to come out for weeks.’

‘And he’s dead,’ said James from the door.

Both faces turned to him, identically blank.

‘If he’s the Rory McCrimmon I knew when I was last in Australia, Phryne, then he’s dead. As a doornail. I sent him back to Skye, dying of TB, and his mother showed me his
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grave when I went there on the way home. I played a lament for him. Rory McCrimmon is dead. And he says he’s Ruth’s father?’

‘We went to see Ruth’s mother,’ explained Jane, shocked.

‘She is dying too. Of TB. Ruth asked her for the name of her father. She gave us his name. Rory McCrimmon the piper.’

James staggered slightly and sat down in a chair. ‘And this was—what, fourteen years ago? How many Rory McCrimmons were there, here in Australia, who could play the pipes?

He was a very good piper. It must be my Rory he is imper-sonating. Because I am sure—certain sure—that he isn’t the real Rory McCrimmon.’

‘Then who could he be?’ wailed Jane. ‘And why does he want Ruth?’

‘I don’t know,’ said James grimly. ‘But I’m minded to find out.’

Phryne got up from her chair and grabbed his shoulder. It felt like wood under her hand.

‘Don’t rush off half cocked. You were in Australia with Rory McCrimmon—why?’

‘We came out on a boat as sailors—precious little to live on in Skye or Orkney. Damn, we even made records for the Folk Song Society together, me and Rory and Neil, the drummer. Rory fell in love with his landlady’s daughter, then he came down with consumption, the landlady refused the marriage, and I sent Rory home. I got a job on a cruise liner soon after. So the poor bride is still alive? What was her name, she was a sweet girl. Annie. That was it. Pretty Annie with her long brown hair. I thought she had died long since. And there was a babe? I never knew. I never knew.’

James seemed stunned.

Jane went to her room and brought back a sheaf of notes
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and letters. Now that her promise had somehow got broken, without her actually breaking it, she needed to help. Phryne turned them over, appalled. They were a subtle, clever seduction.

The first one just said ‘Do you know who your father was?’

The next one said ‘I know where your father is’, signed

‘A friend’. The third said ‘Why don’t you want to see your father? Leave a light on and I’ll come to your window.’

‘We didn’t leave a light on,’ said Jane. ‘But Ruth was really upset.’

‘No rose is as fair as you’ said the card which had come with the roses.

‘Your father is missing you’, said the next. ‘He wants to see you and know you. Come out to the lane and I’ll wait for you there.’

‘He didn’t mention any names,’ said Jane. ‘So we thought it was a trick. Then after we came back from the sanatorium, this one came.’

‘Rory McCrimmon is your father and I am waiting for you by the lamp post.’

‘Even then she didn’t do anything because she was scared,’

said Jane. ‘Until this one. I haven’t seen it before. He used to post them through our window.’

‘Darling daughter I long to see you. Come to the town hall and wait by the first pillar at three in the afternoon. Your father, Rory.’

‘She didn’t think there could be any harm, if it was during the day,’ pleaded Jane. ‘He couldn’t just pick her up and carry her away in front of all those people.’