Queen of Flowers (28 page)

She loosened the sheet from across her throat, removed Ember from his stranglehold position and listened to the house wake up. Jane by herself in her room, bereft of Ruth. Where was the girl? Mrs Jackmann coming in to get her patient ready for the day. Mr Butler vacuuming the breakfast room with his patent suction cleaner. Mrs Butler in the kitchen, clattering pots. James tuning his fiddle. Molly barking to announce a caller, or possibly a bird or an innocent aeroplane. Friday. What had she to do on Friday?

Confront Diane the flower maiden, that’s what. How was she to extract the girl from her family? There was no chance that Diane would talk with Mama in hearing distance. Perhaps it would be easier to operate on the weaker of the partnership, the young man Derek. Girls with a serious case of love could be difficult. They would allow themselves to be burned at the stake rather than betray Him. But boys—Phryne knew a little about boys. Boys could be seduced.

She caught sight of her own slow smile in the mirror, the red lips curving, the green eyes merciless. Salome, she thought.

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Or Herodias, at least. My, my, Miss Fisher, how very dangerous you look.

Now to get Derek’s address. And today, Phryne recalled, Bert had promised to introduce her to the man in charge of prostitution in St Kilda. That ought to be interesting. It was going to be a busy day, and she ought to get started right away.

Lin moved an arm and asked sleepily, ‘Phryne?’ His hand travelled slowly down her shoulder to her breast, leaving sparkles of sensation in its wake. ‘Is it morning yet?’

‘No,’ said Phryne, slipping down beside him again. ‘Not yet.’

Phryne saw Lin off with a kiss to return to his wife and her garden. Marie Bernhoff provided Derek’s address. She told Phryne that she had already sketched the shape of her Samarkand Suite and even her father was impressed. Diane, when telephoned, was visiting Joannie and not available. Derek, when telephoned, was also at Joannie’s house and Phryne had no mind to call him there. Shelving the seduction for the moment, she visited the patient. Rose was looking better. The swelling had begun to go down and she had a face again, not a carnival mask. That said, she was not ready for a close-up with Mr de Mille. Movie stars tended to have fewer broken ribs.

‘Hello, Rose,’ said Phryne. ‘How are you? You’re looking better.’

‘Feel a bit better,’ muttered Rose, careful of the split lip.

‘Good. You won’t be going near your family again, you know,’ said Phryne chattily. ‘So I want you to think about where you would like to go. When you are better.’

‘They’ll come and take me back,’ wailed Rose suddenly.

Her split lip broke again and spilled blood all down her nightgown. Mrs Jackmann mopped and tutted.

‘No, they won’t,’ said Phryne.

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She sounded so sure that Rose stopped wailing. ‘How do you know?’ she demanded.

‘Because they will be in jail,’ Phryne told her. ‘Detective Inspector Robinson has your diary. All you have to do is swear that it is true. Then down go Grandpapa and Johnson and all.

Did your mother know about it?’

‘No,’ said Rose. ‘Or Dad. I just . . . couldn’t talk to Dad.

Not after . . .’

‘Quite,’ said Phryne. ‘Now, you just rest and leave it to me.’

‘Don’t have a choice, do I?’ said Rose, and almost chuckled.

Phryne raised an eyebrow. The girl had bottom, after all.

‘For the moment, no,’ she agreed. ‘By the way, here is your capital.’ She laid the purse on Rose’s lap. Both hands came down to clutch it, to check that the money was inside. Then she hid the purse under the bed clothes.

‘That was the price of my virtue,’ said Rose blankly.

‘Get better and you can spend it,’ Phryne ordered, and left the room.

Bert and Cec were waiting for her in the parlour. They looked worried.

‘You sure that you want to do this, Miss?’ asked Bert. ‘Me and Cec can go and see him.’

‘Wouldn’t miss it for worlds,’ Phryne assured him. ‘I am having a lot of success mixing with the local crime czars—isn’t that what the American films call them?’

‘So far,’ said Bert. ‘Mr Walker asked around about you this morning. Just to make sure that the story was kosher.’

‘Well, it was,’ said Phryne. ‘Mr Walker is not a man one would fib to, not if one expected to live a full, rich and satisfying life.’

‘Yair,’ said Bert. ‘Also, he’s looking for Simonds and Mongrel.

Did you happen to mention them, careless like?’

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‘I might have,’ said Phryne. ‘I hope I find them first.

I would like to hear what they have to say,’ she added.

Bert pursed his lips. ‘Have to be fast,’ he opined. ‘You driving?’ he added with well-concealed fear as Phryne led the way to the big car purring in the street. Mr Butler, living up to his billing as a chauffeur, had already started it and left it running warmly. Phryne got in and so, with some trepidation, did Bert and Cec.

‘Which way?’ asked Phryne, allowing the big car to take up first gear.

‘Straight down past the George,’ said Bert, hanging on to his hat.

Phryne was aware that there were such things as speed limits, but had never allowed the fact to cramp her style. The Hispano-Suiza was built for speed, and she didn’t want it to mope. They zoomed past the George in a fine flurry of pedes-trians who yelled and shook their fists, and then slowed so that Bert could instruct Phryne in the protocols of the establishment she was about to visit.

‘This is the high class brothel,’ said Bert. ‘The highest we got in Melbourne. It’s run by an old French biddy of a Madame, very starchy and correct. She’s got a stable of fifteen girls and a lot of muscle to back them up. You be careful, Miss.’

‘French, eh? They know how to run a house of ill-repute.

They’re legal in France. But you were talking about a

“him”. The brothel doesn’t belong to Madame, then?’ asked Phryne.

‘No, it’s actually the professor, and he’s a powerful man.

He’s like Mr Walker. No one takes him on.’

‘Fine. Is this the place?’

‘Yair,’ conceded Bert. ‘We’ll come with you.’

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‘You will wait in the car,’ instructed Phryne. ‘If I am not back in one hour, take it and get Jack Robinson. Don’t argue.

You are my insurance.’

‘All right,’ said Bert.

The building was a well-maintained old two-storey house, Federation style, with cornucopias and gargoyles. There was nothing to announce its avocation except a small brass plate, like a doctor’s, beside the door. It just said ‘The University.

Please Ring and Enter.’

Phryne rang and pushed the door. It was locked. She rang again.

‘I’m sorry, Miss,’ said a magisterial butler who finally answered. He looked down a considerable length of nose at Phryne. ‘We don’t buy anything at the door or contribute to charities by collection.’

Phryne had been outfaced by experts and the butler, though impressive, did not come close to inspiring the awe generated by such giants amongst their profession as her father’s Mr Harker or La Princesse Du Salles’ M’sieur Gaston. She produced her own card, gave it to the butler and said sweetly,

‘I am sure that the professor would not like to keep me waiting on the doorstep.’

Butlers are as susceptible to a title as other people, and this one gave in quickly. ‘Of course not, Miss Fisher, do come in,’

he said, showing her through a lofty hall and into a very well appointed parlour.

The theme was Chinese and it was all exquisite: paintings, porcelain, carpets and furniture. The brothel business was doing well, it seemed. Phryne was inspecting a jade bowl of perfect green, flawless, without any carving or mark, so thin that light fell through it and glowed like early spring, when the door opened and a parlourmaid came in.

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She was as perfect as the jade bowl in her way: black dress, cap and apron all complete. Not only a parlourmaid but a French parlourmaid, with the correct ‘follow-me-lads’ ribbons on her cap. Phryne grinned.

‘The professor is expecting you,’ she announced. ‘This way, Miss Fisher.’

Phryne followed biddably. She was shown into a large library. A fire crackled in the hearth. The air was full of the scent of old books mixed with a faint aroma of sandalwood.

Tea was laid out on a linen-draped table. A man rose from a leather armchair by the fire and placed his pipe on a brass tray.

‘Well, well,’ said Miss Fisher, astonished. ‘We meet again.’

Miss Anna Ross to Miss Mavis Sutherland 19 May 1913

Mama refused Mr McCrimmon’s proposal, Mavis. I don’t know
why. When I burst into tears and demanded that she tell me she
just shut her mouth with a snap and said ‘He is not a good risk.’

When I told her I loved him she said that I’d recover and find
a better man, but there isn’t a better man, Mavis, not for me.

If I can’t have Rory I will die a maid. I’ll become one of those
bitter old women who wear jangly things at their waists and
grudge their boarders a spoonful of sugar to their tea. But Rory
still loves me and I have a plan which will make Mother come
around. I haven’t been well latterly. I caught a cold and now
I am running a fever. It isn’t unpleasant except that the weather
is very hot. But how are you? Are the dreams gone, now that
you are out of London?

I very much hope that I will come to Britain and that
I will see you again, your distracted but loving friend, Anna.

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CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Have you not girls and garlands in your homes?

James Elroy Flecker

The Golden Journey to Samarkand

‘Miss Fisher,’ said Professor Merckens. ‘How very nice of you, to come and cheer an old man’s solitude. Do sit down. Tea?

Chinese or Indian? And will you smoke?’

‘I will,’ said Phryne, sitting down and groping for a cigarette. ‘Indian tea, if you please, milk and one lump of sugar.

Professor Merckens, dear, you are a Napoleon of crime! How very enterprising of you!’

‘Spare my blushes,’ he said, picking up the pipe again and settling back into his chair. A curiously coloured cat slipped across the room and swarmed up, taking a balanced seat on the professor’s shoulder. It had eyes the colour of sapphires and it stared straight at Phryne, who stared back.

Eventually Phryne and the cat broke their gaze simultaneously
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and the cat turned her head away, refusing to notice Phryne gain.

‘What a very beautiful creature,’ said Phryne. ‘I’ve never seen a cat like that before.’

The cat had a wheat-coloured body and four stockings in dark brown, and dark ears like a polecat. There the resemblance ended. It was a sinuous, sensuous, and at the moment censorious cat who patently did not approve of Phryne. The professor reached up a hand and slid his stroking fingers under the cat’s jaw. It began to purr.

‘She is Thai Thai, a Siamese cat,’ he told Phryne. ‘A present from visiting royalty. There, my precious,’ he soothed. Thai Thai pointedly removed her face from his touch and scolded him in a high, many-vowelled yowl. ‘Oh dear me, yes,’ he said.

‘How could I have forgotten?’

He poured a little milk into a saucer and placed it on a silk tablemat on the floor. Thai Thai leapt neatly down and crouched next to it, folding each paw under and putting her ears back like a kitten before her curled tongue touched a drop of the sacred fluid. Phryne felt that she was witnessing a devotional rite.

‘I don’t know where she learned such language. The gutters of Siam, I assume, though she was born in the palace. She was brought up on goat’s milk,’ explained the professor. ‘I prefer it myself. But she does appreciate the extra cream in cow’s milk.

Now, perhaps I can indulge in a brief apologia pro vita mea while you drink your tea.’

‘And before I expire of curiosity,’ said Phryne, taking up her cup. It was, of course, very good tea. And petits fours which she could have sworn came from Anatole’s to have with it.

‘Well, you see, I was always lazy,’ said the professor, puffing gently at his pipe. ‘I excelled in some subjects, because they
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came easily to me. Languages, for instance. I drifted along through school, won a scholarship to Cambridge. My parents, on the contrary, were hard working chapel folk. My brothers and sisters were all virtuous persons, married early and worked themselves into early graves, most of them. But I was—well, disinclined to make an effort. I liked sleep, and good food, and amusing company, and the theatre, and books. That sort of philosophy requires money, and I didn’t have any. I was quite a skilled gambler, but after I was caught cheating I had to leave my clubs. I went, as is often the case with the exiled, to Paris.

There I was reduced to abject poverty, both by some unwise investments and some very bad company indeed. There my future wife Marie found me, sitting on a doorstep, weeping quietly for the harshness of my fate, though it was all my own fault entirely. More tea?’

‘No,’ said Phryne, stubbing out her cigarette and lighting another. ‘Do go on.’

‘Marie was a
fille du joie
at a house in the Place L’Opera.

Are you familiar with Paris?’

‘Certainly,’ said Phryne. The cat Thai Thai completed her milk ritual and returned to her perch on the professor’s shoulder, curling her tail neatly around her for balance. They made a pretty picture. She was reminded strangely of Dr Nikola.