Queen of Flowers (29 page)

‘So she took me to her house, and Madame suggested that I could teach English to the girls and earn my keep. I did so.

As you are aware, prostitution is an avocation in France, a legal job. Of course one has to register with the police and there is a lot of corruption, especially in places like Montmartre, pah, but Marie’s house was a good solid bourgeois operation. She was happy enough there. So was I.

‘Then the strangest thing happened—you might think that it was Meant. My brother Charlie died and left me this house.

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Really, it was providential. My Marie, though very desirable to me, was getting a little too old for the trade, and we had saved up enough between us to come to Australia and establish ourselves rather sumptuously.’

‘Indeed,’ said Phryne, ‘the business must be going very well. That jade bowl, now; my friend is Chinese and recently brought back many things from the mainland, and even he doesn’t have anything as beautiful.’

‘Lin Chung,’ said the professor, stroking Thai Thai. ‘Eldest son of the Lin family of Little Bourke Street. Recently married to Camellia, and there lies a tale. She is not the Camellia he thinks she is.’

‘You are very well informed,’ said Phryne, not betraying the fact that Camellia herself had told Lin that she was not the Camellia he had expected.

‘Knowledge is power,’ said the professor. ‘That is how I have managed to gain, and indeed hold, my present exalted position. After a few years in this profession, Miss Fisher, one knows something about everyone.’

‘Mr Johnson?’ asked Phryne.

‘I do not cater for such tastes,’ said the professor calmly.

‘He frequents another place of business.’

‘Mr Weston?’

‘A miser. He has no interest in sins of the flesh. Reputed to have sold his daughter to Johnson for his help in a share market fraud.’

‘Detective Inspector Robinson,’ challenged Phryne. The professor laughed.

‘Likes orchids,’ he said.

‘Aha,’ said Phryne. ‘I am sure that you know all about me,’

she said. ‘And you are welcome. My life is an open, if rather highly coloured, book. And I’m sure that you know I have no
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intention of trying to interfere with anything you are doing in your own business—I am not suicidal and you have a fearsome reputation. In fact, Professor, I need some help,’ said Phryne.

‘A missing girl?’ he asked wearily.

‘Two. One is Rose Weston and the other is my own adopted daughter Ruth. I want them back. If I have to tear the town apart to find them, I will,’ she said, showing her teeth.

Thai Thai rose to her paws and hissed at Phryne, objecting to her tone.

‘I believe you,’ said the professor. ‘And it is an earnest of my own trust in you that I will not tell anyone else that you have Rose Weston safe in your own house. I do have some information about Rose, though. Two low criminals called Simonds and . . . er . . . Mongrel attempted to sell her to a house of joy in Fitzroy. My colleague in the same position telephoned me and asked for my advice, and I told him on no account to allow this deal to go through as the girl was from a prominent family and undue publicity could not be avoided in the event of this purchase being approved. Also—forgive me—that she was promiscuous and hysterical and would not prove to be a worthwhile investment.’

‘No more than the truth,’ agreed Phryne.

‘The girl, my colleague said, appeared to have been drugged. The two criminals removed her from the brothel and took her away. They did not make the same offer again, or I would have heard of it. Such things are not common,’ said the professor severely. ‘We do not white slave. The girls enter the profession voluntarily. I have a waiting list of young women who want to join my establishment. Here they receive suitable health care, instructions in various methods of retaining their vigour, good food, good accommodation, paid holidays and when they wish to leave us, a small party and a dowry. They
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may keep one of their children while they are here and after they leave they may have as many as they please. Run on French lines a brothel is just another place of business, with no need for emotional scenes. I do not like emotional scenes,’ said the professor, and Phryne got a sudden intimation of why he was so feared. He did not have the gun-in-pocket aggression of Mr Walker but he was master of more secrets than a cabinet minister. How on earth had he found out about Camellia? And Rose Weston? The professor was a very dangerous man. But compared to the cold, insecurity and squalor of Fitzroy Street late on a Friday night, his house must seem like a palace to a working girl. Medical care. Dowries.

She suppressed a start of surprise as Thai Thai, leaving the professor’s shoulder, landed as lightly as a leaf on the arm of her chair. The dark ears were forward, the eyes focused, and a gloved paw was laid delicately on Phryne’s hand. Phryne caressed the silky coat and was rewarded with a pleasant remark in Siamese.

Thai Thai began an elaborate wash, with whuffling noises.

‘She has the softest fur,’ said Phryne.

‘That is a mark of considerable honour,’ said the professor.

‘I knew you were quality, Miss Fisher.’

‘Do call me Phryne,’ she said, watching the cat. Thai Thai’s self adoration made Ember look modest.

‘Phryne, thank you, my own name is Jeremiah. I shall institute enquiries about Ruth. You have a photograph of her?’

Phryne laid it on the table.

‘She is thirteen? Yes. And she went missing on Wednesday, in the street outside the town hall. Thence decoyed to the circus and left tied up in a tent; the ropes being cut by the time her kidnapper came back. And he is now in police custody.

Just so. I should have an answer for you by tonight,’ he said.

‘I will telephone.’

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‘I am very much obliged,’ said Phryne. ‘And perhaps you and Madame Marie will do me the honour of dining with me after this is all over?’

‘You wish to further our acquaintance?’ asked the professor, taken aback.

‘Certainly,’ said Phryne. ‘Now I really must go. My minders will be getting nervous. I’ve been away for almost an hour.’

‘You are a cautious woman with whom it is a pleasure to do business,’ the professor told her. ‘And I am delighted to accept your prospective invitation. See Miss Fisher out, Fifi.’

Of course, thought Phryne as she was escorted out of the University. What other name could the parlourmaid in a brothel ever have?

She was laughing about it as she jumped into the big car.

Bert threw his chewed cigarette end into the gutter.

‘You cut it fine,’ he said. ‘We was about to go for the jacks.’

‘No need,’ said Phryne. ‘We got on swimmingly and he’s going to ring me tonight. Now, can I drop you gentlemen anywhere? I am going home,’ she said.

‘We’ll walk,’ said Bert hastily, hopping out of the car. ‘Me and Cec have a few people still to see.’

Phryne thought of calling him a coward, and refrained.

One didn’t say things like that to a pair of Anzacs. And perhaps her driving style was a little flamboyant. But that’s what all those cylinders were for, she told herself as she pressed the self starter and heard the engine roar.

Phryne finally managed to catch the young man Derek at his own house, before four. He was delighted by the idea of a tête-à-téte at five with the delectable Miss Fisher. From his practised compliments, Phryne considered that he had been
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courted by older women before. That would make her surprise attack more shocking.

She assembled her household and told them that she was going to have an interview with Derek in her own rooms, that she didn’t want to hear a squeak from anyone, and that Hugh Collins would oblige her by entering her large wardrobe with his notebook, pencil and flashlight. She suggested to him that now was the time to visit the amenities should he feel that might be necessary.

He did. Dot ascended to the boudoir to help Phryne find a suitable boy-seducing gown.

‘How far do you mean to go with this?’ she asked, thinking not so much of Phryne’s virtue but of her own intended’s modesty.

‘As far as I need to,’ said Phryne grimly. ‘Make sure that Mrs Jackmann shuts the guest room door, won’t you? It would be very bad if the little toad finds out that Rose is here, and bad for Rose, too. She is just beginning to emerge from her

“amnesia”. What about this one?’ she asked, holding up a sheer length of blue silk with a shimmering muslin overlay. The neckline plunged, as did the back.

‘Bit obvious.’ Dot bit her lip.

‘Don’t worry, Hugh won’t be able to see me,’ Phryne assured her. ‘Get into the wardrobe and check, if you like.’

‘No,’ said Dot, embarrassed.

‘Boys like obvious,’ Phryne told her. ‘Men prefer subtle but boys only stop thinking about sex when they are thinking about food. Or football. The adolescent male is a strange and horrible creature unless, of course, one’s tastes run the same way.’

‘And yours do?’ asked Dot, swallowing her jealousy.

‘Not anymore. When I was an adolescent they did. Hot, so to speak, to the hand but they are so fleeting.’ Phryne looked momentarily sad.

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Dot, thanking her patron saint that she didn’t actually know what Miss Phryne was talking about, laid out a milk-coloured nightdress and negligee.

‘If you’re going to be obvious,’ she suggested, ‘why not be real obvious?’

Phryne gave her a hug.

‘Good idea. Now, I’ve just time to bathe and change. Keep the others out of the way, especially James. You may explain to him what is happening if you think he ought to know. You let the boy in, Dot dear, bring him here, and leave him to me.’

Mr Rory McCrimmon to Miss Anna Ross

It’s no good, Anna. I cannot marry you. It would not be fair.

And now it seems that I cannot wait for you either, my bonny
bird. I sail home on Wednesday. James has arranged it. Rory
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CHAPTER SIXTEEN

‘Oh Sister, Sister, let me live

And all that’s mine I’ll truly give.’

‘Your own true love I’ll have, and more,
But thou shalt never come ashore.’

Anon

‘The Cruel Sister’

When Derek was ushered into Miss Fisher’s boudoir the lights were low and a vision of loveliness was half sitting, half lying on a sofa before a small bright fire. There was a black cat curled at the foot of her sofa. She was draped in milky white fabric which entirely failed to hide the contours of her body underneath.

He swallowed dryly. Miss Fisher waved him to approach, and he sank down on the fur rug in front of the fire. Everything was scented, he noticed; the fire was made of some aromatic wood, there was a scented sleeve over the low electric light, and Miss Fisher herself exuded some faint, attractive, Oriental perfume.

‘How kind of you to visit,’ she murmured, so that he had to lean close to hear her, ‘when you must have so many calls on your time.’

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‘For anyone as beautiful as you I would always make time,’ he said, a reply straight from the last Theda Bara movie he had seen.

‘Sweet boy,’ said Phryne. She trailed a hand over his face and felt him shiver. He really was transcendently beautiful, she thought. It would be diverting to really seduce him. But she was right about adolescent boys. Hot to the hand and over in a moment. Seducing him would probably muddle the chain of evidence she was trying to construct. Damn. ‘All the girls are after you, I observed,’ she said.

‘Just Joannie and Diane,’ he replied defensively. ‘And they’re . . .’

‘Good girls?’ drawled Phryne. ‘Ah, I have never been a good girl.’

She allowed him to lean close enough to kiss her red lips. For a beginner, he did rather well. She wondered how Hugh in her wardrobe was managing with the sounds he could undoubtedly hear. Phryne had not lied to Dot. Hugh could not see her from the wardrobe. Phryne indulged herself with the young man’s mouth for a full minute. Then she gently pushed him away.

‘You must have fun with the girls, though they are good girls,’ she hinted.

‘Just a few practical jokes,’ he said. ‘Kiss me again,’ he requested. Phryne kissed him again.

‘Tell me,’ ordered Phryne. ‘Divert me. I get so bored,’ she said untruthfully but within the Elinor Glyn genre.

‘Well, there was Rose,’ he said doubtfully. ‘But that didn’t work. We were meant to meet her at midnight,’ he told Phryne.

‘But she wasn’t there. And then Diane found her, face down in the sand. So it didn’t work as a joke.’

‘And what did you do then with Diane?’ asked Phryne arching her back. The sight took the young man’s breath away.

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‘We ran away,’ he said artlessly. ‘Someone was coming and we ran into the carnival. And then she let me kiss her,’ he said.

‘In the dark, among the tents. It was exciting. But not as exciting as you, Miss Fisher.’

‘But Rose has been missing for days. How did you know where to find her to make your assignation, clever boy?’ Her fingers toyed with his shirt buttons.

‘I knew,’ said the boy proudly. ‘The men she associated with, they know me. I know them. She’s a tart, that Rose.’

‘My dear boy, where did you find such bad playmates?’

asked Phryne, kissing him again. But there were things which kissing was not going to elicit from the boy.