Queen of Flowers (30 page)

‘Oh, just around,’ he said airily. The fingers which had strayed amongst his buttons now had him firmly by the collar.

Phryne sat up, shedding her languor, and shook him.

‘Unless you want to spend the night in the cells, dear boy, you’d better tell me how you know such creatures as Mongrel and Simonds,’ she said firmly.

‘I don’t have to tell you anything!’ he protested.

‘No, you don’t. However, you are already guilty of attempted murder, so anything else you say has to be an improvement. Didn’t you notice that Rose was unconscious?

She was lying face down in the sand below the high tide mark—didn’t you notice that? I bet Diane did.’

‘She got me into this,’ said the young man, slumping against Phryne’s silk-clad knee.

‘Tell me all about it,’ purred Phryne. In the wardrobe, Hugh licked his pencil.

‘How do you mean, attempted murder?’ His eyes were blue and piteous in his angelic face.

‘Well, put it to yourself, dear boy. If you leave someone in a situation where they can’t move and, as it might be, the tide
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is creeping up as it does every night—and you can even feel the difference between high tide and beyond the tide, the sand is softer, you don’t need a light—then you’ve left them in peril of death and if they die, it is your fault.’

‘I didn’t know she was unconscious,’ protested the boy.

‘Diane said she was drunk. It was dark. I didn’t know.’

‘Of course not,’ soothed Phryne. ‘What was Diane’s stake in this?’

‘She wants me to marry her,’ said the boy miserably. ‘I’ve got to marry money. Diane’s all right, I suppose. And she really wants me. And she’s got oodles of money. Her father has, I mean. The reason I know Simonds is he’s my cousin. You can ruin me now, I don’t care anymore. I grew up in North Brighton,’ he confessed brokenly, as if admitting to leprosy in the family.

‘I grew up in Richmond and my mother was a Mrs Mopps and my father was a waster,’ Phryne told him. ‘It is in ourselves, and not in our stars, that we are underlings, Derek. Pull yourself together. How were you going to hide your North Brighton lineage from the nobs, then?’

‘Oh, Dad is dead, and Mother lives in a little house in St Kilda, the right street, so it’s all right,’ he said sulkily. ‘But Mum told me herself that I only had one thing to sell and I’d better get the best price for it. I’m not clever. I’m never going to be a doctor or an engineer. So I have to marry money and Diane really wants me.’

‘And Rose said she could take you away from Diane any time she wished,’ Phryne remembered.

‘She wanted me,’ said Derek. ‘She could have had me, too.

She was fast. But that doesn’t mean anything. Rose was a tart.

Simonds said that she . . . that she did all sorts of things for him.

Then he got tired of her and tried to sell her, and then . . .’

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‘Then he must have decided to kill her,’ said Phryne. ‘Did you know Rose’s family at all?’

‘No,’ said the pretty boy. ‘Just that they haven’t got any money. Diane used to laugh at the clothes they made Rose wear.’

‘Do you know where Simonds and Mongrel are now?’

‘No,’ said Derek. ‘I only see them sometimes. Really,’

he added.

‘All right,’ said Phryne. ‘You can go. But I want you to think about this—do you want to marry a woman capable of murder? For when your looks fade, beautiful boy,’ she kissed him again, ‘how long do you think you’ll live?’

Dot led the startled, thoughtful boy down the stairs and past the guest rooms. Just as the front door was being opened by Mr Butler, Rose looked out of her sickroom, said ‘Oh!’

and recoiled.

The boy gave no sign that he had seen her, and Dot let him go. She returned to the boudoir and found Phryne pulling on her ordinary clothes. Hugh was still in the wardrobe with the door firmly shut.

‘Just stay there for a tick, Hugh dear, and I can let you out,’

Phryne was saying. ‘Dot, can you get this dratted back fastening? Thanks.’

Phryne buttoned the jumper suit and slipped on her shoes.

‘Oh, it is very tiring behaving like an odalisque. Really,’ she said to Dot’s unbelieving frown. ‘Now we have a lot more information and can piece the whole story together, even if Rose doesn’t want to tell us. You can let Hugh out of the wardrobe now,’ Phryne told Dot. ‘He’ll be a bit cramped but I bet he has all his notes.’

‘I have,’ said Hugh, red faced from confinement. He gave Dot an affectionate pat on the cheek. ‘That little hound
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takes the cake,’ he added. ‘Did you hear him blame it all on the girl?’

‘A natural gigolo,’ Phryne commented. ‘But I don’t know if there is a legal case against them. I’d love to lock them up until their hair turned grey but I’m afraid that . . .’

‘Detective Inspector Robinson will know,’ said Hugh. ‘Can we spring for a cup of tea for me?’ he asked Dot, rumpling his hair. ‘All that being shut in wardrobes is thirsty work.’

‘Of course,’ said Dot, as embarrassed as if she had ever doubted her Hugh. ‘Come downstairs.’

‘Yes, we need a conference before dinner,’ said Phryne.

‘Has James come back?’

‘Yes, Miss, just in. I told him you were using Mata Hari methods to get a confession and he just laughed. The boy’s gone. But he might have seen Rose. She popped open her door just as he was passing.’

‘That’s not good,’ said Phryne. ‘Did he react?’

‘No, Miss, just looked downcast and miserable.’

‘He has a lot to be downcast about,’ said Phryne vengefully.

‘Maybe it’s nothing. To think I have to have that Diane on my float on Saturday! The things that get done in the name of love stagger the imagination, they really do.’

‘Miss Fisher!’ Rose’s urgent whisper caught Phryne as she was passing the guest room.

‘Rose?’ Rose grasped Phryne’s arm to steady herself.

‘That was Derek! I remember! Diane, he was with Diane on the beach, and I thought they were going to help me, the water was coming up, and I couldn’t move on my own, and they left me. They left me!’

‘Yes, they did. And then Lin, Li Pen and I came and dragged you from the water. But you were pretty much out of it by then.’

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‘I only remember being lifted up, out of the water at last.

And carried over someone’s shoulder. Then everything suddenly hurt a lot.’

‘I bet it did,’ said Phryne. ‘Would you like to sit up for a while?’

‘No,’ said Rose, trying not to weep. ‘I think I’d better go back to bed.’

‘Probably a good idea. But don’t be cast down,’ Phryne told her, lowering the girl back into her bed. ‘There were people who didn’t save you, agreed. And there were people who tried to kill you. But there were also people who saved you. And the world mostly works out like that. Here comes Mrs Jackmann with your chicken soup. Drink up and don’t despair. There’s no sense in it.’

She returned to the blue parlour. Jane was cutting bright pink ribbon into precise lengths and James was telling a story to sweeten her labour. Phryne sat down to listen to it. ‘Once there were two fiddlers,’ he said. ‘One was Evan, the best on the island.

The other was his best friend James, a good enough fiddler, always asked if Evan wasn’t around, but never when Evan was.

They were walking one night, very late, home from a dance, past the fairy mounds on the left of the Stromness road, when Evan said, “I can see a light”. “Where?” said James, who couldn’t see anything and just wanted to get home. “I’ll just take a wee look”, said Evan. He walked towards the mound, and vanished clean away. James called and hunted in the darkness but could not find him anywhere. The next day he came back with other men of the village and they searched so close they would have found a lost bead; but they found no trace of Evan, his cap or his fiddle.’

‘He’d just gone?’ asked Dot, who loved stories.

‘Gone clean away, like fog off glass,’ said James. ‘Well then, James was the only fiddler now, and he got asked to all the fairs and funerals and marriages and wakes. And his fiddling got
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better because he didn’t have his envy of Evan to hold him back.

He never married, though, convinced that no woman would want him, and that the local maidens were all longing for the return of Evan, which they were, but some would have made shift with James if he had asked, but he never asked.

‘And then, twenty-five years to the day after Evan vanished, by chance James was walking past those same fairy mounds on the left of the Stromness road at night, very late, home from a dance, and Evan fell in beside him and said, as if he had never been away, “But Janet is the fairer”, continuing the discussion they had been having about the girl whom Evan was minded to marry.

‘ “Dead these ten years,” said James. “Of the TB. Evan, where have you been?”

‘ “I stepped through a little door into the land of the Faye,”

said Evan. “And I played all night for them. It must be getting very late, I said, and then the king gave me this bag of gold, and here you still are.” He punched James playfully. “Such a good friend, waiting all night!”

‘ “Evan, I’ve waited twenty-five years,” said James.

‘Evan took some convincing. It was only when James took him to the grave of his intended, and then to the house of the young woman Janet, and he saw her children, her eldest daughter just like her, that he believed. But to Evan it still seemed that only one night had passed since he left James on the road.’

‘How terrible! And what happened then?’ asked Jane, who had finished snipping.

‘Evan married the daughter of his Janet, and had children of his own and twenty-five years’ gossip to catch up on. And James, well, a woman got tired of waiting for James to ask and asked him, and he married as well and was very happy. But no one in Stromness walks down the road on the side where the fairy mounds are, and if they see a light, they say nothing and
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hurry home, for no bag of fairy gold is worth the loss of twenty-five years of the society of people.’

‘That’s a good story,’ said Jane. ‘Miss Phryne, I’ve cut all the ribbons for the nosegays. But . . . have you any idea where Ruth is?’

‘I shall know more soon,’ said Phryne. ‘You did a very good job, they are exactly the same length. Bundle them up. We are plotting.’

‘Oh, good,’ said Jane, stuffing the ribbons into a basket.

‘I like plots.’

‘One place Ruth may be,’ said Phryne, ‘is the Weston house.’

‘You mean that they might have stolen Ruth because they think you might have Rose?’ asked James.

‘Yes. How they would know that I do not know. But they might. So we need to search the house, and for this we need Dot.’

‘Me?’ quavered Dot.

‘You have all the qualifications. You are a loyal daughter of the church, the priest will vouch for you and therefore Biddy will trust you. I want you to get along to St Joan of Arc’s for Mass tomorrow morning and get hold of the girl. We have left her there too long. That ends tomorrow. I have a very nice destination for her. Now, what I want you to do thereafter is this,’ said Phryne.

The voices fell to a confidential murmur. Once, James laughed. When Phryne finished, Dot nodded firmly.

‘I can do it,’ she said.

‘Dinner,’ announced Mr Butler, and they went in.

Phryne was restless. The rest of the household had found things to do, but she did not seem to be able to settle. She was worried about Ruth. Perhaps the girl had run away, but perhaps she had not. And if she had not, if she had exchanged
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one captor for another, the second might not be an improvement. Rose’s condition proved it. Phryne itched for action.

A lover would have been nice, but Lin was taking most of his younger relatives to see the famous Chinese magician Loong Jack Sam—‘a marvel of Oriental artistry’—and his lovely assistants Mi Ma and Mi San at the Tivoli. Finally Phryne sat down and began to deal her favourite clock patience, only resorted to when she did not want to think. It absorbed the time until the phone rang.

She almost beat Mr Butler to the phone. She was lurking in the hall when she heard him say, ‘If you will wait a moment, sir, I will ascertain if Miss Fisher is available.’

‘Who is it?’

‘A Professor Merckens, Miss Fisher.’

‘Wonderful.’ Phryne only restrained herself from snatching the receiver out of her butler’s hands by the knowledge that he would be affronted. ‘Professor? I mean, Jeremiah? This is Phryne Fisher.’

‘Phryne,’ said the wonderful voice. ‘I have undertaken the enquiries. I have to tell you that no sign of such a girl as Ruth has been seen, even in the most . . . basic of houses. And none of the street prostitutes have seen her. One cannot question them all, of course, but my agents are tolerably thorough.’

‘Good, that’s good news,’ said Phryne a little breathlessly.

‘Thank you very much. And Simonds and Mongrel?’

‘Nothing,’ said the professor. ‘Though I did find out that Mr Walker is also looking for them. An admirable man, but very direct in his methods. If you want to talk to them it might be necessary to find them soon.’

‘Quite,’ said Phryne. ‘While they are still breathing.’

‘Yes,’ said the professor.

Phryne thanked him effusively, repeated her invitation to
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dinner, and rang off. Good. The odds that Ruth was not captive were rising. Unless, of course, she was in durance vile in the Weston house, and that was a matter for tomorrow. When, come to think of it, she had to rise early. Not only was it a day to search someone else’s house quite illegally, it was the day of the Lady Mayoress’s Bazaar.