Unnatural Habits: A Phryne Fisher Mystery (Phryne Fisher Mysteries) (10 page)

A very proud Ruth was escorting a badly dressed girl of about twelve. She stood in front of Phryne, scuffing her boots in the dust and sucking the end of her plait. Ruth gently removed the hair and said, ‘Tell the lady all you know about the Reillys, and she’ll give you a penny.’

‘Twopence,’ said Phryne. ‘Hello. What’s your name?’

The child replied haltingly that she was Mary. There were a lot of Marys in Catholic Collingwood, Phryne thought. This Mary began to speak in a rush. She really wanted that twopence.

‘They went away in the middle of the night; all their furniture went, too. In a cart. Landlord came next day for the rent and swore something cruel. Mum says they had bad luck. Their Julie lost her job and they couldn’t carry on without her.The missus is sick and the baby, too.’

‘Any idea where they might have gone?’

‘She had a sister in the country somewhere… Shepparton, that was it.’

Having told all that she knew the girl put out her hand. Phryne gave her twopence, and Mary abruptly lost her nerve and ran, clutching the coins in a death grip.

‘Well, minions?’ asked Phryne.

‘I heard the same,’ said Tinker.

‘And me,’ said Jane.

‘And me,’ said Dot, who had come back from the shop. ‘They left owing on the tick. The shopkeeper’s not fazed. Said they’d been going downhill since they lost Julie and she wasn’t surprised that they vanished. No idea where they went.’

‘Righty-ho,’ said Phryne. ‘Now on to the pious widow and then home—I’ve had just about enough for one day.’

The minions agreed. This detecting was more tiring than he had imagined, Tinker thought. He accepted an egg sandwich and ate wolfishly. He still wasn’t used to the liberality of Phryne’s cuisine. All that food, he said to himself. And always enough for me, too.

Food made Tinker sentimental. He smiled on his new family and they smiled back.

The Barkly Street home of the pious widow was very clean. That was about all that could be said for it. The doorstep was scrubbed, the windows sparkled. The paint on the door was recent. When the door was opened a gust of carbolic made Dot sneeze. The small servant, doubtless from the same orphanage, was painfully scrubbed and starched and very thin. There was no smell of cooking in the house. Just disinfectant and, when Mrs. Ryan came in to receive her distinguished visitors, naphthalene. Phryne looked at the parlour. It was bare. Hard chairs, no carpets, no ornaments but a large picture of the Sacred Heart, with added thorns. Phryne had never liked this depiction of Christ. It was disturbingly anatomical. The space above the empty fireplace, which contained not even a fan of red paper or a bunch of dried flowers, was occupied by a wooden cross on which an agonised figure was writhing. It was beautifully carved. Phryne wished that it wasn’t.

‘Mrs. Ryan, I am looking into the disappearance of three girls from your house,’ she said. ‘And the abduction of a reporter. What can you tell me?’

Mrs. Ryan was tall and skeletal. Her hair was dragged back into a punitive bun under a white cap. Her cotton dress was clean and grey, almost like a nurse’s uniform. She wore a white apron which crackled with starch. She did not sit down but folded her hands in front of her waist and said stiffly, ‘Does the convent know that you are here?’

‘I have not yet visited the convent,’ Phryne told her.

‘Then I am not at liberty to tell you anything,’ snapped Mrs. Ryan.

‘As you wish,’ said Phryne gently. ‘But it will be my unpleasant duty to convey your refusal to help to Detective Inspector Robinson. He will have further questions, I am sure.’

Mrs. Ryan paled. ‘Very well,’ she muttered. ‘Ask your questions and go away before the neighbours see you.’

‘Delighted,’ said Phryne, really meaning it. ‘When did the girls leave your house?’

‘At night,’ said Mrs. Ryan. ‘That’s all I can say. They were in their beds at curfew—they go to bed at eight—and not there in the morning.’

‘Did they have any visitors?’

‘Visitors are allowed between the hours of three and five in the afternoon. They have to be received in this parlour. They had no visitors.’

‘And any letters?’

‘None. I open and inspect all the patients’ mail.’

I bet you do, thought Phryne. Prison must be like this. Or hell.

‘Were they friends? Did they leave together?’

‘They talked, when allowed. We impose a Holy Silence but they are allowed to speak at meals. I don’t know if they were friends. We don’t encourage friendship between the patients.’

Mrs. Ryan’s voice was scraping on Phryne’s nerves. It was like the voice of a machine. A cold, flat, disapproving machine. Dot had taken out her rosary for comfort. Mrs. Ryan’s chill gaze noted it and passed on.

‘Did they take their belongings?’ persisted Phryne.

‘Yes, such as they were. And several things belonging to the house. Towels and so on. They are thieves and when they are found I want them prosecuted. I have a list.’

‘I see,’ said Phryne. ‘Show me.’

Mrs. Ryan went to a plain deal desk and produced a list. Phryne and Dot read it. Three towels, some underclothes, a sewing kit, soap, toothbrushes, stockings. Value, perhaps five shillings. Mrs. Ryan had put down five pounds. The pious widow, it seemed, was greedy. That might be useful.

‘I would be willing to offer a reward for any information,’ said Phryne silkily. ‘Perhaps your son might know more?’

‘I doubt it,’ snapped Mrs. Ryan. ‘In any case, he isn’t here.’

‘What a pity, we will have to come back,’ said Phryne. ‘Now, about this abduction.’

‘I didn’t see anything,’ said Mrs. Ryan. ‘All I know is that she came here to ask impertinent questions, I was busy, and my son received her into the house, which he should not have done. Then, he said, as she was leaving, she was dragged into a big black car. Now, if you are quite finished, I have important work to do.’

‘Of course,’ said Phryne graciously, and was escorted out by the little maid, into whose hand she slipped a sixpence. The child gasped, grabbed, and instantly cached it in her knickers.

‘What’s she like?’ asked Dot gently.

‘Bitch,’ whispered the child, opening the door. ‘Bloody mean bitch.’

The door closed and Phryne drew in a breath of air which was not contaminated with the smell of mothballs. Dot dived into the car and poured herself a cup of strong sweet milky tea. Phryne had a tot of the good cognac. Both were shaken.

‘If I had been sent to the pious Mrs. Ryan,’ said Phryne after an interval, ‘I would decamp if I had to crawl.’

‘Over broken glass,’ agreed Dot.

The minions returned. Bert came back and leaned into the car.

‘I got the office that the son’s down the pub,’ he said. ‘You want me to talk to him?’

‘Yes, please,’ said Phryne. ‘But we have to go home. Come to dinner later—and bring Cec. Can you manage if I take the cab?’

‘Don’t you dent it,’ warned Bert, and strolled off.

‘Miss Phryne, you don’t have a licence to drive a taxi!’ protested Dot.

‘No, isn’t that lucky,’ said Phryne, taking her place at the wheel and revving the engine.

‘Why is it lucky?’ asked Jane.

‘Because I cannot be assumed to know the rules,’ replied Phryne, and set off for St. Kilda as though, Dot thought, devils were after her.

On the other hand, that was the way she usually drove.

***

Arrived home, the party scattered to write down their impressions and information in their notebooks. Thereafter Tinker retreated to his shed with a plate of gingerbread and a glass of milk, the girls to their room ditto, Dot to the sitting room with a strong cup of really hot tea, which tea in thermoses, however welcome, never was, and Phryne to run a scented bath to get the combined scents of naphthalene and filth out of her nostrils. She lay and soaked luxuriously in a slick of cypress oil. The pine scent was perfect. Too late to visit a convent, even if she had any tact left. And Detective Inspector Robinson was going to call to hear what she had to report. Phryne wondered if he had found the big black car.

A short time later, dried, powdered and dressed in a silk gown, she sat in her own room to read The Woman Worker with care. There was a socialist link. One girl had had a copy of this magazine delivered, another was in her own trade’s union.

It was, as usual, a Gestetner duplicate, with a hand-carved depiction of
The Woman Worker
in Russian social realist pose at the head. But the content was ferociously passionate and made stirring reading.

‘What is the position of woman in the advanced capitalist countries? And what is the position of the millions of working or peasant women in the colonial and semicolonial countries?’ it asked, and proceeded to tell Phryne.

‘…It is lower than a slave. She is nonexistent politically, she is frightfully exploited economically, she has no standing socially, she is isolated culturally. Read the reports on labour conditions. Fivepence a day, no Sunday, no holiday, giving birth to child at the loom in a textile mill or in the hell of a match factory…such is her lot.’

Phryne nodded sadly.

‘Here she is also a second-rate citizen. If she is not the slave of the boss (who exploits her at half the wage paid to men for the same work), she is the slave of the so-called “home,” where she bears the brunt of the economic dependence of the male “supporter” on capitalism. Unemployment, starvation, the burden of rearing and educating children, etc.: all this is the lot of the working-class woman.’

Phryne read of a splendid display of solidarity at Perdriau Rubber Company where, after thirty-seven girls had been dismissed for refusing to make more heavy shoes than they had agreed, the whole workforce of two hundred had sat idle at their benches for a week until management had given in and re-employed the dismissed workers.

The paper noted with delight the creation of a women’s fruit-growing collective in Bacchus Marsh. Such things were essential until the revolution came and the workers triumphed. The name of the woman in charge was Isobel Berners. They had already planted an acre of nectarines and apples and had inherited a lot of stone fruit, including white peaches. They were also making jam and jellies.

Phryne approved of the militant women. And white peaches were her favourite fruit. She thought that she might motor down to visit and perhaps acquire some fruit in the season. Who better to purchase it from? Militant peaches would probably be very tasty.

Phryne dressed for dinner in a loose cotton frock patterned with sea anemones. The weather, as seemed usual in Australia at this time of year, continued hot. Fortunately Mrs. Butler had risen to the challenge, constructing wonderful salads. Jane was discussing one with Ruth—or, rather, Jane was reading a thick book and Ruth was talking—when Phryne came in.