Unnatural Habits: A Phryne Fisher Mystery (Phryne Fisher Mysteries) (2 page)

‘Until you got here,’ grinned Molly. ‘I expect cops’ll be along to scrape up the remains soon. Better get inside before anyone starts asking questions.’

They ascended the stairs. Outside, a ragged boy settled down under the verandah. He attracted no attention whatsoever, except from Molly, who gave him a pie left over from her dinner. It was a good pie, though he did not eat it with the galloping ferocity of the truly starved. But he ate it. It was a good pie.

***

Phryne watched Dr. MacMillan settle Miss Kettle into a padded chair while she ordered drinks and a brief lease on the Withdrawing Room. This was kept supplied with first-aid equipment and the means for repairing or replacing clothes, plus emergency brandy and a young woman who could be summoned for comforting the bereaved or supplying new garments, whichever was required. Her name tonight was Annie. She thought this the best job she had ever had, as emergencies were not common in the club. Annie spent most of her time in the kitchen, being fed tidbits by the cooks and drinking as much tea as she could hold. Summoned, she conducted Miss Kettle into the Withdrawing Room. There she sat the reporter down, sponged the mud of Little Lon off her knees and palms, provided her with new hosiery and allowed her to wash her face and comb her hair while Annie attended to her clothes.

Polly Kettle had not been so tended since she was six and had fallen out of a tree which she had been expressly forbidden to climb. She drank her sal volatile, her hot sugared tea and then her brandy obediently. Annie smiled at her.

‘There you are, Miss, no harm done,’ she told the patient. ‘I just caught up the split seam and put back the hem.’ She surveyed Polly critically. ‘You’ll do.’

‘Thank you,’ murmured Polly, in a medicated haze. ‘Are you a ladies’ maid?’

‘No, Miss, they call me an attendant,’ said Annie. Polly saw that she was a meagre underfed creature, perhaps eighteen years old, with a scarred face. No one else, perhaps, would employ her. There were plenty of unemployed girls. Annie noticed her look.

‘Burns,’ she explained. ‘I fell into the fire when I was a child.’

‘Do you like working here?’ asked Polly, her reporter’s instinct asserting itself.

Annie broke into a pleased smile, strangely distorted by the scars.

‘Oh, yes, Miss, the ladies are very kind, the pay is good, and no one objects to the way I look.’ She opened the door to admit Polly again to the Sitting Room. Polly went where directed, still bemused.

Dr. MacMillan and Phryne Fisher were ensconced by an open window. Phryne was sipping from a frosted glass. Polly licked her lips.

‘Come and have a drink,’ invited Phryne. ‘And if you sit there you will share our cooling breeze. What would you like?’

‘Gin and tonic, please,’ said Polly. ‘Thank you so much for looking after me.’

‘Not at all.’ Phryne waved her unoccupied hand. ‘We are expecting you to enthrall us. Serena, a G and T for Miss Kettle, if you please.’

Serena obliged, and minutes later Polly was clutching a frosted glass of her own.

‘Now,’ said Phryne cozily, as she drew Polly down to sit next to her, ‘do tell!’

‘Girls are going missing from the Magdalen Laundry at the Abbotsford convent,’ said Polly. Her hearers failed to gasp or exclaim. Polly, a little disappointed, took a deep gulp of her drink. It was strong and shocked a little pink into her pale cheeks.

‘Yes?’ prompted Phryne.

‘Three of them so far. Mary O’Hara, Jane Reilly, Ann Prospect. Sent out to stay with a pious widow in Footscray and vanished.’

‘Not just run away? I would, if I was sent to a pious widow,’ said Phryne.

‘Pregnant,’ said Polly baldly, disdaining euphemism. ‘Very pregnant. Within a month of delivery. The pious widow runs a nursing home in Footscray. My newspaper’s Mr. Bates interviewed her and she was unable to tell him what had happened to the girls, or why they should run away when they were so close to their time. Ann Prospect has relatives. They have not heard from her. The same for the others. No one has heard from them. The police are not interested.’

‘But you are?’ asked the doctor.

‘I am,’ said Polly.

‘Why?’

‘I’m a reporter,’ said Polly defiantly. ‘I work for the Daily Truth. They only want female reporters to write about fashion and food and babies and turn in reports of flower shows (getting all the names correct). I want a scoop.’

‘In order to prove to your proprietor that you are a real reporter?’ asked Phryne.

‘Yes!’ said Polly.

‘A laudable ambition,’ said Phryne.

‘No one cares about bad girls!’ Polly burst out indignantly. ‘They make one mistake and they are shut up in the laundry doing hard work. Their babies are adopted out. They are ruined. We ought to have got beyond that. What use is freedom—they told us that we fought that war for freedom—when the women are still punished and the men go on to seduce another girl?’

‘Indeed,’ said the doctor gravely.

‘The cops told me that they had just run away to go on the street,’ said Polly. ‘Who is going to buy your body when you are eight months pregnant? It’s ridiculous.’

‘Certainly,’ said Phryne. ‘Have you enquired at the morgue?’

‘The morgue?’ Polly took another gulp of her drink.

‘Well, the three girls are either dead or somewhere else, alive. That is the first thing you need to ascertain. I believe that there is a register of unclaimed bodies. Then, if they are not there, you need to ask at various hospitals. You keep a proper account of your patients, Elizabeth, do you not?’

‘Of course,’ said Dr. MacMillan. ‘Come to the front desk and I will arrange for you to search the records. Of course, some of our patients do not use their real names. We discourage this but we understand it.’

‘That is…very kind of you,’ faltered Polly. Life was becoming extremely real at present, she thought.

‘And I will ask about who sent your assailants,’ said Phryne. She finished her drink and sauntered out. Polly looked at Dr. MacMillan, who seemed reassuringly normal.

‘Does she mean to go and…’

‘She does,’ said the doctor comfortably.

‘Is she always like that?’ asked Polly.

‘When she was sixteen she was an ambulance driver on the Western Front. I don’t think she’s been daunted by anything since then,’ the doctor told her. ‘She flew me into Hebridean crofts during the flu epidemic when she had to land on shingle and strand with sea on one side and cliff on the other and never turned a hair. Miss Fisher is a force of nature and there is never anything you can do about her. Have another drink and appreciate the show. That’s what I do. I wonder, now, could any of your girls be at the Queen Vic? Do you have a description of each of them—or, better yet, a photo?’

‘They were photographed when they entered the care of the convent,’ said Miss Kettle, still bemused. ‘I have them here.’

‘Show me,’ said Dr. MacMillan. ‘There will be a reasonable explanation, I’m sure enough of that.’

‘And if there isn’t?’ asked Polly.

‘Then we will hand the matter over to Miss Fisher,’ said the doctor, sipping her whisky. ‘She’s very good at the irrational.’

‘Oh,’ said Polly.

‘But none of this is for publication without our permission,’ added Dr. MacMillan severely. ‘Death may be a public matter, but birth is a female mystery. What was your last line of enquiry, m’dear?’

‘Brothels,’ said Polly, eschewing euphemism again.

The doctor seemed unmoved.

‘Few brothels would employ women in their last trimester of pregnancy.’

‘Yes, that’s why I wondered if…They say there are brothels that have special interests. You know, boys, small children, women with one leg, that sort of thing.’

‘The depth of male depravity is indeed bottomless,’ said Dr. MacMillan. ‘And after thirty years in the medical profession nothing now astounds me about evil and the temptations of the devil. But I suspect that I would have heard of such a place. And I haven’t.’

Polly had never met anyone like the doctor—or Phryne. Among women of her nice respectable middle class she herself was considered unacceptably bold and even immoral for insisting on a career which did not include reporting on garden parties. Next to her was a group of ladies discussing strange tribal rites in New Guinea. And others were talking about a durbar where the elephants had got drunk and fallen over while curtseying to the governor. And a further group, rather elevated by cocktails, wondered aloud whether taking a lover is permissible only after one’s husband has acquired a mistress, or if one could venture on a suitable man before, if the occasion seemed to warrant it. She took refuge in her drink.

Dr. MacMillan was examining the three photographs. She put on her wire-framed glasses and stared.

‘No, can’t recall seeing any of them,’ she commented. ‘Plain girls, aren’t they? Not good prostitute material, though given those dreadful smocks and difficult situation I suppose they cannot look their best. The brothel market is rather overcrowded at present, you know. Employment is hard to get, even in the pickle factories and the dangerous trades, and so many young men didn’t come home from the Great War. Girls who would have expected to marry some respectable tradesman will find no candidates except amongst the damaged and ruined, and that really only exchanges one set of cares for another. They have to work, but female wages are still much lower than men’s, as though all of them were just finding a little piecework for pin money, not struggling for survival. So brothels are only accepting the young and pretty and winning. The poor drabs on the street are having a parlous time, I fear. They don’t last long.’

Polly was shocked. Fortunately Phryne returned before she had time to burst into tears at the cruelty of female fate.

Miss Fisher was giggling.

‘Miss Kettle, did you really ask about pregnant girls in the Blue Cat Club?’ she said, sitting down and crooking a finger at the bartender for another White Lady.

‘Yes, I heard they had strange tastes,’ explained Polly. Phryne patted her hand.

‘Yes, indeed, but exclusively male. You have been followed around town tonight by at least three fascinated observers, all watching, I fear, to see which of them was going to get you. The Blue Cat is far too soigné and careful of their manicures to inflict violence, luckily. But two others were dangerous. I should not go anywhere near Corsican Joe’s in the near future. The far future, either. Or Madame Paris. I shall talk to her. It was the Corsican’s men who tried to beat you. I am fairly confident that they will not attempt that again. And I will take to you meet Madame Paris in due course, if you like. But your enquiries need to go in another direction.’

‘Why?’ asked Polly. ‘And why are you helping me?’

‘Well, darling, one does not like to watch a nice little woolly baa-lamb go leaping and gambolling into a field full of large bitey wolves. It has a certain morbid interest, I agree,’ said Phryne, sipping deeply. ‘But it is basically a blood sport and I don’t even like fox-hunting.’ She gestured to the photos Dr. MacMillan was holding. ‘Have you seen the girls, Elizabeth?’