Unnatural Habits: A Phryne Fisher Mystery (Phryne Fisher Mysteries) (3 page)

‘Not a one,’ said the doctor.

‘I thought as much. One of the Corsican’s little pals mentioned that there is some sort of farm where pregnant whores have been sent. It sounds like it might be dire. Since even Lin Chung’s minions couldn’t get anything more out of him, I suspect that is the extent of his knowledge. Asking around,’ warned Phryne, ‘will be perilous.’

‘I don’t care,’ said Polly stoutly, buoyed by company and gin. ‘I’m a reporter with a name to make.’

‘Up to you,’ shrugged Phryne.

‘A little advice?’ suggested the doctor.

‘Yes, of course,’ said Polly.

‘Sew your name and address into your undergarments,’ said Dr. MacMillan. She observed Polly’s look of incomprehension and did not smile.

‘Makes it easier to identify your body,’ explained Phryne. ‘Assuming that they don’t strip you naked, of course. Perhaps a tattoo might be better,’ she added.

‘Yes, dear, but think of the trouble when you changed addresses,’ objected the doctor.

Suddenly it was all too much. Polly rose, straightened her new stockings, took her leave, and left. Phryne and Dr. MacMillan exchanged a speaking glance.

‘How long do you give her?’ asked the doctor in her soft, exact Edinburgh voice.

‘Maybe a week,’ said Phryne, signalling for another drink.

‘Perhaps two,’ agreed Elizabeth MacMillan. ‘Be generous. Now, tell me about your new bathroom.’

‘I have a malachite bath,’ said Phryne. ‘And I have acquired another follower.’

‘Indeed?’

‘Tinker,’ said Phryne. ‘Apprentice detective. Here for six months on trial. From Queenscliff. He appointed himself my acolyte. Wants to be a cop. Father’s a sailor, he’s from a big hungry fishing family. Eldest child. About fourteen, I think.’

‘A likely lad?’

‘Many abilities, but he’s finding it hard to settle down in my house.’

‘Too big?’ asked the doctor.

‘Too female,’ said Phryne. ‘But he’s only been here a week. We shall see.’

‘Indeed we shall,’ said the doctor, and sipped her single malt.

***

Phryne started the great Hispano-Suiza with a roar which would have startled Little Lon if it was liable to be startled, which it wasn’t. Alarums and excursions were commonplace and a large engine could not compete with the crowd exiting from Little Chow’s all-night cafe to settle a small difference of opinion with broken bottles and bricks. To the merry accompaniment of crunches, shrieks and thuds, Phryne drove decorously enough out of Little Lon and on to St. Kilda Road, heading for home in the two a.m. chill of a hot day. Not even a tram on the wide stretches of the highway. Presently she spoke aloud.

‘You can come out now,’ she said. She heard a muffled curse behind her and suppressed a smile.

‘How’d you smoke me, Guv’nor?’ complained Tinker. ‘I was real careful.’

‘Next time you are being real careful, do not stand entirely still. Entire stillness doesn’t happen in nature. Just practise melting into the landscape, as though you are a tree. Besides, the porter told me about you. Why are you following me, Tink?’

‘Are you mad at me, Guv?’ he asked.

‘No, just curious.’

‘Can’t sleep inside,’ confessed the boy. ‘It’s too…’ He groped for a word which would not be insulting to his benefactor. ‘Too womany.’

‘I thought that might be the case.’

‘And it’s not as though they ain’t nice to me, but I don’t belong. There’s Miss Ruth and Mrs. Butler in the kitchen and Miss Jane in the library and Mr. Butler in the pantry and you and Miss Dot upstairs and me nowhere…’

‘I see,’ said Phryne.

There was a long silence as St. Kilda passed under the streetlights. Tinker ventured, ‘You gonna sack me, Guv’nor?’

‘No, I’m going to give you a little house of your own,’ said Phryne. ‘Now if you will be so kind as to get out and open the gate so that I can drive in, we will fix this right now.’

Tinker, mouth agape, did as ordered. Phryne entered her own bijou dwelling, picked up an electric torch and led the boy straight through the house, out of the back door, and into the garden. This had been laid out by Camellia, the wife of Phryne’s Chinese lover, Lin Chung. It had jasmine bowers and bamboo fences. It smelt, in the cool darkness, bewitching.

‘Shed,’ said Phryne, very quietly. Tinker looked.

It was a small stoutly constructed building in which a previous inhabitant had been wont to indulge a diseased passion for fretwork. It had carpenter’s tools hung on the wall, a stout bench and block for cutting wood, and a lot of sawdust on the floor. One window. One door, which could be shut. Tinker stood in the darkness and inhaled the scent of cut wood and realised that he could hear the sea. It was not the roar of the real ocean, to which he had been born and had heard all his life. It was the half-hearted lazy slopping ashore of the bay. But it was the sea and he released a breath which he had not known he had been holding. For about a week, it seemed to Tinker. He put a hand on the wall to steady himself.

Phryne said nothing. She played the light around the unlined walls and the dusty floor.

‘Yes?’ she said.

‘Oh, yair,’ replied Tinker fervently.

‘Then it’s yours. Tomorrow you can sweep up a little and move in some furniture. Or you can sleep on the ground, if that suits. Now we are going inside for the sandwiches which Mrs. B always leaves for me and I seldom eat, and then you are going to bed in the house. All right?’

Tinker did not know what to say. This angel, this goddess, had broken open his prison doors and given him a priceless gift. His own place. No more listening to Miss Jane talking about mathematics, no more feeling like an awkward lump always in the way in the kitchen. No more sitting gingerly on the edge of the sofa hoping he wouldn’t break something. He did not know what to say and had never hugged anyone. He extended a grimy, calloused hand.

‘Thanks,’ he said, and Phryne shook, gravely.

***

Phryne woke to the noise of activity downstairs. Not the usual late-breakfast preparation-for-lunch buzz and occasional clank in the kitchen, but thuds of furniture being moved. Tinker had relayed her instructions and someone was trying to move something heavy—a cast-iron bed frame, perhaps—without making any noise. This was not working. Phryne put out a hand and pulled a bell rope. Dot appeared as though summoned up on a breath of sea wind.

‘Going to be a nice day,’ she said, putting down the tray on which reposed Miss Fisher’s Greek coffee, roll and butter, and the little pot of Seville orange marmalade which she favoured. Phryne sat up in bed.

‘Good morning,’ she said. ‘I gather that Tinker is moving his furniture?’

‘Yes, Miss, he said you told him he could have the shed. I’ve given it a good sweep-out. But he won’t let us decorate it at all. He was real short with Jane offering him books and Ruth saying she could find him some paint. Just the hessian lining is good enough for him, he says, and we only just got him to accept a bed to sleep in. Not even curtains.’ Dot sounded mortified. ‘People will think we’re mistreating him.’

‘Two points,’ said Phryne, reaching for the coffee. ‘One, if the nice ladies from Children’s Protection come around, refer them to me. And two, it’s what Tinker needs. Everyone will be more comfortable with him sleeping in the shed, especially him. Make a note to buy another bed for the spare room. And ask him if he would like electric light or a hurricane lamp. He’ll be safe enough, he’s used to them. He’ll be wanting to read, I hope.’ She took another sip of the life-giving fluid. ‘It will be all right, Dot, I promise. Lovely day, you said?’

‘Yes, Miss,’ said Dot, accepting the orders with great relief. It would be nice to have someone guarding the back gate. It would also be nice—though she hated to admit it, it seemed so uncharitable—to have Tinker out of the house, where he was so awkward and uncomfortable that he disrupted the peaceful routine which Mr. and Mrs. Butler had imposed on Phryne’s rather chaotic life. Dot liked routine. It made her feel safe. It wasn’t as though Tinker wasn’t a good boy, Dot was sure, at bottom. He was respectful, cheerful, likely to be of great use to Miss Fisher. But he was so patently a boy. Not a man like Phryne’s friends or Mr. Butler. A boy, and he disturbed the girls. He didn’t know how to treat them, although he had sisters, he said. Also he hadn’t got used to the length of his arms and legs, so he knocked things off tables, tripped over rugs, and broke china, which upset Mrs. Butler. He was alternately cheeky and depressed. And that made Dot feel that she should do something to help him, having little brothers of her own. It was clear that the family were getting on Tinker’s nerves as much as he was getting on theirs. The whole house had been uneasy since his advent.

Much better, Dot considered, that he should have a refuge in the shed. When he felt like joining the family, he would probably be better company.

There was a loud crunch as the bed frame was squeezed though the back door, a cry of triumph from Tinker, and a grunt from Mr. Butler. Phryne smiled and ate her roll.

Dot handed her the hairbrush and Phryne got out of bed and stood herself before the big mirror, garlanded with art deco vines in green enamel and gilt. There was Miss Fisher, a pale oval face, red lips in a cupid’s bow, green eyes staring directly at her reflection, doll-like except for the decisiveness in the bone structure. Behind her stood Dot, mousy, in her favourite shade of brown with her hair in a long plait wound round her head; devout, delightful, and always a little worried about Phryne. Phryne blew a kiss to her own reflection and put down the brush. Her short black hair, snipped into a bobby-cut, was as shiny as a crow’s feather.

‘Bath,’ she said, and went into her new bathroom. It was magnificent. The bath was made of green malachite. The walls were scarlet. Dot thought the whole thing very garish. Bathrooms ought to be white, or at the most a very pale pink or blue. But, she had to admit, it suited Phryne’s flamboyant personality. Dot made sure that there were sufficient moss-green bath sheets and went downstairs to see what domestic disasters had occurred while she was away. Behind her, Phryne lifted up her voice in one of her favourite bath songs, ‘My Canary Has Circles Under His Eyes’.

‘I’m afraid when he’s in the park, he leaves the straight and narrow…’ Dot smiled. It was pleasant to be home.

By the time Phryne descended to the main house, the move had been accomplished. Tinker had allowed that he had got used to sleeping in a bed, so he had his iron one, and bedding. The sawdust had been swept out of his little home, and he had nailed a flour sack across the window to provide privacy. All of the rest of his possessions reposed on the carpenter’s bench. Sexton Blake novels, string, stones, shells, fishhooks stuck in a cork, a magnifying glass, matches, a notebook, a pencil, useful bits of wire. His hurricane lamp was filled and trimmed. Phryne surveyed Tinker’s domain, smiled, and held out a heavy wrought-iron key.

‘No one will come in, Tink, but you have to put your sheets and dirty clothes into the laundry basket on Wednesday night, and remake the bed yourself. New shirt and underwear every day, remember. I shall have this checked. And a wash every night and a bath at least every week. You can use the Butlers’ bathroom.’