Unnatural Habits: A Phryne Fisher Mystery (Phryne Fisher Mysteries) (39 page)

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The Phryne who descended to lunch with her co-conspirators was a different Phryne from the crushed woman who had crept upstairs to be alone with her misery at the cruelty of the world. She bounced into the dining room.

‘Everyone here?’ she asked Dot.

‘Yes, Miss, the buffet’s ready. Mrs. B made two steak and kidney pies, in case one wasn’t enough.’

‘Very kind of her. Bert, Cec, how are the comrades? Jack dear, how nice to see you. Hugh, you are looking in the pink. Dot, that dress really suits you. Hello, minions. What’s for lunch?’

‘A good feed, however you look at it,’ replied Bert.

‘Wonderful, I’m starving.’

She grabbed a plate and loaded it with food. Bert and Jack Robinson met over the first steak and kidney pie. They divided it in half with mathematical exactitude. With Mrs. Butler’s sister’s homemade tomato sauce it was, as always, magnificent.

Dot hovered over Hugh Collins, supplying him with food. Ruth fed Bert. Tinker and Jane were still discussing chess. Lin ate distractedly. He knew what had worried Phryne the night before. But her present high spirits made him instantly suspicious. What wildly dangerous thing was she contemplating now to stagger humanity, or at least his part of it?

Well, he would know soon enough, and for the present there was a banquet to be eaten. He was Chinese. He knew about the importance of food.

When the feast had concluded with a beautiful fruit sorbet and the company were nibbling dry biscuits and cheese and sipping their coffee, Phryne called the meeting to order.

‘Polly Kettle,’ she said, ‘has not been found, but we know where she isn’t, which is an advantage.’

‘I don’t call it progress,’ grumbled Jack Robinson.

‘Then you’re a very silly policeman indeed. To find where something is, you must look in all the places where it isn’t. Stands to reason,’ said Phryne briskly. ‘Now, she isn’t in the commune. She hasn’t even been there. She isn’t in any of the brothels. If so, Madame Paris would know, because she knows everything which concerns her. At the… upper end, you might say, of her trade. And Jack and his policemen have covered the lower end.’

‘No sign of her,’ confirmed Jack Robinson, as gloomy as a man could be who had a stomach full of very good steak and kidney pie.

‘She isn’t in the convent,’ said Phryne. ‘I am sure. I searched it. Every loathsome part of it. There ought to be some law against what they are doing there, Jack.’

‘But there isn’t,’ he said. ‘I wish there was, if it’s as bad as they say.’

‘It’s worse,’ said Phryne.

‘All right,’ said Jack. ‘Miss Kettle isn’t in the convent, she isn’t in the houses. I’ve laid hands on that precious pair, Mrs. Ryan and her thug of a son. I’ve got ’em in custody for fraud, theft, assault and recklessly causing grievous bodily harm. They left one poor girl in a state where she might have bled to death. They didn’t give a f—’ he looked at Dot and censored his speech ‘—fig about the patients. Mrs. Ryan’s been fleecing the Welfare department for years. She lied about being a nurse, too. She’ll go to jail for a long time.’

‘How nice,’ said Phryne. ‘Just what I would have wished for her. And her son?’

‘Him, too,’ said Jack Robinson. ‘The house is up for sale, to defray debt. I don’t reckon they’ll get a penny, them debtors. The place was mortgaged up to the hilt to pay off sonny’s gambling debts. He had a real eye for a horse, that one. He just had to look at it and it fell down.’

‘Excellent! I am very pleased. Well done, Jack dear!’

‘Just routine police work,’ muttered Robinson. ‘The odd thing is that they did see Polly Kettle that morning, but she was never kidnapped. She just went away. No one at that address laid a hand on her. That fool was just romancing.’

‘I suspected as much,’ said Phryne. ‘But that leaves us with very few clues. She left the house in Footscray, presumably caught a tram or a train back into the city. What was her next port of call?’

Jack consulted his notes. ‘Jobs for All,’ he said.

‘Right,’ said Phryne.

‘Oh, by the way…’ Jack passed a piece of paper across the table ‘This is the town address of that bloke you asked me about. Miss Kettle’s intended. Got a house in Toorak, as you might have expected.’

‘That must be why the family wanted her to marry him,’ said Phryne, putting the paper aside. ‘Right, now, all of you minions, what do we know about Jobs for All?’

‘Nothing good,’ growled Hugh Collins.

‘But nothing we can nail them on,’ said his superior.

‘Searched the place,’ said Collins. ‘Looked through the books. They seem to charter small boats for their girls. Two of ’em, the Thisbe and the Pandarus. Funny sorts of names. They seem to be looking for blondes at present. Younger the better. Say they’re sending them out to theatrical appointments or to be maids or nannies or nurses.’

‘And you think their destinations are going to be less respectable?’ asked Jane.

‘Yes,’ said Collins. ‘I think that an awful fate awaits the poor girls.’

‘When does the next boat sail?’ asked Phryne.

‘Tomorrow night,’ said Hugh. ‘But we’ve got nothing we can stop the boat with.’

‘Yair we have,’ said Bert.

They all looked at him.

‘You been keepin’ up with the wharf news, Comrade?’ he asked Phryne.

‘No, I’ve been otherwise occupied. What’s happening?’

‘They won’t get a small boat loaded with slaves out of Melbourne River at the moment,’ Bert told her.

‘Why not?’ asked Phryne.

‘Port’s closed,’ said Bert. ‘There’s war on the waterfront. Pickets around all the gates. Ever since the Beeby judgment. The smugglers are real crook on us,’ he added.

‘Because?’

‘Place is swarming with cops and bucks and scabs,’ he told her. ‘White wingers. Reporters. Harbour Trust, Seamen’s Union, Carters’ and Drovers’, all pokin’ their noses in. Not a mouse gets in or out without some bugger noticin’. They won’t be takin’ them poor tarts out of port.’

‘Where, then? They can’t get them to Beirut on a train,’ objected Dot.

‘Willi, I reckon,’ said Bert, consulting Cec with a look.

‘Too right,’ said Cec.

‘Williamstown?’ asked Phryne.

‘Too right,’ said Cec again. ‘That’s the Naval Dockyard, the Royal Yacht Club, Gem Pier, Blunt’s Boatyard, lots of small vessels, nothing carryin’ cargo.’

‘Or we’d know about it, eh, Cec?’ said Bert. ‘Thanks, Ruthie,’ he added, as she refilled his beer glass. Bert had rescued Ruth from domestic slavery and brought her to Miss Phryne. She would never stop loving him.

‘Too right,’ said Cec.

‘All right. Can you two find out where those two little ships are moored and when they are going to set sail?’ asked Phryne.

Cec nodded.

‘And now, what about that employment agency?’ asked Dot.

‘They’re registered,’ said Hugh Collins. ‘Two directors, one that smarmy bast…man I told you about—his name’s De Vere. Vivien De Vere. What sort of name’s that for a man?’ he asked.

Phryne smothered a giggle. ‘No sort of name,’ she told him. ‘The chance that he is actually called De Vere is very limited. Vivien, eh? I wonder if I’ve met any Viviens. Not lately, to be sure.’

‘The other one’s called Bill Smith,’ said Collins.

‘Just as likely to be a
nom de crime
,’ said Phryne. ‘But that need not concern us here. How long have they been operating?’

‘Eleven years,’ said Collins. ‘Pay their taxes, too.’

‘Indeed. How very law-abiding of them.’

‘If you’re drivin’ a stolen car, don’t run no red lights,’ said Bert philosophically.

‘Quite.’

‘Miss,’ said Dot, looking worried.

‘Dot?’

‘I asked around about that Catholic charity, Miss, the one called Gratitude who’s supposed to be sending the girls.’

‘And?’

‘I couldn’t find out anything,’ confessed Dot. ‘Bishop’s office never heard of them. None of the priests I talked to knew about them. They’re in the phone book, but when I rang the number it didn’t answer. I asked Hugh—’ she blushed ‘—and he sent a constable to the address in the directory. It doesn’t exist.’

‘Bodgy,’ said Bert.

‘Too right,’ said Tinker. ‘I went and did a bit of a lurk around there. In me old clothes, Guv’nor. It’s a vacant lot. But there’s a phone box. The phone rang and blow me down but a bloke jumps out of a parked car and answers it. Smarmy-lookin’ goat with slicked-down hair. I got the number of the car,’ he said, and produced a carefully lettered page out of his notebook.

‘Good boy,’ said Jack Robinson, which was not something that any cop had occasion to say to Tinker before. He was flattered, but he looked to Phryne for approval.

‘Yes, very good,’ agreed Phryne. ‘Chocolate ice cream for you, also a small addition to your pocket money.’

‘And for me and Ruth,’ said Jane. ‘We went through their books. Jobs for All, I mean. Mr. Collins lent them to us for the afternoon,’ she said. ‘And we were curious. Don’t be cross, Mr. Robinson.’

‘Tell you what, you tell me what you found and I won’t be cross with a constable who mislays evidence in a criminal case,’ replied Robinson. He sounded serious so Jane handed over several sheets of lined paper.

‘You see.’ She pointed out several entries, copied in Ruth’s careful hand. ‘Payments in which don’t have a donor or a double entry. Only designated by G. G for Gratitude, perhaps?’

‘Blimey, you’re a shark of an accountant,’ said Jack, impressed. ‘I missed that. And that’s a good half of their income. Quids and quids.’

‘Ice cream for all,’ said Phryne, very proud of her family.

They beamed.

‘So, we’ve got Gratitude collecting girls who’re in trouble or can’t make a fuss,’ summarised Lin Chung. ‘Having no families, or none that want them back. We have an agency that is also collecting—or trying to collect—pretty little blonde girls. We have two ships, Thisbe and Pandarus, and we do not need to think about which one holds the slaves.’

‘We don’t?’ asked Bert.

‘Trust me that it will be the Pandarus,’ said Phryne. ‘It’s another name for pimp.’