Introducing the Honourable Phryne Fisher Page 17

  ‘But why the murder, when you must be making a mint out of the coke trade?’ asked Phryne, to keep the conversation going.

  Lydia shuddered. ‘He was making. . demands upon me. He called it his marital rights. He is. . disgusting. He must go,’ concluded Lydia.

  Phryne stared at her. She still looked like a porcelain doll: curly blonde hair, pink cheeks, baby-face. There was something indescribably horrible about the dainty way she ordered her men about. Phryne leaned against Sasha, who put an arm around her.

  ‘You know, I could have sworn that you had designs upon me yourself,’ she commented softly. ‘Do your tastes lie in my direction, Lydia?’

  The tea trolley arrived, pushed by a sour-faced Cokey.

  ‘Shall I be mother?’ smiled Lydia, and poured out. ‘Sugar and milk?’

  Sasha and Phryne looked at each other in bewilderment. ‘Milk, but no sugar,’ said Phryne. ‘Strong, if you please, I think I’ve had rather a shock.’

  She drank the tea thirstily and ate two cucumber sandwiches. She wondered if the Bull had cut them and muffled a laugh. Sasha drank his tea in complete astonishment.

  ‘Now, you have a choice, Miss Fisher,’ said Lydia formally. ‘Come in with me, or. . er. . die.’

  ‘Come in with you? Does that include going to bed with you?’ asked Phryne coarsely. ‘If so, no thank you.’

  Lydia blushed. ‘Not at all. It is an excellent business. Overheads are low, shipping charges moderate, and the personnel trustworthy.’

  ‘How did you get to be the King of Snow?’ demanded Phryne. Lydia fingered the Fabergé brooch.

  ‘I was looking for a good investment, when I was in Paris in the first year of my marriage. I made an acquaintance, a woman, who was thinking of retiring from the Kingship. She had all her markets in Europe, and had never thought of Australia. I had some money from Auntie to invest, and I had to make myself independent of my husband. So I bought the business, outright. The stockists deliver to Paris — I have nothing to do with that — and the merchandise enters as Chasseur et Cie bath salts. We have a very exclusive clientele, all wealthy ladies, and Gerda delivers the beauty powders when she is taken with Madame to do massages.’

  ‘Is Madame Breda in on this?’ asked Phryne.

  ‘No. She allows us to use her rooms to store the cosmetics of Chasseur et Cie, for a consideration. She would never be a party to anything so unhealthy as drugs. Gerda, her maid, is our main sales agent, as I said.’

  ‘And the chemist’s shop in Little Lon.?’ prompted Phryne, accepting her second cup of tea.

  ‘Yes, that is our street outlet,’ agreed Lydia, sipping delicately. It was an excellent tea. ‘Come, Miss Fisher, with your connections, we could have a worldwide trade, not just Paris and Melbourne. Millions of pounds are spent on drugs every day. It seems a pity that we cannot. . I believe the term is “corner the market”.’

  ‘An interesting proposition. What is the alternative?’

  ‘We will strip you both and put you in the Turkish bath together,’ said Lydia, biting a precise semicircle out of her sandwich. ‘You should suffocate in about three hours.’

  ‘Won’t that be a little difficult to explain to Madame Breda?’ asked Phryne. Lydia considered.

  ‘No. We will tell her that you particularly wanted to enjoy your new diversion — I mean him,’ she pointed to Sasha with a pearly forefinger, ‘in a jungle atmosphere. You were so exhausted by transports of lust that you fell asleep — and a terrible accident happened. They may close the Turkish bath, but they will never suspect the truth.’

  ‘Good. Now I feel it only fair to tell you that I have left a full statement of your part in this ring: your attempt to murder your husband, plus samples of your wares; to be delivered to that nice policeman, whose name escapes me, if I don’t return to the Windsor at noon. Put that in your pipe and smoke it. More tea, please,’ requested Phryne. Lydia refilled her cup and sat staring at her.

  ‘Now where would you have left it?’ With that disagreeable suffragette doctor? Or in your room with your maid? I can’t get in to your room, the girl has bolted the door — no doubt on your orders. But I think that’s a blind. I think that the doctor is the one.’

  ‘Oh, do you? And where do you suppose I dined last night?’ misdirected Phryne.

  Lydia paled. ‘Mr Sanderson’s?’

  ‘What do you think? Where would such a commission be safest? In the hands of a silly girl or an old woman, or with a parliamentarian and statesman, who moreover has a safe? Your goose is cooked, Lydia. Better give it up.’

  Lydia stood up, rigid with fury. ‘Come,’ she snapped at the hovering men, and led the way out of the room.

  Phryne waited until the door was shut and locked before she took the last sandwich and pulled it apart.

  ‘Plaster your burns with this, Sasha, and listen. I think I’ve got our Mrs Andrews’ weak spot.’

  Sasha obediently smeared his burns with butter and listened.

  ‘It will not work,’ he said at length.

  ‘It had better,’ replied Phryne. ‘Or do you fancy being pressure-cooked into Sasha Surprise? She’ll send one to each: Sanderson, and Dot, and Elizabeth. They can all look after themselves, I hope. That leaves her to us. Will you cooperate or not?’

  ‘I am not at my best,’ admitted Sasha, smoothing down his hair. ‘But I shall try.’

  Phryne began to listen at the door.

  ‘You go to the Windsor, Bull, and obtain the letter which Miss Fisher told us of. She is in suite thirty-three. Don’t draw attention to yourself and don’t come back without it, or I shall be very cross. Mr Billings: you will break into the Queen Victoria Hospital, threaten the disagreeable woman with whatever occurs to you, and get the samples and the script, if there is one. Then you, may kill her, if you like. And then you shall have a whole ounce to yourself when you come back. James, you will tackle Mr Sanderson. I imagine that the letter is in his safe. Be careful, all of you. And if you fail. .’ she giggled, ‘I shall be very cross indeed. You all remember what happened to Thomas, when he flouted me? I still have the very gun with which I shot him, and no one has missed him yet. Off you go,’ concluded Lydia.

  ‘I wonder,’ Phryne murmured in Sasha’s ear, ‘I wonder if she truly is a sapphic, or whether she just loathes the flesh? What do you think, moon of my delight?’

  ‘I do not think that she has any pleasures of the flesh,’ commented Sasha, his mouth against Phryne’s neck. ‘Is that shoe-polish which I can smell?’

  ‘Yes, I wanted to look unwashed. Not a sapphic, then?’

  ‘I do not think so. Her manner towards you is not. . not confiding enough. She is more like a child, with a child’s will and the single mind. She does not touch you, or me—quant à ça, that would be a trial. She finds sex loathsome, that is plain. Dirty. Disgusting. Her husband has mistreated her; no woman is born icy. . what is the word?’

  ‘Frigid. Then all this is a substitute?’

  ‘No,’ whispered Sasha. ‘It is power that she loves. Did you see her eyes when she spoke of murdering us? They glistened like those of a woman in love. It is power she loves.’

  ‘And sex she hates.’

  ‘And on her hatred and loathing of sex our only chance depends, hein?’

  ‘Oui.’ Agreed Phryne.

  Dr MacMillan had had a hard struggle with the breech baby, and when that was safe, with the mother, who seemed obstinately set upon dying. It was nine o’clock before she was satisfied that they both intended to stay, and she could go upstairs for a bath, a cup of strong coffee and an hour’s sleep before the day’s work began. She had arisen from her bed and was dressed, combing her pepper-and-salt hair before the mirror, when a noise at the window attracted her attention. Someone was climbing the drainpipe. It was a lithe man, with a black silk scarf around his neck.

  The doctor was used to the fact that any all-woman establishment attracts peeping Toms and perverts of all descriptions. She called to mind the hand-to-hand struggle she ha
d once had with a drunken carter in Glasgow, and chuckled. Waiting until Cokey Billing’s head was crowning through the window, she struck him forcibly on the occiput with the washstand basin — which was of thick, white hospital china — and followed his downward course with a practised eye. She reckoned that a fall of two storeys would probably not kill him, and walked down to provide life-saving measures if necessary.

  ‘Waste of a good basin,’ muttered Dr MacMillan, regretfully.

  The Bull found the Windsor without getting lost more than three or four times, and eyed the doorman sourly. He had been denied admittance with a fluency of language which he found wounding, and was now at a loss. If he couldn’t get in, how could he search suite thirty-three for this letter the boss wanted? Thinking always gave the Bull a headache. While waiting, he decided to have a drink at the nearby hostelry, where he could keep an eye on the door.

  Gentleman Jim, stepping through the window of Dr Sanderson’s library, located the safe and rolled the tumblers between his fingers. His ears, trained to such work, found the first faint click that would begin to release the combination. He was only two numbers away from it when he was grabbed roughly by two policemen and handcuffed. Mr Sanderson had fitted his library window with the new telephone burglar alarm, which rang at Russell Street. As befitted a gentleman, he went quietly.

  Dot became more and more alarmed as the clock ticked on. There had been no message from Phryne, but someone had inquired for her at the desk.

  She had mended all the stockings, and was not com- fortable waiting with nothing to do. She was also very hungry, being unused to going without her breakfast since she had come into Phryne’s service.

  It was ten o’clock in the morning.

  Phryne laid herself out across Sasha’s knees as she heard the brisk clack of Lydia’s heels on the uncarpeted floor of the hall.

  The door was unlocked, and Lydia, returning without companions, found a shocking spectacle to offend her eye. Phryne’s damaged dress was discarded and Sasha’s cut and bloodstained shirt lay on the floor. Phryne had ripped her camiknickers down to the crotch to allow free play for Sasha’s hands and was lying back, eyes glazed with desire.

  Lydia stopped short and shrieked, ‘Stop that!’

  The lovers paid her no heed. She flourished the gun, took another step, and shrieked again, spattering Sasha with spittle.

  ‘Let her alone!’ Her face distorted into a grimace. Teeth bared, she struck at Sasha with the gun, and at that moment Phryne flung the shirt over her head and seized the gun hand.

  They rolled about the floor, Lydia grunting and attempting to bite while Phryne knelt astride her, bashing her hand hard down on the tiles at the edge of the swimming bath.

  ‘Help me, Sasha, she’s as strong as a horse!’ gasped Phryne, and the young man added his weight to Phryne’s.

  Lydia released the gun, her hand being broken. Phryne rolled her over and tied her wrists with the remains of the mistreated dress. Lydia struggled silently and furiously until Sasha caught her ankles to tie her feet together, when she went as lax as a rag doll and whimpered.

  ‘What’s taken all the fight out of her?’ wondered Phryne, sucking a bitten finger.

  Sasha shuddered. ‘She thought that I meant to rape her,’ he answered, his complexion greening.

  ‘You sit and watch her, Sasha, and don’t go any closer than that. Just watch — you don’t have to talk to her. I want a look around. I hope that the house is empty, but I don’t know. And you really have no talent for intrigue.’

  Phryne opened the door carefully and listened. There was no one stirring. Overhead, she heard a slow thumping that indicated that Gerda was alive; she owed Gerda a favour. It had been she who had warned her of the Rose.

  Phryne found some rope in the kitchen and looked out into the little yard. Seeing it in daylight, she shuddered to think that she had ever been near it.

  ‘A couple of cans of paraffin and a match would do that place a world of good,’ she muttered. She bolted the door, not wishing for any surprises from behind, and rejoined Sasha. Together they trussed Lydia Andrews as close as a Christmas turkey. Phryne recovered her tattered mantle and pulled it on.

  ‘I don’t understand it,’ murmured Lydia’s pale lips. ‘It was all going so well until you came along. .’

  ‘And you know the cream of the jest, don’t you?’ chuckled Phryne. ‘Your father sent me, to find out if your husband was poisoning you. I only got into this snow business because it killed Sasha’s mother. Well, now you’ve found your King of Snow, Sasha, the man you swore to kill — do you still want to?’

  Sasha flinched. ‘She is a monstrous woman,’ he said slowly. ‘A daughter of a dog, a servant of the anti-Christ, but I do not want to kill her.’

  ‘We’ve got company,’ said Phryne, repossessing herself of the gun as the front window shattered, and Bert leapt in, followed by Cec and several policemen.

  ‘We should have known, Cec,’ he exclaimed, disgusted, as he came to a full stop out of Phryne’s line of fire. ‘Rescuing? She don’t want rescuing. Not though it don’t look like she’s had a time of it,’ he added, observing Phryne’s elegant figure, most of which was evident through the rents in her garments. ‘I’ve brung a few coppers along, Miss, and I’ve been delayed because the lame-brains wouldn’t believe me. They had to gather in your little chemist and his girl, and comb the stock before they were convinced. Cops? Don’t talk to me about cops.’

  An embarrassed policeman came forward to handcuff Lydia. She moved passively, but turned in their grip to spit full in Sasha’s face.

  ‘Manners,’ said the policeman reprovingly. ‘I’ve got a message for you from the detective-inspector, Miss Fisher. He’s got all the samples and he’d like to see you as soon as may be. Perhaps when you’re dressed,’ he added, averting his eyes.

  ‘How did Dot get her message through?’ asked Phryne. The policeman grinned.

  ‘She rang the inspector and asked him to fetch it. Simple, eh? And we picked up a bloke as he tried to waylay your maid when she came out with the inspector. The hotel clerk pointed her out to him. Huge big bloke. Took four of us to bring him down. I’ll be taking this one in, Miss.’

  ‘Show me your warrant card, please,’ asked Phryne, who had never put down her pistol. The policeman obligingly exhibited a card that identified him as Detective-constable Malleson, and Phryne lowered the gun.

  ‘I have a suspicious mind,’ she confessed. ‘There is also Gerda. She put me on to Mrs Andrews. Unfortunately I had to stab her and I’ve tied her to her bed. You’ll need a stretcher.’

  Detective-constable Malleson nodded, gave some orders, and, accompanied by three constables, carried Lydia out, loaded her into a van and watched it drive away. Phryne flung her arms around Bert’s neck and kissed him on the mouth.

  ‘We did it!’ she cried. ‘Quick, let’s find a pub and celebrate. No, better still, you shall all come to lunch with me.’

  ‘Er. . you goin’ to travel like that, Miss?’ asked Bert, smirking. Phryne pulled Sasha’s shirt on over her ruined undergarments and re-donned her mantle. She looked quite indescribable.

  There was a burst of astounded German at the door, as Madame Breda, entering, encountered Gerda on her stretcher, leaving. Madame Breda’s healthy cheeks took on a cyclamen colour when she heard what Gerda called her.

  ‘No time to explain, Madame. Your establishment has been used for drug-dealing. Come to lunch and I’ll explain it all — or most of it. One o’clock, at the Windsor!’

  Phryne spat out a stray feather and, embracing Sasha and Bert, danced down into the disreputable taxi, en route for the most exclusive hotel in Melbourne, dressed only in a shirt and a smile.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  As his pure intellect applies its laws He moves not on his coppery keen claws

  Wallace Stevens ‘The Bird with the Coppery Keen Claws’

  The apparition of Miss Fisher, clad in rags, escorted up to the front door by a shirtless dan
cer and two grinning cab-drivers made a lasting impression on the doorman, who had previously been willing to bet that he had seen everything.

  Dot was standing on the steps, weeping like a funeral, but the ebullient Miss Fisher kicked her bare legs in the air as she passed the doorman, and continued through the lobby and into the lift as though she did not present an appalling spectacle. The doorman’s world wavered on its axis.

  Phryne embraced Dot in a close hug. ‘You did splendidly, Dot, splendidly — I’m proud of you. Now, order coffee for four, and find Sasha a shirt, for he must go home and fetch la Princesse and Elli. Yes, you must,’ she reproved, silencing Sasha with a kiss full on the mouth. ‘And I must have a bath, I’m putrid. At one o’clock, Sasha, in the luncheon-room. Ring down and order a table for ten, Dot. Come in, Bert, Cec — and excuse me.’

  Phryne flew into the bathroom and planted herself under the showerbath. A puff of steam emerged and snatches of song could be heard. Dot handed Sasha a gentleman’s butcher-blue shirt which Phryne sometimes wore with a black skirt, and he left. Bert and Cec sat down gingerly in the midst of all this luxury and accepted coffee in small cups.

  ‘Is it all over?’ asked Dot in a small voice. Bert reached over and patted her soothingly.

  ‘Yair, the cocaine ring’s all smashed, and the leader’s in jail, as well as all the bad men. You can sleep safe in your bed tonight.’

  Dot mopped her face and smiled for the first time in days.

  ‘Oh, the lunch table!’ she exclaimed, and rang up the maître d’ with great aplomb. Bert was impressed.

  ‘I reckon,’ he said, taking another cup of coffee, ‘that she wasn’t scared at all. She must have been in deep trouble in that bath house, but she was cool as a cucumber. What a girl!’

  Cec nodded agreement. Dot considered that their lang- uage was rather free, but was too tired to resent it. She poured herself some coffee, drank it with a grimace, and went to find Phryne a robe, lest she forget her company and burst naked out of the bathroom.

  Phryne, meanwhile, was revelling in the heat of the water and the speed at which eau-de-Little Lon. was being replaced with ‘Le Fruit Deféndu’. She towelled her hair roughly and sat down in the bath to soak her hands and feet clean and remove the mud and dung from her numerous grazes. She hoped that she would not contract tetanus. She anointed them all with iodine, refusing to wince, and creamed her face with ‘Facial Youth’, a steal at a shilling a tube.