Introducing the Honourable Phryne Fisher Page 18

  Dot entered with a robe as Phryne was examining her knees.

  ‘No Charleston for me for at least three weeks,’ she mourned. ‘But no worse than that. Thanks, Dot. Now, go put on your best dress. You’re coming to lunch, too. Yes, you are! And give Dr MacMillan, the nice Detective-inspector Robinson and WPC Jones a ring and ask them, too. Are Bert and Cec still here?’

  ‘Yes, Miss.’

  ‘Good. I owe them fifty quid.’

  Phryne put on the robe, a sober one in dark shades of gold, went out, and sat down on the couch next to Bert.

  ‘I haven’t thanked you for rescuing me,’ she observed, lighting one of her own cigarettes with great delight. ‘How did you get there so promptly?’

  ‘It would have been sooner, and maybe have saved that friend of yours a few burns on his chest, but I couldn’t get the thick-headed coppers to listen to me. I had to near drag one out to the chemist’s in Little Lon. and buy him one of the powders. It numbed his tongue, all right, so he sent for the others, and they raided the chemist’s first, despite us saying that you were in the front building. It wasn’t until morning that we got it through their heads that we were serious. Still, we got there at last.’

  ‘So you did, and I am very grateful. Here’s the price we agreed on. We might work together again,’ said Phryne, and to her astonishment, Cec replied, ‘Too right.’ It was the first opinion she had heard him express, unprompted.

  Bert looked at his mate in surprise. ‘You reckon?’

  ‘Too right,’ said Cec again, just to show that it wasn’t a fluke. ‘Me and Bert have to go and check out some other business, but we’ll be in on the lunch. Wouldn’t miss it for quids.’

  Phryne and Bert stared at Cec, then at each other. Never had they seen him so animated. Something was up, but neither knew what.

  Bert and Cec took their leave, and Phryne and Dot prepared for lunch.

  Phryne donned the undergarments and dress handed to her by Dot, who was arrayed in her embroidered linen. She brushed her hair vigorously and put on a small, blue hat with a pert brim. Dot was wearing a close-fitting cloche.

  They surveyed themselves in the big mirror, slim young women in stylish clothes.

  ‘Are you giving your notice, Dot?’ asked Phryne of Dot’s reflection. ‘This has been a bit above and beyond the call of, you know.’

  ‘No, Miss!’ Dot’s reflection looked dismayed. ‘What, give this up when I’m just getting good at it?’

  ‘Alice, the lady doctor says that you can go home next week,’ Cec was sitting by Alice’s bed and holding her hand. She had small plump hands that were chillblained and red with washing. But almost all of the blemishes were gone. Enforced rest had given Alice the hands of a lady for the first time in her life. They were getting stronger, Cec thought, as he squeezed the hand, and Alice returned the squeeze. ‘What I mean to say is. . Will you marry me? I’ve got a half-share in a taxi and a place to live and. . I don’t mind about the hound who got you into trouble, though I’d break his neck if I knew him and. . I think it would be a good idea. .’ faltered Cec, blushing painfully.

  Propped up, Alice looked at him. He was tall and lanky and devoted, and she loved him dearly. But Alice was not going to make a mistake this time around.

  ‘You’re sorry for me,’ she said. ‘I don’t want you to marry me just because you’re sorry for me.’

  ‘That’s not the reason I want to marry you,’ said Cec. Alice felt the strength of the grip on the white hospital coverlet and looked into his deep, brown eyes.

  ‘Give it six months,’ suggested Alice. ‘Till I’m better and in my own world again. Back with mum and dad. Ask me again in six months, Cec,’ said Alice, ‘and we’ll see.’

  Cec smiled his peculiarly beautiful smile and patted her shoulder. ‘It’ll be apples,’ he said.

  ‘So, what did she say?’ asked Bert, who’d been waiting outside.

  Cec grinned. ‘Six months, she said to ask again in six months.’

  ‘That ain’t so good,’ commented Bert.

  ‘It’s good enough for me!’ exulted Cec.

  ‘Aar, you’re stuck on that girl,’ snarled Bert, not at all pleased by this new turn of events. ‘Carm on, lover boy, this might be our only chance to have lunch at the Windsor.’

  The Windsor’s dining-room was crowded, and a table for ten had only been obtained by the maître d’hotel rushing one party through their meal with amazing haste, seeing them off with a glittering, breathless smile, whipping off the cloth with his own hands and summoning five menials to re-lay the table in record time.

  Miss Fisher’s guests were arriving. Dr MacMillan was refusing Veuve Clicquot and demanding a little whisky. Detective-inspector Robinson, leaving three sergeants in charge of counting and weighing Chasseur et Cie cocaine from Madame Breda’s Bath House, had brought Woman Police-Officer Jones with him as ordered. He did not really know what to say to her, out of uniform. She solved his problem by talking to Sasha, who had swept in with his sister and the old woman, and was staring hungrily at the hors d’oeuvres as though he had not eaten for a week. A loose artistic shirt covered his burns, and he was as attractive as ever. WPC Jones thought that he looked like a sheik, and hung on his every word.

  Detective-inspector Robinson engaged Dr MacMillan in conversation.

  ‘How is that girl, the last victim of Butcher George?’

  ‘Oh, she will be fine. I believe that she will suffer no lasting ill-effects. A strong young woman. How is the monster taking his imprisonment?’

  ‘Not too well, I am glad to say. It seems that he can’t stand confined spaces. He confessed it all, you know, including the rapes and the murders, but said that they were all little tarts who deserved all that he did to them. But he isn’t mad,’ said Robinson, taking a cheesy thing from the tray of entrées. ‘Not legally mad. He’ll hang before spring, thank the Lord. And the world will be a safer place without him. And we’ve broken the coke ring. Even my chief has noticed.’

  ‘You mean Phryne broke the ring, and captured the criminals.’

  ‘That’s true.’

  ‘And without her you would not have got your Butcher George, either, would you?’

  ‘No. A wonderful girl. Pity we can’t have her in the detective force.’

  ‘A few years ago they were saying that women could not become doctors,’ retorted Dr MacMillian crushingly. Robinson called for more whisky.

  Phryne, Dot, Bert and Cec came into the luncheon-room together. Their table began to applaud. Bert and Cec stood aghast. Phryne swept a full court curtsey, and Sasha led her to the head of the table, beating Cec by a short half-head to the seat on her right. The dancer possessed himself of her hand, and kissed it to general approbation.

  She leaned accross the table to kiss his cheek and whispered, ‘I still won’t marry you, and I definitely won’t pay you!’

  ‘I am in your debt, for you have avenged me,’ Sasha said seriously. ‘Now there can be no repayment of what I owe you. And I never thought that you would marry me, which is sad. But do not tell the Princesse, or she will sell me elsewhere.’ Phryne kissed his other cheek, and then his mouth.

  ‘What has happened to Cec?’ asked Dr MacMillan. ‘He looks like he has won a lottery!’

  ‘Aah, makes a man sick,’ complained Bert. ‘That sheila we took to your place. Doctor, Cec has fallen for her like a ton of bricks. And just today it looks like she’s fallen for him, too. Turns a man’s stomach.’ Bert downed a glass of champagne, a drink which was new to him. He did not like the taste, but it clothed the world in a rosier glow and he was disposed to think more kindly, even of Alice, who was going to steal his mate away.

  Phryne completed the confounding of Cec by giving him a congratulatory kiss as well. She was in a demonstrative mood.

  ‘I’ve seen your King, Miss Fisher,’ said Dectective-inspector Robinson, ‘She don’t look up to much.’

  ‘That’s not how she looked when she was going to cook me and Sasha into casserole
in the Turkish bath.’

  ‘My Turkish bath!’ moaned Madame Breda, and was plied with champagne by Bert, though she protested that she never took wine.

  ‘Begin at the beginning, girl!’ admonished Dr MacMillan. ‘We want to hear the whole tale.’

  The Detective-inspector, knowing that this was most irregular, was about to protest and withdraw when he caught the doctor’s eye, and decided not to. Soup was served, and Phryne began to talk.

  As veal followed the soup and chicken ragoût the veal, and then cheeses and ices and coffee made their appearance, she ploughed through the story, omitting the delicate parts. Even the outline gave her hearers enough trouble. Fabergé brooches and the Russian Revolution, the Cryers and the chemist in Little Lon., the planted packets of powder turning up all through the story, sapphism and crime. .

  ‘It’s an unbelievable tale,’ summed up Dr MacMillan. ‘The scheming bitch is in jail now, and all her associates captured. Cokey Billings is in hospital with a broken ankle and a dent in his head. What happened to the others?’

  ‘The Bull and Gentleman Jim are both lodged with me,’ said Robinson, with quiet satisfaction. ‘And the chemist, and the chemist’s girl, and Gerda. That was a nicely judged blow, Miss Fisher; another inch to the right and you’d have killed her.’

  Phryne, sipping coffee, suppressed the intelligence that it had not been nice judgement but blind luck that had preserved Gerda’s life.

  ‘To Phryne Fisher,’ Dr MacMillan raised her glass. ‘May she continue to be an example to us all!’

  All drank. Cec murmured, ‘Too right.’

  Phryne drained her glass.

  ‘I seem to be established as an investigator,’ she mused, considering the thought gravely. ‘It could be most diverting. In the meantime, there’s champagne and Sasha. Cheers!’ she cried, holding up a refilled glass. Life was very good.

  Flying Too High

  CHAPTER ONE

  A sad tale’s best for Winter

  Shakespeare The Winter’s Tale

  Candida Alice Maldon was being a bad girl. Firstly, she had not told anyone that she had found a threepence on the street. Secondly, she had not mentioned to anyone in the house that she was going out, because she knew that she would not be allowed. Thirdly, since she had lost one of her teeth, she was not supposed to be eating sweets, anyway.

  The consciousness of wrongdoing had never stopped Candida from doing anything she wanted. She was prepared to be punished, and even prepared to feel sorry. Later. She approached the sweet-shop counter, clutching her threepence in her hand, and stared at the treasures within. Laid out, like those Egyptian treasures her father had shown her photos of in the paper, were sweets enough to give the whole world toothache.

  There were red and green toffee umbrellas and toffee horses on a stick. There were jelly-beans and jelly-babies and snakes in lots of colours, and lolly bananas and snowballs and acid drops. These had the advantage that they were twenty-four a penny, but they were too sour for Candida’s taste. She dismissed wine-gums as too gluey and musk sticks as too crumbly, and humbugs as too peppery. She considered boiled lollies in all the colours of the millefiore brooch which her grandmother wore, and barley-sugar in long, glassy canes. There were ring sticks with real rings around them, and rainbow balls and honeybears and chocolate toffs. Candida breathed heavily on the glass and wiped it with her sleeve.

  ‘What would you like, dear?’ asked the shopkeeper.

  ‘My name is Candida,’ the child informed her, ‘and I have threepence. I would like a ha’porth of honeybears, a ha’porth of coffee buds, a ha’porth of mint-leaves, a ha’porth of silver sticks. . a ha’porth of umbrellas and a ha’porth of bananas.’

  ‘There you are, Miss Candida,’ said the shopkeeper, accepting the sweaty, warm coin. ‘Here are your lollies. Don’t eat them all at once!’

  Candida walked out of the shop, and began to trail her way home. She was not in a hurry because no one knew she was gone.

  She was hopping in and out of the gutter, as she had been expressly forbidden to do, when a car drew up beside her. It was a black car shaped like a beetle. Nothing like her father’s little Austin. Candida looked up with a start.

  ‘Candida! There you are! Your daddy sent me to look for you. Where have you been?’ A woman opened the car door and extended a hand.

  Candida stepped closer to look. The woman had yellow hair and Candida did not like her smile.

  ‘Come along now, dear. We’ll take you home.’

  ‘I don’t believe you,’ Candida said clearly. ‘I don’t believe my daddy sent you. I shall tell him you’re a liar,’ and she jumped back onto the pavement to run home. But someone in the back of the car was too quick. She was seized by strong hands and an odd-smelling handkerchief was clamped over her face. Then the world went dark green.

  Phryne Fisher was enduring afternoon tea at the Traveller’s Club with Mrs William McNaughton for a special reason. This did not make the ordeal any more pleasant, but it gave her the necessary spinal fortitude. Not that there was anything wrong with the tea. There were scones and strawberry jam with cream obviously obtained from contented cows. There were petit fours in delightful colours and brandy snaps. There was Ceylon tea in the big silver teapot, and fine Chinese cups from which to drink it.

  The only fly in the afternoon’s ointment was Mrs William McNaughton. She was a pale, drooping woman, dressed in an unbecoming grey. Her sheaf of pale hair was coming adrift from its pins. These disadvantages could have been overcome with the correct choice of hairdresser and couturière, but the essential soppiness of her character was irreparable. Mrs William McNaughton reminded Phryne of jelly-cake and aspens and other quivering things, but there was steel under her flinching. This was a woman who had all the marks of extensive abuse: the hollow eyes, the nervous movements, the habit of starting at a sudden sound. But she had survived in her own way. She might cower, but she would not release hold of an idea once she had grasped it, and she could keep a secret or embark on a clandestine path. Her concealment of her character and her desires would be close to absolute, and torture would not break her now if her past had not killed her. However, despite the reasons, Phryne could not like her. Phryne herself met all challenges head-on, and the Devil take the hindmost.

  ‘It’s my son, Miss Fisher,’ said Mrs McNaughton, handing Phryne a cup of tea. ‘I’m worried about him.’

  ‘Well, what worries you?’ asked Phryne, pouring her cup of anaemic tea into the slop-bowl and filling it with a stronger brew. ‘Have you spoken to him about it?’

  ‘Oh, no!’ Mrs McNaughton recoiled. Phryne added milk and sugar to her tea and stirred thoughtfully. The process of finding out what was bothering McNaughton was like extracting teeth from an uncooperative ox.

  ‘Tell me, then, and perhaps I may be able to help,’ she suggested.

  ‘I have heard of your talents, Miss Fisher,’ observed Mrs McNaughton artlessly. ‘I hoped that you might be able to help me without causing a scandal. Lady Rose speaks very highly of you. She’s a connection of my mother’s, you know.’

  ‘Indeed,’ agreed Phryne, taking a brandy snap and smiling. Lady Rose had mislaid her emerald earrings, and was positive that her maid of long standing had not stolen them, thus contradicting her greedy nephew and heir, as well as the local policeman. She had hired Phryne to find the earrings, and this Phryne had done in one afternoon’s inquiry among the local Montes de Piété, where the nephew had pawned them. He had made an unwise investment in the fourth at Flemington, putting the proceeds on a horse which was possessed of insufficient zeal and had not been able to redeem them. Lady Rose had been less than generous with the fee, but more than generous with her recommendations. Since Phryne did not need the money, she was pleased with the bargain. Lady Rose had told her immediate acquaintance that, ‘She may look like a flapper — she smokes cigarettes and drinks cocktails and I believe that she can fly an aeroplane — but she has brains and bottom, and I thoroughly approve of her.�
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  Since she had made the decision to become an investi- gator, Phryne had not been out of work. She had found the Persian kitten for which the little son of the Spanish ambassador was pining. It had been seduced by the delights of the nearby fish-shop’s storehouse, and had been shut in. Phryne had released it, and (after it had suffered three baths) it was restored to its doting admirer. She had worked three weeks in an office, watching a costing clerk skimming the warehouse and blaming the shortfall on the inefficiency of a female stores clerk. Phryne had taken a certain delight in catching that one. She had watched a brutal and violent husband for long enough to obtain sufficient evidence for his battered wife to divorce him. For, in addition to her bruises and broken fingers, she needed to prove adultery. Phryne, who never shrank from a little bending of the rules, had provided the adulterer with a suitable partner from among the working girls of her acquaintance, and had paid the photographer’s fee out of her own bounty. The husband was informed that the negatives would be handed over after the delivery of the decree absolute, and everyone wondered that such a determined and hard man went through his divorce like a lamb. His divorced wife was in possession of a comfortable competence and was reported to be very happy.

  The result of all this work was that Phryne, to her surprise, was busy and occupied and had not been bored for months. She considered that she had found her métier. Physically, Phyrne had been described by the redoubtable Lady Rose as ‘small, thin, with black hair cut in what I am told is a bob, disconcerting grey-green eyes and porcelain skin. Looks like a Dutch doll’. Phryne admitted this was a fair depiction.

  For the interview with Mrs McNaughton, she had selected a beige dress of mannish cut, which she felt made her look like the directress of a women’s prison, and matching taupe shoes and stockings. Her cloche hat was of a quiet dusty pink felt.