Murder on a Midsummer Night Page 18

  ‘Poor man,’ sympathised Lin Chung. ‘What did you do with the body?’

  Phryne slapped his wrist. ‘I let him go,’ she said. ‘He was not a very skilled burglar and he didn’t take anything. Might have just been a wandering thief. I’ve been having such a puzzling time, Lin dear.’

  ‘Tell me about it?’

  ‘Wait for the champagne,’ she told him, and kissed him again.

  By the time the champagne arrived an hour later, delivered by Mr. Butler, along with the ‘simple repast’ on a covered trolley, Lin felt in need of something strengthening. Phryne drank a glass of the Veuve rather more quickly than its antiquity warranted and it shocked her into speech.

  She told Lin about the Atkinsons, then all about the case of the missing child. Lin sipped gently. The savour was of spring, strawberries and hyacinths, with the uniquely French yeasty sparkle which caressed the palate. He shook his head over the tragedy of the drunken actor’s suicide and the forsaken maiden’s respectable fate.

  ‘Could have been much worse,’ he said lazily. ‘She could have been thrown out into the street with her baby, and then what would have happened to her?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Phryne sat up abruptly and reached for the bottle. ‘But she could have determined it on her own. Dot said the same thing, come to think of it. She might have decided that she couldn’t care for the baby on her own and that adoption was an answer—though there were a lot of spare babies then, and baby farmers, and not a lot of the poor little creatures survived. She might have starved and begged with her actor husband. She might have gone on the streets and taken to gin—or become a famous whore with a pink feather boa. Or even a rich courtesan with one parliamentary lover and a little house in South Yarra.’

  ‘Or killed herself and her baby one night with a cry of, “Oh, the river, the river!”’ replied Lin Chung. The sight of a drop of champagne running down Phryne’s rounded chin and thence down her pearly breast to her admirable navel was ruining his concentration.

  ‘Dickens himself knew that most prostitutes didn’t kill themselves,’ she retorted. ‘It’s just that he wasn’t allowed to put it in a book. Public taste required poor Little Em’ly to die— or go to Australia, which was much the same thing. Ironic, really. But it was all decided for Kathleen O’Brien, poor girl. Her parents knew better.’

  ‘At that time,’ said Lin carefully, ‘that was the general belief. They thought they were handling the matter with tact and care. They didn’t send her away after the baby was born, and they did find a suitable husband, this Bonnetti, for her, who was kind to her, as you say. She had her music and her children and lived a long, comfortable life.’

  ‘Oh, well, damn it, I suppose so,’ admitted Phryne grumpily. ‘How have things been with you? I haven’t even asked, I’m sorry.’

  ‘Well enough. Grandmamma has not been healthy or happy in this weather, though I now have a remedy for that which will increase our harmoniousness.’

  ‘Did you sack the maids who wanted to drug her?’

  ‘No, just warned them not to try it. Unless instructed by me. Many more nights of scolding and shrieking would not be good for the old lady. But if anyone is going to drug her, it is going to be me. Better drugged than poisoned.’

  ‘That could happen?’

  He shrugged. ‘I hope not, of course. But she is very exigent and lack of sleep is a well-known torture. What has Mr. Butler given us? I can’t keep drinking champagne on an empty stomach…’

  ‘Let’s see.’ Phryne collected the trolley and wheeled it inside, within easy reach of the bed. She began lifting lids. ‘Simple little repast,’ she said admiringly. ‘A little caviar, perhaps, Lin dear?’

  Lin loved caviar. He accepted a plate and loaded caviar, sieved boiled egg and chopped onion onto a sippet of rye toast. The next course was perfectly cooked salmon, with mayonnaise and a bitter-leaved salad. And for dessert, Phryne found, they had Mrs. Butler’s famous tropical fruit sorbet, luscious with slivers of pawpaw and mango in a pineapple and passionfruit base. Phryne settled back into the envelope of cool air and sighed with pleasure.

  ‘Are you staying for breakfast?’ she asked Lin.

  ‘Since I cannot get any ice at this late hour, and therefore cannot alleviate Grandmamma’s discomfort until tomorrow, I would be delighted. And so would Ember,’ he added, as the black cat strolled into the room, tail as erect as a taper, scenting caviar and salmon, his favourite fruits.

  Because he did not demand, but sat collectedly at her feet, tail curled round paws, radiating ‘I am a good and deserving cat’ so effectively that she could almost see the halo around his ears, Phryne awarded him a portion of salmon and a teaspoonful of caviar. He ate them with great neatness, polishing the plate and then positioning himself in the ambiance of the fan to wash and brush his already immaculate fur. He knew Phryne very well.

  She could not be forced, but she could always be seduced.

  Phryne reposed that night in the cool damp air, between the purring black cat and the luxuriating Lin Chung, and slept like a baby.

  When she woke Lin had already washed and dressed and was leaning down to kiss her. Ember had vanished, presumably seeking bacon rind. It was eight o’clock.

  ‘I must go and arrange about the ice and the fan,’ Lin said. ‘I will send the porcelain bath over as soon as I can. Thank you for last night,’ he added, kissed her again, and left.

  This suited Phryne, who was never keen on company for breakfast. If ever there was a woman born to be a concubine, she told herself as she turned on the shower, it is I. A night of passion, and then the loved man wafts away. No domestic dramas, no domesticity at all, in fact, and if I need a man as an escort I can always find one. Perfect, she said to herself as the hot water cascaded over her shoulders. Phryne liked the twentieth century. It had had its unfortunate events—like the Great War—but with any luck, that would be the last one for the duration. And no parent could now stop Phryne from living exactly as she wished.

  She dressed in a light shift and went down to breakfast. Dot and the girls had already eaten. Phryne and her newspaper were alone with the croissant, the cherry jam, and the pot of coffee.

  Dot came in as she sipped the last sip and nibbled the last crumb.

  ‘Cooler today,’ she observed, ‘now that rotten wind has dropped. You’ve got the meeting with the Bonnettis, Miss Phryne?’

  ‘Yes, and it is not likely to be amusing. I haven’t got any information about the child, only about the father, and that’s a sad story in itself. Would you like to come with me?’

  ‘Me?’ asked Dot, taken aback.

  ‘Yes, you. You did most of the research. You talked to Sister Immaculata. And there is almost guaranteed to be a priest present and you know that priests make me nervous. I never know if I’m supposed to kneel or bow or whether a simple handshake will suffice.’

  ‘You just have to shake his hand,’ Dot instructed. ‘You’re not part of his congregation.’

  ‘Right. Well, up to you,’ said Phryne.

  ‘All right, Miss Phryne, if you like. I’ll put on some good clothes.’

  ‘And so will I,’ said Phryne. ‘At least we are not going to melt. Oh, Mr. Butler, Lin Chung is having a porcelain bath delivered today to take the place of the tin one in your admirable air cooling system. Make sure that you get the carriers to move everything for you. That’s what they are for. Should we hire a house man, do you think, for the heavy work?’

  The butler bowed from the waist. ‘If you would be so good, Miss Fisher, there is a large young fellow, a connection of my wife’s, who would do admirably and could be paid by the hour. He’s out of place, due to no fault of his own.’

  ‘Good, hire him immediately. I don’t want you to throw your back out hauling heavy loads, Mr. Butler.’

  ‘No, Miss Fisher.’

  ‘I’m taking the car to attend
this Bonnetti meeting, is she fuelled and ready to go?’

  ‘Yes, Miss Fisher, filled her up yesterday.’

  ‘Wonderful. Carry on, Mr. Butler.’

  Dot was having second thoughts about accompanying Phryne anywhere, if she was the chauffeur.

  ‘Are you driving, Miss? Can’t Mr. Butler drive?’

  ‘He has to wait for the porcelain. Don’t worry, old thing! I’ll drive like I’m carrying a cargo of little lambkins, Dot, I promise.’

  ‘Very well,’ said Dot reluctantly. She knew how Phryne drove. It put the ‘neck’ into ‘neck or nothing’, and the neck was Dot’s.

  Her fears were, unhappily, realised. By the time they arrived in Kew, with the heartfelt curses of half of Melbourne’s motorists (and that poor cyclist) following, Dot was worn out. If Miss Phryne had been driving lambkins, she thought crossly, they would have the world’s curliest wool before they arrived at their destination. With their nerves, also, in rags and hardly a bleat between them.

  ‘Here we are!’ exclaimed Phryne, allowing the big car to roll to a halt. ‘You can open your eyes now. Nice house, Dot.’

  Dot opened her eyes as ordered. ‘Expensive,’ she said, looking at a vast black marble pile with a long line of stairs up to the front door, flanked by black marble walls with flowerpots flowing over with white and scarlet ivy-leafed geraniums, mostly dying of drought.

  ‘Old money,’ Phryne said. ‘Well, old for Australia. Come along. Let me just put your hat straight, and you shall do the same for me.’

  Dot imitated a lambkin. The big house overawed her. But nothing overawed Miss Phryne. She marched up the steps as though she was a duchess condescending to view a peasant’s hut. Dot followed the violet silk flicker of Phryne’s skirt up the steps, of which there seemed to be thousands. They arrived, panting a little, at the top, a glassy black marble pavement as big as a tennis court and as welcoming as a tombstone.

  ‘Vulgar,’ observed Phryne to her shrinking handmaid. Then, as the massive door opened, she turned the full measure of her personality on a butler so terribly well dressed and so freezing in manner that Dot almost squeaked and fled.

  ‘The Honourable Miss Fisher and her companion Dorothy Williams,’ she announced, in a tone so icily flat that Dot began to shiver and even the butler flinched a little. He stepped back and they walked in.

  ‘I believe that Mr. Bonnetti is expecting you,’ he intoned.

  ‘I believe that he is,’ said Phryne flatly.

  ‘I will announce you,’ said the butler, giving up the effort to impress this obdurately unimpressionable guest. He knew sheer unadulterated aristocratic arrogance when he saw it. ‘If you would come this way, ladies…’

  They followed him through a hall hung with oil paintings, presumably of ancestors. The house was dark and close and smelt faintly musty, as though the carpets could do with a good going over with vinegar and tea leaves. This must be the family home, Phryne thought. She had seen bigger, and better furnished.

  Resolutely unconcerned, Phryne allowed the butler to announce her and Dot, then entered after a studied pause. And there were the Bonnettis, in council.

  The children of Mario Bonnetti and his wife, Kathleen, nee O’Brien, had been as follows, Phryne recalled: Giuseppe, or Joseph, born in 1872, now fifty-six; Maria, born in 1874, now a nun called Sister Immaculata, who was not present; Sheila, born 1878, now fifty; and the youngest and last living child, Bernadette, born 1880 and now forty-eight. All of whom had married and presumably had children of their own. The room seemed crowded, though it was very large. Mr. Adami, looking dapper but worried, conducted Phryne to the head of a solid walnut dinner table, where a large man was standing. There was a priest, as Phryne had expected, next to him. An old priest, which might be an advantage.

  ‘Mr. Bonnetti, this is the Honourable Phryne Fisher,’ said Mr. Adami. Phryne put her hand into the hard, strong hand of the head of the family. Mr. Bonnetti had dark eyes and white hair and a commanding presence. This was someone used to being in charge. After all, his father had died more than twenty years ago, and he was the only male heir.

  ‘I am pleased to meet you,’ said Phryne. ‘This is my assistant, Miss Williams.’

  Dot’s hand was also taken and pressed.

  ‘Very kind of you to help us with our little problem,’ Mr. Bonnetti told Phryne. There was not a trace of an Italian accent in his voice. ‘Let me introduce the council. This is Mr. Adami, whom you already know.’ Phryne smiled at the harassed lawyer. ‘This is Bishop Quinlan, who has agreed to assist us.’ Phryne shook the old man’s hand, cool even in the summer heat.

  He had a benign, closed, close-shaved countenance. Dot dipped gracefully and kissed his ring. ‘This is my sister Sheila and her husband Thomas Johnson.’ Phryne shook the hand of a thin, faded woman with a nervous twitch to the eyelids. All her nails were bitten to the quick. Her husband was large and florid, with blue eyes and thinning hair. ‘And this is my sister Bernadette, she is a widow, and her doctor, Dr. James.’

  Bernadette did not extend her hand but stared blankly down at her handkerchief, which she was folding and unfolding. She had the almost unlined countenance of the mentally bereft and a mass of beautiful hair, still reddish. Dr. James gave Phryne’s hand a fast medical examination squeeze. Behind Bernadette’s chair stood a woman wearing the black dress and white apron of a household servant in the old days. Phryne smiled at her and she blinked timidly at this brightly dressed lady.

  ‘And this lady?’ asked Phryne.

  ‘Oh, that’s just Tata Guilia, she cares for Bernadette. Cared for all the children, and still here, eh, Tata?’ said Mr. Bonnetti heartily, as though to a small child. Tata Guilia smiled a small, shy smile. ‘My sister Bernadette never really recovered from the birth of her last child,’ Mr. Bonnetti told Phryne. ‘But sometimes she comes back to us so I thought she should be here.’ He shot a challenging glance at his brother-in-law, Thomas Johnson, who huffed. ‘Well, now, let us all sit down and let Miss Fisher inform us as to the results of her investigation.’

  Phryne sat at the bottom of the table and surveyed the room. The chairs were heavy walnut, the walls were hung with dusty velvet curtains in faded red, and there were far too many ornaments, most of them precious, all of them needing a good wash. Phryne particularly liked a Staffordshire pair, maiden and swain, who had been grape picking, and were now returning with baskets on head and hip, depending on gender.

  The maiden was wearing a shawl of grey dust and there were cobwebs on the young man’s flowery hat. There were various gaps in the dust where things had been removed. How Augustine Manifold would have loved this house, she thought. Poor Augustine. Mr. Bonnetti saw her glance.

  ‘We haven’t used this room for a long time. Not since mother became ill. I thought that I ordered it to be cleaned,’ he said meaningfully to a man standing by the door.

  ‘Patrone,’ said the factotum indignantly, in a heavy Italian accent. ‘Mr. Johns, ’e no let us in. Troppo val’able things in ’ere, ’e said. ’E call us ladri—thieves!’

  ‘I shall speak to Mr. Johns later,’ said Mr. Bonnetti. There was an undercurrent of menace in the statement which made all present glad that they weren’t Mr. Johns. Phryne hoped that he was the butler, who deserved a little putting-down. ‘But for the moment, forgive us our squalor and inform us, Miss Fisher.’

  Phryne looked at Dot, who was far too overwhelmed to speak. So she began, ‘The first thing you asked me to find out was, was there a child? And due to the researches of both myself and my assistant, I can confirm this. There was a child. He or she was born in Ballarat at a home for fallen women run by the Sisters of Mercy on or about the fifteenth of January 1865. He or she was sent out to be adopted—’

  ‘Wait a moment.’ Thomas Johnson raised a plump red hand, glinting with rings. ‘You say he or she. You don’t know which, girl or boy?’

  ‘No,’ sa
id Phryne. ‘Not yet. It has been quite difficult to get even this far, you know. If I might continue?’

  ‘How do you know the child didn’t die?’ persisted Thomas Johnson. He was sneering at Phryne, and she had never been very tolerant of being sneered at.

  ‘I don’t,’ she responded. ‘Yet.’

  Mr. Johnson stood up. ‘Seems to me you haven’t got a lot of information for our money,’ he insinuated.

  ‘Happy to resign the case any time you like,’ said Phryne, putting her hands on the unpolished table, preparing to rise.

  ‘No, no, no!’ scolded Mrs. Johnson, Sheila Bonnetti as was. ‘Thomas, you said you’d be good and patient. You promised!’

  ‘This is a waste of time,’ he growled at her. ‘It’s just dragging the process out, so that you get less of your mother’s money than you should. We need that money. My business is—’ He had said too much. He sat down again, leaving his heavy hand on his spouse’s fragile shoulder. She winced and bit her lip.

  ‘Your business is in trouble?’ asked Mr. Bonnetti, quietly. ‘Again?’

  ‘Just needs an injection of capital to turn the corner,’ bluffed Mr. Johnson.

  ‘It seems to me that it has already turned a number of corners,’ said Mr. Bonnetti. ‘And it seems to me that all of Sheila’s dowry has been expended in driving it around the corners, eh?’

  ‘Ridiculous!’ said Mr. Johnson violently. ‘I lavish every luxury on her. Don’t I, dear?’ he said to Mrs. Johnson, squeezing her shoulder.

  ‘Oh, yes, dear,’ she responded in a faint voice.

  Phryne was disgusted. Dot was interested. She had not known that rich people behaved just the same as poor people. Only the surroundings were different. This was just like her uncle claiming that Dot’s grandmother had left the money to him, not his wife her daughter, and he could spend it as he liked. Which had been down at the pub buying beer for his mates. Uncle Jim had had that exact tone of voice, and that exact shade of brick red in his complexion, while he was telling Dot’s father that his wife was a happy woman.