Murder on a Midsummer Night Page 24

  ‘You bitch!’ cried Mr. Johns.

  ‘Music to my ears,’ said Phryne, unfazed.

  Under the threat of the little gun, Mr. Johns allowed himself to be handcuffed. ‘It was easy,’ he yelled into their faces. ‘You made it so simple! You wouldn’t talk to each other, you never trusted each other, you made it too, too easy! Hypocrites! I hated you, I hated you all. You, Bonnetti, and your affectation of father of the family, wouldn’t even confide in your own wife! She would never have let me get away with it. You, Johnson, terrified that your meal ticket was going to throw you out. For incest! And you,’ he snarled at Mr. Wright and Mr. Lawrence. ‘I was a good actor! They were just envious! I never got a chance! But I played butler to perfection, to perfection! Difficult. I couldn’t let up for a moment. But I did it and no one suspected me! You’re all fools!’

  His voice was rising into hysteria. He was promptly escorted out, to the massed but smothered parting curses of the Italians.

  ‘It seems that our late butler might be right,’ said Mr. Bonnetti heavily, refusing to look at Mrs. Bonnetti. ‘We are all fools.’

  ‘Of course,’ said Bernadette, coming out of her habitual trance, ‘I never liked that Johns and I tried to tell you, but no one listens to me.’

  ‘Tom, how could you?’ demanded Sheila Johnson. ‘You wasted all that money on a blackmailer, you never said a word to me, and they were my children, they might have been tainted, children of incest, how could you?’

  ‘You would have sent me away,’ he pleaded, rubbing his patchy red face with both hands.

  ‘And I shall,’ she said firmly. ‘Oh, I shall. Mr. Adami?’

  ‘Ma’am?’ Mr. Adami was glad of a distraction.

  ‘Draw up a Separation,’ said Mrs. Johnson. ‘From this hour. I want him out of my house. I’ll give you an allowance,’ she said. ‘But you’ll never lay a hand on me again, never come roaring into the house with your whores, never kick my dog or pawn my jewels or waste my substance. If you come near me again I shall call the police. Clear?’

  Tears rolled down his face. This had always worked before but now there was an unfamiliar light of resolution in his wife’s eyes.

  ‘Sheila, you can’t mean it! I only wanted to protect you!’

  ‘No, you wanted to protect yourself,’ she said. ‘And it’s been a very expensive exercise.’

  ‘Bonnetti, can’t you do anything?’ He appealed to his brother-in-law.

  ‘Perhaps I could, but I’m not going to,’ said Mr. Bonnetti. ‘It occurs to me that I have been very remiss in my duty to protect my sister, and perhaps it is not too late to begin. You may leave,’ he said.

  ‘Oh, no, don’t let him go,’ cried Mrs. Johnson. ‘He’ll go home and kill Antoinette, my poodle. He’s always threatened to do that. He hates her because she loves me.’

  ‘Then you shall sit down in the smaller drawing room, Mr. Johnson, and Mario will stay with you. And there you shall sit until we have completed this meeting. Then we will go to my sister’s house, remove your belongings, bestow them somewhere else, and arrange for her to have a little company, in case you feel like making trouble.’

  Mario, who was strong and swarthy and already delighted by the fall of Mr. Johns, grinned an unnerving grin. He had a mouthful of gold teeth and the self-assured air of one with a knife in his sleeve. And another in his sock. He took Mr. Johnson by the shoulder and he, after all, went quietly.

  Mr. Lawrence and Mr. Wright had been whispering to Miss Fisher while the family discussion had been going on. She nodded and smiled at them. Dot was feeling stunned. So much noise! Ladies and gentlemen acting like that! She was shocked and fascinated in roughly equal proportions.

  ‘So, Miss Fisher, what about the child?’ asked Mrs. Bonnetti. ‘Did you find him?’

  ‘I found the child,’ said Phryne. ‘Dot, would you read the translation of the Irish writing for me? This was found amongst the pitiful belongings of Patrick O’Rourke, who died in extreme poverty. It was wrapped around a golden guinea. What did Father Kelly say about it, Dot?’

  ‘It says “Tá sí milse ná seo rud eile”, which means “this is for my sweet daughter”,’ said Dot.

  ‘And I think it’s time we gave it to her,’ said Phryne, and laid the coin in Tata’s hand. Silence fell with a thud. The company stared. Tata looked at the golden guinea.

  ‘And you knew Tata,’ said Phryne. ‘Mr. Wright, Mr. Lawrence?’

  ‘She was at the funeral,’ said Mr. Lawrence. ‘Wearing an old black cloth coat with a rained-on fur collar.’

  ‘That was Mother’s,’ said Mr. Bonnetti. ‘I was there when she gave it to Tata.’

  ‘I got the idea,’ said Phryne chattily, to give everyone time to recover a little, ‘when an eminent doctor mistook the daughter of my house for a servant. I thought, am I doing the same thing? Who notices Tata? Mr. Bonnetti talks to her as though she was deaf or simple, but she isn’t simple or deaf. She’s just always been there. Part of the furniture. I bet you don’t even know her name. She isn’t a person. She’s a title.’

  ‘You’re right,’ he said numbly. ‘I don’t know her name. What…what is your name, Tata?’

  ‘Julia Flaherty,’ said the elderly woman in a firm voice. ‘You know, I always wondered if this day would come. I never knew how I would feel.’

  ‘Tell us,’ encouraged Phryne.

  ‘I was adopted by a good Catholic family and given the name of Mary Flaherty, though the nuns said my mother named me Julia, so I went back to Julia as soon as I could. We lived near the Sisters of Mercy’s home. Soon after I was adopted my mother and father had their own children. They tried to be fair but there was always a difference and I was unhappy. I started asking questions and found out the name of my real mother. The Flahertys said that she didn’t want me and had given me away. I was very young. So I ran away in the night and came to Melbourne and got a place in the household of this woman who had abandoned me. I was prepared to hate her. But she was kind and sad, and I thought that might be because of me, so I cared for her children as best I could. I found my father—I even saw him act—but I knew that he had abandoned my mother, and me, and I never tried to speak to him. Then it was too late.’

  ‘Tata—I mean, Miss Flaherty—I mean, Julia, that was Mother’s middle name, that’s why she called you Julia. You knew we were looking for you, why didn’t you say anything?’ asked Mr. Bonnetti.

  ‘I didn’t know what to do,’ she said simply. ‘You might not have believed me, and then I would be dismissed, and I am old now, where would I go?’

  ‘She loved you,’ Dot said suddenly. ‘She wrote about it. She made this for you,’ and Dot unbundled the cobweb fine shawl and threw it over Tata’s shoulders, where it settled like a benediction over her black dress and white apron. ‘They both loved you. But they were ill-fated. She never would have abandoned you if she had had her own will.’

  ‘I nursed her,’ said Tata, stroking the shawl. ‘I held her in my arms when she was dying. I knew she was my mother and I think, at the end, she almost knew about me, too.’

  ‘That would explain the will,’ said Mr. Adami, pleased that something was making sense at last.

  ‘But what are we going to do with you?’ asked Mr. Bonnetti helplessly. ‘I mean, we have treated you very badly, Julia, what would you have us do?’

  ‘If you want to do something for me, then dismiss this charlatan and get Bernadette off those sedatives,’ said Julia. ‘She was despondent when the last baby came, a lot of women are. And she needed medicine for a few years, a lot of women do, such a hard time, the climacteric. But she doesn’t need it now and hasn’t for some years. It suited you that she was not interfering in your family affairs,’ she told Mr. Bonnetti calmly. ‘She is capable of being quite tiresome, but she should not be drugged like this.’

  ‘Quite so, off you go, Dr. James, there’s a good fellow,’ sa
id Mr. Bonnetti promptly. ‘We shall give you a generous severance, but no more valerian.’

  ‘She can’t just stop taking it like that!’ exclaimed the doctor, who did not offer any other words in his own defence. It had been a nice, comfortable position with an undemanding patient, but someone was bound to notice eventually.

  ‘No, we shall wean her off it slowly,’ Julia told him. ‘Now, do as the master tells you.’

  Dr. James left. Tata took off her cap and apron and became Julia. The room was emptying. Last act. At least it was not like the last act of Hamlet, thought Mr. Wright, and repressed a giggle. This high-octane emotion was all right for the stage, but he preferred a quiet life these days. Mr. Lawrence nudged him. He hadn’t had so much fun in decades.

  ‘I have a suggestion,’ said Phryne. ‘A voyage. Julia and Bernadette. A cruise ship—why not the Hinemoa?—to Europe. Sleepy days, good food, a little promenade on the sun deck. A reduced dose of valerian. And then a few trips to nice, bracing places—Skegness, perhaps? Switzerland? And when they come lazing home, Julia will have become a sister rather than a nurse, and Bernadette will be off the stuff.’

  ‘Wonderful,’ said Mr. Bonnetti. ‘Agreed?’ He looked around the table. Everyone nodded. Incandescent Mrs. Bonnetti, who had things to say to her husband. Sheila Bonnetti, freed of an appalling husband. Bernadette, shortly to be restored to whatever sanity she had been born with. Julia, restored to her proper place. The loathsome Mr. Johns was in custody. The unuxorious Mr. Johnson was in the care of a grinning Sicilian with a blade. Just what she would have wished for all of them.

  Phryne felt that the day’s work was done and stood up.

  ‘Must go,’ she said. ‘My account will be in the mail. Goodbye,’ she said, collected her followers, and left. The front door stood open. A warm scented wind blew in. It smelt wet. Someone was watering the geraniums.

  Phryne laughed suddenly and ran down the stairs. As her panting followers came up, she loaded them into the big car and gave her orders.

  ‘Mr. Butler, to the pub! We all need a drink.’ ‘Thank goodness for that,’ whispered Mr. Wright. ‘I thought she’d never ask,’ agreed Mr. Lawrence.

  ***

  ‘When the next war comes along, I’m gonna go down to the docks with the troops and sing “Boys of the Old Brigade” and then I’m gonna turn around and march right back home,’ said Vern.

  ‘Too right. Halt! Who goes there?’

  ‘Oh, it’s just Zeke, the poor old coot. He’s got religion again.’

  The voice came closer, wailing, ‘The indignation of the Lord is upon all nations: he hath utterly destroyed them: he hath delivered them to the slaughter. The streams thereof shall be turned into pitch and the dust thereof into brimstone, and it shall not be quenched by day or by night forever!’

  ‘Put a sock in it,’ suggested Curly easily.

  ‘They have stretched out upon Ashkelon the line of confusion and the stone of emptiness: they have swept it with the besom of destruction: it shall be an habitation for owls and a court for dragons.’

  ‘Not that he’s wrong, mind you,’ said Vern.

  ‘Too right,’ said Curly.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Glendower: I can call spirits from the vasty deep.

  Hotspur: Why, so can I, or so can any man;

  But will they come when you do call for them?

  William Shakespeare

  Henry IV, Part I

  Phryne felt she had had enough of the wild extravagances and small meannesses of human nature for the time being. She extracted Dot from her plunge into theatre gossip with the two elderly Thespians and went home quietly, which was the only way Mr. Butler knew how to drive.

  Then she left Dot to convey the solution of the Bonnetti puzzle to the enthralled staff, walked up to her own cool airy room and fell onto her bed, barely having the energy to take off her shoes and stockings and shuck the neat dark blue suit.

  It had been an interesting afternoon. A period of reflection and repose was indicated. One mystery down, and one to go. A bee buzzed drowsily in the wisteria. Seconds only intervened before reflection gave way to repose and Phryne was asleep.

  When she woke she bathed lazily and had another nap, knowing that she was going to dine at the Cafe Saporo. Mrs. Butler, she considered, had served up enough large dinners lately. The whole party could walk to the cafe and back again, which also gave Mr. Butler the night off. She dwelt affectionately on the memory of two aged actors, arms around each other, drinking Patrick O’Rourke’s health in pub whiskey, and Dot—Dot!—joining in a chorus of ‘She Was Poor But She Was Honest’. They had left seconds before they were thrown out of the pub, which in any case closed at six. And she thought how pleased the Sisters of Mercy and the Actors’ Benevolent Society would be with Phryne’s fee, which she was dividing amongst them, with a few deductions for new hats, vintage port and theatre treats incurred in the Bonnetti cause.

  And it was probably time she got up and dressed and went down to see how James Barton was and whether Lin Chung had returned.

  So she selected a cool cotton dress and a shady hat and sauntered down the stairs to her quiet house, carrying her sandals in her hand. Mr. Butler emerged from the kitchen to enquire as to her wishes.

  ‘The young ladies are in the larger parlour, Miss Fisher, reading their library books, which have to go back tomorrow. Mr. Lin is in the smaller parlour, and Mr. Barton has arisen and is with him. They are drinking tea.’

  ‘I would like a glass of orange crush, if you please,’ said Phryne. ‘You know that we are going out for dinner?’

  ‘Yes, Miss, the Cafe Saporo has confirmed your booking. Very obliging of you, Miss. Mrs. Butler is looking forward, she says, to a boiled egg and a good sit down. And I am, too.’

  ‘I bet you are. Very good, Mr. Butler. Where’s Dot?’

  ‘In the garden, Miss. Sewing. She says that the light is better.’

  ‘Good, thank you, Mr. Butler. Enjoy your egg.’

  The butler bowed a little and Phryne went into the smaller parlour. She found Lin Chung attempting to make conversation with James Barton, who was more than a trifle dazed.

  ‘I say, you are a Chinaman, aren’t you?’ he was asking. ‘Or is there something wrong with my eyes?’

  ‘Nothing wrong with your eyes,’ said Lin patiently. ‘I am, as you see, Chinese.’

  ‘Hello, sweet man.’ Phryne strolled in. ‘Can I get you anything? Muslin, paraffin wax, flying trumpets, the complete works of Harry Price?’

  ‘No, thank you,’ said Lin, smiling at the enumeration of the elements of faked seances and the man who proved them spurious. ‘My effects are nothing like as crude.’

  ‘I am really looking forward to this. Hello, James. How are you feeling?’

  ‘Still sleepy,’ confessed James Barton. ‘Bit woozy. Must have been that ghastly medicine.’ He sat up suddenly. ‘They haven’t come for me, have they?’

  ‘No, and if they did, they wouldn’t get you. Now, James dear, I am going to ask you to describe a seance at Mr. Atkinson’s house, and I want you to remember everything. I am going to make notes. Then you can have a nice boiled egg for dinner and get some more sleep.’

  Lin waited for James Barton to thank Phryne for her kindness and care. But he didn’t. This young man had no manners, Lin thought: no manners, no breeding, and no backbone. Altogether just the sort of young man that, according to Grandmamma, characterised the modern generation. Lin drank more tea and listened as James, slowly and then with more fluency, described the appearances of the spirits as seen by the medium Stephanie Reynolds in her red sari. Selima in her short white tunic crowned with roses. Zacarias in his long white robes with a tall conical hat. Charging Elk in buckskin, with a feathered headdress, and a bare chest strung with bears’ teeth and wampum. He imitated their voices for Phryne. Then he excused himself to go and lie dow
n again. The effort had quite exhausted him. As breakdowns go, James Barton’s was not a nervous one. Phryne wondered if he had traumatic symplegia, like that Wodehouse cat, Augustus.

  ‘Is that enough information?’ Phryne asked Lin Chung.

  ‘Oh, yes, more than enough. I have located and rented a little house, which I have altered and wired for my effects. Which do not, by the way, involve cheesecloth ectoplasm. I have spent more than eight pounds,’ he confessed.

  ‘Which shall be repaid. This is very kind of you, Lin dear.’

  ‘No, not at all. I have not had a chance to play magician since I left the troupe in China. But I have to tell you, Phryne, some of my effects are…I do not know the term…perhaps, biological? They will scare all of us, you, me, them, the dog if there is a dog.’

  ‘Interesting. That’s all right, Lin. We’re brave.’

  ‘I just wanted to warn you,’ he said affectionately. He was feeling very well. Grandmamma had finally approved of the ice and fan arrangement, and she had slept all through the night. For three nights running, now. So, therefore, had her maids, her servants, the cooks and servers, and the Lin family daughters and granddaughters. And Lin himself. The relief was profound. He took Phryne’s hand and kissed it.

  She returned the kiss and retrieved her hand. ‘Now, pass me a sheet of paper. I need to write an anonymous letter.’

  ‘To whom?’ asked Lin.

  ‘To Gerald Atkinson,’ she said. ‘Give me the address of your little house. And when would it please you to commence your performance?’

  ‘Oh, after midnight,’ he said. ‘All the best ghosts arise at midnight.’

  ‘And do you want Miss Reynolds as your medium?’

  ‘She should prove admirable,’ he said. ‘If she is a fake, I will scare her into honesty. And if she is real—then Augustine Manifold must be fairly annoyed by now.’

  ‘Sometimes, Lin dear,’ said Phryne, blotting her letter, which was written in ragged black capitals, ‘you make my spine tingle. And other parts of me, of course. Now, let’s get James his supper and gather our family for a nice walk down to the cafe. I can post this on the way.’