‘This particular horrid business is over,’ she said, patting her housekeeper on the arm, ‘but the other horrid business is sent right back to square one. The person that had all the earmarks of being the murderer on the train has the best alibi of all — he was in police custody, so that puts him right out of the picture. Dear me. What a tiring day! Can you manage an early dinner, Mrs B.? Poor Bert has been on a reducing diet lately. Then I think that we could all profit from an early night. Tomorrow I’m going with Miss Henderson to open up her house and help her clear out, and Dot and Jane are coming too. That will be exhausting enough, but then I’ve just remembered that the students’ glee club is on at the boathouse tomorrow night.’
‘Yes, Miss, an early dinner, I’ve got some fish that the boy swears was caught this morning, and I can easily make a few extra chips. Will that suit? And don’t worry about your problem,’ soothed Mrs Butler, seeing that Phryne was white and strained. ‘It will quite likely solve itself if you don’t worry at it. More beer, Mr Bert?’
Bert held out his glass and grinned. ‘It’s worth a man doing a perish if he gets one of your dinners, Mrs Butler.’
‘Go on with you,’ sniffed that lady, and bustled back to her kitchen to fry up a storm.
Jane was sitting on the hearth, with a scrubbed-clean Ruth. Ember was on her lap. The kitten had quite recovered and was watching the flames with his ears laid back as though he was at his mother’s breast.
‘I’m remembering a lot more,’ she said quietly. ‘I remember getting off the train, at a station in the middle of big open paddocks. I didn’t know who I was or where I was going but I knew that I didn’t want to go there. I sat down on the station seat, then it got dark and a train stopped, and I heard a child crying, so I went to get him and I put him on the train again, then it seemed silly to stay where I was, so I got on the train too, and hid in the ladies. I stayed there until. . something happened. . then I was at Ballarat and I couldn’t remember a thing. It feels like it happened to someone else, not me,’ she explained. ‘All cotton-woolly, as though it was a movie.’
‘And, of course, there was no one on the station to meet you, because you were on the wrong train,’ mused Phryne. ‘It all fits, Jane.’
Jane looked up suddenly and laid a hand on Phryne’s silk-clad knee. Her upturned face was very young. ‘Am I still a good girl, Miss?’
Phryne, leaning down to embrace Jane with an unaccustomed catch at the heart, assured her that she was.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
. . and she was quite pleased to find that there was a real one blazing away as brightly as the one she had left behind.
‘So I shall be as warm here as I was in the old room,’ thought Alice. ‘Warmer, in fact, because there’ll be no one here to scold me away from the fire.’
Lewis Carroll Alice Through the Looking Glass
‘Lord, isn’t it cold in here? Never mind, Dot will soon have a fire lit. Did you have any servants, Eunice? If so they haven’t left the old place in any sort of order.’
‘No, I dismissed them, with notice of course, and I fear that they haven’t complied with their employment conditions.’
Phryne, Dot, Jane and Ruth had escorted Eunice Henderson to her home in case she should be overwhelmed by her memories as she climbed the front steps to the dull grey door. When it became clear that Eunice had a grip on her emotions they turned to the more pressing matters an unoccupied house presented them with.
The house had that musty chill which falls upon unoccupied houses, and depresses the spirits of all visitors. Dot hung up her good blue coat on the hallstand and went to find the kitchen, taking the girls with her, to light the stove and open some windows. Dot carried her capacious basket well supplied with a picnic, and tea and sugar and a bottle of milk. Phryne helped Eunice out of her coat and elected to remain wrapped in her sables.
Eunice ran a glove along the hall table and examined her finger; it was coated with dust. The house was an elegant Edwardian family mansion, stoutly built and ornately decorated, but it was unloved, overcrowded and dilapidated. Phryne picked up a vase in which lilies had died; they moved with a sad rustle in their slime-green water.
‘This will need an army of parlourmaids to set in order,’ sighed Eunice. ‘When are your cleaners coming, Miss Fisher?’
‘I told them ten o’clock, and that will be them now, I expect. Admirable women; Mrs Butler recommends them.’
Phryne answered a strident ring at the bell and ushered in a small stout woman and a small thin woman, relieved them of their coats, and pointed them towards the dining-room.
‘There you are, ladies, I suggest that you make a start by opening all of the windows and letting a nice fresh gale in. Miss Henderson, this is Mrs Price and Mrs Cummings.’
‘Glad to meet you, ladies,’ said Eunice. ‘Do you think that you can manage? It’s a frightful mess.’
The thin woman tugged at her hem, tied her apron strings, and wrapped an enormous red-and-white bandana around her head. ‘Me and Maise’ll manage,’ she said. ‘Done worse than this, eh, Maise?’
Maise nodded, enveloping her head in a blue scarf.
‘Hot water in the kitchen?’ asked Adela Price, and Phryne nodded. They squared their shoulders.
‘I’ll do the windows, Dell, and you open the flues and start the fires,’ said Maise, and Eunice led Phryne upstairs.
‘I’m afraid that it has all gone downhill since Mother lost all her money,’ she apologised. ‘She used to be very well-off, you know, and she got used to luxury. It was all that I could manage to keep her in linen sheets, after the crash of the Megatherium Trust, you know.’
‘Your mother had money in that trust?’ asked Phryne, catching up on a dusty landing and following Eunice into a dark bedroom. The Megatherium Trust, a hastily put together fraud perpetrated by the Honourable Bobby Matthews, remittance-man of Phryne’s acquaintance, had crashed resoundingly at the end of May 1928, taking all its investors with it. The Hon. Bobby had elected to seek the warmer and less indictable climes of South America. Phryne had not been sorry to see him go. Megatherium indeed! Many less-than-funny jokes had been made about prehistoric monsters after the crash.
‘Oh, yes, all of her money was in Megatherium. She lost every penny that she had. Dear me, this carpet is sadly motheaten. Do you think that your friends will want such a sad relic?’
‘Bert and Cec can find a home for everything, even if it’s only the tip. Pardon me for asking, Eunice, but does your young man know this?’
‘Why, no, the question never came up. I suppose that he assumed that I was wealthy. I am well provided for, of course, but entirely by my own labours.’
‘Oh?’ asked Phryne, her mind buzzing with theories, ‘what labours?’
‘You promise not to tell anyone at all?’ pressed Eunice, stopping with an armload of dreadful dresses.
‘Not a soul,’ promised Phryne, crossing her heart.
Eunice opened a little door and slipped inside. Phryne had taken it for a powdering closet, but it was a study. There was a professional looking typewriter and a load of carefully numbered manuscripts. Phryne remembered the packet of foolscap paper she had picked up in the train.
‘You’re a writer!’ she cried.
Eunice Henderson blushed. ‘Romantic novels for railway reading, and, dear, they are too, too terrible.’
‘What are you working on at present?’
‘Nothing at the moment, I have just been correcting the proofs of Passion’s Bondslaves. It is quite the most disgusting drivel I ever read, so I am sure that it will be just as successful as Silken Fetters and Midnight of the Sheik. I sold a thousand copies of that in two weeks, and it’s still in print. You won’t tell, Phryne, will you?’
‘Of course not, my dear, but I think that it is so enterprising of you! How did you begin?’
‘Well, Mother always liked to read the things, revolting slop for the most part, and I learned typewriting so that I could do Mother’s accounts. I w
as practising on the machine, and I thought I’d see if I could write the stuff, it seemed easy enough, and, my dear, it simply poured onto the page, I could hardly type fast enough to keep up. I never knew that I had such an indelicate imagination,’ she confessed, throwing down the dresses in a rustling heap. ‘So I sent it to a publisher who knew my father and could be sworn to secrecy, and there it was. I can write one every three months, and the market seems rather under-supplied with tripe than otherwise. So I could afford lavender-water for Mother, and handmade chocolates, and trips to Ballarat, and. . oh, dear, I had forgotten all about Mother! How heartless of me!’
Eunice sat down on the brass bed and wept for five minutes, at the end of which she wiped her eyes, replaced her handkerchief, and went on with the conversation.
‘It will catch me like that for awhile, now that my face is healed and I’m not doped with pain-killers,’ she said sadly. ‘Poor Mother! Who could have killed her?’
‘For awhile I thought that it was your young man, Eunice, God forgive me,’ confessed Phryne, sorting shoes into a pile. ‘But it can’t have been him.’
‘It can’t?’ she asked tautly.
‘No, it seems that he was in police custody that night. Drunk and disorderly.’
‘How. . how very unlike him,’ Eunice flung three gloves onto the pile. ‘I have never seen him touch alcohol. . at least, very rarely. Never mind. I forgive your suspicions, Phryne, it did look black against him. Why did Mother keep seven unmatching stockings, do you think? What are we going to do with all this stuff?’
‘We are going to put all the clothes and so on in a big heap in the upstairs hall, and Dot will sort from there. Some of the things will go to deserving causes and the worst will be dropped off at the rag-pickers by Bert and Cec. All we have to do is to decide what you want to keep.’
‘All the stuff in here can go, and this carpet — it will probably roll if you can dislodge the corner. . thank you.’ They began to carry out a motely collection of old clothes, good clothes, handbags by the hundred, shoes ranging from the Victorian to the Edwardian, combs and boxes of caked powder, greasy hairpins, mob-caps and lacy petticoats. After two hours they had sorted out all the upstairs rooms and Phryne was ready for a cup of tea and a cigarette.
Dot, Ruth and Jane were working at the clothing mound, packing the good things into tea-chests and the rags into chaff-bags. Bert, Cec and the charwomen were removing the discarded furniture, knick-knacks, what-nots and so on into Bert’s disreputable van.
‘It really is lovely to clean out all this old rubbish,’ said Eunice as they passed the workers on the way to the kitchen. ‘But are you sure that anyone would want all this stuff? Look at that glass bowl over Great-Grandma’s wedding bouquet! What an excresence!’
Cec, who had earmarked the glass bowl as a present for his sweetheart, commented, ‘Real good glass, this. Made by a craftsman,’ and Miss Henderson smiled warmly.
‘Take it and enjoy it,’ she recommended.
Cec grinned.
Bert called from the door, ‘Are you coming, mate? A man hasn’t got all day!’ and Cec grabbed the glass dish and went.
Phryne and Eunice had their cup of tea, and surveyed the sterling work which had already been done. The floors were swept clean, the windows open, the fires burning, and the house smelt pleasantly of wood smoke and furniture polish.
‘It is very kind of you to help me, Phryne,’ she observed, ‘This will all be finished in one day, and I can sleep in my own bed tonight.’
‘You won’t mind being here on your own?’
‘No, dear, what could harm me? I am exorcising the ghosts of all of my family, and I shall be quite happy alone. I’m only keeping the basic furniture, and all of those ornaments and feathers and dead birds and seashells and small tables can go. I am throwing out the firescreen made by Aunt Matilda, whom I always hated, and dear Cousin Nell’s petit point chair, and Uncle John’s butterfly collection. It’s a fine empty feeling,’ she continued, a little intoxicated by all that space. ‘It’s a nice house, if it wasn’t all cluttered. And the curtains. I have always hated those heaped-up lace curtains.’
‘Don’t throw them away, you need something to cover the windows,’ objected Phryne. ‘Cut them off.’
‘Cut them off?’
‘Yes, just snip them level with the floor.’
Eunice Henderson flung herself at Phryne and kissed her soundly.
‘Oh, Phryne, why did I never think of that? In all that time when I hated the idea of all that lace lying around on the floor for the sole reason of demonstrating that you could afford to have lace lying on the floor, and I never thought of that! Quick! Where’s the scissors?’
They snipped with a will, and the yards of superfluous lace joined a century’s gleaning of costumes in the chaff-bags. Dot claimed armloads of delicate undergarments for her own; Jane and Ruth found a store of satins from China and were allowed to keep them all; Bert took a fancy to a huge conch, and took it for a present to his landlady. It took eleven trips of the rickety van to various destinations before the detritus of seventy years was removed from the house, and Phryne marvelled that it still looked full. The linen-room was bursting with Irish sheets, there were beds and tables and chairs and fire irons and paintings, but only one ornament remained in the entire mansion: a tall blue vase, quite unfigured, which some pirating ancestor had picked up in the Boxer wars.
‘It’s the only thing of Mother’s that I wanted,’ said Eunice, as they sat around the kitchen table sipping afternoon tea. ‘I want you to have it, Phryne. It will go beautifully with your sea-green and sea-blue salon.’
‘Oh, Eunice, I couldn’t, it’s much too valuable. .’
‘Yes, you could. Otherwise I shall break it. I don’t want to see another ornament in my entire life. I shall have a study in the breakfast-room, which looks out onto the garden. I shall be very happy. And I am still employing you to find out who killed my mother.’
‘Yes, I know, old thing, and I haven’t the slightest idea at the moment. However, something will turn up. Are you sure you are all right to be left?’
‘Perfectly,’ asserted Eunice, as she stood bidding them farewell in her scoured, cold hallway. The wind had been from the west and the house smelt of the sea. Behind her in the swept-clean morning-room a bright fire glowed, and her supper was laid out on the one remaining small table. Phryne kissed her goodbye, and allowed Bert to give her a lift home in the truck, in which she sat nursing the blue vase as though it was a child.
Phryne dined early with Dot, Jane and Ruth. Jane was preoccupied, and between the egg-and-bacon pie and the chops Phryne asked her what the matter was.
‘I’ve remembered,’ said Jane. ‘What sent me off — what broke his power. It was something I saw. You know about my gran? She hanged herself, my gran did, at the window of the upstairs at Miss Gay’s.’
‘What did you see?’ asked Phryne. ‘Don’t tell me if you don’t want to.’
‘I saw an old woman hanged,’ muttered Jane. ‘She was pulled out of the window by her neck; just like my gran’s, her head was.’ Jane’s head flopped sickeningly sideways in demonstration. ‘It was bright moonlight, like it was the night my gran died. That’s what set me off. That’s why I went queer.’
‘Where was this, Jane?’
‘By the tower, the thing that the trains get water from. And there was a man there, Miss Fisher, a man.’
‘What was he doing?’
‘Pulling on the rope. The body rose, and so did he; he climbed over her and onto the water tower, then he swung her and dropped her on the grass. It was horrible, and I hid my eyes. Then he jumped down. .’
Jane broke off. Ruth caught Jane in her arms.
‘Ruthie! It was awful!’
‘You just tell Miss about it,’ commanded Ruth, and Jane obeyed. ‘He landed on her body and. .’
‘I know what he did, Jane. No need to go on. Then what did you do?’
‘I was watching out of the window
of the ladies, Miss, and I heard a terrible scream behind me, and then the train started again. I just stayed where I was, Miss.’
‘Would you know the man again, Jane?’
‘Yes, Miss. I expect so.’
‘Good. Now you and Ruthie sit down and eat some chops, and let’s get on with the dinner, for I am famished.’
Ruth paused with a fork halfway to her mouth and asked the question that had been concerning her since her arrival. ‘Miss Fisher, what are you going to do with me?’
‘I’m not going to do anything with you, if you mean by that, something to you. What would you like me to do?’
‘Jane says that you are sending her to school.’
‘That is true.’
‘And that you like intelligent girls.’
‘Yes.’
‘And you adopted her.’
‘Yes,’ agreed Phryne, wondering what was coming.
‘I’m intelligent and I can work hard and I have always looked after Jane. What’ll she do without me? You should take both of us, Miss, not just pick one like kittens out of a litter.’
Jane laid her hand on Ruth’s shoulder and looked at Phryne. Ruth bit the end of one plait reflectively. Then she took up her fork and swallowed the piece of chop impaled on it, as though she was not sure when she would get another meal.
Phryne smiled. ‘Two are better than one,’ she said. ‘I was wondering how Jane would manage in this rackety house on her own. All right, Ruth. You too. Any relatives?’
‘No,’ affirmed Ruth, and took some more bread, thankful for the first time in her life that she was an orphan.
‘I’ll call that irritating solicitor tomorrow and get it all put through legally. But you will have to go to school, girls, through term, and you can come back here in the holidays. You can do anything you like, as long as you are willing to work for it. And you must never say anything about my cases, nothing at all, do you understand?’
Introducing the Honourable Phryne Fisher Page 46