She was a pretty one, though. Black hair and such dark eyes. What did she say?’
‘She called us murderers,’ said Phryne.
‘You don’t feel like telling me about it?’ asked Mrs Price, her eyes glinting with ravenous curiosity. ‘I never get to hear the end of stories.’
‘Sorry,’ said Phryne. She opened the bag and retrieved the gold button. Then she offered the helper a banknote.
‘For your work,’ she said. Mrs Price waved it away, closing her eyes on her headache.
The helper accepted it on the way out.
Selwyn Alexander and Bradford, clinging to one 175
another and trembling, got into Phryne’s car and she drove them to Carlton. They did not speak all the way home, which, Phryne reflected, was an indication that they were seriously shocked.
When she returned to her own house, she saw a shadow on the foreshore directly opposite; a man leaning on a tree, smoking a cigarette. He could have been there for any number of legal or illegal purposes, but he was unusual in that he was definitely Chinese.
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CHAPTER TEN
Now let the royal lieges gather round The Prince’s foster mother has been found!
The Gondoliers
, Gilbert and Sullivan DOT, AS promised, was sitting in the parlour telling her rosary. Phryne walked quickly into the room and shed her coat.
‘Amen. Well, Miss?’ Dot asked, examining her employer narrowly for signs of foaming at the mouth or speaking in tongues. ‘How did it go?’
‘Odd, Dot, weird and strange. Mr B, a cocktail, if you please.’ Phryne flung herself down onto the sofa and smoothed her stocking, where the wooden bench had roughened the silk. ‘There was nothing in the performance which she couldn’t have got from a person at the theatre but . . . it was convincing. Not a thing about the delights of the spirit world and she didn’t want money.’
177
‘You were endangering your immortal soul,’
said Dot severely. ‘I was worried about you.’
‘Well, my soul escaped unscathed, Dot dear, I am just puzzled. What would you like to do this evening, eh, to make up for being so concerned about me? I do appreciate you, Dot.’
‘I would like to mend stockings and listen to the wireless,’ said Dot, hauling out her sewing basket.
Phryne summoned up a smile and turned the bakelite knob.
A flood of dance music filled the parlour. Dot threaded her needle. Phryne eased off her hand-made black leather shoes, sipped her cocktail and tried to think.
Shelving the whole
Ruddigore
question for the moment, she concerned herself with what the Chinese thought they were doing, following her around. Tomorrow night, she decided, she would ask the delightful Lin Chung for an explanation and a whole bolt of the best silk in compensation.
Sky blue, she thought, enough azure silk to drape the walls of her parlour.
Dot woke her two hours later and put her to bed.
Morning brought Jack Robinson to breakfast.
The underfed policeman encouraged Mr Butler to load his plate with eggs, bacon, ham, and tomatoes. He buttered toast with a lavish hand and ate solidly for ten minutes while Phryne nibbled at a tea-cake and drank black coffee.
When he was sipping his second cup of tea, she asked, ‘Who dropped the weight, Jack?’
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‘Hanged if I know.’ Under the influence of well-cooked food and hot tea the detective inspector began to look less haggard. ‘I’ve asked everyone and no one saw anyone near the rope. I can’t tell if everyone is lying or everyone is telling the truth, in which case it never happened and poor Miss Thomas only thinks she’s dead. Half of them think it was the ghost and the other half are convinced it was an accident. I can’t believe it was the ghost and I don’t believe it was an accident. Then there’s the question of whether it was aimed at the person it killed or whether it was meant for either Mr Evans or you. Opinion’s divided on that, too. Lot of them would be glad to see Mr Evans dead if he wasn’t such a good actor, but because he is, they seem to be able to digest his being such a bounder.
Have you got anything?’
‘I’ve been working on the ghost. I went to a spiritualist meeting last night with Mr Alexander and the medium called him a murderer.’
‘Is that possible?’
‘I don’t think he could have cut the curtain-rope, he’s too stiff to climb. He might have killed Dorothea, I suppose, if he happened to be in London and was a very precocious child.’
‘So that’s no use.’
‘No,’ said Phryne. ‘I’m still convinced this ghost is a trick, but I can’t see how it is being worked.’
‘I don’t need to know about the ghost, there are no such things as ghosts,’ said Jack Robinson impatiently. ‘I need to find a murderer who’s 179
accounted for two people already before he kills another.’
‘You mean that the person who poisoned poor Robbie and Walter Copland is the same as killed Prompt?’
‘Unlikely to have two murderers in the same theatre.’
‘Different methods. Don’t murderers usually stick to their
modus operandi
?’
‘Yes, but this is a theatre, they’re very odd folk.’
Phryne was unconvinced. ‘I think that’s going too far,’ she said. ‘But you go your way and I’ll go mine.’
‘All right. What are you doing today?’
‘I’m going back to the theatre, to see what people will tell me.’
‘They might tell you more than me, if you can stomach them. I’m going to the hospital – they might let me talk to Robert Craven today.’ Jack Robinson levered himself to his feet. ‘Oh, by the way. You’ll never guess who Walter Copland left all his money to – and a tidy bit, too. House in Bendigo and a nice little financial cushion behind the fire-brick.’
‘No, I’ll never guess,’ said Phryne, who hated parlour games. ‘Who?’
‘House to Hansen the dresser ‘‘for his devoted service’’ and fifty quid to the doorkeeper, Tom Deeping ‘‘in memory of the old days’’. And a small legacy to Miss Esperance and the rest to that boy, Herbert ‘‘who shows such promise’’. Not surprising, but enough to be a motive for murder. We 180
have to talk to old Tom again.Thanks for the breakfast – it was good-o.’ He called into the kitchen, ‘Thanks, Mrs B, I was perishing for some good tucker and a cuppa. Well, I’ll probably see you later, Miss Fisher,’ he said gloomily, and Phryne conducted him to the door.
‘Put your coat on, Dot dear,’ called Phryne. ‘I’m taking you to the theatre.’
The theatre was silent when she and Dot arrived.
The old man said, ‘No rehearsal today, Miss, there’s a matineé. You’ve got the place to yourself for a couple of hours.’ He smelt even more strongly than usual of cooking sherry, and he leaned close to Phryne, so that she had to squeeze against the wall.
She placed a hand on his chest and said softly,
‘You knew Dorothea Curtis, didn’t you?’ and he sprang away as though her touch was electrified.
‘Knew her?’ he croaked. ‘Knew ’em all. She was a haughty piece, she was. I knew where she came from, see, for all she behaved like Lady Muck. I knew her when she was singing for pennies in pubs and selling kisses to drunken sailors for the rent.’
‘Did you, indeed? Were you one of her customers?’
‘I
couldn’t
afford
Dorothea,’ he laughed
unpleasantly. ‘She was too dear for me, little Miss Dorothea with her black curls and her bright eyes and her airs and graces. But she offended all them nobs. Got on one goat too many and someone 181
killed her. And she was so beautiful,’ he said, and Phryne hastily extracted herself and her maid from the stage door corridor before he started to cry. The last she saw of Tom Deeping was a crumpled yellowing face, the bloodshot eyes overflowing with tears which ran down his wrinkles and soaked the collar of his dirty ex-army greatcoat.
Hammering could be heard onstage, and when they climbed to the next level Phryne and Dot found several young man and women playing pontoon in the ladies’ dressing room. They leapt to their feet, spilling the pack.
‘It’s all right, it’s Miss Fisher,’ said Jessie to the others. ‘Don’t tell on us, will you? Just a friendly game, only the blokes aren’t supposed to be in here.’ Phryne promised not to tell. ‘We’re on this afternoon, and it’s not too nice where some of us are staying, so we come in here and play cards.’
Phryne said, ‘That seems innocent enough.’
Colin the bass gathered the cards with rather worrying expertise and began to shuffle them. ‘It takes our mind off performing and all the strange things that have been happening,’ he explained.
‘Closest thing to pure thought is card play.’ There was a groan at this.
‘Don’t get him on to gambling as a path to Pure Thought,’ urged Melly. ‘We’ve heard that speech several times and it’s boring.’
‘Very boring,’ agreed Marie-Claire.
‘I’m just going to have another look around,’
said Phryne. ‘You haven’t seen me.’
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‘No,’ Colin agreed, dealing out cards. ‘We haven’t seen you.’
‘But you’ll try and get it all sorted out, won’t you?’ Melly grabbed Phryne’s velvet sleeve. ‘We’re doing our best to be brave, but we’re in such a state that one loud sneeze and we’ll all burst into tears.’
‘I’ll do my best.’ She closed the dressing room door and said decisively, ‘Right, Dot dear, we are going to search a couple of rooms. I’ve brought you because you’ll know instantly if anything is out of place. One room is Mr Evans’ and perhaps I’d better do that one, you know what gentlemen are like, and particularly that gentleman. The police have already searched for anything overtly criminal or related to the murders. But we are looking for anything odd, anything peculiar.
Perhaps you could begin with this one.’
She opened a door with a star on it. Dot shrugged off her burnt-orange coat and peeled her gloves down as her eyes examined the room.
Phryne searched in the time-honoured Pinker-ton method for an hour and came up with a healthy respect for Gwilym Evans’ love life – he had bundles of love letters, all tied with pink ribbon, in the same drawer which held a packet of contraceptive devices – and none of the things for which she was tentatively searching. She noted with interest that Miss Diana Ffoulkes, queen of the flappers, had an exceptionally combustible prose style. She was promising to follow Gwilym to New Zealand, if only he would grant 183
her – what was the phrase Bernard had used?
Ah, yes. His regard. Phryne folded the letters into their original creases and replaced them. He had a British passport which confirmed his date of birth and some letters written in an exceptionally foreign tongue which must have been Welsh. These seemed to be missives from home, laboriously lettered with a leaking pen on cheap paper. She stole one from the middle of the bundle and returned it to its hiding place at the back of a drawer.
Then she joined Dot, who was straightening up from an inspection of the dressing table bottom.
‘Several things, Miss,’ she said in answer to Phryne’s unspoken question. ‘A box of white powders in paper, like a Bex. I think they’re pre-scription, by the label.’ Phryne examined the chemist’s packet. ‘Morphine. Miss Esperance, one to be taken if the pain is severe.’ She nodded at Dot to go on.
‘This,’ said Dot, blushing, exhibiting a dia-phragm in its little box. Phryne nodded again.
‘And these. I found them at the bottom of that dress basket. Why would anyone keep single gloves there, when the mates to them are in that glove box?’
‘Why indeed?’ Phryne looked at two gloves, differing slightly in colour and degree of wear, which had been knotted together. ‘Put them back, Dot, very well done! How did you know where to look?’
‘I had a lot of sisters,’ said Dot, restoring the 184
spoil to various niches. ‘We got good at hiding things from each other.’
‘Right, now we look at the other ladies,’ said Phryne, and led the way.
Apart from revealing that Miss Wiltshire was a smoker and that Miss Gault had a taste for Dr McKenzies’ Menthoids, an empty packet of which lay in her wastepaper basket, Phryne found nothing of interest in that room until Dot, questing behind the hanging rack, found several sheets of brown wrapping paper, carefully folded. Phryne spread them out. On the edge of one, which had been cut into an irregular shape, was a fine line.
Phryne touched it and it smudged. Eyebrow pencil.
She rolled up the marked sheet, restored the others to their place, and led Dot to the manager’s office.
The notes which had brought two rivals to their lady’s door were in the drawer. She laid them and the sheet together and Dot said, ‘Yes, they fit.’
‘So, it was one of those women who called Evans and Dupont together. I wonder if she was watching? Miss Wiltshire or Miss Webb, I think –
Miss Gault is otherwise interested.’ Phryne folded notes and paper together and stowed them in Dot’s basket. ‘Right, now the chorus rooms. Then I have to find Herbert. He has a report to make.’
‘I’ll search, Miss, you find him.’
Phryne agreed and walked back onto the stage, where she found the boy staring up at the lighting gantry. He jumped when she touched him.
‘Hello, Herbert!’
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‘Oh, Miss Fisher, you gave me a surprise. I’ve been waiting for you.’
‘Good. Come along and tell me what you’ve found.’ She led the way to the manager’s office.
‘What are you doing here, when you ought to be minding the stage door?’ Herbert avoided her eyes and hung his head.
‘Tom, he’s . . . he’s . . . ’
‘Drunk?’ suggested Phryne.
The boy’s fine hands were twisted together. ‘My dad, he’s like that when he’s been having a few, and then he comes home and bashes my mum if lunch isn’t ready.’
‘He must start very early in the morning.’
‘Yes, Miss, he’s a pastry-cook.’
‘Yes, I thought he might be. Herbert, why did you put green food colouring in the whisky?’
The face screwed into an expression of such wronged innocence that Phryne almost laughed.
‘You’ll have to work on that expression, Herbert dear, it’s overdone. The really innocent look blank.’
The boy’s face changed as if by magic. Now he looked astonished and a little affronted by her outrageous suggestion.