But if I change my mind again
I’ll let you know.
Ruddigore
, Gilbert and Sullivan BY THE time the police had completed their search, it was four o’clock and Phryne was feeling exhausted. There were too many people, too many voices, and too much inconveniently passionate emotion clouding the theatre. Commissioning Herbert to go and call for a certain taxi, she left by the stage door. She emerged into the icy darkness and waited under the streetlight, allowing the cold wind to blow some of her tiredness away.
Someone was sharing the street with her.
A shadow detached itself from just around the corner of Little Bourke Street and began to drift towards her. She could not hear any footsteps and he or it moved quite quickly. Phryne retreated 60
until she had her back against the wall of the theatre and unclipped her bag before remembering that she did not have her gun with her. She had not expected His Majesty’s Theatre to provide her with such an engrossing and challenging evening.
She peered into the darkness.
It was a he. A man, dressed in a dark suit, with only the gleam of a shirt at the throat to reveal him. A Chinese man.
She could not see if he was armed. She was waiting, calmly, for him to make a move so that she could break his arm when lights from an approaching taxi flooded the pavement and Phryne was distracted.
When she looked back, he was gone.
‘Bert dear, what an opportune arrival,’ she said gratefully, gathering her cloak and sinking into the front seat, ‘I have had a really strange evening and I would like to go home.’
‘You been to the Hinkler galah, Miss? Bit late, aren’t you?’ Bert’s hand-rolled cigarette, as usual, was not disturbed by speech. ‘Been a good day for the cabs. Every man and his woofer wanted to go out to watch that plane land. They had to put on special trains.’
Phryne always found Bert’s company soothing.
He and his mate Cec owned this taxi and drove it in shifts. Bert was short and square and dark, Cec was tall and lanky and pale; Bert talked and Cec was taciturn. They had been through war and fire together and could handle anything.
‘There’ve been two attempted murders at the 61
theatre, Bert, and I’ve been retained by the Management. I expect that it will be explicable but there seems to be a ghost as well.’
Bert, unusually, did not reply. He hauled the cab around the corner into Victoria Street and trundled down towards a patch of lights. ‘Need to go round the city,’ he commented. ‘Cops have closed Flinders Street – there’s been a road accident. This way’ll get us round quicker.’
‘I didn’t know the Market got up so early,’ commented Phryne.
‘Four o’clock in the winter, three o’clock in the summer, Miss. Them big drays block up the road something shocking, lucky they ain’t travelling later when everyone’s trying to get to work.’
He tooted and then passed a lumbering wagon, loaded with produce in sacks, which was occupy-ing most of the roadway. A nodding Chinese man sat in the seat, the reins knotted to the bar in front of him, and a very well fed and polished cart-horse walked patiently between the shafts.
‘The wholesalers get here real early, then the greengrocers’ vans arrive to supply the shops.
’Course, the best grade stuff is always the Chinese, though the Italians run ’em close. Work like slaves, the Chows do. They don’t want time-and-a-half or an eight hour day.’
‘You don’t like them, Bert?’ Phryne was not at all sleepy, suddenly.
‘I got nothing against ’em, Miss, as long as they don’t break strikes – and they don’t. They’re just trying to make a quid like the rest of us.’
62
Phryne reviewed the conversation and realised that Bert had gone silent on the subject of ghosts.
She decided not to re-open it.
‘Who’s on the case, Miss?’ Bert asked as the cab took St Kilda Road.
‘Jack Robinson, Sergeant Smith, and a huge constable called Naylor.’
Bert whistled. ‘Alias Smith, he’s all right – all right for a copper, I mean, being as he is a tool of the capitalist oppressors and a running dog of the state dedicated to doing down the working man.
His name really is John Smith, poor bu . . .
blighter. His father must have had a funny sense of humour. And you get on all right with Robinson, who’s not bad as cops go. But Naylor – you be careful of him, Miss. Big as a house and no manners. Beat the soul-case out of a couple of wharfies when he was supposed to be investigating some pilferage. Lucky not to be dismissed from the force. Not a nice man,’ opined Bert, who only used this phrase for seriously dangerous persons.
Phryne lit a gasper and thought about it.
‘Can’t see that he is a danger to me, Bert, but I’ll take your advice and stay out of his way. He can’t do much harm with Robinson there, I suppose.’
‘Not nice,’ repeated Bert. ‘You be careful, Miss Phryne.’
Phryne agreed that she would be as careful as possible. She asked how the taxi business was going (it was no worse than usual), and was delivered to her house.
63
She let herself in quietly and climbed the stairs to her own suite on the first floor. The house was silent. The Butlers slept in their room; under the autumn-leaf bedspread Dot slept in her tower.
Only the black cat Ember was awake. He entered silently then levitated onto Phryne’s lap as she sat at her dressing table, cleaning her face with precise licks of a wad of cotton.
‘You gave me a shock,’ she reproved him as the black nose nuzzled into her palm – Ember loved the taste of cold cream. He purred briefly, a rusty and absurd noise for a grown cat, then settled down in Sphinx posture along her silk-clad thigh.
Phryne brushed her perfectly black, perfectly straight hair, considering her reflection, and Ember raised his chin and looked into the mirror.
A stylised young woman draped in an ivory silk nightdress, with the slim, stylised black cat on her lap. Both pairs of green eyes considered the spec-tator, coolly. The
art decoratif
frame of the looking glass – leaves and garlands in delicate ceramics which wreathed artlessly around it –
made them look like a very fashionable 1928
nymph and transformed suitor reflected in an Arcadian pool. An aphorism came to Phryne’s mind.
‘If pursued by a satyr, always contrive to be captured near the softest available moss.’ Phryne chuckled, blew a kiss to mirror-Phryne and put nymph and panther to bed in something warmer than Daphnis’ drift of leaves.
64
Morning brought coffee, Dot, and the news that Dr Fielding, Detective Inspector Robinson and Sir Bernard Tarrant were all downstairs and clamour-ing for an interview.
Phryne groaned. Ember had departed from her pillow, leaving a small round patch of warmth, as soon as Mrs Butler had reached the kitchen and put on the kettle, a noise which signalled milk and a warm stove to sit by. Dot was drawing the curtains.
‘What’s the time?’
‘Ten, Miss, and there’s a crowd downstairs.’
‘They can wait. Run me a bath, Dot dear. Then call and tell Mrs B to give them all tea and I’ll be with them in due course.’ Phryne stretched. ‘I’d better have the black skirt and the plum Russian top, the walking shoes, and a large coat – it looks cold,’ she observed. ‘Dot, there were two attempted murders in the theatre last night – at the Hinkler gala, of all things!’
‘Not attempted murder, Miss,’ said Dot from the bathroom. ‘Real murder now. The older chap’s dead.’
‘Oh, dear.’ Phryne remembered a light, pleasant voice singing:
My boy you may take it from me,
That of all the afflictions accursed . . .
A diffident nature’s the worst . . .
You must stir it and stump it and blow your own trumpet
Or trust me you haven’t a chance.
65
Good singers were rare enough. They should not be wantonly removed. ‘What about the other one?’
‘He’s out of danger – he took less of the stuff, it seems. You aren’t going to work in the chorus, are you, Miss, like you worked as a rider in that circus?’ Dot looked anxious. Phryne got up and stripped off the nightdress as she walked to the bathroom.
‘No, Dot dear, I shall be entirely myself and I’ll come home every night,’ she said soothingly.
‘Well, almost every night. I have had enough of performing. I don’t know how Jack Robinson is going to react to me being involved in his murder inquiry and I really don’t know what I can do, but I’ll try – I promised Bernard.’
‘Dr Fielding’s downstairs. Is . . . I mean, you broke off with him, Miss?’
‘And I will not resume. A lovely man but he needs a wife and a dog and some children and a settled home, and you know how I feel about settled homes, Dot dear. I don’t think he’ll be difficult. And he has a face which is pleasant to contemplate. No, the main problem is the theatre. All those people are trained to be charming, delightful, fascinating, and to laugh or weep on command. That makes all poor Jack’s usual ways of judging if someone is telling the truth or lying quite useless.’
‘There’s something else, Miss, it slipped my mind. This note was under the door.’
Phryne, pulling on crepe de Chine underwear, scanned the crumpled paper. It was part of a playbill. Someone had printed ‘
Yore irregler is
66
redy
’ and signed his name with a cross.
‘That’s my accomplice, Dot, a boy called Herbert of angelic countenance and no education whatsoever. He tells me he is going to be a great actor and it is distinctly possible. He’s about four foot six and dark and if he turns up I want to see him right away. Now, I need a big bag, and I’d better have handkerchiefs, salts, cigarettes, a flask and . . . ’ she reached into the drawer of her dressing table, ‘a new notebook.’
Dot watched with disapproval when Phryne added her small gun to the contents of the Flor-entine leather bag.
‘You’re expecting trouble,’ she said slowly.
‘Possibly.’
Phryne smiled at her maid. Dot was dressed in her favourite brown woollen dress, with a ochre jacket and ochre shoes. Her long brown hair was strained back into a plaited bun skewered with a vengeful hairpin and her brown eyes looked worried. ‘Don’t worry Dot dear, I’m just being careful. You’re always telling me to be careful, aren’t you? And it’s time I listened. Now, a final sprinkle of ‘Jicky’ and we can face the day.’
The parlour, which was spacious, did not seem large enough to contain Sir Bernard Tarrant, who was standing in the gentleman’s position with his back to the fire, Dr Fielding, looking stricken, and a policeman drinking tea and eating muffins with the deep concentration of the unbreakfasted.
‘Phryne darling,’ said Sir Bernard, ‘you look 67
absolutely ravishing. Do be an angel and help us.
I don’t know what to do.’
‘What else has happened?’ Phryne sat down on the arm of Dr Fielding’s chair.
‘Why, poor Walter’s dead, that’s what’s the matter. Wouldn’t you say that’s enough?’ returned Bernard hotly.
‘And no one saw anything useful, or if they did they are not telling me,’ added Robinson, reaching for another muffin. ‘I’ve been up all night, and I’ve nothing to show for it. Well, not much. Naylor searched the dressing rooms, but found no drugs.
Lots of other things, but no drugs. The chorus and the stage crew saw nothing. The analysis of the pills and the . . . er . . . evidence isn’t done yet. I wish we could get a police surgeon who didn’t go crook at being a police surgeon. Then there’s this ghost. Miss Esperance says she’s seen it, so do a couple of other people. There are no ghosts, so there’s a trickster at work as sure as eggs. They’re always awful – like anonymous letter writers. Do a lot of damage and when you catch them butter wouldn’t melt in their mouth.’ Reminded of melting butter, Robinson reached for another muffin and Mr Butler refilled his teacup.
‘I think I can help you with . . . with the ghost,’
said Bernard reluctantly.
‘Good. And you shall tell us all about it directly.
Do sit down, Bernard, and have some tea and a muffin. You need fortifying,’ Phryne ordered, and nudged Dr Fielding.
‘What’s the matter with you, old bean?’
68
‘He shouldn’t have died,’ said Mark Fielding, looking up at Phryne. ‘When I got them to hospital they were both past the recovery point. The young man’s all right, just as I would have expected. The older man had taken more poison, and it was longer before he got treatment – but I could swear, Phryne, I could swear that he was recovering. I even got a light-stimulus response from the pupil.’
‘You’re upset that you lost a patient,’ she said gently, and he replied, ‘Of course I am, I hate losing a patient, every doctor hates losing anyone, but this is wrong, Phryne, there’s something wrong with this death.’
‘Jack, did you order a post-mortem?’ she asked.
‘Of course,’ said the policeman, putting down his cup. ‘Should know what killed him by tomorrow.’
‘Right, well, there’s nothing to be done until then, is there? If it’s any comfort, Mark dear, I believe that you may be right, and in any case you behaved in a very prompt and professional manner and certainly saved Robbie’s life. So have some tea, Doctor, and we’ll listen to a ghost story.’
Mark snorted, ‘Ghosts!’ but took a cup from Mr Butler. Suddenly hungry, he slipped the last muffin out from under Jack Robinson’s hovering fork and ate it.
‘I was in the 1898 production of
Ruddigore
in London, have I ever told you that?’ asked Sir Bernard. ‘Yes, there we were – the Savoy season, new costumes, new production – all of the best.
Thirty years ago. It seems like yesterday. And here 69
I am the Management – when I think about how I used to complain about Management! Ah, well.’
Now launched, Sir Bernard seemed to be unwilling to get to the point. Phryne prompted him.
‘Who was in the company, then? What part did you play?’
‘Richard Dauntless, the Jack Tar – Gilbert genuinely admired sailors, you know. It’s a very good part.’ He put one hand behind his back and adjusted an imaginary straw hat with the other. ‘I shipped d’ye see on a revenue sloop,’ he sang softly, and Phryne saw the slimmer, less confident Bernard of 1898 and reflected that he must have been very attractive. ‘Yes, well, Robin Oakapple, who’s later Sir Ruthven, was played by Charles Sheffield, and Rose Maybud was Dorothea Curtis.’ He paused, his eyes full of memory. ‘She was so beautiful, was Dorothea. Small – can’t have been above five feet, a proud beauty, with midnight black hair in curls all down her back and dark eyes which burned holes in me. Buxom, but I could span her waist with my hands. She could sing like a lark and dance like an angel on the head of a pin. And she was . . . alive. Dorothea was all alive, from her tiny hands to her neat little feet.