Vic
The final letter had no heading, just a date: 9th October 1924. It began hastily.
Dad,
Please stop asking me to come back. I haven’t got a job in the city. Mum has declared me dead. What would Charlie think if I suddenly turned up? And I’m not used to society now, Dad. I won’t write again. Thanks for everything, Dad.
This one had a parting salutation:
Your loving son,
Vic
Phryne carefully folded all the letters and retied the bundle. The house was quite silent. Phryne had the immediate urge to put on the wireless, to sing, to move. She did not like silence. The noise of cities, the passing of feet and cars, voices calling and laughing, dogs barking, soothed and amused her. Would it be right to go seeking this damaged young man, who at the age of nineteen had wandered off into that vast space, and try to drag him back to this noise place just because of the testatory fears of a neurotic mother?
Phryne remembered, with a sudden chill, that Mrs Freeman didn’t want Victor back. She wanted him dead.
You don’t like my peaches, why do you shake
my tree?
You don’t like my peaches, why do you shake
my tree?
WC Handy
‘St Louis Blues’
Phryne was dressing for her outing with Tintagel Stone when her necklace of jet beads broke. She and Dot dived to the floor to gather them all before they should roll out of sight under the furniture, to be vacuumed up by Mr Butler and his new machine. Phryne poured her beads into a stocking, and Dot came to add hers, cupped in a red silk scarf which had also been on the floor.
As Dot held out her hand, with the black bead nestling in the centre of the red silk, Phryne at last caught the memory that had been eluding her for days. The picture stood still in her mind’s eye and allowed her to focus on it. The snail in the centre of the red roses. The black bead in Dot’s red palm. The knife still in the wound of the dead man at the Green Mill, the odd round haft of the knife in Bernard Steven’s chest. The blot of bright blood had made an irregular splotch, about the size of a hand, and in the middle was the knife.
It had been there when the man had fallen; Phryne had seen it. It had not been there after the members of Tintagel’s Jazz Makers had finished their examination of the corpse. In that interval, someone had removed the murder weapon, then somehow smuggled it out of the Green Mill without being caught. How? That was another problem. The relief of catching the memory was profound.
‘Miss, Miss, are you all right?’ asked Dot, worried by her silence and air of abstraction. ‘It can be fixed, Miss. We’ve got all the beads. And you can wear the other one.’
‘It’s all right, Dot, dear, the necklace doesn’t matter in the slightest. I have been trying to remember something and it just came back when I saw you holding that bead. And thank God, I thought I was losing my reason. But I had only mislaid it,’ she said, and chuckled. ‘Well, well! I shall have to think about this.’
Dot was looping the stocking carefully, so that it would not be damaged by the beads.
‘And I shall have a very interesting evening. Now, have I got everything? Cigarettes? No, Dot, I’ll take the bigger bag.’
‘It doesn’t match so well,’ observed Dot, picking up a pouchy black velvet bag and putting down a flat beaded clutch-purse.
‘I know, but I need to carry more things than that little one will hold.’
Before Dot’s censorious gaze, Phryne loaded the black bag with her little gun, a wodge of banknotes, a handkerchief, some cigarettes, a lighter, and a lipstick.
‘Miss, you’re expecting trouble,’ she chided. ‘Are you going alone? Why not take Mr Bert and Mr Cec?’
‘They wouldn’t fit in. I’ll be all right, Dot, I assure you.’
Phryne hugged Dot impatiently. ‘Now don’t get all sniffy, Dot dear, I tell you I shall be all right. Perfectly safe,’ said Phryne, and she breezed down to meet her escort, who had been waiting in the salon for twenty minutes.
Phryne made an entrance that was worth waiting for. She was wearing a black silk dress, dance-length, which glittered with silver beads in the pattern of constellations; silver stockings and black shoes. On her head was a silver cap, beaded with the zodiac around its flat brim. Long, delicate strings of beads trailed around her enigmatic face and stopped just short of her neck.
‘Oh, Phryne,’ said Tintagel Stone, eyes alight. ‘Magnificent!’ She walked into his embrace.
‘Are you fond of the stars?’ she asked lightly.
‘I have always reached for them,’ he replied, sliding a hand down over the Southern Cross. Phryne pushed him gently away.
‘We are going out,’ she said, and Tintagel released her reluctantly.
‘If you insist,’ he agreed. ‘We are playing at the Jazz Club, and Nerine has agreed to sing. I don’t know what you did to her, but it has had an excellent effect. Did you find her husband?’
‘Yes. He’s dead,’ said Phryne, preceding him down the hall. ‘I started from the premise that anyone who had Nerine would not willingly have let her go. She has . . . appeal.’
‘Yes.’ Tintagel Stone opened the car door and climbed in. ‘You could say that. Raw, naked passion is more like it.’
‘And has she never attracted you?’ Phryne started the engine.
‘Me?’ Tintagel’s mouth dropped open. ‘Are you quite mad? She’s been with Ben Rodgers ever since I met her, and you know . . .’
‘What trumpeters are. Yes,’ sighed Phryne, ‘I know. Has he always been that jealous?’
‘Yes. Threw one patron down the steps at a nightclub, we never played there again. Big bloke, too, but that doesn’t matter to Ben, not when he’s in a rage. And he’ll wait, too, he’s as patient as a cat and has all the delicacy and refinement of a great white shark. Not a nice man, perhaps, but a bloody great trumpeter. Mind you, even for a trumpeter he’s a bit extreme.’
‘You would go so far as to say that?’ marvelled Phryne. ‘Is he capable of murder?’
‘Phryne, are you saying . . . what are you saying?’
‘Just answer the question.’
‘Yes, he is capable of murder. Look, are you suggesting that Ben killed that Bernard chap? He didn’t know him! He had no reason to kill him! And anyway, he was right in front of me when the fellow collapsed. I swear that he was never off the bandstand, not until the chap was dead and on the floor.’
Tintagel, I fear that you have not been wholly frank with me,’ said Phryne severely. ‘Not frank at all. Not what one would expect of a Cornishman. If you didn’t think Ben had something to do with this, why did you smuggle the murder weapon out of the Green Mill?’
‘Me?’
‘That’s very good,’ said Phryne, approving of his blank innocence. ‘That tone must be very useful in nasty situations. I’m sure it has convinced many a suspicious cop.’
‘But not you?’ His voice was level, containing an undercurrent of stress; perhaps anger, perhaps amusement.
‘No, not me,’ agreed Phyrne. ‘Doubtless you washed your shirt-cuff as soon as you got home, but you forgot the crust of blood on the inside of the suit-sleeve, caused by pushing a bloody knife up there when you thought no one was watching.’
‘How did you know about the blood?’ The voice was still calm.
‘I felt for it when I hugged you, just now.’
‘You are the most . . .’ He struggled for words. ‘The most . . .’
‘The usual phrase is cold-hearted, devious bitch,’ supplied Phryne helpfully, pulling the car into the kerb and stopping. She turned to face Tintagel and did not smile.
‘Marvellous girl!’ exploded Tintagel, staring with open admiration into her green eyes. ‘I thought no one had noticed.’
‘Quite. Once I worked that out, I wondered why you should hide the murder weapon, unless it would point straight to someone you felt the need to protect. Now it couldn’t be Iris, she never moved; nor could it be you. I knew where you were.’ Her voice was reminiscent and warm. ‘I could see you. You had no connection with the dance marathon, and in any case the dancers couldn’t reach, I was in the way. So he had to be killed from a distance. Come on. You’ll be late.’
Tintagel Stone, emotions in ferment, was nevertheless a professional performer. He entered the Jazz Club at a run and found the Jazz Makers already there.
He collected his banjo and stepped onto the stage, where Nerine waited in a black dress with a sparkly pink overlay of chiffon, cut low enough to reveal breasts which, although definitely out of fashion, were smooth, marmoreal and perfect. Both Nerine and Ben Rodgers gave Phryne a narrowed glance, Nerine squinting to sight her even at three yards.
‘Tintagel Stone and the Jazz Makers,’ announced the MC. ‘The band that made St Vitus dance!’
They launched into a fast, slightly discordant version of ‘Tiger Rag’, which had become their trademark. Over the melody the cornet wailed, muted and skilled, never quite entirely out of key.
‘I hate to see that evening sun go down,’ sang Nerine, who appeared to have the St Louis blues. ‘I hate to see that evening sun go down, because my baby he done gone and left this town.’ As always, her potent appeal made itself felt. The crowded club was quiet and intent. Over near the kitchen door, a ferocious argument about the True Meaning of Jazz died down to a murmur.
‘St Louis woman, love her diamond ring,’ sang Nerine, huskily but with great force. ‘Drag that man around by her apron string.’ Then came a wail which should have been ridiculous but was heartrending. ‘If it weren’t for her powder and store-bought hair, that man I love wouldn’t have gone nowhere.’
Phryne sat down at a table in the front, against stiff opposition from a number of gentlemen who wanted to get as close to Nerine as they could. ‘If you don’t like my peaches,’ she sang, hand on hips, swaying slightly, ‘why do you shake my tree?’ A shiver ran through the club. The red hair shadowed her breast as she shook her head. ‘If you don’t like my peaches, why do you shake my tree?’ The head came up, the hips forward, and the dress shifted and gaped. Even Phryne, who was not attracted to women, was not unmoved. ‘You get out of my orchard, and let my peach tree be!’ The singer knew what effect she was producing in this predominantly male environment, even relished it. The red lips curved over white teeth as she smiled into the dark. Phryne, for the first time since she had been fourteen, felt small, pale and flat-chested, devoid of charm in the face of this arrogant and voluptuous challenge. She shook herself and ordered coffee.
The band swung into a fast ‘Basin Street Blues’. Phryne drank her coffee and recovered her self-confidence.
I could demand an explanation, she thought, as the trumpet, expertly handled, wailed and clucked. I could break up the feast with much admired disorder. I know that Tintagel is covering up for someone. But I like Tintagel. There isn’t any real need to do anything. Jack Robinson will work out in a couple of days that it wasn’t Charles, and will let him go. Who cares who killed Bernard Stevens, anyway? He was a blackmailer. Charles is an unattractive character too, flirting with poor Bobby and leading him on. I don’t like either of them, so why am I interfering?
She was served with more coffee, paid for it, then was possessed of a sudden disgust for her own ways.
She sipped the coffee, which was as weak as dishwater. Maybe I’ll go and look for the errant son. I’ll ring up this Talbotville place, anyway. I need cold, and silence. What was it he called it? The great silence. There’s too much noise in here and I don’t like myself at all at the moment, or the game that I am playing.
Leaving the coffee half drunk, she got up decisively and went out. The door swung shut behind the flicker of her constellations.
Away! Away! For I will fly to thee
John Keats
‘Ode to a Nightingale’
Phryne slept the night without dreaming, and the next morning took up the packet of letters from Victor to his father. She read them again, then looked at the photograph, which Dot had placed on her bedside table. Not a pretty face, but, as Dot had said, one you could trust. His letters were painfully honest, and his father’s importunities doubly selfish. She began to think that Mrs Freeman and her spouse had deserved each other. She was as self-centred as a compass. So was Charles, always wailing, ‘Why should this happen to me? How could anyone do this to me?’ in that distressing way. Phryne did not like questions without an answer, and the only answer to those questions was, ‘Why not?’ which was not satisfactory, however true. Poor Victor, recovering his balance in the cold silence, happy with his mountains, nagged by his father to return when there was nothing for him in the city. His mother disliked him, his brother thought he was dead, and he had said himself that he was no good at business. His father can only have wanted him back to be his companion, or possibly as a pawn in a power struggle with his wife. Charles did not even know that Victor was alive. How thoughtless, to continually demand Victor’s return! Why did his father not go and visit him, or meet him in one of these towns with outlandish names, Talbotville or Dargo, instead of writing to require the
boy’s presence?