‘Oh,’ said Phryne, uncertain of whether to laugh or not. ‘So he never laid a hand on you?’
‘Lady, I was expectin’ him to lay a hand on me,’ spat Nerine. ‘Then I realised that he was one of them funny boys—we have ’em down south, too—and I flung his diamonds and his flowers right back at him and left the place. I swore I wouldn’t never sing for him again, and that’s why Ten has to do without me when he plays the high spots, because I don’ never want to see Charles Freeman ever again in my life!’
‘Where do you come from?’
‘Georgia,’ said Nerine. ‘I came here with Billy—I told you that I was a sucker for sailors. Then I liked it here. Honey, if it wasn’t for Charles Freeman I’d stay here forever.’
‘He’s vanished,’ said Phryne, tasting the coffee, which seemed to have been made out of aged-in-the-wood beans that had worked hard for their living.
Nerine glowed. ‘He gone? Then I don’t have to go. I never been so insulted! To ask me to break my sworn-given word! I’ll have to tell Ben.’
‘He knows. Flat, you say? Charles Freeman has a flat? Where is it?’
Nerine gave the address. It was, she said, carved on her memory.
‘Nerine, did you tell Ben all about this, er, insult? Did he know about it?’
‘Oh, yeah, well, he knew I was going about with Charles. He’s awful jealous and we used to have some fine scenes. I tol’ him I’d love who I chose. He didn’t like that.’ She chuckled, evidently a woman who throve on conflict.
‘I bet he didn’t. Weren’t you running rather a risk, inflaming a trumpeter?’
‘He wouldn’t hurt me none, he needs my voice,’ said Nerine complacently. ‘I sing the blues better than any woman in this ole town. He knows that. But he was fierce against poor old Charles. I was right sorry for Charles, you know. Seemed like he didn’t know nothing about girls. And he didn’t,’ she added with a vindictive snap of fine teeth. ‘He didn’t. Well, I’ve helped you as much as I can, Miss Fisher. Reckon you can find that no-good man of mine?’
‘I’ll give it my best try,’ promised Phryne. Nerine groped her way back to the stage and shook herself. There was a collective gasp. The red dress, which had ridden up, slid down like a glove over the voluptuous body. Nerine had an unrefined sexual presence that should keep Ben in a fine state of ferment for all of the time that she was in the public eye.
Tintagel came back bearing more lemonade. ‘Well, did she tell you?’
‘Yes, and I never heard of such a thing. However, I see your difficulty. I don’t know whether I would have believed you, if you had told me. Now I have met Nerine, of course, it all makes sense. Let’s go, Ten, I’m tired.’
‘Home?’ asked Tintagel, hopefully. Phryne smiled at him, and this time produced the right effect. It was a smile of infinite sensual promise.
‘Home,’ she agreed.
Dance, dance dance little lady
Leave tomorrow behind!
Noel Coward
This Year of Grace
Phryne woke the next morning with her head on the banjo player’s chest. He was sleeping deeply, naked and relaxed, still holding her so close that she had to exert all her strength to break his grip. He did have very strong arms. Phryne smiled reminiscently, got up, and pulled aside the curtains. Morning again, but it could hardly be called early.
Tintagel Stone was still asleep when Phryne was summoned to take a telephone call. She dragged on a dressing gown, padding down the stairs in bare feet.
‘Mr Butler, if that is Mrs Freeman again I will scream.’
‘A Mr Bobby Sullivan, Miss.’
Phryne took the phone. A light, pleasant, tenor voice asked, ‘Miss Fisher?’
‘Yes.’
‘I hear that you have been retained to look for Charles.’
‘You hear correctly.’
‘Could we talk about it?’
‘We are talking.’
‘Perhaps, could I ask you to call on me?’
‘Yes, that could be arranged. This afternoon?’
‘Very well. At two.’ He gave an address in the plush part of South Yarra. Phryne exchanged the usual greetings and rang off. Odd, she thought as she walked up the stairs again, savouring the soft carpet underfoot. Bobby Sullivan, of the County Cork Sullivans. She giggled. That was like saying the Birmingham Smiths: no distinction at all. Bobby had clearly exploited Mrs Freeman’s snobbery with a fine sense of irony.
Meanwhile, there was Tintagel Stone, and he would not have had time to get dressed yet.
Phryne got up again at noon, consumed a light lunch, and sent Dot down to the Public Records Office to search for evidence of the marriage of Nerine and Billy, and then to look for death notices.
‘Why death notices, Miss?’
‘I can’t imagine any red-blooded sailor leaving Nerine for an extended time. The girl is the living image of “it”. I suspect that dear Billy is no longer with us. If you can’t find him we shall write to the other states. Bert and Cec are coming to dinner, so can you dine with me, Dot?’
‘Yes, Miss, of course. Bye,’ and Dot was gone. Tintagel pushed away his plate.
‘I’d better go too,’ he said reluctantly. ‘We’ve got the Green Mill again tonight, lucky the management isn’t superstitious. Shall I see you again, Phryne?’
‘I shall be around,’ said Phryne, kissing him lightly.
‘I hope so. One person in a band singing the blues is quite enough.’
Phryne crooked an arm around Tintagel’s neck and drew his face down to hers. The blue eyes blazed. ‘I won’t forget you, my dear,’ she promised.
The mail was brought in and Phryne perused it over another cup of tea. A few bills went on one pile, some begging letters on another. There was a letter from Paris with news that Sasha was marrying an American pressed-beef heiress, which prompted a delighted chuckle; a letter from Bundaberg, Queensland, from one Peter Smith, most dear of anarchists; and a badly blotted appeal from someone who signed herself ‘Violet King (Miss)’.
Phryne slipped the letter from the much-missed and loved Peter into her dressing-gown pocket, and read Miss King’s letter carefully.
Dear Miss Fisher,
I make bold to write to you to ask you to tell the cops that we didn’t have anything to do with the murder. The Green Mill won’t pay up. I’d come and see you but I can’t walk yet.
There was an address, and Phryne noted that there was a telephone number. She dialled it.
‘Yair?’ asked a shrill female voice.
‘Can you take a message for Miss King?’ asked Phryne politely.
‘All right,’ said the voice grudgingly. ‘Who are you?’
‘Phryne Fisher. Can I come and see Miss King at four this afternoon?’
‘She ain’t going nowhere,’ said the voice. ‘I’ll tell her.’
Phryne then rang Miss Iris Jordan and arranged to meet her at Miss King’s house at four.
‘Now I really must get dressed, Bobby awaits. Funny how I detest the name. What to wear? Severe, I think. Dark green Dior suit and the emeralds.’
She dressed quickly, pulling on champagne-coloured silk stockings, camiknickers in black silk, a pale yellow blouse, and the suit, which fitted so closely that she never wore it when any action was likely. No one could run in a Dior suit. The shoes were glacé kid in emerald green. She examined herself in the mirror, pulled on her hat, a cloche with a drunken brim, drew in her eyebrows, brushed a little Rachel
poudre riz
over her nose, twitched her black hair into line across both cheeks, and smiled. Bright green eyes smiled back at her.
‘Very nice,’ she commented. ‘You look like a
Vogue
cover.’
She drove at a reasonable pace (not more than ten miles a hour above the speed limit of twenty) to the address given by Bobby Sullivan and was directed by a discreet card in Gothic print to the top floor of an old Victorian house, turned recently and with taste into two apartments.
She rang the doorbell and was ushered by a pale, immaculate young man into a décor which mixed modern with antique in a pleasant, unsurprising, artistic mélange.
The walls were washed pale peach and hung with silk tapestries. The furniture included the usual Deco angular pieces side by side with carved Chinese blackwood, and a thick Persian carpet covered the floor.
‘Do sit down, Miss Fisher. The sofa is very comfortable. Would you like some tea?’
‘No thank you, I’ve just had lunch. So, Mr Sullivan, what can I do for you?’
‘Charles,’ said Bobby Sullivan, sinking, as far as was possible, into a Deco chair remarkable for its cubism. ‘I wanted to talk to you about Charles.’
‘Ah, yes. You are his great friend.’ Phryne produced the phrase without irony or emphasis. ‘Tell me about him.’
‘He was not . . . my lover.’ The young man cast Phryne a quick beseeching glance. ‘My tastes . . . are the same as yours, Miss Fisher.’
‘What was wrong with Charles, then?’ asked Phryne. ‘He’s attractive enough.’
‘Oh, yes, attractive, certainly. But he did not want me. Cold, Charles is cold, and cruel.’
Phryne leaned back in the sumptuous sofa and lit a cigarette.
‘I never asked to be like I am,’ he said quietly. ‘I was born like this, with these emotions, with this heart. I was five when I first fell in love with another boy; one of the sons of my mother’s best friend. He didn’t love me, but that didn’t matter. I wasn’t interested in football at school, but in music and art. I was lucky that I found a congenial profession that makes me a good living. I design interiors for rich people’s houses. I charge them a fortune, and so I can have my Persian carpets and my Earl Grey tea and my agreeable little suppers. I would marry if I could but I can’t. I feel about making love to a woman as you do; impossible.’
‘I understand,’ said Phryne. ‘You are managing beautifully, Mr Sullivan. Dignity and restraint is the only way. With the occasional outbreak, of course. That is essential.’
‘But I have to be so careful. I can’t haunt the public toilets to pick up curious boys. I have a position. I’m living in a house of cards. One breath of scandal and they will all fall down.’
‘I see. What did you want to tell me about Charles?’
‘He is behaving in a very odd way. Poor Charles. He’s . . . unloving. Not as clever as he thinks he is, either, and he plays games. He played one with me, making me love him, and then turning me down. He said some very cruel things to me.’
Phryne was suddenly very sorry for Bobby. Any lover might turn into a blackmailer, and the legal penalties for sodomy were biblical in their severity. What would happen to the exquisite Bobby in prison? Her mind shied off the terrible thought.
‘Hmmm. I thought that he was homosexual, you know, because of his response to me. I do not wish to boast, Mr Sullivan, but I am used to making an effect on a man, if I wish to. But all my powder was wasted on Charles, not that I really wanted him. I do not like games.’
‘Charles does. He gloated over my broken heart. And I, too, am used to having my effect. We are similar, Miss Fisher, if you will forgive the comparison. And Charles has defeated both of us. By the way, that dark colour looks stunning on you. Green eyes are so rare that they should be emphasised.’
‘Thank you. How long have you known Charles?’
‘Oh, since school. He wasn’t interested in sport either. He suffered a lot, I think, from the loss of his brother Victor. He was killed in the war, you know. Heroic figure, and Charles never felt he could live up to that. Then there was his mother. A vampire, I assure you: on the surface all fainting and smelling salts and underneath pure prussic acid. She has hung onto Charles, using him like a husband, taking him into bed with her, clinging like a chorus-girl. God! The woman has no shame!
‘But since I knew . . .’ He paused, lit a Sobranie in a long holder, ‘. . . that I loved the same sex, I thought Charles was like me. He was never interested in girls, never had a crush on anyone, boy or girl. I should have known then that he didn’t have the, the heart, I suppose, to love anyone. His mother has absorbed all of Charles’s ability to love. I tried a couple of times to attract him, but he didn’t even notice. Then when I asked him he laughed at me. But he stayed with me. He is very well read and very good company and very witty. He was always a bit of a hypochondriac, Charles was, prone to imagining that he had pneumonia when he had a cold, but that’s not so unusual. We used to go to the opera together, Miss Fisher, and sometimes we would sit here and read aloud to each other like an old married couple. Absurd, isn’t it?’
He brushed away a tear and turned his head to stare at the delicate dancing ladies on his Chinese screen. Phryne was touched.
She leaned forward and took Bobby’s hand. It was a smooth hand, manicured, with a seamstress’s much-pricked forefinger. Bobby dropped to his knees and buried his face against the pale blouse and cried in soft, heartbroken sobs, while Phryne embraced him gently, her chin resting on the well-groomed, dark head.
He cried for about ten minutes, then pulled away, groping in his pocket for a handkerchief. Phryne supplied hers, a large gentleman’s monogrammed hankie which she always carried for the use of her clients. The young man dried his face and sat back on his heels.