Death at Victoria Dock (10 page)

Meanwhile, there were the anarchists. Phryne was wearing her Beretta in her garter, and she had a throwing knife strapped to her forearm. She did not intend to be taken by surprise again.

The Socialist Bookshop was closed but she knocked at the door and a thin, dark young man let her in. The bookshelves, stuffed with literature, loomed dark and indistinct. The young man took Phryne’s hand and led her up half-seen stairs into a large chamber hung with black cloth painted with luminous stars.

‘Your ticket?’

Phryne produced her ticket and the young man accepted it. He leaned close to her and whispered, ‘Go in and take the chair by the door. Madame Stella is preparing for her trance and must not be disturbed. Please do not make a noise.’

Phryne was pushed through a curtain into a dim chamber dominated by a huge table set around with chairs. All but two were occupied. Phryne sat down and scanned her neighbours.

Sitting next to her was a fat woman in a flowered print and a chintz hat like a pot. She was over made-up and could not have acquired that colour of hair naturally. She smiled tremulously at Phryne and whispered, ‘Isn’t this exciting?’

A respectable widow occupied the next seat, then Maria Aliyena (alias Evans) and two men, both young, who were conferring together in low voices. They had a pencil and a block of paper before them, evidently to make notes. At the head of the table was the medium’s cabinet, hung with thick black curtains. Next to it were two electric torches. Past the cabinet of mysteries were two men, in respectable clothes, who could have been clerks. From them floated a spiritual perfume, and Phryne thought that she could guess which bottle it came out of. Another man, middle-aged and greying, with a forgettable face and some difficulty in sitting, was next to them. Phryne was sure that this was her assailant. A foreign-looking girl with curly hair sat on Phryne’s other side.

‘You new here, dearie?’ asked the fat woman.

‘Yes, this is the first time. What do we do?’ Phryne said.

‘Wait until Madame Stella finishes her preparations, then we all hold hands and sing a hymn.’

‘A hymn?’

‘Yes, dear, it expels the evil spirits. Then we wait for Bright Feather to come through and he brings all the others.’

‘Bright Feather?’

‘Her control. He’s a Red Indian. Shh!’

Madame Stella came in, escorted by a squat man in an academic robe. She was magnificent in long, dark draperies, with deep sleeves perfect for the concealment of apports. Phryne sat back and admired the atmosphere, cleverly created by having the customers wait in a darkened room with all these magical props and the luminous paint, which after a while began to induce light-spot illusions.

‘God bless you,’ began Madame Stella in her flat, common voice, and the congregation replied, ‘God bless you.’

‘All join hands and we will sing “Abide with Me.”’

Phryne joined in, although this was not her favourite hymn. The anarchists appeared to have a political objection to carrying a tune.

‘Abide with me, fast falls the eventide

The darkness deepens, Lord with me abide,

When other helpers fail, and comforts flee…

In life, in death, O Lord, abide with me.’

Enough to scare every spirit right back to the Elysian Fields, she thought, easing the pressure of the foreign girl’s fingers on her hand. Now. Let the play begin!

Madame Stella was leaning back in her chair, breathing deeply. Phryne counted the respirations; five, ten, fifteen, then a deep voice announced: ‘Bright Feather is here. How!’

He sounded just like every Indian on every cowboy radio serial that Phryne had ever heard. She bit her lip so that she should not laugh, but the effect on the gathering was electric. Phryne felt a shiver of excitement run through them. Someone gasped.

‘Many spirits here,’ commented Bright Feather. ‘Tom wishes to speak to his mother. Is she here?’

The fat woman gave a sob of released tension and cried, ‘Oh, Tom, are you all right?’

Phryne was suddenly very sorry for the fat woman. The medium stirred a little and produced another voice: a young man.

‘Mother, I’m all right. It’s nice here. Don’t cry, Mother, don’t mourn. You’ll be with me soon.’

‘Oh, Tommy,’ the fat woman’s voice faltered. ‘Oh, my dear, my son! What’s it like there, where you are?’

‘All music and flowers, and Grandma is here. You remember Bill? He’s here too. Lots of friends. Flowers…’ The voice broke off. The fat woman clutched Phryne’s hand and wept freely.

Bright Feather was back.

‘An old man is calling for his wife. His hair is white. He is bent and walks with a stick. He says that his wife is called “Felicia.” Is Felicia here?’

Phryne wondered why Bright Feather did not know who was waiting for this contact with the Other World.

The widow said dully, ‘Is that you, Jack?’

‘Hello, Lis, I got through at last.’ The voice was creaky and disused. ‘Lots of friends here. I brought you a present.’

Eerily, noiselessly, a speaking trumpet rose into the air, and moved slowly along to the widow. It tipped, and something rattled down onto the table.

‘You lost it, didn’t you, Lis? Always were careless,’ creaked the old man’s voice. The widow began to cry.

‘Oh, Jack, it is you! I lost my wedding ring yesterday, I can’t think where.’

Phryne had a shrewd idea where she had lost it. Here in the Socialist Bookshop, when she came to buy her ticket. Fraudulent mediums had to get their effects where they found them.

‘What’s it like, Jack? Beyond the veil? Do you miss me?’

‘It’s nice. We sing all day, flowers, music. No work to do.’

‘Jack, Jack, did you meet Jesus?’

But Jack had gone. Something else was happening. A tambourine rose into the air and beat itself, jingling. The trumpet made a tootling noise. The curtains of the medium’s booth billowed under the influence of a sudden wind.

Phryne was impressed. Madame Stella must have worked for hours to produce these effects.

A man came through for the two clerks, their old friend who had been killed by an omnibus driven by a drunk.

‘’Ello, ’ello, ’ello, who do we have here? You never used to believe in all this stuff, lads!’

‘It’s him!’ exclaimed one of the clerks. ‘Say something to him.’

Phryne was irresistibly reminded of
Hamlet
. ‘It would be spoke to. Speak to it, Horatio!’ The young man floundered.

‘Are you all right, mate?’

‘Of course. Nice here. You’ll like it. Though I hope that driver burns in hell. He did for me, you know. Drunk as a Lord.’

‘I thought you were supposed to leave all anger behind,’ commented his friend, and Bright Feather took over again, cutting off the spirit’s attempt to disabuse his friends about anger which lasted longer than life.

‘He has much work to do before he can go on,’ he said sternly. ‘Many spirits cling to the passions of earth even though they are in the Happy Hunting Ground. I see the helpers coming to take him away. Now there is a young man. He passed on in a fire. He wants to speak to Casimir, Karl, Max, Nina and Maria. Are they here?’

‘We are here,’ said a solemn voice.

The medium’s voice changed again. Phryne reflected that she must be getting tired. The advent of this anarchist was heralded by the most spectacular effect yet seen. Out of the dark, a fine cheese-cloth flag floated, red, with the hammer and sickle of the Revolution. Phryne caught a corner of it in her mouth as it floated down over the table, soundless, and sniffed.

The medium’s saliva was rank upon it. Phryne spat it out.

The voice of this spirit was light. It was a young man’s voice and he spoke entirely in Latvian. Phryne’s attention wandered. She was still holding the hands of her neighbours. The fat woman sobbed gently. The foreign girl was listening hard.

One of the two young men took notes, the pencil scratching over the paper as he wrote down names and dates and, Phryne hoped, times and places. Occasionally the voice would say something which caused the Latvian-speaking part of the audience to gasp.

‘What did he say?’ Phryne whispered.

‘He is talking about how he died,’ the girl replied. ‘He was in a siege. He says that he shot himself before the house burned down. We did not know that.’

And you still don’t, thought Phryne. Bright Feather was back, and Phryne made ready to release her hands when an Irish voice said brightly, ‘Well, me old dear! Do you remember the old Baker Fox Able?’

Chapter Nine

‘Farewell, happy fields,

Where joy forever dwells! Hail, horrors! Hail!’

John Milton,
Paradise Lost

Phryne was frozen with shock. How could anyone have known about Baker Fox Able? It was the designation of the plane in which she had, as a girl of nineteen, flown to the Hebrides in the ’Flu Epidemic, taking Dr. MacMillan to the stricken crofts. Irish Michael had been the only man at the airfield when she had borrowed the plane. The voice was Michael’s voice, but he had been gone since 1921, when he had died in a flying accident.

‘What is your name?’ she faltered.

‘Why, Michael, me darlin’, Irish Michael as ever was. Nice to see you again, m’girl. You’re doing well.’

‘How did you die?’

‘My plane fell out of the air, the wings just ripped off her and down she went. But it’s all right being dead,
macushla
, don’t you be afraid of it. I should have passed on years ago, but I’m still too interested in the earth…’

‘Oh, Michael,’ said Phryne, at a loss for something to say.

‘So don’t you worry,
mo chroidhe
. Lots of fliers here. Keep your chin up,’ and he was gone.

The medium was stirring and opening her eyes. The lights were put on.

‘Isn’t that nice, someone came through for you.’ The fat woman dried her eyes. ‘Were you expecting him, dear?’

‘No,’ said a completely flabbergasted Phryne. ‘No, I wasn’t!’

Madame Stella gave Phryne a broad grin.

‘It came through, didn’t it? You knew him?’

‘Yes, I knew him.’

‘That’s how it is with the bloody spirits, dearie. They always can surprise you. Good night,’ she added. ‘There’s a cuppa downstairs if you want it, though if I was you I wouldn’t touch the stuff. So long. I’m going to have a rest. The spirits take it out of you.’

Phryne found her way to the stairs, and at the bottom five anarchists were awaiting her.

‘You are
la Chatte Noire
?’

‘I am.’ Phryne stared straight into the pale eyes of a young man. She pulled back the collar of the black dress and exhibited the tattoo. His eyes widened.

‘I am Karl Smoller. This is Nina Gardstein. Maria Aliyena. Max Dubof. Casimir Svars.’

Casimir was the assailant with the crippled genitals. Karl Smoller was tall and blond; so was Max. They were of a height, and could easily have been the gunmen. She put their ages at about twenty-five.

‘Come with us, so that we may discuss what is happening in Paris. We have not heard from the comrades for some time.’

‘Neither have I. It is years since I was in Paris. I am not in contact with the comrades there.’

Phryne came further down the stairs, flexing her wrist to bring the throwing knife out of its sheath and into the palm of her right hand.

The women interested her. Maria with her fall of dead black hair, and the younger and prettier Nina, who had curly hair which was loosed to froth over her shoulders. It was red, growing out of a brown dye. She wondered why anyone would se
ek to conceal such beautiful hair. Nina had a heart-shaped face and pink cheeks. Around her neck a ring swung on a piece of string.

Nina would bear watching.

‘Come with us,’ repeated Karl. ‘You have heard all of our plans, and must not be allowed to go free.’

‘All your plans? I don’t speak Latvian. I don’t know what the spirits said. You have already attempted to kidnap me. Ask Casimir what happens to the man who lays a hand on me.’

‘You are not a true anarchist,’ snapped Casimir. ‘No anarchist would harm a comrade.’

‘Rubbish! You are attempting to harm me, all right.’

Stand-off. They backed away, allowing the other sitters to get to the tea. Phryne did not like either Max or Karl. Both of them had the pale-blue eyes which Bert said denoted a dangerous man. Phryne could not tell if she was making her point with them.

‘We needed to speak with you.’

‘You are speaking with me now.’

Phryne side-stepped until she had her back to the wall. Max and Karl confronted her. They were both taller and stronger than she was.

‘You will come with us,’ said Karl softly, allowing her to see the barrel of a pistol which was visible through his fingers. Phryne tossed up. This at least would take her where she wanted to go: to their stronghold. Presumably they had a car. Too dangerous, she decided.

‘I will not come with you,’ she said, closing her hand around the haft of the knife. ‘And you will be sorry that you threatened me.’

The moment was perfectly poised. Phryne eyed her enemies. They looked competent and cold. She could not account for both of them before Karl could shoot.

‘Nina, are you there?’ A loud voice came from outside, the door shook under a heavy blow, and Nina Gardstein gasped with relief. She ran across in front of Karl and opened the door. A very large young man was about to knock again.

‘Well, hello, how nice to see you!’ exclaimed Phryne. ‘I’m Phryne Fisher.’

She stepped forward, using Nina for cover, and took the large young man’s arm.

‘I am going to buy you both a drink,’ she announced. ‘Come along.’

Nina and her companion followed as Phryne emerged into the street. Looking back, she saw Karl put the gun back in his pocket and grinned into his scowling face.

‘Another time, comrade.’ Then she asked the newcomer, ‘Who are you?’

The man, unexpectedly quick on the uptake, said easily, ‘Bill Cooper. I’m a cane cutter. Come down to Melbourne when the season’s over. How about that drink? And what were the commos going to do to you, eh?’

‘I don’t know, but I would not have enjoyed it. You walked in at exactly the right time. How long have you known Nina?’

‘I met him three months ago, and we are going to be married,’ announced Nina, exhibiting the ring strung around her neck. ‘I am going to live in Queensland where they will never find me.’

‘How can you stay with them? Aren’t you afraid?’

‘Me? Afraid? Of them?’ snapped Nina. ‘No! What can they do to me?’

‘They could kill you and fling the body into the river,’ said Phryne, grimly. ‘You have flouted them and by your agency I have got away.’

‘I keep telling her that,’ said the cane cutter. ‘But she won’t listen.’

‘I’ll just find my taxi, it should be around here…ah, Bert, hello, Cec. Take us to a civilized pub.’

‘You all right, Miss?’

‘I nearly wasn’t. This nice man rescued me. His name is Bill Cooper, and this is Nina Gardstein.’

Bert put the taxi at Spencer Street as one would put a horse at a fence.

‘The Esplanade, Miss?’

‘Yes, what a good idea.’

Phryne lit a cigarette. That had been a close shave.

Over a beer (Bill), a gin and tonic (Phryne) and a large straight brandy (Nina), Phryne scanned her companions. Nina was pretty, and when the dye was out of that red hair she would be prettier. Although she wore the accepted revolutionary female garb, she was curved in all the right places and would make a toothsome armful indeed. Compared with Maria’s fine-boned wire-thin intensity, Nina was plump and vulgar, but she had charm and a strong, sensual presence.

Bill Cooper the cane cutter was huge. He must have stood over six feet tall and was several axe handles across the shoulders. He had mild brown eyes like a cow and a closely cropped head of brown hair, bleached in some places by the sun. He was burned the colour of mahogany. His hands were as big as shovels. In his city clothes he appeared bigger than life and his suit, bought off-the-peg in some back-blocks general store, fitted only where it touched and stretched dangerously across his mighty thighs and his shoulders. Phryne summed him up as a lamb.

‘So you want to go back to the comrades, Nina?’

‘I have given my word, Bill. As soon as the action which is in hand is finished, then I shall go with you to Queensland and we shall be married and have many children.’

‘How old are you, Nina?’ Phryne asked.

‘I am seventeen,’ announced Nina, knocking back the brandy. ‘I was born in Australia, my mother was a comrade. She died three years ago—it was sad.’

‘Why aren’t you afraid? These are ruthless people.’

‘Ruthless, yes, but they will not harm me. They are afraid of my father.’

‘Who is your father?’

Nina shook her head and held out her glass. Bill Cooper put a big hand over the top of it.

‘Tha’s enough, m’girl. You’ll spoil your complexion. You see how it is, Miss Fisher. I come down to Melbourne last year and I went to a pub in Spencer Street and she was there. I knew right away that this was the girl for me. At first she pretended not to speak English, but I kept coming back until she talked to me and then we agreed to get married. She will come with me, to where there ain’t no anarchists. But they are bad men, Miss Fisher, bad men. I’ve met some strange chaps on the fields. These are bad. They have guns. And what use will it be to say you’ll marry me if you’re in prison?’

‘Will you wait for me, Bill?’ Nina leaned on his shoulder. The cane cutter smiled and his rough face softened. The end of his broken nose wiggled.

‘Of course I’ll wait for you, love.’

‘Nina, I must speak with you. Pay attention, love birds, and we may be able to get out of this with a whole skin. Tell me what was decided in the seance. Who came through?’

‘George Gardstein and Peter Piatkov, who is called Peter the Painter.’

‘George is some relation of yours?’

Nina chuckled, and took a sip of Bill’s beer.

‘He is dead,’ she said dismissively. ‘He died in the Siege of Sidney Street. He said that he was shot. This we did not know. It was thought that he died of burning.’

‘Do you believe in the spirits?’

‘Me? No. I know that these voices are not the spirits.’

‘How do you know?’

Nina shook her head again and laughed. Phryne persisted.

‘Well, what was decided? What did Gardstein say?’

‘It is a secret.’

‘I know that. Do you want to help me or not? Peter Smith is a friend of mine, you know. He is helping me.’

Nina froze with Bill’s beer glass in her hand.

‘You know Peter?’

‘I do.’ Phryne suppressed the information of how very well she knew him. ‘He is my friend.’

‘In that case I shall help you,’ decided Nina. Bill hugged her.

‘Good girl. You tell the lady what she wants to know. What is your interest, Miss?’

‘I was driving past the Victoria Dock when my windscreen was shot out. I found a young man dying on the wharf approach road. I was shot at. I want those who killed the young man.’

‘Poor Yourka. Maria is distraught. He was her cousin. He was a nice boy and the same age as me. All he did was to get drunk and boast. All young men get drunk and boast. It is part of being a young man. And they killed him.’

‘They shot at you, Miss?’

Bill Cooper was shocked, and called for another beer. Nina had absent-mindedly drunk his.

‘Yes. Here is my card. I am a private investigator. So I decided that since there are few enough beautiful young men in the world, and I had been shocked and my car damaged, I would find the murderers. I don’t want anyone else. Nina and Maria are safe with me. But Karl and Max have got to go.’

‘Mongrels,’ commented Bill Cooper. ‘You reckon you can get Nina out of all this without trouble with the cops, Miss?’

‘I reckon,’ agreed Phryne. ‘If she will help me.’

Bill Cooper looked at Nina. He was waiting for her response. Phryne thought of Sir Gawain giving the Loathly Damsel her choice.

‘I help you, of course.’ Nina gulped down Bill’s beer.

‘Good. What did the medium say?’

‘She say that the raid on the bank is to go ahead. She say that Thursday at two in the afternoon is the time. And that they should use the…the…’

‘Lewis gun,’ prompted Phryne, who had heard this English phrase dropped into the conversation with the spirits. Nina nodded.

‘It was Peter Piatkov—
le Pierrot l’Peint’e
—who was supposed to be speaking. He says that he died in the Siege of Sidney Street. It is all lies.’

‘All lies, is it? How do you know?’

‘The medium, she is a fraud. Only sometimes do real spirits come through. Mostly it is all lies.’

‘And you know that it is all lies,’ reasoned Phryne, ‘because you know that Peter Piatkov, Peter the Painter, did not die in Sidney Street…Oh, no, it’s not that.’ A light had burst on Phryne. ‘You know that it is all lies because Peter the Painter isn’t a spirit. You know that it is fraud because you know that Peter the Painter is alive!’

Nina gaped. Then she shook her head violently and shut her mouth as though her tongue had betrayed her.

‘I won’t tell anyone,’ promised Phryne. ‘Thursday of this week?’ Nina nodded.

‘Where?’

‘State Savings Bank of Victoria, corner of William Street and Collins Street,’ whispered Nina. ‘If they know about Peter the Painter, they will kill me.’

‘I heard it somewhere else, anyway,’ soothed Phryne. ‘Now. I expect that I will see you again. If you must go into that den of wolves, Nina, do be careful. I don’t want another death on my conscience. Now I’ve got to go.’

‘What’s your hurry, Miss?’ asked the cane cutter, affable with relief. ‘Sit down and have another drink.’

‘Can’t. If I hurry I might catch the end of the ballet. ’Bye.’ Phryne left the pub, collecting Bert and Cec on the way, and was driven to the Princess Theatre.

***

‘Ah,
le rideau
,’ she said, as the drop curtain depicting a self-satisfied magician reclining on clouds was lowered. ‘How has it been, ladies? Are you enjoying it?’

‘Phryne,’ observed Dr. MacMillan. ‘The dancers are excellent. Really, the elevation is remarkable for human muscles. It’s not that they leap so high, but seem to come down so slow.’

‘Oh, so pretty,’ sighed Jane. ‘Lovely!’

Phryne collared a chocolate from the box resting on Ruth’s lap. Dr. MacMillan was right. Nijinsky’s slow vault was famous. Petroushka quivered and screamed against his imprisonment. Gypsies danced. A bear lumbered across the stage. Snow began to fall. High on a roof, the spirit of the murdered puppet shrieked and writhed in anguished protest against ever having been brought straw-limbed and with human heart into a ruthless world.