Death Before Wicket: Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries 10 (28 page)

Phryne remembered that she lived by the shore and had children three and four, having skipped to the rhyme herself. She was disposed to like Glebe. Glebe Point Road was broad (for Sydney) and pleasant. The poplar trees were in full leaf, lending a Parisian air to it. Glebe was gently crumbling into the sea, but it retained some of its original gracious tone, like an old woman in mended lace gloves, offering cheap tea in a bone china cup. We might be poor, said Glebe, but we’ll be genteel or die.

What on earth was the Dean doing here? Phryne said as much.

‘I don’t know,’ confessed Brazell. ‘He used to live in Bellevue. Glebe is not his s-sort of place at all, one would have thought.’

‘Onward,’ said Phryne, straightening her hat.

Mrs Gorman was not pleased to see visitors. However, social duty was social duty, and she escorted her unwelcome guests into a parlour which was crammed with furniture.

‘I will fetch the Dean,’ she told them, and stalked away, closing the door with a suspicion of a slam. It raised dust and Phryne sneezed.

‘I can think of more interesting ways to s-spend an afternoon, Phryne,’ suggested Edmund Brazell. Phryne could also. She lifted the hand which he had slid onto her knee and held it for a moment.

‘This is the last one,’ she told him. ‘Then we can go back to the hotel.’

Brazell brightened. After an uncomfortably long interval, Mrs Gorman swept back into the room, carrying a tray on which reposed a Crown Derby teapot, sugar basin and milk jug, four teacups, silver spoons, and a silver strainer. She set it down briskly on a large dining table.

‘My maid left this morning without notice,’ she stated. ‘It’s so hard to get reasonable servants these days! Milk and sugar, Miss Fisher? My husband will be here shortly. It is his practice to spend Sunday afternoon writing letters.’

Which was another name for lying back in an easy chair and catching forty winks, Phryne thought, as Mr Gorman stumped into the parlour and accepted a cup of tea. ‘Well, Brazell, how’s the investigation?’ he asked. ‘You seem to have wormed your way into Miss Fisher’s confidence all right.’

He spoke over Phryne’s head, as though she was not there. Phryne did not take offence, but watched Mrs Gorman. She did not blink.

‘Oh, I wouldn’t s-say “wormed”, Dean. It is the duty of a gentleman to assist the Fair S-Sex in any difficulty,’ said Brazell, who had been playing academic politics for many years.

‘Duty of a gentleman!’ sneered the Dean. ‘Who are you to talk to me about the duties of a gentleman? Lot of gentlemen back at your college, are there?’

‘A c-certain number.’ Edmund was retaining his calmness rather well, Phryne thought. She intervened before the generalities became personal.

‘I’m so sorry, Mrs Gorman, that you should have lost your garnets in this burglary,’ she assured her. ‘I’m doing my best to retrieve them for you.’

Mrs Gorman looked at Phryne. She was a large woman in a punitive corset. Her hair was dragged back into a bun and skewered with two vengeful hairpins. She was dressed in dull purple, which accentuated the red patches of her complexion. A thick line divided her brows. Prone to headaches, Phryne thought, or short-sighted. Of course, it could just be temper.

‘Thank you, Miss Fisher,’ she said.

‘Were they family heirlooms?’ asked Phryne.

‘They belonged to my mother.’ Mrs Gorman was no longer even looking in Phryne’s direction, but was watching her husband. ‘But you do not need to trouble yourself. They were insured.’

‘If the Dean would care to come to the faculty office at seven o’clock tonight,’ Phryne told her, ‘the matter will be cleared up for good.’

‘He’ll be there,’ said Mrs Gorman.

‘And the move must have upset you,’ insinuated Phryne. ‘Such a dreadful undertaking, moving a whole house.’

‘Terrible,’ agreed Mrs Gorman. ‘Trying to supervise the carriers, all careless fellows, sorting out all the china and glass, packing everything so carefully that even if they drop it it won’t break. Then the mess! And the dust! I was quite prostrate by the end of it.’

‘I’m sure,’ sympathised Phryne. ‘Are you going to cut down your curtains?’

‘No, I won’t cut that, it’s good velvet. I suppose you have a modern house, Miss Fisher, all shiny surfaces?’

‘No, I’ve bought an old terrace house in St Kilda,’ replied Phryne. ‘All mod cons, of course, but otherwise left just as it was. Plaster is the chief problem, I believe,’ said Phryne, who had given the task to a builder and let him get on with it.

‘Oh, yes, some of the plaster here is so fragile that it won’t hold a nail. I’ll have to get a man in,’ said Mrs Gorman, who clearly didn’t know a lot about it either. ‘And me with no help…’

‘Since your maid left,’ prompted Phryne.

‘Eh? Oh, yes. Of course. Since the maid left.’

Gorman and Brazell had not spoken to each other. Phryne finished her tea and beguiled another quarter of an hour talking to Mrs Gorman about the difficulties of adapting furniture to smaller houses before she allowed Edmund to escort her to the door.

‘Phew,’ he said, shutting the taxi door.

‘Phew.’ Phryne leaned her head on his shoulder and he put an arm around her.

‘Where now, lady?’ asked the driver.

‘Back to the Hotel Australia,’ said Phryne. ‘And don’t spare the horses.’

‘Right,’ said the driver, seeing an unusually large tip evaporate unless he got back onto the street soon. The taxi roared away.

Dot had told the whole rosary twice. For hours the only sound had been the click of the beads as she passed a finger and thumb over the large Pater and the intervening Aves and the final Gloria. The Glorious Mysteries had passed under her busy fingers. The Resurrection. The Ascension. The Descent of the Holy Spirit. The Crowning of the Queen of Heaven.

‘O Immaculate Heart of Mary, Queen of Heaven and Earth, and tender Mother of man, in accordance with thy ardent wish made at Fatima, I consecrate to thee myself, my brethren, this poor suffering boy, my country, and the whole human race.
Gloria Patri, et Filis, et Spiritui Sancto
, said Dot, and let the rosary drop into her lap.

Joss Hart appeared to be asleep. On one side of him Mrs Hart was sleeping with her head on the bed. On the other side Viv Hart stared into the darkness.

‘I didn’t treat her that bad, did I?’ he asked.

Dot felt that she should reply. ‘She thinks you did,’ she said.

‘She was a wayward, flighty piece,’ he said.

‘Perhaps she was,’ said Dot.

‘Now the boy knows she’s alive, what am I going to do with her?’ he demanded.

‘You don’t have to do anything with her,’ Dot informed him. ‘Now, I got to go. Can you keep the peace, Mr Hart, or do I need to send a porter in?’

‘Joss is going to die, isn’t he?’ asked Viv Hart.

‘I don’t know,’ said Dot. ‘Doctor said he’d be along in the morning with that new antivenene they’ve been trying. And it’s morning now. That’s why I have to go. I’ll be back as soon as I can,’ said Dot.

Hart laid his head down on the bed and closed his eyes.

Dorothy Williams took the first tram to the Women’s Prison and joined the crowd waiting at the gates. Six o’clock in the morning, exactly, was the release time for prisoners. The iron gate creaked open at six on the dot, and released into the street a chattering mob of dishevelled, shrilling women and a plump figure in an evening dress. Mrs James Thompson was wearing what she had been wearing when she was picked up in the sweep on Palmer Street. It was a nice dress, apricot silk, but noticeable on the street at that hour. Joan’s face was drawn, her hair was dirty, and her fingernails were in mourning for her lost virtue. The prison had given her back her possessions in a paper bag, and she was scrabbling through it for tuppence tram fare, wondering how on earth she was going to get home without everyone in the world knowing where she had come from. Sharkbait would come with the car to pick up the other girls, but Joan knew what her husband would say if she was delivered home in a Bentley.

‘Joanie!’ exclaimed Dot, pushing through the crowd.

‘Dot?’ Joan appeared bewildered. ‘So you got here, after all. Who told you I was in this place? Does Jim know? Are the children all right?’ she demanded, grabbing her sister’s arm.

‘Mrs Ryan is minding them, but you might have a bit of difficulty with Jim. He…well, the night I saw him, he was pretty crook,’ said Dot.

‘Men,’ said Joan. Dot nodded.

‘I’ll call us a taxi and we can go back to the hotel. You need a bath and some clothes. You can borrow some of mine. Come along, Joanie.’ Dot guided her sister into the street and summoned a cruising cab. She gave the address, glared the driver into silence and ushered Joan into the hotel and, finally, into Phryne’s bath with a good deal of Phryne’s lavender bath salts.

Joan sank herself abruptly underwater and rose to scrub her body until her fair skin flushed red, as though she was scrubbing off something more than ordinary dirt. Then she selected a severe suit from her sister’s wardrobe while Dot read a note which had been left on the hall table.

Joan wondered what her sister was doing as Dot tiptoed to the bedroom door, opened it a crack, seemed to be counting, then screwed up the note and dropped it into the wastepaper basket.

‘Well, she’s got herself out of trouble again,’ Joan heard Dot say with quiet pride. ‘Joanie? You decent?’ Dot wondered to hear a shake in her sister’s voice as Joan assured her that she was, indeed, decent.

‘I know what you’ve been doing,’ declared Dot, as Joan tried on a pair of low-heeled black shoes.

‘Do you?’ Joan seized a towel and muffled her head in it, sick with apprehension. Dot had always been the good girl. God knew what she’d say about this escapade. Or what she’d tell Mum, who’d brought them up to be children of Mary.

‘Yes, Mrs Hart told me. Dolly Hart.’

Joan’s astonished face emerged from the towel. ‘Dot, how on earth did you meet Dolly Hart? For a good girl you’ve got some strange friends!’

‘She came to bring me your message. She told me you’ve been teaching deportment to Tillie’s girls. She’s sitting with her son at the University infirmary. It’s a long story,’ Dot informed her sister. ‘You look real nice, Joan.’

Joan Hart looked at herself in the mirror. In Dot’s well-made black suit and hat she did indeed look respectable and smart— an improvement on her previous appearance. It was all right. No one knew about those men in the alley. Dolly Hart hadn’t told Dot. She was a good woman, Dolly was. Relief flooded through Joan, strengthening her stance. Her drying hair fluffed around her shoulders. No one can see it in my eyes, she thought. It didn’t happen. I’m just a teacher of deportment. And I might—by the grace of God—have been saved. Saved for my children. Even for my husband. I must have loved him once, I suppose, and I wouldn’t want to hurt him. Joan vowed a candle every week to the Mother of Mercy and took a deep breath.

‘Come on,’ she told Dot. ‘I want to see the children. And Jim,’ she added. ‘You stay out of the way if he cuts up rough, Dot.’

‘I’m not afraid of him,’ said Dot, and she wasn’t.

Jim Thompson had been informed of his wife’s situation through a message delivered by a huge bloke with red hair and the calm, considered tone of the real hard man. It had told him that Joan was in jail, that she was morally blameless, and that his business still existed because he had a wife of unparalleled refinement and delicacy. It also told him that if he so much as spoke a cross word to Joan, Sharkbait would reduce him to the small pounded up remains of those who crossed Tillie Devine, an offence which no one committed twice because after committing it once they no longer had the capacity for rational thought or, indeed, any thought at all. Jim Thompson knew that previous persons had been foolish enough to disobey Tillie’s edicts and that they had regretted it for as long as it took for them to say their last words, which were along the lines of ‘Ooh! Look at all those pretty fishes!’

But he could not have been said to be happy. A graduate of the school of What Will the Other Blokes Think, Jim Thompson was an ironmonger with a position to keep up. This could not be done if his wife was associated with Tillie Devine.

He was hammering listlessly at a piece of copper destined to be house numbers when his mate Tom came in, joined by Crosscut Smith, Curly and Big Josh. He stared at them glumly.

‘Heard that Joanie’s coming back,’ said Crosscut. ‘Bit of luck, that.’

‘Luck? Findin’ out me missus is a pro?’ growled Thompson.

‘She ain’t a pro, yer know she ain’t. Always been straight as a wire, your Joanie. She’s a teacher. Yer wouldn’t grizzle if she was teaching dancin’ to schoolgirls,’ put in Tom. ‘I reckon it’s a good deal.’

‘Yair?’ asked Jim Thompson, looking like an older and grimier version of the Dawn of Hope, a lithograph which his mother had placed over the piano.

‘Too right,’ said Curly. ‘I wish my missus’d find a job. Things is crook, and what are we goin’ to do when the bridge is finished?’

‘Yair,’ said Big Josh, who didn’t talk much. ‘Joanie be home soon?’

‘Yair, must be. Her sister was pickin’ her up,’ said Jim Thompson, who had been on the receiving end of a telephone call from Dot to the corner shop. He hadn’t enjoyed Dot’s warnings much either. But if his mates didn’t mind, why should he? ‘I’d better go and get the tea on,’ he said, and went into the house.