Mrs Freeman, it appeared, had not moved since Phryne had last seen her. She was still lying on the couch with a maid in attendance and still weeping. She might not have a heart, thought Phryne, but her tear ducts worked overtime.
‘Miss Fisher, they have arrested my son!’
‘Which one?’ asked Phryne nastily, sitting down on the edge of the couch. ‘Enough hysterics, Mrs Freeman, you weary me and you do not impress me. A woman with a heart as hard as yours should not shriek. It does not convince. Charles will be freed as soon as I solve the murder. Now, do you want me to continue to try to find your other, shamefully neglected, son—or would you like me to resign the case? There are two other lady detectives practising in Melbourne, and they would be pleased to take up the search.’
Mrs Freeman was silent for a moment. Phryne wondered whether she was gathering strength to have her impudent visitor flung out of the house, but she spoke quietly.
‘Please continue. I do not know why I trust you, Miss Fisher, for you are the rudest young woman I have ever had the misfortune to encounter, but I do.’
‘Very well. Have you any clue as to where Victor might be? When did he return to Melbourne, where from, and with what injuries?’
‘He was sent home from England in September 1916. He had been in Lady Montague’s Rest Hospital but they said that he could not be cured. He was blind for three months, apparently. After Gallipoli he was at a place in France that they made a song about. What was it . . . ?’ She began to hum, and then to sing softly in a dry, tuneless soprano, ‘Mademoiselle from Armentiéres, that was it. A battle at a place called Poziéres.’
So Bert was right, thought Phryne, that was where poor Victor had lost his marbles. Poziéres. ‘Lots of us copped it,’ Bert had said.
‘Then there was a terrible dilemma, you see. He was, well, he was nervy and jumpy and rude and couldn’t sleep. I could not let poor Charles see his heroic brother reduced to screaming like a fishwife. He really was impossible, Miss Fisher. And he’d been such a quiet boy, fond of music and riding. So I told Charles that Victor was dead. That solicitor chap has been most impudent about it. He said that to say someone is dead when you know they’re not is fraud, and that I was trying to make him commit a fraud on the Supreme Court. I wouldn’t think of such a thing. Anyway, Victor’s been missing for eight years. He can be declared dead. The solicitor had the nerve to tell me I shouldn’t look for Victor if I want to put in an application for that. But then if Victor is declared dead and didn’t ever marry, and I’m sure he didn’t, then the other part of the property doesn’t go to Charles, it goes into—what was the word?—residue, that’s it. And my stupid husband left the residue of his estate to the Royal Children’s Hospital. It means I don’t get anything but my jewellery and the clothes I stand up in!’
Some reason for the hysteria was now apparent.
‘But if you find that Victor is really dead, the house comes to me, because he made an army will which left me all his property, the dear boy.’
Phryne was nauseated, but had to keep listening.
‘Anyway,’ said Mrs Freeman, dragging herself away from the iniquities of the law, ‘Victor was so difficult that I moved out while he was in the house. My husband always did indulge him. I was staying at the Brighton Hotel when I got a telegram saying that I could return. “When I got home my husband told me that Victor had decided to go into the bush, where it was quiet, because he couldn’t bear noise. He’d been gone a whole day, never even said goodbye to me. I was so hurt. His own mother! How could he just go off like that, leave me without a word? I never knew where he went, and I never heard from him again. My husband sent a cheque every year to a place called Talbotville, in Gippsland somewhere. But he never said, he never told me, that he had heard from Victor. After I spoke with you the other day I searched my husband’s desk; all the legal papers were gone, of course, but I found this. And I never even suspected.’
She produced a bundle of letters, tied with tape. They had been read and reread and then lovingly folded into their original creases and stacked in order of receipt.
‘Wicked man!’ Mrs Freeman fanned herself vigorously. ‘I never knew that Victor wrote to him. He never replied to
me.
And I wrote to him every year!’
‘Can I take these?’ asked Phryne. ‘Have you read them?’
‘No. Well, only the first one. He says such things—I couldn’t bear to read any more. Take them with pleasure.’
Phryne, who did not feel that she could bear much more of Mrs Freeman’s company, stood up, tucking the bundle of letters into her bag.
‘And you will get Charles for me, you will get him back?’ the woman pleaded, snatching Phryne’s hand.
Phryne detached herself, agreed that she would restore Charles as soon as she could, and left.
In the park Phryne stopped to watch children playing with an airgun. It was probable that airguns, like dancing, singing, bicycle riding, ball games, and any other form of amusement which might appear dangerous to the local government, were banned in the park. Phryne hoped they would not be caught. Pfft! went the gun, itching at her memory. There were four children: a plump, bossy, blonde one; a thin dark one; a strong-willed girl with chestnut hair; and a small, freckled red-headed kid. They quarrelled as though it was their standard method of communication.
‘My shot! My shot!’ bellowed the small boy as his dark-haired sister snatched the rifle. Despite pulling her face into a fearful grimace, closing both eyes, and aiming the barrel with wobbling hands, she was by far the best shot.
‘Pfft!’ ‘Oh, well done!’ said the plump blonde. ‘Bull’s-eye! I don’t know why you can shoot better than all the rest of us,’ she commented, taking the gun away and giving it to the small girl. ‘You’re not supposed to close both eyes, you know. How can you see the target? Your turn, Anne.’ The small girl butted the gun firmly against a strong shoulder, aimed with care, and hit the edge of the target.
‘It fluttered,’ she complained.
Phryne sighted a keeper looming through the trees.
‘Run, kids, it’s the keeper,’ she called, and they gathered up the gun, a fallen sunhat, and the paper target, and ran for their lives.
Phryne started the Hispano-Suiza and went home for a soothing lunch and a read of Victor’s letters.
Tintagel Stone had rung to invite Phryne to another jazz club; she left word that she accepted.
Lunch was a grilled whiting with salad and boiled new potatoes, a Charlotte Russe, and several cups of strong coffee. There was something wrong, she realised, either with Mrs Freeman’s legal advisor, or the way she had interpreted his advice. It would make no difference to Victor’s inheritance if he were presumed dead or really dead. But the law being such a minefield, Phryne rang Jilly at her office to check. She hoped that Jilly had forgiven her for losing her the big murder trial in which she had been convinced she would make her mark.
‘Phryne, how delightful to hear your voice. Sorry to hurry you, old girl, but I’ve got a bail coming on at Russell Street in an hour and I’m not only making bricks without straw, but without mud, mortar, and water, as well. What can I do for you?’
Phryne explained her problem.
‘No, she must have misheard the solicitor. There’s no difference between being presumed dead and being dead. I mean, no difference in law. I suppose there is a difference if you are still alive on a desert island somewhere and the Crown is giving your estate away.’
‘So, in terms of inheritance, you might as well be presumed dead as dead?’
‘Exactly so, dear Phryne. Now if there’s nothing else I really must go. I just can’t imagine how I’m going to get this client out of the watch-house, I really can’t.’
Jilly rang off. Phryne took her coffee and the letters to her own sitting room on the first floor. The house was quiet. Mr and Mrs Butler were having their afternoon rest. Dot was out visiting her sister, who had just had her first baby. The letters made a loud crackle as Phryne carefully unfolded them.
There were eight in total, all written in a laborious but educated hand, in very black ink on ordinary stationer’s paper. They were very neat; not a blot or a splatter on any of them. Victor had not gone so far as to give any permanent address.
The first letter was postmarked ‘Dargo’ and was dated 29th March 1917. It was headed ‘Railway Hotel, Bairnsdale’ and read:
Dear Dad,
I got here all right. I’m going to have to go right out into the bush to find some quiet. It’s too noisy even here. There’s a bloke taking stores to Dargo. He says I can go with him. I think I’ll do that. Still can’t sleep. I’m sorry I couldn’t stay at home, Dad. Mum never let up nagging me, and screaming and fainting, and I couldn’t stand it. Even when she left, I still felt like she’d come back any minute. I’ll let you know when I stop somewhere. somewhere.
Vic
The next was headed ‘Commercial Hotel, Dargo’, dated 15th April 1917.
Dear Dad,
Thanks for the cheque. I can’t get out into the real mountains this late, the snowline is coming down, but I’m going out to a place called Talbotville, where there is a post office, and I can take a packhorse further. Still can’t sleep, but there’s a lot worse off than me.
Vic
The next one was addressed from ‘The Pub, Talbotville’ and read:
Dear Dad,
I really like this place, it’s so small. The local blokes were a bit stand-offish till they gave me a mean devil of a stockhorse to ride and I stuck on good-o. I’ve been out on a long ride with pack-horses to deliver stores to the outliers up on the high plains; all sorts of things, tins and even a stove! And a cross-cut saw! You can imagine how the neddy took to that! I think I’ll stay here.
Vic
There had been a long gap before the fourth letter. As Phryne unfolded it a small pressed flower, which might have originally been pink, fell out. It had a faint scent of eucalypt. ‘MacAlister Springs’ was the superscription.
Dear Dad,
Thanks for the cheque. I’m sorry it’s been so long since I wrote. As soon as the snow retreated, I bought a tent and some gear from Dargo and went wandering. It’s so quiet here. The mountains are grand. I sleep like a log. I can’t believe it’s been a year since I came home. I’m much better. The leaseholder says I can stay here as long as I don’t start a business, and there’s no fear of that. Charlie is the businessman. I got a letter from Mum and she says she’s told Charlie I’m dead. Perhaps it’s better. I’ve got a dog and a horse and all the silence in the world. I’m learning how to build a slab hut.
Vic
Phryne drank her coffee thoughtfully. She had never been out into the real bush, only on church picnics to the wilds of Werribee as a small child, before she went to England. She wondered what solace a shell-shocked boy, living skin-to-lousy-skin with other humans for years, would find in high mountains and silence and loneliness. Phryne decided that she was too gregarious to stand it.
‘MacAlister Springs’, read the next, dated 2nd December 1918.
Dear Dad,
They tell me in Talbotville it’s all over. The Great War, I mean. I can’t feel any triumph, only relief, and regret for all my mates that didn’t come home. We left them, Dad, on that cliff at Gallipoli and in the mud at Poziéres. I was lucky, compared to them. Pve got a horse (Lucky) and a dog (Mack). I finished my hut for last winter. If I run out of meat there’s plenty of bunnies. I found a blackbird with a broken wing and he’s staying too, and I share my breakfast with the kookaburras. At mustering time I help with the strayed beasts. Don’t keep asking me to come back, Dad. I’m happy. I couldn’t stand Mum and the city again. Besides, I’m dead.
Vic
Letter number five was dated 11th November 1919 and just said:
I got the cheque, Dad. I can’t help remembering them. One of the boys at Talbotville asked me what it was like. I couldn’t tell him. It was a bad winter. Can you send me a parcel of books? Not adventures. My own books from when I was a kid;
The Wind in the Willows,
and
Treasure
Island
and all those. I can order the others from Melbourne.
There were still three letters left, and Phryne had been told that Victor had not been heard of since 1920. The sixth was dated 26th September 1920 and said:
Dear Dad,
I’m onto a bit of work here, so you don’t need to send any more money. I can’t come home, Dad. Here is my home. I would miss the great silence too much. Thanks for the books. They arrived all in order.
Vic
Number seven included another flower. The faded yellow petals crackled, although Phryne handled it as gently as she could. It was headed ‘MacAlister Springs’ and dated 12th January 1921.
Dear Dad,
Happy new year. I’m getting on bonzer. Thanks for the chocolates and biscuits and stuff. I can get rough supplies from Talbotville but the shop doesn’t go as far as chocolates! Thanks. I can’t come home, Dad, really. I can’t. This year the forest is as dry as a chip, and we are all watching for the smoke.