Away With The Fairies (3 page)

‘Thanks very much, Mrs Needham,’ said Jack Robinson. ‘Now we’ll be a while, so perhaps we could see you on the way out?’

‘Very well, Detective Inspector.’ She was still a little stiff with a policeman who had dared to comment on her perfectly reasonable charges. ‘Oh, I’d forgotten—what about Bluebird?’

‘I’ll take care of him,’ said Jack Robinson.

‘Bluebird?’ asked Phryne, when Ping had been carried regally away. ‘I thought it was pink.’

‘Probably named after Maeterlinck’s book
The Blue Bird
,’ commented Robinson. ‘Very popular with sentimental people, I’m told. Well, Phryne? What do you think?’

‘Why don’t you go out and find a suitable spot to inter Bluebird, and leave me here?’ suggested Phryne. The policeman’s presence was offending the extreme femininity of the room. He couldn’t have been more out of place if he’d been an eight foot prizefighter smoking a cigar. Phryne sat down at the table where the previous tenant had been found dead, and looked at the room.

Fairies everywhere, yes, admitted. More pink than the mind could comfortably cope with, yes. Idly, Phryne wound up the musical box on the desk. It was surmounted by a celluloid fairy doll dressed in bright red gauze. It tinkled a tune which Phryne suspected was called ‘Fairy Bells’ and the fairy twirled around on her perch. The machinery gave a gasping wrench and died, leaving the fairy in mid-pirouette. Even the musical box missed its mistress, apparently. Very, very ornamental, if you liked that kind of thing. But underneath the tinsel, there lay the real woman. Who had she been, this Miss Lavender? Someone who really enjoyed ‘Fairy Bells’?

A woman with a good business, that was clear.

Phryne saw paintings in all stages, from preliminary sketch to varnished and ready to frame, and in all forms, each carefully labelled and piled into neat stacks. Underneath a wicker chair (pink) was a supply of brown paper, packing labels, cardboard and string. And, of course, pink tissue paper for the initial covering. A large pink-lidded basket disclosed water colours, brushes, paper and prepared stretchers. The desk drawers contained headed paper (pink) and a neat rose-coloured folder full of clipped bills, despatch notes, invoices and orders. Things were booming in the fairy business, it appeared. Phryne took a pink notepad and scribbled down some figures.

Good, but not good enough, not for Mrs Needham’s charges. Miss Lavender must have had some other source of income. Bank statements revealed that she was paid quite a solid amount every month from ‘Marshall and Co.’. Now what did Marshall and Co. do?

Further investigation revealed that Marshall and Co. had been paying Miss Lavender this sum every month for the whole length of her tenancy, and possibly before. The Commonweath Bank, which the departed might have patronised because it had a women’s banking room, reported that Miss Lavender drew cheques to Mrs Needham and to Cash for her own expenses, and had a balance of two hundred and seventy-five pounds eight shillings and threepence as at the end of the last calendar year.

A nice round sum, thought Phryne. Saving for her old age, possibly. She got up and inspected the kitchen. The bench was clean and dry and the sink looked unused. The rubbish bin contained several envelopes, an orange rind, some brown wrapping and string and a crumpled letter.

‘“You bitch you bitch I’ll finish you you bitch”,’ said Phryne aloud. ‘Not very informative. Common typing paper and—of course—not considerate enough to include a return address or a name. And you can’t get fingerprints off paper. I’ll have to have a look at the one which the deceased gave to Jack.’

Phryne stuck the letter in her pocket and looked into the bathroom. A small wash-place blushing with rosy tiles and even a pink WC. The bathroom cabinet contained aspirin, a prescription bottle of codeine marked ‘For severe headaches’ and the usual toiletries. Miss Lavender had had headaches. But a headache hadn’t killed her. Phryne noted the name of the prescribing doctor and continued.

Upstairs was a surprise. It wasn’t pink.

The bed was neatly made—had Miss Lavender not slept there, or did she make her own bed? It was covered with a spread of a quiet fawn shade. The brown and blue Persian carpet was patterned with small intricate lozenges. There were no decorations except for a few framed pictures of Highland scenes which had probably come with the apartment. Next to the bed was a polished mahogany box containing letters in various hands, all in slit envelopes with notes scribbled on them. A stenographer’s notebook and pencil lay on the bedside table beside a pile of mystery novels, a work of devotion and a half-empty glass of water. Beside that was a silver salver bearing an almost empty bottle of gin, a bottle in which tonic water had gone flat, a glass and a sliced lemon. That explained the faint under-scent of alcohol. Miss Lavender liked a private snootful, that was plain.

Phryne prowled. The relief to the eye of this quiet, respectable room, obviously inhabited by a woman of means and sober taste, was remarkable.

The wardrobe door was open. Phryne ran her hands through the respectable clothes, emptying pockets and handbags and wishing she had Dot with her. Dot was good at searching. Phryne piled all the crumpled handkerchiefs, bus tickets and chocolate wrappers into the mahogany box and carried it downstairs with her. There she was assaulted afresh by fairies, and swore that if one ever fluttered through her window one night she would swat it flat with considerable pleasure.

She stood at the door, watching Jack Robinson sitting at his ease on a cane chair, talking to a Latin lover sort of young man in flannel bags and a gardening apron. She turned back to look once more at Miss Lavender’s room. There was something glaringly wrong, and it itched at her consciousness. Fairies, indeed, they were enough to confuse the senses, and she had explained the scents—gin upstairs and oil sleeves over every lightbulb downstairs. The desk with its musical box, the piles of paintings ready to despatch, a large pink fairy puppet hanging from the staircase …

No. She couldn’t pin it down. Perhaps the letters would enlighten her.

As Phryne approached Jack Robinson rose and introduced the darkish, youngish man. ‘The Hon. Phryne Fisher, Mr Bell. I was just telling him how much I like his garden.’

‘Yes, it’s splendid,’ agreed Phryne warmly. ‘Very Italian. Boboli Gardens, hmm?’

Mr Bell ducked his head modestly. ‘I like pottering about,’ he said, as if confessing to a dreadful sin. ‘So peaceful, gardens.’ He lifted his face to the light and Phryne saw a puckered scar from a burn which rose from under his collar and disfigured his olive-skinned jaw and cheek. ‘After the war I went travelling. Just me. And when I came to Florence I fell ill. When I started to recover they took me every day to the Boboli. When I saw this sunken garden here I couldn’t resist it.’

‘You were a flier,’ said Phryne gently. She had seen such burns before.

‘Once,’ said Mr Bell. ‘Now I do a little stockbroking and a little antique trading and mow the grass.’

‘And that’s enough?’ murmured Phryne.

‘It has to be.’ He looked away from her and coughed. Then swallowed and went on in a louder, hasty voice, ‘Now, you wanted to ask me some questions, eh, Miss Fisher? How did I get on with Miss Lavender? I fought ferociously to keep her rotten gnomes out of my garden, but otherwise I had nothing to do with her.’

‘Did you quarrel with her recently?’ asked Phryne.

‘No, she gave up on the gnomes months ago. Mrs Needham told her that she could have the path up to Wee Nooke and I had the sunken garden and that was that. She seemed to accept it. You’d never know from looking at her that she had such rotten taste, you know. Quiet sort of woman, nicely dressed. But you never know with people.’

‘No,’ said Phryne curiously. ‘You never do. Who else lives here?’

‘There’s nine apartments,’ said Mr Bell, relaxing a little. I live in number six, over there. The building is a hollow square, you see. Main flats at the front, others down the sides. My door gives onto the garden. In five, right at the back behind me, is Mr Carroll. Something in the city, I believe. Goes out to boozy parties with his friends until all hours. Past me there’s Mrs Needham’s apartment. In front of her, in seven, there’s Mr and Mrs Opie and their child. Quite a nice child. Doesn’t hurt the flowers. He’s old money, I believe. They quarrel a lot. Ask them about Miss Lavender!’

‘Why?’ asked Jack Robinson.

‘They didn’t like her,’ said Mr Bell, suddenly becoming reticent. He was more nervous than seemed appropriate. ‘On the other side, behind the Garden Apartment, there’s Miss Gallagher and Miss Grigg in four. They’re journalists. Work for a magazine called
Women’s Choice
. Old-style suffragettes, that’s them, though don’t tell them I said that, please. Three is old Professor Keith and his niece. He’s retired. Nice old stick. Knows a lot about plants. Two is Mrs Gould, a widow. She’s just moved in so I don’t know much about her. Brought a lot of rather good furniture with her and a small painting of Venice which made my mouth water. I’d swear it was a Canaletto. School of, at least. And one is Mr and Mrs Hewland. Keep themselves to themselves. Very religious. Anything else?’ He gave Jack Robinson a cheeky grin.

‘I’m sure you’ve got lots of mulching to do,’ said Robinson gravely. ‘Always a lot to do in the garden at this time of year, Mr Bell.’

‘Right you are,’ said Mr Bell, and moved away. He glanced back at the box which Phryne held under her arm. He seemed about to ask something, then bit his lip and turned away, ostentatiously busying himself with clipping back some importunate nasturtiums. He took with him his smell of fear.

‘You’ve spoken to all the inhabitants, have you, Jack, dear?’

asked Phryne, sitting down cosily next to the policeman on his cane lounge chair and lighting a gasper. It had seemed like sacrilege to smoke in Miss Lavender’s apartment.

‘Constable’s doing it now,’ he said. ‘I’ll get the reports in due course. I don’t for a moment suppose that anyone will have noticed anything.’

‘I wonder how one gets to the tennis court?’ asked Phryne.

‘What?’ Jack Robinson was drowsing in the shade. Now he opened his eyes wide. Miss Fisher had a talent for non-sequitur.

‘Well, there’s no gate in this garden, it ends in the wall and one wouldn’t want to go out into the street in one’s tennis clothes, not in a respectable place like this, with a church on the corner. Stiff letters would be written to the municipal council.’

‘I didn’t think about it,’ murmured Jack Robinson.

‘There’s a couple of players coming back now,’ said Phryne. ‘Let’s watch.’

Two slim, flannel-clad figures were strolling across the lawn towards the garden wall. Just when it seemed that they were intending to climb over, they vanished, to reappear some minutes later in the walkway beside the main house.

‘There’s a tunnel,’ said Robinson.

‘Which means that, assuming someone came in and killed Miss Lavender by some means, they could have just wandered in through the tennis court and wandered out the same way,’ observed Phryne.

‘So it does,’ agreed Jack Robinson, dolefully. ‘That neat wire fence around the court wouldn’t keep out a determined cat. Just like I always say, Phryne. People put up a wall, a portcullis and a ferocious dog at their front door, and protect the back with a sign saying “Please do not burgle this house”. I don’t know. It’s enough to make a policeman discouraged. You know what thieves say, don’t you? When charged, they say, “He shouldn’t have left the keys in”, or “They shouldn’t have left the door unlocked”, and I have to agree. Well, I’d better give Mrs Needham the speech about “Securing your Home from Robbers” and she’ll tell me that they are all nice people around here and would never think of doing such a thing.’

‘Off you go,’ said Phryne. ‘And watch out for that Pekingese. It bites.’

‘Of course it does,’ said Robinson, gloomily.

He plodded away. Phryne breathed in the scent of newmown grass and allowed her mind to stray. Peking. Ping. Where was Lin Chung? On the sea? Even now returning with a large supply of new silks and stories to tell? The newspapers had not been encouraging about the situation in China since the death of Sun Yat Sen, Father of his People. Generalissimo Chiang Kai Shek had managed to hold on to some cities, but the Japanese were in Manchuria, the Russians were threatening at several points, and the rest of China had reverted to the rule of the warlords, which it always did lacking a strong central government. Palaces had been sacked. Foreign delegations had been assailed, some beseiged, and most were leaving, withdrawing into treaty harbours or across to Hong Kong, taking away the last independent witnesses of slaughter and tyranny. Nuns had been murdered. Hundreds of people had been killed and thousands were fleeing across the face of that huge continent, seeking safety and a small plot in which to grow some rice.

Not an unreasonable quest, but perhaps impossible. And somewhere in that slew of refuge-seekers, murderers, looters and soldiers was the irreplaceable Lin Chung. It was not a comforting thought. He was certainly Chinese by race, but he had been brought up in the West. How current was his slang? How reliable were his relatives? And where was SS
Gold
Mountain
? Phryne had failed to find it in the shipping lists. It looked like she really was going to have to seek an audience with Madame Lin.

She might have decided that it was time Lin married a suitable girl and sent him to the Four Counties to contract for a nice unspoiled virgin cousin. Probably, Phryne thought vengefully, with bound feet. That would make sure she didn’t develop any life independent of Madame Lin.

‘Pretty lady!’ announced a voice at Phryne’s knee. She opened her eyes.

A small child in a sailor hat which had extinguished all its features like a candle-snuffer was presenting her with a paper bag. Phryne took it gingerly.

‘Three toffees,’ said the child. It might have been male or female. The eyes were very bright. A small hand lay on Phryne’s skirt like a pink, sticky starfish.

‘Yes,’ Phryne agreed. ‘There are three.’

‘Two for me,’ said the child. ‘One for you.’