Death at Victoria Dock (6 page)

‘Well, it’s a good play. You should enjoy it.’

‘Mmm, yes, but you’d think that they would have taught him to spell. How now, varlet,’ said Jane. ‘Give Miss Phryne’s shawl back and let’s go and read it.’

Ruth hung the shawl carefully over the back of a chair and followed Jane into their room to continue her attack on England’s Greatest Poet with some signs of enthusiasm.

***

The girls, whose appetite was prodigious, dined with Phryne at
six o’clock on
Soupe Provençale
, veal cutlets and fruit. Phryne was eagerly anticipating the advent of apricots and nectarines and her special favourite, white peaches, which spring was promising. Ruth and Jane took their baths as ordered and retired to their room, where Phryne could hear the buzz of Shakespearean dialogue with occasional breaks while they puzzled out what he meant.

‘But why is he jealous of her? She hasn’t done anything!’ protested Ruth. Jane murmured some reply and Phryne took herself upstairs to resume study of her shocker until Peter Smith should arrive.

Chapter Six

‘Tout passe, tout casse, tout lasse’

(Everything passes, everything breaks, everything palls)

French proverb

Phryne flung the detective story against the wall. She had guessed the murderer in the third chapter and was not patient. She struck the author’s name from her list of books to be ordered just as she heard ‘Mr. Peter Smith’ announced. Dot brought him up to the salon, where he asked for whisky and water and sank into one of the plush chairs.

Phryne dismissed Dot with a nod, but her maid drew her to the door.

‘Constable Collins has called, Miss. I’m going to the Latvian Club with him on Wednesday night.’

‘Good. I’m taking the girls to the ballet on Tuesday, so I’ll be home if you need me. Not that you are likely to…’

Dot smiled. She was sure that she could handle Hugh Collins, but Latvians, being foreign and possibly dangerous, were another matter.

Dot closed the door and Phryne poured a stiff whisky for her guest.

‘There is something going on,’ announced Peter Smith. ‘And I do not like it, because I cannot find out what it is.’

His English was perfect, the accent blameless, but when excited his diction was too precise. He gulped down the drink and held out his glass for another. Phryne gave him unlabelled. There was no point in wasting Laphroaig on a distracted man.

‘What is going on? You mean the plot to kill Stalin?’

‘No, no, I already knew about that. You have stumbled on something nasty, Miss Fisher.’

‘Call me Phryne, please. And I can hardly be said to have been anything but an innocent bystander. They did not know that I was coming, did they? I did not know myself. Have some more whisky and take off your coat. It is better to be comfortable if you are worried.’

Peter Smith cast Phryne an appreciative smile, took off his coat revealing a collarless white shirt, and sipped at the second whisky.

He had dark-blue eyes and hollows under them that spoke of past privation. As he rolled up his sleeves she noticed several long-healed scars ringing his wrists. He smiled.

‘When they caught me, the Russians, they put me in shackles, because they thought that I was a dangerous revolutionary. Which, of course, I was,’ he added complacently. ‘And they did not take them off for three months. I was fixed to a wall and I slumped into the chains when I slept; thus I was galled.’

‘When was that?’

‘A long time ago.’ He sipped his drink. ‘And in another country. My past does not matter in this clean land, which has no heavy burden of history to deform the backs of its children. That is why I came here.’

‘When did you come here?’

‘In the year 10 or so, I believe. I have worked on the wharf since then, which is a good place to work, being well paid and independent. I do not wish to be any man’s serf.’

‘One thing you can say about wharfies, they are not serfs,’ agreed Phryne. ‘I have friends working there.’

‘Have you, indeed? Strange friends for a lady.’

‘I’m getting sick of this!’ exclaimed Phryne. ‘Listen, I was not born to the purple, you know. I lived in the streets and starved when I had to, and this aristocratic layer is mere overlay on an impeccable working-class base. Get that clear, if you please. I am rich, and I enjoy money but, like Queen Elizabeth, cast me out into any part of my realm in my petticoat and I would be what I am. Do I make myself clear?’

She was expecting him to be affronted. She was not expecting him to put down his glass, drop to one knee, and kiss her hand with great respect.

‘Pardon, madam, pardon. I have been guilty of
classisme
. You are a unique phenomenon, Phryne. I have never met anyone like you before, and I have met princesses in my time.’

‘So have I.’ Phryne remembered the Princesse de Grasse and chuckled. She occasionally regretted the loss of the princesse, who had gone back to Paris, taking her grandson the beautiful Sasha with her, leaving Phryne without a lover for at least ten minutes. Phryne restored Peter Smith to his chair and asked if he had eaten.

It appeared he had not. Phryne telephoned to Mrs. Butler for sandwiches and the leftovers from the girls’ high tea. A tray was delivered by Mr. Butler. Peter Smith ate as though he was famished.

Poor, Phryne thought, though that might be from political conviction rather than lack of coin. He was not precisely thin, few wharfies were thin, because of the muscle they built up by carrying hundred-weights of wheat in an eight-hour shift, also the beer which they consumed in great quantities to dilute the dust. Peter Smith absorbed four sandwiches, eight little cakes and the remaining slice of chocolate cake, washed down with another whisky, then sat back and sighed. Some of the tension was gone from his face.

He really was very good looking. High cheekbones, slightly slanted eyes with dark lashes, and finely drawn mouth and chin. His hair was cut brutally short, dark brown streaked with grey.

‘There. Isn’t that better? Being frightened is one thing; being hungry and frightened is another.’

‘Madam, all my life I seem to have been hungry and frightened.’ He settled deeper into the plush chair and stretched his legs. Phryne said nothing, and without cue, Peter Smith began to talk.

‘That is what is good about Australia. There is so little history. Regrettably we refuge-seekers have brought it with us. All our pain, all our grudges, all our atrocities. One does not forget murder, assassination, the death of children. It is impossible. And then, we clump together. It is sweet to hear your own language, your own idioms; to recall the old country. With this, however, comes the old feuds. It is ridiculous to continue our emnities here, but we continue them. Just today I spoke to three people, on whom the claws of the old battles are still fixed. It makes me very sad to think of them. Poor men. They have no chance of succeeding; and they are cowards, also. They should fight their battle in Latvia, not here. What use can a bank robbery here have for the fall of Stalin? How long can such a man as Stalin last, anyway? So, I spoke to all of them, attempting to ascertain the name and allegiance of the young man who was killed in madam’s presence. I do not know his name, but a woman will go and identify him tomorrow, at Russell Street, and if madam were to befriend her…’

‘Madam takes your point.’

‘Good.’

‘However, there is something else.’ Phryne sat down on the hearthrug at Peter’s feet, looking up at the strained face.

‘Yes,’ admitted the man. ‘There is something else. I will tell you, Phryne. I trust you.’

‘So you may.’

Peter Smith looked down into Phryne’s countenance, then up into the pink mirror which showed him his own face wreathed in green ceramic vine leaves. Even in the salons of the
Grandes Horizontales
in Paris where he had once been as a young and disapproving revolutionary, he did not recall such pervasive eroticism. The demi-mondaine had been stupid, with intellectual pretensions. Sitting at his feet was a very intelligent woman.

He sighed, closed his eyes, and continued, ‘A bank robbery is planned for the near future. This week, I believe. The group which is carrying it out is armed. They have, among other things, a Lewis gun.’

‘A
Lewis gun
! A machine-gun? Are you sure?’

Phryne had heard Lewis guns in the Great War. It was a portable machine-gun with drum magazine and its power over a line of innocent civilians did not bear thinking of. Phryne sat up and put an urgent hand on Peter Smith’s knee.

‘I am sure. I have seen it. They showed it to me. They were proud of it. Fools! Did they not learn anything in London? The Houndsditch massacre, the Tottenham outrage, the Siege of Sidney Street? They were burned to death in that house…’

He stopped suddenly. The moment poised on a knife’s edge. Phryne held her breath, biting back the question, ‘Were you in the siege?’ One wrong word and Peter Smith would shut up like a clam. He stared into the mirror. When he spoke again it was in a calm voice.

‘They have learned nothing. Anarchists are devoted to nothingness. Do not misunderstand me. I still hope for the Revolution. I have given to it my mother and my sister and the young woman whom I was to marry, and my village was bombed flat by the big guns. But outrages in Melbourne will bring political repression, and we will lose those freedoms which make Australia dear to me. And they will not listen. I am no longer at the forefront.’ He took Phryne’s hand in his. ‘I cannot control the strong passions of the young.’

‘And you cannot tell me any more?’ asked Phryne gently, expecting his reply.

‘I cannot tell you any more. But if you find Maria Aliyena, she will be susceptible to your charm. The dead young man, I am told, was her cousin, and she was very fond of him.’

‘Why did they kill him?’

‘He got drunk in the Watersider Hotel and told the whole bar that he was a bank robber and had a machine-gun.’

‘And they killed him for that?’

‘They killed him for that.’

Peter Smith sagged down into Phryne’s arms. It was not until she felt tears on her neck that she realized he was weeping. His back was knotted, his hands clutched her, and when his lips found her mouth he kissed her as though he was clinging to a plank in a shipwreck.

Surprised, but pleased, Phryne hitched a hip forward so that she was lying at full length on the sheepskin hearthrug and responded to bottomless kisses, his mouth hot and wet and demanding.

They lay together for almost an hour. Phryne was delighted by the kisses and the emotional depth which he exhibited, but she had no mind to take advantage of Slavic sorrow. She pulled away, out of the strong arms and the clutch of the calloused hands.

‘What is wrong?’

‘I want to give you a chance to decide if you want to get up and go home,’ said Phryne collectedly. Peter Smith stared at her for a good minute in astonishment, then began to laugh.

‘Oh, Phryne, as I said, you are unique. Do you not desire me?’

‘Of course.’

His eyes filled with tears again, spilling down over the cheekbones and into his smile. ‘I want you,’ he whispered. ‘Comfort me against age and the prospect of all I have fought for being wasted by fools. You are the most wonderful woman I have ever met.’

Phryne knelt, shedding her crêpe dress, and unbuttoned his workman’s shirt revealing his strong throat, burnt brown by the sun, and a small round tattoo on his collarbone: a capital A in a circle, done in blue ink.

She bent and kissed the tattoo, removing the shirt. His hands found the fastenings of her chemise and the garters rolled down her thighs as though they had a life of their own.

Peter Smith, stripped, was strong and muscular. He had a star-shaped bullet scar on his chest, which Phryne kissed gently when they lay together in her big bed on the green sheets.

‘It missed my heart,’ he murmured. ‘But you have not. What can I give you, Phryne, for the gift of your body?’

‘The gift of yours,’ said Phryne, trapping his mouth again. Sweet, sweet, she thought, the touch of these practised hands, the skin almost scratching as they swept across her belly. She moaned and turned into his arms, caressing the scarred back. His face reared above her, a Slavic mask, the mouth reddened and swollen from kisses, the blue eyes burning.

Consummation was so close and sweet that she cried aloud.

***

Phryne woke eight hours later when Dot tapped at the door. It appeared to be Monday, and morning. Phryne asked for coffee and croissants for two, and padded back to the big bed and drew the curtains. The man woke, sat up straight, and then relaxed back into the embrace of the pillows.

‘Oh, Phryne,’ he murmured. ‘I thought that I was back in prison, and that I had dreamed you. You are the sort of dream which comes to a man in prison. The essence of all sensuality. Come here and let me hold you close, or I shall not be convinced that you are not a vision.’

Phryne subsided back into his arms, sated and sleepy and pleased that he was not going to recoil in that inexplicable way that some men did.

Mr. Butler put the breakfast tray on the table in the salon.

‘Let go, Peter, I need coffee. Come and have some breakfast.’

Peter released her with unflattering celerity. This man was definitely underfed. He ate most of the fresh rolls and a lot of jam and butter. Phryne nibbled at one croissant and drank most of the coffee. She never felt very well early in the morning.

‘I must get dressed, Peter, if I am to catch Maria Aliyena at Russell Street.’

‘This is true, although sad,’ he agreed. ‘I may return?’

‘You may. Tell me. Do the anarchist women have that tattoo, as well?’

‘Yes. On the left breast. There,’ he demonstrated.

‘Lend me your shoulder, then, just for a moment.’

Peter Smith sat uncomplainingly as Phryne took a piece of thin paper and traced the tattoo with a pencil.

‘You are not going to be tattooed?’ he asked in horror, pausing with a piece of croissant half-way to his mouth.

‘No, but I might do something with indelible pencil.’

‘That will not do. These marks are always in blue ink.’

‘I’ll think of something,’ said Phryne. ‘Now, you can have the bathroom, while I find something to wear. What does one wear to identify a body and snare a grieving woman?’

She did not expect an answer but he called from the bathroom, ‘A black dress, well-worn, with soup down the front.’

Phryne laughed and rummaged in her wardrobe, finding a black dress which had seen better days, and was wobbly about the hem due to being badly laundered. She had kept it because she was minded to demand her money back. She farewelled Peter at her door after he had splashed vigorously and found his clothes. He kissed her hand lingeringly and left without a word.

She had a quick shower and donned her disguise.

‘Dot, ask Mr. B. to get me the officer in charge of the dock case. He’s Constable Collins’ superior and I’ve forgotten his name.’

Mr. Butler, having seen Peter Smith out and shut the front door, lifted the receiver and asked for Russell Street Police Station.