Death at Victoria Dock (9 page)

It was while she was returning, glowing and shivering by turns, that a blanket was thrown over her head and she was seized by strong arms.

The blanket was sandy and she began to choke, kicked wildly, and felt one of her heels sink into something soft. Gaining her advantage, she shot out both hands and grabbed.

Although she could not see what she had seized, it was evidently a part which her assailant valued. She heard a howl, and the arms slackened their grip.

Phryne tightened her fingers. The arms fell away, and someone began flailing at her blanket-covered head, swearing in an unknown language. Phryne shook herself and the blanket slipped.

She had chosen her hold well. The parts of the man she had clawed into a bundle were those which gave him the designation, and he exhibited every sign of wanting them back.

Phryne let go, tripped him, and knelt on his chest as he wept hot tears and clutched at his organs.

‘You bastard, who are you? What do you want with me? Talk, or I’ll tear them off with my teeth!’ she hissed, red-faced and furious and spitting sand.

‘No!’ he cried. ‘I was only obeying orders!’

‘Whose orders?’

This, even at the threat to his manhood, he would not answer.

‘Tell your boss,’ said Phryne with measured loathing, ‘that I will speak to him or I will meet him, but the next fool he sends within my grasp I will castrate with a blunt knife. Repeat it.’ It took three attempts for the blubbering attacker to learn this threat off by heart and then Phryne jumped off him and backed three paces.

‘I’d go now, if I were you,’ she said, conversationally. He understood her quickly. He ran away down the beach, and Phryne walked back into the sea to wash his touch and the sand off her body.

Trembling with reaction, she found her beach pyjamas, re-clothed herself and walked back to her house. Not a young man, perhaps forty, heavy Slavic accent, greying hair, forgettable face. She had, in fact, not really looked at his face.

Perhaps I should not have let him go. Perhaps next time they will just shoot me. But he wanted me alive, that was a kidnapping attempt, thought Phryne, ringing her own doorbell. And what would I have done with him? What with Ember and Jane and Ruthie and Mr. and Mrs. Butler and me, it’s becoming a rather full house. I should have looked for the car. Never mind. I wonder how the tattoo stood up to all that? I wouldn’t like to have to bother the Professor again.

She peered down her front. The anarchist brand was still there, a little paler, but seemingly indelible.

‘Did you have a nice swim, Miss Fisher?’ Mr. Butler opened the door. Phryne smiled seraphically.

‘Thank you, Mr. Butler, it was most congenial.’

Chapter Eight

‘…I am angling now,
Though you perceive me not how I give line.’

William Shakespeare,
The Winter’s Tale

Phryne ran up to her boudoir and shut herself in. She was trembling all over with shock and rage, and she had broken a fingernail and bruised one shin. She flung herself down on her bed and closed her eyes, willing the fury to drain out of her before it shook her to pieces.

So easily caught! If there had been more than one of them I would have been taken, without clothes, without weapons. Not again. I go armed even in the bath and the Lord protect whoever touches me!

It had been an anarchist, she was sure. Perhaps it had been one of the two names she had been given. If so, he would now be mourning seriously twisted testicles. Yourka Rosen was already a little avenged. This thought made her chuckle, and she felt better. Then she ran straight to her bathroom and was luxuriously sick.

This completed her cure. She brushed her teeth, poured a small Laphroaig, took a cool shower, and washed all the sand out of her hair. By the time she was sitting down at her mirror and cutting the affronted nail Dot was tapping at the door.

‘Miss? Miss Phryne? Are you all right?’

‘Come in, Dot. I’m fine. Some son of unmarried parents just tried to kidnap me.’

‘What did you do with the body, Miss?’ Dot was calm. ‘Was this on the beach? Only one of them?’

‘Yes, on the beach, he threw a blanket over my head, but I managed to persuade him to drop me.’ Phryne suppressed any communication on the method used, in deference to her maid’s modesty. ‘And then I let him go, blast it.’

‘Lucky, too.’ Dot took up the scissors and began to trim the nail. ‘What would you do with him? I mean, apart from mulch.’

‘Dot, I believe that I have corrupted you.’

‘Me, Miss? I don’t care what happens to someone who shoots at you!’ Dot replaced the scissors in their case.

‘Are you looking forward to the ballet? What are you going to wear?’

‘Yes, Miss, I’ve never been to the ballet before, though I wish that you were coming too. I’m going to wear the dark-brown figured velvet and the orangey cloche with the velvet flowers.’

‘Yes, that will do very well. And you need a coat. Take the green one, that won’t clash. Your blue will not match at all.’

‘Thank you, Miss. That will look nice. Mr. Peter Smith rang, Miss. He said he’d call back at two.’

‘Good. Now I’m going to sleep, Dot, and I don’t want to be woken except for an emergency. Wake me at half-past one with a light lunch and ask the girls to forgive me for not going to the beach with them. No one is going anywhere, Dot. Tell them what happened and allow them to invite their friends here, if they like. Imagine what would have happened if it had been you, or Ruthie or Jane.’

‘Them two can look after themselves,’ muttered Dot. ‘I’ll tell ’em. Let me find you a nightdress, Miss, and I’ll tuck you up. There you are. Sleep well. No one won’t go out, and if anyone tries to come in they will be sorry.’

Dot went out, closing the door with a quiet click, and stalked down the stairs, calling for Phryne’s daughters. They were emerging from their room clad in bathing costumes more decorous than Phryne’s.

‘When are we going out?’ asked Ruth.

‘We ain’t. Someone just made an attempt to kidnap Miss Phryne. She says no one is to go out but you can invite anyone in.’

‘Gosh! How is the poor man?’

‘He ran away,’ Dot smiled. ‘And I should think so, too. It’s these revolutionaries. We never ought to have got mixed up with them. Who would you like to invite to lunch?’

Both girls thought hard.

‘What about Estelle Underwood?’ suggested Ruth, but Jane objected. ‘She’ll bring her soppy brother with her.’

‘Yes, I know,’ said Ruth patiently. ‘And he goes to school with Alicia Waddington-Forsythe’s brother.’

‘You know, Ruthie, you are sometimes almost intelligent,’ said Jane, ducking Ruth’s slap. Dot smiled on them.

‘That’s a good pair of girls to try and help Miss Phryne. But be careful. She always says that the big danger in investigation is saying too much.’

‘We’ll be careful,’ promised Ruth, and went down the hall to obtain the number of Estelle Underwood and her soppy brother.

***

Phryne slept peacefully through the advent of Rupert and Estelle Underwood, who were pleased to condescend to eating Mrs. Butler’s lunch and required no prompting to talk about the Waddington-Forsythes.

‘Oh, yes, Paul was distraught when his sister went missing. Some lady rang Mother yesterday, asking if we had seen her.’

‘And had you?’ asked Jane idly, passing the cream cakes. Jane had eaten more cream cakes in the last two days than she had previously believed existed, and was now able to regard them with only a languid interest.

‘No! Paul has been to visit, of course. Poor fellow. He’s desperately in love with his stepmother, you know. Quite a pash. She’s twenty-five, though, far too old for him.’

‘Practically antique,’ agreed his sister. ‘But I don’t think that you are fair to Alicia. She’s a very good sort of girl, very religious. She was always talking about the convent and how she wanted to be a nun. She would have made a good nun and her father dragged her out of the sisterhood, where she was happy, and pushed her into school, and then she turned into a beastly little prig. Bound to happen. Why does her father want her to make a good marriage, anyway? Positively prehistoric.’

‘Aren’t you going to get married, Estelle?’

‘Yes, I hope so, but it won’t be because my father wants me to.’

‘I don’t think Paul is likely to marry,’ commented Rupert. ‘He’s always talking about perfect love and that sort of thing. Reads Ruskin. Like me, he wants to burn with a hard, gem-like flame and you can’t do that if you are married and have a lot of brats and nurseries and all that sordid mess.’

Rupert had never forgiven his mother for continuing to have children once she had achieved the heights of human creation by giving birth to Rupert. He was, however, particularly fond of his sister, whose uncompromising plainness made a good foil for his Pre-Raphaelite beauty. He looked rather alarmingly like his friend Paul. He stretched out his legs and leaned back. He approved of Miss Fisher’s salon. He liked the pair of full-length nudes which decorated the main wall. ‘La Source,’ a female holding an amphora on her shoulder from which water flowed, and ‘Poseidon,’ where the river ended in the sea, nude and lightly muscled, crowned with seaweed. He was toying with the idea of following in the divine Oscar’s footsteps and found his friend’s fascination with his stepmother both puzzling and faintly disgusting.

‘What does Paul say about her?’ asked Ruth, artlessly. ‘Doesn’t he think that she’s too old?’

‘He says that she looks just like the Blessed Damozel, leaning out from the gold bar of Heaven,’ replied Rupert. ‘I can’t see it myself. I don’t like her, to be candid. Doe eyes and all a-tremble if you make a noise or drop something. And she is…she is…’

‘Expecting,’ said his sister, practically.

‘Yes, that. You could not find a lady in that…unfortunate condition attractive.’

Jane glanced at Ruth. Rupert was soppy, there was no denying it.

‘Of course, you probably don’t understand what I mean,’ condescended Rupert. ‘Being girls. Love can only be understood properly by a masculine mind.’

Ordinarily that would have earned Rupert an impressive set of retributions, including a beating with cushions, but Jane and Ruth had sterner aims and were not to be distracted.

‘Oh, indeed? Tell us, then.’

‘I say, you can’t understand it unless you are a chap and I don’t know that I like to talk about it to a lot of girls,’ objected Rupert. ‘I mean, you haven’t got the same…er…passions.’

‘Haven’t we?’ asked Jane artlessly, thinking of Phryne. ‘I don’t think that you are right, Rupert. Come on. What did Paul tell you about his stepmother?’

‘Do tell us!’ urged Ruth.

His sister added, ‘Come on, Rupert, you can’t torment us like this. If you know anything, spit it out! Or else shut up about it.’

‘Oh, all right.’ Rupert took a cake, crossly. ‘He said—mind you, this is just what he
said
, that doesn’t mean I believe it…’

‘Oh, come on Rupert, have a heart,’ groaned Ruth, flinging a cushion, which he fended off his cake with ease.

‘He said that she had allowed him…had allowed him to…er…you know.’

‘No, I don’t know and if I did I would not be asking you!’ exclaimed Jane, whose education in matters sexual had been full and informative but short on euphemisms. Rupert blushed red and ran a distracted hand through his hair.

‘I mean that she had given him the ultimate favour.’

There was silence in the room.

‘Gosh,’ said Jane, lamely.

‘Yes,’ agreed Rupert.

‘Good Lord defend us!’ exclaimed Dot silently from the kitchen door, where she stood frozen to the spot with a teapot unregarded in her hand. She only noticed it when she was minded to cross herself.

‘I think we should go and play some records,’ said Jane, and they retired to the girls’ room to wind up the gramophone, which had been a present from a policeman called Jack Robinson. The strains of a jazz song could be heard through the door.

‘It ain’t gonna rain no more no more,

It ain’t gonna rain no more!

How in the heck can I wash my neck

If it ain’t gonna rain no more?’

Phryne woke, relaxed and warm, to take the tray from Dot and eat her boiled egg in comfort. Dot sat down on the edge of the bed to wait for the tray. Phryne noticed that Dot was pale and seemed shocked.

‘What’s happened? Has there been an attack?’

‘No, Miss, we’re safe as houses. It’s something the girls have found out, but I’ll leave it to them to tell you. After all, they discovered it.’

‘If it is that the repulsive Paul is sleeping with his stepmother, I’ve guessed it already. It still does not help us to discover Alicia. I wonder where the little pest is? She might never have left the convent, you know. Mother Superior may be practising “economy of truth.”’

‘She ain’t a Jesuit, Miss, she’s an Anglican. I don’t think they have it.’

‘You didn’t think they had convents. I need that awful black dress again for tonight, but now I feel like being magnificent. Give me the silver and jade lounging robe and my pantoufles. Are the girls’ visitors still here?’

‘Yes, Miss.’

‘What’s the time?’

‘Two o’clock, Miss.’

‘Good. I’ll stay here and wait for Mr. Smith’s call. Don’t worry, Dot. Dismiss it from your mind. We’ll find the little beast. And the perversions of the sins of the flesh are not confined to the working class, you know.’

‘It’s a shock, though.’

Dot went out, shaking her head, with the tray.

The call came exactly at the promised time, and Phryne picked up her own telephone and said, ‘Thank you, Mr. B., I’ll take the call.’

The voice was low and urgent.

‘Phryne, I hear that bad things have happened.’

‘Unsuccessfully.’

‘You escaped?’

‘They never held on to me.’

Peter chuckled, a deep, rich laugh.

‘I said that you were unique.’

‘Thank you.’

‘But they will try again.’

‘I expect so, but I shall be prepared. They will be very sorry that they tried. But they don’t want me dead or they could have shot me as I stood. Don’t worry.’

‘When shall I see you again?’

‘Come on Wednesday night. Come to dinner,’ said Phryne, who knew the way to this man’s heart. ‘About seven-thirty.’

‘I will be there, and so, I hope, will you.’

‘You can rely on it,’ said Phryne, and rang off.

Since there was nothing else to do until later, she lay back in her big chair in her glittering gown and watched the sea, and the ships which crossed it from one horizon to another. She always found the sea soothing.

***

Dot and the girls were dressed in their new clothes and sent off with Mr. Butler in the Hispano-Suiza. They would pick up Dr. MacMillan on the way. Phryne was clad in her old black dress, over which she was wearing a ratty overcoat which Mr. Butler wore when changing tyres on wet days. She had damaged a perfectly good felt hat in producing the correct secondhand
droop, immersing it firmly in her bath and drying it in the spring sun.

Bert and Cec arrived in their cab, whistled derisively when they saw her attire, and headed for the city.

‘You want us to wait, Miss?’

‘Yes. Somewhere out of sight. Round the corner, perhaps, in one of those lanes. I’m armed and I feel fairly safe, but they have already tried to kidnap me today.’

‘They tried a snatch on you, Miss?’

‘Yes. It did not succeed, as you can tell. If I appear escorted or carried, follow and find out where they are taking me, but give me at least three hours before you do anything. I want to have both of these men hanged, and I am willing to risk a bit of discomfort for that. If I’m not out within three hours, come and get me. The cop in charge of the case is Detective-Sergeant Bill Carroll. But don’t wait until he turns up. I leave it to your discretion. Here we are, Bert. Stop here. I shall walk the rest of the way.’

‘Good luck,’ said Bert. He steered the car around the corner and turned into a dark and noisome lane.

‘All we need is some nosy copper moving us on,’ he growled. Cec peered into the night.

‘No one in sight, mate. How about a smoke?’

Bert accepted the pouch and began to roll a cigarette. He did not like waiting.

***

Phryne huddled into the coat. She had received the girls’ revelations with gratitude, and had thanked them for their excellent efforts on her behalf. She had leapt to the conclusion that the beautiful Paul had been conducting some sort of affair with Christine, and it was pleasing to have her suspicions confirmed, but it gave her no clue to the disappearance of Alicia. Where could she be? Had she left the convent? Had she gone home again? If so, she had not seen her father.