Ruddy Gore (24 page)

‘She’d understand,’ soothed Phryne. ‘Anyone would have been frightened. But you stole your own gloves, and tore up the telegram, Leila, and that’s all? You didn’t steal the hyacinth perfume?

You didn’t plant anything on Selwyn Alexander?’

‘No,’ said the actress simply. Phryne, for some reason, believed her.

‘It’s lucky it took so long,’ Leila said flatly.

‘Lucky we didn’t find out until now.’

‘Why?’

‘I’m a principal singer and I got here on my own.

No one will be able to say that Sir B pushed me.

I did it all on my own. And now I’m Management’s daughter. Will she come again, my mother?

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I want to tell her I’m sorry I ran away. I won’t be scared next time,’ she said imploringly and Phryne was filled with pity, entirely against her better judgement.

‘If she comes again, you can tell her so. But if she’s here, perhaps she’ll know anyway. And perhaps that’s what she wanted to do – perhaps that’s why she’s come. To make sure that Bernie has a daughter to be proud of, and to stop you making a foolish marriage – several foolish marriages, come to think of it. Now she’s done that, she might be free.’ Phryne was on exceptionally shaky ground and knew it, but she seemed to be comforting Miss Esperance.

She left the father and daughter to become acquainted and took herself into Sir Bernard’s box, where she could hear a comforting noise of hammering and swearing on stage. There she fell into a doze, and woke on the stroke of seven o’clock with the knowledge that she had forgotten something terribly important.

Originally, it had appeared that Dorothea had not returned to ensure any happy endings. She was raging for revenge on her murderer. And he or she had still not been found.

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CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Within this breast there beats a heart Whose voice can’t be gainsaid.

Ruddigore
, Gilbert and Sullivan PHRYNE MET an immaculate Lin Chung at the stage door, where Tom Deeping had recovered and was once more at his post. Behind her, the stage echoed to the chorus trying to sing ‘Hail the bride-groom/hail the bride’ to the constant interruptions of the chorus master, who was yelling actionable things in French about their pitch and how it got like that.

She felt scratchy and irritated and silently took his arm. They turned down into Little Bourke Street.

They had passed a banana store and the Chinese Mission building before she spoke.

‘Sorry, Lin, I’m in an evil mood. I have solved two of the problems but there is this ghost and I 240

don’t seem to be able to get a handle on her at all.’

‘Then we shall have a pleasant dinner and you need not think about her for a few hours,’ he replied equably, as they passed Quong Hoong Wah, general store. The shopkeeper, sweeping his step with a short whisk broom, said, ‘
Wah! Jung
gwok moh nui a?
’

Lin replied, ‘
Moh kam Gong, a pak! Pang yau
che!
’ and the shopkeeper laughed.

‘What did he say?’ Phryne demanded. Lin shifted his gaze and said, ‘Oh, just a comment about women.’

‘On the general subject of ‘‘aren’t Chinese ladies good enough for you?’’ ’ she guessed shrewdly. He looked down at her, astonished.

‘Yes, indeed. How did you know that?’

‘That’s what someone would say to me if I escorted you down Toorak Road. This is going to be a rocky and difficult road, Lin, if we want to walk it.’

‘Yes, I had considered that.’

‘And?’

‘Difficult roads are so much more interesting, don’t you think?’

‘Picturesque,’ agreed Phryne and began to look about her.

Little Bourke Street was narrow and crowded. It was sliced across with lanes and all of them were full of people working. Each little grey stone house, she saw with pleasure, had a door and a doorstep where someone was sitting doing something. An old woman was shelling peas. A young 241

man was splitting what looked like cane, laying the pieces in a water-filled dish beside him. A well-fed orange cat sat on a windowsill next to a pot of herbs, surveying the scene with distant eyes.

The air smelt overwhelmingly of fruit, with an underscent of saffron, garlic, dust, people and motor exhaust.

Lin and Phryne stood back against the wall as a large truck manoeuvred its way carefully out of Corr’s Lane into Little Bourke Street and trundled past. It had ‘Yee Tong, Fruit Merchant’ embla-zoned on its dusty side.

Little shops with tiny windows breathed forth a smell of herbs and strange spices. Each one appeared to be staffed by an old woman in dark loose trousers and tunic, her head wrapped in a white scarf, with an attendant cat sitting at her feet.

‘Small tiger,’ said Lin Chung. ‘Every shop has a
mau
. For the mice and rats. They are also effective against demons.’

‘ ‘‘The cherub cat is a term of the angel tiger,’’ ’

said Phryne, quoting Christopher Smart, and Lin said ‘Yes, that is exactly it. Who said that? I thought I knew all the Chinese authors.’

‘Not Chinese, don’t be so isolationist.’

‘English?’

Phryne nodded. ‘Eighteenth century. And mad.

Where are we going?’

‘A restaurant in Heffernan’s Lane. Unless you are feeling uncomfortable?’

Phryne had been aware of the eyes as soon as 242

she had entered Little Bourke Street on the arm of a Chinese man. Everyone was, indeed, looking at her, but the gaze was neither insulting nor intrusive. They were interested in her, and she was interested in them. It seemed fair. Phryne had been stared out of countenance in too many countries in the world to bother about a few glances in the heart of her own city. Plump, well-dressed and decorative Chinese children sat up in prams and goggled at her in a most satisfactory way, their hair carefully done in two straight plaits which stuck out at right angles from the wearer’s head, giving them the appearance of dolls.

It was not as though she was the only foreigner in the street. She sighted a very un-Chinese Louis Orbuck and Co, jewellers, down one of the lanes.

Along another lane, she saw the Domino Shirt Manufactory and His Majesty’s Motor Garage, with the usual complement of greasy mechanics lounging about outside, breathing the same fumes as Petroleum and Oils in Star Lane. As they turned the corner of Heffernan’s Lane, she heard the earthquake thud of a printery called City Service Press.

Altogether Little Bourke Street was as interesting and bustling as Shanghai, with the same bamboo washing poles which bannered laundry above the street, fewer sing-song girls, and the same strange scents.

‘This is the home of Mr Li,’ said Lin Chung. ‘He is a doctor. A herbalist. It is surprising how many Australians come to him.’

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‘Why?’

‘Chinese medicine and Western medicine have nothing in common. The theory is entirely different.

Western medicine treats the disease – Chinese treats the patient. In Melbourne you pay your doctor when you are sick. But in China you pay him to keep you well.’ A white-bearded old man was standing at his shop door, flanked by bunches of dried things which Phryne could not identify. And that surely was not a box of cicada shells which he was sorting?

‘This is Miss Fisher, Mr Li,’ said Lin Chung def-erentially, and the old man looked at Phryne and bowed.

‘Miss Fisher,’ he said politely, ‘I trust you have no need of my services.’

‘No, thank you,’ said Phryne, inclining her head in return, ‘I am just here to dine with my friend.’

‘I believe that there was some little unpleasant-ness in the street, in which you intervened with great courage,’ he said, and Phryne disclaimed, ‘It was nothing, really.’

‘I believe, however, that the matter has been solved,’ he said quietly, ‘and that you have no further need to concern yourself.’

The words might have been directed at either Phryne or her companion. Lin Chung made a slight bow and the old man returned to sorting what were definitely cicada shells.

‘What was all that about?’ asked Phryne when they were beyond hearing distance.

‘What?’ asked Lin Chung, absently. She tugged at his arm.

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‘Don’t go all inscrutable on me, Lin.’ He grinned and put his hands together like a stage Chinaman.

‘So solly. Little missee has no need to wolly about poor ol’ Sam Pan,’ he chanted in a sing-song tone, and bowed from the waist. Phryne laughed.

‘Tell me in your own time,’ she said implacably.

‘I can wait.’

He gave her a wary sidelong glance and they stopped outside the door of a restaurant. The name over the door was Mee Heong Guey, which sounded unlikely. Lin Chung commented that the Australian signwriter had undoubtedly misheard

‘Kei’ and had written ‘Guey’ as his next best guess.

The small windows were fogged and Phryne could not see inside.

‘This place makes real Cantonese food, such as you will not get anywhere else in Melbourne.’

He opened the door. The buzz of conversation, which had been considerable, was silenced.

Phryne retained her hold on Lin’s arm, feeling a little disconcerted. The cafe´ was full of people, mostly family parties, sailors, and a group of unaccompanied young men in baggy blue suits. Everyone, from eldest grandfather surrounded by his family to the smallest child perched on three red cushions, was staring at Phryne as though she had recently arrived from Mars. She stood her ground and stared back.

What good-looking people they were, she thought, the girls with their long plaits and the young men with their smooth skin and straight backs. The faces of the aged were lined with 245

wisdom; settled, unhurried, full of authority.

An elderly lady picked up her chopsticks and said something sharp to a young woman nursing a baby, who dragged her gaze away from Phryne and spoke to her children. An old gentleman nudged his son and he called his brothers to attention. In an instant the whole restaurant had returned to normal and the new arrival was hence-forward ignored.

Though she was positive that most of the regained voices were speculating about her, Phryne was relieved at their courtesy. No Australian pub crowd would have been as polite to a visiting Chinese woman, she was sure.

Lin Chung looked at Phryne and said, ‘I didn’t think – I am very sorry.’

‘There is no need to be sorry. Are we going to get something to eat? I’m famished.’

‘
Doh je leung wai
,’ said Lin to a greasy person in an off-white apron, and they were conducted to a table covered in checked red and white oilcloth.

The waiter immediately filled two blue and white china teacups with pale scented tea and Lin Chung asked, ‘Will you let me order?’ Phryne nodded and sipped the tea. It smelt like jasmine, and was clear and hot.

‘This is a modest place, but the owners come from Szechwan, which has the best food in the South. I have ordered the specialities. I hope you will like them. Phryne, I . . . possibly I should not have brought you here.’

‘Why? Is it going to get you into trouble?’

246

‘No, but you must feel like a zoo animal.’

‘A lady, my governess told me, is always on display. I don’t mind.’

‘You are sure?’

‘If I had minded, I would have told you. I am here, as I am sure that you know, because I wish to be. No one makes me do anything.’

‘No, they don’t, do they? And how many have been broken into bits trying?’

‘A few,’ Phryne smiled. ‘Now, tell me about this street. And what is the See Yup society? It seems to own a lot of buildings.’

‘They are a . . . well, sort of like a trade union, no, a brotherhood . . . there isn’t a proper word.

The people who came to dig for gold needed to band together. In the beginning, the Chinese lived in Spencer Street, much exploited and in dreadful conditions – rats and so on. So they gathered together, all the people from the four provinces, in order to protect each other and to fit into Australian society, because societies are like any other group of animals – if you do not adapt, you are destroyed. The aim then was to make a lot of money and go home to China. See Yup was founded to make sure that nothing awful happened to the members – to protect them. There was a joining fee and it provided medical care and housing and funeral expenses. They have rules and they enforce them. It is . . . ah, yes. A Benevolent Society. That even sounds Chinese. ‘‘All people who come to dig for gold must love and help each other.’’ ‘‘The gods alone are liberal, and confer 247

happiness and protection to men. Is this not excellent? Is this not noble?’’ ’ he was evidently quoting. ‘A Chinese, unless he is the sole survivor of a disaster, is never without relatives, Phryne.

Even if the entire immediate family is lost, as used to happen under some of the more touchy emper-ors, there are always other branches of say, the Li family, which is the most numerous in China. Or the Lin, for that matter. Kung Fu Tse said, ‘‘The family is the foundation of the Empire,’’ and it was true. If all is well with the Emperor, then all is well under Heaven – but if the family is disordered, then the corruption spreads upwards.’

‘What are you trying to tell me?’ The waiter brought a platter of something that looked fried, and ostentatiously laid down a large polished silver spoon before Phryne. ‘Tell him I can use chopsticks,’ she said, and Lin Chung snapped something which produced a pair of new wooden chopsticks with remarkable speed.

‘Where did you learn such an arcane skill?’ he asked as she clicked them together, hoping that the art had not deserted her.

‘Shanghai. You were saying about the family?’

‘Have a taste,’ Lin Chung urged. ‘This is
geung-chung haai
, crab with ginger.’

Phryne picked up a morsel of crab and conveyed it to her mouth without dropping it. She caught the eye of a goggling child and smiled at it, and its mother immediately cuffed it lightly and turned its chair around.

‘Very nice crab.’ She was beginning to get the 248

hang of Chinese conversation, which required that direct questions must not be asked. Observations, however, could be offered. ‘Mine is not a close-knit family. I left most of it in England and I do not expect to see any of them for a long time, which is fine by me. I have some relatives here, but I don’t see them often.’ Lin Chung looked vaguely shocked. ‘I believe that my father hoped that I would marry into the aristocracy, but I did not like what I found there.’