The Green Mill Murder (11 page)

Dearest Phryne,

I love you with all my heart and I will never forget you. Do not forget me. You were like a vision, like water to a man dying of thirst. You saved me and the Revolution. Write to me. To lose you has taken sunlight out of my life.

Peter

Phryne was suddenly and piercingly reminded of his touch,
and a jolt ran down her spine.

‘Did I pin you, Miss? Sorry. Keep still,’ instructed Dot. Phryne stood still as ordered while Dot tweaked the flowing folds of the Érte dress, draped silk like a Greek maiden’s, and found her sandals.

‘There,’ exclaimed Dot, standing beside Phryne in front of the pier-glass. ‘Aren’t we a pair?’

Phryne smiled. Dot glowed in the gold dress, Phryne shone white in the Érte. She blew a kiss to the reflection.

‘We are beautiful,’ she said lightly, patted Dot’s cheek, and led the way down the stairs as the gong sounded to announce that dinner would shortly be served.

Bert and Cec were being served with beer in the parlour by Mr Butler, who liked them both (having been a soldier himself ), however much he might disapprove of their politics. Red-raggers, he had commented to Mrs Butler in the privacy of her kitchen after first encountering Bert and Cec, but good chaps nonetheless. Mrs Butler was pleased by their wholehearted appreciation of her cooking. No cook can ignore the opinion of a man who asks for three helpings. One is politeness, two is hunger, but three is a true and cherished compliment.

Thus Mrs Butler had cooked Cec’s favourite steak-and-kidney pudding, and had been in a ferment all afternoon in case it did not turn out of the dish in perfect unity.

Mr Butler always absented himself on these occasions. He felt that the tension was not good for his health. Once he heard the ‘ting’ of the kitchen bell, indicating that the first course was ready to be served, he would return to his spouse without danger of being hit by a flying pan. Even the best cooks were saucepan throwers when the soufflé collapsed.

‘Jeez, Cec, look!’ Bert lifted his nose from his glass and grinned. Cec smiled his spaniel smile. Phryne and Dot entered the parlour with queenly grace and posed.

‘Would you gentlemen like to escort us into dinner?’ asked Phryne, and Bert abandoned his beer for the first time in his life. Phryne put a hand on his arm. Cec took Dot, walking carefully, awed in the presence of so much high fashion.

‘You look bonzer, Miss,’ said Cec slowly. ‘I dunno where I ever seen you look so pretty. That cop, he’s a lucky bloke.’

Dot blushed. Bert said, ‘Yair, me and me mate are overwhelmed by your bee-yoo-ty. We ain’t used to dining with two such visions of loveliness, eh Cec?’

‘Too right,’ Cec smiled down at Dot and she blushed again.

Mr Butler replaced Bert’s beer, since he disdained all wine as ‘plonk’, as did Cec, though the latter admitted shyly to a taste for arak.

‘Where on earth did you encounter arak?’ asked Phryne as the soup was served; chicken bouillon. It was clear, hot and just salty enough.

‘In the war, Miss. We used to swap the Turks the medicinal brandy.’

‘Of course, you two were at Gallipoli, weren’t you? I expect that we have some arak. To me, it tastes like alcoholic aniseed balls, and one either likes aniseed, or one doesn’t.’

‘I don’t like licorice or any of them things,’ declared Bert, eating his soup rapidly but without spill or slurp.

‘I used to love aniseed balls,’ Dot confessed. ‘I was the one who got the black jelly beans but, luckily, I liked them best.’

‘You would have been useful at school, Dot, I used to give them to the gardener’s dog. He seemed to like them.’

‘How are the girls? Jane and my mate little Ruthie?’ asked Bert. He had been instrumental in rescuing Ruth from domestic slavery, and her ambition to be a cook called to something deep in Bert, who had been hungry for a lot of his life.

‘They are doing very well. I’ve been asked to go to the prize-giving at the end of the year; I believe Jane has won the mathematics prize. And Ruth has taken up swimming. Apart from not liking their music mistress they seem to be having a good time. Odd as it seems to have daughters, I’m glad I got them. They are such interesting children.’

The pudding was brought in, surrounded by vegetables —perfect, its crust unblemished by the slightest crack. Bert and Cec did not speak for some time, for one of Mrs Butler’s puddings was a masterpiece not to be slighted by conversation.

After an interval, Bert put down his fork and sighed. ‘Every time I taste it I think that that was the best steak-and-kidney pud I’ve ever eaten,’ he said. ‘Our landlady has a good hand with the pastry, but Mrs Butler keeps getting better.’

Mr Butler memorised this, and filled Bert’s glass again. When fruit and cheese were brought in, chairs were pushed back and cups of black coffee served. Mr Butler searched his stock, and came back with pastis, which was close enough to arak. Dot accepted a glass, as did Cec, and Phryne chose port. Bert stuck to beer.

‘Light up, gentlemen; I have a problem,’ said Phryne.

‘I thought you wasn’t inviting us to dinner for the sake of our looks,’ commented Bert, extracting tobacco pouch and papers from his pocket. ‘For a dinner like that, however, I’m willing to talk about anything.’

‘There is a man I am trying to find,’ said Phryne slowly, ‘who went off to the war looking like this.’ She pushed the photograph of Victor Freeman across to Bert. He stared at it for a long moment, then passed it to Cec.

‘Jeez, I was that young once,’ said Bert. ‘Eh, mate? I went off to fight looking like that. Stars in me eyes. Battle and heroics.’ He licked the cigarette paper reflectively, paused, and groped for a match.

‘He was at Gallipoli, was invalided home with shell-shock and a shrapnel wound on his head. After that, he changed. He couldn’t stand noise. He quarrelled with his family; well, he quarrelled with his disgusting mother. Finally he left; he went out into the mountains to live alone, and he hasn’t been heard of since 1920. Why did he go?’

Bert lit the cigarette and stared at the fireplace, where the maidenhair fern grew lush and green.

‘We wouldn’t tell this to just anybody, you know. But you’re clever. You have to understand what it was like,’ he said reluctantly. ‘It was like hell. You gotta remember how young we were. I was eighteen, Cec was . . . how old were you, mate?’

‘Seventeen,’ said Cec.

‘Yair. We joined up in a hurry, in case it was all over before we got there, and then kicked our heels for months in Cairo—of all the lousy cities in the world, Cairo is the lousiest. We was marched up and down and round till we could drill in our sleep. Cec and me hadn’t met then. Come April 20th, we all get onto some old transports and then we get unloaded again. Wind got up. It got up me, too. Anyway, in the end we bucket across the sea and they tell us to land at this little cove. Now, it was a good idea, the Gallipoli campaign. If it had been done two months earlier and we had landed on the right beach the war woulda been three years shorter. But those bastards in Command sat around scratching until the Turks guessed and had time to prepare a little reception for us. We paddled ashore in rowboats and I was waist-deep in water when the gazumpers opened up—and rifle and machine-gun fire. The bullets skipped across the water, zip, zip, and the guns crashed, and the navy opened up behind us with shells, and I never heard such a noise in all my life, never. You didn’t hear it, you felt it. It went through all your bones and made ’em quiver. I almost didn’t care about getting hit. We struggled ashore and started to climb the cliffs—steep, scrubby cliffs—and up on top them damned machine-gunners, and snipers. The bloke ahead of me had his head blown off, clean as a whistle, and I’d never seen blood before, only in a street fight. Jeez, I was scared. But there was nowhere to go but up, so we went up, and by noon I reckon there was ten thousand men on them cliffs.

‘After a while we dug in and the engineers started sapping. Two days we was under continuous fire and when they fell silent, them big guns, I thought I’d gone deaf. And we could hear the Turks yelling, “
Allah! Il Allah Akhbar!
” You remember, Cec?’

‘Yair, mate, I remember.’ Cec’s eyes were dark with pain. ‘We come up that first hill about two hours after you. By the time I got to cover all of me mates were gone. It was hot, too. Some bastard Johnny-sniper had holed me water bottle. I was perishing for a drink. And nothing but baking rocks, and the “ping” to remind yer not to raise yer head.’

‘We got organised after a bit,’ said Bert, butting out the cigarette and beginning on the manufacture of another. ‘Got some rations and they brought these Indians and donkeys to bring water up from the tankers. Then it was just holding on. We scrounged a drink here and there, and they still thought we could take the ridge. We bloody tried. Then some clever bugger invented the periscope sight, so you could snipe without getting yer head blown off. But we died, my word we did. The dead lay between the lines, and swelled up in the heat, and stank. After a month the slightest scratch turned septic. And the big guns firing High Explosive, they never stopped, us or them. After a while you could tell what gun was firing by the sound. Them Turks could fight, too.
“Allah!”
they’d yell, and we’d scream, “Said baksheesh!” or, “Eggs-acook!” like the wog traders said in Cairo, or, “Australia will be there!” And they’d reply, “Australia finish!” and we’d yell, “Diggers!” They were all right. They was caught in the same trap as us. Couple of times we organised truces to bury the bodies. And we’d swap, sometimes, our rum for that arak what tastes like petrol.’

‘Did you see Simpson and his donkey?’ asked Dot. Bert smiled.

‘Yair. Murph and his Donk. Seen him walk the length of Hellfire Gully, down the sap, with a man on the donkey and another leaning on him. And Jacko Turk had two machine-guns fixed to fire the length of that gully, and the big guns was watering the ground with H.E. He copped it, though. Later. Most of us copped it.’

‘Where did you meet Cec?’ asked Phryne.

‘Lone Pine,’ said Cec. ‘That’s what Bert means about hell. Lots of blokes in Flanders whinged about the mud, said that hell was mud, deep enough to drown in. But hell ain’t wet. Hell’s a little tiny boiling-hot firing possy on a hill, where the grease from dead men drips on your head and you stink, and you scratch your skin off with lice, and big brown maggots drop in your face. I dreamed about them maggots for years. You couldn’t eat because the blowies rushed into yer mouth as soon as you opened it. By then Bert’s blokes was all gone, and there was only three men left in my company; we were palling up. I got sent up to Lone Pine and the first thing I saw was Bert’s face, peering up over the edge, and a Turk sniper about to get him, so I shoved him down, and we was mates.’

Cec, unaccustomed to long speech, took a gulp of pastis.

‘You got the sniper, too,’ added Bert. ‘Through his loophole. A bonzer shot. We’d sit up there for two days, breathing in that stench, and wishing we hadn’t decided to be soldiers. Oh, dear Bill, what a bastard it was.’

‘How did you get out?’ asked Phryne. Bert looked indignant.

‘Cec and me was originals. They let us go last, when they gave it up as a bad job. We set up the water-fired rifles and a few nice surprises for the first Turk that got into our trench. It was awful, leaving. Leaving all our mates behind, running like yeller dogs. I was walking around, setting up these rifles, and trying to explain to the mates we was abandoning that we wasn’t running away, we was under orders. They tell me that it took two days before Johnny Turk dared to advance. We’da had him stonkered, if we’d started in time,’ said Bert. ‘They took us off to Cairo again—Jeez, I hate Cairo!—on a nice hospital ship, with sheets and blankets. Cec had enteric, and I had a bit of shrapnel in me knee, which had swelled up like billy-oh. We was pretty sorry for ourselves. But the navy was bonzer. They sat us on deck and scrubbed us raw with sea-water soap, and I never felt so clean. Then they gave us new clothes and stew with meat in and the first orange I’d seen since I left Melbourne. Then a nice nurse led me to a clean bed and I thought I’d died and gone to heaven. Eh, Cec?’

‘I wasn’t looking at the nurse,’ said Cec, grinning, ‘I was looking at the food. Cocoa so thick you could stand a spoon in it. Bread with real butter. Tea with milk. And the chats had gone. I was patterned all over with red dots from louse-bites.’

‘Yair, they call them the Glories of War,’ said Bert. ‘So, we arrived in Cairo wearing badges of rank and blankets, and they put us in hospital again. But that ain’t where your missing man got his shell-shock, not if he was with us. We were dead too quick to get shell-shock, I don’t remember anyone getting it on Gallipoli. Musta been later.’

‘Well, where did you go from there?’

‘Flanders. Now, I reckon hell is wet. I didn’t mind the heat or the flies—much. But that Flanders mud, slimy stinking corrupt mud with arms and legs and dead horses in it. I need another drink.’

Mr Butler, whose military service had been in the Boer War, was so interested that he had forgotten to keep the glasses filled. He remedied this instantly.

‘Yair, we was sent to . . . was it Marseilles, Cec?’

‘Yair. Issued us with a tin hat and sent us out to the Bridioux salient. Near Armentiéres.’

‘Yair, you’re right. That was just before Poziéres. We both got our tickets home at Poziéres, and that’s where your man would have got his shell-shock. Lots of us had it. July 20th. Worst shelling I ever been in—worse than Gallipoli, bigger guns, closer. Cec and me went over the top together and the machine-guns cut us all down. One bullet went straight through me chest, another through me thigh and into Cec’s leg, another in the left arm. Cec dragged me back through the wire. I should have been a goner.’