Unnatural Habits: A Phryne Fisher Mystery (Phryne Fisher Mysteries) (14 page)

Willis handed over the bread knife, Phryne farewelled the patients, and she was carried into the city in the small unremarkable car.

‘Have you been with Miss Steel long?’ asked Phryne, settling her hat and trying to shake off gloom.

‘Six years,’ he said. ‘She’s all right. We see some dreadful things, but. Hard on a family man.’

‘It must be.’

‘A man just wants to take ’em all home,’ he said. ‘Like puppies. And it gives a man a bad view of his fellow man.’

‘Oh, I can understand that,’ said Phryne.

‘All them kids have fathers,’ he continued in a rush of words. ‘Where are they? How could they just leave them poor girls like that?’

‘A question I have frequently asked of myself,’ replied Phryne.

‘So a man just tries not to feel,’ he explained.

‘But it doesn’t work,’ she said gently.

‘Nah,’ he said, and lapsed into his zombie trance again.

Chapter Seven

I know not whether Laws be right
Or whether Laws be wrong;
All we know that lie in gaol
Is that the wall is strong…

Oscar Wilde, The Ballad of Reading Gaol

Bidding Willis farewell (he grunted, evidently regretting his loquacity) and arrived at Flinders Lane, Phryne walked down to the discreet entrance of the Blue Cat Club. It was surrounded by tailors and furriers. On the corner of Calico Alley stood a respectable tall stone building in a style which could be loosely described as Victorian Gothic, with Palladian overtones. The newly finished Majorca Building, all Moorish lamps and coloured tiles, stood on the other side of the alley. At the Collins Street end of the lane, occupied by seamstresses, button makers, stamp collectors and sellers of bric-a-brac, was one of Phryne’s favourite arcades. This was a part of the city that she always found intriguing.

The brass plate that proclaimed this was her destination also bore the legend Gentlemen Only. Undeterred, she pressed the button and the door gaped. Inside, a tall, uniformed figure stared at her in amazement.

‘Miss Fisher,’ she said, and passed the portal. ‘Mr. Featherstonehaugh is expecting me.’

‘As you say, Miss,’ said the functionary stiffly, preceding her through a tiled hallway into a large room glittering with diamonds.

They were, of course, only crystal chandeliers and lamps with crystal drops, but the effect was dazzling. The room was empty at this hour. It was the Café Royale, writ large. Plush. Gold leaf. Marble copies of the Apollo Belvedere and the David. The scent of patchouli, so favoured by dear Oscar, and beeswax furniture polish flowed over her. She sniffed gratefully as it obliterated even the memory of mothballs. She softened her stance. Here, at least, she would meet no gentlemen who might contribute to Miss Steel’s overflowing portfolio of misused children and abandoned women.

Mr. Featherstonehaugh was waiting for her. He was a smallish, rounded gentleman wearing an impeccable evening suit with just a hint of the velvet and silk of the eighties. He had abundant white hair in a Neapolitan style favoured in the old days. He smelt bewitchingly of amber essence. His hand, as she took it, was smooth, plump and white, with one gold signet ring. He seemed altogether charming and harmless until her eyes met his. Dark, penetrating and stern. Oh, Lord, thought Phryne. Another strong character. That makes two in one morning. I do hope he is going to offer me a drink.

He conducted her to a positively indecent chair and snapped his fingers. A waiter brought a silver tray on which reposed a tall glass jug, tinkling with ice, two glasses, and a small plate of Kalamata olives. Phryne settled into the chair, which embraced her tired limbs with fervour. The contrast between this luxury and Mrs. Ryan’s house could hardly be greater. Mr. Featherstonehaugh murmured polite observances about the weather and ordered the waiter to pour the distinguished visitor a drink.

This, on tasting, proved to be cider cup. But not entirely cider and lemonade. She considered the taste.

‘Pear,’ she observed. ‘A little cognac. And something else.’

‘Indeed,’ her host said gravely. ‘The secret is guava jelly. Just a touch of the tropics. We go through gallons of it in the summer. The gentlemen find it agreeably cooling.’

‘And not too intoxicating,’ she said.

‘Indeed. Thank you very much for coming to see us, Miss Fisher.’

‘My pleasure, I assure you.’

‘I have…several of my gentlemen have told me…that you might be able to put my mind at rest,’ he said, with uncharacteristic lack of clarity.

‘Which gentlemen?’ she asked, taking another sip of the cider cup. She must ask Mr. Butler if he knew how to make it.

Mr. Featherstonehaugh named several friends, whom Phryne had always regretted because they played so firmly for the other team. She nodded.

‘I would be delighted to reassure you,’ she said gently. He really was bouleversé. ‘Tell me all.’

‘Some history, Miss Fisher?’

‘If you please. I am very comfortable and I do not have to be anywhere else for some time.’

Mr. Featherstonehaugh smoothed his hair and lit a rose-leaf-tipped cigarette. Phryne allowed the waiter to ignite her gasper. There was silence as the smoke difted upwards like incense to some phallic god. Finally he spoke.

‘When the Great Scandal broke in 1895, I was only a young man, but I realised that for such as myself England was finished. Most of us fled to France, along with the divine Oscar, who really was such a fool. He thought he was untouchable, when none of us are safe. He thought his position would secure him, and it didn’t. He thought his friends would rescue him, and they couldn’t. Or wouldn’t. He went to Paris to die, and did, and I went to Paris, too. But I could not settle. It was so…’

‘French?’ offered Phryne.

He smiled. ‘Just so. The police had found out their strength under the Criminal Law Amendment Act—Oscar taught them that, too, unfortunately—and were raging for revenge with Até at their side. No one has ever approved of us. They have tolerated us at best. But you know this,’ he said.

‘I know.’ Phryne drank more cider and the waiter refilled her glass.

‘So I realised my assets and sailed for, well, as far away as I could go. Australia. Where no one really believes in men loving men, and don’t particularly care if they do. Oh, yes, it is illegal—’ he held up one finger in case Phryne should protest ‘—but the only cases that get to court are those which are visible. Soliciting in public toilets and public parks and so on, and a couple of notorious sailors’ hotels in St. Kilda. And schoolmasters and priests preying on pupils and choirboys, naturally—such actions are entirely reprehensible.’

‘And not confined to one gender,’ said Phryne, a letter about a certain Father Kennedy in her bag.

‘Indeed. You do not consider one sort of predation worse than the other?’

‘No,’ said Phryne. ‘I would happily execute all those who rape children. By evisceration,’ she elaborated.

‘I, too,’ said Mr. Featherstonehaugh. She looked into his eyes. She recognised truth. ‘Do nibble at an olive. I believe that they are considered rather good. I import them from Greece. We do not cater for that perversion here. We never have. I bought this building, equipped and furnished it as a safe haven where we could be ourselves. And I have operated it since 1909 without incident. We have never attracted police attention. I have taken…certain precautions.’

‘These olives really are excellent,’ observed Phryne, knowing he meant that selected persons had been paid off. It probably also meant that the neighbours were paid a small amount to warn the club if a raid was gathering outside. And there was undoubtedly a safe way out, possibly through the cellar.

‘I’m so glad you think so,’ he said. ‘Not all our members are…so,’ he said, crooking his little finger in the universally recognised signal. ‘Some are just gentlemen who are—well, perhaps one could say “over-womaned.”’

‘Married with sisters and aunts and cousins and daughters?’ asked Phryne.

‘Exactly. This is a place where they do not have to remember their manners. We also,’ his voice radiated pride, ‘have an excellent chef. Well, two. One for plain fare and one French. Though he’s actually Calabrian. Downstairs they will see nothing which might offend them. Upstairs they will not be allowed to go. What goes on there never impinges on the ordinary Blue Cat members.’

‘I understand,’ said Phryne. ‘Café Royale rules.’

‘Quite. The ordinary ones consider that belonging to this club is a little daring, a little risqué; they like the frisson and they love the food. I brought with me a chef who was my dear friend at the time. He left me his recipes when he died—too young, poor chap. Such fare as cannot be obtained in Australia. Even ortolans en brochette.’ He winced for some reason. ‘The members of the inner circle, as you might say, all know each other. So there is no chance that…’

‘They might blackmail anyone, because they can be blackmailed in their turn,’ said Phryne. ‘Any scandal would reflect on all of you. I understand.’

‘Good. So imagine how I felt when I saw this in the Hawklet.’

Phryne read the cutting.

CLEVELAND STREET IN MELBOURNE?

A little bird tells us that a scandal is imminent which will stagger Melbourne’s high society. And it will happen in Flinders Lane at a club for gentlemen. Expect dreadful revelations!

‘Oh dear,’ said Phryne.

‘There is only one gentlemen’s club in Flinders Lane,’ said Mr. Featherstonehaugh.

‘This is dated March last year,’ she observed. ‘Nothing since then?’

‘No. But I am worried. There can be no Cleveland Street scandal here. Here there are no miserable messenger boys obliging gentlemen for money. We do not even allow consenting—nay, eager—sailors of the merchant marine or soldiers who have discovered their true nature in the trenches, unless they are members already. We have no prostitutes here, Miss Fisher. Of that, I can assure you.’

‘This must be a very well-conducted club,’ said Phryne gently. The man was on the verge of tears and would never forgive himself if he cried in front of a woman. ‘I don’t think you have anything to worry about, really.’

‘But this wretched missing reporter!’ he protested. ‘She was last seen here! I fear… I fear…’

‘That some of your more enthusiastic members might have removed her? Because you all walk on a razor’s edge, and any slip would be total, utter ruin?’

‘Yes,’ said Mr. Featherstonehaugh softly.

Phryne gestured to the waiter, who had been a stolid earwitness throughout. ‘Cognac,’ she said. ‘Fast.’

He vanished and reappeared, holding the glass, in a whisk of black and white. Obviously one of the Mr. Butler school of domestic service. Phryne gestured to him to hold the glass. Now was not the time for her to come over all motherly, though she was deeply sympathetic. Mr. Featherstonehaugh gulped, sobbed, turned it into a cough, and mopped his brow with an exquisite linen handkerchief.