Unnatural Habits: A Phryne Fisher Mystery (Phryne Fisher Mysteries) (25 page)

‘I should have forbidden her,’ said Mrs. Kettle.

Dot murmured something which could be taken to be agreement and kept searching. No love letters that Dot could find, and she knew where to look. Cards for parties and outings and theatre engagments. Letters from a friend called Cecilia. Dot took those. Her clothes were, according to Mrs. Kettle, all there, except what she was wearing at the time. Nice clothes for a nice gel, undoubtedly bought by her mother. Her toothbrush and toiletries were present in the bathroom.

‘Self-willed,’ said Mrs. Kettle. ‘That’s Polly.’

‘How did she get on with her brother?’ asked Dot. ‘Could I speak to him?’

‘He isn’t here,’ said Mrs. Kettle. ‘I sent him to Mount Martha, to his cousins, for the holidays.’

‘So he wasn’t here when Polly…er…vanished?’

‘No,’ snapped Mrs. Kettle. ‘He’s a good boy and I don’t want him bothered by all this. He’s going to be solicitor. His grandfather left a trust fund for his education.’

‘Oh, good,’ said Dot. There was not much more to find in Polly’s room, which had been cleaned and tidied. She hadn’t been kidnapped from here, it was plain. Dot suggested that Mrs. Kettle write Cecilia’s address down for Miss Phryne.

‘Of course, she may have lost her memory,’ said Mrs. Kettle hopefully. ‘She used to sleepwalk when she was a child. One does hear of such amnesia cases. There was that soldier found by his mother after the war. Dressed like a farm labourer and only spoke French. But she knew him. A mother always knows.’ She scribbled an address on a piece of headed stationery.

With that, they went downstairs.

Dot and Phryne made suitable farewells, collected Mr. Butler and left in the big car, down the carriage drive and into Burke Road.

‘The middle class,’ sighed Phryne. ‘I suppose they have a purpose in God’s Great Plan.’

‘That mother,’ said Dot, worried.

‘Yes, I know. Not concerned enough, was she?’

‘No. But she did think her daughter might have lost her memory. How was the father?’

‘Frantic,’ Phryne replied.

‘I didn’t find anything strange in her room. And the little brother’s been sent away. She says before the…er…incident, but I think she was lying.’

‘Odd,’ said Phryne. ‘When we get home, we shall have a conference. I bet Mr. Butler has wrung the servants’ hall dry of information.’

‘I did find them a chatty lot,’ he said, never taking his eyes off the road.

‘Oh, good,’ murmured Phryne. She yawned. She closed her eyes. Really, that cupola was a bit above the odds…

Chapter Eleven

I must dance barefoot on her wedding day,
And for your love to her, lead apes in hell.

William Shakespeare, The Taming of the Shrew

Phryne was still chuckling about Dot’s revelation of the high social position of Lady Rose Winslow, social arbiter of Camberwell, when Mr. Butler brought in tea and, contrary to all custom, sat down and allowed his employer to pour him a cup. The children were accommodated with milk and one passionfruit biscuit each, so as not to spoil their lunch. Phryne had been so stuffed with scones and cake as to consider lunch an unappetising prospect.

‘We have all been to see Polly Kettle’s parents,’ Phryne announced. ‘As dire a pair as you might expect, but that’s my prejudice. The father is a banker. He is very anxious about his daughter. He professes himself happy to pay any ransom to get his daughter back. But there has been no ransom demand. I think he would tell me if there had been. He’s frantic with worry about his Polly, poor man.’

‘The mother isn’t very worried,’ said Dot. ‘She thinks Polly might have lost her memory. Or so she says. She’s sent the girl’s brother Martin away to Mount Martha—she says before the kidnapping, I say after, to get him out of the way of any questions.’

‘I shall ask Jack to send…no, I actually do have a friend at Mount Martha. He could talk to the boy. I’ll telephone in due course,’ said Phryne.

‘The young lady had nice clothes and a nice room,’ said Dot. ‘I’ve brought all her notes and clippings home with me, and some letters from a girl called Cecilia. No love letters. No pictures of a boy. She seems to have only been interested in her work.’ Dot had a hand-coloured photo of Hugh Collins. She kept it in her bedside drawer and kissed it every night before she said her prayers.

‘I spoke to the servants,’ said Mr. Butler. ‘The cook and housekeeper, Mrs. Johnson, a friendly plump lady with a small child of her own. War widow. The boy, Jones. The yard man and gardener—the one inserted into that unbecoming jacket, Miss Fisher—called Bill Jones, the boy’s elder brother. They have no housemaid. A woman comes in to clean every morning.’

‘I suspected that butler wasn’t a butler,’ said Phryne.

Mr. Butler nodded magisterially. ‘Miss Fisher has been received into the best houses,’ he agreed. ‘They told me that their employers were a bit silly but paid well and weren’t too demanding. It isn’t a big household even when the boy and girl are home. They like the girl. The housekeeper said that she fights with her mother all the time about clothes and the newspaper job. But she loves her father and gets on very well with him.’

‘I got that impression, too,’ agreed Phryne. Dot nodded.

‘But the girl didn’t demand service all the time, asking people to climb two flights of stairs to fetch her handkerchief, as her mother is wont to do. Then not even a thank you. But that isn’t unusual. Daily women quit on a regular basis.’

‘I bet they do,’ commented Phryne.

‘However, the housekeeper before Mrs. Johnson quit without notice because of this misuse of authority, and Mrs. Kettle was left with a dinner to cook—which she can’t—and the Vicar coming. After that she moderated her demands on the live-in staff.’

‘Where do they live in?’ asked Phryne.

‘Nice rooms, Miss Fisher, on the ground floor. A girl employed by Mrs. Johnson minds her child during working hours. They are in a position to note all comings and goings though the gates and both doors.’

‘How useful,’ said Dot.

‘Indeed. On the day in question, Miss Fisher, the young woman had a screaming quarrel with her mother about her profession. Again. She took her brother Martin aside and confided something to him. The yard boy Jones didn’t hear what she said. Then she left as usual and has not been seen again.’

‘I knew that woman was hiding her son,’ said Dot.

‘She hustled the son of the house to Mount Martha that very afternoon, Miss Fisher,’ said Mr. Butler.

‘What did the staff make of the boy?’

‘Apart from the fact that he hates his name, Martin, and insists on being called John, the staff say that he is a nice boy, keen on sport, not very bright or bookish. Likes making things. Wants to play cricket.’

‘Oh dear, his mother wants him to be a lawyer,’ said Dot.

‘Mrs. Johnson says that Mrs. Kettle dotes on Master Martin far more than is healthy. She adores the boy. She ignores or argues with the girl.’

‘How does she get on with her husband?’ asked Phryne.

‘She rubs along with him,’ replied Mr. Butler. ‘The cook says she’s jealous of how much he loves his daughter. Says sometimes that he loves his daughter more than he loves her, goes into a tantrum and a sulk, and can only be brought out of it by gifts of expensive jewellery.’

‘I see,’ said Phryne. ‘Not an unusual pattern. No signs that the father loves the daughter in anything other than a proper paterfamilial way?’

‘None, Miss Fisher.’

‘Good. I have enough deviant stuff in this case as it is. Anything more?’

‘The household is prosperous without being rich,’ said Mr. Butler. ‘Well run, well organised, the staff are happy enough to be there. I believe that is all, Miss Fisher.’ He got up and started to gather teacups.

Dot announced that she was going shopping, and left. She had run out of scarlet thread for the waratahs on her glory box tablecloth.

‘Clippings,’ said Phryne to the minions, ‘notes. Let me know what you find,’ and walked into the garden. Behind her, there was rustling as of thousands of mice being admitted to their very own silo. She thought she heard a squeak of delight.

Having someone else to do the research was very pleasant. Clues appeared to be flapping around her like Loïe Fuller’s ribbons. Though nothing like as decorative. She decided to call Cecilia Brown. She might know something about the multifaceted Polly Kettle. She would certainly know if her mother or her father was right about Polly’s character.

She opened the packet of letters, found the most recent, and began to read. Cecilia was a breathless correspondent with a liberal view of punctuation. Her letters were spiky with exclamation marks. Mostly the letters concerned the extensive preparations for her forthcoming wedding to Lance, a young doctor. To judge from the number of times the phrase appeared, really, my mother is so unreasonable!! this was going much as one would have expected. Phryne had decided many years ago that marriage was for other people. She was freshly pleased about this.

In the middle of all this fuss I do wonder if I might have had a career too, wrote Cecilia plaintively. But I wasn’t any good at school and then I met Lance and it all seems to have just happened! I do like hearing your news about your investigations!!

Irritatingly, Cecilia did not expand on this. She went on to discuss the relative merits of peach (her choice) or white (her mother’s and Mrs. Beeton’s choice) for table napkins at her nuptial breakfast. Phryne very quickly lost patience with her. She combed through the remaining letters for mention of anything not marriage-related and found little about Polly’s work except expressions of conventional regret for the writer’s lack of a career and sympathy for the way Polly was being picked on by Mr. Bates (He sounds horrid!! and it about serves him right if you pinched his beastly story, he wasn’t using it!!!). And very little about the groom. He didn’t seem to feature at all except for comments on his taste in buttonholes (he was quite cross and said whatever I thought would be fine with him!). Had Polly no other friend than this blithering idiot? Nevertheless, Cecilia would have to be hunted down and interviewed. As Phryne could not inflict Cecilia on anyone else, she had to do it herself.

***

Cecilia was at home, doubtless choosing tablecloths. She seemed quite pleased to be invited to the extremely respectable Hopetoun Tearooms in the Block Arcade, and Phryne was resigned. At least she didn’t have to endure another middle-class house. She set out in the big car for the city.

There were two types of young woman that Phryne found trying. One was the sullen or bohemian: painty hands, significant art, no stockings and dirty hair. The other was the frilly or gushing: immaculate hair, hat, stockings and gloves and the affectations of the ‘little me’ type. Cecilia was the latter.

Hopetoun Tearooms was the most exclusive and respectable tearoom in the whole city. Phryne always enjoyed the Block Arcade. She had found it on her first walk on her first day in Melbourne. Italian tesserae on the floor, arches and gilding, excellent small shops, bijou jewellers, a couple of intriguing milliners. Phryne calmed herself as she paced the Block with the young woman. The Block was, at least, neutral ground. Miss Cecilia was a healthy, strong young woman with a rosy face, clear eyes, blonde hair and a regrettable taste for pink. She had a faint, die-away voice, ending each sentence with a little questioning gasp, which would doubtless serve her well with the in-laws—she would never express a contrary opinion—but which was annoying Phryne quite out of proportion to the offence. Also, she could not approve of a cloche with quite so many roses on it, even if they were pink silk.