Unnatural Habits: A Phryne Fisher Mystery (Phryne Fisher Mysteries) (27 page)

Dear Ceccie, your dress sounds very good, wrote Polly, evidently trying to sound enthusiastic.

I’m sure that you’ll look beautiful, you always do. I’ve found a link between the convent and this agency called Jobs for All. I’m going there to ask about it. Bates was foul to me again today. But the editor says there’s no property in a story. It’s mine if I can work it. And I have been. Mum’s been on at me to go out with that idiot Herbert. I won’t. I don’t care if he’s rich. He hasn’t an atom of brain. He’s good-looking if you like brawny men. I don’t, and I won’t go out with him when he’s in town. Dad says I needn’t. So there. I’m going to the Lonsdale Street agency tomorrow, and to this lying-in home in Footscray where some of the convent girls have been sent. That’s where the three went missing. Watch the papers. This will be a front-page story. I think peach would be a good colour for napkins.

Love, Polly.

Tinker was giggling.

‘What?’ asked Ruth, grabbing at the letter.

‘She’s saying that the guv’nor rescued her in Little Lon,’ read Tinker. ‘And she’s saying that she didn’t need rescuing and it was high-handed. I saw that mob. She was gonna get a bad belting, all right. Guv?’

‘She was,’ said Phryne, ‘but we are not in this business for the gratitude, Tinker.’

‘We wouldn’t wanna be,’ snarled the boy. ‘Nothin’ else in ’ere. Here,’ he said, recalling his diction.

‘Jane?’

‘Nothing we don’t already know,’ said Jane.

‘Ruth?’

‘Same. This Cecilia sounds very frivolous,’ said Ruth. ‘And she’s dead wrong about game pie being incorrect for the wedding breakfast.’

‘Ceccie’s concerned only for her nuptials,’ said Phryne. ‘Poor Polly had a very inattentive correspondent. This is the last letter, I suggest you all read it. I am going to telephone Jack Robinson—no, actually, I shall leave that to Dot when she gets back; she can call Hugh. She likes doing that. We need to find out how the raid on Jobs for All went.’

‘Yes,’ said Jane. ‘Miss Kettle might have been kidnapped from there, if she was making trouble.’

‘And she would have been,’ said Phryne.

***

But there was no need to call Hugh, for by the time Dot returned with not only the scarlet for her waratah but a new viridian art silk for the leaves, the detective constable was already at the door. Mr. Butler conducted him inside.

‘A hot day, sir,’ observed the butler. ‘Miss Fisher and Miss Williams are in the parlour, sir.’

He saw Hugh to a seat and provided a pint of soda water and then a bottle of beer, which vanished as though there were no sides for it to touch. He was panting. His brow was wet with honest sweat.

‘For God’s sake, Hugh, take off your coat and loosen your collar. We won’t be shocked at shirtsleeves, will we, Dot?’ asked Phryne. ‘But we will be shocked if you expire in our drawing room.’

Mr. Butler took the coat and provided more cold beverages. Hugh, who had felt that he was actually melting like an altar candle, began to solidify.

‘Thanks!’ he gasped. ‘Outside’s like walking through a furnace.’

‘Like Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego,’ said Jane helpfully.

‘Yair, them,’ agreed Hugh, engulfing more soda water and then more beer. He had not been a particularly attentive scripture scholar.

‘Though a furnace temperature is about…’ Jane began, then intercepted Dot’s glance and subsided. Sometimes people just didn’t want to know useful facts about the Bible. Dot especially. Jane found this strange.

Hugh removed a sheaf of papers from his coat as Mr. Butler took it away.

‘Messages from Jack Robinson, Miss,’ he said, holding out the sweat-marked bundle to Phryne. ‘Information received.’

‘Oh, goody,’ said Phryne. She leafed through, handing each page to a minion after she had read it.

‘So, no Forrest called Frank at that factory?’ she said.

‘Not as we can find,’ said Hugh, gulping more soda water in preparation for another heavenly beer. ‘But there’s the list of employees, Miss.’

‘And how about Jobs for All?’ asked Phryne.

‘Oh, they’re into some dirty work all right,’ growled Hugh. ‘Started off as a straight employment agency for genteel ladies, that was before the war. Then they got…er…’

‘Less genteel?’

‘Yair. But Jack Robinson says there ain’t nothing we can get on them. They say they only handle the employment of the girls and their travel arrangements. They say they’re only agents. Fair dinkum. I nearly punched the boss. Smarmy, la-di-dah bast—coot. English.’

‘Is he?’ asked Phryne. ‘That’s unusual. Upper-class voice? I’m just Burlington Bertie from Bow, doncherknow?’ she mimicked. Hugh winced.

‘Yair, like that.’

‘I really must drop in and visit a compatriot,’ said Phryne.

‘Oh no, Miss, that might be dangerous, these ain’t nice men,’ protested Hugh. He looked to Dot for help, but Dot merely shrugged.

‘Didn’t you know, Hugh dear?’ purred Phryne. ‘I’m not nice either. So there was nothing that Jack could do about Jobs For All?’

‘No, Miss,’ muttered Hugh, deeply unhappy. His boss would go crook about this, he just knew it.

‘Closed ’em down for a couple of days while we go through the books. Best we can do unless they’re smuggling. Which they might very well be, you know.’

‘As you say. And this charity, Gratitude?’

‘They send ’em girls, the agency sends the girls on.’

‘I see. Neat.’

‘Got ’im!’ exclaimed Tinker, who was reading the employee list.

‘Got whom?’ asked Phryne grammatically.

‘The bloke whose name reminded her of forests.’

‘Well?’ asked Jane.

‘Here,’ said Tinker. He exhibited the name.

Phryne chuckled ‘Of course, how clever of you—you shall have some clever ice cream. Too hot for chocolates in this weather.’

‘What’s the name?’ asked Ruth.

‘Timberlake,’ said Jane. ‘That was clever,’ she admitted.

‘A word with Frank Timberlake would be advisable,’ Phryne told Hugh. ‘Also tell Jack I would like to know the city address of a certain Herbert Grant, who wants to marry Polly. Also anything known to the police about him. Now, you sit here until you are quite recovered. We shall consider these documents in my office. Come along, minions. We need to plot. And, Jane, I believe you were about to teach Tinker chess?’

Left alone with Dot, Hugh accepted another glass of fizzy water.

‘She isn’t going to do something rash, is she?’ he asked uneasily.

‘Probably,’ said Dot.

They sat together and worried. After a while, Dot took up her embroidery, and Hugh took up her book and began to read to her. Soon, they were very content together.

Chapter Twelve

I believe that…it is in the sterilisation of failure, and not in the selection of successes for breeding, that the possibility of improvement of the human stock lies.

H. G. Wells,
Comments on Francis Galton to the
Sociological Society, London, 1904

Dr. MacMillan called just before dinner. She bustled inside, full of some discovery, and hardly waited to divest herself of her coat and drink the first pint of soda water before she exclaimed, ‘Phryne! The oddest thing!’

‘Tell all,’ said Phryne. ‘We’re agog.’

‘I talked to the doctor who treated that creature O’Hara,’ she said. ‘He had noticed the suture and thought it odd. Then I arranged for three more to be examined. Phryne, someone is chloroforming men and performing vasectomies on them!’

This rather fell flat. The faces of her listeners remained agog.

‘And that would be?’ asked Phryne.

‘It’s a small operation,’ said the doctor. ‘Yes, a little of the whisky would be lovely, Mr. Butler. I never heard of such a thing! Each one still has his…er…virility,’ she censored her discourse.

‘You mean he still has all his reproductive organs,’ said Jane.

‘Exactly, but he cannot engender. He’s been…well, not castrated, but…’

‘I see. How difficult is this operation?’ asked Phryne.

‘Oh, it’s easy. Just a little incision, draw out the vas deferens and snip it, then the same on the other side. Would take about ten minutes if the operator was experienced.’

‘He or she is rapidly gaining experience,’ said Phryne. ‘And this would be when the nun arrived unannounced at the door and everything went black?’

‘Precisely.’

‘Goodness,’ said Phryne.

‘Have you observed a pattern, Dr. MacMillan?’ asked Jane.

‘I have. Each one is responsible for a pregnancy. Mr. O’Hara for thirteen of them.’

‘And the girls in question?’ asked Phryne.

‘All of them—well, all that I know about, Phryne—were sent to the Convent of the Good Shepherd.’

‘Well, well,’ said Phryne. ‘That really is odd. I must meet this eugenicist.’

‘Eugenicist?’ asked Hugh Collins.

‘The science of eugenics. Scientific breeding,’ explained Jane, who had just finished the book. She had thought it interesting but badly reasoned and illogical. The criteria for acceptance appeared to be fatally flawed by the prejudices of the writer.

‘What, like cows and horses?’ asked the bemused police officer.

‘Yes, except applied to people,’ Jane told him.

‘That doesn’t sound right,’ he said. ‘I can’t believe it.’

‘Believe it,’ advised Phryne. ‘Someone is doing it, eh, Doctor?’

‘Yes, they do seem to be.’

‘This isn’t castration, you say?’ asked Phryne.

Dot blushed. So did Hugh. The minions were unaffected. The doctor accepted a little more whisky.

‘No, not at all. The operation itself is common. Often used to treat various neuroses. In this case it appears that some, at least, of the victims have demonstrated that they are reproductively untrustworthy and have been removed from any chance of impregnating anyone again.’