Unnatural Habits: A Phryne Fisher Mystery (Phryne Fisher Mysteries) (28 page)

‘Some girls from the Magdalen Laundry?’ asked Phryne.

‘That I cannot tell you.’

‘Hugh, can you find out?’

‘I expect so, Miss Fisher.’

‘Then do so. And I will take some legal advice. The motive cannot be revenge. If they wanted to avenge a rape, they would remove the offending organs. The man is at their mercy, he’s unconscious. But they’ve stopped him not from raping anyone else, but from impregnating them. Strange, lucid way of thinking. Right. Can you all stay for dinner? If so we need to tell Mrs. Butler.’

‘I’d be delighted,’ said the doctor.

‘I got to get back to my chief,’ said Hugh reluctantly. ‘I’ll find out those things for you, Miss Fisher. See you later, Dot.’

‘I’ll walk you to the door,’ said Dot.

***

Dinner, which was cold and salady and delicious as always, was beguiled with interesting discussions on morbid psychology. With the ice cream and fruit, Phryne remembered to ask a question.

‘About this amnesia explanation for Polly’s disappearance…’ she started.

Dr. MacMillan snorted. ‘Very rare,’ she said. ‘Usually more of an alibi than a neurosis.’

‘But what about the Tom Smith case?’ asked Jane. ‘His mother knew him, though he was dressed as a farm labourer and only spoke dialect.’

‘Possibly,’ said the doctor.

‘What do you mean?’ demanded Jane. ‘I read about it. It seemed conclusive.’

‘Well, my hinny, perhaps he was an Englishman. Perhaps he had forgotten all about himself. That war was enough to obliterate anyone’s mind. The noise, for example, the big guns, the vibrations. Unhinges the thought processes.’

‘So it does,’ agreed Phryne, recalling the high explosive raining down overhead with noises much louder than thunder. ‘It sounded like the end of the world.’

‘He learned English very fast, three months, and he had no French accent when he spoke,’ argued Jane.

‘Ay, well, imphm. As I said, real amnesia is rare. A blow to the head will produce a gap in the memory of the incident which produced the amnesia; the blow or fall is almost never remembered. As to more than that, who can say? Tom Smith certainly made his mother’s heart glad, and that was a good thing.’

‘So you do not think it likely that Polly Kettle is wandering around the city unable to remember her own name?’ asked Phryne.

‘Not very,’ said the doctor dryly. ‘Not unless she wants to be.’

‘Ah,’ said Phryne.

***

Phryne slept that night without dreams. When she woke she explained it by reference to a judicious amount of gin in her gins and orange. No word had come from Jack Robinson by the time breakfast was concluded, so she sat down in her parlour to think about what to do next. Jobs for All was closed for two days. That would require some preparations. Investigations were on foot about Polly. She had to wait for Agnes from the convent to call her. What to usefully do today?

Phryne pondered. She put her silk-clad legs up on another chair and sipped her second coffee. She needed advice. Legal advice. And to whom should she apply, given the extreme oddness of the crime which was being perpetrated?

Someone was noting which man had impregnated some of the girls in the Magdalen Laundry. Someone was ascertaining the whereabouts of their assailants. And someone was creeping into their houses, chloroforming them, and neatly, surgically, painlessly removing from them that which would allow them to engender any more bastards on unwilling prey. They had not been castrated. They had just been… removed from fatherhood. Which just about suited them.

A eugenic mission, but it had to be illegal. Phryne sipped again. Aha. Felix Pettigrew was in Melbourne. He had left his practice in England to follow the gorgeous Clarissa Cartwright to Australia. And she, gossip said, doted on him. A visit to Felix was indicated. Besides, Phryne hadn’t seen him since he had escorted a blubbering ex-maiden, child in arms, along a line of sappers, identified from their shoulder badge, which was all the dazed young woman could recall of her lover.

‘Two and six a week, and was she worth it?’ he had remarked cynically and almost inaudibly, still bearing up the woman on his arm with perfect courtesy. And he had, of course, got his man.

Phryne rang and had Mr. Butler call for an appointment.

***

Felix’s Collins Street office was canonical, with leather chairs, a huge desk piled with files, a throne-like chair for the solicitor and the general air of a gentlemen’s club. His bowler was hanging on the hallstand. He was clad in his pinstripes and correct lounge suit, with subfusc tie and discreet pearl pin. But he still had the sharp, acute, bony face, the air of subdued amusement, and those bright eyes which saw much further into the human mind than was quite comfortable. Phryne had never tried to lie to Felix and considered that it would not be a good idea. For one thing, he would instantly know, and for a second thing, he would find the attempt funny.

But he also had the well-fed aspect of Ember with his whiskers deep in the crème fraiche. That marriage really suited him was evident. Drat, thought Phryne, another one gone into matrimony; I might run out of men by the millenium at this rate.

He rose politely to meet her and took her hands. Felix’s grasp was warm and dry, as always.

‘Phryne, how very good to see you!’ She recalled his voice: crisp, precise, English.

‘And you too, darling, I can see that marriage pleases you. How is the law?’

‘Human folly,’ he told her gravely, ‘is still flourishing, thank God. Tea?’

‘Aren’t you too busy?’ she asked. The office outside was buzzing.

‘For you, I have all the time in the world.’

‘Too sweet of you. Thank you, tea, and I have a really strange problem for your delectation. I know how you used to love puzzles.’

‘Unlikely to be one I haven’t seen before,’ he assured her. ‘But in any case I promise not to be shocked.’

Phryne told him, over tea and imported Huntley & Palmers biscuits from a tin. Felix drank his tea. Then he ate his biscuit. Then he started to laugh. He laughed so much that he set Phryne off and his secretary came in to see if he needed anything. He waved her out, weeping with mirth, mopping his face with an immaculate handkerchief.

‘Who is this person, that I may suggest a medal?’ he asked. ‘The world has needed one of them—many of them—for years.’

‘My view entirely, but what crime has he committed?’

‘Oh, well, there’s the problem. Assault with a weapon—I assume a scalpel was used. Battery. Grievous bodily harm. False imprisonment. Five years’ jail, perhaps eight. I cannot think of a judge who would be as enchanted by his actions as am I. Pity. Should he be charged, do instruct me. I know just the barrister for this case.’ He laughed again.

Phryne left with another handclasp and an invitation to Clarissa’s first night in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, in which she was playing Titania. As she would be, of course.

Finding herself in the city, Phryne walked past Jobs for All. It was a small, neat shop with a genteel sign. Unexceptionable. Pleasant for the genteel ladies in distressed circumstances who had originally used it. Nice for the girls who crept in asking for a situation overseas, perhaps minding a prince’s children. Who found themselves in quite another establishment. God rot them, thought Phryne, and decided to pay a morning call on Madame Paris, principal brothel keeper in Melbourne. Her establishment was at the top end of Collins Street. Phryne had always wondered whether the description ‘the Paris end of Collins Street’ was not a subtle Melbourne joke—only for those in the know.

Madame Paris had been one of Madame Brussels’ ‘girls.’ Phryne remembered seeing a newspaper photo of them—in the Truth, she thought: an elderly lady and three young women in blameless swimsuits under parasols. It had been enchantingly captioned Madame Brussels and her junketing Jezebels
.
Now Madame Brussels was dead, her empire had been left to her three ‘girls’—Madame Bristol, in Kew, Madame Leyden, in Caulfield, and Madame Paris, in the original house in Collins Street. Phryne was prepared to put good money on none of them appearing in the government report on prostitution in Melbourne. Very brave would the policeman have to be to raid a house in which he might encounter the commissioner, the mayor or the premier. Almost as brave as the loon who raided the Blue Cat. So far, no one had been foolish enough.

The house was quiet. A monstrous object uncoiled itself from his seat inside the door. A Maori about seven feet high and three wide, with shoulders like an ox. Oxen. He asked in an unexpectedly soft, cultured voice, ‘Lady?’

‘Miss Fisher, to see Madame Paris,’ said Phryne to his second coat button. Someone like that should not have been wearing livery. He should have been wearing very little, so that he could flex his muscles for the visitors. Possibly he should be armed with a spear or a greenstone club. Reminding the oafs that they could always end up as the main ingredient in a dish of long pig, for which he had his grandfather’s recipe. He grinned. His teeth had been filed to a point.

‘If the lady will wait a moment?’ he asked, and rang a bell.

‘University?’ asked Phryne.

‘Pays my fees,’ he said.

‘Law?’ she asked.

‘Psychology, sociology, anthropology and science,’ he replied. ‘Going home as soon as I graduate to help my own people preserve their traditions.’

‘And you remind the annoying that one of your traditions involves eating people?’

‘Seems to work so far,’ he replied, and grinned again. ‘I don’t see a lot of trouble.’

‘I can’t imagine why,’ said Phryne, fanning herself with one hand. ‘Melbourne is less endowed with the suicidally insane than I thought.’

A girl came down to conduct Phryne upstairs. She was perhaps twelve. Phryne’s good opinion of Madame Paris took a blow. Surely this child wasn’t one of the staff. She was dressed in a shift, with bare legs and sandaled feet.

‘No, I’m not one of the ladies,’ she told Phryne defiantly. ‘I’m Madame’s adopted daughter.’

‘I have two adopted daughters of my own,’ Phryne told her.

‘My mother died in a car accident,’ said the child. ‘She was one of Madame’s ladies. Madame took me in. She said she wouldn’t send anyone to an orphanage.’

‘Good,’ said Phryne. ‘I wouldn’t either. You’re better off here.’

The child smiled at last. She held out a hand. ‘I’m Jonquil,’ she said, and Phryne said, ‘Phryne Fisher.’

‘Ooh! You’re in the society journals!’ said Jonquil. ‘I’ve seen your picture!’

‘For my sins,’ said Phryne.

‘Madame’s breakfasting,’ said Jonquil. ‘She said to go right in.’

‘Madame Paris,’ said Phryne, as she was ushered into a large, beautifully decorated parlour. No Victorian hangings or plush or gilt. Pure Art Décoratif and very soothing and cool. Madame put down her croissant and stood up to welcome her. She was a short plump woman with a wealth of greying brown hair and eyes of pure polished jet. A glance from them used to set men on fire in her prime. Now she could quell the irritating with a flick of her lashes. Madame Paris was a formidable person.