Unnatural Habits: A Phryne Fisher Mystery (Phryne Fisher Mysteries) (31 page)

‘Where and how?’ asked Robinson.

‘I’ll let you know,’ said Phryne, who occasionally liked to follow the precept of Sherlock Holmes that ‘Any problem, once expounded, seems simple’ and would decline to explain. ‘It will be all right. If I need any help, I’ll scream for it. What about Jobs for All?’

‘They’re opening again tomorrow,’ Jack said gloomily. ‘Nothing to hold them on. I dunno. I wish I could lay hands on that wretched girl. The papers are nagging the chief and he’s nagging me. And I’m nagging Collins,’ he added ruefully.

‘That’s all right, sir; that’s what I’m for,’ said Hugh manfully.

‘And there’s more of those assaults,’ complained Robinson. ‘I tried to get a list of their inmates from that convent and they not only told me to go away, they complained to the bishop.’

‘I’ll get one, even if I have to go and see Mannix,’ Phryne assured him. ‘He owes me a favour.’

‘How?’ asked Hugh Collins.

‘Ah,’ said Phryne, and would not tell him any more, for she had promised that not a word of the strange affair of Jock McHale’s hat would ever be spoken.

‘Anyway, the ones we can find out about have all been involved in either an illegitimate pregnancy or had a real lot of kids,’ said Robinson. ‘And they’re all in the area of the convent. And some of them can remember a nun.’

‘Before it all went black,’ said Phryne.

‘Yair. But the nun’s not high on my list,’ he said. ‘She’s doing good work, I think.’

Both Dot and Hugh looked at him with identical expressions of horror, which Phryne and the minions failed to share.

‘Indeed,’ said Phryne. ‘Well, I’ll call you as soon as I’ve found out about Prospect and O’Hara. Dot, would you walk them to the door? Then come up to my room. I need some advice on costume.’

When Dot arrived in the sea-green boudoir, Phryne was looking at an armload of what she called her ‘playclothes’ laid out on her bed. They included disgraceful garments which Dot had had a hand in ruining, allowing her to appear to be eccentric, disturbed or very poor.

‘Poor, desperate and pregnant,’ said Phryne. ‘The dreadful blue sacque?’

‘Not blue,’ said Dot. ‘The convent would never let the bad girls wear blue.’ Phryne looked her question.’The Blessed Virgin Mary’s colour,’ explained Dot to her pagan employer.

‘Oh, indeed. What about that shabby grey sacque?’ asked Phryne, inspecting a garment notable for its sagging hem and uncertain neckline. It had originally been charcoal but had run in the wash.

‘Yes, that’d be good.’

‘No stockings?’

‘No, Miss. Socks and sandals. Or maybe those old shoes.’

‘And padding?’

Six months ago, this request would have curled Dot’s hair. Now she said equably, ‘How pregnant do you want to be, Miss?’

‘Very,’ said Phryne.

Dot contrived a believeable belly with a small pillow and some bandages. Phryne shook talcum powder over her hair to dull its shine, applied diluted shoe polish to her nails and neck, and picked up a roomy shopping bag made of unravelling pink raffia.

‘Yes?’ she asked.

‘Yes,’ said Dot, appalled. Even the way Phryne stood had changed. She leaned back on her worn-down heels, cradling her fraudulent belly. She looked beaten down by time and fate.

But Dot knew that Phryne carried her little Beretta and a wad of cash in her belly, which abandoned women seldom did.

‘Good. I’ll get a lift from Mr. Butler. You hold the fort, Dot, and I’ll be back as soon as I can.’

Phryne kissed Dot, bade the minions to be good if at all possible, and left, trailing mystery behind her.

‘I don’t like her goin’ alone,’ worried Tinker.

Jane patted his arm. ‘None of us likes it,’ she told him. ‘But she’ll see you if you follow her.’

‘I know,’ said Tinker in an exasperated tone. ‘I’ve tried.’

‘Come on, back to the chessboard,’ urged Jane. ‘Miss Phryne always falls on her feet.’

‘Or someone else’s,’ added Dot.

SS, thought Phryne. Obvious, when you think of it the right way, which is not how I had been thinking of it. She boarded the train at Spencer Street station. The 5.10. For Bacchus Marsh. SS 5.10 BM.

What she would find when she got there would be interesting. The train would presumably be met, because from the map in the directory the station seemed quite a long way from the actual town. If there was a bus she hoped someone would tell her which way to go. Phryne had a copy of The Woman Worker in the raffia bag, which also contained a change of garments and other belongings expected of a woman who is running away to an unknown destination. Rat-tat, the train set off, carrying Phryne to an unknown destination.

Along with a lot of other people, of course; this was the Ballarat train. My Lord, thought Phryne, remembering another voyage in first class where the whole carriage had been chloroformed in order to kill an old woman who stood, unforgivably, between her assailant and a lot of money. Here in third class the seats were harder and the company less select, but no one chloroformed her, which was an improvement.

Mostly businesspeople, she noticed. A few definite farmers, in town on some agricultural errand, loaded down with presents for their families. One darling young man with a little box he kept taking out of his pocket and staring at and putting back again—Phryne diagnosed an engagement ring. Had he asked and been accepted? No, too nervous. If he didn’t stop doing that he was going to drop the thing. Next to him two old women with shopping baskets. A long way to go to buy—what? The bags they carried seemed to contain clothes. They were eating cream cakes with a lot of flaking and enjoying their day out immensely. The woman sitting next to Phryne was eating toffees and offered her one, casting a pitying glance at her protruberant belly and her naked left hand.

Phryne took the point, but she also took the toffee. Clack-clack and the train pulled in at North Melbourne, where a lot of men in suits shoved their way aboard. Also an inspector of tickets, though Phryne could see no way that he could force his way through the throng unless he could discorporate. She fended off knees and briefcases.

Clack-clack and it was Footscray, a baroque example of railway architecture, where some of the suits got off to try their luck in another compartment, or risk the wrath to come by riding in second class on a third-class ticket. The rest of the passengers found a sitting or leaning or strap-hanging position and settled, prepared to defend it against all odds. Phryne knew that her seat was safe, even if she did move, because pregnant women, if they had the bad taste or the sheer necessity to travel, always got a seat. The social disapproval of a healthy man who kept his seat while a lady in a delicate condition stood would be crushing. Also there was a fair chance that the lady would fall on him or some censorious old lady would spike him with her umbrella or park her shopping on him, stepping on his feet the while. Some courtesies were absolute.

The inspector moved through the train, now that he was no longer crushed against the far wall, checking tickets. Clack-clack, and the inspector loomed close to a group of ticketless boys, who managed to escape at Sunshine, running away toward the massive Harvester Works, which covered several acres in every direction and had given the suburb its name. It was fittingly sunny today. The train pulled out on whistle and signal just as the boys reached the gate and leapt it.

And clack-clack as the outraged inspector crossly demanded tickets from the remainder of the population. And as the train clacked on, Phryne heard an altercation and looked up from The Woman Worker to find a scene around a very pregnant woman who was weeping freely and had no ticket whatsoever.

‘I’ll have to put you off, Missus,’ said the Inspector.

‘Oh, but I have to get to Bacchus Marsh,’ she protested. ‘I have to!’

‘Why, hello!’ said Phryne, struggling through the mass of people, who tried to part and let her through. ‘There you are! Didn’t you get the ticket?’

The woman stared at her dumbfounded. Her face was red and wet, she was clearly at the end of whatever tether she had. She could not say a word, which was fine with Phryne.

‘I’m so sorry,’ she told the Inspector. ‘This is my cousin and she lost me in the crowd. I thought she’d missed the train. Here’s the money for her ticket. We can only say sorry, can’t we, eh, Mary?’

‘Yes?’ whispered Mary, aware that she had just been rescued and totally at a loss about the means.

‘Oh, very well,’ grumbled the inspector, and condescended to issue a sixpenny ticket, which he punched himself with some violence and put into the clammy paw held out to him. ‘Don’t be so careless next time!’

Phryne assured him that she would be the soul of exactitude in future and leaned over the pregnant girl. The gentleman sitting next to her immediately rose. Phryne thanked him and told him to take her seat further back, if he could fight his way through the throng.

‘SS. 5.10 BM,’ she whispered to her rescuee.

‘Oh. We’re going to the same place,’ whispered the young woman.

‘I believe we are,’ said Phryne, settling. Her fraudulent belly was very uncomfortable.

‘But how did you know my name was Mary?’ asked the girl. ‘Did the comrades tell you that I was coming?’

‘No, I guessed,’ responded Phryne. ‘Which station is this?’

‘Ardeer,’ said Mary. ‘There’s the silos. It’s where the grain comes in. Were they going to send you to the convent?’ she asked.

‘Yes,’ said Phryne.

‘They take the baby away,’ said Mary. ‘My bloke’s dead. We was goin’ to get married. Had the ring and all. Then he got killed. On the wharf. And me like this. My family said I was a shame and a disgrace. And they wanted to take the baby. It’s all I ’ave of my bloke.’ She started to cry again.

‘Have you got the ring on you?’ asked Phryne.

‘Yes,’ said Mary, pulling at a string around her neck. It bore a cheap, rolled-gold wedding ring.

‘Then you have a perfect right to wear it,’ Phryne told her as the train clacked into somewhere called Deer Park, which was perfectly flat and perfectly dry, except for boulders and thistles. It was entirely free of deer. ‘Put it on.’

Mary obeyed. And she did feel better, visibly. Phryne was reminded of the charitable practice of the Queen Victoria Hospital. For reasons of hygiene during labour, every woman’s wedding ring was covered with a strip of sterile sticking plaster. The white ring around the finger was immediately evident, separating the married from the unmarried. So every woman at the Queen Vic for delivery wore a sticking plaster ring.

‘Where are we now?’ asked Phryne.

‘Rockbank,’ said a shopping woman comfortably. ‘Soon home, dear.’

‘Good. I think Mary and I could do with a nice strong cuppa.’

‘You’ll be going out to Miss Isobel, then?’