Unnatural Habits: A Phryne Fisher Mystery (Phryne Fisher Mysteries) (7 page)

‘I agree.’ Dot nodded. ‘They would have been scolded all the time for being wicked and sinful, but you can get used to scolding.’

‘Not even notice it after a while,’ Tinker put in. His mother had seldom communicated with her children except by nagging. He had long ago learned to block out the sound of her voice, until she reinforced some order with a clip over the ear. And she had a punch like a heavyweight. Ruth grinned at him. He grinned back.

‘Remind me not to scold you,’ said Phryne. ‘Continue, Ruthie, please.’

‘I mean, even though there was hard work and nagging, they were fed and lodged. Outside there ain’t no one to look after them. Isn’t. Anyone,’ she corrected herself. Remembering being cold and overworked and continuously yelled at had taken her back to the language of her childhood.

‘But someone got to them,’ said Dot. ‘And there aren’t many outsiders in a convent.’

‘Who could get in?’ asked Phryne. ‘Men?’

Dot’s shocked glance replied before she actually said, ‘Oh, no, Miss!’

‘But what if something went wrong with the water supply in the Magdalen Laundry and they had to bring in a plumber?’

‘Then the girls wouldn’t be there when he came, and two nuns would be with him until they walked him out the gate. Old nuns. Tough ones.’

‘They are that cautious, eh?’

‘Oh, yes, Miss. And the whole convent is surrounded by that really high wall. And they have big dogs. Convents have to be careful. Some men have…real strange ideas about nuns.’

‘And, of course, the high wall works both ways. It keeps the nuns and the girls in, as well as keeping the lustful out.’

‘I suppose so, Miss,’ conceded Dot, who hadn’t thought of it that way.

‘So the girls couldn’t have got out of the convent,’ said Tinker. ‘If the wall is so high and there are dogs. Which is why they had to wait to make their getaway until they were sent to this place in Footscray.’

‘Quite right. They could have been plotting for months,’ said Phryne.

‘Waiting for their chance to flee,’ said Ruth, clasping her hands. She loved romances, and this sounded like a romance.

‘And once they were able to—make their getaway, was it, Tinker?—they went. Promptly. Neatly. Leaving no clue. Arguing either amazing luck or very good staff work,’ said Phryne.

‘I don’t reckon them poor girls are that lucky,’ said Tinker gloomily.

‘Me neither,’ said Ruth.

‘What would you like us to do, Miss Phryne?’ asked Jane, who considered that enough time had been spent in idle speculation. She was a scientist and preferred experiment to theory any day.

‘I think,’ said Phryne slowly, ‘I think that we will hire Bert, and we will take a little taxi ride. We need to visit all of the families, and then we need to visit the lying-in home kept by the pious Mrs. Ryan.’

‘Shouldn’t we be going after Miss Kettle first?’ asked Dot. ‘She might be in danger.’

‘The cops are looking for her,’ said Phryne. ‘They have methods and people we don’t have. We shall augment their efforts. I suspect that if we find the girls we will find out why someone kidnapped Miss Kettle. So we shall pursue the whole enquiry. One at a time. We shall use our advantages.’

‘What do you want us to do?’ asked Ruth.

‘I propose letting you out of the car, two on the street at a time, to talk to the local kids. It’s school holidays; there will be kids around. One of you, I shall take in with me. On some pretext, I shall send you off with the other children, and you need to find out what the mother or father isn’t telling me.’

‘What sort of thing?’ asked Jane, who liked precision.

‘Could be anything,’ said Phryne. ‘Find out if the girls had boyfriends, if they had political affiliations, if they had friends and who the friends are and what sort they are. Especially try to find out why Mary O’Hara’s mother says she is a good girl and her father says she is a liar.’

Tinker, Ruth and Dot exchanged a glance. Dot crossed herself. Phryne knew what they were thinking because she was thinking it herself.

‘Yes, but we can’t leap to the conclusion that it is incest,’ she told them. Jane looked a little startled. She had been thinking about Fermat’s Last Theorem until someone gave her some data. She was about to ask for clarification when Ruth nudged her.

‘Tell you later,’ she whispered. Jane accepted this.

‘What would you like us to be?’ asked Dot.

‘Shabby genteel,’ said Phryne. ‘That fits in everywhere. That means you wear cotton trousers and a clean shirt, Tink, but the shirt Dot mended for you, not a new one. Cotton dresses, girls, clean but worn. Those straw hats that got caught in the rain. You will wear what your own good taste dictates, Dot dear, and I shall stay in this suit. With a different hat and flat shoes, I will look enough like a district visitor.’

Dot grinned privately. Nothing was going to make Phryne look shabby, genteel or otherwise. She could be dressed in a hessian sack and still look superb. And few district visitors had their clothes made to measure by Madame Fleuri of Collins Street.

The company scattered to change. All Dot did was replace her modish jacket with a cardigan which had sagged out of shape in the wash. She stuck her rosary in her pocket, in case she might be asked to join in some act of devotion. And said a brief prayer for the lost and strayed as she did so. Dot, a true daughter of the Church, desperately hoped that the convent had done nothing wrong, and would cheerfully unleash the fires of hell—or Miss Phryne, a reasonable earthly substitute—on them if they had fallen from the grace expected of them by God and the saints.

Mrs. Butler was asked to provide a hamper. Mr. Butler was instructed to summon Bert and Cec and their bonzer new taxi, which Phryne had bought for them early in their partnership. Phryne inspected her troops.

Tinker looked just right. He could have been a good boy from a good family who had fallen on hard times or a child of the working class whose parents had Aspirations. Jane had brushed her hair back under the slightly drooping brim of the straw hat and pulled it down hard, so that she looked like a mushroom in an outgrown blue shift. But she had mended gloves and her sandals were clean but had one strap replaced with string. Ruth had braided her hair very tightly, donned a yellow dress on which she had spilled orangeade which had never entirely washed out, and had cheap yellow cotton gloves, which clashed with her ensemble. Dot twirled to exhibit her saggy cardigan. Phryne beamed.

‘You are all very, very worthy minions,’ she told them. ‘Now you take the files, Dot, and you grab that hamper, Tink. I can hear Bert at the door. Have you all got your emergency money?’

They all nodded. Six pennies jingled in every pocket.

‘If something goes wrong, run. Don’t fight unless you have to. Get back to the taxi or call a cab or get on a tram or summon a policeman. Then find a telephone and call the house. Mr. Butler will be here and will advise you. Clear?’

They nodded. Even Mr. Butler bent his stately head in butlerine acquiescence.

‘Then let’s go,’ said Phryne. ‘The game’s afoot!’

Chapter Four

Laws grind the poor
And rich men rule the law.

Oliver Goldsmith, ‘The Traveller’

The nearest house was that of Ann Prospect in Collingwood. It was a nice respectable wooden house in good repair, painted recently. Someone had planted red geraniums in the miniscule front garden. Someone loves this house, Phryne thought. She had brought Dot and Jane with her. It seemed a good fit. Tinker and Ruth might betray their working-class origins. They hadn’t yet learned the sophisticated hypocrisy which Phryne found so useful in prosecuting her enquiries.

The door was answered by a small girl in a maid’s uniform. Someone had done their best with the lace, which had been trimmed and mended where it had frayed. Phryne knew that Dot would be able to tell her all about the girl’s clothes when they were back in the car. The servant bobbed a terrified curtsey. Phryne gave her the card which said The Hon. Miss Phryne Fisher: Enquiries
.
She reserved this one for the snobbish. It always worked.

And so it proved. After the girl had scurried off, the mistress of the house herself appeared in moments and ushered them into a parlour darkened by plush curtains and littered with ornaments. Inherited, Phryne diagnosed. This family had come down in the world.

‘Tea, Miss Fisher?’ asked the woman, a tall rangy redhead, who had introduced herself as Mrs. Edward Prospect. The daughter favoured her mother. Mrs. Prospect wore a beige suit of no imagination or fit and great respectability. Second-hand, Phryne decided. Too proud to shop at the cheap shops, too poor to shop at the expensive ones. She was rigid. You could have measured angles with Mrs. Prospect. Phryne smiled on her, however.

‘No, thank you. I have come to make some enquiries into the fate of three missing girls. Your daughter Ann is one of them. But before we speak further, perhaps you could send my daughter join to join your children? This conversation might not be fit for tender ears.’

‘Of course,’ replied Mrs. Prospect. It had apparently not occurred to her that if the conversation was likely to be indelicate, Miss Fisher should not have brought her daughter. She rang the bell and Jane was sent away with the little maid. ‘Do sit down, but I am afraid I cannot tell you anything about… Ann’s whereabouts.’

‘You have haven’t heard from her?’ asked Phryne. Mrs. Prospect linked her fingers in a knot.

‘Not a word. We did not part on good terms.’ The tone of voice could have been used in the fishing industry for freezing prawns. ‘I have no interest in her fate.’

‘Then we have nothing at all to talk about,’ said Phryne equably.

Mrs. Prospect saw her aristocratic visitor about to rise, collect her bag and escape. This could not be allowed to happen. Phryne’s visit would endow Mrs. Prospect with boasting powers hitherto unknown and would agreeably squash the pretensions of that common woman next door, who had once entertained a bishop. Besides, she had caught a look of disapproval from the plain young woman who had accompanied the Hon. Miss Fisher. A devout young woman, with the beads of a rosary trailing out of her cardigan pocket. Mrs. Prospect hastily assumed her company smile.

‘Let’s not be hasty, Miss Fisher. What do you want to know?’

‘What was Ann like?’

‘Like?’ Mrs. Prospect frowned. ‘She was a girl. Tall and slim like me. She had to work in a—well, we all have to work, don’t we, in this modern postwar world?’

Phryne assented. ‘We do, indeed. Did she object to working in the factory?’

‘No, not at all. I thought she ought to try for a job in an office—the company at the factory is very rough—but she said that she liked it. She was being considered for a promotion to leading hand. She was doing well. Though one could not approve of her tendency to socialism. She was a member of the union, you know. Then—she fell.’

‘Yes,’ prompted Phryne.

‘And of course she couldn’t stay here. I have young children who could be corrupted by her evil example. She was wilful. She would not say who was the father of her child of shame. We came to an agreement with an old family friend who said he would rescue her good name. And she turned around and rejected him! Flat! I was so embarrassed.’