Cocaine Blues (3 page)

Sister Simmonds picked up Alice’s hand and felt for a pulse. It flickered so fast that she could not distinguish the separate beats. The girl’s temperature was 104 degrees. She was alternately sweating and shaking with cold, and dried out and burning with heat. Her belly, breasts and thighs were patterned with a scarlet-fever like rash.

‘Sapraemia,’ she announced. Dr MacMillan nodded.

‘Treatment?’

‘Salicyclates and anti-tetanus serum.’

‘Good. Tell them to prepare a bed in the septic ward, and the theatre as soon as you can. If I remove the source of the infection she will have a better chance. Arrange for ice-water sponging and paraldehyde by injection.

‘Poor mite,’ added Dr MacMillan, touching Alice’s cheek. ‘But a bairn herself.’

***

Bert sipped his tea suspiciously. It was hot and sweet and he drank it quickly, burning his tongue. He did not like this at all. He suspected that Alice was going to lead them into trouble and fervently wished that the tall man in Lonsdale Street had chosen another cab to deposit the poor little rat into. Cec was staring at the wall, his tea untouched.

‘Drink your tea, mate,’ suggested Bert, and Cec said, ‘She’s only a kid,’ again. Bert sighed. He had known Cec for many years and was aware that his heart was as soft as putty. The rooming house in Carlton where they both lived presently lodged three cats and two dogs which had all been found
in extremis
and nursed back to aggressive, barking, scratching health by his partner. After all, Bert thought, I seen him sit up all night nursing a half-drowned kitten. Plain nutty on anything weak and wanting, that’s Cec. And what Mrs Browning is going to say if he wants to bring a stray girl home, I don’t know. She created something chronic about the last puppy. The thought made him smile and he patted Cec on the shoulder.

‘Tails up, Cec. She’ll be apples,’ he encouraged, and Cec took up his cup.

He had barely raised it to his lips when Dr MacMillan entered the room, and they both stood up. She waved them to their hard hospital chairs again and sat down heavily in the only easy chair. Cec poured her tea.

‘How is she?’ he asked anxiously. Dr MacMillan shot him a quick look, and saw the brown eyes full of concern, without the inevitable fear which would have marked the man responsible for Alice’s condition or for her operation. She sighed.

‘It is not good. She waited too long to come to us. She has blood poisoning and I don’t know if we can save her. It will be touch and go. It depends upon how strong her will to live is.’

‘Can’t you do anything?’ demanded Bert.

‘No. Even modern medicine can do very little. She must fight her own battle, and maybe lose it. Now, tell me all about the tall man in Lonsdale Street.’

‘About six feet, lofty beggar, with dark hat and suit, looked like a gentleman. He was worried, but. Gold signet ring on the left little finger with a diamond in it big as a hatpin.’

‘Was he a pimp?’

‘Nah, and she’s no whore,’ objected Bert. ‘I should know, I’ve carried enough. Only people who can afford taxis, almost.’

‘No, she’s not one of them,’ agreed Cec, ‘she made a mistake, that’s all. Some bloke ain’t acted square. He’s podded her and then left her, and she must have a respectable family, because she said she could go home now. You remember, mate? She wouldn’t have said that unless she came from a good home, and they didn’t know.’

‘Yair, she was frantic,’ said Bert. ‘We said that you wouldn’t tell ’em.’

‘Nor shall I,’ agreed Dr MacMillan. ‘I shall tell them that she is here, but not what brought her here. One can get blood poisoning from any breach in the skin. A rose thorn would do. What else can you recall about the man who brought her to you?’

‘Nothin’ much else. Black hair, I reckoned, and a toffy look. Eh, Cec?’

Cec, overcome by his unaccustomed eloquence, nodded.

‘Yair, and I reckon we’ve seen him before.’

‘Where?’

‘Might have been in the cab, might have just been on the street—have a feeling that it was somewhere around Lon. or Little Lon.…Cec, does that toffy mug ring a bell?’

‘Nah, mate. You musta been on your pat.’

‘We don’t usually work together, see. Cec has a truck. But she’s laid up with piston trouble so we’re doing a double shift. Nah, I can’t remember. Why do you want to know?’

‘To inform the police, of course,’ stated Dr MacMillan quietly. ‘He must be found and put in jail. If she dies, he is a murderer. Butchers! They batten on the respectability of these stupid girls—it’s always the innocent and deceived that get caught—and they mutilate them, charging ten pounds for the savagery that a cannibal wouldn’t stoop to, and then they dump them like so much garbage to bleed out their lives in the gutter. Nothing is too bad for such men—nothing. If I could but lay a hand on them myself I’d inoculate them with bacteria, and watch how they liked trembling and shrieking their lives away down to an agonizing, filthy death.’

‘Not the jacks, though,’ mumbled Bert. ‘Not the cops…’

‘And why not? You are essential witnesses.’

‘Yair, but Cec and me don’t have no cause to love the jacks.’

‘I am not asking you to love them, nor will they be concerned with your petty crimes. You will come down to Russell Street with me this afternoon and you will tell them everything you know, and I will answer for it that you will walk out again. Do you understand?’

They understood.

***

At three o’clock in the afternoon, Bert and Cec tailed Dr MacMillan into the police station, under the red brick portal, and came before the desk-sergeant on his high pedestal.

‘I am Dr Elizabeth MacMillan, and I have an appointment to see a Detective-Inspector Robinson.’

‘Yes, Madam,’ said the desk-sergeant. ‘He’s expecting you. These are your people, Sir,’ he added to a soberly dressed young man sitting beside him. They followed him along a corridor and into a small, bleak office painted institution green. It contained a desk, a filing cabinet, and four hard chairs. The cable-car clanged outside. At his signal, they all sat down and there was a moment’s silence while he took down a folio ledger and unscrewed a black fountain pen.

‘Your names, please,’ he said in a carefully unmodulated voice. The man was colourless, with mid-brown hair, mid-brown eyes, and nothing noticeable about him at all. They gave their names. When he heard ‘Albert Johnson’ and ‘Cecil Yates’ he grinned.

‘The red-raggers, eh? Still fighting the capitalist menace? Been to Russia yet? With a lot of property reasonably suspected to be unlawfully obtained?’

Cec stared mournfully at Dr MacMillan.

Bert, glaring at the policeman, snarled, ‘Your time will come. Oppressor of the widow and orphan, upholder of the exploiter…’

‘That will do,’ interposed Dr MacMillan. ‘I spoke to you, officer, if you recall, about these gentlemen. They behaved, in relation to this wretched girl, with notable gallantry and gentleness. I have assured them that they are required only to state what they have observed about this butcher of an abortionist, and I would not be forsworn.’

She fixed the uncomfortable detective with her eye, and he flinched.

‘That’s right, Madam, you are quite correct. Now, tell me all about the man.’

Bert, assisted by Cec, repeated the description, and the detective lost his indifference. He flicked over the pages in the ledger and read aloud, ‘Six feet tall, cropped hair, swarthy complexion, signet ring on his left hand.’

‘Yair,’ agreed Bert. ‘We couldn’t see his hair because he had his hat on, but I reckoned that it was black, or very dark brown, like shoe polish. And a little smear of a moustache, just a line on the upper lip.’

‘That’s him,’ said the detective. ‘He’s been involved in this racket for three years—or that’s as long as we’ve known about it. We call him Butcher George. The first victim was a girl called Mary Elizabeth Allen, found dead in the Flagstaff Gardens, dumped out of a car by a man of that description. Good girl, by the way. The next was a common prostitute known as Gay Lil, real name Lillian Marchent, found dying in a gutter in Fitzroy Street. She said that the job was done by a man called George Fletcher and gave a similar description. Course, you can’t rely on the word of a girl like that…’

‘O can’t ye?’ demanded Dr MacMillan, her accent becoming more Scottish as she lost her temper. ‘I’ve worked with enough of ’em to know you can trust ’em just as fine as anyone—they’re human women, for the Lord’s sake! Lil’s death is just as much a tragedy as the good little girls—they all die the same, Detective-Inspector.’

Dr MacMillan saw that Bert, Cec, and the policeman were all regarding her with the same puzzled stare. She concluded that men were all alike, one side of the law or the other, and held her tongue. The detective-inspector read on.

‘Third was a married woman—eight kids she had—and she got home before she bled to death. Left her husband a note saying that George had charged her ten pounds and she was sorry. Man answering to that description seen leaving the house. That was six months ago. And now your girl—when do you reckon it was done?’

‘Two or three days ago.’

‘And will she live?’

‘I hope so. I can’t tell,’ sighed Dr MacMillan. The detective-inspector leaned back in his chair.

‘We don’t know enough. It’s always hard to find ’em, because their victims protect ’em. To a girl in that situation, even death seems better than continuing pregnant, with social ruin staring her in the face. And some of them are quite competent. Some even use ether and have an operating room. Some like this bastard—beg pardon, Madam—force themselves on the girls before they do the procedure.’

Cec growled, and Bert demanded, ‘If you’ve got all this proof, why don’t you catch him?’

‘No clues, he gets rid of the ones who die.’

‘And the ones that live won’t say a word. They committed a crime by having the abortion, I understand,’ said Dr MacMillan. ‘We see enough of them at the hospital. Bleeding like pigs, infected, mutilated, torn and sterile for life, they all insist that it was a hot bath, or a horse-ride, or a fall down some steep stairs. Very well, officer. Thank you for seeing us.’

‘Here, you’re going to do nothin’?’ protested Bert. The detective-inspector turned a weary face towards him.

‘Why don’t you mobilize the comrades?’ he suggested tonelessly. ‘This George is somewhere in the city, near where you picked up this poor girl. Keep your eyes open, you may see him again.’

‘I tell you what, mate,’ called Bert as he was ushered out, ‘if I do see him, I’ll run the bastard down!’

***

Back in the taxi Cec drove and Bert asked questions.

‘Is she going to live?’

‘As I said to that policeman, I don’t know. I’ve cleared the womb of its remaining contents so the source of infection is gone. I’ve stitched up the damaged flesh and disinfected every bit I could reach. She will decide her own fate now. And I must get the almoner to find her relatives, and I have a surgery at four—so shall we stop dawdling?’

Cec ground gears and they picked up speed.

Dr MacMillan was decanted at her hospital and Cec and Bert resumed their rounds. They did not speak, but patrolled up and down the city, picking up fares, and watching for the tall man with the moustache and the signet ring with the huge diamond. Cec followed Bert and Bert succeeded Cec, until they went home to Carlton at about three in the morning.

‘Wouldn’t it rot your socks!’ exclaimed Bert, kicking at a passing fence. ‘Wouldn’t it!’

Cec said nothing, but that was normal for Cec.

Chapter Four

When this yokel comes maundering
Whetting his hacker
I shall run before him
Diffusing the civilest odours
Out of geraniums and unsmelled flowers.
It will check him.

‘The Plot against the Giant’, Wallace Stevens

‘You ain’t one of them white slavers, are you?’ demanded Dorothy, stopping dead in Collins Street, and causing a gentleman directly behind her to swallow his cigar. Phryne reached into her pocket, chuckling.

‘If you’re really thinking that, then accept this ten quid and go home to your mother,’ she suggested. The idea of scouting for white slaves in the Block Arcade tickled her fancy. Dorothy looked at the ground so intently that Phryne wondered if she was surveying for the gold which was popularly supposed to pave Melbourne’s streets.

After a little while the girl took Phryne’s hand.

‘I don’t think that really,’ she said in her flat, harsh drawl. ‘Not really. But it was in the
Women’s Own
, see, and they said that lots of working girls gets took by them.’

‘Indeed. Come on, Dorothy, it’s not far now.’

‘Slow down, Miss, you walk so fast. I’m wore out.’

‘Frightfully sorry, old dear,’ murmured Phryne, slowing her swift pace and patting Dorothy’s hand. ‘We’ll soon be there; just around the corner at the top of the hill. You shall have a bath, and perhaps—yes, a cocktail, and…’

Phyrne led Dorothy up the steps into the Windsor and past the magnificent doorman, who did not so much as flicker an eyelash at the sight of the miserable and underclad Dorothy. His only private comment was to the effect that the aristocracy did have singular tastes.

Phryne conducted Dorothy to the bathroom and shut her in, instructing her to wash herself and her hair thoroughly, pointing out the products to be used for various surfaces. She left her confronting, rather dubiously, the array of jars, unguents, boxes and wash-balls which were laid out upon the skirted table, next to a very naked nymph in gunmetal. Phryne sighed. Clearly the nymph had aroused all of Dorothy’s latent suspicions. However, a certain splashing and puffs of scented steam from under the door indicated that her doubts did not extend to either hot water or Phryne’s cosmetics. The smell of ‘Koko-for-the-Hair’ (as used by the Royal House of Denmark) made itself palpable.

Phryne had few really ingrained fears, but lice was one of them. The very idea made her skin crawl. In her early youth she had spent a miserable day with her head wrapped in a kerosene-smelling towel and she was not going through that again if she could help it. She rummaged in her fourth trunk, and found a very plain nightdress and a dressing gown in a shade of orange which did not suit her at all, and sat down to check off her visiting list.

She had some twenty people to leave cards upon in the morning, and the prospect gave her no pleasure. She sorted out a suitable selection of cards and wrote, on each, the name of the person who had referred her to the householder. This took about twenty minutes, and at the end of it Phryne began to wonder at the silence in the bathroom. She crossed the room and knocked, the garments over her arm.

‘Are you all right, old thing?’ she called, and the door opened a crack.

‘Oh, Miss, I’ve tore my dress, and it’s the only one I got!’ wailed the hapless maid.

Phryne stuffed the nightwear through the gap in the doorway and ordered, ‘Put those things on, Dorothy, and come out! I’ll advance you enough for a new dress.’

There was a muffled gulp, almost a sob, from the room, and a moment later, Dorothy emerged in a sweep of orange satin.

‘Oh, ain’t it fine! I love pretty clothes!’ she cried. It was the first spontaneous exclamation of pleasure Phryne had heard from the girl, and she smiled. Dorothy, bathed and revenged, was unrecognizable. Her fair skin was flushed, her hair appeared darker because it was wet, and her eyes shone.

Phryne opened a little door and said, ‘Would you like to go straight to bed? This is your room, and here is the key—you can lock yourself in, if you like.’

‘I’ll sit up a little, Miss, if I may.’

‘Very well. I’ll order tea.’

Phryne picked up the house phone and did so, then returned to her seat at the desk, while Dorothy paraded up and down, enjoying the swish of her gown.

‘Did you mean it, Miss, about me being your maid?’ asked the girl, turning when she reached the wall to parade back.

‘Yes, I need a maid—you can see the mess my things get into…’ Phryne indicated the sitting room, which was liberally strewn with her belongings. ‘But only if you want the job. I’m here on confidential business, inquiring about a lady on behalf of her parents, so if you want to work for me you must never gossip or tell anyone anything about what you might overhear. I need someone of the utmost discretion. We may be staying in grand houses, and you must not, on any account, say anything about my concerns. You’re free to talk about me,’ she added, grinning. ‘Just not my business.’

‘I promise,’ said Dorothy, solemnly wetting her forefinger and inscribing a careful cross on the breast of the satin gown. ‘Hope I may die.’

‘Well, then, all you have to do is to look after my clothes, find things that I’ve lost, answer the phone if I’m not in, and generally look after me. For instance, tomorrow someone has to take a taxi and deliver all those cards to people I’m supposed to meet in Melbourne. How about it?’

Dorothy’s chin went up.

‘If I’ve a new dress, I can do it.’

‘Good stuff!’

‘What about wages, Miss?’

‘Oh. I don’t know what the going rate for a confidential maid and social secretary is. What were you getting?’

‘Two-and-six a week and me keep,’ said Dorothy. Phryne was shocked.

‘No wonder they’ve got a servant problem here! What were you doing for that?’

‘Everything, Miss, but cooking. They kept a cook. And the washing was sent out to the Chinese. So it wasn’t too bad. I had to go out to work. We can’t live on what Mum earns. Of course, you wouldn’t know about that. You don’t know what that’s like, no disrespect meant. You ain’t never had to starve.’

‘Oh, yes I have,’ said Phryne grimly. ‘I starved liked Billy-o. My family was skint until I was twelve.’

‘Then how…?’ asked Dorothy, folding a dressing gown. ‘How…?’

‘Three people between Father and the Title died,’ Phryne said. ‘Three young men dying out of their time, and the old Lord summoned us out of Richmond and onto a big liner and into the lap of luxury. I didn’t like it much,’ she confessed. ‘My sister died of diphtheria and starvation. It seemed too cruel that we had all those relatives in England and they hadn’t lifted a hand until Father became the heir. But don’t tell me about poverty, Dot. I ate rabbit and cabbage because there was nothing else, and I confess that I’ve not been able to face lapin ragoût or
cabbage in any form since. Oh, you’ve found the blue suit, I had forgotten I bought it.’

The tea arrived on a silver tray. There was also a teacake, which Phryne cut and buttered immediately.

‘Never mind my history, come and help me eat some of these cakes,’ said Phryne, who hated teacake. ‘White tea, is it? And two lumps?’

Dorothy sniffed, was about to wipe her face on her gown, then remembered herself and retreated to the bathroom to find her handkerchief. While she poured the tea, Phryne reflected that Dorothy must be very tired. Revenge and release is just as much of a strain as hatred and murder. She palmed a small white pill and dropped it into the tea. Dorothy needed the sleep.

The girl returned and made a promising inroad into the tea-cake before she took up her cup.

‘I’ll ring an agency in the morning and find out how much I ought to pay you,’ said Phryne. ‘And tomorrow we shall buy you some clothes. The uniform will be paid for by me, and you can have an advance to buy your own clothes. We shall also pick up your box from the station.’

‘I think I’d better go to bed now,’ observed Dorothy thickly, and Phryne helped her to the small room, tucked her in, and before she closed the door, noted that the girl was fast asleep.

‘Two-and-six a week and her keep,’ said Phryne. She poured another cup of tea and lit a cigarette. ‘The poor little babe!’

***

Alice Greenham woke in a white bed, strangely docile, and floating above her tortured body on a cushion of morphia. Women clad in big white aprons came by, periodically, to do things to the body, which Alice felt belonged to someone else. They soaked it with cold water and laid a wet sheet over it. This looked comic, and she giggled. The baby, at least, was gone, and she could go back to her church-going, respectable home, unburdened of proof of her shame.

She had not believed that five minutes could change someone’s life. She had gone to a church-run dance, and had been enticed out into the bike shed by a boy she had always thought nice, a deacon’s son. They had leaned against the creaking wooden wall while he had fumbled with her clothes and whispered that he loved her and would marry her as soon as his father gave him a halfshare in the shop. From that joyless, clumsy mating had come all this trouble. He had not seemed to know her when they next met, avoiding her eyes and when she had told him about the baby he had shouted, ‘No! not me! You must have been going with plenty of blokes!’ And he had struck her across the face when she had persisted.

The nurses—she had identified them by their caps—were gathered around the body now. A woman in trousers was filling a syringe. Alice sensed that this was a crisis. She was sleepy and airy and light, and they were trying to drag her back to that suffering, twisting thing on the bed below. Well, she wouldn’t go. She had been hurt enough. That oily man, George, and his foul hands all over her. No, she wouldn’t go back, they couldn’t make her.

Now they were holding the body down. It struggled. The woman in trousers was injecting something into the chest. The body slumped, and the nurses clustered around it.

She was unable to avoid a shriek as the body dragged her back and her poisoned womb convulsed. She opened her eyes, looked directly into Dr MacMillan’s face, and whispered, ‘It’s not fair…I was all light…’ before her words were extinguished in a long, hoarse scream. The fever had broken.