Death at Victoria Dock (5 page)

The convoy anchored before a wooden door which appeared to have been made out of a solid block of mahogany. The tallest girl tapped and retreated, then the door swung open and the children vanished.

Phryne turned to thank them but they were gone. She raised an eyebrow and Dot nodded. She too had learned to vanish with silent celerity when a similar door had swung open in her own convent.

A nun who appeared to have vinegar running in her veins paused in order to disapprove properly of the Reverend Mother’s visitors, then ushered them across the shining sea of parquet to another door, which she flung open with a shattering crash before announcing: ‘Your callers, Reverend Mother!’

The woman sitting at the desk stood up, winced a little at the noise, and smiled.

Phryne went forward to take the Mother’s hand, and was invited to sit down in a chair of penitential straitness.

‘I am Phryne Fisher, and this is my confidential secretary Miss Williams. I hope that I have not interrupted you.’

‘No, no, not at all. I am seriously concerned by the fears you expressed for little Alicia. Not a very stable girl, I admit, but with a background like that…’

‘What was her background?’

Dark brown eyes, hard to read. The hands, long and fine, laid one in another like an opera singer’s. The face a smooth oval, unlined, serene, but a soft full mouth, tucked firmly in at the corners as though her sense of the ridiculous had survived years of relentless theology. Charming.

‘Her mother died when she was seven—a painful, long, drawn-out death. Cancer. The Lord give her rest. Then her father, who should have been old enough to know better, married a woman forty years younger than he was, although I believe that there was nothing
known
against her character. Alicia is a strong minded and chaste young woman. I believe that she found her father’s behaviour disgusting. Who could blame her? The situation was made worse by the way her brother reacted to the new bride. Both her father and her brother were besotted with the woman and there was no love left over for Alicia, do you see? Not a pleasant situation for Alicia.’

Phryne nodded. She saw.

‘Her father refused to leave her here with us, and took her away to a secular school in the city when she expressed a vocation. All I could do was to tell her that a true vocation could not be denied and the Lord would find a way. I have almost been expecting her. But she is not here and she has not been here. I will call her two closest friends, if you would like, who can confirm this.’

Phryne nodded again. Dot appeared to be bearing up fairly well against an onslaught of remembered awe.

‘Sister Constantine?’ The Reverend Mother addressed her acidic secretary. ‘Could you find the Bevan sisters and bring them to me? Tell them that they are not in any trouble. I merely want to talk to them.’

The sister vanished in a flounce of habit, slamming the door again.

‘I fear that Sister Constantine is of the old school,’ she apologized. ‘She does not believe in softness and courtesy. Since she has been with us she really has improved.’

Phryne wondered what Sister Constantine had been in private life. A bricklayer, she decided, or one of Whelan the Wrecker’s prize operatives.

Two girls were shoved into the room and stood transfixed before the desk, tongue tied.

‘This is the Honourable Phryne Fisher, and Miss Williams, girls. This is Nicola Bevan and this is her sister Anne. Now, girls, we need to know when you last saw Alicia Waddington-Forsythe. Speak up, now. You aren’t in any trouble. We just want to know.’

Nicola burst into tears. Dot took charge.

‘Come here,’ she invited, opening her purse. When the girls came close enough she popped a bullseye into each mouth.

‘Now you tell the lady what she wants to know,’ she encouraged. ‘Reverend Mother isn’t angry with you.’

Anne Bevan tucked the bullseye joyfully into her check and smiled.

‘I have told these ladies that the last time we saw Alicia was three weeks ago,’ began the Mother, leading the witness in a most undesirable fashion. Nicola took courage from the bullseye and the proximity of the sapphire suit and blurted out, ‘Oh, no, Reverend Mother, we saw her on Wednesday.’

‘Wednesday of this week?’ asked Phryne quickly. Nicola nodded.

‘Where?’

‘Why, here, Miss, at the school, she had a bag with her and said that she had run away and she was going to see Reverend Mother and get her postulancy…’

‘She never saw me!’ exclaimed the Mother. ‘Are you sure, Nicola?’ Nicola nodded vigorously.

‘What time did you see her?’ asked Phryne.

‘Late, Miss, it was after dinner. She said that she came on the late train. She called us down into the courtyard and she had her bag and everything and I expected her to be at breakfast but she wasn’t and what’s happened to her? Is she lost?’

‘Yes. I believe that she is. But that is a secret, both of you. Do you hear me? Not one word to anyone else, or I shall be severely displeased.’ Reverend Mother had authority. ‘Have you any more questions, Miss Fisher?’

‘What was she wearing?’

‘Blue uniform and white blouse, Miss.’

‘Did she have her diary with her?’

‘Oh, I expect so, Miss. She always carried it. And she said she was going straight to see you, Reverend Mother.’

‘All right, girls. You may spend the rest of this period in the Chapel praying for your friend, for God will protect her wherever she is. Off you go, now.’

Dot handed over another bullseye each and the Bevan sisters withdrew on tiptoes, incandescent with their secret.

‘Sister Constantine!’ called Mother Theresa, in a tone of steely command. The nun edged reluctantly into the room.

‘You kept her away from me, did you not, Sister?’

‘I don’t know what you mean, Mother.’

‘Yes, you do, Sister. That miserable Alicia Waddington-Forsythe ran away from home and came here for postulancy and refuge, and you sent her away, did you not? God knows the secrets of all hearts, and while I do not claim Divinity I have my share of sense. Tell me what happened.’

‘She came marching in as though she owned the place, and complaining of her stepmother. I did not want you to be disturbed by such talk, so I told her that she no longer had any connection with the school and she could not be a nun here and that she should go back to her father.’

‘You sent her out, fourteen years old, despairing, and alone?’ Mother Theresa’s voice was as cold as the grave, into which she evidently hoped that Sister Constantine would sink. The secretary nodded.

‘You are suspended from all duties, Sister, and will remain henceforward in your cell on bread and water. There you will meditate on what our Saviour said about charity. You will stay there until the priest comes, to whom I recommend that you make a full confession. Go now. You have fallen into mortal sin, Sister Constantine.’ The woman turned away. Phryne seized her sleeve.

‘Wait. Where did she go?’

‘I didn’t notice,’ muttered the sour voice. ‘Away. Toward the station. And good riddance! Holier-than-thou little madam, with her beautiful house and her beautiful brother and her money.’

Sister Constantine left, slamming the door with a deafening crash.

‘Well, that’s torn it,’ commented Phryne. The Reverend Mother snatched up a particularly revolting statuette of the infant Samuel and threw it to shatter against the stencilled nymphs on her wall.

Chapter Five

‘Les enfants terrible’ (The embarrassing young)

Paul Gavarni

‘So, what did the Reverend Mother do then?’ asked Ruth Fisher, née Collins.

‘She recovered her serenity—by a huge effort—and asked us to tea, but Dot and I were fairly unnerved by then, so we piled back into the car and Mr. Butler drove us home. On the way we stopped at all the likely places and asked if anyone had seen Alicia. We had several sightings of her before she came to the school, and none after, but it was dark by then.’

‘Ooh, it sounds spooky,’ commented Ruth, taking another piece of fruit cake as a prophylactic against further shocks. ‘What do you think, Jane?’

Jane Fisher, née Graham, stared gravely out the window of the cake shop and shook her head.

‘I don’t know, Ruthie, it sounds bad, doesn’t it? What if she never left the convent? Maybe they’ve buried her in the cellar, like in…’ she blushed and bit into her apricot tart. Phryne laughed.

‘What have you been reading, girls?
The Awful Adventures of Maria Monk
?’

From the shocked glances it was clear that this was the source of their ideas.

‘Finish those cakes and we’ll take a little walk. Let’s decide which cake we shall take home for Dot and the Butlers. What shall it be? Mrs. Rosenbaum makes a lovely fruit cake.’

‘Brandy snaps? No, Mrs. B. makes them herself. Chocolate cake,’ said Jane. ‘The one with jam and cream.’

‘Good choice,’ agreed Ruth, and Phryne paid for the tea and ordered a chocolate cake to be sent to her house before they emerged onto the street into pale spring sunshine.

Ruth and Jane were the human results of Phryne’s investigation into a mystery a month before. Phryne had adopted Jane as the only way of keeping her safe. Ruth had been Jane’s best friend and fellow-captive, so Phryne had adopted her too, feeling that Jane would need some company in Phryne’s rackety house. They were both at the Presbyterian Ladies’ College and doing well. Jane was university material and wanted to be a doctor.

For the moment, however, they were both concentrating on the disappearance of their school fellow. The brown plaits and the black plaits met as Ruth whispered to Jane, and Jane nodded.

‘We think that we ought to tell you about Alicia,’ announced Jane abruptly. ‘Even though it is sneaking. After all, she might be in real trouble, mightn’t she?’

Phryne assented, leading the way across St. Kilda Road onto the foreshore, where a number of bathers were braving the weather
.

‘Tell me,’ she invited. ‘You can rely on my confidence.’

Ruth took Jane’s hand. Phryne surveyed them, pleased at the progress which had been made since they had been rescued, starved and slatternly, from a dreadful boarding house in Seddon. Jane had grown at least an inch and both of them had put on weight. Their eyes were clear and their skin rosy under the influence of safety and chocolate cake. Possibly as a result of early privation, Ruth had announced an intention to become a cook, which had endeared her to Mrs. Butler. The expenditure of a certain sum had clothed them suitably and fashionably in yellow and red, and they made a bright and cheering sight in the watery sun, which was just making up its mind to shine.

‘You were saying, Ruth,’ prompted Phryne. ‘Did you both know Alicia?’

‘Yes, Miss Phryne, she was in the same form as us. She did Latin and mathematics with Jane and English with me. She was a worm.’

‘What do you mean, a worm?’

‘She liked secrets, you see. She wormed them out of people and then she got what she wanted from them because she knew the secret,’ explained Jane. ‘She tried it on us, we aren’t just telling you gossip.’

‘What was your secret?’

‘Why, that we were domestic servants in a boarding house, and that you adopted us.’ Jane was patient. ‘She found out about it and then tried to blackmail us into…into…’

‘Come along, Ruthie, Jane, tell me your sins.’ Phryne was serious.

‘There’s a club of us, Miss Phryne, the ones who don’t come from the same backgrounds as the other girls. We have great times. We put all our money together to buy Fleischer cakes and eat them in the big oak tree. You know.’

Phryne nodded. She knew.

‘Well, Alicia wanted to join, and we said that she couldn’t, because she didn’t qualify and anyway…’

‘She is a worm,’ agreed Phryne. ‘Yes, and…?’

‘So she said she’d tell everyone about where we came from, and Ruthie and me, we told her to tell everyone, we didn’t care. We are very lucky,’ said Jane, glancing admiringly up at Phryne in her shady straw and grass-green dress. ‘We know that. So…’

‘So, she went off muttering. “Exit, pursued by a bear,”’ quoted Ruth, who was studying
The Winter’s Tale
. ‘And we didn’t hear any more about her. But she had a diary, and she wrote all these secrets in it. A purple leather book, bound, with
Firenze
on the front. What’s
Firenze
, Miss Phryne?’

‘It’s a place where they make good leather—in Italy. We call it Florence. An expensive diary. Did she always carry it with her?’

‘Yes, always. Beastly girl,’ said Jane, with sudden loathing. ‘She caused a lot of trouble, you know. What about poor Miss Ellis?
’

‘What about her? Who is Miss Ellis?’

‘She was a music teacher. She used to drink. Alicia spied on her until she caught her with a bottle and then told the Head, and got Miss Ellis sacked.’

‘She sounds like a detestable young woman.’

‘Yes. But Mary Tachell would know more about her. She is her best friend.’

‘We shall invite Mary to tea,’ decided Phryne. ‘What’s she like?’

‘Pale and peepy and weak,’ said Jane dismissively. ‘Do we have to?
’

‘For my investigation, yes.’

‘All right. I’ll ring her up when we get home,’ agreed Ruth. For Phryne, she would entertain a dozen Marys.

***

They returned to the house, where Mr. Butler was just replacing the telephone.

‘Ah, Miss Fisher, a Mr. Peter Smith has called. He said that if there is no objection, he will visit tonight at about nine. He says that he has some information for you.’

‘Good. I’m going up for a nap, Mr. B. Could you get a telephone number for Miss Ruth? Oh, Jane, Ember has missed you!’

Jane buried her face into the midnight-black fur of a cat which had wreathed himself around her neck and was purring like an engine
.

Pleased with the excellent condition of her strays, Phryne mounted the stairs to fling off her hat and lie down with the latest detective story which the bookshop had sent her.

***

Mary Tachell arrived, chauffeured in a huge black Bentley, two hours later, in time for a four o’clock tea of startling proportions. The centrepiece of the loaded table was the bought cake, and Mrs. Butler had laid out sandwiches, jelly, cream cakes, scones, and plain cakes. Phryne presided over the table and the girls introduced Mary.

She was an undersized creature, with pale blue eyes swimming behind thick lenses and a mass of white-blonde hair which was supposed to be restrained by an Alice band but which was perpetually escaping. She ate as though she had been through a long winter’s famine. Phryne did not try to question Mary. Instead she left the strategy to her adoptive daughters, who were showing a fine natural talent for intrigue.

‘Have you seen Alicia lately?’ asked Ruth. ‘Have some more jelly.’

‘No.’ The reply was muffled. ‘She’s run away.’

‘Run away! Where to?’

‘The sisterhood,’ announced Mary. This was the most exciting thing which had happened to her in years and she was not going to waste any of her sensation. ‘A convent. In Eltham.’

‘When? Look out, your hair’s in the cream.’

Ruth extracted the strand with a deft twitch. Unlike Jane, who could fall over a piece of string, Ruth was forceful and neat in her actions.

‘She ran away on Wednesday. She said that she couldn’t stand the secret any more.’

‘What secret?’

Mary confined her answer to looking wise and stuffing a cream cake into her mouth.

‘Don’t be silly, Jane, there’s no secret,’ scorned Ruth, and Mary rose to the bait like a trout.

‘There is so! Alicia said so!’

‘What was it, then, this secret?’ Ruth’s voice was dismissive.

‘She wouldn’t tell me, but it was something to do with her family. She said that she couldn’t stay in her father’s house any more once she knew about it and she was running away to be a nun.’

And what an impediment to that peaceful community she would have been, thought Phryne, taking a brandy snap. Fortunate for the nuns that she had not stayed. Alicia could have wreaked ruin on them. But perhaps she had been happy there and would have been a good and devout sister.

‘Have you heard from her since she went?’ Just the question which Phryne was burning to ask. She cast an appreciative glance upon Jane.

‘No. But she hasn’t got her diary.’

‘How do you know?’

‘Not telling. Why are you so interested, anyway? You wouldn’t let us join your club.’

‘We asked you to tea,’ said Ruth. ‘You can at least talk to us.’

‘Won’t. I’m going home. Why are you asking about Alicia?’

Both girls looked at Phryne for instructions. She said easily, ‘Alicia isn’t at the sisterhood.’

‘She isn’t?’

‘No. I’ve been there. She went to Eltham, but she did not stay. She has been missing since Wednesday. She might be in trouble. You can help me find her.’

‘Oh, Miss Fisher!’ cried Mary. ‘She didn’t tell me she was going anywhere else. She said she was going to be a nun.’

‘She went to the sisterhood, but she met a nasty woman there who sent her away. Now, where else could she have gone?’

Phryne could see the sordid row of houses in Gertrude Street which she might have to search. She sighed. Mary Tachell had begun to cry, and was being patted by Jane. Ruth was thinking, her eyes as bright as pins.

‘Maybe she’s been kidnapped,’ she commented.

‘Who’d want her?’ asked Phryne, rhetorically.

Mary wailed, ‘She was my friend! I liked her, even if no one else did, and she was good to me when I was lonely and no one would talk to me. What can have happened to her? She said she was going to be…’

‘…a nun. I know. Now think, if you are fond of her. Where else could she have gone?’

‘I don’t know, Miss Fisher. I really don’t know. But she was going to send for her diary.’

‘Aha. That diary. Where is it?’

‘Not telling.’

‘All right, but tell me this, is it in a safe place? Where no one is likely to find it?’

Mary nodded. Phryne waved a cautioning hand at the girls.

‘All right. That’s enough for one day. Have another scone. Mrs. Butler makes good scones. You think about it, and when you decide to give the diary to me so that I might be able to find Alicia, then you call me. Perhaps I should contact your parents,’ mused Phryne. ‘I really should not be asking you questions without them knowing.’

Mary shied like a frightened horse. The whites of her eyes showed.

‘No, no, please don’t tell them! It’s in a hollow tree in Domain Gardens. We used to walk there. I’ll show you.’

‘Wise decision, Mary. Tomorrow we shall call on you and you can give me the diary and then, if we find Alicia, I will give it back to her and explain why you gave it to me. It will be all right. Alicia will understand. Now have some more tea and wipe your face. You have done your best to find your friend and now I will do my best. It’s all right, Mary!’

Mary was a biddable creature. She wiped her face with her napkin and took another cup of tea and was comforted. Phryne left the girls to finish their tea and went to take a bath, disgusted with the success of her methods.

Ruth and Jane, on the other hand, were delighted.

‘You did that very well, Miss Phryne,’ said Jane as Phryne descended the great stair clad in an afternoon dress of handkerchief-pointed crepe. ‘She didn’t have a chance to lie.’

‘She was easy. It was a shame to take her money, and such methods must not be used except for a good purpose, so don’t congratulate me, girls, and for God’s sake don’t emulate me unless you really need to know something. What would you like to do now?’

‘Try on our new dresses,’ said Ruth.

Phryne sat in her cool parlour and watched them as they emerged from their room, clad in several changes of new clothes, culminating in one evening dress each. Madam Partlett had designed them, and each was ‘Correct, Miss Fisher, and
à la jeune fille.
’ Jane’s dress was heliotrope, to emphasise her chestnut hair, and Ruth’s was of pale cyclamen to set off her dark skin, brown eyes, and black hair. There were matching shoes and one short string each of small pearls.

‘When I am taller I shall wear wine colours., announced Ruth, smoothing down her straight front. ‘Wine and amber.’

‘I shall always like this colour,’ Jane was looking at herself in the big glass with astonishment. ‘It makes me look quite different. But when shall we wear them?’

‘We shall go to the ballet on Tuesday night, as long as no other developments happen. Even if they do, Dr. MacMillan will take you. It is the Russian Ballet and they are doing
Petroushka
, which you will love. I would like to see it again but I might not be able to. It depends. Now, tonight I am entertaining Mr. Smith, who may have some important information for me, so I shall go up directly after dinner.’

‘Is he staying?’ asked Jane, trying to get a back view.

‘Don’t know.’

‘Well, I’ve got all that homework, anyway. Eh, Ruth?’

‘Geography,’ groaned Ruth. ‘Perhaps I shall have a shawl, a long traily one.’

She snatched up Phryne’s shawl and glided around the room, watching the effect of the following fringes. Phryne reflected that in a few years’ time Ruth would be a force to be reckoned with. Jane, on the other hand, was not really interested in clothes. She was born plain and she did not seem to mind.

‘And Latin, and English, we’ve got to finish
The Winter’s Tale
.’