Murder in Montparnasse (20 page)

The price she had been quoted from the crowded but fascinating picture dealer’s shop in Bourke Street had staggered Phryne. The acting proprietor, Jacob Stein, offered her a chair and asked if he could fetch her a glass of water. He was attentive, as young salesmen who scent a woman with a stash of French Modernist paintings usually are. He was just starting in his father’s business and wanted to make an impression on his parent. Old Papa Isaac Stein thought his son far too interested in girls to learn his hallmarks correctly, much less value paintings. Jacob only had sole control of the shop because Papa had had that heart attack. He reported on the day’s trading every night, over dinner.

‘If you would allow it, madam, we could call at your house and make a catalogue for you,’ he offered, as a scurrying black-clad woman brought iced water in an eighteenth-century crystal tumbler. Phryne took a deep gulp. ‘At a most reasonable fee. No obligation to sell, of course,’ he added. ‘But Sarcelle is all the rage at the moment and sometimes these fashions do not last. Our commission is very moderate, and I’m sure you will be pleased with our estimates.’

‘I don’t want to sell,’ said Phryne. ‘But a catalogue is a good idea. I had Father send all my favourites over when I bought my house and they’re insured, of course.’

‘But not for nearly enough, if you have a Sarcelle,’ suggested Jacob Stein, going so far as to pat Phryne’s hand. She sat up straight.

‘Very well. When can I expect you?’

‘On Monday, madam? At ten?’

‘Good.’ Phryne gave him her card. She wasn’t going to mention that she actually owned seven Sarcelles in case someone was listening and decided to burgle the house before the insurance could be raised. ‘Your fee for the catalogue?’

‘Five pounds,’ said Jacob promptly. He saw Phryne out of the shop and heard the bell tinkle. It rang for success. Papa would have to admit that this was a coup, and he was sure that he could persuade the lady to sell a Sarcelle, even if it was only one. He wrote her details in his appointment diary, humming to himself. Miss Ellis, the business’s most aged and trusted retainer, had brought the water in the eighteenth-century crystal. That meant that she agreed with his estimate of the customer’s taste, discernment and wealth. It was going to be a good day, he felt sure.

Phryne Fisher collected Jack Robinson from outside his police station and executed a thoroughly illegal turn to take the car onto St Kilda Road. Robinson, who (on the grounds of not seeing anything of which he might have to take official notice) always kept his eyes shut when driving with Phryne, opened them cautiously.

‘You ever heard of road rules, Miss Fisher?’

‘No, you must tell me all about them,’ yelled Phryne over the slipstream. She slowed down enough to allow pedestrians to get on and off the tram before roaring past it. They were in Fitzroy Street before he opened his eyes again.

‘You’ll enjoy this, Jack,’ said Phryne as she allowed the big car to slide into a space occupied by a van moments before. ‘This is the best French cooking in Australia.’

‘If you say so, Miss Fisher,’ said Robinson. He was resolved. If someone offered him snails, he was—by gum!—going to try them. The same did not apply to frog’s legs, however. In a parental prospecting foray into the outback, young Jack had gotten lost and been rescued by some Aborigines. They had offered him something flaky which tasted vaguely of fish. When his father had found him he had been informed that he was eating snake. He had retained the snake because manners are manners and a rescue in the desert is a rescue in the desert, but he had decided to omit reptiles, and that included amphibians, from his diet thereafter. It was no use offering Jack Robinson a crocodile sandwich, even if it was delivered very swiftly.

Café Anatole was almost full. Jean-Paul greeted them at the door, smiling a professional smile. It broadened when he recognised Phryne.

‘Milady, m’sieur, this way.’ He led them to a small table in an obscure corner.

‘Feed us,’ said Phryne, waving away the menu.

‘Snails,’ said Robinson bravely.

‘Escargots au beurre,’ said Jean-Paul. ‘A little fish, perhaps? Today we have sole. And the chef ’s special, mousse de saumon. Then perhaps chateaubriand?’

‘Yes,’ said Robinson. ‘Snails and then a steak.’

‘I’ll have the salmon mousse,’ said Phryne. ‘And chateau-briand, rare, with Béarnaise sauce.’

‘With pommes de terre paille. And we have the new broad beans, tiny, tiny ones . . .’ hinted Jean-Paul.

‘Some of them as well,’ said Robinson recklessly.

Ten minutes later, Phryne watched, fascinated, as he chewed his first escargot. ‘Not bad at all,’ he said judiciously. ‘Doesn’t really taste of anything but this butter sauce. I reckon you could put that butter sauce on India rubber and get the same effect.’

They chatted amiably through the snails.

‘Oh, by the way, we’ve found your car, Miss Fisher. It’s just around the corner, hidden in a back yard. Don’t you think you ought to whisper in my shell-like what this is all about?’

‘I think I’d better,’ said Phryne. She outlined the kidnapping of Elizabeth Chambers, the enquiries she had made, and the total lack of progress she had met with. Robinson chewed his steak. It was very good. He averted his eyes from the blood-seeping spectacle on Phryne’s plate and said, ‘Kidnapping’s always bl . . . extremely difficult. I can’t say that we would have fared any better. The old man’s done his best to comb through the underworld and there ain’t many gangs who’d risk kidnapping, especially not a young girl. It’s got to be amateurs, and they’re always chancy.

‘We’ll need to raid the house,’ he went on. ‘But we can do it real quiet. If I take a few more blokes than usual we can get through the door and into the whole house before they have a chance to get rid of their prisoner. We’ll do it tonight,’ he said. ‘And no, I ain’t going to talk to Hector Chambers. You’ve got all you can out of him, probably more than I would have got. And that blonde girlfriend sounds useless. We’ll just get a warrant, not a hard job because there’s a stolen car in the yard.

‘And for our other news,’ said Robinson, ‘young Hugh Collins has found a bloke who was seen talking to the deceased just before he got to be deceased. And his name was in the register. René Dupont. And you’ll not be surprised to know that no René Dupont is registered with Customs and Immigration.’

‘Oh dear. So, is Hugh back?’

‘I told him to poke around a bit more but not get himself into any trouble. He should be on his way home.’

‘Well, that’s a bundle of news,’ said Phryne. ‘Come along, let’s congratulate the cook.’

She entered the kitchen, bowed in by Jean-Paul. M’sieur Anatole was teaching the washing-up boy to make sauce blonde. The boy’s hands were very quick and the sauce was compounding as he watched it, egg yolks performing their alchemy, thickening under the whisk.

‘Hello,’ Phryne signed under the boy’s nose.

Startled eyes lifted, the boy saw Robinson behind her, dropped the whisk with a soundless yelp and fled out of the back door, which was open. Phryne heard his flapping shoes resound on the cobbles.

M’sieur Anatole caught the whisk and returned to the sauce, which must not be allowed to boil. ‘Quelle affaire!’ he said.

‘What just happened?’ asked Robinson.

‘You scared him,’ said Phryne.

‘Can’t imagine why,’ Robinson replied. ‘I’ve never seen him before in my whole life.’

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

I only know how to want what I want . . . and
what I want, would you want it?

Natalie Barney,
Their Lovers

Phryne took a bemused Robinson back to the station. So much for that theory. Billy the Match, if he was still extant, wasn’t working at Café Anatole. But the Chambers’ Bentley had been found, and tonight, with any luck, Jack Robinson might free a prisoner.

Phryne had not been able to finagle herself into the raiding party. She would have to wait outside to find out what had happened in the Acland Street house.

That sorted, she went home with an unshakeable conviction that what she had to do was find René Dubois, without the faintest idea of where to go searching for him. French consulate? René detested officialdom. Hotels? If René had money, he would choose the Ritz. But if he was staying for a while, he would rent a house. His peasant ancestors had made René very shrewd with money.

Phryne went home, hauled out the telephone directory, and made a list.

Hugh Collins had just got his hands loose and was working on his ankles when he heard someone coming. Heavy footsteps pounded what he was now convinced was a deck. He twisted the awl frantically and the shackle clicked open. His ankles were free.

Hugh crouched. He had no weapon except a penknife but he was now so very thirsty, hungry and angry that he was not concerned about minor details like weapons. He wanted to grab the man who had hit him and stuffed him in what were (probably) bilges. When he did grab, he planned to hang on and twist, until his captor gave up or his head came off. Hugh did not care which happened first.

The cover slid off the bilges, or possibly it was a hatch, and Hugh erupted into the fresh air like a Jack-in-the-box. He heard a startled shout and something clipped at his shoulder, then he was on his feet. Not with one bound, like Sexton, but pretty close. He turned on the man, intending to crunch and rend, and found himself confronting a shotgun.

‘Captain Max!’ exclaimed Hugh.

Captain Max was looking sorrowful. ‘What did you have to come interfering for?’ he asked. ‘Now I have to kill you, son, and you’re a nice young chap.’

‘Why do you have to kill me?’ Hugh was surprised at how steady his voice was. This was the first time anyone had tried to shoot him. He was attempting not to look down the double barrels of the shotgun and going cross-eyed. He dragged his gaze away.

‘You know,’ said Captain Max scornfully.

‘No, really, I don’t know,’ shouted Hugh.

He was on the other side of the boat. He could always dive into the river. Then he’d be half dead, because he couldn’t swim very well, but staying up on deck with that shotgun meant that he would be all dead, and half dead was better.

‘I picked you first go,’ said Max. ‘No, don’t move! Knew you were a cop! Knew you hadn’t come about that other business. No city cop would come 358 miles to look into a soldier settler getting drunk and falling in a ditch, even if someone pushed him into it. No, you didn’t fool me for a moment.’

‘I can see you’re a wise man,’ said Hugh carefully.

‘Only took me a moment to suss you,’ said Captain Max. ‘Then I had to decide what to do with you. I waited until you’d finished wooing them yeller-haired girls in the telephone exchange, then I swings me bit of four by two and you were out like a light. Then I just carried you here.’

‘I follow you,’ said Hugh. ‘But I still don’t know why.’

‘Stands to reason,’ said Captain Max complacently. ‘You must have been investigating the stolen jewellery. Was it the Toorak house, or the shop in Flinders Lane?’

‘Neither,’ said Hugh, thinking about it. ‘But it’s a good way to dispose of stolen jewellery, a fine way. The thieves just pack it into a case with a lot of other stuff, consign it to the railways, they bring it here, you pick it up at the station and off it goes across the river, out of the Victoria Police jurisdiction. You’ve got the local policeman well bribed, so he’s not going to enquire. Yes, a really good scheme.’

Captain Max beamed. ‘Bonzer, isn’t it? And then you had to come poking your nose in.’

‘And you know the really funny bit, Captain?’ asked Hugh. His foot had struck against something heavy and round. It rolled a little.

‘No, what?’

‘I didn’t know anything about it until now,’ said Hugh as he simultaneously stooped, grabbed, and hurled an unopened tin of Best Seville Orange Marmalade straight into Captain Max’s face.

Hugh threw himself flat as the gun roared. Then he dived across the deck and, after a fierce struggle, managed to get Captain Max to go down and stay down. He scrabbled in the hold for his manacles and applied them, securing the dazed assailant to the taffrail. He dropped the gun overboard with profound pleasure.

He went forward to what he thought of as the driver’s cabin and found a thin middle-aged woman with one hand on the tiller, pensively eating an apple.

‘Hello,’ he said, keeping both hands free in case Mrs Captain Max was in on this enterprise. She looked up, startled.

‘What are you doing here? Max didn’t tell me there were any passengers.’

‘I’m a police officer,’ said Hugh, producing his badge.

‘Max has been doing something he shouldn’t, hasn’t he?’ she asked resignedly.

‘Yes, I’m afraid so.’

‘I knew it. Whenever he gets that grin, he’s been doing something he oughtn’t.’

‘I must ask you to turn the boat around and get us back to Mildura.’

‘All right, but it’ll take a while. If you’re in a hurry to get back to Melbourne, you’d be better getting off at Echuca and catching the train.’

Hugh thought about the well-bribed Constable Smith in Mildura. ‘Maybe you’re right. Let’s do that, then. Er . . . full steam ahead?’

Mrs Captain Max did not smile. She took a final vengeful bite out of her apple and tossed the core from the window.

‘What’s he done?’

‘Receiving stolen goods, I think.’

‘It’s his diet, you know,’ she said sternly. ‘All that refined sugar will be the death of him.’

Hugh pondered the irony of a Food Reform resister being felled by an illicit tin of jam and smothered a smile.

‘I’ll read him his rights when he wakes up,’ said Hugh. ‘Meanwhile, can I get a drink of water? Something to eat?’

Mrs Captain Max tucked back a strand of iron grey hair and replied calmly, ‘There’s banana bread, just out of the oven, inside. It’s a bit scorched. I just got the recipe from the Country Women’s Association at our last stop. And you can squeeze yourself some oranges. I don’t carry no coffee nor tea. Poisons, they are. Rank poisons.’

The galley was very neat. He sipped water as he cut and squeezed oranges and when he drank the juice it removed the taste of sickness and fear from his mouth as if by magic. After that the banana bread was chewy and nutty, precisely what his stomach would have ordered. The boat surged through the water. He cut himself another slice.