Murder in Montparnasse (25 page)

‘Yes. Will you still talk to me?’ He smiled, a pleasant, serene smile.

‘Just the man I was looking for,’ said Phryne. ‘I want to do something to Mr Slyme, and you’re the person who will know all about him and his horrid ways.’

‘Yes,’ said Mr Dunne.

Phryne took his arm.

She had time to take Mr Dunne into the station to talk to a policeman about fraud, peculation and theft and to sign a few cheques for his good works. She returned home and concluded a phone call to Bert just before Detective Inspector Robinson arrived. With him was Hugh Collins, who seemed to have grown. He had always been large. New confidence made him massive. Robinson was still in an excellent humour.

‘Two prize pinches in two days,’ he said. ‘I got the car thieves and the boy here broke as nice a little ring of jewellery fencing as I’ve ever seen. All because he allowed himself to be hit on the head and shanghaied, of course, but it’s a hard head and a few cracks might let in some caution.’

He smiled as he delivered himself of this opinion. Hugh Collins did not seem cast down by this criticism. He had a piece of sticking plaster over a shaved spot on the back of his head but seemed otherwise uninjured. Dot gave a small concerned cry when she saw him.

‘No, really, Dot, I am all right,’ he said hurriedly. ‘Just a bit of a bump. And I’ve got all the information the boss sent me to find and a river-boat captain who was a fence into the bargain. And a corrupt police officer,’ he added in a low voice, as though such things were not to be spoken of in mixed company. ‘That’s worth a bit of a bump on the coconut.’

Dot, evidently, did not agree. Phryne ordered tea and they all sat down.

‘I’ve already dealt with ex-Constable Smith of Mildura,’ said Robinson vengefully. ‘He won’t trouble us no more. And I had a look at Mrs Chambers’ death certificate. It all looks in order. She had a heart problem. Her doctor confirms it.

‘Well, here’s the gen on Mr Eeles. Neighbours saw a small dark man hanging about for a few days before the death. He even knocked at the old lady next door’s house and asked her if it was Mr Eeles, who used to be a soldier, who lived there. The old lady said he was very foreign and charming and kissed her hand like foreigners do. And she told him that Mr Eeles had been a soldier and was such a nice man. She told him that Mr Eeles was often seen working on his truck.’

‘So she gave him the idea,’ said Phryne.

‘Perhaps. She’s a harmless old chook, bit lonely, glad to have someone to talk to, so I didn’t tell her that, poor woman.’ Robinson sipped his tea.

Dot had managed to find a seat next to Hugh Collins and had already passed an anxious hand over his skull to check that it was not, as his superior had said, cracked. She had managed to do this without the boss noticing. Phryne gave her marks for tact. To make sure that Robinson did not look around, Phryne asked, ‘Anyone else see him?’

‘Two other people. Woman hanging out washing and a child coming back from doing the messages. The descriptions agree. Small, dark, dark brown hair and eyes, well dressed. Not carrying anything. Mrs Eeles didn’t see him. She also didn’t notice what sort of voice it was at the door, just that it was male, because the baby started crying. The autopsy was faulty. They didn’t test the stomach contents for drugs. But we found a bottle of chloral hydrate mixed with alcohol in the garden. The murderer must have offered the victim a little nip to keep out the cold and, once he was unconscious, jacked up the van, dragged him under, then knocked or kicked away the jack. No dogs in the surrounding yards. Then he legged it out the back gate and was gone. As you said, Miss Phryne, ruthless. And efficient.’

‘And cruel. He left the body to be discovered by the wife. She’ll never get over that,’ said Collins.

‘And what did you find out, Hugh dear?’ asked Phryne, pouring more tea for the proud young man.

‘Same kind of feel to the case, if you take my meaning, Miss Fisher. He enticed MacKenzie out of the pub with a scheme about providing frozen orange juice to Europe, then must have offered him a big glass of the supposed product—perhaps he said it was juice which had been frozen and thawed—and when MacKenzie drank it down he would have been legless. I tried quarter of a glass of that vodka in orange juice and you really couldn’t taste it and it was deadly strong.’

‘Ethanol,’ said Phryne. ‘A Fitzroy cocktail, without the meths. It seems to work on the local derelicts, poor souls.’

‘Yes. Then he just pushed MacKenzie into a ditch and stood on him until he drowned. And MacKenzie had a fiancée. Her name is Maisie, she works at the hotel. She was real fond of him. She’s in a bad way now that he’s dead. They were going to buy the ring the day he was found in the ditch.’

‘Yes, cruel,’ said Phryne.

‘So, Miss Fisher, are you going to tell me all?’ asked Robinson, putting down his cup.

‘I’ll give you a photograph,’ said Phryne, handing it over. ‘Ask your witnesses if they recognise anyone in that picture. The third from the left is a man called René Dubois. I knew him in Paris in 1918. He’s in Australia now. I have an address for him. I’m thinking of seeing him tomorrow, if you will lend me a big strong man to go with me.’

She grinned in a predatory manner. Robinson returned the smile.

‘All right, you can have Collins. He’s been given three days off to recover from his head injury. Just don’t get him into trouble, mind. And if this is our man, I’ll come back and you can tell me all about him.’

‘Yes,’ murmured Phryne. There were people she was intending to tell first, but Robinson did not need to know that. He believed in her deference just as much as Phryne had believed in the girls’.

‘Oh, Miss Fisher, there’s a little problem I thought you might like to help with,’ said Hugh unexpectedly.

‘What’s that?’

‘Like I said the deceased had a girl he was about to marry, like I told you. She was dead gone on him, poor girl. She hates working at the hotel and she was going to be an orange farmer. Her sister said Thomas MacKenzie might have made a will. Can we get someone to find out if he did, and maybe something good might come out of all this?’

‘I’ll talk to my lawyer tomorrow. There must be ways of finding out if people have made wills. There’s probably a stock agent or solicitor in Mildura. If there’s a will, we’ll find it. That was a nice thought, Hugh.’

‘Definitely needs a few days off,’ said Robinson. ‘Told you: women’ll be the ruin of you, boy. Present company excepted, of course. Right, we’re off.’

‘See you tomorrow,’ said Hugh to Dot, and kissed her on the cheek in front, as Dot later said, of everyone.

After that it was hard to settle down to anything. Dot put on her hat and took herself out for a brisk walk. Phryne idled away the afternoon playing jazz records. It would be pleasant to revisit some of the jazz clubs again. And this time she wasn’t looking for a missing girl, but a missing musician, and he should prove easier to find.

The girls came home, agog with excitement. They packed their basket with good clothes and, on Dot’s insistence, a bottle of cold tea, a couple of sandwiches and two headscarves.

Then they dutifully ate a light meal, one of Mrs Butler’s excellent omelettes with tomato and bacon, and lay down for their rest.

Ruth fell asleep at once, a legacy of her life as a domestic drudge who slept when she could and was always tired. Jane tried several times to talk to her but nothing was as adamantly asleep as Ruth. Jane reflected on hibernating animals and dropped off in the middle of her meditation on the strangeness of going to sleep in autumn and waking up to find that it was already a quarter past spring.

When she woke them two hours later, Phryne gave both girls a cup of half-strength coffee and Dot looked over the initial disguises. ‘Good,’ she said.

The stout boots were carefully scuffed and the stockings thick. Jane’s dress was a skimpy black skirt and a winceyette shirt which had bagged in the wash. Ruth wore her own dress from when she was rescued, which she had kept as a trophy of her liberation. It was now much too short and too tight and had irreparable stains all down the front. Treacle, as Ruth remembered it.

‘You look perfect,’ said Dot, tweaking at Jane’s shabby skirt. ‘Got the skipping ropes? This is a very brave thing to do, girls. Now remember that you’ve got pennies in your kicker legs and some money in the basket and if you get into trouble ask the nearest policeman, or get into a taxi and come home. Good luck, now,’ said Dot, kissing each of them.

‘Don’t be careless,’ said Phryne on the way to the car. Then, out of earshot of the anxious Dot, she added, ‘And have fun.’

Jane smiled and Ruth grinned. This was, indeed, going to be fun.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

How could I wish you ill? Are you not the worst
I could have wished for you?

Natalie Barney,
Critical Sallies

The prisoner had been untied. Now she sat in a chair. It was a
hard chair and she was very thirsty. There was water in the tap
and it was only five paces away, but he had told her not to
move and he would know if she did. He always did, somehow. So
she sat, dully noticing that the night was continuing. It seemed
to last forever.

Eleven o’clock was not an hour for good children to be on the street, but these were not good children. They skipped nonchalantly down the side street and into the lane behind Café Anatole, where once the night men had plied their odorous trade. The cobbles were uneven but almost any surface allowed for skipping. They heard a back door open, and then the creak of a back gate.

‘My mother said I never should,’ began Jane, swinging her rope.

‘Play with the gypsies in the wood,’ responded Ruth.

Someone came out of the back gate. A boy with straw-coloured hair and oversized shoes plodded past them without even glancing their way. Jane and Ruth kept skipping behind him, not getting too close, continuing the chant. As they passed lit yards and dark ones their prey silvered or darkened and their footing became difficult.

They reached the end of the lane, where it came out onto the street, and saw the straw-head walking quickly north. Ruth hefted the basket, Jane fell in ten paces behind her, and they trailed the spiky hair down past the row of shops to the station.

He was walking differently, Jane noticed. In the lane the boy’s back had been bent, the shoulders hunched as though expecting a blow. Now he was walking freely, like a dancer. Jane put the basket down behind a pillar before groping in her knicker leg for the first of her hidden pennies. St Kilda was a very plush station—the only one with a chandelier—and she and Ruth were out of place.

Ruth joined her. They pulled on their good coats and hats and Jane took the basket as Ruth fell in line behind the boy. Up close, he exuded a pleasant scent of cooking, as though he had been steeped in kitchens all his life. On his shoulders was a light dusting of flour. He asked for a half price one-way ticket to the city.

Ruth bought two of the same and managed to drop her ticket into Jane’s basket as she passed her without catching her eye.

The train might be difficult. Ruth decided to get into the same carriage as the boy. A city train came in, one of the new electric ones, and the boy suddenly ran like a rabbit from where he had been standing to the other end of the train and dived inside as though seeking his home warren. Ruth hoped that Jane was in place and stepped into the carriage.

Now—would he get out at South Melbourne, Albert Park or Middle Park instead of Flinders Street? The train clunked and chunked over the track, clickety clack. Ruth was suddenly sleepy. This was very late for her to be out. She must not fall asleep! She wished she had the basket with the food in it. Food always kept Ruth awake. Middle Park. No one got off the train.

There were few other passengers at this late hour: some young men out on the town with brown-paper wrapped bottles in their pockets, a couple of women in headscarves who were probably cleaning ladies, a fireman in full uniform. Ruth occupied herself in counting his buttons until they came in at Albert Park. There the young men left, laughing and shoving each other at the door. Ruth did not approve of young men. So noisy.

South Melbourne and she was at the door, scanning down the length of the platform. No boy and no Jane. Good. The cleaning ladies were watching her and one called out to ‘Mind the doors!’ Ruth sat down again. The night was a black glass plate, studded with rhinestones. Flinders Street. The platform slid past. Ruth got out. So did the cleaning ladies. So, far away, did Jane.

But no boy. She couldn’t see him anywhere. Where could he have gone? Jane stood with the basket at her feet, staring. Then she snatched it up and ran to Ruth.

‘Come on,’ she said breathlessly. ‘He’s got out the other side of the train, Ruthie, and he’s only got two ways to get out of this station and we have to watch both of them. Take a scarf,’ she said, shoving one into Ruth’s hands. ‘Watch down the street for me. If I’ve got him, I’ll wave. If it’s you, you wave.’

‘All right! I’ll run down to the Degraves Street exit, you’re puffed.’

They gave up their tickets and Jane sat down with her basket on the steps, under the clocks, with an assortment of indigents and young men waiting for young women. Under the clocks was where everybody met their friends, Jane knew. She was now convinced that there was, indeed, something wrong with this boy, as Miss Phryne thought. Why should he take the risk of jumping down onto the track? He had a ticket. Ruth had seen him buy it. Therefore he was evading pursuit. Jane didn’t know if he had seen either or both of the girls and marked them as his pursuers. Perhaps he did this every night. She edged around a little on her step, making sure that she could scan the pedestrians as they left the domed station concourse. Many people came, but not a straw-headed boy with a scarred face.

Ruth belted down to the Degraves Street exit as though she was playing hockey, then leaned into a doorway to straighten her hat and still her fast breathing. There were many people on the streets. This was a help in that it provided cover but a hindrance in that Ruth had to peer around them and that looked suspicious. She had to watch two exits at once. There was the back gate of the station, on Flinders Street, and there was the tunnel under the street which came up on the other side of Flinders Street. Tricky. She took out the little mirror Phryne had given her and stood so that she could see the reflected people coming up out of the ground. The crowd had died away. Surely he hadn’t evaded them? Where else could he go?