Unnatural Habits: A Phryne Fisher Mystery (Phryne Fisher Mysteries) (24 page)

‘He’s settling in real well,’ said Dot. ‘That was a real good idea, Miss. Every night he just takes his cocoa or his lemonade and locks himself in to read Sexton Blake, quiet as a mouse. He gets up at dawn and takes Molly out fishing. She’s a lot less trouble, too; he tires her out. And he knows all those old fishermen on the pier. Even Ruth’s beginning to like him.’

‘Possibly because of the way he eats. Cooks adore a good appetite.’

‘I used to be that hungry once,’ said Dot.

‘So did I,’ said Phryne.

‘It’ll wear off once he knows dinner’s going to come along tomorrow, without fail,’ said Dot. ‘Just like a stray cat.’

‘Strays settle down in the end, Dot.’

‘So we do,’ she agreed.

Down the hill and crossing Glenferrrie Road, and the Methodist Ladies’ College came into view, with giant Moreton Bay figs and a suffragette agenda to turn out clever gels. Then Carey Baptist Grammar, which made a trifecta of religions in one journey.

‘What do we know about the blighted residents of this blighted suburb?’ ask Phryne.

‘Mr. Robinson’s report says they’re respectable. He’s a banker, she plays tennis every week at the social club and belongs to the lady mayoress’ committee. Well off. Two children: Martin, a boy aged fifteen, still at Camberwell Grammar, and one girl, Margaret—that is, Polly. She went to a local ladies’ college, then joined the paper as a cadet. Last seen the morning of the tenth, which is the day she vanished. Ate her usual breakfast, seemed excited about something, wouldn’t tell anyone what. They’ve heard nothing and had no ransom demand. If she is found her dad is going to make her stay home in future and give up “all this newspaper nonsense,”’ Dot read from Robinson’s notes.

‘I don’t like his chances,’ said Phryne.

‘That’s what he told the cops—I mean, Mr. Robinson,’ said Dot.

‘Not that well off,’ commented Phryne. ‘Camberwell Grammar is not top drawer. Not one of the elite, like Melbourne Grammar or Scotch. Oh dear, these will be the boring have-nots who want to be haves. I personally have no patience with them.’

‘Because you’re already a have, Miss,’ Dot pointed out.

Phryne turned and looked Dot full in the face. Her voice was serious. ‘No, Dot, really not. I am what I am and I have what I have, even when I was scouting for old veggies in the pig bins at the Vic market. And I never wanted anyone’s place or their regard. They can like me or not; it is a matter of complete indifference to me.’

‘Yes, Miss,’ agreed Dot. Her employer had great beauty, learning, insouciance, a bijou house, a fortune, aristocratic connections and a (married) (Chinese!) lover. There really wasn’t a lot Melbourne could do to her if it decided to be sniffy. So, of course, it had flung itself on its back with its paws in the air, licking Phryne’s expensive handmade shoes and inviting her to tickle its belly. Occasionally she deigned to do so. This had always been met with whimpers of delight and photographs in the society pages. It was a mystery to Dot, who had always relied on being good to make her happy. Different rules, apparently, applied to Miss Fisher. She had always behaved as if this were so.

‘If you get a chance to talk to the servants or the boy, Dot, do so. His sister might have confided in him, or he might have spied on her. Every boy wants to be Sexton Blake these days.’

‘Yes, Miss,’ said Dot.

The big car traversed Burke Road and stopped at a large iron gate. It was rather more over-wrought than was strictly necessary. Mr. Butler honked the horn, and a functionary opened it and let them in.

The carriage drive was miniature, but it was a carriage drive within the meaning of the act. The house was a three-storey monstrosity probably built during the Gold Rush, when red brick blushed for its presumption. It had verandahs and curlicues. It was in excellent repair, regrettably without ivy or wisteria to conceal its vulgar colour. Mr. Butler conducted Miss Fisher to the door—another dread portal—and rang the bell, lest his patroness’ expensive fingers be besmirched by touching the lowly possessions of the middle class. Mr. Butler didn’t like the middle class, either. They marked their importance by being rude to servants. Many tiny stinging insults were about to be avenged.

The door was practically snatched open by a young man in a morning coat. Kitchen or yard boy pressed into service as butler to impress Miss Fisher, thought Mr. Butler, a professional butler
magna cum laude.
Ill-fitting coat, too.

‘Miss Fisher, Miss Williams, to see Mr. Kettle,’ he announced to the butler.

The reply should have been, ‘To see Mr. Kettle. Miss Fisher, Miss Williams,’ but the boy just stood and gaped. Just like the frog in Alice, who come to think of it had been a porter, too.

‘Go on, my son,’ said Mr. Butler in an undertone. ‘Ask us in… No, ladies do not take off their hats. Put us in a room to wait for Mr. Kettle, then go and tell him we’re here. Then you come back and get us, and announce the names at the door. You’ll get the hang of it. Off you go, now.’

The boy opened the door of the front drawing room in the mansion, and fled. Phryne and Dot examined the decor.

‘Hasn’t been changed since the house was built,’ diagnosed Phryne. ‘Plush and gold and Turkey carpets. A complete Victorian gem.’

‘Must be awful to dust,’ observed Dot, looking at a wedding bouquet under a polished glass dome. The glass was clean. The room had been freshly tidied. In honour of their visit?

‘If you would come this way,’ said the boy from the door, parroting what he had been told to say. Phryne and Dot followed the tight suit, were admitted through another door, and saw that Mr. Butler was accompanying the young man beyond the green baize door. Good, he would come back with all the gossip from the servants.

Meanwhile, here was Mr. Kettle, who looked just like a banker, and Mrs. Kettle, dark hair, thin, not very good clothes worn with no élan. Phryne extended a hand. It was taken gingerly, as though she might bite.

‘Do sit down, Miss Fisher, Miss Williams. Tea?’

‘Thank you,’ said Phryne, aware that this event had been agonised over and had probably caused the cook to threaten to give notice if the mistress didn’t go away and let her get on. It would be pure cruelty to decline. This room, too, was untouched by artistic revivals, not to mention revolutions. The Victorian plush and gilt were overpowering in the still, warm air.

‘This hot weather is very trying, isn’t it?’ asked Mrs. Kettle, sitting down.

Phryne obligingly talked about the contrast in climate between London and Melbourne as a trolley was wheeled in and tea was poured, sugared and milked as required. Mr. Kettle took a cup. Dot took a slice of pound cake. The conversation wittered on through latest modes in hats and the newest sensation of the stage (Clarissa Cartwright in Measure for Measure) and was about to embark on the middle-class perennial, the Servant Problem, when Mr. Kettle interrupted the feast of strawberry jam and the flow of tea to demand, ‘Have you any idea where Polly might be?’

‘Not at present,’ said Phryne, very pleased at the intervention. She really had nothing to say about the Servant Problem. ‘I am trying to find her, as is the police department. It appears that she was last seen in Footscray, but the account of her abduction may be false. I need to talk to her friends. I need to see her room.’

‘Oh, Miss Fisher…’ Mrs. Kettle protested.

‘Yes,’ said Mr. Kettle.

Interesting. Mr. Kettle was seriously worried about the fate of his daughter. Mrs. Kettle wasn’t. Possibly she didn’t like her daughter very much and didn’t care what happened to her. Or possibly she knew where she was and was concealing this fact from her husband. Phryne tried to picture Polly as she had last seen her. Was that stomach swelled? Could she have been sent away to give birth to an unlawful child?

No, that girl had been plump, but not pregnant. Time to split these people up.

‘So, if you do not object, Mrs. Kettle, could you take my companion Miss Williams to see your daughter’s room? Any letters, Dot, anything written. You know what to look for. And I will have a few words with you, Mr. Kettle.’

This worked. Mrs. Kettle led Dot away, and Mr. Kettle, as soon as his wife was out of the room, crossed to the drinks trolley and poured a lot of neat brandy into his tea.

‘I can’t imagine how this happened to us,’ he said, slumping into the plush chair.

‘No one ever can,’ said Phryne gently. ‘You are very fond of your daughter. Can you think of where she might have gone?’

‘No,’ he groaned. ‘She was always bright and clever. Got that newspaper job straight out of school. If she comes out of this alive, I swear she’s never leaving the house again.’

‘Quite,’ said Phryne. This reaction was not unusual. ‘She is bright and clever. I met her. That’s partly why I am looking for her. But the usual places where missing girls turn up have not revealed her. Something else is happening. Have you talked with her lately?’

‘Just the usual—hello Dad, nice day, that sort of thing. She used to say ‘How’s the millions?’ because I’m a banker. It used to annoy me.’ He wiped a hand across his eyes.

‘And you haven’t received any ransom demand?’

‘Nothing. I’d pay, you know. I’d pay anything to have Polly back, chirping ‘How’s the millions?’ at me. But no one has asked for anything.’

‘What do her friends think?’

‘God, I don’t know. I don’t talk to them. I don’t like those giggly girls and those stupid boys. Socialists all. I’ve got no time for them. I’ve worked hard for everything I’ve got.’

‘I’m sure you have,’ soothed Phryne. This man was really in pain.

‘Do you…’ he started, choked, coughed and then said, ‘Do you think she’s dead?’

‘She may be,’ said Phryne. ‘But I don’t think so. I suspect we’ll find her. Meanwhile,’ she went on briskly, ‘tell me all about her.’

The portrait of Polly which emerged did not match the girl Phryne had encountered in Little Lon. Polly, according to her father, was bright, pretty, cheerful and artistic. Did the flowers for her mother. Had no boyfriend. But lots of friends. Had a bee in her bonnet about this newspaper career which would, her father foresaw, speedily evaporate when the right man came along. Phryne doubted this, but said nothing.

Dot, meanwhile, was hearing about an entirely different Polly. As she leafed through papers and letters in the escritoire, Mrs. Kettle related to Dot how her sweet little girlie, who looked so good in frills, had grown up insolent, cut off her curls, abandoned the tennis club and the garden parties and had actually got a position at a periodical. And not The Australian Home Beautiful or Women’s Own, either, but the Daily Truth. She had insisted on starting as a cadet journalist and Mrs. Kettle had been terrified as to what her own friends would say. But they had approved, so Polly was allowed to continue.

‘Lady Rose Winslow was so good as to tell me that young ladies should have a career, so I went along with it.’

Dot stifled a giggle. What Mrs. Kettle didn’t know about Lady Rose Winslow, a dear friend of Phryne’s, was that she had been born Algernon Charles Winslow and her title was, like her gender, entirely self-endowed. Dot said nothing but kept leafing through slips, cuttings and notes. She put them all into the scrapbook which Polly had been keeping of her own writing and secured it with a ribbon.