Unnatural Habits: A Phryne Fisher Mystery (Phryne Fisher Mysteries) (37 page)

Phryne had Mr. Butler drop his passengers at the end of St. Helier Street. It would never do to swan up to the front gate in the Hispano-Suiza, wearing these clothes. Phryne found the black garments cumbersome, but found a way of walking in them without treading on the hem. They were also hot. She mentioned this.

‘Wait till you get into that laundry,’ said Agnes. ‘Especially in the boiler room with all them coppers. Come on. The guards know me.’

The gates were huge and moved very slowly to allow a van to go out. Phryne and Agnes went in. The guard waved at Agnes and let them pass.

‘This way,’ said Agnes. Her voice was shaking.

Phryne took her arm. ‘Agnes, if you can’t control yourself, then let me go on alone. Anyone could tell you were scared. You’ll get us discovered.’

‘Oh no, my lady, you don’t know the way. I’m all right. I’m usually nervous, they won’t see any difference. They don’t look at us much, anyway.’

‘All right,’ said Phryne, not at all sure. She was not concerned at being detected and flung out neck and crop, had she brought a crop with her. She was concerned about being flung out before she found Polly Kettle.

Agnes led her to the laundry.

It was a large annexe, built onto the side of the convent quadrangle presided over by the statue of St. Joseph. Phryne wondered which saint would preside over this building. None occurred. The big doors by which trucks came and went to load and unload led into crooked corridors, stinking of disinfectant and bleach, almost sticky with starch. The noise was acute. Machines rumbled and rolled and squealed.

The first room held the clean, dry and folded laundry, each in its own pile, being packed into clean calico bags by women in grey smocks. No one spoke. No one even looked up. They consulted and ticked off lists and pinned each one to the completed orders.

‘This is where the good obedient girls are,’ said Agnes. ‘Light work.’

‘Light, I see,’ said Phryne.

‘This is ironing.’

A large number of lines ran from a central point in the middle of the room, each attached to an iron. Inside this monstrous spiderweb more grey-smocked women were working, ironing sheets, shirts, clear-starched doctors’ and waiters’ coats, watched over by a sister whom Phryne had seen before. Sister de Sales, eyes everywhere, walking behind every ironer in a manner guaranteed to disconcert.

Phryne had seen every face so far. They were blanched, exhausted, weary beyond bearing. Not all of them were pregnant. Some were very young. And none of them was Polly Kettle.

Out of the ironing room, and Agnes hitched up her skirts. Phryne did the same.

‘It’s always wet in here,’ she told Phryne. ‘The girls work barefoot. It’s easier. Shoes don’t last long.’

Neither, thought Phryne, would humans. The huge coppers—fifty gallons, Phryne estimated, at least—boiled continuously, filling the air with steam. Women in those same smocks, barefoot and bare-legged, shoved sheets in and pulled sheets out, wringing them between two pot sticks until the slimy stone floor was swimming with hot water.

‘Bad girls,’ mouthed Agnes. The sour stink of soapy filth and sweat was overwhelming. Phryne managed to see each face. Pull, haul, twist, wring, endless sheets, endless hard, hot, heavy work. Severe labour for any strong man. Iniquitous for pregnant women.

Still no Polly. Out of the boilers and into the rinsing, not as hot or as foul but just as hard. Still no familiar reporter. Then further, into a room which was occupied by a gigantic mangle, broad enough to take a double bed sheet, into which more slaves were poking the wrung-out sheets from the rinsing. Still barefoot; the mangle squeezed out more and more water.

Agnes nodded to the auxiliary in charge as she conducted Phryne into the drying yard. The warm wind struck chill. What a way to catch pneumonia, thought Phryne, out of that fug into cold air. A new meaning to the term ‘catch your death’. More grey-clad servants of the laundry, busily pegging the sheets, under the malevolent eye of Sister Dolour. One girl saw a friend on the other side of the yard and spoke. Sister Dolour slapped her across the shoulders with her pot stick. There was a distinct ‘thwack’. Phryne froze. The urge to remove the weapon from that bitch of a woman and beat her to death with it was very strong.

Phryne did not move. The girl didn’t even react. She expected Sister to hit her. Sister expected to be able to hit anyone she chose. Agnes dragged at Phryne’s arm. No Polly among the dancing linens.

And inside again to another room, where wrung, almost-dry coats and fine linen tablecloths, gossamer wedding veils and delicate laces were starched. No face that Phryne knew.

And in the middle of the next room, which contained benches and tables and might have been meant to be a place of rest, stood a woman in a grey smock, standing on an uncarpeted square of concrete. She swayed. Only pride was holding her erect. She was very pregnant. Her arms embraced her belly. A penitent who had refused to work.

Not Polly. Phryne dragged Agnes across the room to speak to her. Agnes fought her every inch of the way, and lost.

‘If they send you out to give birth, catch the five-ten to Bacchus Marsh,’ she said, bending down as if to wring out the hem of her dress. ‘If not, tell Terry to take you out of here with Madame Paris’ sheets. Remind him about a girl called Primrose. And if I were you, a graceful faint about now might be politic.’

The girl’s eyes opened wide.

‘Who are you?’ she asked.

‘Phryne Fisher,’ she replied.

‘Right,’ said the girl, and slumped.

Agnes and Phryne took her up and bore her away, out of the room, into the corridor which ran into the convent itself.

‘Agnes?’ asked Sister de Sales, as they passed the ironing room.

‘She’s fainted,’ said Agnes with some heat. ‘How long’s she been there?’

‘I don’t know,’ said the sister. ‘Dolour must have ordered it. All right, take her away, I’ll explain.’

‘Thank you, Sister,’ said Agnes.

Phryne, who would not have put good money on the timbre of her voice, kept silent.

The infirmary was not palatial, but it was quiet. Agnes indicated a bed and they laid the girl down on it.

‘Just lie still and I’ll get you some water,’ said Agnes. ‘How long you been there?’

‘Since dawn,’ said the girl. ‘My legs bloody hurt.’

‘Get a pillow and put her feet up,’ ordered Agnes, secure in her own domain. ‘I got some aspirin. Why don’t you just do the work?’ she demanded.

‘I wouldn’t work for those bitches if they killed me,’ said the girl, faint but clear.

‘They just might if you don’t learn,’ scolded Agnes.

‘No,’ said the girl.

‘You should have said that before,’ sneered Agnes.

‘Didn’t have a choice,’ said the girl.

‘Enough,’ said Phryne. ‘Recriminations will not help us here. What’s your name?’ she asked.

‘Faith.’

‘Have you seen anything of a woman called Polly?’

‘No. We’re all numbers here. Thanks,’ she said, as Phryne lifted her swollen ankles onto a folded blanket.

‘She was a reporter, here to expose the conditions in the laundry,’ said Phryne, as Agnes propped Faith’s head on her shoulder and fed her a paper of aspirin and a long drink of water.

‘No, never heard of her. But I wouldn’t be her, if the bitches knew why she was here.’

Faith closed her eyes.

‘Right, I’m off,’ said Phryne. ‘Give me a note about Faith and I’ll be back as soon as I can.’

‘You don’t want me to go with you?’ asked Agnes, scribbling on the back of a bill and trying not to sound as relieved as she felt.

‘No. Back soon,’ Phryne said, and stepped out into another corridor.

The trouble was, she considered—after walking for too long, according to the map she had memorised—was that all these passages looked the same. No signs, no pictures, all painted an institution grey. The only light relief were some very realistic oleographs of the Sacred Heart, gory and unsettling. Still, not a lot of point in going back. By what she could recall, most of them led back into the quadrangle. There were only four possible sides. One had to lead somewhere.

So far she had seen few nuns, and no one had challenged her. This could not continue. She picked up her skirts and ran to the end of the present passage and emerged into what must be the nuns’ quarters.

They were sterile. Clean, grey, stony, and even on a warm day, cold. Each little cell had a door, and all were open. Each nun had a bed, a blanket, a prie-dieu, a book of prayers, and that was about all. Not a bauble, a lolly, a family picture, even a toothbrush.

The last two doors, though, were firmly shut and when Phryne tried them, locked. There were slots in the doors, as one saw in the best prisons. She looked in.

Two sad countenances. Two tear-streaked penitent faces.

No Polly Kettle.

Few people have been happier to leave a building than Phryne Fisher at that moment.

She went out into the courtyard, navigated her way back to the infirmary, bade farewell to Agnes and Faith, then stalked out to the gate.

‘Leaving us so soon?’ asked the guard, with something that resembled a leer.

‘Let. Me. Out,’ ordered Phryne. Eyes as cold as emeralds glared into his, clearly prophesying what would definitely happen if he didn’t do exactly as ordered and that right speedily. An old soldier, he had last seen that look in the eyes of a German soldier, who had been bayoneting him at the time.

‘Right you are, Miss,’ he said, and swung the gate open.

After that he knocked off early for a drink. He had had a shock. Females at the convent were usually real biddable.

Phryne stalked down St. Helier Street, got into the car, tore off her veil and cap and threw them out the window.

‘Home, Miss?’ asked Mr. Butler, very gently.

‘Home,’ said Phryne. ‘Now.’

The convent had been searched, and Polly Kettle was not there.

Chapter Sixteen

We console ourselves with the flesh
for all the iniquities in the world.

Anaïs Nin, A Spy in the House of Love

Phryne had walked sadly into the house, taken herself off for a shower and a change of clothes, and was sitting, staring out the window, in her boudoir, having refused food, drink and company.