Unnatural Habits: A Phryne Fisher Mystery (Phryne Fisher Mysteries) (45 page)

Dot appeared with a cup of Hellenic coffee and a croissant. It was not until Phryne had finished eating that she said, ‘Inspector Robinson is downstairs, Miss, and Hugh. Constable Collins, I mean. They’re looking very pleased.’

‘Oh good, that means Jack is not going to get cross about all that money,’ said Phryne.

‘Money?’ asked Dot.

‘Nothing to concern you, Dot dear. Bert has views on spoiling the Egyptians and it wasn’t as though it was a difficult lock. Right, what sort of day is it?’

‘Bright and shiny, Miss. Warm but not hot.’

‘Good. A cotton shift, please, and sandals. I am not doing anything energetic today.’

‘I should think not. Jane says you held up two ships!’

‘Not alone, Dot, I had very valuable assistance. How is everyone this morning?’

‘Mrs. B was a bit huffy about the mess in the kitchen, but Ruth, Tinker and Jane came in to help her with the washing-up. There were no fish for breakfast, because Tinker slept in. He says he wants to be a sailor.’

‘Then so he shall,’ said Phryne. ‘He is very adept when it comes to ships, Dot.’

‘But not washing-up,’ said Dot. ‘He broke one of your Clarice Cliff coffee cups.’

‘Then we shall buy another,’ said Phryne.

***

Jack Robinson was as close as that subfusc man ever came to being puffed up with pride. He had broken a white slavery ring, captured all the main players and a lot of very chatty accomplices, all eager to secure their own skins. He had actually arrested a ship. He had rescued ten actresses and four innocent girls. He had been congratulated by the commissioner. His own chief had shaken him by the hand.

The fact that Phryne was the one who had actually done all these things was what stopped him from being really puffed up. Phryne wished for no acclaim. She disclaimed recognition. He knew that. But still, he felt like a fraud.

He was kibbitzing on Tinker’s chess game when Phryne came in.

‘I reckon you want to move that knight, Tinker,’ he advised.

‘He’s pinned,’ said Jane patiently. ‘If he moves the knight either way, he’s lost. I’ll take him with either the pawn or the bishop.’

‘Oh, right, I see,’ said Jack. ‘Well, son, I think you’re in trouble.’

‘But I can do this,’ said Tinker, sweeping his queen across the board to attack Jane’s bishop.

‘So you can,’ said Jack.

‘The queen is the most powerful piece on the board,’ said Jane, with a suspicion of a grin.

‘So she is,’ agreed the policeman. ‘G’day, Miss Fisher. How do you find yourself this afternoon?’

‘A bit creaky but very pleased,’ said Phryne, sitting down carefully in a padded chair. ‘How are you?’

‘Likewise,’ he replied. ‘We got all the bad men in custody, all weeping and wailing and calling for their mothers. It’s pitiful. Talk about no honour among thieves! There’s even less honour among slavers. The ladies have retrieved their trunks and are back where they came from. Someone seems to have given them a fiver each. I can’t imagine who that would be,’ he said with elaborate innocence.

‘Probably some person with a socialist conscience,’ said Phryne. ‘Only a wild guess, you know. What did you find out about Gratitude?’

‘A front for their foul trade,’ said Robinson. ‘They’d send that harridan Mrs. Donnelly—she’s Father Declan’s aunt—out to orphanages and so on pretending to be a pious widow, Mrs. Smith. She’d collect the girls, drug them, and when the poor little mites woke up it’d be at sea. Been doing it for years. Only attracted attention when they snatched some from the street. Or they bought them, of course. Mostly from their fathers.’

‘Charming,’ said Phryne, glad that she hadn’t eaten much breakfast. Dot, who had been sitting with Hugh Collins, missed a stitch in the stocking she was repairing.

‘The four on the ship all have parents,’ said Robinson. ‘All of ’em reported missing as per regulations. All of ’em very pleased to get their little angels back. I’ve never been hugged and wept over so much in all my born days. Poor Collins was one big blush.’

‘Rather you than me,’ said Phryne.

‘You really mean that, don’t you?’ he asked.

‘Certainly.’

‘Well, anyway, came to thank you,’ said Jack.

‘My pleasure,’ said Phryne. ‘I haven’t had a chance to be a pirate before. Any trouble with the owner of that yacht we borrowed?’

‘Never knew it was gone,’ said Hugh Collins. ‘We didn’t see it as our duty to tell him.’

‘Excellent.’

‘So most of it is solved,’ said Robinson. ‘You found the girls from that lying-in home and they’re all all right. You foiled the white-slavery ring and the victims are all right, too.’

‘But still—’ Phryne leaned forward ‘—Polly Kettle is missing.’

‘Oh,’ said Robinson, damped. ‘So she is.’

‘And I mean to find her. She isn’t in the convent, I searched it.’ Robinson decided not to ask her about that, as her face had become as stern as a white marble Justice—without the blindfold. ‘She isn’t in the Bacchus Marsh commune. She wasn’t and hadn’t been on the Pandarus. Those creatures kept quite careful records. So she’s still somewhere.’

‘If she isn’t dead,’ commented Tinker, and was immediately hushed by Ruth.

‘Usually would have found a body by now,’ Robinson told him with matching bluntness. ‘They’d ha’ nosed her out behind the arras.’

This meant nothing to Tinker, but he got the point, and went back to playing chess.

‘So I shall spend today and tomorrow recovering and thinking. Then, if I need some help, Jack, can I call you?’

‘For anything, at any time,’ said Robinson. ‘With everything I’ve got.’

She rose with some effort and held out her hand. Greatly surprising himself, he kissed it.

Then he collected his detective constable and left the house. Reporters were eager to interview him. He began to think that Miss Fisher was right about keeping in the background.

‘Polly Kettle,’ said Phryne. ‘We need to review everything we know about her. But now, who’s up for a gentle stroll au bord de la mer
before lunch?’

***

They all joined her. It was a lovely day and a charming walk. A gentle breeze stirred the palm fronds. Tinker talked about being a deepwater sailor. But it brought Phryne no nearer to finding Polly Kettle.

With their usual inducements to thought—lemonade, ginger beer, a cocktail, a sherry cobbler—Phryne and her minions sat down in the shady garden with all available notes and considered the problem.

‘She did visit Mrs. Faceache in Footscray,’ said Phryne.

‘Ryan,’ corrected Jane, to whom an inexactitude was a pain under the pinny.

Phryne waved a hand. ‘As I said, Ryan. I’ve been meeting a lot of harridans lately. She left that house and was supposed by that disgusting pair to be headed for the city. Except that Patrick told a pretty story. Right so far?’

‘Right,’ said Jane.

‘And then she fell out of the world,’ said Ruth, who loved a florid phrase.

‘Exactly. No one can disappear. She is somewhere. Just not where we have looked. Yet. Not in the convent,’ said Phryne. ‘Not on the Pandarus. Not captive in that lying-in home. So where can she be?’

‘Inspector Robinson says she isn’t in any of the… houses,’ said Dot.

‘And they let him search, which argues both fear and a clear conscience,’ responded Phryne. ‘And it stands to reason. Brothels at present have no need of uncooperative women. There are a large number of hungry volunteers. Madame Paris has a waiting list, for heaven’s sake. And they wouldn’t tolerate Polly hanging around seeking for a story. Though there was a saint, wasn’t there, Dot, who sat on the steps of a brothel and converted the inhabitants?’

‘Yes, Miss,’ said Dot. ‘But that was a long while ago. I don’t reckon that’d work nowadays.’

‘Indeed. Now, what do we know about Polly?’

‘She’s silly,’ said Jane, her strongest term of condemnation. ‘She takes foolish risks.’

‘She’s bl…very ungrateful,’ said Tinker. ‘She lied about you rescuing her, Guv’nor.’

‘She doesn’t have a boyfriend,’ said Dot. ‘Her best friend Cecilia’s a silly young miss who’s only concerned with her wedding. I’m sure that Cecilia would have mentioned a boyfriend if there had been one. Miss Kettle doesn’t seem to have been interested.’

‘She wanted a career,’ said Phryne. ‘Everyone in that newspaper office was spitting on their hands and bending to the task of discouraging her. So she seized on a good story that she thought would make her name and convince her editor to put her on to reporting the news, rather than the garden parties. And she stole the story from the crippled and extremely angry Mr. Bates.’

‘He sounds like he might bear more investigation,’ said Dot.

‘Did he fancy her?’ asked Ruth. ‘It might be a tale of forbidden love.’

‘I swear, Ruth, one day I am going to make a little bonfire of all the romance novels in the world,’ said Phryne without rancour. ‘Actually, it would have to be a very big bonfire. Perhaps I could rent a volcano and drop them in from the air. Honestly. No, he wasn’t.’

‘How do you know?’ asked Jane.

‘Because he’s a member of the Blue Cat Club, and that fact does not leave this garden.’

‘Blue cat?’ asked Tinker. ‘Cats don’t come in blue. They’re black like Ember or stripy or white or orange…’ Ruth whispered into his ear. ‘Oh, one of them blokes,’ said Tinker. ‘Bloke who runs the ships’ chandlery in Queenscliff’s one of them blokes. Lives with another bloke. But he’s all right. Always pays his messengers, never whinges about the trade, has a drink down the pub with the rest. I got nothin’ against queers,’ said Tinker.

‘Good, because some of my best friends are. Queer, I mean.’

‘You mean like Dr. Mac?’ asked Jane, athirst for knowledge.

‘Yes, but back to the subject,’ Phryne recalled their attention. ‘I interviewed Mr. and Mrs. Kettle. Her father was desperate to have her back. Her mother…’

‘Not so much,’ said Dot. ‘Mr. Butler talked to the staff. They said the mother was jealous of the father’s regard for the daughter, threw tantrums when he paid too much attention to her. But surely…’

‘The mother wouldn’t have arranged the abduction of her own daughter?’ asked Phryne. ‘You heard what Jack said. Some of those little golden-haired girls were sold by their parents to the Port Said brothel trade.’