Cocaine Blues (8 page)

‘One of them,’ said Sasha with perfect clarity, ‘had a knife.’

With that he sank gracefully into Phryne’s arms and his head lolled on her shoulder.

‘Oh, Lord,’ said that young woman ruefully. ‘Now what shall I do?’

At that moment she heard a car approaching, and stood irresolutely, gun in hand, awaiting it. Blessing on blessings, it was a taxi, though the sign was turned down, and she stepped out onto the road to intercept it.

‘Here, you crazy tart, what’s the idea?’ demanded a familiar voice, and Phryne had to restrain herself from hugging the driver. It was Bert and Cec.

‘Oh, Bert, it’s about time you arrived, I’ve been waiting for hours. My friend has fainted. Help me get her into the car, and take us to the Windsor. I’ll give you ten pounds.’

‘Twelve,’ bargained Bert, dragging the car back on its haunches and flinging open the door.

‘Ten—that’s all I’ve got on me.’

‘Eleven,’ offered Bert, gathering up Sasha and loading him into the back seat. Phryne followed, and the silent Cec climbed in. Bert started the cab with a certain difficulty, and said, ‘What about twenty not to tell your Dad what you’ve been doing?’

Phryne produced the little gun and touched the back of his neck with the cold barrel.

‘How about nothing at all? I thought we were mates,’ she suggested silkily. Her patience with this pair of opportunists was wearing thin. Ten pounds would buy this cab, and have enough change for a packet of smokes and a glass of beer.

‘We’ll just leave it at the round ten, eh, shall we?’ said Bert, not turning a hair. ‘Lucky for you that Cec and me was passing by.’

Phryne, who was concerned about Sasha’s condition, and moreover was perched uncomfortably on a pile of what was probably stolen property, was tight-lipped. They made the journey to the Windsor through empty streets, and Bert rang the night bell while Cec and Phryne supported Sasha, who had recovered enough to stand.

Phryne produced the ten pounds.

‘How is the girl you brought into the hospital? Are you looking for this George?’

Bert spat out the cigarette in disgust.

‘Yair, we’re looking for him, but not a sniff. Cec reckons he’s seen him before, but he can’t remember where. The Scotch lady doctor took us to the cops and they said they’d do something but they don’t know where he is either. But I’ve been collecting numbers—and a mate of mine is givin’ me the drum about another one tomorrow.’

‘Numbers?’ asked Phryne, supporting Sasha with difficulty.

‘Yair, phone numbers. All we need is a sheila to make the calls.’ Phryne smiled, and Bert backed a pace.

‘You got your sheila,’ said Phryne in a flat Australian drawl. ‘Call here, and we’ll have a council of war—no, better, I’ll find myself a car, and we’ll do the phoning from a public phone where there is no operator. Meet me at the corner of Flinders and Spencer at noon, day after tomorrow. Goodnight,’ she added, as the night porter opened the door and she swept Sasha inside and up the stairs. The two men stared at the closed door for a while, then made off on their own errand.

‘You reckon she can do it, mate?’ asked Cec after a long silence.

‘Reckon,’ agreed Bert.

***

Phryne succeeded in getting Sasha up to her room without much noise and found that Dot had gone to bed. She lowered the young man on to the couch, removed her fillet and cape, and surveyed the damage. The lassitude was explained by the fact that a razor-sharp knife had slit a long thin wound down the bicep, slicing through the leotard, and although it was minor compared to the wreckage produced by, say, an apache brawl, it was bleeding freely.

Phryne, aware that blood could not be removed from satin, threw off the beautiful dress, and found a towel and a newly washed stocking in the bathroom. She rang room service and ordered strong coffee and a bottle of Benedictine. Sasha returned to full consciousness to find himself being offered a drink by a young woman clad in black camiknicks, black stockings, high heels, and a towel. There was a long smear of bright red across her breast, which he felt was just what the costume needed.

His arm hurt. He looked down, alarmed at the amount of blood, anxious that the muscles might be damaged; there was a stocking bound tightly around it.

‘You are not badly hurt, but to judge from the state of that jerkin you have lost a lot of blood. Your arm isn’t crippled; bend your fingers, one at a time. Good. Now clench your fist. Good. Now bend your elbow. Put your fist on your shoulder and keep it there, and you might stop bleeding. Now, drink more coffee, please, and keep your arm and side still. A young man in one’s hotel bedroom is capable of being explained, but a corpse is always a hindrance.’

Phryne, noting the young man’s eyes upon her and realizing that her costume might be considered scanty, wiped the blood off her breast and wrapped herself in her mannish dressing gown. Then she poured a cup of coffee, lit a gasper, and waited for an explanation.

Sasha, feeling strength creep back into his weary body, drank coffee, sipped Benedictine and began to talk in French. That language came more easily to him than English.

‘It was the Snow,’ he said, investing the term
neige
, usually connected with French skiing lessons, with solemn horror. ‘I heard that there was to be a drop of the stuff at a certain place, so I went there, without telling my sister or la Princesse. They will skin me alive! Though there is little necessity, I have effectively punished myself. You are sure about the muscle? It is very tender.’

Phryne reassured him. She recalled that she had some styptic powder, fetched it from the bathroom, and applied it to the arm. She could not help noticing how muscular he was, his skin as smooth as marble. She slit the side seam of the leotard and removed it, wrapping him in the gown which she used as a
peignoir
. It was of dark green cotton and suited him well. Although he resembled his sister very strongly, Phryne had no difficulty in remembering that Sasha was male, even when clad in female garments. His charm was not at all androgynous. As the Princesse had said, had he exerted all of the charm which God gave him, she would have lain down in his arms and given him anything he wanted.

He leaned his head back against her thigh as she sat behind him on the arm of the chair, and she ran her hand through the curly hair.

‘Continue,’ she ordered. ‘So what did you do?’

‘I hid myself outside the gate,’ sighed Sasha. ‘And the car drew up as they had arranged, and a packet was exchanged. Then they saw me, and I ran, like a fool! Two of them chased me, on foot, luckily. I don’t know what became of the car. Then I realized that the one who had first seen me, who had lunged at me with a knife, he had wounded me…I was failing…then I saw you, and flung myself at your feet, and with great wit and
a speed of thought to be marvelled at, you hid me and contrived to convey me here. Where is here?’

‘The Hotel Windsor. I think that you had better stay here tonight. The Princesse is coming in a few hours to take me to the Turkish bath of Madame Breda. I can smuggle you out with us. What is your address?’

‘We are staying at Scott’s; a good hotel, but not luxurious, as this one is. I should like to live here,’ said Sasha artlessly, reaching out his unwounded right hand for the coffee cup. Phryne laughed.

‘I daresay you would. But you would shock my maid,’ she added, wondering what Dot would make of the visitor.

She dragged the quilt off her bed and made Sasha comfortable on the sofa, despite his preferred wish to sleep with her, ‘Like brother and sister, you know.’ Phryne knew that her will to resist temptation was weak. She turned off the lights, pinned a note on Dot’s door that said, ‘It’s all right, he’s a visitor and anyway he’s hurt. Call me at eight with tea and aspirins, P.’. Then she put herself to bed, resolutely turning the key in her door more as a warning to herself than any suspicion of Sasha’s motives.

In any case, as soon as the lights were off, she slept like a baby.

Chapter Eight

Come down and relieve us from virtue
Our Lady of Pain

‘Our Lady of Pain’, Algernon Swinburne

Phryne awoke, feeling unhuman. Dot was tapping on her door. She lurched out of bed, accepted the tray and sat down to swallow aspirins and tea at top speed.

‘Run me a bath, Dot, please, with lavender salts.’

Dot stayed put.

‘What about ’im?’ She jerked a thumb back over her shoulder. Phryne had forgotten Sasha. It was very early in the morning.

‘Sasha? He was attacked in the street, and I brought him back here because it was too late for him to get back into his hotel. He’s hurt, Dot, and I want you to be nice to him.’

She joined her maid at the door and saw that Sasha had thrown off the covers as he slept and now sprawled, like a youthful faun wearied with one orgy too many, naked to the waist, fast asleep and heart-stoppingly beautiful. Phryne sighed.

‘But not too nice. Let him sleep, and if he’s still asleep at lunch, leave him here. He won’t do any damage,’ she added. Her private papers were on her person and most of her jewels were in the hotel safe. As for her other possessions, well, this might be a good way of ascertaining if Sasha was a thief. Phryne Fisher had a taste for young and comely men, but she was not prone to trust them with anything but her body.

‘Run my bath, please, Dot, and remember this is your afternoon off. Are you doing anything interesting?’

‘I’m going home,’ said Dot, receding in the direction of the bathroom. ‘Then to the flicks. There’s a new Douglas Fairbanks.
’

Phryne sat down to drink her tea, adding a judicious measure of Benedictine. She decided upon severe black trousers, a white shirt, and a loose, bloused, black jacket as suitable dress for a visit to a Turkish bath, and she loaded the capacious pockets with the usual accessories. Finding the pouchy velvet bag of the night before, she removed the little gun, surveyed it thoughtfully, and added it to her accoutrements. Her headache began to ease. Sasha rolled over, fast asleep, and moaned. Phryne laid a hand on his forehead, but it was cool. He did not seem to have sustained any lasting damage.

Dorothy returned with the news that her bath was run, and Phryne subsided into the steam with a deep groan. All of her muscles hurt. She resolved to take more exercise before she danced with Sasha again, and applied some cream to her face. ‘Too many nights like that, m’girl, and you’ll be getting haggard,’ she reproved herself, lathering her pale slender arms and breasts with Parisian soap. Despite the creaking of the tendons, she remained slim as the gunmetal nymph and completely unblemished. She sluiced herself down, dried and dressed, and accepted a light breakfast which Dot had ordered. The coffee completed her recovery. After further deep thought, she gave the small gun to Dot and ordered her to hide it. One cannot take much except intelligence and religious convictions into a Turkish bath, and one’s garments are available to be searched.

The Princesse arrived at half-past eight, dressed in a shabby linen outfit evidently made for someone who was much taller and stouter. She said little, but stalked off down toward Russell Street, and Phryne followed.

The streets were windswept and chilly. The only sign of life appeared to emanate from Little Lonsdale Street, where the late-night revellers were eating eggs and bacon in the company of girls far too skimpily clad for the climate. The Bath House of Madame Breda was but a hop, skip and jump from these scenes of bacchanalian fervour, and Phryne, cold and disgruntled, felt that the neighbourhood was hardly salubrious.

The Bath was a large building, running the width of the block between Russell and Little Lonsdale. The stone was respectable and the doorway imposingly austere. Phryne was regretting her bed, possibly with Sasha in it, when the door was opened by a severe maid in black with a white cap. She ushered them in without a smile, and they entered a hall scented with the most ravishing, oriental steam. Phryne, after a little thought and several deep sniffs, analysed it as a heavenly compound of bergamot orange, sandalwood and something rare and precious—frangipani, perhaps, or orchid—a seductive, slightly sour scent, quite ravishing to the unprepared senses. The Princesse nudged Phryne in the ribs with an elbow evidently especially sharpened for the purpose of compelling attention.

‘Smells like a brothel,
n’est-ce-pas
? A Turkish brothel.’ Phryne’s experience of brothels was not extensive, and her knowledge of Turkish ones was non-existent; but this was certainly how a Turkish brothel should have smelt. She nodded.

Madame Breda was advancing on them with an outstretched hand. Phryne stepped back a pace, for Madame was enormous. She stood a full six feet high and must have weighed fifteen stone; blonde and muscular, she could have walked on as a Valkyrie and gained nothing but applause. Her eyes were blue, her cheeks red, her complexion excellent, and her hair luxuriant; she was as strong as a goddess and very intimidating. And she was completely wrong for the part of King of Snow. She was the last person in the world whom Phryne could imagine selling any sort of drug. She was so oppressively healthy.

They were led into a pink-tiled room, filled with the overpowering scented steam, and divested of their clothes. The actual swimming bath was a full fifteen feet long, about four feet deep, and half-filled with Nile-green water.

‘The demoiselles will begin in the steam room,’ suggested the maid. She was unruffled, not a hair out of place, though the heat was reddening Phryne’s cheeks and slicking her hair to her skull. They followed the maid into the Scandinavian bath, where the air was suffocatingly hot. There they shed their towelling robes and sat naked on rather spiky cane chairs. Phryne noticed that the Princesse, though wizened, was as straight of limb as a woman of twenty, and was as healthy as a tree.

‘This reminds me of India,’ remarked the Princesse. ‘I was there with the Tsar’s entourage, you know.’

Phryne was unaware of the visit of the Tsar to India, an imperial dominion which had every reason to be suspicious of the intentions of Russia. She doubted the story but nodded politely.

‘This is the distribution centre,’ remarked the old woman. ‘The maid will deliver the snow to me as we recline at the massage and hydro-bath. Watch.’

And thereafter she chatted amiably of her extensive travels and her improbable amours. ‘I danced the dance of the seven veils for the Prince and Rasputin—such eyes that man had, like our Sasha, he could command a woman in all things—and when I get to the fourth veil, the Prince, he can stand it no longer, and he…’

Just when the Princesse had Phryne’s undivided attention, the maid interrupted, and moved them to a cooler room, where they were supplied with bitter herb tea ‘to cleanse the system’. Phryne examined the maid. Her name, it appeared, was Gerda, and she was Madame Breda’s cousin. Gerda had a washed-out, bony countenance and a pale, whispering voice, spiced with a little venom as she described her employer and relative.

‘Her! She works me to death! Gerda, clean the bathing-pool! Gerda, serve the tea! And I had a young man in Austria, and an eligible
parti
. She offered me employment here, and I came hoping to amass enough for a useful dowry, and now my young man has married someone else, and I stay here, my heart broken.’

Phryne wondered how old this young man was, and how long Gerda had been in Australia. She was forty if she was a day, and a cold, sour forty, at that. Her iron-grey hair was dragged back into a vengeful bun, and her figure was not one which would attract the attention of any bathing-belle judges. She was built like a box; so much so that Phryne wondered if she might still have ‘Cox’s Orange Pippin’ stencilled on her bottom. She decided that nothing could induce her to tip Gerda up and look.

An attendant entered with unguents, and the ladies reclined for a massage. The masseuse was Madame Breda herself, and after a certain initial impression that all her bones were being torn loose from their sockets, Phryne relaxed and began to enjoy the pummelling of the hard, skilful fingers. She felt the knots in her calf muscles soothed and coaxed away, and the rubbing oil, which was of sandalwood, imparted an agreeable pungency. On the next bench, the Princesse grunted with pleasure. Phryne was wrapped in her towelling robe again, and sat to watch her companion undergoing the treatment, with the enjoyment of one who has already come through.

Madame Breda clapped Phryne on the shoulder and boomed, ‘Now you have warm bath with oatmeal, to take out the oil, and then the cold plunge. You have been walking far lately? Or dancing? Yes, it would be dancing in one so young and beautiful. Next time, do not dance so hard. You may do damage to a muscle. I have not seen you before. You are a friend of the Princesse?’

‘My name is Phryne Fisher,’ said Phryne carefully, not at all sure that she was a friend of the Princesse. ‘I’m a visitor from England.’

‘You shall come again,’ declared Madame Breda, her rosy cheeks shining and her red mouth parting in a most daunting manner. ‘You will find yourself most refreshed.’

This sounded like an order, but Phryne smiled and nodded. She was escorted to a luxurious bath, milky with oatmeal. The small attendant, a pretty girl only marred by a flat burn scar on one cheek, instructed her to lie back and be washed. Phryne felt like a Princess of Egypt being bathed in ass’ milk, while the girl rubbed her gently all over with a soft muslin bag containing more oatmeal. When she seemed to be concentrating a little too markedly on the nipples and then the female parts, Phryne did not open her eyes, but murmured, ‘No thank you,’ and the girl desisted. So that was one of the offered entertainments of Madame Breda’s. Pleasant, but not to Phryne’s taste. Possibly, however, to Lydia’s taste, thought Phryne, remembering how Lydia had looked at her. What an excellent opportunity for a little polite blackmail.

She was assisted out of the milk-bath, rinsed with warm clean water, and led to the green pool. Madame Breda was there.

‘Jump!’ she instructed, and Phryne jumped.

The water was cold enough to stop the heart.

After gasping, choking, and uttering a small shriek, Phryne duck-dived the length of the pool, turned, and swam back. Madame Breda had gone; the Princesse and Gerda were entering the room. Phryne, though she strained her ears, could not hear what they were saying, but she saw a packet change hands, and Gerda tucked a considerable wad of currency into the dark recesses of her costume.

The Princesse flung herself into the pool, climbed out, and shook herself briskly. She and Phryne reclaimed their robes and went back to the dressing room. The package was square, done up in white with sealing wax, like a chemist’s. As they dressed, Phryne asked, ‘Is that the stuff?’

‘Of course,’ said the Princesse. Phryne put her hand in her pocket, and encountered a folded piece of paper which had not been there before, and a wadded something, containing a crystalline substance of the consistency of salt. She did not take either object out into plain sight, and she did not think that the Princesse had noticed anything.

Dressed, they adjourned to Madame’s parlour to partake of more bitter tea. Gerda was there, with a large and loaded tray.

‘I will send your account to your hotel, Mademoiselle,’ she observed respectfully. ‘But I am instructed to offer you our treatments. Here is the mud pack, the bain effervescent, tea for complexion and vitality, and beauty powders. Madame Breda is famous for her powders.’

Phryne was familiar with this practice. Most beauty parlours made up tonics and headache cures and sold them when the customer was at her most relaxed. In view of the transactions which she had just seen, however, she was not willing to risk anything.

‘No, thank you—but I shall come again. Ready, Princesse?’

‘Certainly. Give Madame Breda my compliments,’ said the Princesse with rare grace, and they left the Bath House.

‘Tell me, Princesse, what is your real title? And why do you use de Grasse?’

‘It is simple. I am the Princesse Barazynovska. When I came first to Europe they could not pronounce it. So I changed it. I have always liked Grasse. It is the centre of the perfume industry, you know, and has fields of lavender…and you, mademoiselle. You have not been born to the blue, eh?’

‘Purple,’ corrected Phryne. ‘No, I was born in very poor circumstances. Bitterly poor. Then several people died, and I was whisked into fashion and wealth. I enjoy it greatly,’ she said honestly. ‘There’s nothing like being really poor to make you relish being really wealthy.’

‘And are you?’

‘Which?’

‘Really wealthy?’ asked the Princesse, with every appearance of personal interest.

‘Yes. Why? You said last night that you did not want money.’

‘A little money would be pleasant, but I was speaking the truth.’

‘Good. Now, give me that packet.’

The Princesse’s hand went protectively to her bag.

‘Why?’

‘I want it,’ explained Phryne hardly at all. ‘Shall I make you an offer for it? Or are you an addict yourself?’

‘No!’ exclaimed the old woman. ‘No! Make me an offer.’

Phryne reflected that it was fortunate that Melbourne was not a French-speaking country, or this conversation would have unduly interested the policeman whom they happened to be passing. She said abruptly, ‘Twenty pounds.’

‘Done,’ agreed the Princesse, and handed over the packet. Phryne pocketed it, and stuffed notes into the Princesse’s shabby purse.

‘Well, I have shown you what you needed to be shown,’ declared the old woman. ‘And here I shall leave you. Farewell for now, dear child. I will send you my address. You interest me.’

And with that, she left, trotting away into the crowd. Phryne immediately inquired her way to a post office, purchased brown paper and string, and, on the way, dropped into the ladies’ public toilet, where she hoped to be unobserved. She emptied her pocket, and found the little crunchy package and the note.

The package was full of a white powder, and the message written in greasy black pencil—perhaps eyebrow pencil—merely said ‘Beware of the Rose’.