The Green Mill Murder (6 page)

‘Oh, Miss Fisher, excuse me for not getting up, but I’m so upset! Where can Charlie be? He never did anything like this before! How could he do this to me?’

This being a question with which Miss Fisher felt ill-equipped to deal, she ignored it and sat down on the edge of the chaise longue.

‘What about his friends?’ she asked. A gaunt, claw-like hand closed on her fingers, and she had to fight the urge to pull away. Mrs Freeman’s voice was ragged and breathy, as though she had damaged her throat with screaming.

‘I’ve called all the friends I know. None of them have seen him. Bobby Sullivan—one of the County Cork Sullivans, you know—he laughed and said that Charles would come home if I left him alone, like Mary’s sheep. He laughed! Charles goes around with rather a fast set of young men, Miss Fisher, frivolous young men, but not vicious.’

Sez you, thought Phryne vulgarly. I know these bright young things. They remind me that I’m not as young as I was. ‘Yes, Mrs Freeman,’ she said encouragingly. ‘Have you spoken to all of them?’

‘Bobby is his special friend. He’d know where Charles is, if anyone does. Oh, Miss Fisher, I keep thinking of . . . car accidents, you know, and the river!’

‘Is there a reason to fear that Charles might have . . .’ Phryne paused, seeking an acceptable way of saying it, and opted for the most vague, ‘done something foolish?’

It was not vague enough. Mrs Freeman screamed and went into such hysterics that Phryne was forced to apply brandy and smelling salts and another clean handkerchief.

‘Now, listen,’ she said roughly, ‘if you are going to rocket off into the stratosphere as soon as I mention a nasty possibility, we’re not going to get anywhere. Calm yourself. You won’t last a day like this, and what use will you be to Charles if you’re a rag? Come along, now. I shall order you some breakfast and you will eat it and then we will talk about Charles and you will not scream at me.’

This treatment seemed to be the right one. Mrs Freeman stopped sobbing, Phryne gave the order, and the woman absorbed a boiled egg and three slices of toast and two cups of tea. The tray was taken away, and she was tidied by a voluble lady’s maid who clearly disapproved of Phryne but was unable to say so, seeing that no one else had been able to get any nourishment down Mrs Freeman’s throat since Charles had vanished.

The maid left, closing the door with the suspicion of a slam, and Phryne asked again, ‘Well?’

‘No, he has never shown any signs of wanting to . . . do that.’

‘What about drugs? Any suspicious white powders left in his evening clothes? Has he been elated or depressed? Think back. You should have noticed.’

‘He was always the same to me.’ Mrs Freeman looked as though she might be about to start crying again, but glanced at Phryne and decided not to. ‘He was sensitive, yes, always noticed if the eggs were overcooked at breakfast or the laundry hadn’t starched his shirt correctly, that sort of thing. And he was out most nights with Bobby and the others, that’s why I was pleased that you took him to the Green Mill, Miss Fisher. He doesn’t know many girls, though that cat Mary Andrews tried to hook him for her pale, plain daughter. But of course Charles wasn’t going to be caught like that, even though they have so much money. No, he’s been just the same Charles. He was so good to me when his father passed on. He would stay in and read to me, and . . . he’s my only one, since Victor . . .’

‘That was his elder brother?’

‘Yes, Victor. He was in the Gallipoli campaign. Such a sensitive boy, joined the army when he was just eighteen. There’s a photo of him on the piano.’

Phryne walked over and looked at the young face, less pretty than Charles’s, with strong bones, a determined jaw under the small moustache, and deep eyes. He stared out at splendid battles under the ostrich-feathered hat, like a knight at vigil.

‘And he never came back?’ she asked delicately.

‘Oh, no, Miss Fisher, he came back. But we lost him, you see. We lost him and we don’t know what happened to him. Poor Vic! He came back very changed, couldn’t bear the city, and went off wandering. We sent his cheque to a place in Gippsland for years, and he always collected it, though he never wrote. Then about four years ago the cheques came back. I don’t know what happened to Victor. But there was Charles, you see. Now I’ve lost Charles, I suppose I ought to find out about Victor. But he was always an impatient boy, difficult and wilful, and Charles . . .’

And Charles, thought Phryne vindictively, was here to soothe mother and hand her the smelling salts and tell her not to bother about an undutiful and probably shell-shocked son, who was moreover not as good-looking and possibly afflicted with unsightly scars of mind or body. So let poor Victor bear his load of horror out in the lonely bush, while pretty Charles takes his place in his mother’s affections, and helps himself to the money and position.

‘And you really don’t know what happened to Victor?’ asked Phryne, attempting and failing to keep incredulity out of her voice. Mrs Freeman bridled and reached for the salts.

‘He was safe enough, out there in the bush somewhere, and I could always reach him by letter. I used to write every year, on his birthday, telling him what had happened during the year, and how the business was going and how Charles . . .’

How wonderful Charles was, thought Phryne, how Victor wasn’t needed or wanted, how he should stay where he was and not upset this nice domestic applecart. Oh, Mrs Freeman, you will be lucky if you don’t run out of sons, if that’s the way you treat them.

Aloud, she said, ‘Well, Mrs Freeman, what do you want me to do? I’m afraid that I’ve had to increase my fees lately. Cost of living, you know.’

‘Fees? Miss Fisher, I understood . . .’ Phryne gave her a polite but adamantine glance. ‘Oh, yes, well, of course. Whatever you think fit, if you can find Charles. And Victor,’ she added as an afterthought. ‘I think that you might as well find Victor, too. If Charles is gone I might need Victor after all. He was last heard of at Talbotville, in Gippsland.’

‘How long ago?’

‘1924. Then the cheques came back.’

‘And the letters?’

‘Oh, I stopped writing,’ said Mrs Freeman casually. ‘No point, if he wasn’t there any more.’

‘I see.’ Phryne swallowed outrage. ‘But what about inheritance? Would not Victor inherit, now his father is . . . er . . . passed on?’

‘Oh my God!’ Mrs Freeman sat bolt upright. ‘The will! Mr Freeman never changed it! Miss Fisher, you shall find that Victor is dead! All of the business goes to Charles, but the house and the money to Victor!’

‘You must have heard that from your lawyer. I suppose that there is a lawyer?’

‘Oh, yes,’ said Mrs Freeman, ‘But I told the lawyer that Victor was dead. For Charles’s sake, you know.’

‘For Charles’s sake,’ agreed Phryne. ‘Of course.’

CHAPTER FOUR

Oh, Cholly, play that thing, I mean that slide
trombone.

George Brooks

‘Trombone Cholly’

Phryne treated herself to a large and indigestible lunch at the Ritz. She had been shaken by her encounter with Mrs Freeman, and found that lobster stimulated her thought processes.

She looked again at the photograph of Victor Ernest Freeman, so lightly cast aside when he came home damaged from the Great War. A very pleasant face, she thought, reliable, honest, heartbreakingly young. Interrogation of Mrs Freeman’s acidulous maid had revealed that he had not been badly marked, just a white scar across the temple where a piece of shrapnel had failed to take off his head. But he had become abrupt, difficult, intolerant of noise and what the maid called ‘the missus’s silliness’.

‘He was a good boy,’ the maid had admitted, ‘a better boy than Charles; honest, you knew what he was thinking. But the wicked war changed him; he wasn’t the boy he had been.’

Of course he wasn’t the boy he had been. Gallipoli had not been a pleasant or a successful campaign. Phryne decided that she would invite Bert and Cec to dinner and ask them about it.

But meanwhile, there was Charles. Where could he be? And what connection could he have to the dead man?

Phryne beguiled coffee and chocolates in contemplating her memories of Tintagel Stone, on whom she had her eye, then called home.

‘Any messages, Mr B?’

‘Yes, Miss Fisher. Mr Tintagel Stone called and asked you to visit a club with him this evening. He could not leave a telephone number so will call back.’

‘Tell him yes. Anything else?’

‘Someone called, Miss, and then rang off without speaking. It happened twice.’

‘Hmm. I wonder if it was Charles? If it happens again, say that I will be at home and will answer the phone myself between six and seven. Can you call Mr Bert and Mr Cec and ask them to dinner tomorrow night? And ask Mr Stone to dine with me at home tonight. Mrs B might still have some of that delicious veal; if so, perhaps she could make breaded cutlets?’

‘I believe that she has some left, Miss Fisher. The new butcher is coming up trumps. Would you object to dinner at seven? Mrs Butler wants to see that new picture.’

‘Of course. Tell Mr Stone, and if he can’t dine that early make me a reservation at the Windsor. Thanks, Mr B. I’ll be back by six.’

She put down the telephone and walked out. A wander past the fashionable windows of Collins Street was exactly what she needed.

Phryne concluded a charming afternoon with the purchase of a beaded gown patterned with peacock feathers from Mme Fleurette, at a sum which was really quite reasonable if you considered how many seamstresses must have been needed to sew on all those beads. She sauntered down Collins Street to collect her car so that she would be home in time to wait by the phone at the required time. It was about five when she arrived, time to have a cup of tea and try on the new dress.

‘Oh, Miss!’ exclaimed Dot. ‘It’s beautiful!’

‘It’s not bad, is it Dot? Love the way it dips down to the heels at the back.’

‘Almost no back, Miss, you’d better wait until it’s warmer to wear it. Who’s the man, Miss?

‘Mm? Oh, that’s Charles Freeman’s missing brother. I’ll tell you all about it when I have a faint idea of what I’m going to do to find him. What do you think, Dot?’

‘It’s not a pretty face,’ said Dot, tilting the frame so that sunlight fell on the picture. ‘But I’d trust him. A nice dependable face.’ She put the photo on Phryne’s bedside table. ‘What’s he done, Miss?’

‘He’s gone missing. And so has his bothersome brother. And how I am to locate one or both, Dot, I really don’t know. However, I daresay something will occur to me. Did Mr Stone call?’

‘Yes, Miss, and he can dine tonight. I hope you find him.’

‘Who? Mr Stone?’

‘No, Miss, the boy in the photo. I like him,’ said Dot firmly, and went to run Phryne’s bath.

At eleven minutes past six the phone rang. Phryne picked it
up and heard someone breathing.

‘Phryne Fisher here.’

‘Oh, Phryne, what am I to do?’ asked a frantic voice.

‘You must come out of whatever wardrobe you are hiding in and I’ll go with you to the cops,’ said Phryne reasonably.

The voice gasped. ‘Oh, no, I can’t, they’ll know by now.’

‘Know what?’

‘About Bernard. They’ll know about him. Oh, Phryne!’

‘Less of the “Oh, Phryne” and more information, Charles. What will they know? Where are you? And do you know that your mother is having whole litters of kittens?’

‘Mother always does. She’ll be all right,’ said Charles dismissively. ‘I’m safe. Don’t worry about me.’

‘I’m not,’ said Phryne candidly. ‘Where are you?’

‘I’m hiding,’ said Charles.

Phryne tutted. ‘Yes, yes, I have already worked that out. What about Bernard, then?’

‘He was . . . he was . . . oh, no I can’t . . .’ The line went dead. Phryne sat holding the phone for a moment, then hung up.

‘Well, Miss, was that Mr Freeman?’ asked Dot. ‘Do you want to wear the peacock dress?’

‘No, I don’t want to be too obvious in a club. Just the dark blue suit and a cloche, Dot. That was indeed Charles, who still appears to be panicking but, then, he’s an expert. He says that the cops will know about him and Bernard, and in view of what that evil-minded maid of Mrs Freeman’s told me, I fear that Bernard was, er, very close to Charles. That gives the little ratbag a motive, of course. How commonplace. Never mind. Hand me that paper on jazz written by Percy Grainger and leave me to my fate.’

Phryne skimmed quickly through the scholarly treatise, noting that jazz was originally called ‘jass’, and before that, ‘jasm’ or ‘gism’, a word which Mr Grainger declined to define but which clearly indicated the sexual origins of the music. The clerics and Catholic mothers of five who denounced it as Negroid music full of African savage drumming and dark urges were probably correct. Jazz, the learned Grainger informed Phryne, was a true folk idiom, an encounter between the European harmonic structure of brass-band music and African pentatonic chant. As such, Grainger said, it was unique and to be encouraged.

He appeared to be alone in his opinion. Phryne wound the gramophone and put on ‘Dippermouth Blues’ and listened hard. Yes, she could hear it. The pentatonic scale left out the third and the seventh note of the European scale, and the Africans, attempting to adapt their own music to this new scale, were unsure about which note to put in, and so blues got its unique sound. Phryne felt a sense of enlightenment. She had fought a pitched battle at school to avoid taking the piano lessons that were the province of good little girls, because she was determined to be a bad little girl; now she regretted it. She might have made some subversive use of that musical knowledge, as had the freed slaves who found brass-band instruments as loot on battlefields, and adapted the uncompromising oom-pah-pah of the polka and the march to their own needs.