Unnatural Habits: A Phryne Fisher Mystery (Phryne Fisher Mysteries) (17 page)

Recalled to the present, for which she was immensely grateful, Phryne threw the dice, pushed her token and went down an exceptionally long snake. Ruth giggled. Tinker went up a ladder and glowed with pride. Jane frowned, attempting to calculate the odds of throwing the right number to get onto a ladder next time…

‘So what are the odds of throwing a four?’ asked Tinker, interested. ‘I need a four.’

‘One in twelve,’ said Jane. ‘There are two ways to get a four: a three and a one, or two twos.’

‘Every time?’ asked Tinker.

‘Every time,’ affirmed Jane.

‘But that doesn’t work in two-up,’ objected Tinker. ‘You can win by following the pennies. You bet on what came up last time. You almost never get a head, tail, head, tail, like that.’

‘It shouldn’t work like that,’ said Jane.

‘But it does,’ said Tinker, sure of himself. ‘My dad took me to a lot of two-up games and he always come—came—out ahead.’

‘When we finish this game, we can try it,’ said Jane, who was a firm empiricist.

‘Meanwhile,’ said Dot, ‘it’s your turn, Tinker.’

‘Oh, yair, sorry.’ He threw the die. His one-in-twelve chance came in. And he rose triumphantly up a ladder.

Humanity, thought Phryne. Quite a good idea, after all.

Thunder crashed. Inside his wardrobe, Ember wailed in protest that a royal cat should be so tormented and affronted. Molly licked Dot’s feet, too. Ruth concentrated on the game, Jane thought about probability. And the Somme campaign was half a world away in place and time.

The lights came back on in time to prevent an ice-cream orgy, and they separated: Jane and Tinker to throw endless coins before resuming their telephone ordeal; Ruth to the parlour to consult the Britannica on endive; Phryne and Dot to sip lemonade and read through the notebooks.

‘We’ll have to go to Camberwell,’ said Phryne eventually. ‘Talk to the parents. I’d better do that. Then perhaps another visit to the newsroom. Someone there knows more about Polly Kettle than they have told me, which is very obstructive of them. Where is that girl? If she’s just romped off on a folly of her own I shall be cross.’

‘She doesn’t sound like a romantic sort of girl,’ observed Dot, turning another page and puzzling over Jane’s script. Tinker wrote neatly, though his spelling was not good, Ruth’s recipes would never fail for confusion between ‘add sugar’ and ‘seethe’, but Jane’s writing looked like an intoxicated inky spider had staggered across the page on the way to the bar for another drink. Which it really didn’t need.

‘No, she wasn’t. Ambitious, innocent, driven by a sense of purpose, with no sense of self-preservation, but not romantic. And the Ryan family gone, leaving only a few odd socks behind. I hope Jack can find them. Storm’s over. I’m going for a swim to clear my head.’

‘Have a nice time,’ murmured Dot, who only swam when the temperature was above one hundred degrees Farenheit.

Phryne flew upstairs for costume, bathing cap, towel and sandals, then put her loose shift back on over the ensemble. The cool air slapped her into wakefulness as she walked down her front steps and toward the beach. The air was rain-washed and clean.

As she walked down the beach, she shed clothes and then waded into the water. No one there but a few dogs whose owners were calling unavailingly from the shore. One was a Newfoundland who was delighted to tow Phryne out into the deeper water, where she could swim freely, then circled her like a large furry shark, barking occasionally then spluttering with his mouth full of water. It was delightful, and by the time she and the dog beached again, her foul memories had been washed away. The dog trotted away to find someone suitable to shake water all over. A couple of sunbathers further up the beach looked like promising recipients.

On her return, there was news. Somehow the bishop’s secretary had managed to insert a call in between the fruitless mathematical ones. The bishop would see Miss Fisher at nine in the morning. The matter of Father Kennedy, the secretary added, was under investigation. Jack Robinson reported that there had been sightings of the Ryans, which he was pursuing. And Mr. Featherstonehaugh had invited her to lunch on the morrow, at one. Phryne was pleased and went back to her book. Perhaps Mrs. Christie was right. It was just a matter of following the right clues.

***

Morning dawned for Tinker with the actual rising of the sun through his hessian blind. No one else was awake. He put on his shorts and shirt, found his fishing gear, collected Molly and slipped out of the back gate. It was going to be another hot day and his only chance of a catch was before the surface water got too warm. Then the fish would head for the depths, out of reach of his line. He joined the die-hard old men on the pier. They looked at him, grunted, and made room for him. Molly flopped down beside him. Silence fell. Molly woofed at a seagull who ventured too close. The sea slopped ashore.

‘They bitin’?’ Tinker asked ritually, after the correct interval.

‘Not bad,’ conceded the old coot next to him. ‘Sea trout, a few.’

Which meant that the water was teeming with prey. He could tell from the sea birds in diving clouds and the occasional round, dog-like head of a seal rising with its whiskers bristling, mouth full of fish. The line jerked. One. Two. More.

Tinker strung his scaled and gutted fish onto his line, tipped his cap to the old men, and walked home with ten sea trout, whistling. Molly barked and frisked beside him.

***

Mrs. Butler was pleased. ‘Nothing better than fish straight out of the sea,’ she told him. ‘Good boy! Yes, you shall have some,’ she remarked to Ember, who wreathed around her ankles, tail as straight as a taper. ‘Thanks for cleaning them, I hate gutting fish. Have a wash, now, and be ready for breakfast.’ She took a deep breath and wrinkled her nose. ‘Oh, Lord, that dog! Did she eat all the insides?’

‘And rolled in the rest,’ admitted Tinker.

‘Drat. Well, you know who is going to be washing her before she comes into a Christian household. Out you go, now,’ she ordered, and Molly took the offered bone and accepted banishment. She could never understand what people had against delightful fishy smells.

Tinker shrugged. He didn’t mind washing a cooperative dog on a hot day. And Molly had really enjoyed those fish guts. He had never had a pet before Miss Fisher’s advent into his life. Molly’s wholehearted gusto pleased him. And he liked being a provider. At breakfast, everyone would know who had caught the main dish.

Tinker accepted a large fruit bun and went out again to wash both himself and Molly in the obsolete bathtub next to the copper. The garden filled with the noise of splashing.

‘I think he’s going to be all right,’ commented Mr. Butler, who liked a piece of fresh fish, lightly fried, with a squeeze of lemon, for breakfast.

‘I think so too,’ agreed his wife, setting the big frying pan on the stove and decanting a scoop of lard into it. ‘Pour me another cuppa, will you, love?’

‘I’ll do that, and I’ll take the tea out to the breakfast room. Miss Dot will be down soon.’

‘Good. And the bread, the butter, the toast, the scrambled eggs, the marmalade and the Vegemite are all on the trolley. Fish’ll be ready soon.’

All was peaceful in the kitchen and the garden, where Molly was shaking herself, restored to sweetness and scented only with yellow soap, which she considered an inferior aroma compared to fishguts. Tinker dried both of them, dressed and went in for breakfast in a very happy frame of mind.

This continued as even Jane, forking in the white flakes while she read her book, remarked that the fish tasted very good today.

By the time Phryne descended, the breakfast room was empty and they had all scattered: Ruth to the kitchen, Jane and Tinker back to the phone, and Dot to the garden. Dot was doing the Age crossword and trying to make sense of nine across when she saw what Phryne was wearing.

‘Oh, Miss!’ She jumped to her feet. ‘You’re going to see the bishop! Shouldn’t you change?’

‘Why?’ Phryne looked down at her rose-coloured shift, embroidered with clove pinks around the hem. It had an enchantingly cut little jacket and did not show any immodest flesh, not even her elbows. With it went a dusty pink cloche. And she had handmade grey leather shoes. Phryne thought that the bishop ought to appreciate being able to look at such a spectacle of stylish female beauty.

‘The skirt! It’s so short!’ protested Dot.

‘Look, Dot dear, I’ve no further patience with the sensibilities of clerics. God made my knees and he had a purpose for them. Anyway, you can only see them if I sit down and I’m inclined not to sit with this bishop unless he shows signs of cooperating. There are girls missing and at least one priest who has fathered a child, and I’m out of all charity with him. Them. Are you coming or not?’

‘I’ll have to get changed,’ said Dot.

‘Then give me your crossword and I’ll wait out here for you.’

Dot surrendered the puzzle and hurried away. Phryne perched on a white wrought-iron chair and did her best with nine across. She had just filled in anarchy for state of chaos when Mr. Butler called her to the telephone, which had managed to squeeze in a ring while Tinker and Jane were taking a break for lemonade and shortcake. It was Jack Robinson, who reported that Patrick Ryan had hired a van. The number had been conveyed to all police stations across the state, and someone would probably see it. Enthralled neighbours had reported hurried packing and a hasty departure.

‘What did you say to them?’ asked Robinson, nettled.

‘Nothing controversial,’ replied Phryne. ‘Their own consciences, assuming they have such a thing, supplied the terror. “The wicked flee where no man pursueth,” Jack dear.’

‘Yes, I suppose so,’ he grumbled. ‘What are you doing today?’

‘Going to interview a bishop, lunch at the Blue Cat Club, and visit some nuns,’ said Phryne.

‘The Blue Cat? You won’t find anyone to enchant there, Miss Fisher.’

‘No. Tell me, any complaints about that club?’

‘None. They’re very quiet, very discreet. We’ve got no trouble with the queens. They’re not to be taken lightly, mind. Few years ago some bright public school oafs decided to crash one of their banquets. They didn’t realise that some of the members were rugby players and boxers. The bad boys nearly completed their careers served up on a silver dish, baked, for supper. They stripped them naked and painted their, er, genitalia blue and threw them out into Flinders Lane, to the horror of all passers-by. Never happened again. You take care, Miss Fisher.’

‘I am more likely to be in trouble with the nuns,’ said Phryne, blew him an invisible kiss, and hung up.

***

The bishop proved to be a dessicated cleric of some seventy summers, which appeared to have baked him like a mummy. He was scribbling notes, consulting a thick book. He did not seem to notice his visitors, though they had been announced by his secretary.

Phryne was not in the mood to be ignored. She began to count aloud.

‘In five seconds I am going to the newspapers. One, two, three, four…’