Unnatural Habits: A Phryne Fisher Mystery (Phryne Fisher Mysteries) (23 page)

‘Thank you,’ said Phryne.

Agnes took her leave in a whisk of skirts.

‘Is that all?’ asked Mother Aloysius.

‘Oh yes, for the moment,’ said Phryne airily. ‘Though I may be back.’

She was escorted out by Sister Perpetua, and drove away secure in the knowledge that her little package of a ten-shilling note and her card had been accepted and instantly concealed by Agnes. She had prepared it in advance in case a suitable person presented herself. Agnes was unhappy about that Magdalene Laundry. Further developments might be expected.

Meanwhile, Phryne needed to get home and have a bath, to wash off the odour of—well, sanctity, to stretch a point. And dress for dinner. And phone Jack Robinson to get him to find Frank (probably) Forrest. Who might know where Julie Reilly was. And, by extension, the others.

Which still did not take her any nearer to the fate of Polly Kettle. Tomorrow, thought Phryne, Camberwell and an interview with the Kettle parents. Not precisely a destination as harsh as the Magdalen Laundry, but likely to be trying. Phryne had no time for the up-jumped middle class. And here she was about to plunge herself into the heart of them.

Bath, she thought. Dinner.

***

The bath scented Phryne with essence of freesia. Dinner with her family had been pleasant. Jane reported no progress in deciphering the code, but was not cast down. Tinker had been fishing again and had taken Molly for a long walk along the beach. The hound was lying on her back with her paws in the air, across a doorway as was her wont. She was exhausted but happy, returning covered in aged fish and having been laundered again. Ruth had been involved in the creation of a bombe Alaska which had neither sunk nor exploded and was a triumph: sweet cold ice cream inside a crisp hot meringue crust. It was much appreciated, and Ruth blushed with pride. The dependents had then scattered to their own occupations, and Phryne and Dot sat in the sea-green parlour, discussing the events of the day.

Dot seemed unsurprised when Phryne described the sisters, who would have been strong contenders for any Fitzroy standover gang.

‘Some of them are like that. Especially at school. Angry,’ said Dot, considering this for the first time.

‘Vengeful?’ asked Phryne, knowing that nuns were a touchy subject.

‘Yes, now you say it. I never thought of it before. I suppose all that chastity and poverty and obedience must have been hard for them. Some of them were so sweet and kind. Sort of natural religious. Some of them seemed to hate us. Hugh says the same. Some of them were nice, some of them beat us black and blue. And it was no use complaining about it. My parents wouldn’t have believed me. Or they would have said that I deserved it.’

‘So, if you were saying that a priest had raped you, no one would believe it?’

‘No!’ exclaimed Dot. ‘A priest wouldn’t do that…a priest…’ She subsided under Phryne’s level, considering stare. She thought about her own past. About what her friend Kitty had told her. About Father Kennedy and his ‘private devotional lessons.’ The same one who had been the cause of that Jordan girl’s pregnancy, or so she said. ‘Oh,’ said Dot in a small, sad voice.

‘Priests are men, and men are fallible,’ Phryne told her. ‘If they were able to marry, there probably wouldn’t be a problem.’

‘Priests can’t marry,’ said Dot.

‘Church of England priests marry,’ said Phryne.

‘Yes, but that—’ began Dot.

‘Isn’t the one true Church?’ teased Phryne. ‘No, don’t answer that. I’m just being mischievous. We are not going to agree on theology, Dot dear. But as I remarked, men are fallible. Otherwise they wouldn’t be men. And women are fallible, too. We’re humans. God made us like that, presumably for a purpose. Tell me, could you hide a female prisoner in a convent? Tucked away without any contact with the outside world?’

‘Oh, yes, Miss, there are always devotional cells for sisters who need to contemplate… Miss Phryne, you aren’t thinking that Polly Kettle is there? Held prisoner by the sisters?’

‘I know, it’s just too Awful Disclosures of Maria Monk, isn’t it?’ said Phryne. ‘But I do need to search everywhere for her. And everywhere includes the convent. My chances of an unfettered look around there are very slim. Meanwhile, however, we need to consider where those girls have gone.’

‘What about this Forrest man?’ asked Dot.

‘The sister might not have got the correct name; no, Agnes wasn’t a sister, she was an auxiliary. What is that?’ asked Phryne.

‘A lay sister,’ said Dot. ‘A pious volunteer. They haven’t taken vows. But they want to do good works.’

‘That’s why they dress all in black in a garment that is not quite a habit?’ asked Phryne.

‘Yes, they want to help, or they’re lonely. Widows, you know. Or spinsters.’

‘Agnes looked more like a tent fighter,’ observed Phryne.

‘Spinster, then,’ said Dot.

‘She seemed kind enough,’ said Phryne. ‘Actually talked to Julie Reilly while tending her burnt hand. Well, well, we will have to shelve the convent for the present. I might still receive some information. To other sources. I shall see Polly Kettle’s parents tomorrow. I am not expecting this to be amusing. Would you like to come with me?’

‘Are you driving?’ asked Dot. Really needing to know.

‘No, we shall go en grande tenue
,
with Mr. Butler in his chauffeur’s cap and livery.’

‘In that case, Miss Phryne, I would like to go. I’ve never been to Camberwell.’

‘It’s nothing flash compared to London, but some of the houses are nice. For a colony,’ said Phryne. ‘Then I need to speak to poor Jack again. About Jobs for All and doubtful theatrical engagements in the Middle East.’

‘White slavery?’ asked Dot, and shuddered.

‘It seems so,’ answered Phryne. How would she herself manage, finding herself in a brothel in Cairo?

Like she would always manage, no matter where she was. Learn some Arabic from her clients. Seduce the doorkeeper. Manage her escape to the British Consul. It would not be amusing. But she could do it.

How would an innocent dimwitted fourteen-year-old cope?

Badly, Phryne decided. This was a terrible crime and needed to be stopped. She would, therefore, stop it.

On that thought, she took herself and her crime novel to bed. Mrs. Christie was always amusing, if a little trite. Phryne thought that it would be nice to have easily solved problems, even if she didn’t have Hercule’s quantity of little grey cells.

She slept badly, dreaming of Polly Kettle crying out for rescue from a dark cell. Shadowy nuns looked in through the grating on the iron door. Phryne cursed the day she had borrowed The Awful Disclosures of Maria Monk from a prurient classmate and left the house for a fast, cleansing swim. She returned for a brisk shower and coffee and a croissant. She declared herself fit for the day. Which would contain, God help her, Camberwell. She dressed accordingly.

***

An extremely expensive couture-clad Phryne took her place in the back passenger seat of the big red car. Dot, dressed in beige with a terracotta hat which looked like an upturned flowerpot, joined her. And Mr. Butler, in blue serge with piping, tipped his peaked cap to the postman as he drove carefully into the road and headed for Camberwell via Victoria Street. Phryne sighed impatiently. This car could do ninety miles an hour—had done eighty for twenty-four hours straight at the Indianapolis Brickyard, which was one reason she had bought it. Mr. Butler stuck to the speed limit of thirty miles an hour as though it had been engraved on his heart. She smoothed down her silk skirt and started a conversation to beguile the time.

‘Did you like the nuns at school, Dot?’

‘Some of them. There were a few nice ones. Some of them would still scare the life out of me, I reckon. What sort of teachers did you have?’

‘Mixed,’ said Phryne, thinking back to her schooldays, something which she never did unless she wanted to make herself cross. ‘They taught us to read and write, at least, and then when I was whisked off to England, Latin and a little Greek, French, geography, deportment, arithmetic, dancing and music. And how to endure cruelty, unkindness, bullying, isolation, loneliness and cold. That school was built on an iceberg, I swear. I had chilblains on my chilblains and the food was pure stodge. When I think of my education I smell boiled cabbage.’

‘I always thought that rich people had good schools,’ said Dot.

‘Rich people happily send their children to places which the proprietors of Devil’s Island would consider unduly severe. The only thing that frightful place had was books. A whole library of them and, since they stressed hockey and pure thinking, no one there. That library was my refuge. I was a swot. And gloried in the title. Once the bullies made me do their homework, of course, they were in my power.’

‘Miss?’ Dot did not follow.

‘Because they didn’t know anything about the subject, I could write anything I liked. And if they annoyed or oppressed me, I would write nonsense. They would hand it in as all their own work, and they could not say that I had written it for them under pain of torture. So their paters would be upset and cut off their allowance. Because they were such lazy, bone-idle bitches, I had them by…well, in the case of girls, the—’

‘Indeed,’ said Dot, cutting off the indelicate end of the sentence. ‘That was clever of you, Miss.’

‘Desperation lends the mind wings, Dot.’ Phryne settled back. ‘Nonetheless, if such situations arise at the girls’ school, the headmistress is going to hear from me.’

‘I don’t think they have,’ said Dot. ‘Ruth looks after Jane. Jane’s too clever to notice the other girls being snippy, and neither of them cares about what the other girls care about—clothes and boys and marriage. Jane says she can’t see any point in marrying if you are not intending to have children, and she isn’t, she’s going to be a doctor, and Ruth wants to be a cook and can’t be having with boys at any price.’

‘Both independent young women,’ said Phryne.

‘And if they get real bullied, they just mention your name, Miss, and the bullies go away.’

‘Really? How very gratifying,’ said Phryne. ‘Why?’

‘Because you’re an Hon, Miss. All their parents want to be friends with you.’

‘Ah,’ said Phryne, disappointed. ‘I thought it might be the dangerous reputation and the gun.’

‘That, too,’ affirmed Dot.

‘And Tinker is getting on better now he’s got a bolthole,’ Phryne observed. In Victoria Street outside she saw, on her right, the vast mansions of the wealthy and the green of Fitzroy Gardens. On the left was dirt-poor Collingwood and, soon, dirt-poorer Abbotsford. She could not see the convent from the road, but she knew it was there. Factories belched black smoke into the air. In summer, it stank, and she shut the window. Presently they crossed the Yarra. Up the hill, and Barkers Road was sliding past far too slowly. Where were the bleats of narrowly missed pedestrians, the yells of outraged traffic cops? It was too tedious. On the left was the vast expanse of Xavier College. Phryne thought how strange, but oddly reassuring, that in such a very Church of England city, the Catholics had such extensive grounds and such imposing architecture. The chapel even had a cupola.