Unnatural Habits: A Phryne Fisher Mystery (Phryne Fisher Mysteries) (40 page)

‘Right-o,’ said Bert.

‘You said that this De Vere was English?’ asked Lin Chung.

‘Yair,’ said Collins, who still loathed the man.

‘Then a university education has clearly been wasted on him,’ he said calmly. ‘Both ships are named from Shakespeare. A Midsummer Night’s Dream and…’

‘Troilus and Cressida,’ said Robinson, who doted on Shakespeare. A man you could sit down and buy a beer for, should he still be extant.

‘So, we have all the facts,’ said Phryne. ‘This is what I plan to do.’

She expounded. Only Lin Chung and Dot were not very, very shocked.

Chapter Seventeen

What is a ship but a prison?

Robert Burton, Anatomy of Melancholy

Tinker played white and moved his king’s pawn two squares forward. Jane did the same, and Tinker moved his bishop out three squares on the diagonal. Jane smiled. ‘This would be the Boden Gambit I was telling you about? All right, Tinker, but I’m not going to move my knight. I’m going to do this instead.’

She moved her own bishop out next to Tinker’s. Tinker frowned, and moved his queen’s pawn out two squares. Jane looked disconcerted, and moved her queen out to the very edge of the board. It was Tinker’s turn to frown. He had expected that Jane would take his queen’s pawn. He moved out his king’s knight to attack Jane’s queen. Jane clapped her hands together gleefully and moved her queen down to take the pawn next to Tinker’s king. ‘Checkmate!’ she exulted. ‘See, your king can’t move anywhere.’

‘You got him,’ said Tinker, lying the piece down.

‘That’s called the Scholar’s Mate. We’ve all fallen into that trap at some stage. Remember it for next time.’

‘Still,’ he growled, ‘you didn’t win the bet. Took you four moves.’

Jane conceded that this was so and showed him the Scholar’s Mate again, slowly. Tinker was getting the hang of chess. You had to think several moves ahead and guess what the other person was going to do. This made the game really difficult. Rather like fishing. A lot of fish in the sea, his father had said, but an awful lot of water mixed up with ’em. You had to out-think the fish.

‘What do you reckon about the guv’nor’s plan?’ he asked. ‘She’s only going to be on her own for a lot of it, but.’

‘What have you learned about chess, Tink?’ asked Jane. He looked at her. ‘The queen is the most powerful figure on the board,’ Jane told him. ‘Now, you try to mate with that move. It works just as well for black or for white.’

***

Phryne was sitting in Clarissa Cartwright’s dressing room, looking at herself in the brightly lit mirror.

‘Felix has told me all about you,’ said Clarissa. Her face appeared in the mirror besides Phryne’s. She was as beautiful as a porcelain doll, but much more animated.

‘Indeed?’ murmured Phryne.

‘You’re just as beautiful as he said you were,’ observed Clarissa. ‘And he says you’re doing something very hush-hush and I ought not to ask about it.’

‘Does he?’ asked Phryne. Felix’s discretion was legendary. Phryne’s was not.

‘So tell me all about it as we work,’ said Clarissa cosily, and Phryne did. Felix was not the only person with discretion. One reason that Clarissa was a star was that she was very intelligent. And she was pleased to help Phryne wreak vengeance on any low hound who preyed on actresses. Clarissa had been in the theatre since she had first appeared as a slightly wobbly (but enchanting) fairy at the age of four. She loved the theatre almost as much as she loved Felix. And she had a delighted, wicked inkling that any vengeance wreaked by Phryne would be satisfying to the soul, if not positively Jacobean.

A stout, middle-aged woman was dragging Phryne’s hair back under a stockinette cap. Her name was Elsie and she had been Clarissa’s dresser for her whole career, picked out of the chorus by the rising star. Elsie might have dreamed of being a leading lady herself, once. Now she was entirely devoted to Clarissa.

‘I don’t know about this Tait,’ she mumbled.

‘Which one?’ asked Clarissa. ‘CogitTait, HesiTait or AgiTait?’

‘Very funny,’ muttered Elsie. ‘I dunno about the arrangments for the New Zealand tour. You only got a small cabin.’

‘The others will have smaller,’ said Clarissa, with the certainty of someone who was used to being a star. ‘Now, Phryne, you want to look like an aspiring but down-at-heel actress who might accept a dubious engagement which might end in a brothel?’

‘That’s the idea,’ said Phryne.

‘Isn’t that dangerous? What if these men really seize you?’

‘I will have protection,’ said Phryne.

‘Well, I think you’re very brave,’ said Clarissa, and kissed her gently on the cheek. Her skin felt like the softest buds of a pussy-willow or a kitten’s paws. ‘Good luck! Now, on with the slap. This is greasepaint,’ she explained, as she mixed it in the palm of her hand. ‘You have lovely pale skin, so you will be wearing too much makeup if you put anything but rice powder on it. Therefore, prepare to be plastered.’

Phryne looked at the face appearing in the glass. Clarissa was an artist. Phryne’s startling green eyes were subdued by an orangey underlay over which was painted a bright blue crescent. Her own eyebrows were blocked out and others drawn in a good deal higher on her forehead. Her mouth was outlined in greasy red crayon. The whole was dusted over with fine powder. She looked shabby but aspiring. She puckered her lips for an appreciative whistle and Clarissa put a hand over her mouth.

‘Don’t,’ she warned. ‘Or Elsie will make you go outside, turn around three times and swear before you can come back in.’

Phryne looked at Elsie, who nodded portentously. She unpuckered and Clarissa applied more red paint to her lips.

‘That’ll last twelve hours, and you can only get it off with cold cream, remember. Oh dear, what a picture. Elsie! The wig!’

‘Oh my,’ said Phryne, as a wig of tumbling golden curls, almost metallic, was fitted over the stockinette cap. She had always wondered what it would be like to be a blonde. So far it had no advantages. Elsie thrust in a number of hairpins, apparently straight into Phryne’s skull. Then she grabbed the wig with both hands and pulled at it. Phryne’s head rocked under the tension.

‘That’ll do,’ said Elsie.

‘Once Elsie sets a wig, it stays through everything short of a hurricane, and my money would be on the wig anyway,’ observed Clarissa. She extended both soft, scented hands. ‘Stand up. How does it all feel?’

Phryne rocked on heels higher than she normally wore and resolved to shuck them if she had to run. She looked at herself in the full-length mirror.

Oh dear. Scuffed heels, stockings with one artful ladder, art silk shift in a distressing shade of teal, navy blue hat pinned onto the golden wig.

‘Perfect,’ she said, sketching a kiss toward the smooth cheek.

‘You’ll be careful?’ Clarissa had retained a grip on her hands.

‘I will,’ said Phryne, who wouldn’t.

‘You’ll let me know how it goes?’ asked the actress. ‘This is a very good thing you are doing for us, you know.’

‘I shall have a party,’ said Phryne. ‘At the Windsor. If this works,’ she added, conscious of the number of things which might go wrong. And of the St. Christopher which Dot had hung, that morning, around her neck.

***

Jobs for All proclaimed the sign, and Phryne went boldly inside. She knew that several of the childen playing skippy in the street were watching. It had been a long totter on those heels to Lonsdale Street, and she sank into an office chair with a sigh. The man at the desk looked up as she came in.

‘Need a job,’ said Phryne, reverting to the accent of her childhood, overlaid with some affectations.

‘What sort of job?’ asked the man. This must be the bloke with the slicked-down hair reported by Tinker. Not a prime specimen of manhood, Phryne thought. Bill Smith—or could this be Vivien of the caste of Vere de Vere? No, Australian accent. Must be good old Bill.

‘The girls say you’ve got a tour going to England,’ said Phryne, stretching out her legs as though her feet ached—which, as it happened, they did.

‘Which girls?’ asked Bill.

‘The chorus at the Maj. I sprained an ankle, can’t dance like I could. But I can act. Done all sort of parts.
The
Maitland Gazette loved my Juliet.’

‘That would have been a while ago,’ commented Bill.

Phryne bridled at this suggestion that she was too old to play Juliet. ‘Only a few years. Come on, you got anything?’

‘Might have,’ he grunted, consulting his books. ‘What’s yer name?’

‘Fern Williams,’ said Phryne.

‘You got any family?’

‘Not here. We didn’t see eye to eye about my career in the theatre, you see. They wanted me to marry and settle down. Anyway, what’s that to you?’

‘Nothing,’ he said.

He stood up and surveyed Phryne, then pulled her to her feet, groping her body and closing a hand on her buttock.

‘Get off!’ She struggled, but not too much.

‘All right, you’ll do, I think the client can use you. You’ll meet the rest of the company in London. Chorus and small parts. Two quid and allowances. Where’s your trunk?’

‘Lodgings in Carlton,’ she said.

‘Right. Here’s a train ticket. Get yourself and your trunk to Williamstown Beach by ten o’clock tonight. Train’ll be met by my partner, Mr. De Vere. Sign here,’ said Bill Smith.

Phryne signed Fern Williams at the bottom of a very closely printed contract and then grinned, creasing her greasepaint.

‘Good-o!’ she said. ‘See you then.’ She tottered out of the office, walked to the corner, and Mr. Butler collected her, Jane, Tinker and Ruth.

‘May God have no mercy on my soul if I ever wear high heels again,’ she said, snatching the offending footwear off. ‘Home, Mr. Butler, we need to fudge up a suitable trunk. Dot may need to go to the second-hand shops.’

‘Are they bodgy, Guv?’ asked Tinker, smearing his already smeared face. He had bought an ice cream as cover and it had melted faster than he had anticipated. Ruth gave him a handkerchief.

‘Oh, they are bodgy all right. Did he ask for my clippings?’

‘Clippings?’ enquired Jane.

‘All actresses have clippings. Reviews of their performances. They’re like references,’ explained Phryne.

‘Well, did he ask for them?’ asked Jane.