Unnatural Habits: A Phryne Fisher Mystery (Phryne Fisher Mysteries) (49 page)

‘When did you begin your sacred mission?’ asked Phryne.

‘Six months ago,’ said Agnes. ‘Some of those poor little girls are barely fourteen. It would be better if the fathers were castrated, but that’s too dangerous in an unsterile environment. They might easily bleed to death. And God does not condone murder.’

‘Well, that solves that little problem,’ said Phryne, standing up. Agnes looked up at her in astonishment. ‘Aren’t you going to call the police?’ she asked. She sounded a little disappointed, like a martyr who had been informed by the Coliseum authorities that the lions were off their feed today.

‘No, why should I?’

‘But I thought that policeman wanted you to solve the crime,’ said Agnes.

‘Then want must be his master. It isn’t good for Jack Robinson to rely on me to solve all his problems. I consulted a lawyer and I am sure that you know how illegal your operations are. I don’t think you’d like prison. So try to avoid being caught. Jack can’t obtain the list of inmates from the convent, so he might not connect these assaults. Or he might not connect them to you. And I’m not going to tell him.’

‘Then you don’t mean to stop me?’ asked Agnes, cheering up.

‘Go to it, Agnes dear, and if you get arrested, don’t say a word and call Felix Pettigrew. Here is his card. He will arrange suitable representation for you.’

‘It’s God’s work,’ said Agnes, lifting her black bag. Phryne preferred not to speculate as to the contents.

‘You may well be right,’ said Phryne. ‘By the way, take Mr. Timberlake off your list. He’s married his Julie, and they are very happy.’

Agnes took out a notebook and put a black line through a name. There were pages of them, Phryne noticed, but did not speak.

‘God go with you,’ said Phryne quietly, and showed Agnes out.

The Blue Cats’ guardians let Phryne in without any delay, and Mr. Featherstonehaugh came to meet her, taking her hands and drawing her into one of the smaller rooms, which was decorated with Beardsley Yellow Book drawings. She had always found the Spartan ambassadors overdrawn.

‘Now, my dear sir, I need but a few words with one of your members, and then we shall be square. Is he here?’

‘He is,’ said the manager.

Her interviewee sat scowling in a padded chair, glaring at a cigar as though it had insulted his mother.

‘I have rescued Polly Kettle,’ Phryne told him. ‘Someone set her up to be abducted. I am sure that you will be delighted that she is unhurt and will be back at the newspaper soon. With a scoop relating to the white slave scandal.’

He grunted.

‘I shall take that as a “yes”,’ said Phryne. ‘You see, Mr. Bates, I did wonder how the abductor knew where Polly Kettle would be on that morning. Her mother could possibly have read it in her notebook, but she always carried her notebook with her. Who would know? Why, her newsroom colleagues. And who would tell the vile Mrs. Kettle, hoping to get rid of a bothersome girl and her annoying ambitions? Why, I believe that would be you, Mr. Bates.’

‘You got me,’ he said.

‘If you were about to tell me that she would be happier married to a moron and not getting in the way of your ambitions and littering up your nice clean newspaper, don’t.’

As he had been about to say something like that, he adjusted it to asking, ‘What’re you going to do to me?’

‘Me? Nothing. I will just extract a promise that you will be as polite as you can manage to that silly, but fundamentally decent, young woman in future, and cede her the white slavery story.’

‘It was mine,’ he muttered. ‘She stole it!’

‘Yes, so she did. You will have to forgive her. However, I have a story about the Magdalen Laundry which will curl your hair. Are you game to offend the Catholics? Dr. Mannix may denounce you from the pulpit. You may be excommunicated. It will be very noisy and very, very public.’

‘Try me,’ he said greedily.

He got out his notebook and wrote busily as Phryne detailed the conditions in the Magdalen Laundry and Mr. Featherstonehaugh supplied Veuve Clicquot and brie
petits bateaux.

At the conclusion of her narrative, Phryne stood up and extended a hand. ‘Deal?’ she asked.

He looked up into her face. ‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘This is hot stuff. Deal.’ He shook her hand.

‘Do finish up the Veuve,’ said Mr. Featherstonehaugh to the scribbling reporter. ‘I have a debt to pay also.’

He led Phryne into the kitchen, where chefs were shouting in a routine fashion, and out into a pocket garden, which had a small fountain, a turf seat, a grapevine and a set of tables and chairs. It was alive with wild birds. There was a large cage of sparrows. Common, city, gutter-feeding sparrows.

‘Oh, no,’ said Phryne, breaking into a huge grin. ‘Really?’

‘The practice of eating ortolans is barbaric,’ Mr. Featherstonehaugh told her, allowing himself a small, well-controlled smile. ‘Also, we may well run out of ortolans; they are wild birds. And they don’t have them in Australia. I could not bring myself to cook budgies or finches, the equivalent. But there are plenty of sparrows. I keep them in their cage for a month, feed them on figs and grapes and grain, and then when someone demands the dish, take out three and drown them instantly in cognac. They are then plucked and cooked. In a grape leaf. No one has ever complained.’

‘You are a remarkable man,’ said Phryne.

‘And you, Miss Fisher, if I might be allowed the liberty,’ said Mr. Featherstonehaugh, ‘are a remarkable woman.’

***

Arranging a party was, for Phryne, a matter of picking up the phone and conversing with the maitre d’ at the Windsor. Once the details were discussed, Phryne set the minions to filling out invitation cards for a really quite wide acquaintance.

Some of the invitations enclosed banknotes to allow the attendees to pay for, as it might be, a new dress or a taxi fare. Jane was excused from addressing envelopes because her handwriting was so illegible. She was reading aloud from a book of fairy tales. Phryne was listening to ‘King Cophetua and the Beggar Maid’ rather absently while she assembled her props for her interview with Polly Kettle.

List of times and dates. Names of ships and fellow prisoners. Fairly accurate account of police action that rescued them. Details about Gratitude and Mrs. Donnelly and ex-Father Declan, with a few notes on what constituted
sub judice
. And the golden wig with its silly blue hat still skewered to it with Elsie’s hatpin.

Polly arrived on time, notebook in hand. She was bouncing with joy and still getting a great deal of pleasure out of not being in a room with bars on the windows.

‘Isn’t it a beautiful day!’ she enthused. ‘I really like St. Kilda, the seagulls and the sand and the palm trees. You have entirely squashed my mother. I owe you a great debt, Miss Fisher! Dad’s put his foot down about her extravagance. She’s put us in debt. John’s starting a carpentry apprenticeship, so that saves his school fees. Dad signed the papers this morning. We ought to manage on Dad’s salary and mine. My mother has sent me with this cheque for you.’ She handed it over. Being threatened by her son and disapproved of by her whole family was one sort of pain, but being deprived of her dress allowance for six months was another, and possibly deeper, agony for Mrs. Kettle. Phryne smiled and took the cheque.

‘Right, now I promised you a scoop,’ she said. ‘This is how it was. You went to ‘Jobs for All’ in Lonsdale Street, wearing this wig and hat, impersonating an out-of-work actress. You were picked up from Williamstown Beach station by a smarmy creature called De Vere and stuffed aboard a tramp steamer called the MV Pandarus, bound for Port Said and a dreadful fate. Here are the notes about the times and places. You will have to interview the ladies yourself: here are their names. I know one was going back to New Zealand, but you should be able to find some of the others. You were there when the heroic Jack Robinson broke down the door and set you free, and when the police arrested the other boat, the Thisbe, and brought the four little golden-haired girls ashore, arresting all and sundry.’

‘I was?’ asked Polly, dazed.

‘You were, and you were very brave. People are going to wonder where you were for the last week, Polly dear; it doesn’t do to give them ideas. This will be a full and acceptable explanation, and I expect your editor to fall on your neck, weeping tears of joy. Make sure you get a photo taken of you in your disguise before you return the wig and hat to Clarissa Cartwright at the Maj, with my compliments.’

‘Miss Fisher,’ said Polly humbly. ‘This was all you!’

‘Yes, but no one else knows that who might object. You can interview the parents of the rescued children. They were unharmed, by the way. You might try having a word with the revolting Mrs. Donnelly and the even more repellent ex-Father Declan O’Rourke, but be sure to take some strong antinausea medication before you do. They are both in custody, along with twenty-nine sailors and the stenographer and bookkeeper from the agency. Of all of them, I suspect she is the only one who isn’t as guilty as sin.’

‘Everyone is trying to find out about this story,’ said Polly, awed. ‘Robinson won’t say anything. My God. This is the story of lifetime!’

‘You paid for it by being abducted,’ observed Phryne. ‘If I hadn’t been looking for you in all the wrong places, I would never have found it out.’

‘I’d spend a week in prison reading Victorian sermons any time for this story,’ whispered Polly.

‘Right. Go to it. I will give you this note for Jack Robinson. He will give you an exclusive. Be nice to him. He isn’t used to being famous.’

‘I will. But what about Mr. Bates? He thinks I pinched his story.’

‘You did,’ said Phryne. ‘I would like to hear you admit it.’

‘Well, yes, I did,’ Polly conceded.

‘Good girl. If you work in a man’s job, you have to be both manful and gentlemanly. Tell him you are sorry. He will not cause you any more trouble.’

‘Did you manage that, too?’ asked Polly.

‘I had a word. He has a scoop of his own. Now, off you go, I have a party to arrange. Sunday, at the Windsor? Just a little gathering to celebrate—I haven’t quite decided yet. But do come.’

Tinker handed over an invitation. One less stamp, he thought. He did not approve of Polly Kettle. She was ungrateful. And, as Jane said, silly. And now she would get all the glory which rightfully belonged to the guv’nor. It didn’t seem fair.

‘Never mind, Tink,’ Phryne told him. ‘Everyone who needs to know, knows.’

Sometimes it was real eerie, the way she read his mind. He went back to addressing envelopes. And he didn’t approve of this Beggar Maid and King Cophetua lark. What if she liked being a beggar? What if she didn’t want to be forever beholden to a king?

Perhaps he could go fishing at dusk, when the water cooled and the fish rose. Molly needed the exercise, and so did Tinker. He was getting grumpy from being indoors so much. Jane moved on to the story of ‘Snow White and the Seven Dwarves.’ Much more to his liking. He’d some across a lot of women like the Wicked Queen lately.