Unnatural Habits: A Phryne Fisher Mystery (Phryne Fisher Mysteries) (5 page)

‘You didn’t guess anything about her line of enquiry?’

‘Girls missing. Nothing unusual in that, not in this city.’

‘Could she have left any notes?’

‘We can look,’ said the editor. He led the way out of his small, crowded Spencer Street office into a large crowded Spencer Street newsroom. Desks were set at random across the floor, surrounded by balls of paper which had missed the wastepaper baskets. Several people were working hard, as is common in the presence of the editor. Copyboys and copygirls stood poised to run written pieces off to the typists or down to the printers in the basement. The grimy windows looked out onto a cheerful view of the railway shunting yards. People were shouting into telephones, scribbling notes, demanding tea, and tearing pages out of typewriters and crumpling them. It sounded just like a newsroom ought, Phryne considered. It smelt of ink, cigarette smoke and impatience. She was pleased. But it was no sort of environment for a delicate young woman, and Miss Kettle must have had a certain amount of fortitude to survive it. Even now a crippled man had dropped a crutch as he tried to stand up and was swearing the air blue. No one was rushing to help him.

Phryne found this interesting, but the unimaginative repetition was getting on her nerves. Phryne admired inventive profanity. This was not original. She bent with a flash of garters which drew gasps from behind her, retrieved the crutch, shoved it neatly into its requisite armpit and said into the angry, snarling face, ‘Be civil, or I shall provide you with a nursemaid, a spanking and a dummy. You should have grown out of this sort of tantrum when you were four years old. For shame. And there is a lady present,’ she reminded him. ‘In fact, me.’

Total silence fell. One of the copygirls said, ‘Jeez,’ in an awed voice. Then, one by one, the newsroom began to applaud.

Phryne bowed. The crippled man glared at her with furious eyes. Then, as the clapping went on, he turned and limped out of the room.

‘It’s not altogether his fault,’ said a youngish man with a scarred face. ‘He had a bad war.’

‘So did you,’ said Phryne. ‘Flyer?’ She had seen those flat, angry scars before. Aviators often had burnt faces.

‘Not too bad. Had to ditch the old ’bus in the Channel and that put out the fire, d’you see? I was lucky. Still see out of both eyes. But he was army all along, spent four years in the trenches. Came back damaged. Left a leg somewhere on the Somme. Othello’s occupation gone. He never wanted to be a reporter.

‘But he’s a bad-tempered bastard,’ added the scarred man. ‘And they say he also brought back his service revolver. Threatens to kill people all the time. No one’s had the nerve to stand up to Sergeant Bates. Miss…?’

‘Fisher,’ said Phryne. She held out her hand. ‘Mr…?’

‘Downey,’ said the youngish man. He pumped her hand enthusiastically. ‘You’re asking about Polly?’

‘I am,’ said Phryne. ‘Does anyone know anything about her?’

‘Nice girl,’ said one older man, putting down his racing page. ‘Ambitious. I reckon she had the stuff too. Was after a big story.’

‘Anyone know what?’

‘Her lips were sealed,’ grinned Mr. Downey. ‘We’ve all been like that. Well, except for poor old Bates.’

Mr. Trevelyan, in a hurry to get Miss Fisher out of his office, introduced his reporters.

Mr. Coffin, also known as Zeno, racing and horses. Mr. Thompson, crime beat. Mr. Downey, general news. Mr. Pribble, political news. Mr. Simpson, leaders and assistant editor. Mrs. Simpson, advertising. Mr. George, photography. Mrs. Fiskin, in charge of the typing pool. Mrs. Howard, fashion, food and home management. She was a thin middle-aged woman in a very fashionable suit who was noting down every detail of Miss Fisher’s garments, shoes, hat, hairstyle and even leaned close enough to sniff at her scent.

Phryne bore this without complaint until Mrs. Howard sniffed for the second time, then she said crisply, ‘Floris Stephanotis, only available from London by mail order, suit and blouse by Madame Fleuri of Collins Street, shoes handmade by the excellent Mr. Lowenstein in Flinders Lane, hat by Firielle’s on the Boul Mich, Paris, and the stockings are indeed pure silk. I decline to describe my undergarments in mixed company.’

‘Not even if we say pretty please with sugar on it?’ asked Mr. Downey, entranced.

‘Not even then,’ Phryne told him firmly. Mrs. Howard looked as abashed as a hardened fashion reporter can manage, which is to say, very slightly embarrassed.

‘I’m so sorry, Miss Fisher, but you are quite famous, you know. I’ve never seen you close up. Only in the crowd, you know, at openings and bazaars and so on.’

‘You may look all you like,’ said Phryne generously. ‘The back view is also rewarding.’

‘My oath,’ agreed Mr. Downey, not quite sotto voce. He had been behind Phryne went she bent over to retrieve the crutch. She decided not to hear this remark but spoke to Mrs. Howard instead.

‘And, by the way, I quite agree with your last column. Hemlines are definitely going up.’

‘You read my column?’ gasped Mrs. Howard, overcome.

‘Of course,’ said Phryne, who had glimpsed it over Dot’s shoulder. ‘Miss Kettle’s notes?’ she asked Mr. Trevelyan.

Recalled to his duty, the editor indicated a desk and Phryne sat down in the chair. A mess of papers burdened the desk. Spills, she was told, from published articles. Cooking—a thrifty new recipe for shepherd’s pie (more potato, less meat). Account of an azalea growers’ conference with all the names spelt correctly. An experiment in fruit growing in Bacchus Marsh. High tea with the lady mayoress in aid of charity, with another list of attendees. Phryne leafed through them. Nothing to the purpose. The fruit growers looked interesting because their spokesman was a woman whose name sounded vaguely familiar. Phryne kept that one. The drawers contained exactly what she expected them to contain. Pencils with their requisite sharpener, several leads from a propelling ditto, a new bottle of ink, a half-empty bottle of same, drawing pens, typewriter ribbon tangled beyond any but an Alexandrine solution, hairpins, a comb, a compact with Rachel poudre de riz. At the bottom were a couple of loose cough sweets which had stuck, in their immemorial way, to two rubber bands, an eraser and chain of paperclips. There was also a bottle opener, which hinted at office parties, a kit for repairing runs in stockings, a packet of Ladies’ Travelling Necessities, and a bottle which proved to contain aspirin. Phryne summoned Mr. Downey. He attended eagerly.

‘Anything missing?’ she asked.

Breathing in her scent, he leaned over the desk. ‘No,’ he said regretfully, hoping to prolong his contact with this delectable woman. ‘Her notebook, of course. But she would have had that with her. Her notes on the missing girls would have been in that. No, our Polly played her cards close to her chest. I hope nothing’s happened to her. Nice girl,’ he said.

‘How nice?’ asked Phryne, her face very close to his.

He grinned. ‘Not that nice,’ he told her. ‘I’m engaged.’

‘Ah.’ She stood up. ‘Mr. Trevelyan, thank you so much for your attention,’ said Phryne. ‘Can I borrow your Mr. Downey for an hour or so? Just to guide me through the newspaper process,’ she added.

‘Half his luck,’ said Mr. Trevelyan, and opened the office door for his distinguished visitor and Mr. Downey, who was trying to preserve a solemn countenance. And not succeeding very well.

Followed by whistles, Phryne left the office and led her captive out into Spencer Street.

‘Where’s your pub?’ she asked.

‘The Fleet Street, but you really can’t go there,’ he protested. ‘Rough sort of place.’

‘Watch me,’ advised Phryne. He watched. Phryne walked through the doors of the Fleet Street as though she owned the freehold, and he followed her into the beer, cigarette smoke and sawdust fog. There was a chorus of cheers and whistles, followed by a strange silence. When he found Miss Fisher, she was sitting at the bar, had already ordered a gin and tonic, and the populace had decided that she was neither a whore nor an avenging wife and was engaged in wondering, as so many had wondered before them, who and what, exactly, she was. Mr. Downey wondered the same thing.

He sat down next to her, planted his feet on the familiar brass rail, and ordered a beer. Barney the barman, a tough ex-boxer, brought it. On his face was the same astonishment that Mr. Downey felt. He looked a question at Downey. Downey shrugged. Everyone went back to his beer and his own concerns. Phryne was too difficult a problem for this early in the day.

‘That,’ Phryne told him, ‘is what usually happens. Assume the rules do not apply to you, and they don’t.’

‘Impressive, Miss Fisher,’ said Mr. Downey.

‘Thank you. Now tell me what you didn’t want your editor to hear about Miss Kettle.’

‘That obvious, was I?’ he said ruefully.

‘Only to the educated ear,’ said Phryne, sipping. ‘Excuse me,’ she said to Barney. ‘Can you take this back and mix me one with the real gin? The stuff out of a bottle marked “gin,”’ she clarified.

Barney, who was known for his ferocious suppression of bar brawls and his ability to bite off ears and remove crown caps with his teeth, took the glass without complaint, poured away the drink, and concocted a new one, using gin from a marked container and a new flask of tonic water with a yellow label.

Miss Fisher sipped and approved. ‘Thank you so much,’ she said graciously. ‘Mr. Downey?’

‘You’re amazing,’ he commented. Then he recollected himself. ‘Yes, you want to know about Miss Kettle. Our Polly was ambitious. She went after a story like a terrier after rats. She thought she was on to something with this missing-girls story. And she was right. No brothel is going to want girls in the pod. Something very nasty is going on. She might have been going to talk to the pious widow.’

‘She did,’ said Phryne. ‘She was abducted outside her house by three men in a big black car.’

‘Oh,’ said Mr. Downey. ‘Then it sounds like she was indeed on to something. Her next appointment was with the convent. The Mother Superior. They run the Magdalen Laundry. But I doubt that Polly got to see her. Or that she’d get anything out of her if she did. And the girls didn’t vanish from the convent…’

‘Did Polly talk to the parents or relatives of the missing girls?’

‘All of them. No family knows—or cares—where their erring daughter went. Or so Polly said. She was pretty wild about that. Called them cruel canting hypocrites.’

‘Polite language considering what I might have said,’ commented Miss Fisher.

‘Yair, I can imagine. Just. Batesy used to pinch her notebook, you know, and read it. Never forgave her for stealing his story. Some coots really hold on to a grudge. Anyway, looks like someone resented her questions.’

‘That means a trawl through the brothels,’ sighed Phryne. ‘Again.’

‘Can I report on this?’ he asked. ‘I mean, private eye the Hon. Miss Fisher investigates missing news reporter?’

‘Not yet,’ said Phryne, laying a scented hand on his arm. ‘But I promise that, should I find her, you shall have the scoop all for yourself.’

‘Bonzer,’ said Mr. Downey.

The conversation strayed into other channels. Mr. Downey’s intended, Ariadne, seemed to be a model of girlish kindness, style and intelligence. The last was not a common desideratum. She was a solicitor’s clerk, however. Not a reporter.