Princesse nudged Phryne in the ribs with an elbow evidently especially sharpened for the purpose of compelling attention.
‘Smells like a brothel,
Madame Breda was advancing on them with an outstretched hand. Phryne stepped back a pace, for Madame was enormous. She stood a full six feet high and must have weighed fifteen stone; blonde and muscular, she could have walked on as a Valkyrie and gained nothing but applause. Her eyes were blue, her cheeks red, her complexion excellent, and her hair luxuriant; she was as strong as a goddess and very intimidating. And she was completely wrong for the part of King of Snow. She was the last person in the world whom Phryne could imagine selling any sort of drug. She was so oppressively healthy.
They were led into a pink-tiled room, filled with the overpowering scented steam, and divested of their clothes. The actual swimming bath was a full fifteen feet long, about four feet deep, and half-filled with Nile-green water.
‘The demoiselles will begin in the steam-room,’ suggested the maid. She was unruffled, not a hair out of place, though the heat was reddening Phryne’s cheeks and slicking her hair to her skull. They followed the maid into the Scandinavian bath, where the air was suffocatingly hot. There they shed their towelling robes and sat naked on rather spiky cane chairs. Phryne noticed that the Princesse, though wizened, was as straight of limb as a woman of twenty, and was as healthy as a tree.
‘This reminds me of India,’ remarked the Princesse. ‘I was there with the Tsar’s entourage, you know.’
Phryne was unaware of the visit of the Tsar to India, an imperial dominion which had every reason to be suspicious of the intentions of Russia. She doubted the story but nodded politely.
‘This is the distribution centre,’ remarked the old woman. ‘The maid will deliver the snow to me as we recline at the massage and hydro-bath. Watch.’
And thereafter she chatted amiably of her extensive travels and her improbable amours. ‘I danced the dance of the seven veils for the Prince and Rasputin — such eyes that man had, like our Sasha, he could command a woman in all things — and when I get to the fourth veil, the Prince, he can stand it no longer, and he. .’
Just when the Princesse had Phryne’s undivided attention, the maid interrupted, and moved them to a cooler room, where they were supplied with bitter herb tea ‘to cleanse the system’. Phryne examined the maid. Her name, it appeared, was Gerda, and she was Madame Breda’s cousin. Gerda had a washed-out, bony countenance and a pale, whispering voice, spiced with a little venom as she described her employer and relative.
‘Her! She works me to death! Gerda, clean the bathing-pool! Gerda, serve the tea! And I had a young man in Austria, and an eligible
Phryne wondered how old this young man was, and how long Gerda had been in Australia. She was forty if she was a day, and a cold, sour forty, at that. Her iron-grey hair was dragged back into a vengeful bun, and her figure was not one which would attract the attention of any bathing-belle judges. She was built like a box; so much so that Phryne wondered if she might still have ‘Cox’s Orange Pippin’ stencilled on her bottom. She decided that nothing could induce her to tip Gerda up and look.
An attendant entered with unguents, and the ladies reclined for a massage. The masseuse was Madame Breda herself, and after a certain initial impression that all her bones were being torn loose from their sockets, Phryne relaxed and began to enjoy the pummelling of the hard, skilful fingers. She felt the knots in her calf muscles soothed and coaxed away, and the rubbing oil, which was of sandalwood, imparted an agreeable pungency. On the next bench, the Princesse grunted with pleasure. Phryne was wrapped in her towelling robe again, and sat to watch her companion undergoing the treatment, with the enjoyment of one who has already come through.
Madame Breda clapped Phryne on the shoulder and boomed, ‘Now you have warm bath with oatmeal, to take out the oil, and then the cold plunge. You have been walking far lately? Or dancing? Yes, it would be dancing in one so young and beautiful. Next time, do not dance so hard. You may do damage to a muscle. I have not seen you before. You are a friend of the Princesse?’
‘My name is Phryne Fisher,’ said Phryne carefully, not at all sure that she was a friend of the Princesse. ‘I’m a visitor from England.’
‘You shall come again,’ declared Madame Breda, her rosy cheeks shining and her red mouth parting in a most daunting manner. ‘You will find yourself most refreshed.’
This sounded like an order, but Phryne smiled and nodded. She was escorted to a luxurious bath, milky with oatmeal. The small attendant, a pretty girl only marred by a flat burn scar on one cheek, instructed her to lie back and be washed. Phryne felt like a Princess of Egypt being bathed in ass’s milk, while the girl rubbed her gently all over with a soft muslin bag containing more oatmeal. When she seemed to be concentrating a little too markedly on the nipples and then the female parts, Phryne did not open her eyes, but murmured, ‘No thank you,’ and the girl desisted. So that was one of the offered entertainments of Madame Breda’s. Pleasant, but not to Phryne’s taste. Possibly, however, to Lydia’s taste, thought Phryne, remembering how Lydia had looked at her. What an excellent opportunity for a little polite blackmail.
She was assisted out of the milk-bath, rinsed with warm clean water, and led to the green pool. Madame Breda was there.
‘Jump!’ she instructed, and Phryne jumped.
The water was cold enough to stop the heart.
After gasping, choking and uttering a small shriek, Phryne duck-dived the length of the pool, turned and swam back. Madame Breda had gone; the Princesse and Gerda were entering the room. Phryne, though she strained her ears, could not hear what they were saying, but she saw a packet change hands, and Gerda tucked a considerable wad of currency into the dark recesses of her costume.
The Princesse flung herself into the pool, climbed out and shook herself briskly. She and Phryne reclaimed their robes and went back to the dressing-room. The package was square, done up in white with sealing wax, like a chemist’s. As they dressed, Phryne asked, ‘Is that the stuff?’
‘Of course,’ said the Princesse. Phryne put her hand in her pocket, and encountered a folded piece of paper which had not been there before, and a wadded something, containing a crystalline substance of the consistency of salt. She did not take either object out into plain sight, and she did not think that the Princesse had noticed anything.
Dressed, they adjourned to Madame’s parlour to partake of more bitter tea. Gerda was there, with a large and loaded tray.
‘I will send your account to your hotel, mademoiselle,’ she observed respectfully. ‘But I am instructed to offer you our treatments. Here is the mud pack, the bain effervescent, tea for complexion and vitality, and beauty powders. Madame Breda is famous for her powders.’
Phryne was familiar with this practice. Most beauty parlours made up tonics and headache cures, and sold them when the customer was at her most relaxed. In view of the transactions which she had just seen, however, she was not willing to risk anything.
‘No, thank you — but I shall come again. Ready, Princesse?’
‘Certainly. Give Madame Breda my compliments,’ said the Princesse with rare grace, and they left the Bath House.
‘Tell me, Princesse, what is your real title? And why do you use de Grasse?’
‘It is simple. I am the Princesse Barazynovska. When I came first to Europe they could not pronounce it. So I changed it. I have always liked Grasse. It is the centre of the perfume industry, you know, and has fields of lavender. . and you, mademoiselle. You have not been born to the blue, eh?’
‘Purple,’ corrected Phryne. ‘No, I was born in very poor circumstances. Bitterly poor. Then several people died, and I was whisked into fashion and wealth. I enjoy it greatly,’ she said honestly. ‘There’s nothing like being really poor to make you relish being really wealthy.’
‘And are you?’
‘Which?’
‘Really wealthy?’ asked the Princesse, with every appearance of personal interest.
‘Yes. Why? You said last night that you did not want money.’
