Introducing the Honourable Phryne Fisher

Bert looked at his mate in surprise. ‘You reckon?’

‘Too right,’ said Cec again, just to show that it wasn’t a fluke. ‘Me and Bert have to go and check out some other business, but we’ll be in on the lunch. Wouldn’t miss it for quids.’

Phryne and Bert stared at Cec, then at each other. Never had they seen him so animated. Something was up, but neither knew what.

Bert and Cec took their leave, and Phryne and Dot prepared for lunch.

Phryne donned the undergarments and dress handed to her by Dot, who was arrayed in her embroidered linen. She brushed her hair vigorously and put on a small, blue hat with a pert brim. Dot was wearing a close-fitting cloche.

They surveyed themselves in the big mirror, slim young women in stylish clothes.

‘Are you giving your notice, Dot?’ asked Phryne of Dot’s reflection. ‘This has been a bit above and beyond the call of, you know.’

‘No, Miss!’ Dot’s reflection looked dismayed. ‘What, give this up when I’m just getting good at it?’

‘Alice, the lady doctor says that you can go home next week,’ Cec was sitting by Alice’s bed and holding her hand. She had small plump hands that were chillblained and red with washing. But almost all of the blemishes were gone. Enforced rest had given Alice the hands of a lady for the first time in her life. They were getting stronger, Cec thought, as he squeezed the hand, and Alice returned the squeeze. ‘What I mean to say is. . Will you marry me? I’ve got a half-share in a taxi and a place to live and. . I don’t mind about the hound who got you into trouble, though I’d break his neck if I knew him and. . I think it would be a good idea. .’ faltered Cec, blushing painfully.

Propped up, Alice looked at him. He was tall and lanky and devoted, and she loved him dearly. But Alice was not going to make a mistake this time around.

‘You’re sorry for me,’ she said. ‘I don’t want you to marry me just because you’re sorry for me.’

‘That’s not the reason I want to marry you,’ said Cec. Alice felt the strength of the grip on the white hospital coverlet and looked into his deep, brown eyes.

‘Give it six months,’ suggested Alice. ‘Till I’m better and in my own world again. Back with mum and dad. Ask me again in six months, Cec,’ said Alice, ‘and we’ll see.’

Cec smiled his peculiarly beautiful smile and patted her shoulder. ‘It’ll be apples,’ he said.

‘So, what did she say?’ asked Bert, who’d been waiting outside.

Cec grinned. ‘Six months, she said to ask again in six months.’

‘That ain’t so good,’ commented Bert.

‘It’s good enough for me!’ exulted Cec.

‘Aar, you’re stuck on that girl,’ snarled Bert, not at all pleased by this new turn of events. ‘Carm on, lover boy, this might be our only chance to have lunch at the Windsor.’

The Windsor’s dining-room was crowded, and a table for ten had only been obtained by the maitre d’hotel rushing one party through their meal with amazing haste, seeing them off with a glittering, breathless smile, whipping off the cloth with his own hands and summoning five menials to re-lay the table in record time.

Miss Fisher’s guests were arriving. Dr MacMillan was refusing Veuve Clicquot and demanding a little whisky. Detective-inspector Robinson, leaving three sergeants in charge of counting and weighing Chasseur et Cie cocaine from Madame Breda’s Bath House, had brought Woman Police-Officer Jones with him as ordered. He did not really know what to say to her, out of uniform. She solved his problem by talking to Sasha, who had swept in with his sister and the old woman, and was staring hungrily at the hors d’oeuvres as though he had not eaten for a week. A loose artistic shirt covered his burns, and he was as attractive as ever. WPC Jones thought that he looked like a sheik, and hung on his every word.

Detective-inspector Robinson engaged Dr MacMillan in conversation.

‘How is that girl, the last victim of Butcher George?’

‘Oh, she will be fine. I believe that she will suffer no lasting ill-effects. A strong young woman. How is the monster taking his imprisonment?’

‘Not too well, I am glad to say. It seems that he can’t stand confined spaces. He confessed it all, you know, including the rapes and the murders, but said that they were all little tarts who deserved all that he did to them. But he isn’t mad,’ said Robinson, taking a cheesy thing from the tray of entrees. ‘Not legally mad. He’ll hang before spring, thank the Lord. And the world will be a safer place without him. And we’ve broken the coke ring. Even my chief has noticed.’

‘You mean Phryne broke the ring, and captured the criminals.’

‘That’s true.’

‘And without her you would not have got your Butcher George, either, would you?’

‘No. A wonderful girl. Pity we can’t have her in the detective force.’

‘A few years ago they were saying that women could not become doctors,’ retorted Dr MacMillian crushingly. Robinson called for more whisky.

Phryne, Dot, Bert and Cec came into the luncheon-room together. Their table began to applaud. Bert and Cec stood aghast. Phryne swept a full court curtsey, and Sasha led her to the head of the table, beating Cec by a short half-head to the seat on her right. The dancer possessed himself of her hand, and kissed it to general approbation.

She leaned accross the table to kiss his cheek and whispered, ‘I still won’t marry you, and I definitely won’t pay you!’

‘I am in your debt, for you have avenged me,’ Sasha said seriously. ‘Now there can be no repayment of what I owe you. And I never thought that you would marry me, which is sad. But do not tell the Princesse, or she will sell me elsewhere.’ Phryne kissed his other cheek, and then his mouth.

‘What has happened to Cec?’ asked Dr MacMillan. ‘He looks like he has won a lottery!’

‘Aah, makes a man sick,’ complained Bert. ‘That sheila we took to your place. Doctor, Cec has fallen for her like a ton of bricks. And just today it looks like she’s fallen for him, too. Turns a man’s stomach.’ Bert downed a glass of champagne, a drink which was new to him. He did not like the taste, but it clothed the world in a rosier glow and he was disposed to think more kindly, even of Alice, who was going to steal his mate away.

Phryne completed the confounding of Cec by giving him a congratulatory kiss as well. She was in a demonstrative mood.

‘I’ve seen your King, Miss Fisher,’ said Dectective-inspector Robinson, ‘She don’t look up to much.’

‘That’s not how she looked when she was going to cook me and Sasha into casserole in the Turkish bath.’

‘My Turkish bath!’ moaned Madame Breda, and was plied with champagne by Bert, though she protested that she never took wine.

‘Begin at the beginning, girl!’ admonished Dr MacMillan. ‘We want to hear the whole tale.’

The Detective-inspector, knowing that this was most irregular, was about to protest and withdraw when he caught the doctor’s eye, and decided not to. Soup was served, and Phryne began to talk.

As veal followed the soup and chicken ragout the veal, and then cheeses and ices and coffee made their appearance, she ploughed through the story, omitting the delicate parts. Even the outline gave her hearers enough trouble. Faberge brooches and the Russian Revolution, the Cryers and the chemist in Little Lon., the planted packets of powder turning up all through the story, sapphism and crime. .

‘It’s an unbelievable tale,’ summed up Dr MacMillan. ‘The scheming bitch is in jail now, and all her associates captured. Cokey Billings is in hospital with a broken ankle and a dent in his head. What happened to the others?’

‘The Bull and Gentleman Jim are both lodged with me,’ said Robinson, with quiet satisfaction. ‘And the chemist, and the chemist’s girl, and Gerda. That was a nicely judged blow, Miss Fisher; another inch to the right and you’d have killed her.’

Phryne, sipping coffee, suppressed the intelligence that it had not been nice judgement but blind luck that had preserved Gerda’s life.

‘To Phryne Fisher,’ Dr MacMillan raised her glass. ‘May she continue to be an example to us all!’

All drank. Cec murmured, ‘Too right.’

Phryne drained her glass.

‘I seem to be established as an investigator,’ she mused, considering the thought gravely. ‘It could be most