CHAPTER FOUR
Oscar Wilde
‘Miss Amelia McNaughton, Miss Fisher,’ announced Mr Butler.
Phryne and the young doctor had been getting on famously when a faltering ring of the doorbell had interrupted their flirtation. Phryne pulled her mind back to the task at hand and took a good look at the daughter of the McNaughton house. It was not encouraging. Amelia was tall and thin, with ruthlessly cropped mousy hair and blotchy skin. She had beautifully shaped hands, long and white, but they were stained with paint and the nails had been gnawed down to the quick. She had obviously dressed in a hurry or in the dark, for she was wearing a shapeless knitted skirt, darned black lisle stockings, and an over-large shirt and jacket. Her pale blue eyes flicked from Phryne to Dr Fielding and she was biting her lower lip.
Dr Fielding stood up and offered her his chair.
‘Please sit down, Miss McNaughton, and have some tea,’ invited Phryne. ‘Your mother is quite all right for the moment. Dr Fielding has given her a sedative. You must be cold. Mr B., could you get more tea? No, on second thoughts, a cocktail would be more suitable,’ she went on, observing the blue lips and the features pinched, as if with cold.
Miss McNaughton sank down into the chair and held out her gnawed fingers to the bright fire.
‘Thank you, Miss Fisher. I don’t know what to do. Father is dead, and Bill arrested, and mother in a state, and I’ve no one to turn to. .’
‘Have you no relatives in Melbourne who might help?’
‘God, no. There’s my father’s brothers; Uncle Ted and Uncle Bob. Both of them worse than useless. We have never been a close family. Uncle Ted telephoned, but all he wanted to say was that Father had left him some shares in his will and that now was the time to transfer them, because the market was turning down and they should be sold.’
‘Charming,’ commented Phryne. Dr Fielding got to his feet and kicked the fire-irons over.
‘Lord, man, can’t you keep your seat?’ snapped Phryne. ‘We have enough to worry about without you doing three rounds with the furniture. I want you here to take Mrs McNaughton home and I’d be obliged if you would stay put.’
Dr Fielding stiffened. ‘I would not be remiss in my duty to the patient, but I did not wish to be third-party to a conference,’ he announced. ‘I shall sit in the kitchen until you are ready, Miss Fisher.’
He stalked out to be comforted by Mrs Butler with teacake.
‘“It is offended: see, it stalks away”,’ quoted Phryne and chuckled. ‘What a strong sense of propriety, to be sure. Miss McNaughton, I am reluctant to leave you in that house with no one to look after you.’
‘Oh, that’s all right,’ muttered Miss McNaughton gracelessly. ‘Mama’s maid was my nurse. We shall do well together. And now that Father is. . is dead, Mama’s nerves will be better.’
‘If your father was anything like your brother Bill, then he must have been rather. . er. . robust in his private life.’
‘He was a loud, crass, overbearing, selfish brute,’ said Miss McNaughton flatly. ‘He nearly drove Mother mad and he always treated me like a chattel.’ She gulped her cocktail thirstily. ‘Do you know what he wanted to do, Miss Fisher? In this year of 1928? He wanted to marry me off.’
‘How medieval,’ said Phryne. ‘How did you feel about that? I should have dug in my heels.’
‘So I did,’ agreed the young woman rather muzzily. Mr Butler’s cocktails had some authority. ‘I told him I’d see him damned first. I have my own man.’
She cast Phryne a glance both proud and oddly ashamed.
‘Oh, good. An artist, is he?’
Miss McNaughton’s pale eyes glowed. ‘He’s a sculptor. He is in the forefront of modern art. Father would not have spat on him, because he is a foreigner.’
‘I have always been interested in art,’ agreed Phryne. ‘What sort of foreigner?’
‘An Italian. Paolo Raguzzi. You will have heard of him, if you are interested in art.’
‘I haven’t investigated the Melbourne art world at all, Miss McNaughton, I have only been here for three months. However, are you now intending to marry?’
‘Of course.’
‘You must invite me to the wedding. Now, perhaps we had better get your mother home. I’ll come too, and have a squiz at the scene of the crime. What is the name of the investigating policeman?’
‘I can’t remember. . Barton, was it? No, Benton. Detective-inspector Benton.’
‘Right. How did you get here? Do you have a car?’
‘Yes, I took Father’s Bentley. He didn’t know that I could drive. We’d better call back that doctor.’
Phryne rang the electric bell. When Mr Butler appeared, she asked for Dr Fielding. He came, in offended silence, certified Mrs McNaughton safe to drive, and carried her out to the car. Phryne saw that, although he was tall and clumsy, he carried the not inconsiderable burden of the unconscious woman without apparent effort.
Phryne took hat, gloves and coat from Dot and dismissed her at the door. ‘You stay here and mind the phone, Dot. Call me at the McNaughton’s if anything interesting happens. Stay home, I might need you. Do you have Bert’s number?’
‘Yes, Miss. Be careful, Miss.’
‘I’m not going flying again today, Dot, I promise. Have a nice cosy evening, and tell Mrs B. that I shall be dining out.’ Phryne sailed down the steps in a red cloth coat with an astrakhan collar, which made her look as though she was wearing a sheep around her neck. Her hat was black felt and her boots Russian leather. Dr Fielding straightened up from depositing Mrs McNaughton in the car and came face to face with her. She smelt bewitchingly of ‘Jicky’.
‘Do not be offended, Doctor. One is prone to be sharp when one is upset. I beg your pardon, and I hope to see you again in a less clinical circumstance. Come to dinner on Thursday at seven.’
She gave him a dazzling smile and her strong, scented hand. He floated off down the street to his Austin in a strange state between insult and adoration. Phryne smiled after him, satisfied with the impression she had created, and hopped into the Bentley next to the sleeping woman.
Miss McNaughton was a good, if reckless driver, and Phryne had nothing to do during the drive but to cushion Mrs McNaughton against the bumps. Amelia McNaughton took corners as though they were a personal affront.
After about half an hour, during which Phryne sustained a number of bruises, the car turned and swept up the paved drive of a big, modern house. Miss Amelia leapt out of the car and ran into the house to find aid in carrying her mother. Phryne eased herself out of her position between Mrs McNaughton and the door, and got out.
It was three o’clock on a fine, breezy winter’s day. The beech and elm trees that lined the drive had lost all of their foliage, but the house evidently kept a gardener, for there was not a leaf to be seen lying on the smooth lawns. The house was of a modern shape; cubist, with a mural consisting of slabs of rainbow colours over the front door. The mural was reminiscent of art deco jewellery, and Phryne liked it, especially against the smooth, flat planes of the building. Without the decoration the house would have been just a collection of different sized boxes in a cool grey brick.
The designer of this residence had decided that privacy was the keynote, and had placed the house in the very centre of the available space and surrounded it with a formal garden on one side, a kitchen garden at the back, and rolling park-like garden with tennis-court on the sides facing the road. No other houses could be seen. The house appeared as a little island of habitation in a wild and possibly dangerous wood. Even the traffic could not be heard, and at the bottom of the garden was the Studley Park rift. This was a deep valley with the river at the bottom and untouched forest occupying the slopes. It would be a very lonely place for the nervous. Phryne wondered how Mrs McNaughton liked living there and whether she had been consulted at all in the building of it.
Amelia returned with a gardener and a stout woman in an apron. Together they lifted Mrs McNaughton, and bore her into the hall and up the stairs to a small room with a narrow bed.
‘Surely this isn’t her room?’ asked Phryne in surprise.
‘Yes, since she stopped sleeping with Father. He wouldn’t let her have another room. He said that she could stay with him in the big room or have this, so she chose this. She says it makes her feel safe; there are no windows, just the light from the stairwell. But she doesn’t have to lock herself in anymore,’ said Miss McNaughton
