Dot grinned. ‘Lindsay is all right, Miss, if you like tom cats.’
‘You know that I do,’ agreed Phryne.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Lewis Carroll
Phryne steered the red car into the city. Detective-inspector Robinson (call me Jack, Miss Fisher, everyone does) had taken over the investigation and was anxious to interview her. He had promised the post-mortem report and any more information that came to hand.
She parked her car in the police garage and ascended the dank stairs to the small bleak office which Jack inhabited. He looked up as she entered; an undistinguished youngish man with mid-brown hair and mid-brown eyes and no feature which one could remember more than three minutes after he had gone. It was this anonymity which had made him a relentless shadow of some of Melbourne’s most wary crooks. They were now languishing behind bars, wondering how they had been detected, still not recalling the ordinary man on the street corner who had followed them doggedly for days. In private life he was a quiet man with a doting family, who grew grevilleas and rare native orchids in his yard. He would talk learnedly of mulch unless instantly and firmly dissuaded.
‘Ah, Miss Fisher. I hope that you are well? How nice to see you again. I won’t offer you police-station tea, because I’m sure you’ve tasted it before. I want you to tell me all about the murder on the Ballarat train.’
‘Delighted,’ said Phryne promptly.
As usual, she told her tale with dispatch and not an unnecessary word. Detective-inspector Robinson took notes attentively.
‘Dragged through the window, eh?’
‘Absolutely. I’m almost sure that she was pulled up, because of the hair caught in the crack in the sill, but where the murderer was, I cannot tell.’
‘And the blond young guard. Describe him.’
‘About five-ten, blue eyes, a pleasant smile, looked well built but slender, no distinguishing marks except a scar on his forehead. A cut along the brow line. All healed over. I think he was about twenty-five but he could have been younger, the cap is very disguising. I didn’t pay much attention,’ apologised Phryne. ‘I was rather tired.’
‘I could hope that all the witnesses that I interview weren’t paying attention like that,’ said the detective- inspector. ‘What about motive?’
‘The daughter had the best motive,’ Phryne crossed her legs and tugged her black skirt down, lest she should distract the policeman. ‘But I don’t think that she did it. She could have shoved her mother out of the train and then doped herself. She might not have known that chloroform burns skin. I met her fiance today, and he didn’t know, and he’s a medical student.’
‘What did you make of him, Miss Fisher?’
‘An arrogant young man, but most doctors are like that. About medium height, with pale hair and blue eyes — as was his pretty friend, they could be twins. Both strong, I should say, and active. It might be an idea to ask the attentive Mr Thompson where he was on the night in question.’
‘You didn’t take to him, Miss Fisher?’ asked the detective. ‘What about the other one, his friend?’
‘Lindsay Herbert. A very nice, if rather gushing and naive, young man. I took to him, and he took to me, and stuck to me like glue, almost as if he had been instructed to do so.’
‘What, Miss, did the young hound try to take advantage of you?’ gasped the detective-inspector, and Phryne chuckled.
‘If there is any advantage to be taken, Jack, you can rely on me to take it. I can cope with Master Lindsay. I didn’t really have a chance to talk to Thompson. Perhaps you will have more success.’
‘Perhaps. I shall certainly do so, and that at the earliest. Where do they live, these students?’
‘In digs in Carlton, I fancy. But I know where they will be at nine tomorrow morning.’
‘Where?’
‘Rowing. I am going down to the boathouse to watch them practice. Perhaps you would like to come too?’
‘Yes, Miss Fisher, I think that I might.’
‘Good. Now, the autopsy report.’
Phryne scanned the buff folder critically, attempting to translate the medical terms into something that might relate to the broken body of the old woman. It seemed that all of the gross fractures had been inflicted after death, including the massive blow which had cracked the skull. The cause of death had been. .
‘Hanging? That’s what that means, isn’t it, Jack? Fracture of the cervical vertebrae?’
‘Yes, Miss. Hanging it is. The hyoid bone in the throat, which is always broken when there is a death by strangulation, was fractured but the doctor says that it was a broken neck. That’s how you die if you are hanged, Miss. The sudden jerk.’ He mimed the rope pulling taut and the sickening flop of the broken neck, and Phryne shuddered.
‘Don’t, Jack, please, it’s too awful. What could have happened? The first bit is clear. Someone doped the carriage and sent us all to sleep, and perhaps we were meant to sleep forever. Then no one would be able to tell when the body was removed, or how, but I woke up too soon. How that murderer must be disliking me, for I foiled his little plan proper. All right, the carriage is full of people all asleep, and the old woman is dragged out — with a rope around her neck? — suspended, and dropped.’
‘Don’t forget the Ballan doctor’s theory.’
‘The man is deranged, it’s too ghastly to contemplate.’
‘And how is the girl, the one who lost her memory?’
‘Jane? I call her Jane, she hasn’t remembered. I shall have a photographer take some pictures of her, and perhaps you can have them distributed among the stations and your staff. Someone must have lost her. I’m keeping her anyway, she’s been molested, and if that is what triggered her off, then I am going to skin the man alive if she remembers who he is. She’s a very clever girl and I expect to have her recalling her past any day now.’
‘Sexually molested?’
‘So Dr MacMillan says.’
‘Poor little thing. You’ll let me in on the arrest, Miss Fisher, as usual?’
‘You will have to be quick,’ said Phryne grimly, and Jack Robinson nodded.
‘You didn’t kill that child-molesting bastard we arrested in Queenscliff,’ he said gently. ‘Even though you did shoot him a bit.’
‘That’s because I promised to deliver him to you in a plain brown wrapper,’ said Phryne reasonably. ‘This one is all mine.’
Wisely, the detective-inspector decided not to pursue the subject, and returned to the matter of murder on the Ballarat train.
‘I’ve checked up on all the guards and railway employees on that train, by the way, and Wallace was right — not one of them under forty. You are sure that it was a young man?’
‘Positive,’ said Phryne, recalling the smooth, unlined throat and chin.
‘I shall see you tomorrow, then, Miss Fisher — at the Melbourne University boathouse,’ and the policeman escorted Phryne out of the building and down the steps. She was restless, aroused by the ardent young man’s attentions, and decided to pass some blameless hours in the museum and art gallery. There she spent some time before the Apollo, a copy of the Belvedere, and tore her salacious mind away with some difficulty.
Phryne was home in time for a pleasant dinner and a bath, then put herself to bed early, sober and alone.
Dot woke Phryne with a cup of Turkish coffee at eight-thirty, and informed her half-asleep mistress that it was a nasty damp, chill morning, but that it was not actually raining. She added that Mr Butler had taken Jane to the photographer and that Miss Henderson was still asleep. Phryne absorbed the coffee, which was as close as one got to neat caffeine, washed and dressed in boots, trousers and a heavy jacket. Dot found a suitable hat and an umbrella and gloves, and assisted Phryne to start the huge car.
‘I must have been mad to agree with this,’ she commented. ‘Steady she goes, Dot. Thanks, go inside quickly before you freeze to the spot. Back directly,’ she called, and put the Hispano-Suiza into gear.
She drove without haste, threading the traffic through the city and out onto the road which circled the
