Introducing the Honourable Phryne Fisher

you.’

There was such an undercurrent of fear in her voice that Bert did not reply aloud, but nodded.

‘Who’s at the door, girl?’ demanded a screech from the back of the house. ‘I don’t know, girls these days can’t do a good day’s work, not like it was when I was a girl. Twelve hours a day I used to work, and hard, too. Now they snivel and fall ill if they’re asked to serve tea. Well? Who is it?’

‘Please, Missus, it’s a man,’ faltered Ruth. ‘He wants a room, Missus.’

‘Oh does he? Have you told him about it?’

‘Yes, Miss, I told him.’

Ruth’s eyes implored Bert not to say anything critical, and he began to feel a strong sense of partisanship with this overworked skivvy. Poor little thing! The woman was evidently a tartar.

‘Yair, she told me. So, have you got a room or haven’t yer? I ain’t got all day.’

Miss Gay emerged from the kitchen, wiping her hands on a dirty tea towel. Bert looked her up and down and classified her instantly as Prize Bitch, filthy class. Prize bitches came in two classes: the fanatically clean, who smelt of bleach, and the slatternly, who smelt of old, boiled cabbage. Miss Gay was also redolent of yellow soap and sour milk. She was not a prepossessing sight, clad in down-at-the-heel house slippers, a faded wrapper in what appeared to be hessian, no stockings and a yellow cardigan draggled at the hips. Bert smiled his best smile and was rewarded with a slight softening of the rigid jaw and mean, thin lips.

‘Here’s me money,’ he offered, handing over a ten-bob note that vanished into the unacceptable recesses of her costume. ‘Show me the room.’

The small maid accompanied them up the unswept stairs to a room which had once been fine. The ceiling was high and decorated with plaster mouldings, and the walls had been papered with Morris designs. A plasterboard partition had been erected, cutting off the window, and the room contained a single iron army cot with two blankets, a dresser which had originally come from a kitchen, still equipped with cup-hooks, a table with one leg shorter than the others and an easy chair so battered that its original form could hardly be guessed. Bert concealed his loathing and said easily, ‘This’ll do me, Missus. What about meals?’

‘Breakfast at seven, and lunch at twelve, if you come home to it. Dinner at six. If you want a packed lunch, tell me the day before. Put anything to be washed in that bag and it goes out on Monday. Washing is extra.’

‘Latch-key,’ suggested Bert, and one was detached from Miss Gay’s jingling belt and handed over.

‘No alcohol or tobacco in the rooms, and lights out at ten. No women, either. Visitors are to stay in the parlour. Board is due every Friday, at twelve noon, sharp. Anything you want, ask Ruth here. She’s a stupid, worthless girl, but I can’t abandon my own flesh and blood.’

Ruth twisted her dirty apron around a grimy hand and gulped back a sob. Miss Gay sailed away down the stairs, and Bert felt in his pocket.

‘Here, take this,’ he whispered, pressing half-a-crown into the girl’s chapped hand. ‘And not a word to a soul, eh?’

Ruth nodded. Her brown eyes were bright and shrewd.

‘You ain’t one of her usual lodgers,’ observed Ruth curiously. ‘What are you doing here?’

‘Go downstairs and get a broom and sweep this floor,’ ordered Bert in a loud voice, and Ruth scurried down and returned with an article which could technically be called a broom, though it had scant three bristles left. With this, patiently, for she was a diligent girl, Ruth began to sweep the floor, while Bert explained what he was doing in a fast undertone.

‘There’s this girl, see, her name is Jane Graham. The Hon. Phryne Fisher has got this Jane in her care, because she’s lost her memory — I mean, Jane has. Your Miss Gay turned up there this morning and demanded Jane, saying that she was her niece. Now my Miss Fisher reckons there is something wrong, and she sent me to investigate it. Do you know Jane?’

‘Yes. She’s my best friend, Jane is. She was here for about six months, after her grandmother died. First her mother died and then her grandma, and her father’s a sailor and he ain’t never come back from his last voyage, so Missus took Jane.’

‘Out of kindness?’ asked Bert artlessly.

Ruth laughed, a small slave’s laugh. ‘Kindness? Her? You’re joking. She took Jane like she took me, for the work she could get out of us. But Jane was funny.’

‘How, funny?’

‘She had nightmares,’ said Ruth. ‘See, her grandma hanged herself, and Jane found her — in this house, it was, by the window upstairs, I durstn’t go there. Then there was the mesmeric man.’

‘The who? Look out, she’s coming back. Hook it, Ruthie,’ warned Bert, and shoved the girl out of his room.

‘Come back with a broom that sweeps,’ he said roughly, and Ruth ran down the stairs, passing the Missus. Miss Gay slapped at her, but Ruth was quick, and the blow missed.

‘Girls!’ snorted Miss Gay. ‘Everything all right, Mr. .’

‘Smith,’ said Bert. ‘Bert Smith.’

‘I’ve brought your rent book, Mr Smith.’

‘Thanks. Send up that girl with a real broom, will you? There’s plaster all over this floor — a man could break his neck.’

Miss Gay departed, and Bert shut the door. His room had no outlet except the doorway, and he felt stifled. At some time a leak had started in the roof, and water had trickled down the wall, leaving a great rusty stain like a grinning face.

‘A real palace,’ observed Bert sardonically, and sat down gingerly on the army cot to wait for Ruth.

It was half an hour before she returned, this time with a reasonable broom, and she had been crying. Bert observed the marks of tears on the child’s face and said, ‘She been knocking you about?’

Ruth nodded. ‘She told me not to talk to you, but I’m going to,’ she said defiantly. Bert shut the door and leaned on it, occluding the keyhole in case Miss Gay should decide to eavesdrop.

Ruth took the broom and began to sweep noisily, and Bert asked, ‘What was this man?’

‘The mesmeric man, the hypnotist. On the halls, he was. At the Tivoli. He tried to hypnotise me, but I just pretended. He mesmerised Jane lots of times. He could make her think that ice was a red-hot poker, and after he touched her with the ice a red blister would form on her arm. He made her think that she was talking to her grandma, and telling her how the missus beat her, and then the missus would punish her when she came round. It was horrible,’ confessed Ruth, sneezing in the plaster dust. ‘But I was glad it wasn’t me.’

‘He still here?’ asked Bert, shocked, and Ruth nodded.

‘He’s her fancy man,’ she said gravely. ‘That’s what the lodgers say. He’s got the best room and the window and all, and he gets all the good food — bacon and eggs and rolls and that.’

‘You hungry?’ asked Bert. ‘Where did she get you?’

‘From the orphanage. I’m not her flesh and blood! She adopted me. My parents are dead. I wish she hadn’t,’ said Ruth sadly. ‘I liked the orphanage. The nuns were letting me teach the younger kids their ABC. I didn’t want to leave, but she took me. . there,’ she added in a loud voice, ‘I’ve swept up all the plaster, Mr Smith.’ Ruth’s hearing, sharpened by pain, had picked up the approach of Miss Gay before Bert had heard her. He opened the door, and Ruth went out, carrying the broom and the dustpan. Bert emerged into the passage.

‘I’m just going out for a couple of hours, Missus,’ he said flatly, and walked down the stairs and out at the hall door to where Cec had been lurking in the unkempt garden. Bert felt that he had been dipped neck-deep in sewage.

He found the cab, with Cec in it, around the corner in Charles Street, and Cec started the engine.

‘To the pub,’ ordered Bert. ‘I never, in all my born days, saw such a place as that. It’s filthier than a pigsty and God alone knows what would happen to a girl.’

‘So, we don’t go back,’ said Cec, stopping the cab outside the Mona Castle, and Bert shook his head.

‘Oh, yes we do,’ he said grimly. ‘Something nasty is going on in that place, and I’m going to get to the bottom of it.’

‘What was Miss Fisher not telling us?’ asked Cec, when they had glasses in their hands, and Bert rolled another smoke.

‘I don’t know, but I’m beginning to guess, and I don’t like what I’m thinking, Cec, I don’t like it one bit.’

Bert told Cec what he was thinking, and they bought another beer.