‘Well, that’s all over, and a very nasty end, and you can’t say that he didn’t deserve it, the horrible man. Mr B., ask Mrs B. for some tea, will you? Miss, you might like a brandy? Mr Cec, can I offer you a drink? A cup of tea?’
Her brisk voice brought everyone to. Phryne rummaged for a light for her cigarette. Jane sat up and wiped her face on Cec’s shirt. Bert sat down and rolled a smoke with hands that hardly shook at all. Cec smiled up at Dot.
‘Thank you, Miss, I’d like a beer, and so would Bert, and then a feed. Poor bloke’s been living on cabbage stalks and offal for days.’
It is an index to how much better they were all feeling after a few minutes that when Ember removed his head from the crook of Cec’s arm and began to wash his front feet, no one shuddered at the thought of what he was washing off.
‘Mate, mate, we was forgettin’.’ exclaimed Bert, slamming down an empty beer glass. ‘What about little Ruthie?’
‘She’s in the kitchen,’ observed Mrs Butler tartly, refilling the glass with ease and skill. ‘She’s been here for ten minutes, but I couldn’t interrupt you. Such goings on in a lady’s house! But it all seems to be over now. Ruth is well, Mr. . er. . Bert. She says that Miss Gay beat her again, and she has a beautiful black eye, poor mite — and she ran away to Miss Fisher like you told her. She’s in the middle of a bath, or I’d call her in. Is this horrible business settled, then?’ she asked in a worried undertone, but not low enough to escape Phryne. Mrs Butler moved aside to allow Jane and Ember to rush to the kitchen. Cries of delight greeted them from the Butler’s bathroom.
‘This particular horrid business is over,’ she said, patting her housekeeper on the arm, ‘but the other horrid business is sent right back to square one. The person that had all the earmarks of being the murderer on the train has the best alibi of all — he was in police custody, so that puts him right out of the picture. Dear me. What a tiring day! Can you manage an early dinner, Mrs B.? Poor Bert has been on a reducing diet lately. Then I think that we could all profit from an early night. Tomorrow I’m going with Miss Henderson to open up her house and help her clear out, and Dot and Jane are coming too. That will be exhausting enough, but then I’ve just remembered that the students’ glee club is on at the boathouse tomorrow night.’
‘Yes, Miss, an early dinner, I’ve got some fish that the boy swears was caught this morning, and I can easily make a few extra chips. Will that suit? And don’t worry about your problem,’ soothed Mrs Butler, seeing that Phryne was white and strained. ‘It will quite likely solve itself if you don’t worry at it. More beer, Mr Bert?’
Bert held out his glass and grinned. ‘It’s worth a man doing a perish if he gets one of your dinners, Mrs Butler.’
‘Go on with you,’ sniffed that lady, and bustled back to her kitchen to fry up a storm.
Jane was sitting on the hearth, with a scrubbed-clean Ruth. Ember was on her lap. The kitten had quite recovered and was watching the flames with his ears laid back as though he was at his mother’s breast.
‘I’m remembering a lot more,’ she said quietly. ‘I remember getting off the train, at a station in the middle of big open paddocks. I didn’t know who I was or where I was going but I knew that I didn’t want to go there. I sat down on the station seat, then it got dark and a train stopped, and I heard a child crying, so I went to get him and I put him on the train again, then it seemed silly to stay where I was, so I got on the train too, and hid in the ladies. I stayed there until. . something happened. . then I was at Ballarat and I couldn’t remember a thing. It feels like it happened to someone else, not me,’ she explained. ‘All cotton-woolly, as though it was a movie.’
‘And, of course, there was no one on the station to meet you, because you were on the wrong train,’ mused Phryne. ‘It all fits, Jane.’
Jane looked up suddenly and laid a hand on Phryne’s silk-clad knee. Her upturned face was very young. ‘Am I still a good girl, Miss?’
Phryne, leaning down to embrace Jane with an unaccustomed catch at the heart, assured her that she was.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Lewis Carroll
‘Lord, isn’t it cold in here? Never mind, Dot will soon have a fire lit. Did you have any servants, Eunice? If so they haven’t left the old place in any sort of order.’
‘No, I dismissed them, with notice of course, and I fear that they haven’t complied with their employment conditions.’
Phryne, Dot, Jane and Ruth had escorted Eunice Henderson to her home in case she should be overwhelmed by her memories as she climbed the front steps to the dull grey door. When it became clear that Eunice had a grip on her emotions they turned to the more pressing matters an unoccupied house presented them with.
The house had that musty chill which falls upon unoccupied houses, and depresses the spirits of all visitors. Dot hung up her good blue coat on the hallstand and went to find the kitchen, taking the girls with her, to light the stove and open some windows. Dot carried her capacious basket well supplied with a picnic, and tea and sugar and a bottle of milk. Phryne helped Eunice out of her coat and elected to remain wrapped in her sables.
Eunice ran a glove along the hall table and examined her finger; it was coated with dust. The house was an elegant Edwardian family mansion, stoutly built and ornately decorated, but it was unloved, overcrowded and dilapidated. Phryne picked up a vase in which lilies had died; they moved with a sad rustle in their slime-green water.
‘This will need an army of parlourmaids to set in order,’ sighed Eunice. ‘When are your cleaners coming, Miss Fisher?’
‘I told them ten o’clock, and that will be them now, I expect. Admirable women; Mrs Butler recommends them.’
Phryne answered a strident ring at the bell and ushered in a small stout woman and a small thin woman, relieved them of their coats, and pointed them towards the dining-room.
‘There you are, ladies, I suggest that you make a start by opening all of the windows and letting a nice fresh gale in. Miss Henderson, this is Mrs Price and Mrs Cummings.’
‘Glad to meet you, ladies,’ said Eunice. ‘Do you think that you can manage? It’s a frightful mess.’
The thin woman tugged at her hem, tied her apron strings, and wrapped an enormous red-and-white bandana around her head. ‘Me and Maise’ll manage,’ she said. ‘Done worse than this, eh, Maise?’
Maise nodded, enveloping her head in a blue scarf.
‘Hot water in the kitchen?’ asked Adela Price, and Phryne nodded. They squared their shoulders.
‘I’ll do the windows, Dell, and you open the flues and start the fires,’ said Maise, and Eunice led Phryne upstairs.
‘I’m afraid that it has all gone downhill since Mother lost all her money,’ she apologised. ‘She used to be very well-off, you know, and she got used to luxury. It was all that I could manage to keep her in linen sheets, after the crash of the Megatherium Trust, you know.’
‘Your mother had money in that trust?’ asked Phryne, catching up on a dusty landing and following Eunice into a dark bedroom. The Megatherium Trust, a hastily put together fraud perpetrated by the Honourable Bobby Matthews, remittance-man of Phryne’s acquaintance, had crashed resoundingly at the end of May 1928, taking all its investors with it. The Hon. Bobby had elected to seek the warmer and less indictable climes of South America. Phryne had not been sorry to see him go. Megatherium indeed! Many less-than-funny jokes had been made about prehistoric monsters after the crash.
‘Oh, yes, all of her money was in Megatherium. She lost every penny that she had. Dear me, this carpet is sadly motheaten. Do you think that your friends will want such a sad relic?’
‘Bert and Cec can find a home for everything, even if it’s only the tip. Pardon me for asking, Eunice, but does your young man know this?’
‘Why, no, the question never came up. I suppose that he assumed that I was wealthy. I am well provided for, of course, but entirely by my own labours.’
‘Oh?’ asked Phryne, her mind buzzing with theories, ‘what labours?’
