‘And I agree with him,’ added Mrs Harper portentously. ‘That there’s something damned odd going on — beg pardon, my dear — and we want some reliable girl to find out.’
‘Do you think her husband is poisoning her?’
The Colonel hesitated but his spouse said placidly, ‘Well, what would you think?’
Phryne had to agree that the cycle of illness sounded odd, and she was at a loose end. She did not want to stay in her father’s house and arrange flowers. She had tried social work but she was sick of the stews and sluts and starvation of London, and the company of the Charitable Ladies was not good for her temper. She had often thought of travelling back to Australia, where she had been born in extreme poverty, and here was an excellent excuse for putting off decisions about her future for half a year.
‘Very well, I’ll go. But I’ll go at my own expense, and I’ll report at my leisure. Don’t follow me with frantic cables or the whole thing will be U.P. I’ll make Lydia’s acquaintance on my own, and you will not mention me in any of your letters to her. I’ll stay at the Windsor.’ Phryne felt a thrill at this. She had last seen that hotel in the cold dawn, as she passed with a load of old vegetables gleaned from the pig-bins of the Victoria Market. ‘You can find me there, if it’s important. What is Lydia’s married name and her address? And tell me — what would her husband inherit if she died?’
‘Her husband’s name is Andrews, and here is her address. If she dies before him without issue, he inherits fifty thousand pounds.’
‘Has she any children?’
‘Not yet,’ said the Colonel. He produced a bundle of letters.
‘Perhaps you’d like to read these,’ and he put them down on the tea table. ‘They are Lydia’s letters. She’s a bright little thing, you’ll find — very canny about money — but she’s besotted with this Andrews feller,’ he snorted. Phryne slipped the first envelope and began to read.
The letters were absorbing. Not that they had any literary merit, but Lydia was such an odd mixture. After a dissertation on oil stocks that would not have disgraced an accountant, she indulged in terms of such honeyed sentimentality about her husband that Phryne could hardly bear to read it. My tom-cat has been severe with his mouse because she was dancing with a pretty cat at supper last night,read Phryne with increasing nausea. And it took two hours of stroking before he became my good little kitten again.
Phryne ploughed on while the Colonel’s wife kept refilling her teacup. After an hour she was awash with tea, and sentiment. The tone became whining after Lydia reached Melbourne. Johnnie goes out to his club and leaves his poor little mouse to pine in her mouse-house . . I was ever so sick but Johnnie just told me I’d over-eaten and went to dinner. There is a rumour that Peruvian Gold is to start their mine again. Don’t put any money into it. Their accountant is buying his second car . . I hope that you took my advice about the Shallows property. The land is adjacent to a church right-of-way and thus cannot be overlooked. It will double in value in twenty years . . I have transferred some of my capital to Lloyds, where the interest rate is half a percentage higher . . I’m trying baths and massage with Madame Breda, of Russell Street. I am very ill but Johnnie just laughs at me.
Odd. Phryne copied out the address of Madame Breda in Russell Street and took her leave, before she could be offered any more tea.
CHAPTER TWO
Or old dependency of day and night Or island solitude, unsponsered, free Of that wide water, inescapable.
Wallace Stevens ‘Sunday Morning’
Phryne leaned on the ship’s rail, listening to the seagulls announcing that land was near, and watched for the first hint of sunrise. She had put on her lounging robe, of a dramatic oriental pattern of green and gold, an outfit not to be sprung suddenly on invalids or those of nervous tendencies — and she was rather glad that there was no one on deck to be astonished. It was five o’clock in the morning.
There was a faint gleam on the horizon; Phryne was waiting for the green flash, which she had never seen. She fumbled in her pocket for cigarettes, her holder, and a match. She lit the gasper and dropped the match over the side. The brief flare had unsighted her; she blinked, and ran a hand over her short black cap of hair.
‘I wonder what I want to do?’ Phryne asked of herself. ‘It has all been quite interesting up until now, but I can’t dance and game my life away. I suppose I could try for the air race record in the new Avro — or join Miss May Cunliffe in the road-trials of the new Lagonda — or learn Abyssinian — or take to gin — or breed horses — I don’t know, it all seems very flat.’
‘Well, I shall try being a perfect Lady Detective in Melbourne — that ought to be difficult enough — and perhaps something will suggest itself. If not, I can still catch the ski season. It may prove amusing, after all.’
At that moment there came a fast, unrepeatable grass-green flash before the gold and rose of sunrise coloured the sky. Phryne blew the sun a kiss, and returned to her cabin.
Still wrapped in her robe, she nibbled a little thin toast and contemplated her wardrobe, which was spread out like a picnic over all available surfaces. She poured a cup of China tea and surveyed her costumes with a jaundiced eye.
The weather reports promised clear, mild conditions, and Phryne briefly considered a Chanel knitted silk suit, in beige, and a rather daring coat and skirt in bright red wool, but finally selected a fetching sailor suit in dark blue with white piping and a pique collar. The waist dropped below her hips leaving five inches of pleated skirt, which even the parochial taste of Melbourne could not find offensive.
She dressed quickly and soon stood up in camiknickers and silk stockings which were gartered above the knee, and dark-blue leather shoes with a Louis heel. She examined her face in the fixed mirror as she brushed ruthlessly at her per- fectly black, perfectly straight hair, which fell into a neat and shiny cap leaving the nape of her neck and most of her forehead bare. She pulled on a soft dark-blue cloche, and with dexterity born of long practice, sketched her eyebrows, out- lined her green-grey eyes with a thin kohl pencil, and added a dab of rouge and a flourish of powder.
She was pouring out her final cup of tea when a tap at the door caused her to dive back into the folds of the robe.
‘Come in,’ she called, wondering if this was to be another visit from the First Officer, who had conceived a desperate passion for Phryne, a passion which, she was convinced, would last for all of ten minutes once the Orient docked. But the answer reassured her.
‘Elizabeth,’ announced the caller, and Phryne opened the door and Dr MacMillan came in and seated herself on the stateroom’s best chair, the only one free of Phryne’s clothes.
‘Well, child, we dock in three hours, so that affected young Purser told me,’ she said. ‘Can you spare the rest of that toast? That blighted woman in steerage produced her brat this morning at three of the clock — babies seem to demand to be born at benighted hours, usually in a thunderstorm — there’s something elemental about babies, I find.’