Her fears were unfounded. The driver had done this journey before. Bert hauled the motor around in another three-point turn and stopped, grinning, in front of the austere portals of the hotel. The doorman, not blanching in the least at this outlandish vehicle, stepped forward with dignity and opened the door by its one remaining hinge. Phryne took his gloved hand and extracted herself from the car, brushed herself down, and produced her purse.
The driver abandoned his vehicle and handed over Phry- ne’s coat, grinning amiably. He was wearing a new cigarette.
‘Thank you so much for the interesting ride,’ said Phryne. ‘How much do I owe you and — er — Cec?’
‘I reckon that five shillings will do it,’ grinned Bert, avoiding the doorman’s eye. Phryne opened her purse.
‘I think about two-and-six will do it, don’t you?’ she said artlessly.
‘And a deener for Cec,’ Bert bargained. Phryne handed over the extra shilling. Cec, a gangly man with more strength than appeared to inhabit his bony frame, transferred Phryne’s trunks and boxes into the care of a small army of porters, all in the livery of the hotel. Then, with a whoop and a cloud of dust, the drivers vanished.
‘I’m Phryne Fisher,’ she informed the doorman. ‘I made my reservation in London.’
‘Ah, yes, Miss,’ replied the doorman. ‘You’re expected. Come in on the Orient this morning? You’ll want a cup of tea. Come this way, if you please.’ Phryne surrendered herself, and stepped up into the quiet, well-ordered, opulent world of the Windsor.
Bathed, re-clothed and hungry, Phryne came down into the hotel dining-room for luncheon. She cut a distractingly fashionable figure in pale straw-coloured cotton and a straw hat, around which she had wrapped a silk scarf of green, lemon and sea-blue. She chose a table under the cluster of marble cupids, selected clear soup and a cold collation from the menu handed to her by a neat girl in black, and considered the inhabitants.
The women were well-dressed, and some quite beautiful, though admittedly a little behind the mode. The men were dressed in the usual pin-stripe and the occasional dark suit — solicitors or bank managers, perhaps. A few bright young things in flannel bags and sports jacket or Fugi dresses swinging braid, and caked make-up livened things up. One actress was in grease-paint, wearing a set of beach pyjamas in gold cloth and a turban. Her fingers dripped with jewels, and a leopard-cub on a strong chain sat at her feet. The Windsor took them all in its stride.
The soup was excellent; Phryne demolished it and her collation and three cups of tea, then returned to her room for a rest. She fell asleep, and didn’t wake up until the dressing-gong sounded for dinner.
While she had been asleep, her clothes had been unpacked, pressed, and hung up in the massive wooden wardrobe. The room was decorated in excellent, if subdued, taste, though she would have preferred a less aggressive pink for the lampshades and fewer statues of nymphs. Phryne had a grudge against nymphs. Her name, chosen by her father, had been Psyche. Regrettably, at her christening he had not been himself, due to a long evening at the club the night before. When called upon for her name, he had rummaged through the rags of a classical education and seized upon Phryne. So instead of Psyche the nymph, she was Phryne the courtesan.
After some investigation, Phryne had been comforted. The courtesan had certainly been a spirited young woman. In court, her case going badly, her Counsel had torn down the front of her robe and revealed her beautiful breasts to the Court. They had been so in awe of such perfection that they had acquitted her. And it had been Phryne who, having amassed a pile of ill-gotten gold, had offered to rebuild the walls of Thebes if she could have placed on them an inscription, ‘The walls of Thebes: ruined by time, rebuilt by Phryne the courtesan’. But the sober citizens of Thebes had preferred their ruins.
And serve them right, thought Phryne Fisher, donning silk undergarments and a peacock-blue gown by Patou. I hope that the Romans invaded them. Now, shall I wear the sapphires or the enamels?
She considered the long sparkling earrings, pulsing with blue fire, and hooked them through her ears. She swiftly tinted and arranged her face, brushed her hair vigorously, and threaded a fillet through the shining strands. Then she gathered a sea-green cloak and her purse, and went down to dinner.
She restored herself with a cocktail and an excellent lobster mayonnaise. Phryne was devoted to lobster mayonnaise, with cucumbers.
It was a fine night, and none of her companions looked to be in the least interesting, except for a humorous gentleman with a large party, who had smiled very pleasantly at her, in apparent admiration of the gown. He, however, was occupied and Phryne needed to think. She ascertained that the Block Arcade was still open, it being Saturday, and returned to her room to change into trousers and a silk pullover, stout shoes and a soft felt hat. In such garments, she was sufficiently epicene to attract no attention from the idle young men of the town but she could make her femininity felt if she wanted to.
Since she wanted to think and to walk, she donned her subfusc garb and went into the warm dusk.
Trams passed with a rush and a rumble; the city smelt of autumn leaves, smoke and dust. She walked, as the doorman had directed, straight down Collins Street. In case it turned cool, she had put on a reefer jacket, box-pleated, with pockets, and as she was unencumbered with a purse, her hands were unusually free. Forests of brass plaques decorated the sober buildings of Collins Street; it reminded her of Harley Street, and London, though the crowds were noisier here, and cleaner, and there were fewer beggars. Phryne felt the crackle of leaves under her shoes.
She passed the Presbyterian Church, the Manse, the Baptist Church, and paused on the other side of the road to stare at the Regent Theatre, a massive pile, decorated to within an inch of the stress-tolerances of concrete. It was so unashamedly vulgar that Phryne rather liked it.
A group of factory girls, all art-silk stockings and feathers, bright with red and blue and green shifts and plastered with a thick veneer of Mr Coles’s products, jostled past Phryne in the harsh street, shrilling like sparrows. Phryne resumed her even pace, passing through the crowd under the Town Hall eaves and across Swanston Street.
CHAPTER THREE
She said, ‘My life is dreary, dreary, Would God that I was dead!’
Tennyson ‘Mariana’
Cec cocked a thumb at a girl drooping in a tall man’s arms on the pavement in Lonsdale Street.
‘Tiddly,’ commented Bert as he came to a halt. ‘And only eleven in the morning. Cruel, innit?’
‘Yair, mate?’ he yelled to the man, who was hailing him, ‘where ya goin’?’
‘Richmond,’ replied the man, hauling the girl forward by the waist and packing her ungently into the cab next to Cec. ‘She’ll give you the address. Here’s the fare.’ He thrust a ten-shilling note into Bert’s face and slammed the door. ‘Keep the change,’ he added over his shoulder, and he hurried away, almost breaking into a run as he rounded the corner into Queen Street. The crowd swallowed him, and frantic honking and personal remarks from the traffic behind as to Bert’s parentage made him move on.
‘He was in a bloody hurry,’ Bert commented. ‘Beg pardon, Miss. What’s the address?’
The girl blinked and rubbed her eyes, licking cracked lips.
‘I can go home, now,’ she whispered. ‘I can go home.’
‘Yair, and the fare paid, too. Where’s home?’ asked Bert in a loud voice calculated to pierce an alcoholic fog. ‘Carm on, Miss, can’t you remember?’
The girl did not reply, but slid bonelessly sideways until she was leaning on Cec’s shoulder. He lifted her gently and said to Bert, ‘Something wrong, mate. I can’t smell no booze. She’s crook. Her skin’s hot as fire.’