‘Is this a personal vendetta?’
‘But yes,’ said the Princesse. ‘Of course. My daughter died of it. She was these children’s mother.’
‘What do you want me to do?’ Phryne asked.
‘Tell us if you find anything. And come with me, in the morning, to Madame Breda’s Turkish Bath.’
‘But I do not suspect snow,’ said Phryne.
‘Perhaps you should,’ said the Princesse.
Phryne agreed. The Princesse pierced her down to the undergarments with her old, needle-sharp eyes, nodded, and clipped Sasha affectionately across the ear.
‘Go, fool and dance with the mademoiselle again, since your feet are better on the floor than in your mouth,’ she chided. Sasha held out his arms, and Phryne walked into them, where she fitted comfortably, and they danced until her attention was claimed for dinner. Sasha faded away with a backward glance to join his sister and the Princesse high up on the left-hand side of the table. Phryne was seated between Lydia and the affable Robert Sanderson, MP, two seats from their hostess.
It was hours before they would allow her to sit up, and even then she was so tired by the movement that she drooped over her tray. Cec had visited, bringing chrysanthemums, and he had spoken kindly to her, unlike some of the nurses, who were abrupt, cold and disapproving. She liked Cec. Her mother had come to weep over her narrow escape from death, and marvel that such damage could be wrought from a grazed knee.
Alice wondered what she looked like. They had cut off her hair, which she thought her best feature, and it was short and curly around her head, but she had got so thin that she could almost see through her wrists.
She had talked to the policeman, who had taken down everything she had falteringly said, in a black notebook. Unfortunately, she did not know much. She had been taken from the railway station in a vehicle with blacked windows — some sort of van, and she had been so hustled into the house that she had not been able to identify the street. It was narrow and cobbled, badly lit and noisy. She could smell cooking sausages and beer, as well as a chemical smell. She had given a description of the room, but it was so ordinary that it could have been one of a thousand innocent parlours, with piano and fireplace and antimacassars. She could not remember how she got out onto Lonsdale Street, after spending two days in a spare stretcher bed in the corner of the room, along with another girl, who said nothing, but moaned in a foreign language.
She did not know why they had kept her so long, except that the foul George had seemed to want her there. He had only become panicky when he felt how hot she was.
A pale, well-dressed lady had looked into the room once, and then hastily shut the door. She had been dressed entirely in dark blue and had been very pretty.
The policeman had seemed disappointed and had gone away, begging her to call him if she remembered more.
Meanwhile, she had nothing to do but drink her egg- and-milk and sleep. All of her life she had worked. Being idle was a strange sensation.
Having been brought back to life, she had no temptation to give up again, although she was so tired and thin and listless. Besides, Cec visited her every day and sat by her bed. He was silent for the most part, but there was something comforting about his silence, and he held her hand as if it was an honour. Alice was not used to this.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Oh, what can ail thee, Knight at Arms, Alone and palely loitering.
John Keats ‘La Belle Dame Sans Merci’
The first course, a delicate asparagus soup, passed politely enough, with Lydia offering timid comments on the Melbourne weather, to which Robert Sanderson responded in hearty agreement.
‘They say, if you don’t like the weather, just wait half an hour and it changes. Makes matters of dress dashed difficult, I can tell you.’
‘Not so much for gentlemen,’ observed Phryne. ‘You are forced to wear the same uniform whether it is hot or cold, wet or dry; I believe it has been described as the “Assyrian Panoply of the Gentleman”. Do you not get tired of it?’
‘Yes, perhaps, Miss Fisher, but what would you have me do? I can’t go about in old flannel bags and a red tie, like those artist chaps up in Heidelberg. The people who have done me the honour to entrust me with the exercise of sovereign power expect a certain standard, and I am delighted to follow their wishes. In this, at least, I can please them. Not, alas, in much else.’
Phryne digested this speech along with the asparagus soup. Anyone who could clothe a trite statement in such orotund periods was obviously born to be a politician. The soup passed, and the entrée — whitebait with accompaniments of lemon and buttered toast — made its appearance. The food was delicious, but the conversation was beginning to bore Phryne. Mindful of her task, she could not divert the company with anything shocking, which was her usual method of gaining either interesting conversation or sufficient silence to eat in comfort. Mrs Cryer was holding forth on the insolence of the poor.
‘A dirty man — I mean, really smelly — opened the door of my taxi, and had the nerve to ask for money! And when I gave him a penny, he almost threw it at me, and called me a most insulting name.’
Phryne diverted a few entrancing moments wondering what he had called her. A mean bitch, perhaps, which would seem to meet the case admirably.
‘A similar thing happened to me,’ reminisced Sanderson. Phryne looked at him. She was hoping that her good opinion of him was not about to be spoiled. ‘A grubby fellow polished the windows of my car, with a villainously dirty rag, so that I could hardly see out of ’em, then asked me for a sixpence — and offered to clean ’em again for a shilling, with a new rag.’
Sanderson chuckled, but Mrs Cryer bridled.
‘I hope that you did not give him anything, Mr Sanderson!’
‘Of course I did, ma’am.’
‘But he would only spend it on drink! You know what the working classes are!’
‘Indeed, ma’am, and why should he not spend it on drink? Would you deprive the poor, whose lives are bad and miserable and comfortless enough, of the solace of a little relief from grinding poverty? A sordid, sodden relief perhaps, but would you be so heartless as to deny the poor even that pleasure in which all of us indulge at your generous expense?’ He looked meaningfully at the glass of wine at Mrs Cryer’s place — it was her third, yet she had eaten very little. An unbecoming flush mounted to her hostess’s hairline, and Phryne leapt in the conversational breach, her opinion of the MP confirmed. She had a feeling that she had heard the speech before — Dr Johnson, was it? — but it did him credit. However, Phryne wanted to gain a few points with Mrs Cryer, and this seemed to be a good time to earn some.
‘Tell me, Mr Sanderson, what party do you belong to? I know so little about politics in Melbourne.’
‘I am, and always have been, a Tory, and I am pleased to say that we are presently in an excellent position. At the moment I have the honour to represent the electorate in this area; I was born here. My father came from Yorkshire, but I have never been home. Never had the time, somehow. There are many things that keep me here. At present, for example, we are setting up soup-kitchens, and a measure of work will be provided for the unemployed, for which they will receive sustenance wages.’
‘Won’t that be very expensive?’
‘Yes, probably, but we cannot allow the working men to starve.’
‘What about the working women?’ asked Phryne artlessly. There was a shocked silence.
‘Why, Miss Fisher, don’t say that you’re a suffragette!’ giggled Mrs Cryer. ‘So indelicate!’
‘Did you vote in the last election, Mrs Cryer?’ asked Robert Sanderson, and his hostess glared at him. Phryne thought that she had better leave politics alone, and changed the subject.