Kerry Greenwood - Introducing the Honourable Phryne Fisher

Bert and Cec seized the Great Hypno.

‘Just one punch,’ pleaded Bert. ‘Just the one.’

‘No, I gotta get him back to headquarters. He’s a mine of information. He knows all about the vice rings and all the white slaving in Victoria. I don’t want him damaged!’

Diving under the arms of the struggling men as quick as a bird after a worm, Jane launched herself out of Dot’s embrace and flew at Mr Burton, fingers hooked into claws. She was mad with release and the intolerable rush of returned memory, and Ember, springing from her shoulder, clawed at whatever foothold he could reach as Cec restrained the struggling child and hauled her away from the ruin of Henry Burton’s face.

Ember fled to Cec, as all cats did, and tucked his small spade-shaped head in the crook of the tall man’s arm. Jane, her fury spent, buried her face in his shoulder, and he held her head down so that she should not have yet another horror to burden her memory.

Razor-sharp, kitten claws scrabbling desperately for a hold had done what no poor twelve-year-old whore had managed. They had dimmed Henry Burton’s magical gaze.

Shocked, Bert released the man, and Mr Butler, who had been an enthralled spectator throughout, telephoned for an ambulance. The room was silent, except for Jane’s sobbing and the muted bubbling snuffle of Burton, who had clamped his hands over his face. The ambulance came in ten minutes, during which time no one moved or spoke, and Robinson and his shorthand writer and his prisoner went away. The front door shut. Still no one moved. Cec stroked the kitten and Jane with equal gentleness, and Dot drew a deep breath and stood up.

‘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

. . and she was quite pleased to find that there was a real one blazing away as brightly as the one she had left behind.

‘So I shall be as warm here as I was in the old room,’ thought Alice. ‘Warmer, in fact, because there’ll be no one here to scold me away from the fire.’

Lewis Carroll Alice Through the Looking Glass

‘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?’