Kerry Greenwood - Introducing the Honourable Phryne 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?’

‘You promise not to tell anyone at all?’ pressed Eunice, stopping with an armload of dreadful dresses.

‘Not a soul,’ promised Phryne, crossing her heart.

Eunice opened a little door and slipped inside. Phryne had taken it for a powdering closet, but it was a study. There was a professional looking typewriter and a load of carefully numbered manuscripts. Phryne remembered the packet of foolscap paper she had picked up in the train.

‘You’re a writer!’ she cried.

Eunice Henderson blushed. ‘Romantic novels for railway reading, and, dear, they are too, too terrible.’

‘What are you working on at present?’

‘Nothing at the moment, I have just been correcting the proofs of Passion’s Bondslaves . It is quite the most disgusting drivel I ever read, so I am sure that it will be just as successful as Silken Fetters and Midnight of the Sheik . I sold a thousand copies of that in two weeks, and it’s still in print. You won’t tell, Phryne, will you?’

‘Of course not, my dear, but I think that it is so enterprising of you! How did you begin?’

‘Well, Mother always liked to read the things, revolting slop for the most part, and I learned typewriting so that I could do Mother’s accounts. I was practising on the machine, and I thought I’d see if I could write the stuff, it seemed easy enough, and, my dear, it simply poured onto the page, I could hardly type fast enough to keep up. I never knew that I had such an indelicate imagination,’ she confessed, throwing down the dresses in a rustling heap. ‘So I sent it to a publisher who knew my father and could be sworn to secrecy, and there it was. I can write one every three months, and the market seems rather under-supplied with tripe than otherwise. So I could afford lavender-water for Mother, and handmade chocolates, and trips to Ballarat, and. . oh, dear, I had forgotten all about Mother! How heartless of me!’

Eunice sat down on the brass bed and wept for five minutes, at the end of which she wiped her eyes, replaced her handkerchief, and went on with the conversation.

‘It will catch me like that for awhile, now that my face is healed and I’m not doped with pain-killers,’ she said sadly. ‘Poor Mother! Who could have killed her?’

‘For awhile I thought that it was your young man, Eunice, God forgive me,’ confessed Phryne, sorting shoes into a pile. ‘But it can’t have been him.’

‘It can’t?’ she asked tautly.

‘No, it seems that he was in police custody that night. Drunk and disorderly.’

‘How. . how very unlike him,’ Eunice flung three gloves onto the pile. ‘I have never seen him touch alcohol. . at least, very rarely. Never mind. I forgive your suspicions, Phryne, it did look black against him. Why did Mother keep seven unmatching stockings, do you think? What are we going to do with all this stuff?’

‘We are going to put all the clothes and so on in a big heap in the upstairs hall, and Dot will sort from there. Some of the things will go to deserving causes and the worst will be dropped off at the rag-pickers by Bert and Cec. All we have to do is to decide what you want to keep.’

‘All the stuff in here can go, and this carpet — it will probably roll if you can dislodge the corner. . thank you.’ They began to carry out a motely collection of old clothes, good clothes, handbags by the hundred, shoes ranging from the Victorian to the Edwardian, combs and boxes of caked powder, greasy hairpins, mob-caps and lacy petticoats. After two hours they had sorted out all the upstairs rooms and Phryne was ready for a cup of tea and a cigarette.

Dot, Ruth and Jane were working at the clothing mound, packing the good things into tea-chests and the rags into chaff-bags. Bert, Cec and the charwomen were removing the discarded furniture, knick-knacks, what-nots and so on into Bert’s disreputable van.

‘It really is lovely to clean out all this old rubbish,’ said Eunice as they passed the workers on the way to the kitchen. ‘But are you sure that anyone would want all this stuff? Look at that glass bowl over Great-Grandma’s wedding bouquet! What an excresence!’

Cec, who had earmarked the glass bowl as a present for his sweetheart, commented, ‘Real good glass, this. Made by a craftsman,’ and Miss Henderson smiled warmly.

‘Take it and enjoy it,’ she recommended.

Cec grinned.

Bert called from the door, ‘Are you coming, mate? A man hasn’t got all day!’ and Cec grabbed the glass dish and went.

Phryne and Eunice had their cup of tea, and surveyed the sterling work which had already been done. The floors were swept clean, the windows open, the fires burning, and the house smelt pleasantly of wood smoke and furniture polish.

‘It is very kind of you to help me, Phryne,’ she observed, ‘This will all be finished in one day, and I can sleep in my own bed tonight.’

‘You won’t mind being here on your own?’

‘No, dear, what could harm me? I am exorcising the ghosts of all of my family, and I shall be quite happy alone. I’m only keeping the basic furniture, and all of those ornaments and feathers and dead birds and seashells and small tables can go. I am throwing out the firescreen made by Aunt Matilda, whom I always hated, and dear Cousin Nell’s petit point chair, and Uncle John’s butterfly collection. It’s a fine empty feeling,’ she continued, a little intoxicated by all that space. ‘It’s a nice house, if it wasn’t all cluttered. And the curtains. I have always hated those heaped-up lace curtains.’