Away With The Fairies (15 page)

‘What then?’

‘Then we proofread, argue a lot, add bits that have been left out by mistake, take the galleys down again and have a quarrel with the printer because he has to reset some of his type and then—at last—we make ourselves the celebratory gin and tonic (or orangeade for Miss Nelson), eat ginger biscuits and begin again. I can’t imagine why we do this to ourselves, but there you are. That pause after all of the pages are delivered is a perfect opportunity for your interrogation, Miss Fisher.’

‘I think,’ said Phryne, suddenly liking Mrs Charlesworth, ‘that you had better call me Phryne.’

‘Georgina,’ said Mrs Charlesworth, holding out a hand. Phryne took it.

Mr Bell arrived, looking apologetic. He was sorry but the gardening piece wasn’t quite finished, could Mrs Charlesworth wait until tomorrow? He had a delivery of antiques coming in and they needed immediate attention. He was sure that one of the girls wouldn’t mind typing it for him when he delivered it tomorrow, perhaps rather late tomorrow, maybe Thursday would be better?

Mrs Charlesworth drew a deep breath and began to speak. Before Mr Bell knew it, his straw boater had been hung on a peg, he was seated at a typewriter, the cover had been whipped off, a pencil had been sharpened for him and paper rolled into the machine, and he was advised that if the gardening article was not forthcoming within the hour, Mrs Charlesworth would be looking for a new incarnation of Agricola.

Raising one finger, he began to type.

The slow, hunt-and-peck clack of the Smith Addison punctuated the morning. Miss Nelson came in and was immediately despatched, to her evident relief, to the post office to bring back any of Artemis’s letters and record them in the letter book. Mrs Charlesworth retired to her office to put the last touches to her editorial. Miss Prout finished the layout of ‘Victoria’s Stately Homes: Mount Macedon’ after a brief but acrimonious argument with Mrs McAlpin on the reduction of her photographs.

‘The trouble with photographers is that they believe that guff about every picture being worth a thousand words,’ she snarled.

‘The trouble with writers is that they don’t,’ replied Mrs McAlpin. ‘Well, Miss Fisher, we may as well begin the new issue with the first pictures of your gown. Miss Herbert?’

‘You can’t have Miss Herbert,’ said Miss Phillips. ‘Not yet. I have to clean up all these errors and I need her. After lunch,’ she pleaded.

‘Very well,’ said Mrs McAlpin. She looked around for someone else to help and decided to go and fetch some biscuits for morning tea. Phryne went with her.

After a brief and enjoyable debate about the merits of coconut macaroons—‘To me they always taste like Koko for the Hair’ was Mrs McAlpin’s opinion—walnut whirls, petits fours, melting moments and gingernuts, they settled on plain iced shortbread and were walking back along Hardware Lane when Phryne was suddenly shoved violently from behind.

She was not entirely unprepared. Since the incident of the night before, she had been keyed up, physically alert. So instead of flying under the wheels of a labouring dray, she managed an airborne twist and grabbed for her attacker. She had him by the shirtfront. For a moment she stared straight into his face. Then he lunged away out of her grip, and she was left with a handful of torn fabric and the view of a retreating back.

A Chinese man wearing a blue Chinese shirt. Was the Lin family out to remove her for asking about Lin Chung? If so, she would have their hides. Nailed, as Bert would have said, to a hay-barn door. What impertinence!

Mrs McAlpin said nothing but, ‘What a disagreeable incident. Really, the city has become most uncomfortable. Are you hurt, dear?’

‘No, but all this adventuring is hard on the stockings and I think I’ve burst a button.’

‘No, it’s just come undone. There we are.’ Mrs McAlpin buttoned Phryne’s jacket as though she was six. ‘Ah, here’s Mrs Opie and Wendy.’

‘I promised to take her out for ice cream. I might go down to the ice cream parlour at the Regent. Hello, Mrs Opie. Hello, Wendy.’

Wendy came forward and took Phryne’s hand, looking imploringly up into her face.

‘Ice cream?’ she whispered.

‘Ice cream,’ Phryne agreed. ‘Mrs Charlesworth’s waiting for that missing page, Mrs Opie, I’m sure you’re anxious to get on. Suppose I take Wendy for a little walk and bring her back in about an hour?’

‘That would be wonderful,’ said Mrs Opie. ‘Now you be good, Wendy.’

She took out a handkerchief and seemed about to spit on it and scrub the child, but was dissuaded by a dangerous glint in Wendy’s eye. Mrs Opie sighed, shoved back her hair and went up the stairs with Mrs McAlpin.

Phryne walked down Little Bourke Street and into Swanston, turned the corner and strode on. Wendy did her best to keep up but after three blocks was dragging on Phryne’s hand.

‘Oh, sorry,’ said Phryne, looking down and seeing a red face screwed up in a determination not to cry. ‘I do beg your pardon. I’ve got longer legs than you have, eh, Wendy? Let’s slow down. Would you like to look at the shops?’

‘Ice cream first,’ Wendy gasped. ‘Then shops.’

‘Very well.’ Phryne slowed down to a stroll. The city was looking prosperous, well dressed and harmless. But someone had tried to kill her, twice or possibly three times in two days. She had better make a contingency plan in case they succeeded while she had Wendy with her.

‘What has your mother told you about getting lost?’ asked Phryne.

‘Find a policeman,’ said Wendy promptly. ‘And tell him my name and address.’ She recited it in a fast singsong. ‘And then he’ll take me home.’

‘What does a policeman look like? Can you see one?’

Wendy scanned the street.

‘There.’ Her finger shot out. A policeman was directing traffic in the centre of the Bourke Street intersection. That would not be too far to run, even on short legs. They continued to the only ice cream parlour in Melbourne, where Wendy absorbed an ice cream sundae with not only chocolate sauce but also sprinkles, wafers and nuts. She was not greedy. She did not gobble. She savoured every mouthful as though it was her last. Phryne watched her with pleasure as she ate a fruit cocktail.

With ritual obeisances and a sacramental payment, they left the temple of ice cream and idled back through the city. Wendy was much taken with the toy train in the window of Foy and Gibsons’, but came away when requested and climbed the steep street without complaint, though she must have been tired by then.

Phryne carried her up the last set of stairs, fast asleep. She put the child down on the only padded chair without waking her and flexed a few muscles. Sleeping children gained weight according to the depth of their sleep.

Order appeared to have been restored in the office. Mr Bell typed his last word with a clack. The sheet was ripped out of the typewriter, the text and picture glued onto the layout block. It was added to the completed article on stately homes and the final version of ‘Your Child’, which Miss Herbert had typed. The editorial was complete, the contents page with its decorative border pasted up, the whole was enclosed in a large folder and Miss Nelson was sent out, rejoicing, to deliver it to the printer.

There was a general air of relaxation. The magazine had been delivered and mother and child were doing well. Miss Grigg put her feet on the desk and lit a small cigar. Miss Phillips stared blankly into space. Miss Prout and Miss Gallagher vanished into the kitchen to make tea. Mrs Opie dabbed at her face with a wet handkerchief, exhausted, looking as though she would like to have joined her daughter in a little nap. Miss Herbert exclaimed over her new hat.

‘It’s beautiful,’ she said, turning the bronze creation around. ‘But it must have cost pounds and pounds, Miss Fisher. You can’t just give it away.’

‘It’s no use to me,’ said Phryne. ‘I misjudged the colour in the shop lighting. It simply can’t be worn on black hair. Try it on.’

Miss Herbert obeyed. The hat was perfect. The bronze matched her hair and the bunch of cock’s feathers threw a green light onto her high complexion, subduing it. On Phryne it had been just a hat. On Miss Herbert it was an accolade.

‘Oh, how can I thank you?’ she asked, kissing Phryne on the cheek.

‘It was nothing,’ said Phryne.

Mrs Charlesworth came in, bringing her chair, and sat down in the midst of the desks. She looked pale and grave. Miss Grigg took her feet off the desk.

‘I have a terrible thing to tell you all,’ she said. ‘The police have told me that Miss Lavender was murdered. There will be an investigation. And I want to warn you that I will take a very dim view of anyone who talks to the press before this is sorted out. I’m sure that it had nothing to do with this magazine, but adverse publicity would ruin us. I’m certain that you understand.’

Nods all round.

‘And it might be proper,’ she said slowly, ‘if we all talked about Miss Lavender. Who knew her well?’

‘Not me,’ said Miss Herbert. ‘I think I only met her once.’

‘Nor me,’ said Miss Nelson nervously.

‘Mania for gnomes,’ said Mr Bell. ‘Mania for knowing things, too.’

‘Really?’ asked Phryne very gently.

‘Oh yes. We live in the same set of apartments, you know. She got into a hell of a row with old Professor Keith. He said she’d been snooping into his affairs—though I fancy that it was only one
affaire
, you know,’ said Mr Bell, warming to his topic. Who says men don’t gossip? Phryne thought. Men say men don’t gossip. ‘If that pretty piece Margery is his niece I’ll eat my boater.’

‘And Miss Lavender knew about this?’

‘I don’t think she wanted to do anything with the knowledge,’ said Miss Grigg. ‘She just liked to know. Gave her a sense of power, perhaps. I never knew that she had any friends. Never any visitors. No relatives, as far as I know.’

‘No,’ said Mrs McAlpin. ‘She had no relatives. And her manias, as you call them, Mr Bell—in my day young men were more respectful to older women—were perfectly explicable.’

‘Explicate,’ urged Miss Prout, scenting scandal.

‘She was raised in an entirely rationalist household,’ said Mrs McAlpin with strong disapproval. ‘No fancies, no stories.’

‘No God, no angels?’ murmured Phryne. Mrs McAlpin bestowed a smile on her.

‘Precisely. No religion, which is appalling. She was an only child and she was educated at home on strict rationalist lines. Facts, nothing but facts. I believe that Dickens used this in one of his novels.’

‘
Hard Times
,’ said Miss Herbert.

‘As it might be,’ said Mrs McAlpin. ‘Then the parents died and went, I trust, to their reward. I hope it was a hot one. What does a young woman with that kind of background and training do as soon as she has no guardians?’

‘Gets into trouble,’ said Phryne, and received another smile.

‘And so she did. She made an unwise marriage, bore a child which died and turned for consolation to various spiritualist organisations. Then her husband died and left her a reasonable competence and she came to the Presbyterian Church for instruction. She has been a member of my church for twenty years now. Never married again. Never showed any signs of wanting to marry after her unhappy experience. And is it any wonder that the poor woman broke out into fairies when she had been deprived of any fiction in her youth? The world is too harsh a place to contemplate directly, without a cushion of fancy and belief.’

‘Underneath are the everlasting arms,’ quoted Mrs Charlesworth.

‘But she was a terrible snoop,’ said Mr Bell.

‘She was very kind to me,’ objected Mrs Opie with a sniff. ‘I was walking in the garden late one night when Wendy wouldn’t sleep and she invited me in and gave me a drink and asked me what was wrong.’

‘Because she wanted to know all about you,’ said Miss Grigg unexpectedly. ‘She wanted to know all about everyone. She knew about Mr Carroll’s drinking and your domestic problems, she knew about Keith and his flapper and pried into the Hewlands’s religious beliefs. She was starting on Mrs Gould, she knew all about Mrs Needham and she tried very hard to find out something about Gally and me.’

‘And me,’ said Mr Bell. ‘How was I burned? How did it feel when the plane went down? I can’t answer questions like that, anyway, at the best of times. I didn’t like her and I don’t care who knows it. But I understand her better,’ he said, smoothing the side of his face. ‘I always thought there was a false note in all those gnomes. She was like those Melanesian tribes which have never been exposed to measles. They die when the traders arrive because they have no immunity. Miss Lavender had no immunity to fantasy and so it proliferated. Now, if you ladies will excuse me, I really have to get down to my warehouse and unpack these new goods.’

‘Where’s your warehouse?’ asked Phryne idly, lighting a gasper. ‘I might drop in with a cheque book and have a look. I need a new table.’

‘Sorry, Miss Fisher, I only sell to trade—I’m sure you understand.’

Phryne thought that she might be beginning to understand, indeed.

The meeting on Miss Lavender continued desultorily.

‘She was nice,’ Miss Gallagher insisted. ‘I had a bit of a difference of opinion with my dear Grigg here one night and she was very kind. Told me that friends mustn’t fall out and friendship was worth more than gold.’

Miss Gallagher seemed to be in earnest. Miss Grigg was watching her narrowly, probably wondering what the gushing Gally might have told the retentive Miss Lavender about their private affairs.

‘Just the sort of thing she would say. She was dreadfully old-fashioned,’ said Miss Prout. ‘I mean, her advice was so … staid.’

‘We are a staid magazine, Miss Prout,’ Miss Charlesworth reminded her.

‘Yes, but all that stuff about Christian resignation, keep the home together, put up with the beatings and the drunkenness.’ ‘And what would you have advised?’ asked Mrs Charlesworth.

‘Leave the b—beggar,’ said Miss Prout.

‘Easy to say,’ said Mrs McAlpin. ‘Divorce is difficult and expensive and at the end of it one may have an allowance sufficient to feed the children but one will probably be faced with trying to work and trying to care for children without help. Ask Mrs Opie how easy that is.’