Away With The Fairies (20 page)

‘Dead?’ said Mrs Corder.

‘Murdered,’ said Dot.

‘I can’t say I’m surprised,’ commented Mrs Corder.

‘I work for Miss Phryne Fisher,’ said Dot, handing over one of Phryne’s engraved cards. ‘She’s helping the police with their enquiries. She wants to eliminate as many people as she can so the police won’t make a scandal.’

‘She’s protecting Artemis,’ declared Mrs Corder. Her hands, Dot noticed, had a slight tremor. A small heap of off-white fur revealed itself to be a Scotch terrier, which began to sniff Dot’s ankles suspiciously.

‘And Artemis’s clients,’ said Dot.

‘God, yes,’ Mrs Corder passed a hand over her forehead. ‘The Hon. Phryne Fisher, eh? Very well, I’ll talk. Isn’t that what they say in the movies? Come into the kitchen, the girl’s just gone. Would you like some tea? And there are gingernuts. I think there are. Come along, McTavish. This is my little friend, McTavish. Isn’t he divine?’

The terrier, still sniffing Dot as though his Presbyterian ancestors had endowed him with the ability to scent out Catholics, trotted at her heel. Dot tried not to wonder how much value was about to be bitten out of her stockings. Mrs Corder was leading the way through an immaculate hall. Every picture was exactly square to the wall and every surface gleamed. ‘Come and sit down, Miss Williams. I’m sure that she put the tea somewhere.’

Mrs Corder appeared so unhinged that Dot made the tea, finding the crockery, the ingredients and even the gingernuts by a sort of psychic echo-location. Dot had spent so much time in other people’s kitchens that she divined where they might put the tea caddy without thinking. McTavish accepted a gingernut with a reluctant growl, probably considering that a decent Kirk Elder should not be asked to take food from the hand of the Scarlet Woman.

This was a very modern kitchen, spare and elegant. The linoleum was new, the sink and sink-heater still had labels attached to the pipes and the room smelt faintly of paint. The tea set was unchipped, fine German china of the flowing Art Decoratif lines which Phryne favoured. Mrs Corder had just completed the redecoration of her kitchen. A bribe, perhaps, from the impotent husband?

Dot poured the tea and sat down. Mrs Corder took a deep sip and declared, ‘I can’t imagine why I wrote to Artemis. I wanted to have a companionate marriage. I don’t like being … being messed around. And Donald is a good man. We have the same tastes, read the same books, like the same plays and music. We like good food and wine and small parties. He has his group of men who do men things and I have my girlfriends. We go out together, shopping and so on. But I was listening to Julia talking about the body-urge, the poetry of the flesh, and I thought I’d like to try it, but I had no idea of how to go about it, so I asked Artemis and she told me …’

‘What did she tell you? Do you still have the letter?’

‘No, no, I burned it. It was so humiliating.’ Mrs Corder shuddered. ‘She said to buy a pretty negligee and have a scented bath and make a nice dinner with wine and then to snuggle up to him and touch him.’

‘And?’ asked Dot, not knowing whether she could cope with the reply.

‘Disaster,’ said Mrs Corder. ‘He told me to stop behaving like a tart and stormed out and didn’t come back for two days. Then he wouldn’t talk to me for a week. And when I finally swore I would never, never do such a thing again, he told me to forget it and I suppose it’s all right but I’ll never forgive that Artemis for telling me to do such a thing. I was so embarrassed. He looked at me as though I was a … a …’

‘It’s all over now,’ soothed Dot. ‘Drink your tea.’

‘But if this should get out,’ wailed Mrs Corder. ‘If this should get into the papers, it will be the end of it, I swear, he’ll leave me and then what will I do?’

‘It won’t get into the papers,’ said Dot. ‘Not if you help Miss Fisher. Now tell me, did you know Artemis? Who she was, where she lived?’

‘I tried to find out,’ confessed Mrs Corder. ‘I called at
Women’s Choice
and asked to see Artemis and they told me that she didn’t work in the office. They said they sent the letters to her. I followed a little blonde office girl up the road to the GPO but I couldn’t see over her shoulder without attracting too much attention. So I gave it up. Anyway, Don had come home by then and everything was back to normal. Except that I felt like a wrung-out rag.’

‘Indeed,’ murmured Dot. ‘Where were you on Sunday morning?’

‘I don’t see what business—’ began Mrs Corder, then realised. Dot caught a glint of excitement in the grey eyes. ‘Of course, I am being asked to account for my movements. How thrilling! I rose late on Sunday and made a nice breakfast for my husband and myself. Sausages, eggs, grilled tomatoes and bacon, if you must know. I must have got up at about nine and we breakfasted at ten.’

‘And, er …’ Dot was unsure how to phrase her next question. ‘There was no one … with you?’

‘Only McTavish. He always sleeps on my bed, don’t you, darling?’

McTavish was not a compellable witness. ‘Do you drive, Mrs Corder?’

‘No,’ said Mrs Corder. ‘I can always take a taxi if I need to get somewhere in a hurry. But on that Sunday morning I was being lazy. My husband could confirm that, but please don’t ask him.’

‘I can’t promise,’ said Dot honestly. ‘But I don’t think we’ll need to. Thanks for the tea, Mrs Corder. Goodbye, McTavish.’

McTavish gave Dot a glare which told her that she had not been forgiven for the Counter Reformation. Dot left, in need of a tram to the city and the Travellers’ Rest. From thence she would go to Russell Street to see if Jack Robinson had found the post office box used by ‘Desperate’, deceased. Then she would have a modest lunch in Coles cafeteria and follow the path. Wherever it led.

Phryne Fisher was halfway to South Yarra on the tram. She was making a list of what she still needed to know. Who was Marshall and Co.? Who was ‘Desperate’?

The tram inched across St Kilda Road and turned into a street lined on one side with the massive, ancient trees of the Botanical Gardens and on the other with the walls and buildings of Melbourne Grammar School. Fortunately the scholars were still virtuously pursuing their studies and not gadarening onto the tram trampling all before them, as was the way of boys.

Phryne loved tram travel. It combined the convenience of not having to drive (which nowadays meant keeping a continual alert for madmen, trucks, straying bicycles and instant children, dogs and footballs), with the airy confidence of a vehicle which weighs nine tons moving on its own predestinate tracks. Anything, short of a tank, which hit a tram would regret it.

In the summer it was very pleasant to sit in the wood-lined, open part of the tram, smoking a reflective gasper and meditating on the universe. Or, in Phryne’s case, the complicated matter of Miss Lavender, Artemis, and the threatening letters. Phryne still had no clue as to who had sent Miss Lavender the ‘you bitch’ letters, though she suspected that the writer was not as illiterate as he or she wished to appear. Were not anonymous letters, like poisoning, a province of female criminals?

‘So they say,’ said Phryne to herself, with Nellie Melba. ‘What say they? Let them say.’

A very well-dressed lady with shoulder blades you could have used to cut cheese moved away from Phryne and ostentatiously turned her back. Phryne grinned. The tram rounded another corner and clanked past respectable lodging houses and apartments. The notebook snapped shut in Phryne’s hands. She closed her eyes.

She had only drowsed, it seemed, for a moment, when she woke and realised that she was past her stop and heading for pastures new. She pulled the cord and got out, crossing the road and walking back toward Tintern Avenue. The sun was hot and her shoes were not well designed for tramping. She was tired when she reached the huge gate in the wall and was admitted by a parlour maid in a well-washed uniform with a token wisp of white net attached to her forehead, apparently with strong glue.

‘Hello,’ said Phryne. ‘I’m Phryne Fisher, and I need a place to sit down, a glass of cold water, and Mrs Needham.’

‘Yes, Miss. If you’d come this way. Mrs Needham is expecting you.’

‘Are you Mercy Porter?’

‘Yes, Miss. I found the body,’ said Mercy with some pride. ‘And I fainted, too, and I never fainted before. Didn’t think I’d be such an idiot. I was that embarrassed when I came round and found them all staring at me.’

‘Did you feel anything odd, smell anything, when you felt faint?’

‘Miss Lavender’s cottage always smelt strong,’ said Mercy. ‘All them different scents, roses and almonds, enough to make anyone come over all unnecessary. Anyway, Miss, if you’d like to sit here,’ she pulled out a chair at the parlour table, ‘I’ll just go and get Mrs Needham and your glass of water. Hot today, isn’t it?’

Phryne assented. In due course, Mercy came back with a glass of iced water on a small silver tray. Behind her came Mrs Needham.

Murder in her household had not been kind to Mrs Needham. Her eyes were pink-rimmed and her hands plucked incessantly at her belt, the tablecloth, the seam of her left sleeve and her buttons, which were loosening under the strain. Phryne hoped that she could solve this case before Mrs Needham quite ruined her wardrobe.

‘Miss Fisher?’ she asked in a hollow tone. The respect due to a titled person was the only consideration which stopped her from saying, ‘You again?’

‘Like a bad penny,’ said Phryne, answering the thought. ‘I’m just going to talk to some of your residents, Mrs Needham, nothing to worry about. I’m as anxious as you are to conclude this matter quietly.’

‘Have your enquiries … progressed?’ demanded Mrs Needham.

‘They’re coming along nicely. Tell me, who is at home?’

‘Mr and Mrs Hewland. They’ve just come back from their walk. They always take a walk at this hour. Then they have a little nap until tea. Such nice, quiet people.’

‘So they are,’ said Phryne. ‘Anyone else?’

‘I believe that Mrs Gould is in. She was in for lunch, I believe. Mr Bell is pottering in the garden. Otherwise they are all out. Mr Carroll and Mr Opie are in the city, Mrs Opie, Wendy, Miss Gallagher and Miss Grigg are at that women’s magazine. Oh, dear! I am forgetting Professor Keith, how dreadful. He’s in. Miss Keith is at the hairdresser’s. She always gets her hair done on Wednesday.’

‘I’ll wander up to see the good professor when I’ve finished this glass of water. Thanks, Mrs Needham. I think I can see a pattern developing. Won’t be long before we are all out of your hair.’

‘Do you think so?’ Sudden hope made her hand jerk and she pulled off the button she had been fiddling with. ‘It’s awful about poor Miss Lavender, but I need to make a living. I can’t leave the Garden Apartment empty for too much longer.’

‘I understand.’ Phryne stood up, missing Ping’s tail by one-eighteenth of an inch. She had detected the dog’s plot when she heard him shuffling around under the table, arranging his plumed tail within easy reach. He would garner an oodle of sympathy if someone stood on him, and this visitor was a good reliable tail treader. She smiled slightly at his snuffle as she went out into the sunshine again. Ping had found Miss Fisher a disappointment.

Professor Keith so resembled a stage professor that it was hard to look beyond the bald head, the white beard, the pipe, the shirtsleeves, the tweed waistcoat stuffed with notes and the fountain pen. He was holding it in one ink-stained hand as he answered the door, scowling. Phryne had been scowled at by experts.

‘Bit of trouble with the fountain pen, Professor? Lead me to it,’ said Phryne, taking it out of his grasp. ‘There is a lot to be said for fountain pens—one is not forever dipping, but they do take careful handling, particularly the expensive ones. Presentation, was it?’

Phryne perched on the desk in a large, sunny room full of potted plants and books. The professor sat down in his big leather chair and looked bemused. His office had just been augmented by a beautiful young woman with a daring red hat who was, moreover, very good with fountain pens. He watched her sure hands as she filled the little rubber thingy, unscrewed the intractable metal gadget, swooshed up the ink and reassembled the pen, all without getting a drop of ink on her person or her hands.

‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘I’ve never managed that.’

‘You’re used to being looked after,’ observed Phryne. ‘No one is mollycoddled like a professor. No one works harder, either,’ she added before Keith could reply.

‘Who are you?’ he asked instead.

‘Phryne Fisher.’ She held out her hand and he shook it. ‘I’m looking into the Miss Lavender matter for the police. Trying, for a wonder, not to make a scandal. I’ve read your police statement.’

‘Then you’d better have a drink. What’s your poison? Gin, like all these young women?’

‘Whisky,’ said Phryne. ‘With a little water.’ She waited until the professor had made her a small drink and himself a larger one and asked, ‘I gather you didn’t take to our Miss Lavender?’

‘She was an interfering old busybody,’ said the professor.

‘Tact,’ suggested Phryne.

‘That’s Sunday school language to what I would have said if you hadn’t been a lady,’ said the professor frankly. ‘It’s no use hiding my opinion. It would look suspicious. Police might leap to the wrong conclusions.’

‘They have been known to do that,’ said Phryne. ‘But not when I am advising them. So, tell me, what was she being nosy about?’

‘Me and my niece Margery,’ said the professor. His moustache twitched when he was cross. Phryne found it hard to take her eyes off it.

‘What about you and your niece?’

‘Whether she was my niece, dammit, or my mistress.’

‘And what is she?’ asked Phryne in a friendly tone.

‘My brother’s daughter,’ said the professor. He found it hard to take offence when the questions were being asked by such a stylish young woman. ‘She’s had a bad time and I won’t have her ballyragged. I used to play peekaboo with her when she was a baby, taught her to swim, gave her her first doll. I wasn’t very close to my brother, but I always loved Margery.’

‘What sort of bad time?’ asked Phryne, so quietly that the professor carried on his train of thought without appearing to notice.