Introducing the Honourable Phryne Fisher

by Kerry Greenwood

  ‘Yes,’ said Lydia, a trace of animation creeping across her features. ‘It was very strange, full of meanings which I just couldn’t grasp, and the music was odd — almost off key, but not quite.’

  ‘I know what you mean,’ agreed Phryne, reminding herself that Lydia was not of such profound stupidity as she chose to appear. She offered her a cigarette, and lit another for herself. The dancers had completed their foxtrot, and Sasha was making for Phryne. Lydia pressed close to her.

  ‘I like you,’ she said confidingly in her little-girl voice. ‘And now that Russian boy is coming to take you away. Come to luncheon tomorrow — will you?’

  The little powdered face turned up with a pout to Phryne. She felt a sudden sinking of the stomach. She had met women of this cast of mind before — the clingers, fragile and utterly ruthless, who wore down friend after friend with their emotional demands, always ill and exhausted and badly treated, but still retaining enough energy to scream reproaches at the retreating friend as she fled, guilt-stricken, down the hall. And the next week to replace that friend — always female — with another. Phryne recognised Mrs Andrews as an emotional trap, and had no choice but to throw herself in.

  ‘Delighted,’ she said promptly. ‘What time?’

  ‘One o’clock,’ sighed Lydia, as the Russian boy emerged from the sea of people as sleek as a seal, smiling enchantingly. He took Phryne’s hand, kissed the knuckle more lingeringly than was necessary, and gestured at the dancing. The band were essaying a tango, with shuddering atonal shriekings added to make the sound modern, and Phryne smiled on her companion. The tango was a dance she had learned in Paris from the most expensive gigolo on the Rue du Chat-qui-Pêche, and she had not had an opportunity to dance it in polite society. They attracted general attention as he led her out on the floor; both slim and pure of line, and the young man so unadorned that he could have been naked.

  The whole room had stopped to watch them as they began to dance, so fluid their movements, so highly charged the sacramental caresses. Sasha slid, moved, turned, with the effortless grace expected of a dancer, but there was more in his tango than mere practice. The more impressionable of the ladies in the audience were reminded of a panther; and one of the serving-maids, clutching her silver spoon to her bosom, whispered to her companion, a waiter, ‘Ooh, he’s a sheik!’

  The waiter was unimpressed with Sasha, but Phryne’s dancing, as the satin and fur flowed ahead and behind her, affected him profoundly. She could combine the grace of a queen with the style of a demimondaine, and he had never seen anything like her in his life.

  ‘Oh, if I could ’ave ’er!’ he whispered, and the serving-maid rapped him sharply with the spoon.

  Dancing with Sasha, Phryne decided, was almost as exciting as doing a loop-the-loop in a new plane in a high wind. He was graceful, and she could feel the ripple of excellent muscles beneath the leotard which fitted him like a second skin; he was exceedingly responsive to her slightest movement, but he led with confidence; she had no fear that he would drop her, and he smelt sweetly of a male human and Russian Leather soap. Her emotions were stirred, but she could not afford to become infatuated with him. She was explaining patiently to herself that she was not infatuated, but merely sensibly attracted to one who was personable, graceful and an excellent dancer, when they swept to a synchronised stop, and bowed to the applause which broke out all around them.

  Sasha was holding her hand and drawing her down into yet another bow. Phryne woke up, resisted the pull, and removed her hand from his, not without an inward pang. The boy turned her gently by the shoulders as the band lurched into a foxtrot, and Sasha said his first words.

  ‘You dance very well,’ he commented. ‘I have seen you dance before.’

  ‘Oh?’ asked Phryne, resisting the urge to move into his embrace. He had the muscular nervousness of a highly bred horse; intensely alive, and reacting to every touch.

  ‘Yes, in the Rue du Chat-qui-Pêche,’ continued Sasha, ‘with Georges Santin.’

  ‘So it was,’ agreed Phryne, wondering if the young man was attempting to blackmail her. ‘It was Georges who taught me to tango, and it cost me a pretty penny, I can tell you. I saw you in Paris too, with the Compagnie des Ballets Masqués in the old Opera. Why did you leave so suddenly?’ she asked artlessly.

  If the young snake was intending to ask embarrassing questions, then he would learn that Phryne had a fair battery of them too.

  ‘It. . it was expedient,’ said Sasha, missing a step and recovering instantly. He spoke thenceforward in French, in which he was fluent, but with a heavy Russian accent. Phryne’s French was suitably Parisian, but in her Left Bank days she had picked up a number of indelicate apache idioms, and used them with alarming candour.

  ‘I find you very attractive, my beautiful boy, but I cannot be blackmailed.’

  ‘The Princesse told me that it would not work,’ admitted Sasha ruefully. ‘And I should not have persisted against her wisdom, but I did, and see what a fool I am revealed to be? Beautiful, charming lady, forgive your humble suppliant!’

  ‘Before I forgive you, tell me what you wanted,’ said Phryne.

  Sasha paused, quivering, then led her to where the old Princesse sat perched on a golden metal chair, nibbling caviar russe and surveying the dancers with a sardonic eye, like an old parrot on a perch. She eyed Sasha and Phryne, and cackled.

  ‘Et puis, mon petit,’ she cackled. ‘Next time you will listen to me. Always I am right — infallibly right. It runs in the family; my father told the Tsar to attend to Rasputin and not declare war, but he did, and came to a bad end. As did poor Russia. And now I come to think of it, me. And you. Foolish boy! Is mademoiselle still speaking to you, worthless one? I told you she is not one to yield to pressure! But she might have reposed in your arms and agreed to your every wish had you used what charm the Lord God saw fit, for some reason, to endow you with!’

  Phryne, observing that her partner was thoroughly chastened, and rather at a loss as to how to react, claimed a cocktail and some of the Princesse’s caviar russe, and resolved to wait until the old woman’s attention could be diverted from the hapless Sasha to explain.

  ‘I still might — they are very pleasant arms to repose in,’ she agreed placidly. ‘But I need more information. What do you want? Money?’

  ‘Not precisely,’ said the old woman. ‘We have a thing to do, and we believe that you can help us. You are investigating the strange illness of that female in rose, are you not? Colonel Harper—’e is an old friend of mine.’

  ‘I can give you no information until you reciprocate,’ temporised Phryne through a mouthful of the excellent caviar. The old woman cackled again.

  ‘Bon. You suspect the snow, do you not?’

  ‘Cocaine?’ asked Phryne, thinking that it was a surprising question. It had not entered her head that Lydia was a drug-fiend.

  ‘We came from Paris in pursuit of the trade,’ stated the old woman calmly. ‘We of the Compagnie des Ballets Masqués are chasing the king of the trade. We believe that he is here — and you will help us find him. You cannot approve of it?’

  Phryne, recalling the haggard cocaine-addicts, twitching and vomiting to an early grave through torments not surpassed by the Inquisition, shook her head. She did not trust her interlocutor, and she had difficulty believing anything which she was hearing, but both of them seemed serious.

  ‘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.

  ‘Any of you gentlemen interested in flying?’

  To Phryne’s great relief, one Alan Carroll piped up from across the table with an enthusiastic summary of the latest Avro, and the conversation went on to a discussion of scientific miracles, the telephone, the wireless, the car, the electric train, the flying machine and the chip-heater.

  The roast chickens were brought in, and the conversation flagged. Lydia, however, continued to speak to her husband in vicious undertones. Phryne was unobtrusively attentive and what she heard confirmed her opinion that despite Lydia’s vapid appearance she had a whim of iron.

  ‘I tell you that Matthews is crooked. He’s laughing at your naivety. You must not believe him, that gold mine is fake. There was an article in the Business Review about it — did you not read it? I marked it for you. You will lose every penny we own, and then you’ll co
me crying to me. I told you, you have no business sense. Leave the investing to me! I know what I’m doing.’

  Mr Andrews took his tongue-lashing meekly.

  Dinner concluded with ices and custards and fruit, and the ladies withdrew to take coffee and gossip. Lydia clung to Phryne but did not speak, and Phryne had no further chance to talk to the Princesse, who was holding her own court in a corner, along with a flagon of orange liqueur and a samovar. Phryne sipped coffee, then shook off Lydia for ten minutes. She re-emerged to find the ballroom in darkness. She understood that the dancers were to begin, and found the Princesse attached to her elbow.

  ‘You have decided?’ she whispered.

  ‘I agree, provided that you tell me what you find,’ Phryne answered without turning her head. The old woman cackled disconcertingly.

  ‘Quiet, now. They are going to perform.’

  The guests were silenced by a painful mixture of Schoen- berg and Russsian folk-song, derived from musically obtuse Styrian peasants who had absorbed their atonality along with their mother’s milk. The sound hurt; but it could not be ignored. Too much of it, Phryne was convinced, would curdle custard.

  The music gave a sudden screech, and the young woman, whose name Phryne had discovered was Elli, leapt into the ring of people. She was dressed in her leotard, with the addition of an apron and a long fair wig, done in plaits. She was both comic and rather touching, as she skipped along, occasionally pausing to pick flowers, which she gathered in her apron. She danced a little childish, almost clumsy dance, indicating that it was spring and a lovely day. She knelt to dip water from a pool, then caught sight of her reflection. She made a few grimaces, and unplaited her hair, trying out the effect and smiling through the long tresses.

  Creeping, silent as a cat, came Sasha, almost invisible in his unrelieved black, with a white mask in his hand. The maiden caught sight of him, bridled, and dimpled coyly. Sasha smiled, a guileless grin, and they danced a clumsy pas-de-deux, while the music hooted and roiled in peasant fashion. They circled the room once, tripping over each other’s feet, and the audience began to laugh. Then the maiden twirled away on her own, apron flaring as her invisible flowers scattered in her path.