“Then I want you to search the bush and ground just outside the McNaughton home for a worn hemp rope. It will probably be about five or six feet long, and I’m hoping that it has blood on it.
“Next, ask around for the local head kid. Find out what their favourite game was the week before the McNaughton murder. Please also collect for me all the illustrated papers for the last three weeks. Don’t forget the Illustrated London News.
“Last of all, scour the area for a place where they are replacing the gutter. McNaughton was killed with a large bluestone pitcher, and I want to know where it came from. It looked like a gutter stone to me. I rely on your intelligence and discretion. Don’t tell anyone what you are up to if you can avoid it by any means short of prison. Best regards and get your finger out. I need this stuff as soon as I can get it. Phryne Fisher. PS. A description of the girl and the old man is attached, and here is a few quid for expenses. PF.”’
Bert shook his head. ‘Where do we start, Cec?’
‘At the beginning, mate,’ replied Cec easily. ‘At the beginning.’
The doorbell rang in the Maldon house, and Henry raced for the door. He returned with an envelope in his hand.
‘No one there,’ he said. ‘But this letter.’
‘Handle it by the edges,’ said Phryne. ‘Slit the top. We don’t want to spoil any fingerprints, do we? Good. One sheet of cheap Coles’ paper enscribed by someone who is not used to writing.
‘“Dere Mr Maldon,”’ she read, ‘“we have yore dorter. Here is her ribon. We want five thou. Leave it in the holow tree stump in the Geelong Gardens tonite. You shal have her bak tomorow. The tree stump is on the left of the path, next to the band rotunda. A frend.”’
She shook the envelope and a blue Alice band fluttered out. Henry Maldon took it into both hands as if it was the Host and kissed it gently.
‘Right, produce the money and let’s get cracking.’
‘I can’t,’ said Henry simply. ‘I don’t have any money. I’ve spent it all. I bought two houses and a plane, and an annuity. I can sell them but it will take time. And meanwhile. .’
‘Candida will be fine,’ announced Molly, refreshed by an hour in the uncomplicated company of baby Alexander. ‘About now, I bet they are wishing they hadn’t taken her.’
Henry forced a small and rusty laugh.
Candida had been washed and clothed in an old white nightgown, and had accepted some bread and milk. She was as wary as a small animal and kept as far as possible from Sidney, who now regarded her with loathing. The big man, Mike, was nicer. He had a large and commanding presence. The woman, Ann, she hated. After a small altercation about the nightgown, which was much too big for her, Ann had slapped Candida across the face. It was the insult rather than the pain which caused the child’s eyes to follow Ann round the room with a black, implacable gaze. At last, as always, the glare made itself felt.
‘Stop looking at me like that, you little toad!’ shrieked Ann.
Candida regarded her coolly. ‘How do you want me to look at you?’ she asked, imitating her mother’s most infuriatingly logical voice. ‘I shall not look at you at all, if you like,’ she went on generously.
Ann went to Mike and leaned on his shoulder. ‘Make her stop looking at me, Mike,’ she fawned. The child gave her a disapproving glare. Mike smiled.
‘If you don’t stop glaring at me, I’ll tell Mike’s spider to crawl right off his chest and come and bite you in your sleep,’ threatened Ann. Candida was interested. Her fascination with insect life had often got her into trouble. No one had let her forget about her snail collection, which she had put down by the kitchen stove so that they could be cosy in the night. The snails had had a different idea of comfort and had glided away, some of them getting as far as the baby’s room. Alexander had eaten one and Mummy had been very angry.
She got up from her seat on the hearth and disposed her nightgown around her feet. She looked up at Mike with a charming smile. ‘May I see the spider on your chest?’ she asked politely.
Mike laughed. ‘She’s got guts, anyway,’ he commented. ‘Do you like spiders?’
‘Yes. I have thirty-seven at home. Black ones,’ elaborated the child calmly.
Mike stripped off his singlet and Candida edged closer, fascinated. The spider would have covered the span of both her hands. It was impressively hairy with little red eyes. Mike took a breath and flexed his pectoral muscles, and the spider wriggled.
Candida clapped her hands. ‘Do it again,’ she chuckled. ‘Make the spider dance again!’
‘It’s time for you to go to bed,’ snapped Ann, and grabbed the child’s wrist in a grip like a handcuff. Candida resisted.
‘I have to take my asthma medicine,’ she stated. ‘And then say my prayers, and I cannot go to sleep without Bear. Where is he?’
She scanned the blank faces before her, and her temper, never under the best of control, broke. She had lost her lollies and Daddy and Mummy, and it was too much that she should have lost Bear, as well.
Mike saw her face empurple, and her body swell.
‘I want Mummy and Daddy and I want my lollies and I want Bear!’ she shrieked in a full-throated operatic soprano. She continued to scream until she began to cough, and then to choke. She doubled over, gasping, and a dreadful wheeze was forced from her lungs as she hauled in each breath.
‘She’s having an asthma attack — my sister gets them,’ said Ann. ‘If we don’t get her medicine, she could die.’
‘So what. We don’t need her alive anymore,’ snarled Sidney.
Mike felled him with a weighty cuff around the right ear. ‘Say something like that again and I’ll take the girl and go straight to the cops. Now shut up and let me think. We can’t call in a doctor. Where’s the nearest chemist?’
‘Geelong. I’ll find one,’ offered Ann. ‘I can be back in an hour.’
‘Go,’ agreed Mike.
Candida heard the car start. She had learned two interesting things. One was that Mike did not really have his heart in this kidnapping and the other was that they were half an hour from Geelong. Candida’s mind was clear — she was used to asthma attacks. She was in pain but she could still hear. The other two obviously thought she could not.
‘Why did you choose this place, Sid?’asked Mike.
‘It’s nice and quiet. No one comes to Queenscliff in the winter. It’s near Geelong for the pick-up, and once we have the dough all we need to do is continue along the road to Adelaide.’
Candida wheezed loudly and both men looked at her. She grimaced with pain and turned away from them.
‘I wish Ann would get a move on. The poor little thing will be turning up her toes and then bang goes our chance of five thousand quid. And it’s murder, too. We’ll swing for it.’
‘You take your chances in this game,’ sneered Sid. Mike made a move towards him, then froze. Sid produced a pistol.
‘I didn’t know you had a gun,’ muttered Mike. ‘I thought we said no guns. They only get used. Put it away. I’m not going to hurt you. So what’s the plan for the pick-up?’
‘I’ll take the car and pick up the money. If we decide to loose the kid we just set her down in the main street. She can find plenty of help. We take off to Adelaide, then you give your share to your wife, and I take a boat. There’s still three warrants out for me in Victoria, and the cops would love to get their claws into me.’
‘Yair, I know. I never thought I’d have sunk so low as to work with a child-molester.’
‘You shouldn’t have married a moll who gets you into debt then. And who is dumb enough to borrow from Red Jack. He’ll break her arms and legs if she don’t get him the money.’
‘I know,’ said Mike gloomily. ‘But she likes pretty things — clothes and shoes — and I can’t afford to buy ’em for her.’
‘And you’re afraid that she’ll go off with someone who can if you don’t come up with the mazuma?’
Mike made the same angry, arrested movement. Candida co
ughed.
‘Here, you sit up, little girl,’ said Mike, shifting her clumsily to lean against his arm. ‘Would you like a drink?’
Candida shook her head. She did not have enough breath to drink. She tugged at the tight strings of the nightgown. Mike loosened them and fetched an old pillowcase to wipe her face. Candida hooked one arm around his neck and laid her hot cheek against the spider tattoo. Mike held her very carefully, as though she might break. He could feel the massive effort which each breath cost the child, and the strain and trembling in all her muscles.
‘Sid, go and get us a blanket,’ he ordered, disregarding the gun in Sid’s hand. Such was the power of Mike’s personality that Sid obeyed. Mike unlatched Candida long enough to wrap her closely and then resumed his place. She cried after him like a puppy if he moved. He had not known that children were like this; intense in their loves and hates, and very brave. Mike admired courage. He sat like that for a long time.
At last there was the sound of the car, and Ann slammed back into the house. She put a bottle of foul, red medicine on the table and rummaged for a glass in the unfamiliar kitchen.
‘I had to wake the chemist up,’ she said. ‘And he charged me three-and-six for the stuff. I hope it works. Here, girlie, drink this.’
She shoved the glass at Candida and the child turned her face to one side. Mike pushed Ann away.
‘Let me do it. Here you are, Candida. Here is the medicine, and soon you will have Mummy and Daddy and Bear and the lollies. .’
Candida drank the mixture. She was sure that they had given her double the usual dose. It tasted just as disgusting as usual. She leaned back on Mike as though he was a chair, and began to control her breathing. The adrenalin and ephedrine in the elixir had their effect. She paled to the whiteness of marble, and her lips and fingernails took on a bluish tinge. Mike thought that she looked like a tombstone angel. The wheeze faded and she accepted a drink of hot milk grudgingly prepared by Ann.
At last she could speak again. She snuggled against the big man and looked up at him accusingly.
‘You didn’t plan this very well, did you?’
CHAPTER EIGHT
Sister Anne, Sister Anne, do you see the horsemen coming?
Charles Perrault Bluebeard
It was time for Phryne to call in the debts that were owed her after the affair of the Cocaine Blues. Thus she found herself in an office the size of a cupboard sitting opposite Detective-inspector Robinson. He looked quite pleased to see her—‘Call me Jack, Miss Fisher, everyone does’—and offered her a cup of tea. Phryne had tasted police-station tea before, but accepted it anyway.
‘Well, Miss Fisher, what have you been up to? My colleague, Benton, has been quite terse about you.’
‘Oh, has he? Is the man stupid, or just very, very stubborn?’
‘I wouldn’t call him stupid. He’s a good detective. He just has theories, that’s all. And when he has a theory nothing will turn him off it. They even call him “Theory” around here. He’s not a bad chap, though we don’t see eye to eye about a lot of things, one of them being you. I told him to take you seriously or risk public embarrassment, but he wouldn’t listen. If you want a really biased opinion of old Theory, ask WPC Jones. He told her he didn’t approve of women in the police force when she went to get her Gallantry Medal from the chief commissioner.’
‘Gallantry Medal? I must congratulate her. What for?’
‘She was acting as bait for a rapist. We didn’t know that he had a knife — dirty, great cane-cutter. He got Jones down and was about to cut her throat when she rolled out from under him, stepped on his wrist and threw the weapon away; then she dropped on his chest, handcuffed his hands and feet together, and told him what she thought of him. Poor bloke. He was begging us to take him to a nice safe cell by the time the patrol caught up. A lovely job, and he was lucky that she is a restrained lady, or she might have cut his balls off, which was what she was threatening to do. Jones has not liked Theory Benton since. You can’t blame her. He’s an irritating man. Still, if you come up with overwhelming evidence I’m sure that you’ll give him a chance to make a manly confession, before you drop him into the soup.’
‘Of course, but I don’t think it will do the slightest good.’
Phryne sipped her tea, and placed the cup back on the desk. She produced the kidnap note in a larger envelope.
‘Is this what you want me to do?’ asked the detective-inspector resignedly. ‘I didn’t really think you had come just to see me and to drink police-station tea.’
‘Good, because I haven’t. When we were mutually involved in that cocaine affair, you were telling me that you could sometimes get fingerprints off paper. Could you have a go with this? And tell me whether they are on record?’
‘I expect that I could. What’s the paper?’
‘A ransom note. Another thing. A big black car, probably a Bentley, and I have most of the licence number. Can you tell me who owns it?’
‘How much of the number?’
‘The first two digits and the two letters.’
‘Yes, I can do that. But will I?’
‘If I ask you very nicely and throw in a solution to the McNaughton murder?’
‘We already have a solution to the McNaughton murder.’
‘The real solution — and a gang of kidnappers,’ offered Phryne. Robinson leaned forward.
‘Kidnapping is dangerous to investigate and usually ends in the victim getting killed. If you allow that to happen my name will be mud and I will personally prosecute you for interfering with the course of a police inquiry. You know that, eh?’
‘Yes, Jack, I know that.’
‘Has this incident been reported to the police?’
‘No.’
‘So it is between you and me.’
‘Yes.’
‘And you are confident that you can find the gang and wrap the whole thing up neatly?’
‘They shall be delivered to your door in a plain brown wrapper.’
‘And you need my help, eh?’
‘Yes. If you would be so kind.’
‘Right, then, we know where we stand. All right. I trust you, Miss Fisher. Is there anything else that you need?’
‘Not at the moment.’
‘Good. Perhaps you’d like to have a word with Jones; you’ll find her in Prisoner Reception this week. Give me an hour. If the stuff is on file, I’ll find it,’ Jack said. Phryne shook his hand and went to look for Jones.
She found the short and muscular policewoman engaged in an argument with a prisoner.
‘I tell you I had ten quid on me when they picked me up. Them thieving jacks have robbed me!’ a cross-eyed gentleman was roaring. Jones had been roared at by experts and did not turn a hair.
‘That’s all that was in your pockets, Mr Murphy.’
‘It’s here,’ said Phryne, tweaking the ten-pound note out of an unsavoury watch pocket. ‘Be more careful in future.’
Mr Murphy thanked her in an alcoholic mumble and took his leave.
Jones smiled. ‘Hello, Miss Fisher, you haven’t half put it across old Theory. If only you can show up the old cuss! Do you know what he said to me?’
‘Yes, Jack Robinson just told me. Outrageous. Can you come out for a cuppa?’
‘My shift finishes in ten minutes, if you can wait.’
‘I’ll just find the Ladies. I don’t think that the tea here agrees with me.’
‘It don’t agree with anyone. Even the drunks are complaining.’
Phryne rejoined WPC Jones, who was rather pretty when out of a uniform designed to remove all dangerous allure from the female form. She had curly hair, which Phryne had only seen severely repressed under her cap. Jones led the way to a coffee shop and ordered a black coffee.
‘It’s hard to sleep in the daytime, and I’m so tired I can hardly keep my eyes propped open. Thank the Lord that I change shifts tomorrow.’
‘I heard about your medal — congratulations,’ said Phryne,
gulping down a mouthful of coffee to wash the taste of the tea away.
‘Thanks, but I really didn’t deserve it. It wasn’t cold courage. I lost my temper with the bastard. It was lucky that I threw that knife out of reach or I might have done him an injury. That wouldn’t have done my career much good.
‘Now, tell me about Theory. I know what he thinks happened. Do you think you can bring him undone?’
‘Oh, yes. I can’t prove it yet. But the safe money is definitely on Bill McNaughton’s innocence.’
‘You made an impression on Benton — even though he is sure that no woman could outsmart him, he’s uneasy. He’s asked two DIs to look at the murder weapon. I do hope you can prove him wrong.’
‘There is no doubt.’
‘Well, I’ve got to go. Thanks for the coffee, and if you need anything, just give me a call. Delighted to help,’ said WPC Jones, and Phryne took herself for a walk in the Art Gallery.
She returned and found a note from Jack pinned to his desk.
‘Dear Miss Fisher, there are three sets of unknown prints on the letter. The only one on record is that of Sidney Brayshaw, a child-molester whom we have been very anxious to interview. If you catch him it will warm the cockles of my chief super’s heart (assuming he has one). The only black Bentley with those prefixes in its number plate belongs to one Anthony Michael Herbert, 342 Bell Street, Preston. He hasn’t any form. Hope this is of use. Watch your step. Jack.’
Phryne folded the note, placed it in her bag and went to reclaim her car from the urchin who was minding it. She gave him a shilling and he sped off before she could change her mind.
The address in Preston was that of a rundown boardinghouse. Phryne rang at the bell and it fell into her hand. The door was open in any case. She walked in.
Introducing the Honourable Phryne Fisher Page 27
