Murder in Montparnasse (12 page)

Julia giggled again. ‘He went to her father and asked for her hand. So sweet! And he is such a good cook. His rillettes de veau—delicious.’

‘Shall we go to Café Anatole, then?’ asked Phryne.

The girl shivered a little. ‘No. I want tea and cakes.’

‘The Windsor, then,’ said Phryne.

‘But I can’t go to the Windsor without stockings!’ wailed Julia.

‘My dear girl,’ said Phryne, ‘you can go anywhere you want to go. The management of the Windsor wish you to come into their establishment and buy a sumptuous tea, and I shall personally reprove anyone I catch looking at your legs. They should be attending to their business, which is to make you comfortable. Now stop worrying and talk to me. Are you not concerned about your friend? Can you tell me what happened on that night when she vanished?’

‘Not much to tell,’ said Julia. ‘We went to my cousin Raoul’s birthday party. There was going to be dancing and Elizabeth loved to dance. She doesn’t like clothes much and she’s death on gossip. She is really only interested in cooking but she does—did—love dancing. And charades. Raoul always has charades. I wasn’t going to go because I didn’t have a dress which everyone hadn’t seen twenty times before. Mother was saving for another dress. Madame Fleuri’s prices are wicked. But Lizzie gave me an armload of her French clothes and told me to take whichever I wanted. Beautiful things, silk underwear and day dresses and ball dresses. Her school had taken them all into Paris to be properly equipped and Lizzie’s father had paid up without a murmur. When I was there, I couldn’t do that. I do love beautiful things.’

‘Yes,’ said Phryne. She was thinking, you are a nice young woman. She also remembered how she had gone through the rest of those clothes, and most of them had still been there. Julia could only have taken one day dress and one dance dress. That was restrained, since Lizzie wouldn’t have cared if she’d taken them all, and the temptation must have been severe.

‘How did you pay your way through finishing school, then?’ she asked.

Julia flushed as pink as a paeony. ‘I taught English and fine needlework,’ she said. ‘I do the beading for a fashion house in Collins Street. My mother cleans houses. My father sells cough medicine. Now you know!’ she declared.

‘Yes, now I know,’ said Phryne. ‘Now I am in a position to ruin you socially. Such secrets as you care to tell me will never be disclosed, and I consider that society needs me a lot more than I need it. I’m notorious, haven’t you heard?’

‘Oh, well, yes, Miss Fisher, I have . . .’ Julia dissolved in confusion.

‘Well, then. I can guess a little. Your family could be quite comfortable if they sold that great big house, sending in a few missionaries first to deal with the tribes living in the undergrowth. Then you could buy a small house in Footscray and live quite well. But instead you are all camping in that Good Address and scrimping to buy you one good dress so that you can go to the right ball and catch the right husband. Such as Mr Chambers, the well-known sporting identity? You have to repair the family fortunes, eh?’

She had stopped the car outside the Windsor. Julia was hovering on the verge of tears.

‘Yes,’ she whispered. ‘That’s what I have to do.’

‘Ah,’ said Phryne, allowing the doorman to help her out. ‘And I thought that Bride Sacrifice had died out with the Chaldeans. Come along,’ she said imperiously, and Julia followed her, intensely conscious of her bare legs, wrapping her concealing coat about her in a frantic swathe.

To her relief, Miss Fisher was right. No one stared at her. They were conducted to a table by the window and immediately supplied with a silver pot of tea, a silver service, and a trolley piled with delicious cakes. Phryne took a selection of petits fours and poured tea liberally.

She waited, watching Julia’s hand hover over the rich, cream-filled dainties, until she selected one.

‘Have two,’ said Phryne. ‘Or three.’

Julia blushed again and loaded her plate like a greedy child.

Phryne allowed her ten minutes to stuff as many cakes as she could into that rosebud mouth—it was charming to watch a girl eat with such frank enjoyment. Then she said gently, ‘So you went to Cousin Raoul’s party in the big car with Elizabeth. Then what happened?’

‘It was a nice party,’ said Julia, her pink tongue discreetly licking the last smear of cream from her lip. ‘Raoul’s parties are always good. We did charades. We had a nice buffet supper and Lizzie danced every dance.’

‘With one person in particular?’ asked Phryne, watching the girl closely.

‘No, with whoever was free. I don’t think Lizzie is interested in boys much. She danced with Raoul—he’s devastating, all the girls are after him—but she said he was only a fair dancer and she wanted Tim Purcell next, and everyone knows he’s a weed. Good dancer, though. He can foxtrot like a dream. But all he can talk about is his medical studies and how he is going to do good to the poor and no one made money out of that.’

‘Anyone there that you are interested in? Cousin Raoul, perhaps?’

‘No,’ said Julia sadly. ‘He hasn’t a bean. He has to marry money, too. Anyway, I don’t want to marry anyone. Look at Father and Mother! They work hard, all to help me find someone I can sell myself to, so that they can fix up the house and get some more servants and go back to how they used to be before the war. I don’t think we can go back to what things were like before the war.’

‘No,’ said Phryne, ‘we can’t. It’s a new world and we have to get used to it. So you and Lizzie were at the party . . .’

‘And I was thinking it was time to get going, it was getting late and some of the hearties were getting a bit rowdy. I don’t like that sort of thing. They were all ragging Tim about his doing good and he was blushing and I thought it was time to go home. I went looking for Lizzie and I couldn’t find her. I didn’t want to cause any talk, so I searched the house. The maid in the ladies’ room said she’d been there about eleven. The maid had repaired her hem. I looked through the window and the black car had gone, but I saw Mr Chamber’s man on the doorstep, shouting at the butler. So I got my coat and slipped down. Mr Chambers’ man said that he’d just been away for a minute and where was the car, and I didn’t know, and where was Lizzie, and I didn’t know that either. So he telephoned Mr Chambers and he sent another car to take me home. The next day Mr Chambers came to see me and I told him all I could and since then I haven’t heard a thing. Where is Lizzie? Has something happened to her?’

‘I don’t know where she is, but Mr Chambers has had a ransom demand.’

Julia’s hand flew to her mouth and her eyes widened. It was a pretty gesture.

‘Oh! Poor Lizzie!’

‘Indeed,’ said Phryne. ‘You haven’t heard from her since that night? I was wondering if you might have had a phone call, a postcard—anything.’

‘No, nothing,’ gasped Julia.

‘Might she have run away?’ asked Phryne.

‘She might,’ said Julia. ‘Her father didn’t know her very well. He really didn’t know how to talk to her. He gave her lots of pretty things and expected her to be a good girl. And she is a good girl,’ declared Julia. ‘She isn’t interested in all those things—fripperies, she calls them. She wants to be a cook.’

‘Did she know that her father was intending to marry you?’

‘Yes,’ confessed Julia, blushing again. ‘But she said she didn’t mind, as long as I didn’t try to mother her, and I couldn’t, really I couldn’t, it would be absurd.’

‘Has it occurred to your parents,’ said Phryne deliberately, ‘that Mr Chambers is a terrible grump and something of a miser? Mean as a rat, my companion says. He may have spent freely on his daughter, but what leads your father to imagine that he would spend freely on his in-laws?’

‘Oh, there’s to be a marriage settlement,’ said Julia. ‘Mr Chambers will agree to settle an amount of money on my parents.’

‘In payment for you?’ asked Phryne.

‘Yes,’ said Julia, her blonde head drooping on its stalk like a snowdrop.

‘And you’ll go along with this . . . arrangement?’

‘I don’t see,’ said Julia, ‘that I have a lot of choices. I can continue to bead garments for rich women until my eyesight goes, living in that dank house and hiding when the bailiff comes, nagged all the time about how much money my parents spent on my education and how I have wasted it. Or I can undertake a marriage which will give me pretty clothes, unlimited food, lots of dances and nice places to stay. Holidays. Champagne.’

‘And Mr Chambers in your bed,’ said Phryne coarsely.

Julia shuddered, but squared her shoulders. ‘It’s a price,’ she admitted. ‘But I can pay it.’

‘So you can,’ said Phryne. ‘And it might be a bargain, at that. Now, I had better be getting you home. You have my card. Call me if anything occurs to you.’

‘Miss Fisher,’ asked Julia, as they were handed back into the car by an attentive doorman whose disposition had been sweetened with silver, ‘can I ask you a question?’

‘Of course,’ said Phryne.

‘Do you think he’ll pay the ransom?’

‘Mr Chambers? If he can’t avoid it,’ said Phryne. ‘He hasn’t called the police, and none of his underworld chums have discovered which gang has carried this out. This means that they are amateurs and might panic.’

‘Oh,’ Julia seemed distressed. ‘Oh, poor Lizzie! I hope she isn’t too frightened.’

‘So do I,’ said Phryne.

She arrived back in her own house still deep in thought. Devil’s bargains all around. Threats from every quarter. The only consolation she had was that Lizzie sounded like an intelligent, determined young woman. The character of the victim was an important component in a successful rescue. Even now, Lizzie might be rescuing herself.

But Phryne must tell Robinson about that car. An interesting thing, that car theft. Just another chance of extra loot, or an oversight?

While being fitted for a dress in which she expected to astonish the Lord Mayor’s Ball, Phryne asked Madame Fleuri if she knew the Chivers family.

‘Ah, yes,’ said Madame in French, speaking in that dressmaker’s dialect which does not disturb the pins in the mouth. ‘Poor as church mice and terribly keen to sell their daughter to the highest bidder. What would you? The girl is beautiful. But not a brain in her head. She beads like a professional and could make a living that way—or she could be a teacher, to be sure, she is well educated—but she has not as much courage as would inflame a mouse. She might as well have a husband.’

‘You are very severe,’ said Phryne, amused.

‘Young women ought to have a profession,’ said Madame. ‘Husbands—they can vanish, pouf ! Here one day and gone the next. That is the nature of men. Then what will she do? For such a one the fall can be sudden. She only knows of one thing which she can sell, and once she is on the streets it is a long way back to the world she has known.’

‘So it is,’ agreed Phryne. She was observing herself in the long mirror. The dress was an Egyptian design, which was daring. It was made of cotton, which was very bold indeed. No one wore cotton in the evening, but it promised to be hot, and Phryne saw no reason why she should sweat in silk when she could be cool in cotton.

‘There,’ Madame grunted as she came up off her knees. ‘A sensation. We will put on this collar, so,’ she laid the jewelled collar over Phryne’s shoulders. The Basht pendant hung between her breasts. The body of the dress was made of fine, pale ochre-coloured Egyptian glazed cotton. Almost as expensive as silk but much, much cooler. It hung as straight as a column to Phryne’s ankles and was slit behind to her knees, so that when she walked she looked like she was wearing an Ancient Greek tunic, and when she stood the dress fell uninterrupted in one fine, long sweep. With it she had sandals made of pale kid’s leather, soft as skin. Madame slid the heavy beaded bracelet up to Phryne’s upper arm and put the circlet on her head. The silver cobra head was raised and alert. It was a modified form of the costume of Isis which she had worn to the Artists’ Ball, scandalising Sydney.

Ember, who had been catching fifty winks on Phryne’s bed, woke, yawned, stretched, and came to sit at her feet, gazing upward with slitted eyes as though she shone. Madame clasped her hands.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Le petit chaton is correct. It is marvellous.’

If Ember objected to being called a little kitten, he did not even flick a whisker. He laid a paw on Phryne’s foot and she bent carefully to caress him. He batted at the hanging image of the cat-goddess. Madame Fleuri chuckled.

‘That one, he is devout,’ she observed, sticking her remaining pins into the emery pincushion on her wrist. ‘I must go. Between ourselves, madame,’ she said to Phryne as she swept her equipment into her bag, ‘can you tell me whether the Chivers are likely to pay their account? They owe me still for the last dress I made for their daughter.’

‘Young Miss Chivers is about to make a very wealthy marriage with old Mr Chambers,’ said Phryne. ‘I have been speaking with her this very morning. She seems determined to go through with it and she knows you are the best dressmaker in Melbourne. I would be inclined to risk one more dress. She is likely to be a good customer once she gets her hands on some real money.’

‘So. It is worth the chance that the alliance may fall through,’ said Madame. ‘And my accountant says that such bad debts would be an advantage this year with that wicked income tax. Very well. Thank you, madame.’

Phryne allowed Dot to undress her. When she laid the collar on her bed, Ember immediately curled himself around it and went firmly back to sleep, defying anyone to remove it.

‘Odd,’ Phryne observed. ‘Leave it for the moment, Dot, he can’t hurt it. Has Jack Robinson come?’

‘Downstairs waiting for you,’ said Dot. ‘Hugh is with him.’

Dot would never call an unrelated man by his first name if she didn’t intend to marry him. She had every intention of doing so, when the right time came. The right time wasn’t yet and Hugh seemed content to wait, escorting Dot and the girls to the cinema and snatching an occasional kiss when Dot would let him get close enough. She was entirely pleased with him and regarded the strange feeling of hot jam running down her back when she kissed him as an excellent omen for future happiness.