Murder on a Midsummer Night (4 page)

‘I am investigating Mr Manifold’s death,’ she told him.

‘Good,’ he said through his handkerchief. ‘Then when you find out, you can tell me why. Because I don’t know,’ he wept. ‘I don’t know!’

He fled from the room, leaving Phryne still puzzled.

She pottered around the collection until the bell rang, her car arrived, and the maid Gertrude escorted her to her previous bedroom, where she assumed her clothes and shoes and returned, with some regret, the sprightly gown.

‘Here’s my card,’ she said to the maid. ‘If you can think of anything strange about Mr Manifold’s death or life, call me. There’s a reward,’ she added. Gertrude’s eyes gleamed and she stowed the card in her apron pocket.

‘Right you are, Miss. M’lady.’

Phryne took her bundle of rough-dried clothes and her newspaper-stuffed shoes and entered the big car. All the way home she was silent. Mr Butler did not know if this was deep consideration or pique and took care around corners, so as not to joggle his employer out of a train of thought.

But all she said, as he closed the front door of her own house on her and hefted the bundle, was, ‘Odd.’

Mr Butler did not know what to make of this, but considered that lunch was in order. And perhaps a strong black coffee.

‘Has Dot returned, Mr B?’ she asked.

‘No, Miss, she is still with Miss Eliza at the shop. She left a telephonic communication that she expected to be engaged for the rest of the day.’

‘And the girls?’

‘Have gone to visit their school friend, Miss. They were collected by the Laurens’ chauffeur half an hour ago, also expected home for dinner.’

‘Then it’s just me for lunch?’

‘Yes, Miss.’

‘Ask Mrs Butler to do me some fish,’ said Phryne. ‘I need brain food. Or steak, of course.’

‘Yes, Miss Fisher. A few of the flathead tails, crumbed, Miss, some French potatoes, a little green salad? And an apple pie to follow.’

‘Scrumptious. I will be in the parlour,’ she told him, and took herself firmly into the sea-green room. Notes. She needed to write all of this down and then it might make more sense. She was annoyed at Mr Atkinson’s flight, just when she was getting a handle on him. Of course, that might have been the reason that he had fled.

She took a new sea-green silk-covered notebook from the stack in the bookcase, uncapped her fountain pen, and began to write.

Mr Butler saw her suitably occupied, brought her a cup of strong black coffee, and left her undisturbed until he called her to lunch.

Lunch was excellent. Phryne appreciated the crispness of the fresh fish, the crunchiness of the fried potatoes, and the spiced heartiness of Mrs Butler’s famous apple pie. With the meal she sipped away two glasses of an athletic hock from the Barossa; a little young and foolish but perfectly agreeable company. She had made all the notes she usefully could, and was about to propose lying down for a brief nap when the doorbell rang and Mr Butler returned with his silver salver. On it reposed a card. In good style, Phryne observed; neat lettering, engraved, very much a gentleman’s card. Mr Valentine Adami, Barrister at Law, apparently wished the favour of speech with Miss Fisher.

‘Show Mr Adami into the parlour, Mr B,’ she said. ‘Break out the port.’

Mr Adami presented no difficulty in classification. He was well, but not too well, dressed. His hair was stylishly cut and his eyes were bright and he was a charming specimen. A successful immigrant, Phryne diagnosed, comfortable and attractive. Nice suit, too. She waited until he was properly seated and had sipped his port before she asked, ‘Well, Mr Adami, I see that you are a lawyer. What can I do for you? I have to tell you in advance, I don’t do divorce.’

‘Neither do I,’ he said in his pleasant, hardly accented voice. ‘I have been advised to see you by . . .’ he lowered his voice, ‘a very exalted personage indeed. In the Church, you know.’

Phryne was puzzled. Had she obliged any Princes of the Church lately? Of course—the exceptionally reverend Daniel Mannix, in that strange affair of Jock McHale’s hat. Mr Adami was well connected. Phryne made a little bow.

‘I am honoured by his confidence,’ she said.

‘Indeed. He holds your skills in high regard,’ said Mr Adami carefully. Phryne appreciated the nuance. ‘He said that if anyone could help me, it would be you.’

‘Indeed. What is the problem?’

‘It’s an estate,’ he said, putting down the port glass with appropriate care. ‘The estate of a very old lady who died last week. Her name was Mrs Mario Bonnetti.’

‘She was Italian?’ Phryne sipped at her own port. It really was superb.

‘No, not at all. That being the problem, as I hope I shall explain. Let’s see . . .’ He unfolded a bundle of papers and scanned them. ‘She was born Kathleen Julia O’Brien on the twenty-fifth of May, 1848. In Melbourne. Her father was a lawyer, a propertied man who bought and sold land and built houses.’

‘Fairly oofy, then,’ observed Phryne.

Mr Adami registered the slang, clearly did not approve of such levity on the serious matter of money, but went on without comment. ‘Yes, a wealthy man was Daniel O’Brien, and so was his wife, the former Miss Bridget Ryan. The family’s wealth was in land and manufacturing so it was not destroyed by the crash in 1880. However. Miss Kathleen Julia was a clever girl and her father sent her to school; not to a convent school, as was usual, but to a school run by some rather advanced ladies, where she showed a great talent for languages, mathematics and music.’

Mr Butler shimmered into the parlour, refilled the port glasses, laid down a plate of cheese straws, green olives and black olives, and dematerialised in his own remarkable fashion. Mr Adami took an olive, tasted it, and said with more than common politeness, ‘The Archbishop said that you were a truly sophisticated lady, Miss Fisher, and I see that he was understating the matter. Real Sicilian olives! What a treat!’

‘Have several,’ urged Phryne. So far the story had not engaged her interest but she could not help liking this dapper Italian. Mr Adami obliged her by eating three olives then returned to his discourse, refreshed.

‘So, we have Miss Kathleen Julia at sixteen, accomplished and intelligent, in post gold rush Melbourne. She goes to suitable concerts with her sisters, properly escorted, of course. She visits the conservatorium. She attends suitable parties for young persons. Then there is a sudden break in her life. Abruptly and without explanation she is withdrawn from school and sent to stay with her Aunt Susan in the country. And there she stays until she is seventeen, a whole year. When she comes back she attends no parties and goes to no concerts, is not seen in public and her piano is given to her younger sister. Then, when she is twenty, in 1870, she marries Mr Mario Bonnetti, a gentleman forty years of age.’

‘Curious,’ said Phryne, who had an easy explanation for that rustication.

‘Significant,’ said Mr Adami. ‘But she made him a good wife, according to all accounts. He was an indulgent husband who allowed her to resume her music. He liked her playing, it is said. And she bore him many children, four of whom are still living. I have their names here, and a family tree.’

Phryne looked. Giuseppe, known as Joseph, born 1872. Maria, born 1874. Patrick, born 1875—he died young—Sheila, born 1878, and Bernadette, born 1880. In between, the solicitor had recorded, were three babies dead before they were a year old and five stillbirths. Phryne sent up a brief but fervent prayer of thanksgiving to Marie Stopes.

‘And these four are still alive,’ she prompted.

‘Yes. Maria is now Sister Immaculata, and belongs to a teaching order. She inherited her mother’s talent for music. The others are all married with children of their own. I am instructed that it was a happy family.’

Phryne noted the use of ‘I am instructed’. It conveyed what the lawyer had been told without any indication of his opinion as to its veracity.

‘Fruitful, certainly,’ she commented.

‘And Mr Bonnetti died at the age of seventy-two in 1903. He was a man who did not like lawyers and he wrote his own will and testament.’

‘They say that all the lawyers in Gray’s Inn raise their glasses once a year to the man who makes his own will,’ said Phryne.

‘As well they might,’ said Mr Adami with feeling. ‘This one was unusually inept. Mr Bonnetti left all his worldly goods to his wife. Not just for her lifetime. Outright.’

‘I begin to see where this is heading, Mr Adami,’ said Phryne, taking another olive and holding out the plate. Mr Adami took two to soothe his feelings.

‘Mrs Bonnetti did employ a solicitor. My firm, in fact. She was adamant about the terms of her will. She left everything, except for some trifling legacies to servants and so on, to be divided equally between her children. The issue of her body, that is.’

‘Oh,’ said Phryne.

‘Not just her legitimate children,’ elaborated Mr Adami.

‘And you suspect that there may have been a child back in 1864 when she was sent to . . . where?’

‘Ballarat, I believe.’

‘She didn’t leave you a letter or a document about this possible child?’

‘No.’

‘And have we any more clues?’

‘Just this,’ he said, and gave her a miniature. Phryne switched on the table lamp, with its Tiffany jewels, to examine it.

The setting was skimpy, a gold border barely a sixteenth of an inch wide, and the backing was of base metal. Not a very well painted miniature. It showed a young man with dark curly hair and blue eyes. He was wearing a tight high collar with a severe necktie and a penitential pin. Under the painting was his name in small even letters.

‘Patrick,’ read Phryne. ‘I see. Anything further known?’

‘I can’t even give you the names of the old lady’s friends,’ he said worriedly. ‘Because they have predeceased her. You see my problem, Miss Fisher. I must assume that the child is alive—though he or she would be sixty-four years old—or, if not, might have left children who will inherit the share which their parent might have had if they had survived. I cannot distribute the whole estate without knowing about the putative child. And Mr Bonnetti once received a note which said “the child is among you”. Someone knows something! And I cannot put an ordinary private enquiry agent on this case. The good name of a lady . . .’

‘Yes, I see,’ said Phryne. ‘Leave it with me for a few days, Mr Adami. I have another case on foot as well. But I will look into it,’ she said.

‘Discreetly?’ he begged, taking her hand.

‘Discreetly,’ promised Phryne.

‘Where did you get the black eye?’ asked Vern.

‘Bit of a difference of opinion with the MPs in Cairo,’ said Curly, lighting a cigarette. His knuckles were skinned raw.

‘Ah,’ said Vern. ‘Marquess of Gooseberry rules?’

‘What’s them?’ asked Curly.

‘If you see a head, kick it,’ instructed Vern.

Curly grinned around his split lip. ‘Too right,’ he said.

CHAPTER FOUR

Errors, like straws, upon the surface flow;
He who would search for pearls, must dive
   below.

John Dryden
All For Love

The girls and the old wares contingent returned at five, Eliza and Dot filthy and thirsty and Jane and Ruth agog for information on this new case.

Phryne banished them all to bathe, dress, and come down to dinner in a sober and industrious frame of mind at which, she said, she would lay out for them the whole extent of both problems. Then she went to do the same herself, giving Eliza the bath and contenting herself with a brisk splash in cold water and a clean dress.

‘I say, Phryne, this is lovely soap,’ commented Eliza as Phryne was brushing her hair before the bathroom mirror.

‘Castile, double milled, scented with freesia,’ said Phryne. ‘For the invention of baths one could forgive the Romans the imperfect subjunctive. Take a cake with you. Very good for the complexion. By the way, you have to watch the sun in Australia, Eliza, it will burn your milk and roses into blackcurrant jelly and beetroot.’

‘Yes, that’s why Ally always makes me wear a broad-brimmed hat. I’ve had such an interesting day, Phryne. That little man had a remarkable stock. And I’ve convinced the shop-girl Sophie to come to our Girls’ Social Club. We wanted to call it Working Girls’ Club, you know, but that would not do. She lives alone in a nasty little room in a boarding house and I believe that she would improve with some company.’

‘Yes,’ said Phryne affectionately. Eliza loved the whole world. If Jack the Ripper dropped in with his case of scalpels she would try to convince him to doff his cloak and join a woodworking class. And she might succeed, too.

‘Lady Alice is coming round with a change of clothes for you, Eliza dear, I’ll send her up as soon as she arrives. Want a little pre-dinner drink and a few cocktail biscuits?’

‘Rather!’ said a voice from the steam. Eliza usually lived an austere life and liked to wallow in luxuries if she could manage it without offending her socialist conscience. In this case, she was filthy and therefore must bathe before dining with civilised persons, and if she happened to be bathing in Phryne’s porcelain tub big enough to lie down in, using Phryne’s endless hot water and her superb soap, towels, powder and scent, then that was a bonus. Even Fabian socialists were allowed to like freesias.

‘Good, I’ll arrange it,’ said Phryne. ‘Enjoy yourself!’

‘Oh, I will,’ promised the voice from the mist. Phryne closed the door on the sound of happy splashing.

Descending the stairs, Phryne found Jane and Ruth, polite and scrubbed in their dinner gowns. They were very good looking, she thought, her orphans; Jane with her blonde hair in pigtails in her decorous blue silk and plumper brown-haired Ruth in apricot. Lin Chung had provided the fabric and Madame had made the dresses, with just a little beading around the neckline and hem—‘
Très jeune fille, mais un peu soigné
’. Their childhood had not allowed them any luxuries at all and they got as much of a thrill out of new clothes as Phryne did herself. Except that Jane had to be prodded to notice the new garment, of course, as she was thinking about the physics of meteorites. Or that is what she had said on the occasion of trying on this dress.

When Lady Alice arrived, Phryne sent her with two attendant girls, one carrying a tray with the decanter and glasses and one carrying the selection of tasty biscuits, up the stairs in grand array. Dot joined Phryne in the parlour. She was conspicuously clean and had re-plaited her hair into a sedate French pleat. In honour of guests for dinner, she had put on her favourite terracotta, beige and fawn house gown and a bandeau with an orange geranium in it.

‘Well, Dot dear?’

‘It was a bit of a hard yakka day, as my dad would say, Miss. More stuff in the shop, and in his rooms and in store, than you could stuff into a rubbish truck.’

‘A bit unkind,’ observed Phryne.

‘I wouldn’t give any of it house room,’ declared Dot stoutly, taking a glass of sherry from Mr Butler’s tray. ‘Thank you, Mr B.’

‘Well, well, it is all a matter of taste,’ said Phryne. ‘Didn’t you like anything you found?’

‘Oh, yes, some of the glass was first rate,’ said Dot, sipping the sherry. She had only lately become habituated to a pre-dinner potation and she was still not sure if it came under the heading of the Demon Drink. Miss Phryne’s Grog Blossom definitely did. ‘Some lovely jewellery. But a lot of it was just old stones and coins where you couldn’t see who issued them. Miss Eliza said they were thousands of years old. Before Christ, she said. Such things shouldn’t be. There wasn’t anything left after the flood.’

‘True,’ said Phryne, a little shocked by the depth of Dot’s ignorance. ‘But after the flood they did rebuild the world, you know. It says so. In Genesis, as I recall. Never mind, Dot dear, don’t concern yourself. Ah, here come our guests. Nice and clean, Eliza?’

‘You could eat your dinner off me,’ beamed Eliza, rosy with hot water and scented with flower essences. ‘If you should want to, which I trust that you don’t. I’ve allowed the girls a half glass of sherry each, is that all right?’

‘Of course,’ said Phryne. ‘It’s a good idea to get used to the idea of drinking at home.’

‘It might have made a difference to some of our girls,’ agreed Lady Alice. In honour of Phryne’s dinner, she had put on her much mended black satin dress and such of her sapphires as she had not sold to relieve the poor. She was sipping whisky, her favourite extravagance. Phryne decided that she and Eliza made a lovely couple. They had certainly thrown everything away to be together: social position, hunt balls, membership of some exclusive charities, and incidentally as foul a concatenation of relatives as Phryne could imagine. And England, of course. And winter.

Mr Butler intimated that dinner was served, and the company filed into the dining room.

‘So, Eliza, how was your day?’ asked Phryne.

‘Fascinating,’ said Eliza. ‘We went through the entire inventory, such a lovely collection! Inscriptions from Mesopotamia, enamels from Egypt, even a few cuneiform tablets. And so on through the ages, one could say. Right up to a Picasso sketch and some Fauves. And only one thing missing,’ she said, accepting Mr Butler’s assistance in sitting down at the dinner table.

‘What?’ asked Phryne.

‘A scroll,’ said Miss Eliza. ‘A copper scroll.’

‘Odd,’ said Phryne.

The dinner progressed through a delicate vegetable soup, some baked lemon-festooned fish with a tomato salad, a roast chicken with sage and onion stuffing with accompanying
légumes maison
, a dessert of fruit salad and ice cream and, finally, a savoury of anchovy toast and some thin chocolates for those with a sweet tooth. Phryne delighted to see her guests eat with pleasure. The menu, with its emphasis on delicate savours and fresh ingredients, was one of Mrs Butler’s triumphs. Mr Butler’s choice of the Rhine riesling for the soup and fish and then a Portuguese rosé for the chicken was extremely acute. Phryne allowed him to fill a minuscule glass with her liqueur of choice, green chartreuse, and expressed proper congratulations.

‘Do tell Mrs B that the dinner was superb,’ she said, to a murmur of agreement from the guests. ‘And your choice of wines most ingenious.’

‘Thank you, Miss Fisher, I shall convey your good opinion to Mrs Butler,’ he said and bowed, a feat considering that he was holding a silver tray with a full set of tiny Waterford glasses. At no point did they even tinkle together. Phryne was impressed. So was Jane, who began to calculate the years of practice it must have taken to keep the hand and arm steady while moving the body from the waist. She was having trouble working out where his waist might theoretically be, since years of buttling and port had expanded Mr Butler’s corporation to the size of an American oil combine. But she assumed that if she drew a line through the watch chain it might approximate to a median . . .

‘A copper scroll, Eliza?’ Phryne was asking, and Jane stored the calculation for later consideration. She often kept abstruse puzzles for when she couldn’t sleep due to Ember deciding to repose on her chest, inducing dreams of mines collapsing, or Ruth snoring.

‘Copper, yes. It was supposed to be in his manuscript collection in that inner room, Phryne, and we could see where it had been. A little dust around it. Sophie was ordered always to leave a little dust on the antiquities. So they looked, well, old.’

‘You know, I’m really sorry I never met Mr Manifold,’ said Phryne, enchanted.

‘He does seem to have been a heaven-born salesman,’ agreed Eliza. ‘We don’t know anything more about this copper scroll except that it wasn’t copper. Sophie handled it and said it was a common vellum scroll, rolled around two spindles, written in Greek.’

‘Perhaps it was in a copper housing,’ suggested Jane.

‘Possibly,’ said Phryne. ‘Mr Atkinson said that scrolls were commonly found in terracotta sort of pot things, sealed at both ends. He has the shards of one in his collection. Might have had decorated ends, of course. Good thought, Jane, keep thinking. You are going to help me read the autopsy report later, if you please.’

Jane wriggled with pleasure. Ruth made a grimace of disgust.

‘The inventory doesn’t tell us where he got the scroll. The acquisitions book just says ‘Simon’. He got a lot of archaeological stuff from this Simon, but Sophie says she doesn’t know him. I asked Mr Yates, and he says all he knows about Simon was he used to call after dark, had a motorbike, and carried his goods in an army knapsack. Mrs Manifold was still too upset to talk to me.’

‘Odd,’ said Phryne. ‘I would have said she was a woman of iron grey purpose. Not prone to have hysterics.’

‘Er . . . I believe that they might have been . . . so to speak . . . induced . . .’ hedged Eliza.

‘She was drunk?’ demanded Jane, cutting through Eliza’s attempt at politeness.

‘Yes,’ said Dot. Jane and Dot exchanged a glance of solidarity; the only two straight speakers in the house. Neither of them had any difficulty in calling a spade a spade, or indeed a shovel, and found the rest of the world annoyingly prone to euphemism, which they felt was perilously close to untruth.

‘Yes,’ said Eliza. ‘I think it was the relief she felt that you had taken on the case that made her hit the bottle. Before she came to see you, Phryne, no one would believe her.’

‘I don’t know if I do, either, yet. Right, tomorrow I am taking Dot off this case, provided you can carry on for a few days, Beth.’

‘I can spare the time,’ said Eliza, getting an affirming nod from her partner.

‘I can manage the mothers’ group and the girls’ friendlies,’ said Lady Alice. ‘If you come back at night and help with the hostel.’

‘I’ll be there,’ promised Eliza.

They smiled fondly at each other.

‘What do you want me to do, Miss?’ asked Dot. She had felt a little left out what with Miss Eliza’s presence in the case, and her knowing so much more about art and things than Dot.

‘Something much more suited to your natural talents,’ said Phryne. ‘I am now about to impart the problem of Mrs Mario Bonnetti’s will, so everyone get a drink and find a comfortable position, because I don’t want to be interrupted or I might lose my place.’

Jane got another cup of tea, Ruth a glass of milk. Phryne was supplied with a pot of coffee and a jug of iced lemonade. Her sister accepted another kirsch and Lady Alice’s whisky was replenished.

Phryne told the story of Mrs Mario Bonnetti, nee Kathleen Julia O’Brien, her strange interlude in Ballarat and her marriage to a forty-year-old Italian. Phryne recited the names of the children, including Sister Immaculata, and the problem of the division of the estate. Then there was a silence.

‘And we need to find out not only if there was a child, but if it lived?’ asked Lady Alice. ‘Such children usually do not live, especially then.’

‘What do you mean?’ asked Phryne, who never thought about children if she could help it.

‘Well, dear, consider. The mortality rate even amongst healthy legitimate children at the time was one in five before their fifth birthday. People didn’t know about feeding pregnant women then, and mothers usually got the keelings of the pot or the leavings of the plates, whatever was left over after the Master of the House had been fed. Men were the breadwinners and had to get the most; women were at the bottom of what biologists call the food hierarchy.’

‘Still are,’ said Dot. ‘In my house, my dad got the pick of the food, then my brothers, then my sisters, then me, then Mum and the baby.’

‘Which means a lot of weak mothers who can’t survive the labour and exhaustion of childbirth,’ explained Lady Alice. ‘And a lot of babies malnourished in the womb, so they cannot undertake the effort of living.’

‘Miss, should the girls be hearing this?’ asked Dot, worried.

‘Yes,’ said Phryne. ‘There is nothing immoral about biology. Or sociology. By itself, I mean. Knowledge is power, Dot dear.’

‘But it’s always been like that,’ Dot protested, shelving her concerns for the girls’ immortal souls. ‘Men work hard, they need the food.’

‘And women don’t work hard?’ asked Lady Alice gently.

Dot subsided. She had never thought of this before. It was revolutionary. And probably against the law of God. Or maybe not.

‘So a child borne by an unmarried mother probably went to an orphanage,’ continued Lady Alice, who knew when to leave a socialist concept to soak in. ‘There must have been some good ones, somewhere, but most were baby farms, where babies lay all day in soaked napkins, if they had napkins, fed occasionally on watered cow’s milk, and died in droves. The poor mites. Children of sin. Such cruelty. Now in a rational state—’

‘This was an important family,’ said Phryne. ‘Would they give the child to an orphanage? Wouldn’t they arrange an adoption?’

‘Might have,’ said Eliza. ‘But they were Irish. The Irish were very hard on unmarried pregnant girls. Harder than the Italians, even though they are both Catholics. If so, it would be a poor family with no children. And they would have paid for its keep. That might be a way of tracing them.’