The Green Mill Murder (25 page)

‘And?’

‘Just don’t like the feel of the land around there. The air seems heavy.’

‘Compared to the air in Poziéres,’ said Phryne, ‘it would be as clean as an Arctic gale. I must leave, ladies. It has been lovely to meet you. Should you visit the city, my house is yours.’

‘Will you be back?’ asked Anne.

Phryne blinked. ‘I don’t know,’ she admitted. ‘It depends on the hermit. Dave!’ she yelled, waking the young man from his trance. ‘Your next aviation lesson is called Fuelling the Plane.’

Dave grinned and began hauling the drums from their dump beneath the lee of the riverbank.

Josephine and Anne, with the population of Talbotville, watched the Moth as it circled. They saw the pilot wave, then the plane darted north for the Barry Ranges, and dwindled to a silver speck in an immeasurable blue sky.

‘I hope she hasn’t done Vic any harm,’ worried Anne. Dave turned regretfully from his last glimpse of the plane.

‘I reckon she’s done him a lot of good,’ he said confidently. ‘Come into the pub, ladies, and I’ll tell you all about it.’

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

If you don’t like whisky you’ d better get used
to wine

If ’n you don’t like whisky you’ d better get used
to wine

That man he left me with that wine and I
feel fine.

WC Handy
‘St Louis Blues’

‘Holy willikens!’ Bill exclaimed when Phryne landed the Moth
back in Melbourne. ‘So you did it!’

Yes, she had done it. She had made the return flight with no problems, except for a gusty tailwind which kept trying to blow her off course. She had landed well, and had been smugly gratified by the astounded and blasphemous greeting from Bill.

Mr Butler conveyed her home in her own superb car and handed her over to Dot, who escorted her straight up the stairs. Phryne stripped off the malodorous flying suit, shucked the liquefying boots, and climbed into a very hot bath scented with spruce. She washed her hair, drained and refilled the bath, then lay back, letting the grime and woodsmoke and engine grease soak off her skin, and wondered if she had a decent fingernail to her name.

She stretched out her legs and allowed Dot to scrub her feet. It was very pleasant to be pampered.

‘Miss?’ asked Dot. Phryne sat up a little before her contentment caused her to drown. Dot was smiling, but looked rather harried.

‘Dot dear, tell me about the ball!’

‘It was lovely, Miss. I wore the dress and Hugh said I looked beautiful and I danced every dance and ruined me shoes. It was lovely.’ Dot smiled reminiscently. ‘I danced with the Chief of Police,’ she added.

‘Really?’

‘He stood on my foot.’

‘Well, even to have one’s foot trodden on by a Chief of Police is a distinction. I got walked on by a wombat.’

‘Did you fly all that way, Miss? I was worried! But there was nothing in the newspapers so I knew you were all right.’

‘Yes.’ Phryne extinguished a chuckle in her face-cloth.

‘Did you find the boy, Miss? The one in that photo?’

‘Yes, at the top of a mountain. A very nice man, Dot, you’d like him.’

‘I think I would,’ agreed Dot. ‘What happened to that Mr Freeman? He came round here and threw a fit when he heard that you’d gone flying. Mr Butler had to put him out.’

‘Well, we won’t see him again, Dot.’

Dot scrubbed industriously at Phryne’s instep, visibly hesitating before asking her next question.

‘Is he . . . dead, Miss?’

‘Yes, and entirely by accident, which is a great relief to us all. No, Dot, don’t look at me like that. I promise, it was an accident caused by Charles Freeman all by himself, as God is my witness.’

Dot let go Phryne’s foot to cross herself, and sighed.

‘God rest his soul,’ she said gravely. ‘And I don’t reckon he’s any loss. I liked his brother, though. Is he going to come to the city?’

‘No, Dot, I feel sure that he will never come to the city. I may fly up and see him again, sometime. I liked him, too, Dot. But I couldn’t stay there, in that cold silence.’

‘It would give me the creeps,’ agreed Dot, who profoundly distrusted any wilderness more uncharted than the closer city parks. ‘There, Miss, that’s the best I can do with your feet. There’s tar or something on the soles.’

‘Sap, I expect. Never mind, it will wear off. Oh, how clean I am and how lovely hot water is! Great invention. No wonder the Romans ruled the world. Give me a hand out of this bath, will you? Otherwise I shall stay here until I dissolve.’

Phryne dried herself on a huge fluffy towel and donned a silk nightgown and a velvet dressing gown with a collar of rabbit fur. She sat stroking the collar as Dot combed her hair, staring into the mirror at her familiar image, wondering why her eyes did not show the experience of mountains which lay behind them. Her eyes looked back, green and inscrutable as always.

‘Any messages, Dot, while I was away?’

‘Yes, Miss. Hang on, I’ve written ’em down. Several gentlemen have been enquiring as to when you would be back, Miss. Mr Lindsay left word that he has finished his exams and asks if you have any towns you want painted red. I haven’t the faintest idea what he means, he talks so educated.’ Dot was supremely unconscious of irony. ‘And Mr Stone, Miss, the musician.’

‘Oh?’

‘He wanted you to telephone when you came back.’

‘Oh, gosh, I’d almost forgotten that problem. Who else?’

‘A gentleman who wouldn’t leave his name.’

‘I know who that is, Dot, a practitioner of the love that dare not speak its name. Tends to demand anonymity.’

This comment went straight over Dot’s head, as Phryne had known it would. Dot remembered something and went into the bedroom.

‘This came by hand, Miss. There’s a label.’

It was a small and rather grubby box, with the superscription, ‘Thanks for everything, Percy and Violet.’ Inside was a piece of wedding cake.

‘That’s concluded, then. I hope they’ll be very happy. Otherwise this affair is hardly soggy with happy endings, Dot. When we go down for dinner, can you remind me to ask Mrs B for a substantial breakfast? I have to go and tell Mrs Freeman that her bouncing boy and favourite son is dead, and I think I shall need strengthening.’

After completing a beautifully cooked and immaculately served meal in her dining salon, which lacked wombats and hermits, Phryne put herself to bed, and dreamed of flying.

She paused outside Mrs Freeman’s door. The document, signed and now dated, in which Victor Ernest Freeman repudiated his inheritance was in her handbag. She had done what she had agreed to do. She took a deep breath, forced her hand into
action, and rang the bell.

Mrs Freeman was still on her couch, with attendant and handkerchiefs. Phryne whispered to the maid to stay; she did not feel confident of dealing with the vapours on her own. The magnitude of the hysterics which Mrs Freeman would be likely to unleash when she found that her favourite toy was dead was likely to rival a volcanic eruption, the sort that engulfs whole villages in the night.

‘Well?’

‘I found Victor,’ said Phryne. ‘He was alive. He is still alive. He has signed this paper, in which he renounces finally and forever any inheritance from his father.’ She gave the paper to Mrs Freeman, who read it with voracious eyes.

‘Where is Viccy? Why doesn’t he come to me?’ she wailed. ‘Are you sure that this is legal?’

‘He will never leave the mountains, Mrs Freeman. And I am assured it is a binding legal document, which he signed of his own free will and in his right mind. He’s very happy in the mountains,’ she added. Now for the tricky part. Mrs Freeman forestalled her.

‘Where is Charles? What have you done with him? He went chasing off to those wretched mountains after you and his brother and I haven’t heard from him for a week.’

‘Mrs Freeman, I’m afraid that I have bad news,’ Phryne began.

The older woman was ahead of her. ‘Viccy’s alive,’ she whispered. ‘But Charlie’s dead.’

Phryne nodded, thankful to have it out at last. There was a silence.

‘He came looking for Vic, intending to kill him. He didn’t succeed. Then, in the dark, he fell and hit his head. I saw it and so did a local stockman. Vic is taking the body down to Talbotville on a packhorse. They will have the inquest at Dargo, I expect. It was an accident. Vic didn’t kill him.’

‘Oh, I know that,’ said Mrs Freeman dismissively. ‘Vic never could kill things. That’s why the war sent him mad. He has a heart of pure marshmallow. You might have killed him, though. Did you?’

‘No.’

‘So they’ve all left me now,’ she whimpered. ‘Charlie and Viccy and Jimmy. I’m a lone, lorn woman.’

‘You are also extremely rich and in command of the family company,’ Phryne pointed out. Disconcertingly dry eyes fixed her to her chair.

‘All my life they wouldn’t let me do anything.’ Mrs Freeman’s voice was still a frail, elderly lady whisper. ‘All my life I’ve been watching them make a mess of things, though Charlie had more talent than his father. He got it from me. You are right, Miss Fisher. I have the family company. And I shall run it. My way.’

A dreadful suspicion struck Phryne and she could not bear to be in the same room as this woman a second longer. She stood up, grasping the arm of the chair. Mrs Freeman saw her face bleach and chuckled.

‘You suspect that I sent Charles to kill Vic, hoping that something would happen to him,’ she stated.

‘Did you?’

‘Wouldn’t you like to know, young woman,’ she cackled. ‘Wouldn’t you like to know.’

Phryne turned without another word and left the house, ran down the steps to the side of her car, and was luxuriantly and voluptuously sick in the gutter.

Profoundly shocked, she slept the better part of the afternoon, and could face only a boiled egg and toast when she awoke. She called herself roughly to order, reminded herself that people like Mrs Freeman are usually drowned at birth, and dressed for the Jazz Club. Dot handed her stockings and undergarments, and she pulled on a soft Chanel suit and a small, close-fitting hat with a cockade of red feathers. But despite appearances she was not feeling very festive.

Tintagel Stone restored her morale a little. He arrived to collect her looking debonair, well dressed; he could still stir her emotions with his intense blue gaze. She informed him that she had been flying across the alps, and he smiled and made a polite comment but was clearly not interested.

And he was in league with a murderer.

The door to the Jazz Club opened, and the beloved and much missed waft of noise, voices, coffee and cigarettes billowed out and embraced Phryne. Her spirits rose. She plunged inside.

Three musicians were sitting by the kitchen door, arguing about the Meaning of Jazz. It seemed to be the same argument she had heard a week before. Around a table at the front sat the Jazz Makers.

The group on stage finished ‘Basin Street Blues’, and Nerine stepped down and groped her way to the table.

‘Nerine, I have good news for you,’ Phryne said, catching at the singer’s arm and seating her safely. The skin was satiny beneath her fingers.

Nerine located Phryne and smiled. ‘You found that good-for-nothing man of mine?’ she asked in her rich accent. Phryne produced the death certificate and Nerine put on her glasses to read it.

‘He been gone all this time!’ She handed the slip of paper to Ben Rodgers. ‘Well, well, well. An’ I thought he took a powder.’

‘No, he just drank himself to death,’ said Phryne. ‘Seven years ago. You have been free of him all this time.’

‘And I never knew. I thank you, Miss Fisher, that sure is a relief to my mind. Mighty quick work too.’ She retrieved the paper from Ben Rodgers and stowed it carefully in her bag, then gave him a long, long look, so loaded with promise that Phryne glanced away. Ben was somewhat short of breath.

‘There’s something else,’ said Iris. ‘We have to talk, Miss Fisher.’

‘Now?’ asked Phryne, gesturing to the rest of the Jazz Makers. Iris nodded.

‘All right, if you insist. Now you know that I had been hired to attempt to get Charles Freeman out of trouble,’ she said to the band at large, scanning them. Iris, calm and capable. Jim Hyde looking worried. Clarence Davies pausing, coffee cup in hand, with his practised but charming smile. Hugh Anderson tugging doubtfully at his curly hair. Tintagel of the blue eyes intent. Ben Rodgers scowling. Nerine smiling at having been so foolish as to assume that anyone would run away from her lush embrace.

‘And they said Charles had a reason for wanting Bernard Stevens, the man who was killed at the Green Mill, dead. Bernard was blackmailing Charles. But Charles didn’t do it.’

Silence. Her audience were not giving anything away. Clarence Davies the drummer began to tap the table in a ragtime beat, until Iris flattened his hand with hers. ‘Please,’ she murmured. Hugh Anderson was staring at Phryne as though she was of an entirely different species.