Chapter Four
"Sir, I'm sorry."
"No need to apologise, Constable," said Jack mildly. "Believe me, I'm the first to admit that we can't help our relatives." He cast a sidelong glance. "Any other skeletons in your police-issue locker that I ought to know about before we get to the next appointment?"
He noted the hunted expression and decided to start the engine and pull away from the kerb before pressing the question.
"I've seen your record, such as it is, Lennox, and it's impressive; but as far as I can recall, you dived straight into the police force as soon as you were old enough. Tell me more?"
"My parents are both teachers, sir," he said, stiffly. Opening up wasn't, it seemed, second nature.
"Ah, then reasoning's in the blood," commented Jack, glancing over his shoulder before turning on to Swanston Street.
The response was delivered in muttered tones.
"What?" Jack, preoccupied with the traffic, was too harassed to be gentle.
"I-don't-know," said Lennox more loudly. Then, as an afterthought. "Sir."
Jack slid him a glance but said no more until they pulled up outside Gold's rooming-house. He turned off the engine, but rather than reach for the door handle, relaxed back against the door. "You don't know?"
"Adopted, sir," said Lennox. "I've been brought up learning to think by two people who have sacrificed a great deal for me. My mother gave me up at birth and I never knew my father, so there's a great deal about my background I'll probably never know."
He offered a challenging look. "Sorry if that's inconvenient, Inspector. I'll try not to let my upbringing get in the way of the investigation."
Jack regarded him calmly, and turned to get out of the car. As they both walked towards the house, he said quietly, "In my station, Constable, men prove their worth by their own work and nothing else." He paused, hand on the door-knocker. "I think you'll find you're in more congenial company than you could possibly have imagined."
Miss Fisher, in the meantime, was grilling Jane. Neither of them bothered to pretend that it wasn't what she was up to, because Jane was a grown-up and Miss Fisher was, well … tenacious. And Jane was showing two vital qualities of a medical professional - a strong stomach and rapid recovery time.
"But why on earth would you go to the Classics store? I could have sworn you said you wanted to be a doctor! If Jack hadn't led me to you I'd have been wandering around the reading room screaming your name. I warn you, this may be the last time I offer to collect you from the library."
"I do want to be a doctor. I want to be as good as Mac. At the same time, I learned to love Latin and Greek, and I needed help with something."
"What sort of thing?"
"Oh, just an argument."
"With one of your lecturers?"
"Oh no! No, one of the other students. A complete idiot. We call him Fester."
"Charming," remarked Phryne. "I suppose his name's Foster or something?"
"Forster," admitted Jane with a grin. "And he thinks he's so clever, because he can memorise anything." She reflected for a moment. "It would be rather marvellous to be able to just - take a picture of the human anatomy and nervous system and carry it in your head the way that he seems to do, mind you."
"Sounds ideal," agreed Phryne. "In fact, isn't that ninety percent of your job? Knowing when someone point to the bit that hurts, what it is they're pointing to?"
Jane giggled. "No! If I was really struggling, I could look that up. No, it's making the connections - working out what all the symptoms mean. Fester's useless at it, and I'm trying to work up a way to show him. That's why Mac's so marvellous," she said wistfully. "She looks at a patient and sees the whole person, and joins up the dots like those puzzles that Lisbeth loves."
She looked around. "Actually, where is she? Lisbeth, I mean. It's awfully quiet."
Phryne sat up, arrested. "You're right. Far too quiet." She stood, marched to the parlour doors and shouted for Elizabeth at a volume that would have alerted the navy, who were at the time minding their own business more than a dozen nautical miles offshore, but would have adored meeting Miss Fisher.
A friendly face appeared in the doorway from a kitchenly quarter. "Ma'am, Miss Elizabeth is currently entertaining guests in a Bedouin Encampment."
Phryne raised an eyebrow. "Really, Mr Butler?"
"Yes, ma'am," he confirmed, straight-faced. "In the garden."
Following his gesture, and pursued by her other daughter, Miss Fisher went in search of the youngest member of the household. What she saw when she reached the back door brought her up short.
Miss Elizabeth Jane Robinson was presiding, cross-legged, on a cushion at the door of a tent.
(Phryne had fond memories of the uses to which that tent had been pressed over the years, and shelved them hastily. Now Was Not The Time).
Her courtiers were lounging on rugs around her, being read to from one of her favourite story-books by her nanny, Mary-Lou. The noble knights Johnson and Yates (cab drivers and defenders of the downtrodden when they weren't busy worshipping at the feet of the Princess Elizabeth) lay on their backs. Bert Johnson was snoring gently, but Her Highness was too engrossed in the story to notice. Lin Soo, Phryne's maid, was also cross-legged and straight-backed, making rapid progress on a daisy-chain, while sipping some authentically sweet mint tea. The only person sedately seated on a chair was the nanny herself, for the pragmatic reason that it would take all the adults present to get her back to her feet if she descended to the ground.
Catching sight of the lady of the house, Mary-Lou paused in her rendition of the exploits of Millicent Margaret Amanda, which made Elizabeth look up.
"Mumma!" she cried gladly. "We're being a Bedroom Camp. Is it lunchtime?"
"By the time you've washed your filthy face and hands, it will be, child," replied her mother cheerfully. "Bid the court farewell, and go and clean yourself."
The rest of the company was hastily rising to its feet, apart from Soo, who carefully threaded the head of the final daisy through a more enlarged hole in the next stalk. The crown thus completed, it was ceremoniously placed on the head of the Princess, who then trundled cheerfully indoors in Mary-Lou's wake to be rendered presentable.
Soo stalked into the house to assist Mr Butler with the lunch (a process which would largely consist of standing with her hands neatly folded on a chair-back, watching him work; it seemed to do remarkable things for his productivity, so Miss Fisher could only applaud). The red-raggers recalled urgent business that needed them to repair to their taxi; and so Jane and Phryne were left alone again.
Slipping her arm around the girl's waist, Phryne drew her back to the house.
"So, did you say the book was Socrates?" she asked, judging - correctly - that the interlude had helped the horrors of the morning be comprehensively filed by her clinically-minded daughter in their proper place.
"Plato," corrected Jane. "Gorgias".
"Interesting," commented Phryne. "And it was stored on the same side of the shelves as the body?"
"No …" Jane considered. "No, the Plato is all on the other side. Funny, I hadn't thought of that. So either the shooter killed the man and walked round the shelf to hide the gun …"
"...or he shot from the other side of the shelf," finished Phryne. "I think we should let the Inspector know. It could be important."
Jane hesitated. "Yes, but …"
"What?"
"Do you think we could have lunch first? I'm famished!"
Phryne grinned. "Something tells me that you have exactly the survival instinct the medical profession needs, Jane. By all means, lunch first!"