Part Twelve: Scherzo

From Jack's perspective, the man in the photograph wearing the uniform of a British army captain and standing with his arm around the much-younger Yvette Benot could have been anyone, but Phryne was in no doubt even before she turned the picture over and translated the brief message on the back.

"'To my darling Yvette – a souvenir of our romance. I shall never forget you – George'. She didn't name her child after the king; she named him after his father. George. George Mortimer." Her eyes were wide with sorrow as she sought her fiancé's gaze. "She met her killer on my own doorstep."

There were hasty translations and farewells, and Renée swiftly agreed to allow them to take the letter and the photograph if it would help them to bring Yvette's killer to justice, and then they were leaving. But at the door, Renée laid her hand on Phryne's arm to detain her.

-What is it?- Phryne asked gently. Renée's reply was halting, pained.

-She was my dearest friend,- she said, -and I forgot all about her. You say she was in a workhouse, and that George Mortimer murdered her. She died alone and forgotten.- Her eyes filled with tears. -I should have remembered her.-

Phryne felt her own eyes fill, and squeezed her former comrade's hand. -We all forgot,- she replied. -We all share the blame.-

She walked to the car and allowed Jack to drive them back to the Bellevue.

...

"So we've established who," Jack said, once they were back in their room and looking over their file once again, "and we know how, but why? Why kill her now, after all this time? Why not when she showed up in England, pregnant? Unless he didn't know she was there."

"Or..." Phryne searched through the folder until she found the newspaper clipping. "I thought this was significant because it was what prompted her to get in touch with me, but I'm not the only person to appear in the Society pages. Look."

She was pointing to another photograph, slightly further down the page. The gentleman in it was older, but undoubtedly the same man who had his arm around Yvette in Renée's photograph. "'Aspiring M.P. The Honourable Mr. George Mortimer nails his political colours to the mast," Jack read aloud, "organising a gala dinner for fellow workhouse guardians to which a number of prominent Conservatives were also invited. Mr. Mortimer has been a vocal opponent of the Local Government Act, and no doubt politics was the hot topic of the evening.' So he was a workhouse guardian."

"And I'll bet I know which workhouse was his."

Jack nodded slowly. "His French fling shows up pregnant. He isn't about to marry her, and he doesn't want to risk having his indiscretion exposed, so he sticks her in the workhouse at Poplar and forgets all about her."

"But then, ten years later, they let her out," Phryne picked up the story, "and by now he's a man with political ambitions."

"And not just any ambitions." Jack continued. "He stands for morality, decency, and good old-fashioned family values."

"But with his own illegitimate baby's skeleton hidden in the cupboard." Phryne's voice trembled slightly as she added that part. "And his former mistress destitute in the East End."

"So he paid..." Jack thumbed through the file until he found the name, "Sid Evans to put the wind up her. Convince her to keep her mouth shut."

"But then she saw me in the paper and remembered." Phryne pointed to the caption underneath. "'The Honourable Miss Phryne Fisher with her antipodean mystery man, believed to be divorced policeman Mr. John 'Jack' Robinson. Miss Fisher has quite the reputation in her native Melbourne for her escapades as a private detective.' It was all right there for her. The problem, George Mortimer, and the solution, her old friend the private detective and her fiancé the policeman."

"So when their paths crossed on your doorstep – and we still haven't established exactly what Mr. Mortimer was doing there – he realised that he was in imminent danger of being exposed and decided that desperate times called for desperate measures. He knew from Evans where Mademoiselle Benot was living. He lay in wait for her, and when she walked down that alleyway he seized his chance and cut her throat. He took her handbag to make it look like a robbery, and my guess is he threw it into the river at the first opportunity, along with the murder weapon." He heaved a deep sigh. "But how do we prove it?"

If he was expecting an answer from Phryne, he was disappointed. "I have no idea," she admitted. "This is normally the part where I'd hand the case over to you."

"And normally, in a case like this, I'd send my constables out to canvas the area with a copy of Mortimer's picture. Perhaps it's time we made another visit to the Limehouse Police Station."

Phryne made a face. "Do you really think Sergeant Cooper-"

"I think Sergeant Cooper has a superior officer. Who with a week-old unsolved murder on his desk might just be willing to listen to us if we turn up with a stack of evidence and make enough of a fuss in the middle of his station."

Phryne tilted her head on one side, considering. "He might be willing to listen to you," she conceded grudgingly, "but everyone knows that nothing a woman says could possibly be of any use."

"'Everyone', Miss Fisher?"

She couldn't help but smile slightly at that, and went to slip her arms around his waist. "Alright, not 'everyone'. You're one of the good ones, Jack Robinson."

"One of the lucky ones is more like it," he replied, returning the file to the table and allowing himself to be thoroughly distracted from the case in ways that he never would have done had they been back in his office in Melbourne.

...

The following morning saw them on the road back to Paris. This time Phryne insisted that her hand was sufficiently healed to permit her to drive – for goodness' sake, how did he think she would pilot the plane home tomorrow if it wasn't? – and Jack braced himself for a speedy journey. As the fields of the Somme flashed by he couldn't help but reflect upon just how swiftly his feelings towards them were changing. This would probably never be a landscape that he could gaze upon with an untroubled heart, but now at least he could look at it with deep sorrow and compassion rather than near-overwhelming fear and horror. There were more people abroad now that Sunday was over, and he found himself marvelling at the tenacity of men willing to return and work the soil upon which they had fought and in which no doubt many of their own people – brothers, sons, fathers, friends – were buried.

"'Now civil wounds are stopp'd, peace lives again/ That she may long live here, God say Amen!'" he murmured to himself.

"What was that?" Phryne asked, no doubt slightly deafened by the tortured whine of the engine. The Magnifique's Renault was a sound vehicle, but it could hardly compete with the Hispano for speed. Not that that was preventing Phryne from trying.

"Just thinking aloud," Jack replied. Suddenly realising that he wanted conversation he asked "Exactly how well do you know Mr. Mortimer?"

"He's the third son of an Earl," Phryne replied. "No title of his own, of course, but wealthy and from an excellent family. After I had my coming out in 1920 my parents made every opportunity to throw the two of us together, no doubt hoping for a match. And since women with an estate and a title coming to them are a comparative rarity George was only too happy to go along with it, until I convinced him I wasn't interested."

"And how did you manage that?" He glanced her way and saw her lips curve into a satisfied smirk.

"We'd had a... rather intense discussion, I suppose you might call it, about a husband's rights and a woman's place, and he made the mistake of beginning a sentence with the words 'when you are my wife.'"

"And what was the rest of the sentence?" Jack asked.

"Haven't the foggiest. I'd had enough by then, so I stepped very close to him, shoved my dagger into his groin and told him that if I were ever unfortunate enough to find myself married to a pig like him I'd make sure that he'd never be able to consummate it."

Jack couldn't quite repress a snort of laughter at that, picturing the shocked expression on Mortimer's face when he realised that she was completely serious. Phryne smiled back.

"He rather went off me after that. Found another baron's daughter to marry, although I believe she has a brother so he didn't quite get what he was hoping for."

"On the other hand, he presumably managed to keep his existing assets intact."

Phryne smirked again. "Presumably."

...

They rolled back into Paris with enough time for a visit to the cemetery in Monparnasse, where Phryne laid a small slab of high-quality chocolate on Adelie's grave. As they wandered back to the car, she explained. "We were bogged down. Covered in mud, freezing cold and starving. I started to cry. And Adelie gave me her last piece of chocolate."

Jack slipped his arm around her shoulders and gave her a reassuring squeeze. "A friend worth remembering," he remarked softly.

"They all were," Phryne replied, Renée's words still resonating in her heart.