A/N: I'm not sure what's going on with this site at the moment. This story is currently showing me that there have been no views but as a couple of you are following this story I'm assuming you're reading it as well, so here's chapter 3 for you all!

*.*.*.

Chapter 3 - Miss Fisher & Miss Williams

*.*.*.

Janey found some spare uniforms in the servants' quarters and got the girls changing. She had retired at this point to start getting ready for the party herself. Guy's fiancée, Isabella, had tried to talk her into wearing some scandalous outfits but she had chosen instead to be the witch to Arthur's Hansel. There was a knock on the door and the eldest of the girls from the convent popped her head into Janey's room to speak to her.

"Excuse me, Miss, I was wondering if you had any balm or ointment? Ella's wound is looking a lot worse than we thought."

"Wound?" Janey leapt to her feet at that word, concerned. "Yes of course. Which one's Ella?"

"Oh, Catherine," the woman replied apologetically. "Sorry, Miss, the sisters change the names when we enter but for some women it never sticks."

"I see. And your name is?"

"Sarah, according to the sisters. At home I was Dorothy."

"Dorothy," Janey repeated, already deciding that she would call these girls by their proper names, unless of course any of them preferred their new name which didn't seem likely from Dorothy's demeanour. "Why did you end up at the laundry?"

The girl blushed. "Oh. I was a lady's maid, but I wasn't very good at it. And the master of the house made advances, which I didn't like. Then he died and I was framed for it. I got arrested and everything, then my mistress let me go and I didn't know where else to go."

"Oh, you poor lamb!" Janey exclaimed.

"I wanted to become a sister but they said I didn't have the right temperament. I would stick up for the other girls sometimes. It's hard work and we all get sores and things but we're not allowed to rest. And some of the girls are…in the family way."

"That's terrible. They shouldn't be working those girls."

"That's what I told them, Miss," Dorothy seemed to grow a lot more animated as Janey commiserated with her, "so they sent me to the punishment room. I know I'm not a sister but that doesn't seem very Christian to me."

"Me neither," Janey agreed. "I will get you some ointment. Do you need any bandages? I'll get you everything. Let's you all get patched up."

Dorothy looked like she was trying not to cry at the kindness Janey was showing them. "Thank you, Miss."

"Not at all, Dorothy. And I'll see what I can do to make sure my aunt finds good positions for you all. Honestly, I'm shocked!"

Janey went running off, her mind racing with the conversation she'd just had with Dorothy. Did her Aunt Prudence know what the girls were going through? Poor Dorothy seemed to be doing her best to look after them all. In a funny way, she reminded Janey of Phryne, although she suspected Phryne wouldn't have lasted five minutes in a place like that, not if she could break out of this punishment room Dorothy mentioned.

*.*.*.

Once they were all patched up and put to work, Dot actually found herself enjoying being out in society again. Her old mistress had thrown parties, although nothing a debauched as this one, and Miss Fisher was very kind to the girls. Just in the few hours she'd seen all four of the others gain confidence.

What she hadn't seen for a while was Miss Fisher herself. Concerned, Dot asked around and other members of staff suggested she should look in Arthur's room. Dot had been warned about Arthur not being right but she wasn't worried. He sounded a lot like some of the girls at the laundry, just lost and out of place in this world. She knocked on his door.

"Who's there?"

That must have been Arthur's voice that responded.

"My name's Dorothy Williams. I'm looking for Miss Janey Fisher."

The door opened to reveal Miss Fisher on the other side. She looked absolutely beautiful in her costume, despite the wart she'd drawn on her face, but also very tired. "Is something the matter, Dorothy?"

Dot shook her head. "No, Miss. I hadn't seen you for a while and wanted to check you were alright is all. You've been so kind to us girls."

Miss Fisher smiled and opened the door to allow Dot into the room. "We've been eating cakes and reading fairytales."

"Guy doesn't want me," Arthur announced sadly.

"Arthur, that's not true," Janey scolded him.

"Yes it is," he replied. "And Marigold is too busy at the party. Janey is all I have now that the woodcutter has Phryne."

"Now, now," Janey said firmly. "Phryne wouldn't have this, would she? She'd say we should go to the party anyway, wouldn't she?"

Arthur nodded. "Yes, but we're happier here with sweets and stories."

Miss Fisher grinned at Dot. "That is sadly true. Would you care to join us?"

Dot looked over at Arthur. He seemed nowhere near as scary as some members of staff made out. He seemed like a child to Dot, albeit one who spoke in riddles. "What was that about a woodcutter?"

"Oh," Miss Fisher sighed and took Dot to one side, presumably so Arthur couldn't hear them discussing him. "Phryne is my sister but she went missing. Arthur has it in his head that a man took her, a man we both saw. He calls him the woodcutter."

"Did he take her?"

"I don't know. The police are looking into it for me. We have no idea what happened to her."

Dot's heart went out to Miss Fisher. "I'm sorry, Miss. I don't have contact with my siblings now but I still wouldn't like one of them to go missing."

"I was very young at the time; the truth is I've spent longer as an only child than I did with Phryne. But she was everything to me back then. It's a hole you never fill. Reach out to your siblings, Dorothy, keep them close."

Dot nodded, not with any plans to go chasing down her siblings but still taking the lady's words to heart. "Shall I go back to work, Miss?"

"No, come sit with us for a while. Arthur, this is Dorothy. She's going to read a story with us."

In the middle of the room Janey had clearly set up a makeshift tent out of blankets. On the ground blanket were plates of cakes and other sweet treats lifted from the party downstairs and bubbling drinks that Dot suspected contained no alcohol. In one corner was a pile of books and Dot found one of these being thrust at her by Arthur. "Hansel and Gretel!"

"Again?" Janey laughed at his request.

"It's my favourite," Arthur insisted.

Slightly blindsided, Dot took the book from him and started reading, hesitantly at first, but she had always been happy reading stories to her nieces and nephews so once she stopped feeling nervous it started to feel like a natural thing for her to be doing. Arthur enjoyed it so much that Dot forgot that she was supposed to be working, she just engaged him in the story and time passed as pleasantly for her as it did him.

"Dorothy is a good reader, isn't she, Arthur?" Janey asked once the story was over.

"Yes," was the firm reply.

"She should get back to the party, though. We all should."

"Not me," Arthur replied sullenly, folding his arms and hiding deeper in the tent.

"Good," Miss Fisher whispered as an aside to Dot. "I hate parties. I am much happier here with Arthur and a book."

"Well you do seem to be out of treats," Dot noted as she looked down at the plates of crumbs that were all that was left of their sweets. "Shall I bring another plate up for you both?"

"Yes!" Arthur exclaimed excitedly. "And then read another story."

Both the ladies stood up and Miss Fisher walked to the door to see Dot out. "It might be the same story, I'm afraid."

Dot grinned at Miss Fisher's weary tone, wondering how many times that story had already been read that night. "I don't mind."

"Wait, Dorothy," Miss Fisher called as Dot headed out of the room to get back to her duties.

Dot turned around. "Yes, Miss?"

"Back in England we had lots of maids, I'm afraid I didn't have much to do with any of them that was always Mother's role, but my aunt only has the one who can assist me at the moment and she's not very good. How would you like a job here as my lady's maid?"

"Oh, Miss, I'm not sure…"

"You said you'd done it before," Janey insisted

"I said I wasn't very good at it," Dot admitted to her, not wanting to let her down, not after she'd been so kind.

"I'm perfectly capable of looking after myself, Dorothy. I don't need someone to wait on me. I suppose what I'm really after is companionship and you seem like a lovely person and you're so good with Arthur. I think we'd both enjoy having you around to read stories with us and I really don't want to have to send you back to that laundry if what you've said is true."

Dot's face lit up. She, too, really liked what she had seen of Miss Fisher and Arthur and would much rather stay here than go back to the convent. "Oh, Miss, if you're sure, I'd love to!"

"Good. I'll talk to my aunt in the morning and see what I have to do to make it all formal. I have to be honest, officially I only came to Melbourne for this party but, well, as the police are making some sort of progress with the hunt for my sister I have decided to stay around for a while longer. I'm not certain how long it will be until I go back to England, you understand?"

Dot nodded. "I understand, Miss. All I need is a good reference and I can get another position when you do decide to go back home."

"That's perfect, then. And, no need to be so formal with me, Dorothy, I haven't always been a lady. You can call me Janey."

"Thank you, Miss," Dot replied, knowing there was no way she'd ever feel comfortable referring to her mistress by her first name. "If you like, you can call me Dot. That's what they called me at home."

*.*.*.

Jack's investigation into Foyle went nowhere slowly. He had been released into the care of his mother, a not very nice woman who swore she had no idea where her son was. He reached out to old associates but none of them were very helpful as they'd all intentionally lost contact with him as soon as he'd been convicted for Hill's kidnap, some even before then when they suggested he'd started acting strangely. He'd even spoken again to his victim, Myrtle Hill, who could remember no more than she had told the police at the time.

Collins had found a lot of other girls who had gone missing but the pair of them struggled to make a connection until Collins remembered that both Myrtle and Janey had spoken about Foyle saying it was his daughter's birthday even though their investigation had turned up no such person. That was when Jack saw the pattern. Three of the other missing girls shared the same birthday with Myrtle and both the Misses Fisher.

He had no idea how Foyle had known all this yet but with this new lead Jack and Hugh drove out to the Stanleys to speak to Miss Fisher again.

To Jack's surprise they found that since they had last spoken, which was a few weeks previously, Miss Fisher had got herself a maid. He remembered arresting the same woman months before, mostly because he remembered Collins staring longingly at her every time he saw her. The girl was pretty so Jack didn't blame him for glancing over at her whenever he could. She had seemed sweet when they'd had to interview her over the murder and Jack had been pleased to find out that it had been the wife who was the murderer in the end. He was disappointed when he realised that Hugh hadn't followed up with the girl afterwards. He hoped that now they had been reacquainted he would.

"Birthdays?" Miss Fisher asked in surprise when Jack explained to her the reason for their visit.

Jack nodded. "Apparently so. We suspect he might have taken five girls in total, including your sister and the only one he was convicted for taking. All five shared a birthday with, well, him. And you."

That made her smirk for some reason. "Oh, no, Inspector. If you've got my birthday from my birth certificate it's wrong. My father had a tradition of registering his daughters' births while rather inebriated. For me, he got the month wrong. That was Phryne's birthday he put on my birth certificate, mine is actually 21st September."

"Did you tell Foyle that?" Jack asked, suddenly very interested in what should seem like trivial information.

"I don't…" Miss Fisher tailed off as she thought back to that day all those years ago. "Yes, maybe. He seemed unhappy that Phryne and Arthur were there with me, so I explained that it was a birthday treat for Phryne to let Arthur come with us."

Jack shared a look with Collins, hoping that the young constable was picking up the same thing as him. "Thank you, Miss Fisher, that's most helpful."

*.*.*.

"Except that we still don't know why," Collins said to him once they had left the house and the pair of them were standing by their car.

"No," Jack agreed, "but that's the link between Foyle and these girls. Five of them, four still missing and unaccounted for."

"You think he somehow found out Miss Janey Fisher's birthday, went after her, had hoped to get her alone at the circus…"

"Then she told him it wasn't her birthday but her sister's…"

"So he went after Miss Phryne Fisher instead."

Jack nodded. "That's my theory."

"Do you still think Phryne escaped, sir?"

Jack got into the car, thinking it all over. "The trouble is the why, Collins. Did he only want three or four girls, only to have Myrtle and Phryne disappear on him? Did he want all five and is hunting down both Phryne and Myrtle or just Myrtle because he has Phryne?"

"Is Myrtle Hill safe, sir?" Collins asked, clearly worried.

"Yes. She moved out of Melbourne when she heard Foyle had been released but she's staying in touch with her local police. We'll know if anything happens to her."

"What about Phryne Fisher?"

Jack sighed and started the engine. "From Miss Fisher's description she didn't sound like a child I'd want to try and kidnap. I think if any of the girls escaped him, it would have been Phryne Fisher."

"But she never went home."

"No," Jack replied sadly, "so we have to consider the possibility that she shared the fate of the other three girls, whatever that was. As it stands, we still have five missing persons to find, Collins. Foyle and the four girls."

TBC...