Chapter 19 - Marked for Murder
*.*.*.
To Jack's utter surprise a couple of days later Lena did come forward to make a statement about both her attack and her kidnap. She didn't say that much but it was enough to add to Foyle's file and help to convict him.
Phryne had come back to him around the same time, he assumed following the all clear from Dr MacMillan but they hadn't made love that first night, he'd just held her in his arms as they slept. He wanted to hurt Foyle just for making her so vulnerable but a part of him was completely humbled by the knowledge that she allowed herself to be vulnerable in front of him.
Things then started to go back to normal again as that night faded to become just a memory. Phryne stopped questioning why he bothered with her and they got to enjoy nearly every night together. She clearly still hadn't got in contact with her family despite what he imagined would have been said, promised and probably threatened by Dr MacMillan but Jack suspected that the women at the Imperial Club now had a doctor if they needed one.
A couple of weeks after those events he stood in the entrance to the Abbotsford football team's club rooms catching his breath. Their star player had been found dead, a possible suicide. Both he and Collins were fans of the team so he'd spent a lot of the morning lecturing his constable on impartiality but he likewise couldn't hide the disappointment that Harper was dead and the team were going to struggle without him.
Near the club entrance a memorial had started to form. He and Collins had interrupted an escalating confrontation on their way in and he was disappointed to see that not only had the trouble makers not moved on, their number had grown. Jack found himself smiling, however, as he recognised the two women who had joined them.
He stepped out a little further into the grounds and finally made eye contact with Phryne and nodded for her to come over to him. He watched her speak firstly to Lena, who he assumed had come with her, and then to a couple of the men before she left the group.
"I didn't know you were an Abbotsford girl," Jack said to her in delight as they stood almost hidden from sight of both the onlookers and the clubrooms by a nearby bush.
"I'm not," Phryne replied, matching his smile, "but Lena is. She had quite a soft spot for this player. Was he murdered, then?"
"That's what I'm here to discover," Jack replied, finding himself a little disappointed that Phryne didn't seem to share his passion for the game. He had hoped that was why she was here and it could be one more thing they could talk about together. Maybe he'd even manage to take her to a game, if she could bear to be seen with a copper for the length of a match. "Do you know those men?"
"Jealous?" she asked him flirtatiously.
"Curious," he replied, not willing to rise to her bait.
"Good. Because actually it's your fault I know those men."
"How so?"
He swore she blushed. "They drive a taxi and somehow they've figured out the time I leave yours in the morning and nearly always wait to pick me up."
"I've never seen them."
"No. Well, I don't take a taxi door to door, more neighbourhood to neighbourhood. They seem all right."
"Hm. Well I wouldn't leave Lena alone with that lot too long if I were you. Your cabbies might be reliable but I've arrested the rest for brawling multiple times." He decided to leave out that he'd arrested her cabbies as well, on more than one occasion.
"Then why call me over," she complained playfully. "You know what Lena's been through, why do you think she asked me to come with her?"
"You know why. I can't resist you."
"Flatterer."
Jack wanted to kiss her but he couldn't. He was fairly certain they weren't being observed but that could change in an instant. He reflected that he didn't really enjoy their sneaking around and thought how much he would enjoy being able to walk around with her on his arm. He compromised with himself and took her hand in his instead. Her smile was almost bashful which wasn't helping Jack's resolve. She was completely irresistible when she was being coquettish but somehow when she seemed almost shy it made Jack feel something a lot like love. He wished he was allowed to be in love with her.
The sound of a car engine caught his attention and to Jack's surprise and horror he saw Fletcher driving Rosie over towards the doorway he'd been standing in. He quickly dropped Phryne's hand. He wasn't ashamed of her and if it had been anyone else in that car he wouldn't have cared but he really didn't want to have to introduce her to Rosie. He couldn't see a way that either woman would be happy with that scenario and he didn't see the point in upsetting everyone if there was no need to.
As he let go of her hand, he saw Phryne look over at the car. Any other woman would have queried why he didn't want to be seen with her but not Phryne; she just accepted it without asking him who was in that car. Jack hoped that wasn't because she was used to being someone's dirty secret and her assuming Jack would never want to be seen with her by anyone. He certainly wouldn't be speaking with her now if that was the case.
He briefly wondered if Phryne would care at all that the woman in the car was his ex-wife. She knew he was divorced and while she'd let him on occasion talk about it, she'd never pried into what his marriage or his wife had been like. He realised he didn't like it that she couldn't even show a little jealousy over him. Surely she should be at least slightly curious about the woman he'd been married to long before he'd known there was a Phryne Fisher in the world.
"I should get back to Lena," she said, saving him the trouble of ending their moment together.
"I'd better get back to work."
She looked back over at the car. "Expensive motor. They must be important."
"I'm sure I'll find out," Jack said as a half truth. In all honesty, he had no idea what they were doing here and there was no way he could evade finding out.
Phryne ran back to Lena's side and Jack walked over to where Fletcher had pulled over, noting that neither one of them had made any move to step out of the vehicle.
"Jack, we just heard," Rosie greeted him as he got nearer.
"Rosie. I thought you'd returned to the West Melbourne fold."
"Yes, Father would have loved that but unfortunately for him, Sidney's a fervent Abbotsford man. Another one!"
Jack couldn't help but smile. He had always got on well with his father-in-law, sometimes causing his wife to jokingly complain about him preferring her father to her. He learnt that he had been happy for her to fall for a policeman like him but he had been horrified to learn that he supported the long term rivals of his beloved football team. Jack knew just how delighted George would be for Rosie's next husband to suffer the same great flaw.
"Jack," Fletcher greeted, seemingly politely but Jack suspected he wanted to interrupt the pair's reminiscing. "Harry Harper was a brilliant player. He was a good bloke, too."
"He worked in shipping, didn't he?" Jack asked, his mind finally getting back to his real reason for being there.
Fletcher nodded. "Managing one of my warehouses, after he left West Melbourne. Rosie and I have become quite close to both the Harpers."
Interesting. That was two suspicious deaths of two men that had worked for Fletcher. Jack supposed if you had a large enough company that wasn't unusual but he did briefly wonder if Harper had been the manager in charge of Burke, not that there was any reason for him to continue that line of questioning. He also got the impression that he was going to have to spend more time in their company to figure out what had happened to Harry Harper, something he was not looking forward to.
"Celia must be shattered, poor thing," Rosie said, almost confirming his suspicions about the depth of their involvement with the deceased. He knew Celia was the name of Harper's wife. "Oh, and if you happen to see our favourite deputy commissioner, no need to mention we were here. Father couldn't take any more antagonising."
Fletcher chuckled as he started the engine back up. "Cheerio, now."
Jack watched them drive off, which gave him a chance to look back at Phryne as they drove past the crowd. The biggest trouble-maker of the bunch seemed to have got himself into an argument with Phryne, who was trying to pull Lena away from paying her respects and get out of there. Jack smiled. He didn't like the man's chances, although he did hope he wouldn't have to arrest Phryne for getting into a fight. Perhaps he ought to head back inside to take another look at his crime scene before he saw her do something he'd regret.
*.*.*.
Janey sat in the study, looking over her notes. Since the Board had rejected her proposal she'd gone back to the drawing board. Rosie had considered the matter settled which in a way suited Janey. She needed a radical new plan and Rosie was in no way radical.
Even Dot was unconvinced by Janey's new plan. She wanted to bypass the convent altogether, stop the girls from getting into the laundry. Everything else they planned could still happen but in their own building with no strict religious code and no conservative board members who sneered at fallen women.
Janey sighed. Her vision was good but it needed a dose of reality. Rosie had always been good at that. Dot was just unhappy that there would be no religious teachings and Janey was struggling to do this all alone.
There was a knock on the study door.
"Yes?" she called absently.
The door creaked open and Dot stood there.
"You've got a message, Miss, from Miss Sanderson. She's had to postpone your meeting this afternoon. She's looking after Mrs Harper because her husband's just died."
"Harper, the footballer?" Janey asked. She'd met the Harpers a couple of times while socialising with Rosie. Harry Harper had turned up on only one occasion, stayed for two seconds and spoke only to Fletcher apart from a very brief farewell to his wife. Celia Harper hadn't seemed to mind his absence, their relationship didn't strike Janey as very loving and she couldn't help but wonder why Celia would be upset that her husband was dead. She was still pretty and young; she could easily get a better one with Harper out of the way.
"Thank you, Dot."
"She also said that she was planning a memorial that you'd be invited to."
"Oh, lovely," Janey replied with minimal amounts of enthusiasm.
"Don't you support Abbotsford, Miss?"
Janey finally turned her attention to Dot. "I've never been overly fond of the game, Dot. Father used to take us when we were little and I was happy enough watching. Then Phryne tried to sabotage the game by getting the opponents team drunk so Mother banned both of us from going, said it was unseemly for young ladies, but mostly it was because she didn't want Phryne to become some young tomboy hooligan."
Dot wrinkled her nose. "How old was she?"
"Oh, I'm not sure, about 10 I think. Father wasn't happy either; it was his alcohol she'd used. He beat her when we got home, then she'd get locked in the cupboard every evening for a week to make sure she got the message."
She watched Dot take this in. "I think I am beginning to understand why your sister ran away and never came back."
"Oh, she fought our parents constantly. I can't remember her ever being young enough to implicitly trust that our parents knew what they were doing. I swear every other word out of her mouth was 'why'. Her rows with Mother were always smaller than with Father. Mother simply couldn't understand why Phryne didn't want to be a little princess of a girl. She didn't care so much about what she got up to, so long as she'd do it in bows and ribbons and didn't get dirty, which Phryne hated. She always liked looking pretty but she didn't care enough about it to slow down and be dainty. She was very active and always sort of ploughed her way through everything, not thinking about ripped skirts and lost ribbons until later."
"And your father?"
Janey smiled. Even though the memories of her childhood weren't all happy ones, at least they contained Phryne. "They were too similar to get on. Father had to be in control of everything, usually through manipulation but Phryne is not someone who can easily be manipulated so they'd argue. Then when Father realised he couldn't use words to get her to do what he wanted, he resorted to violence. When she was younger it was just a smack but as that stopped working…"
"Poor Miss Phryne," Dot replied, seemingly lost in thought. "She's never had an easy life, I suppose. First that, then out on the streets…"
"No, well, I suppose so but that's her own choice," Janey replied. It saddened her that Phryne was still out there, still missing as far she was concerned. "Anyway, as with a lot of things I missed out on as a child, Phryne was to blame for me not going to football matches and I never thought to go as I got older."
"I always loved going with my family, Miss. Hugh has to be devastated, he supports Abbotsford."
"You don't?"
Dot shook her head. "West Melbourne, like my mother."
"Are you sure Hugh's the right man for you, Dot? A Protestant Abbotsford man?"
Dot knew she was only teasing and smiled broadly. "But he's perfect in every other way, Miss."
"I knew he is, Dot."
Janey turned back to her mess of a plan. "I suppose with luncheon off I have nothing better to do than go over this."
She expected to hear Dot leave but she didn't. "Maybe you should leave it, Miss."
"But those poor girls, Dot, you were one of them!"
"I didn't mean forever," Dot replied with a smile, "but there's no point in getting all stressed over it. Maybe if you leave it for a while, you'll find some inspiration when you're not looking."
"It's not inspiration I need, Dot, it's vast pots of unlimited money." Janey pushed the paperwork aside. "But you're right, I do need some time away from all this. Perhaps, as Rosie has let us down, Arthur would like to join us for a picnic in the garden instead."
*.*.*.
"Neville Gibbs telephoned me, complaining of police harassment. He tells me you've brought Stan Baines in. Now he can't be a suspect in this murder, surely?"
Jack sighed in annoyance. He had brought in the opposition's player for a chat. The pair had always had a turbulent relationship and Jack knew he couldn't ignore this when looking into Harper's death. He understood how strongly Sanderson felt about his team but Jack never thought he'd pick sides when it came to a murder investigation. "It seemed worth a chat with him, sir, given the pair's history, recent and long-term."
"Have you turned up any hard evidence?"
"A West Melbourne scarf was found at the crime scene."
"I said hard evidence," George scoffed. "Anyone could have planted that."
"But I can't rule out Bains yet."
"Jack, Stan Bains is still a popular player with West fans. Now, if word gets out that you are an Abbotsford man and you are harassing him unnecessarily... it's you who will be suspect."
Jack and George had now made it through to reception where Neville Gibbs, the West Melbourne manager, was waiting. "We're not holding Bains, Mr Gibbs. He's told us what we need to know and he's free to go."
"Good," replied Sanderson from Jack's side.
"For the moment," Jack muttered as an aside, which sadly for him did not go unnoticed by Sanderson.
"Jack, I hope I can trust you to do the right thing with this case."
Jack nodded. "You can. I'm not going to be swayed from finding justice because of personal loyalties."
"No," Sanderson replied, sounding almost sad about it. "No, I didn't think so."
TBC...
*.*.*.
A/N: I know this chapter took possibly a little too much directly from the episode itself but things will start to move on a bit in the next chapter, I promise.