Murder in Montparnasse by Kerry Greenwood Read Free Book Online Page A

along with Mr MacKenzie as he leaves and offers him— what? A sip from a flask? The farmer had not been drugged. Chloral hydrate was very easy to find at an autopsy on an intact body, because of its peculiar and very unpleasant smell. Someone must have spiked the drinks or had a sure-fire way of making someone take a drink from him.
    But in any case, both deaths were highly suspicious. Each singly could have been an accident, but together they looked extremely worrying.
    Billy the Match’s unedifying record lay before her. A petty criminal as a child—two years in a boys’ training school, she noticed, that should have perfected his skills—and then the usual run of handbag thefts, minor assaults, the victims always other children or old people who wouldn’t or couldn’t fight back. A nasty little person, but not dangerous, until Billy the Match found out about fire. A note from the informant suggested that William Joseph Bland had been responsible for hundreds of small fires in rubbish bins. His favourite method was to tie several matches around a cigarette, light it, and toss it into a bin where, as the cigarette burned down, it would produce a burst of flame and ignite whatever was in the bin. Then he had graduated to houses and discovered the glories of turpentine.
    A medical report, attached, said that he was not insane, he just liked fires, and could not be prevented from lighting them. The fact that he was good at not being caught suggested that he knew that what he was doing was wrong, which proved sanity. The physician also suggested a Freudian analysis; fire was a cleansing element, and Billy felt dirty. His background was dire. His mother was a whore and his father a toss-up between a selection of ten men, mostly sailors, among her clientele. She drank too much, took drugs, and locked the child out of the house, often in the rain, while she was working. He was malnourished and lacked nurture. He had been an early truant and still could not read or write. If the ratbag hadn’t taken to trying to burn down Melbourne, Phryne would have felt sorry for Billy the Match.
    Phryne scanned the list of passengers with French passports who had entered Australia in the last two months. Not many names. Usual selections of Duponts and Duponds. Then one name leapt straight off the paper and struck Phryne between the eyes.
    Oh, no. Not now! Not when she was already feeling destabilised, uncertain, and angry! What was he doing here? What cruel, Phryne-hating fate could have brought René Dubois to Australia?
    She put her hands over her face. René Dubois. René of the scented nights in the Bois de Boulogne. René of the wicked smile. René of the compelling, shrill, intricate music. René wrapped around her in his ill-clothed bed under the eaves of the Montparnasse atelier in which he lived.
    It was all because of that telegram . . . ‘Mademoiselle will await the escort from London?’ asked Madame la Concierge.
    ‘Non,’ said Phryne, furious at the unmitigated gall of her father, expecting her to wait and be called for like a parcel. ‘Mademoiselle will not wait.’
    ‘And may we say where mademoiselle is going?’
    ‘You may not,’ said Phryne, folding her new clothes into her knapsack. ‘I will write a letter for my father. Where is the nearest postal office?’
    ‘I will carry mademoiselle’s letter, if she will trust it to me,’ said Madame, stiffly.
    ‘Of course.’ Phryne sat down and wrote furiously.
    ‘Send it as soon as you can,’ she said. Then, out of the francs which the hotel had advanced her, she stuffed some money into Madame’s hand. ‘You have been very kind,’ she said. ‘I could not have had a better welcome back to the real world. Thank you.’
    Then she was gone down the stairs. Moving well, Madame saw, refreshed by her rest and the good southern wine. But Paris was no place for an unaccompanied young woman of English background, and Madame worried about her as she watched her walk