Introducing the Honourable Phryne Fisher Read Online Free PDF Page A

London.’
    ‘Dorothy Bryant. Ooh, look at him! I wish I could get my hands on him!’
    ‘Listen, I need a maid, and I’ll employ you. I’m staying at the Windsor. I’m quite respectable,’ she added. ‘Now, if I revenge you on that young hound, can you keep a quiet tongue about my activities?’
    ‘If you can do it, I’m yours,’ swore Dorothy. Phryne smiled.
    ‘Watch, and don’t move from here,’ she said, then slid out into the crowd. The young man was accompanied by several fellows, equally expensive and excruciatingly idle. Phryne listened to their conversation as she stalked the young man.
    ‘Then I laid her on the floor of the manse, and she’ll never dare complain—not the vicar’s daughter!’ crowed the young man, and his companions guffawed. Phryne insinuated herself close to the youth, and with a swift and skilled slice, cut his braces through the loose coat, and then slit up his undergarment, so that all below the waist was revealed. By the time he realised what had happened he was standing, perfectly dressed as to coat and shirt and hat, and quite bare down to his sock-suspenders.
    It happened quickly; but the crowd in the Arcade appreciated it at once. The young man was surrounded instantly by the more unruly half of Melbourne’s fashionable society, all of them howling with mirth. When he took a step forward and tripped, sprawling on the floor, the mob crowed with delight, as did the young man’s companions. And when a large policeman hoisted him to his feet and hauled him, suitably covered by his helmet, off to the watch-house to be charged with indecent exposure and conduct likely to cause a breach of the peace, the vaulted ceiling rang with raucous comments and shrieks.
    Phryne slipped back into her place and ordered some more tea, and Dorothy put one small, warm hand on her wrist. The girl’s eyes were shining with tears.
    ‘I’m yours,’ affirmed Dorothy.
    ‘Good. We’ll pick up your bundle tomorrow, and I’ve a maid’s room attached to my suite at the Windsor; you’ll be comfortable there. And you wouldn’t really want to go on the streets, Dorothy; it isn’t at all amusing, really.’
    Dazed, Dorothy followed Phryne out of the arcade and back up the hill to the hotel.
    As soon as Bert and Cec were safely gone, Dr MacMillan took the large scissors and cut off the blue silk dress, bundling it and the underwear together and slinging them into a corner. A quick examination assured her that her patient had undergone a criminal abortion, performed by an amateur with only a sketchy knowledge of anatomy.
    Sister Simmonds, who intended to undertake medical studies as soon as she could earn the fees, arrived and Dr MacMillan explained her diagnosis.
    ‘Clean all that matter away, Sister—you see? Some foreign body introduced into the womb—a knitting needle or syringe of soapy water, perhaps slippery elm bark. Butchers! Mind, Sister, an abortion done under ether with proper asepsis is not perilous—better, usually, to clear the contents of an incompetent womb before the third month than coddle a near-miscarriage to term and birth a monster or a sickly bairn which dies as a neonate. But this is butchery. Look, the cervix is widely dilated and all the vaginal bacteria have rushed in and started colonies.’
    ‘How long ago did this happen, Doctor?’ asked Sister Simmonds, taking up another carbolic-soaked cloth.
    ‘Two days, maybe three. Criminals! They perpetrate this outrage on nature, and the girl begins to miscarry—this one was four months gone, perhaps—and they usually send them home to cope with the results. Septicaemia is the least they can expect. Well, how would you diagnose her?’
    Sister Simmonds picked up Alice’s hand and felt for a pulse. It flickered so fast that she could not distinguish the separate beats. The girl’s temperature was 104 degrees. She was alternately sweating and shaking with cold, and dried out and burning with heat. Her belly, breasts and