Queen of Flowers (2 page)

‘A refreshing cocktail, Miss Fisher,’ he said. ‘In view of the day we have all had.’

Phryne sipped. ‘Oh, lovely,’ she said. It tasted of cherries.

A bubbly, delicate, utterly refreshing mouthful of spring.

Miss Fanshawe took a deep gulp, blinked and said, ‘Oh my!

That’s enough to make you want to go out and get all hot and tired over again!’

Mr Butler withdrew, pleased. The lady might not be out of the top drawer but she knew a good cocktail when she drank it. Mrs Butler had returned with her new hat and was seated at the kitchen table, peeling vegetables for a roast. The adoptive daughters of the house were helping, eating bread and butter to stay their stomachs until dinner. Thin blonde Jane and darker, plumper Ruth, Miss Phryne’s strays. Mr Butler wanted to unbend and he couldn’t do it with them there, even though they were good girls and no trouble at all, really.

‘Go into the garden,’ said Mr Butler to the two girls.

‘There’s an elephant.’

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They dived for the door without a word.

His new cocktail had gone down well. The day had been long. Mr Butler sat down, undid his shirt collar, and poured himself a small glass of the butler’s infallible restorative, a good port. Mrs Butler stopped peeling and laid down her potato severely.

‘Now, Mr B, you know it isn’t right to fib to the girls,’ she reproved. ‘Just because you’d rather have their room than their company.’

Mr Butler gave her a smile which bordered on smug—he had had a very trying day—and said nothing. Mrs Butler surveyed him closely. They had been married for nearly forty years. She picked up the vegetable peeler again, obscurely worried by that smile. ‘There isn’t really an elephant in the garden, is there?’ pressed Mrs Butler, peeling industriously.

‘Yes, Mrs B,’ he replied, allowing himself another vindi-cated sip. ‘There is.’

Phryne Fisher looked at her household as they came down to dinner, correctly dressed, clean and shining. A credit to themselves, she thought. Dot in her favourite brown jumper suit.

The girls in matching summer dresses. Herself in her red house gown. Ember, who had not twitched a whisker when he sighted an elephant through the kitchen window, slouching elegantly along after Mr Butler’s silver salver, which was redolent of gravy.

Molly, who had been coaxed out from under the chair and assured that the elephant was definitely gone, sitting nervously under the table hoping for titbits. Mr Butler, restored by port.

And dinner.

Phryne had a healthy appetite and the money to indulge it. And lunch had been scanty and hurried. Time to taste a nice Bordeaux and allow the day to fold peacefully to its close.

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‘Where did you meet Miss Fanshawe?’ asked Jane. ‘And did you know that the rock hyrax is the elephant’s nearest relative?’

‘In London and no,’ replied Phryne. ‘What is a rock hyrax?’

‘It’s a little rabbity thing,’ said Jane. ‘Not at all like an elephant, which is—as we saw—big. And Miss Fanshawe said that Flossie isn’t even a very big elephant.’

‘She was a special act in a circus I went to see,’ said Phryne.

‘I have always loved circuses. And I was able to help in a little emergency they had, so they invited me backstage—’

‘Hang on,’ interrupted Jane. ‘What little emergency?’

‘It wasn’t anything really,’ temporised Phryne. Jane looked at her. So did Dot and Ruth. ‘Oh well, they had a big cat act.

I was sitting ringside when a black panther called Princess, who had clearly had a bad day, decided that sitting up on her pedestal and waving her paws in the air was too, too tedious and it would be more amusing to knock her trainer down with one swipe and then bite his head off. She was about to do that when I grabbed the ice-cream man’s slop dish and threw it in her face.’

‘That was quick thinking!’ said Jane.

‘I reasoned that she was a cat and cats hate water and they especially hate to appear anything less than entirely well groomed,’ Phryne told Jane. ‘With her whiskers full of partly melted ice cream she felt that she could not face her public and rushed off stage. The other beasts went too and the trainer wasn’t badly hurt. I don’t like seeing those beautiful cats made to do stupid tricks, anyway. It’s undignified. If I had allowed the panther to continue with her program for the day they would have had to shoot her, and that wouldn’t have done at all. Anyway, they asked me to come backstage and there I met Dulcie. First, I met Kali. Now she is a big elephant. Not friendly. I was picking my way over the waste ground to the caravans when a stupid dog came yapping and biting at this
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huge elephant—it clearly had a death wish—and her trunk shot out and—whack—the dog was thrown into the air. It hit the side of a tent with a noise like a drum and retired into private life, howling. I was just standing very still, trying not to attract Kali’s attention, when Dulcie said, “It’s the heat. It’s making them nervous,” and Kali picked me up and set me on her back as gently as a mother. It was an odd evening, all round,’ concluded Phryne, taking another bite of roast beef.

‘No, really,’ said Dot with some irony.

‘Kali is named after the Hindu Goddess of Death,’ Jane informed the company. ‘She’s usually depicted with a bunch of skulls in one hand and a sword in the other, dancing on a pile of severed heads.’

‘Nice name,’ said Dot, exercising her irony again. ‘Nice thing for a young lady to know.’

‘Knowledge is power,’ said Phryne approvingly. ‘Dulcie and elephants just go together like toast and honey. In the way that some people are good with dogs or children, she’s good with elephants. And she had such a conventional upbringing, too.

Nice girl from a nice school with a retired vicar as a father. Still, you can never tell.’

‘Fathers are important,’ said Ruth unexpectedly.

‘Yes,’ agreed Phryne. ‘I suppose they are. But there are fathers and fathers, you know. Mine is an old grump.’

‘Mine’s all right,’ said Dot, helping herself to another roast potato. ‘A hard working honest man. Even goes to church when Mum nags him. Wants his dinner right on the dot of five, of course, but he works hard and he deserves it. Never used to yell at us or hit us.’

‘I don’t remember mine very well,’ confessed Jane. ‘I always lived with my grandma. She said that my parents were travelling folk but kind in their way. They just left me with her and
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wandered off, then they got killed in a farming accident when I was four.’

‘And I don’t remember my father at all,’ said Ruth.

‘I wonder what he was like?’

Phryne suppressed the comment that since he had not gone to the trouble of actually marrying Ruth’s mother and had exited stage left before Ruth was born, not even putting his name on her birth certificate, he wasn’t particularly relevant.

This lack of a father was clearly bothering Ruth, though. The girl read far too many romances.

‘He might have been a good man,’ she said gently. ‘But we’ll never know. Think of him as a good man,’ she suggested.

‘Mum said he was a sailor,’ said Ruth.

‘There are good sailors,’ said Phryne. ‘Well, some good sailors. In a way they are ideal as husbands. They drop in every six months for a wild celebration, then they drop out again before one gets bored with their company or annoyed by their habits. However, speculation is always lame. Let’s see what Mrs Butler has for dessert. Ah! Fruit salad and ice cream.

I wonder if elephants like ice cream?’

‘It would need to be a very big dixie cup,’ said Jane.

Everyone, after their busy day, was sleepy and disinclined to go out to the movies or indeed to do anything more active than play the gramophone and flick through a magazine. Phryne read a detective story, frequently going back because she suddenly found herself reading a conversation between two characters she had not met before—a sure sign that an early night was indicated. The girls played a quiet game of cards. Dot knitted. Molly, still obscurely worried that huge grey beasts might invade her domain, slept in the kitchen wedged in beside the stove with her tail to the wall.

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Ember had already retired to a boudoir which was no longer filled with intrusive humans talking, arguing and flourishing pointed objects. He was curled up in a perfect black sphere when Phryne cast off her red gown, bathed sumptuously in a lily of the valley scented tub, and assumed a red silk nightgown and her own place in her moss green bedroom.

Mr and Mrs Butler made a milk drink and retired. Both girls went to their jazz-coloured room and got into their beds.

By ten o’clock the whole house was breathing deeply in well-deserved slumber.

No one heard the side window slide open after midnight.

Miss Mavis Sutherland to Miss Anna Ross 21 August 1912

Dear Annie

I have your letter and it all sounds so exciting! Three sailors,
one a piper, one a violinist and one a drummer, all staying in
your mama’s house! Which one of the three do you like the best?

Mr James Murray the fiddler (he doesn’t sound very Scotch,
by the way)? Oh no, I see that you said he had red hair. Red
hair is so unattractive on a man. Not like your own deep
auburn tresses which could hardly be called red at all. So is it
the drummer Mr Neil McLeod, who is fair, or the dark-eyed
Mr Rory McCrimmon? Come, Annie, ’fess up. It must be
unbearably exciting to have musicians in the house. Tell all.

I am agog.

Here it is very tedious as always, the London house is closed
for the summer but they will all be back soon, now that autumn
is closing in. There was frost on the windows last night. It must
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be lovely to be in sunny Australia where it never snows. Along
about February, when the snow closes in and it’s so dark, I miss
dear old Melbourne more than ever. Well, I had better finish
this or I’ll miss the post. With my respects to your mother and
my dear love to you,

Your friend

Mavis

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CHAPTER TWO

The struggling pangs of conscious truth to hide
To quench the blushes of ingenuous shame.

Thomas Gray

‘Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard’

Phryne woke refreshed after a short but erotic dream about Lin Chung. Dreams about Lin Chung, her Chinese lover, were almost always erotic. He was everything one could want in a lover: skilled, passionate, beautiful, exotic, devoted, and firmly married to the charming Camellia. Phryne was always willing to make appointments for passion, but hadn’t a second to spare for jealousy, scenes, or matrimony. Even her father had given up on finding a suitable husband for Phryne.

She sipped at the dangerous, inky-brown Hellenic beverage on which she relied to shock her into wakefulness, and surveyed the day’s activities. Meeting with the Mayor’s representative at ten. Lunch with her flower maidens at twelve. Meeting with Phryne’s favourite salesman, Mr Xavier from Xavier’s Cellars,
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at four. She was saving Mr Xavier for last, as he was her favourite vendor. What do vintners buy, she mused with Omar Khayyám, one-half so precious as that which they sell? He might even have managed to track down that shipment of Louis Roederer Cristal which had been ordered for the Russian court and which, tragically, the revolution had prevented them from drinking. It had last been seen heading for South America.

Still, the Russians did have a sweet tooth and Phryne abomi-nated sweet champagne.

She pottered gently through the routine of bathing and dressing and sat brushing her hair in front of her vine-wreathed mirror. The Hon. Miss Phryne Fisher looked at herself. Short black hair cut in a cap like a Dutch doll. A small, decided chin, cupid’s bow lips, fine etched black eyebrows, piercingly green eyes which gave her her Chinese name of the Jade Lady. Very nice, she told her reflection.

Dot had laid out a forest green cardigan suit and ivory silk blouse, low-heeled shoes and a natural straw hat with a respectable brim. Dot was a reliable weather forecaster. If she had selected this hat, it meant no rain in prospect but a danger of sunburn. Phryne spared a moment to reflect on how very fortunate she was in her family, and went downstairs.

Where a riot appeared to have broken out. Phryne halted on the last step and tried to work out what was happening, with a view to taking the poker to an intruder or clipping a few ears, whichever seemed indicated. She listened.

Female voices only, it seemed. Three, in fact. Ruth and Jane, screaming at each other in the breakfast room. Well, well.

And they ordinarily got on amiably enough. Dot was yelling at both of them to be quiet while Miss Phryne was having breakfast, and Molly was helping by barking hysterically.

Mr Butler came out of the room, restrained only by the
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inflexible butlers’ code from throwing up his hands in despair.

Phryne stepped past him and said, ‘Well,’ and got instant silence.

Jane was flushed and angry, her blonde hair straggling out of its plait where she had tugged at it. Ruth looked down, mutinous and red. Dot collected herself enough to take a deep breath.