Murder in the Dark (4 page)

Eliza threw her hat onto the dresser and kissed Phryne as the latter helped herself to Oxford marmalade. ‘This is a change from the old country, eh? No frost! No sad little dead birds! No compulsory visits to those poor cottagers! And best of all . . .’

Phryne raised her coffee cup in salute and agreement. ‘We are eleven thousand miles from Papa.’

‘Indeed,’ said Eliza fervently, and poured tea for herself and her lover in the most devout of familial spirits.

Ruth had successfully made breakfast and stacked the dishes for later washing. Now she was about to face the greatest challenge of her life to date, and she was anxious to get as many people out of the house as she could.

‘I’ll stay,’ offered Eliza. ‘I’ve got up to page five of Mrs Beeton, you know.’

‘And I do not care to attend the shop-worn conventions of an outmoded religion,’ declared Lady Alice. Jane tugged at Phryne’s sleeve and she looked up in time to intercept Ruth’s agonised appeal.

‘No you don’t, you pair of atheists,’ she said to her sister and Lady Alice. ‘You’re coming along with me to a nice rousing singsong. Do your souls good. But first, it’s Ruth’s turn with the Advent book.’

Propped up in a stand on the mantelpiece in the parlour was the Advent book, which had entrancing, brightly painted pictures, all concealed behind little windows which folded out or down. Phryne’s household had alternated in opening them, page by page, and most excitingly there were more after the birth of the baby Jesus, which would be today’s picture.

It was. The mother cradled the child in her arms, and a suspiciously clean collection of shepherds knelt at her feet. Their animals had obviously been freshly rinsed as well.

‘Lovely donkey,’ commented Lady Alice.

‘Nice baby,’ agreed Eliza. ‘Well, if we have to go to this antique ritual, let’s go.’

Phryne winked at Ruth and walked her family out of the house and into the dead quiet of Christmas morning. No buses. No trucks. No vans. Almost no traffic. Phryne was relieved to see a few of the gentlemen of the street, over-full of Christmas spirits, asleep on the bench by the church. St Kilda was itself, after all.

‘Oh come, all ye faithful,’ sang the choir, and the Fisher family went into church.

Ruth went back to her room and removed her prized silk stockings. She put on her old lisle ones and her stout boots. Mrs Butler was firm about bare feet in her kitchen. Too dangerous, she said, with scalds and dropped pots. She returned to the kitchen—all hers now—and wrapped herself up in one of Mrs Butler’s aprons. She tied back her plaits and consulted her list. It seemed very long and daunting.

‘Light stove,’ murmured Ruth, and found the long matches.

An hour later she was wiping her forehead and licking her pencil for the thirtieth time. The list was almost at an end. The shelled peas were in their colander, waiting to be cooked. The brussels sprouts likewise. Ruth had yet to be convinced that brussels sprouts were food, the bitter morsels having been a mainstay of her scullery days, but the cookbooks said that with chestnut purée they were superb, and Ruth was not about to start second-guessing
Ma Cuisine
. The potatoes were in the oven, basted in goose fat. To her probing skewer they were already tender. The pudding was on the stove, steaming, next to a singing kettle which would resupply the pot with boiling water. The washed and dried salad and the iced fruit sorbets were cooling in the American refrigerator. There remained only cream to whip and a few small matters to adjust.

Ruth pushed back her hair and laughed at the last item on Mrs Butler’s list: ‘Now make yourself a cup of really strong tea and take it into the garden. Ginger biscuits in the tin.’ Hers not to reason why, Ruth made her tea, spiked it with four sugars and carried it and the biscuits out into the garden. She sat down under the jasmine bower, where she could see the kitchen door and hear if the pudding began to boil dry.

She was exhausted and exhilarated. Molly wandered into the garden and slumped down on her feet with a sigh. The scent of that cooking goose was a heavy burden for a small starving dog to bear, she conveyed. Ember was at large in the kitchen but he could hardly hook the goose out of the oven with only his own four paws. Birds sang in the Christmas quiet. Ruth drank her tea, listening to a group of magpies chortle their water music, sweeter, Miss Phryne said, than nightingales.

She had just rinsed her cup and saucer when the bell rang and she went to the front door, wondering who would call on Christmas morning. No one was there, but a bright parcel lay on the step, directed to The Hon. Miss Phryne Fisher. Ruth turned it around, shook it experimentally, and then took it inside and put it under the tree. Miss Phryne had a lot of admirers.

She heard an ominous boiling-dry noise and ran back to the kitchen.

‘Well,’ said Phryne expansively, taking another slice of breast, ‘that was the best goose in all the world.’

‘Never tasted better,’ beamed Miss Eliza.

‘Delicious,’ agreed Lady Alice, holding out her plate for more goose, brussels sprouts (and who would have thought they did taste that good with chestnuts? Even Jane had eaten some, Ruth marvelled, resolving never to doubt her texts again), potatoes, gravy, chestnut stuffing and peas. Ruth was delighted. Not by the spoken compliments, though they were very nice, but by the second and even third helpings for which everyone was asking.

‘There’s pudding to follow,’ she warned. ‘And iced sorbets.’

‘In due course,’ said Phryne. ‘Just a little more gravy, please.’

The party relaxed and nibbled their favourite tidbits. Phryne and Eliza began to reminisce about the ceremonies taking place even now in their father’s house and how glad they were not to be witnessing them.

‘He’ll be on his third bottle by now,’ said Eliza, smothering a giggle at her daring in criticising the Patriarch.

‘Drunk as a lord and bellowing at the butler,’ said Phryne, pouring another glass of the moselle which the Barossa Valley was making so competently.

‘Mother will be scuttling along, protesting,’ continued Eliza.

‘And he will not take a blind bit of notice. He will invade the kitchen and dismiss the cook for insubordination, and she will fling a gravy ladle into his face and stalk out, leaving mother, who cannot boil an egg to save her life, to cook dinner for twenty-five.’

‘So she will rush after the offended cook.’

‘And perhaps James might manage to get the master into the parlour to amuse the guests,’ said Eliza. ‘Oh, such a fuss! It’s lovely to have this feast just laid out without any panic and hysteria, though we do appreciate how hard Ruth must have worked to produce it.’

‘No, really, I just followed the instructions,’ said Ruth modestly. She and Jane had changed into their summer frocks, skimpy cool things with short skirts and scooped necklines, pale mauve for Ruth and pale green for Jane, who was blonder. Ruth had decanted the pudding and left it to drain and seethe before she had dared replace her boots with sandals.

She accompanied Jane into the kitchen as they began to clear the table. Just the pudding, cream, brandy sauce and sorbets to go. Jane scraped each plate into the greasy baking dish and stacked them for washing. She was careful, because when she lost concentration she had a tendency to drop things and this was Miss Phryne’s Clarice Cliff dinnerware. Molly lurked under the table, knowing that as soon as the plates were cleared, that baking dish piled high with leftovers was her Christmas dinner. She salivated and licked her chops loudly.

Jane carried the baking dish out into the garden and Molly leapt to follow, tail whirring. When Jane came back she found Ruth transfixed with horror.

Ember had become bored waiting for his treat, or had possibly lacked sufficient trust in humans to be sure that it would eventuate. He had decided to reward himself and was whiskers deep in the bowl of whipped cream, purring like a dynamo.

‘Oh, Jane! What shall we do?’ whispered the hitherto redoubtable Ruth, wringing her hands. ‘I can’t serve whipped cream with cat fur in it! And I haven’t got time to whip more cream!’

‘You get Ember,’ said Jane. ‘I’ll get a big spoon.’

Ruth grasped Ember around the middle. Jane scooped out a generous amount of cream around where he had been licking. She placed spoon, cream and cat on the floor of the scullery and shut the door on the furry, purring thief.

‘There,’ said Jane, patting Ruth’s trembling shoulder. ‘It’s all right. No one will know. I’ve seen Mrs Butler do similar things. Now you take the pudding and I’ll take the cream and the sauce and off we go.’

She gave her foster sister a push and Ruth bore the pudding into the dining room.

The pudding cloth had peeled perfectly. The pudding squatted, spherical and smooth, without a blemish. Ruth accepted the company’s compliments. Phryne gave her a shrewd look and a glass of sweet muscat, instructing her to drink up and recruit her strength after such hard work. Ruth did so, gasped, and shook herself. Of course it would be all right. She didn’t even wince when Lady Alice took whipped cream and brandy sauce with her pudding.

The feast trailed off into spoonfuls of iced lemon sorbet, strong coffee, mince pies and little chocolates. Then Phryne betook herself to the kitchen and sent her guests to their rooms to have a siesta.

‘I washed dishes for a living,’ she told Ruth, who protested. ‘Before I made more money as a model. You and Jane go and lie down for a couple of hours. Then we shall have tea and crackers and carols and presents,’ she promised.

Ruth waited until she saw Miss Phryne fill both sinks in a no-nonsense fashion and begin on the glasses before she allowed herself to be persuaded away. Jane flung herself down to read some more Darwin and Ruth fell asleep instantly, her tired feet elevated on a pillow. Miss Eliza led Lady Alice to the guest bedroom for a little nap. Phryne washed dishes.

She rather liked washing dishes, if she didn’t have to do it for a living. And provided there were gallons of fresh hot water and soda and soap. When she had got to the pots, she left them to soak for a while and brewed herself some more coffee. She became aware of a mewing noise in the scullery.

‘Ah, she said, opening the door and taking in the licked clean spoon and the offended cat. ‘So you like whipped cream, eh? I might have guessed it. If you come out,’ she hinted, ‘there is a plate of carefully cut-up goose scraps for you which some kind girl has prepared and which you do not deserve in the slightest.’

Ember emerged, gave himself a fast once-over wash to demonstrate how he felt about being deprived of a bowl of cream which he had personally hunted down, and addressed himself to the goose. Molly came in, having demolished her mountain of scraps, and flopped down under the table, full to satiety for the first time in her deprived life. And Phryne scrubbed and drained pots, finding that the baking dish had been admirably nibbled clean by the dog. She finished the task and took her coffee into the garden.

The salt wind from the sea, which burned all vegetation in summer, was in Phryne’s garden foiled by large screens of bamboo, unkillable by any earthly force. The delicate trailers and vines sheltered behind the bamboo, able to grow higher than the fence without being blighted instantly. The jasmine was in bloom. The sun was not too hot and Phryne basked a little, very happy in her own house and her own company.

Then she mounted the stairs for a little nap before tea, and presents, and carols.

Christmas carols were playing on the gramophone. The tea tray was prepared. Phryne, in a loose gown, presided as Ruth and Jane alternated in taking parcels from under the glorious gold and silver tree.

‘Miss Phryne,’ said Jane anxiously. Phryne opened it. Inside was a small, cambric handkerchief with a slightly wobbly orchid embroidered on the corner. Blood spots had not quite washed out of it.

‘Jane,’ said Phryne warmly, ‘how lovely. What a good choice of flower.’ She tucked it into her pocket so that the orchid showed. Jane let out her held breath.

‘Jane,’ said Ruth. Jane unwrapped a book. ‘
Gray’s Anatomy
,’ said Phryne. Jane gave a small cry of joy as she reverently opened it and displayed a flayed human form, all muscles marked and numbered. Ruth shuddered slightly and opened her present, a proper starched cook’s cap and apron. Lady Alice and Miss Eliza had also provided books for their friends. Phryne had
London Labour and the London Poor
by Henry Mayhew, in three volumes. Jane had Beatrice and Sidney Webb on the economics of poverty and Ruth
Plain Recipes for Poor
People
by Soyer. Phryne commended her sister on not starting the girls on
Das Kapital
too soon.

‘Oh, it’s central, of course, but it’s so dull,’ said Eliza. ‘Thank you for the shortbread, Ruth. And the pen wiper, Jane. That will come in very useful. And the writing things, Phryne. Purple, my favourite colour too, and such good cream-laid paper. I always think I write better on really good paper.’

‘And here is a box of biscuits for Molly,’ said Ruth.

‘And a pair of gloves from Lin Chung. How very beautiful,’ said Phryne. The gloves were Florentine angel’s skin, thinner than kid and as scarlet as sin.

‘And what’s in this one?’ asked Lady Alice.

‘Oh yes, it was left on the porch,’ said Ruth. ‘This morning.’

Phryne cut the string. Molly came to her side, gave a profound sniff and began to bark. Ember, who had been catching forty winks on the arm of Phryne’s chair, woke up cross and spat.

‘Molly, what’s the matter?’ exclaimed Jane, as Phryne lifted the lid of a small box, disclosing an arm ring in the shape of a brightly enamelled serpent. It was coral and brown and ivory, so beautifully coloured that it might have been alive.

‘What a pretty thing,’ said Phryne, and reached for it. It lifted its head and hissed.

Her life was preserved only because the snake was unsure whom to bite first, the barking dog or the moving hand. It streaked up to half its length, aiming at a point between Phryne and Molly. But it had not counted on there being a cat within easy reach.

Ember had not had a good day. His cream had been taken away from him. He had been locked in the scullery. Then just when he had been adequately regaled and was taking a well deserved nap, he was woken by barking dogs and importunate snakes. It was too much.