Murder on the Ballarat Train by Kerry Greenwood

Author:Kerry Greenwood
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Poisoned Pen Press
Published: 2012-01-04T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter Nine

‘Although she managed to pick plenty of beautiful Rushes…

there was always a more lovely one that she couldn’t reach.’

Alice Through the Looking Glass,

Lewis Carroll

Phryne woke from an uncomfortable dream—not precisely a nightmare but certainly not a delightful reverie—and found that during the night she had pulled a pillow over her face, which probably accounted for it.

Next to her, sleeping like a baby, lay the beautiful Lindsay, as sleek as a seal, and utterly relaxed. Phryne picked up his hand, and dropped it. It fell limply.

‘Out to the world,’ she observed, and went to the bathroom to run herself a deep, hot, foaming bath, scented with ‘Rose de Gueldy’. Then she sat down on the big bed and looked at her lover, finding herself unexpectedly moved by his beauty and his gentleness. Her motives in seducing him had been mixed, to say the least; among them lust and the desire to hammer a wedge between him and his friend Alastair predominated. He had been an engrossing, untiring, eager lover and an apt pupil, and she almost envied the lucky young woman whom he would marry. Like Janet in the old ballad of Tam Lin, ‘she had gotten a stately groom’.

He sighed and turned over, revealing the ordered propriety of bone and muscle that was his back, and Phryne was about to slide down beside him again when she bethought herself of her bath, and went to take it, getting to the taps seconds before it overflowed.

She soaked herself thoroughly, and only rose from the foam like Aphrodite when Mr. Butler tapped at the door with the early morning tea.

‘Good morning, Mr. Butler,’ she said, accepting the loaded tray, and the houseman smiled at her.

‘Good morning, Miss Fisher, you are looking well, the young man has done you good. I’ve brought the papers, Miss Jane’s photograph is in them.’

‘Thank you, Mr. Butler,’ and Phryne shut the door, woke Lindsay with a cup of tea, and sat down beside him to survey the news.

Jane’s photograph occupied a column of page three, with the caption, ‘Do you know this girl?’ Phryne thought that it had come out uncommonly well, and should produce results. Lindsay sat up sleepily and drank his tea, and Phryne settled back comfortably against his shoulder.

‘I don’t know if I dare go back to my digs,’ confessed the young man who had done Miss Fisher so much good. ‘How can I look old Alastair in the eye?’

‘Mmm?’ asked Phryne and Lindsay tried to explain.

‘You see, we’ve known each other almost all our lives, and we’ve always done everything together—we used to climb together, but Alastair had an accident with another climber. He was killed by a falling rock, and Alastair thought that it was his fault, though it wasn’t, of course, rocks can happen to anyone, then we were in the school play together—he was a good actor. I remember him doing Captain Hook, limping around waiting for the crocodile…tick…tick…with his face all scarred.’

‘Oh? How did he do that?’ asked Phryne, who was not really listening.

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