Phryne Fisher 07 - Ruddy Gore by Kerry Greenwood

Author:Kerry Greenwood [Greenwood, Kerry]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

The Ritz Cafe´ was entered through a corridor lined with wine barrels. It smelt agreeably of roasting and garlic and Phryne took a deep sniff.

‘Back to life,’ commented Gwilym, seating himself on a bench and drawing her down beside him. ‘We need rare steak and mushrooms,’ he said to the waiter, smiling with automatic charm. ‘It’s been a long night, Miss Fisher.’

‘Call me Phryne. Yes, it has.’ She roused herself to conversation. ‘You gave a great performance tonight, Mr. Evans.’

‘Since we have shared a blanket, I think you should call me Gwil,’ he grinned.

Phryne looked around. The Ritz was bohemian, fashionable, and nearly full, despite the lateness of the hour. Wine could not be legally purchased after ten o’clock, but a polite fiction allowed late diners to have a bottle on the table, which the management would solemnly swear was opened before the designated hour. Waiters in evening clothes dashed through the maze of wooden tables, carrying plates with effortless ease. The room was low, dark and wood-lined, and although it did not precisely resemble the Tuscan farmhouse which the Management fondly imagined, it was warm and felt safe. Phryne began to thaw.

Gwilym had already melted under her praise.

‘Yes. I could feel it all coming together, I could feel it happening. Poor Robin finding out he is actually a wicked baronet and despairing. I felt his despair.’ The blue eyes fixed on Phryne like a blow-lamp. ‘That line, it’s pure opera, Sullivan must have been thinking of Hamlet.’ He sang, very sweetly and softly ‘Alas, poor ghost!’ and several diners swung around to look at him. Three recognised him and he smiled and bowed to his public.

‘And the music – it’s almost folk song, almost Elizabethan.’

‘But not quite. Sullivan must have known that authentic early music would be too much of a shock for his public,’ said Phryne, who had heard Dolmetch in London and numerous amateurs on crumhorn, a sound which she could not like. She had also had been taken entirely against her will and better judgement to several English Folk Song and Dance Society concerts. ‘The closest he dared get was Purcell.’

Gwilym Evans appeared a little taken aback.

‘You’re well educated for a detective,’ he commented artlessly.

‘If we are going to make personal remarks, you’re a long way from home for a Welshman.’

‘Ah, yes, thousands of miles. I come from a little village half way up a slate mountain in the range the English call Snowdonia. You couldn’t even pronounce the name, Phryne. A long way indeed. Have you ever heard of hiraeth?’ he asked, his eyes staring sadly across endless seas.

‘No, what is that?’

‘A Welsh thing, hard to translate. ‘‘Yearning’’, perhaps. ‘‘Longing’’ is more like it. All of us have it, however happy we are. The yearning for home, even if we shook the dust off our shoes in loathing and swore never to return to the cold damp streets and the cold narrow people and the flat beer and the chapels fulminating endlessly against sin.’

‘Are your parents still there?’

‘I never knew my parents.

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