Urn Burial

CHAPTER SEVEN

Oblivion is not to be hired.

Urn Burial, Sir Thomas Browne, Chapter V.

PHRYNE WAS dressing for dinner. The search party, defeated by the weather and the approach of night, had returned wet and grumbling. They had found no trace of Lina. It was pouring outside the bow windows, a steady drumming against the glass. Phryne yawned. Rain made her sleepy. She had bathed and was wearing her padded silk robe, a present from Lin Chung. Splashes of bright gold chrysanthemums across a background of dark-green leaves cheered her, and the silk wadding was as warm as fur. The smooth fabric caressed her skin like a hand.

She was sitting in her Sheridan chair, feet towards the fire, staring at the vague oil painting which had been in Dot’s room. It was an improvement on Hope. Ladies with parasols were walking down a flower-strewn slope towards the artist. There was a breeze; their hair was blown back and one parasol had turned inside out. Although filthy from long exposure to soot – it must have hung over a mantelpiece – it had a certain internal light which Phryne felt she had seen before, somewhere. She idled with the idea but could not pin it down. Europe, somewhere. A French voice came back to her, talking about clarity.

Dot came in briskly, turned on the light, and the impression vanished.

‘Dinner, Miss,’ she said. ‘What would you like to wear?’

‘The jade dress, I think. It’s cold.’ Phryne dismissed her train of thought and watched as Dot laid out the gown of the season.

Being a dinner dress, it was only ankle length. The fishtail train on Phryne’s ball dress, which seemed, sadly, to be unlikely to see society, at least at this party – was designed for dancing and to overawe the servants. It also provided a convenient test for a clumsy young man to demonstrate just how awkward he was, thus saving Phryne’s feet from many a trampling. If he stood on the train she didn’t dance with him. Dot smoothed the velvet and fluffed up the squirrel-fur collar and cuffs, then found gunmetal-coloured stockings and the silver shoes.

Phryne donned black silk underwear and allowed Dot to drop the dress over her head. She made up her face with a few precise licks of a powder compact, sketched in her eyebrows, painted her mouth, shook her fluid hair into place and surveyed herself narrowly in the wardrobe mirror.

The jade-green velvet, cut by a master, flowed from the furry collar down to her neat ankles and well-shod feet. Phryne turned and walked, watching the movement of the fabric. Beautiful. The dress depended from her shapely shoulders. It was decorously cut, more from considerations of pneumonia than morality, with a high neck and no unseemly display of vertebrae. Poitou had sent it from Paris with his personal compliments to la belle Anglaise, and Phryne thought that he would have been pleased with it. The gown draped over her body, emphasising just what she wanted emphasised, and was remarkably decent while having a wholly indecent effect.

Dot set a fillet onto the black hair. It had a small panache of seagull’s feathers caught in an ornate silver clip. Phryne slid onto her left middle finger the big silver ring she had bought in Shanghai, the dragon and the phoenix, symbolising the mating of yin and yang, male and female, sun and moon, darkness and light.

‘Perfect,’ she said, and smiled at her reflection. It smiled back. ‘What’s the news from the kitchen, Dot?’

‘Mrs Croft thinks Lina’s run away and so do most of the others. Mr Hinchcliff is worried, though – so’s his wife. We only see them at dinner, Miss. Mr Reynolds ordered that all the outside staff have dinner at six. He says they work hard and need their food. We’ll eat after you do, Miss. Looks like a good dinner, too. Mr H hardly ate anything and Mrs H has been crying. Doreen says there was nothing strange about the room, except that the bottom sheet and the blanket were missing, so she put new ones on the bed. She’s upset because she reckons she must have missed Lina by a minute and might have been able to help her.’

‘She couldn’t have helped her, Dot,’ said Phryne soberly.

‘You think she’s dead, Miss. Why?’

‘I saw her dead. All Doreen has done is spare herself a dreadful sight.’

Dot was silent. ‘I don’t s’pose we can just go away, Miss?’ she asked hopefully.

‘Not a chance,’ said Phryne. The reflection’s red mouth hardened into a straight line and the green eyes narrowed. Dot sighed.

‘I was afraid you were going to say that, Miss Phryne.’

‘I don’t think we’re in too much danger, Dot, but after you come back from dinner, shove a chair-back under the doorknob. I’ll knock when I come. Just in case, Dot dear,’ she said hastily. ‘The door doesn’t seem to have a key.’

‘Not only that, Miss, it hasn’t even got a latch. I had a look at it earlier. The lock’s not working.’

‘How singular,’ Phryne observed. ‘The good old chair it is then. Now don’t worry, Dot. I’d better go down. Enjoy your dinner and keep an ear out for gossip. Find out what everyone was doing before they came here, if you can. I’m especially curious about that remarkable couple, the Hinchcliffs. They’re not the sort of people I would expect to find in the backblocks. Be good.’ Phryne kissed Dot. ‘I’m relying on you.’

Dot said, ‘Yes, Miss,’ and waited until Phryne had gone in a waft of Jicky before wiping the lipstick mark off her cheek.

‘You’re enough to drive me mental,’ said Dot to the closed door. ‘But you smell so nice.’

Dinner, it appeared, was going to be testing. The gathering in the drawing room was nervous: Miss Cray was muttering prayers in an annoying undertone, Miss Mead was looking like someone who had just discovered the Mother’s Club rehearsing the Black Mass instead of the Wednesday Play, Tom Reynolds had taken more brandy than was good for him and the poet had not only matched but exceeded his consumption. Mrs Reynolds’ brow was furrowed, Lin Chung looked absolutely expressionless, Miss Fletcher was talking too loudly about the leg-before-wicket rule, Gerald looked crumpled and Jack Lucas short-tempered. The Major’s shirt front was ballooning out as he declaimed that all women were pests and a curse and no time need be wasted on such a light-headed, irresponsible, fundamentally wicked sex.

‘It’s not money that’s the root of all evil, but women,’ he declared. His wife, wispy in pale-blue, cowered away from him and Doctor Franklin, who was the main recipient of the Major’s discourse, looked harried. Only Mrs Fletcher looked pleased, and that might have been because Judith was leaning ostentatiously on Gerald’s arm. Miss Medenham was remarkable in cyclamen chiffon and amethysts. The poet was offering her a cocktail and drinking her in with what looked like serious, if alcoholically inspired, concentration.

The gentlemen were dressed in the usual panoply; the ladies ranged from Joan Fletcher’s ‘suitable’ grey velvet to Miss Cray’s habitual mourning weeds, dressed up with a multitude of jet brooches with hair in them.

Phryne swept in and Lin Chung detached himself from the gathering with deceptive ease and offered her his arm.

‘You look absolutely beautiful,’ he said softly. Phryne surveyed him. His clothes, she thought, were made to measure in Savile Row, or perhaps in Oxford. They fitted him like a glove. The linen irreproachable; the links and studs of round undecorated gold in very good taste. His hair was as shiny as patent leather and he was as sleek and self-satisfied as a black cat.

‘So do you,’ she told him with perfect truth.

‘Shall we go in?’ asked the hostess. Phryne accepted Tom Reynolds’ arm. As the highest-ranking lady, it was her place to go first and be seated first.

Tom was more than a trifle unsteady as the great doors opened into a dining room shining with glass and lit by three chandeliers. The tables were laid with damask as white as snow, on which were displayed glasses in the highest state of gleam; silver polished to extinction, several epergnes full of ferns and a real Sevres dinner service – Peninsular War vintage. Unless it came with the house, it must have cost Tom several fortunes. Phryne hoped that the domestics knew that the penalty for dropping a plate was a shooting at dawn.

She paraded down the length of the room. The decor was, as usual, mixed. Linen-fold panelling lined the walls, but the ceiling was decorated with a frieze of dancing Greek maidens and plaster mouldings in the shape of trailing bunches of ivy and grapes. A Dionysiad, therefore; but a very polite one. No nymph could get into too much trouble when she had such a very tight corset on under her tunic. The floor was parquet and slightly springy, and the windows were draped with full High Victorian curtains, endless falls of heavy velvet and piles of priceless lace heaped carelessly to the floor.

‘Lord, Tom, what a room,’ she murmured, holding her host up with a hand under his elbow.

‘Magnificent, ain’t it?’ he blurred.

‘I’ve never seen anything like it. Come along, old thing, you’re meant to sit here, the head of the table, and I sit here on your left. Downsy-daisy,’ said Phryne, pushing slightly as the butler shoved the chair forward. Hinchcliff flourished his master’s napkin and spread it on his lap. Phryne exchanged a rueful glance with him. How had Tom got so polluted in such a short time? Although the large man’s face remained perfectly butlerine, she caught a flicker of a wink and a small, very fleeting, smile.

‘That’s the way,’ she encouraged. ‘You have to have something to eat, Tom dear. You shouldn’t drink on an empty stomach.’

‘’M not drunk,’ protested Tom.

‘No, of course not, my dear,’ said Phryne, very pleased that Lin Chung was sitting beside her with Miss Medenham and Jack Lucas opposite. At least she would have someone to talk to.

The rest of the company had entered, each gentleman escorting a lady, and Phryne looked down the board. She could not see far, because of a bank of ferns of Amazonian luxuriance. The Major had been separated from his wife, who was sitting next to Tadeusz. Luttrell was inflicting his opinions on Joan Fletcher who, by the look of her, was about to deliver a mustard-plaster snub. Phryne hoped that she would be able to hear it. Miss Cray and Miss Mead flanked the Doctor, and Gerald Randall had accompanied Judith Fletcher and was even listening to what she was saying, or appearing to. Perhaps, Phryne thought, he really was interested in cricket.

‘Hock, Madam?’ asked Mr Hinchcliff, and Phryne nodded. Perhaps Tom Reynolds was wise. This assortment of people might look much better through the pink spectacles of the slightly shickered. She examined the menu card, written in waiter’s French.

Pure Mrs Beeton. No one would serve a meal of such richness and variety in the city now, except possibly the Lord Mayor. Phryne sipped the hock, hoped that she was hungry, and joined in politely to Lin Chung’s conversation about Oxford.

The delights of that city lasted through the consommé de gibier, game soup composed mostly of local rabbit and possibly pigeon.

‘I suppose that it is difficult to make game soup in Australia,’ she commented, ‘though this is excellent. No partridges or quail, no wild birds.’

‘There’s a recipe for parrot soup,’ Tom Reynolds came awake. ‘You take an old boot and a couple of parrots. You put them in a pot and stew them until the old boot is soft. Then you throw the parrots away and eat the old boot.’

Having delivered himself of this culinary gem, Tom lapsed into his reverie again.

‘Well, they are so decorative that I wouldn’t want to eat them anyway,’ said Miss Medenham with aplomb. ‘Don’t you agree, Miss Fisher? I saw a flight of galahs from my window this afternoon, like a grey cloud. Then they turned, and the cloud was pink.’

‘They are beautiful,’ agreed Phryne. ‘And as you say, very Art décoratif. Those bold colours – black and crimson, or the red, blue and gold of rosellas.’

‘Greenfinches would make a lovely frieze around a room,’ said Jack Lucas. ‘Flights and flights of green birds, or silver-eyes, perhaps, in that strange grey-green like gumleaves.’

‘Or that chalk-blue of budgies, though perhaps not a frieze,’ commented Lin Chung. ‘The feathers are very fine. Promise me, Phryne, you will not start a fashion? If you wear the bright plumage, all the ladies will emulate you and there will not be a parrot left in Australia, which would be a pity.’

‘I promise,’ Phryne smiled. ‘The feathers I’m wearing are from a seagull, and I picked them up myself on Elwood beach after he had preened them away. Dot put them together – she is a famous needlewoman.’

‘They are quite perfect,’ said Jack Lucas. ‘They seem to set off your silky black hair just as Miss Medenham’s amethysts set off her golden locks.’

‘Do you admire my golden locks, Jack?’ asked Miss Medenham, shaking her head so that all of her purple stones flashed in the chandelier’s bright light.

‘You know I do,’ he said.

There was a pause. The housemaid, moving with extreme care, offered fillets of trout cooked with almonds. The gentlemen had obviously caught some fish.

‘Tom, dear, would you like some truite almandine?’ asked Phryne as he stared blankly at the embarrassed maid. ‘You caught them, you know.’

‘Me? No. I never caught nothing. Fish, eh? No. Don’t want no fish.’

Phryne waved a hand at the butler, who came instantly and leaned down so that she could whisper. He smelt of starch and eau-de-cologne.

‘I think your master might improve with some coffee. Strong, you know, and black. Can you sort of sneak it in so the others don’t notice? ’He nodded, gave her an approving look which left Phryne feeling a little overwhelmed, and went away.

The trout was delicious, though Phryne heard Miss Cray complaining that hers had not been cooked properly. Miss Mead, a sensible woman, explained the concept of bleu in an undertone, which did not stop Miss Cray from observing, ‘How revolting!’ at the top of her not inconsiderable voice.

Phryne let her hand slip under the table to meet Lin Chung’s where it rested on his thigh. It was going to be a long night and according to the menu there were three courses yet to get through. He patted her hand consolingly.

‘Tell me, Miss Fisher, how have the cases been going? Miss Fisher’s a famous detective,’ added Miss Medenham in explanation. Phryne began to tell the story of the cast of Ruddigore and the ghost. It was a good story and she told it with appropriate verve, so that Jack Lucas was fascinated and even Tom was listening.

‘She’s a clever girl, this one,’ he said thickly, as she reached the end. ‘Clever girl. Even though she brought a Chinese lover. I don’t mind that, why should I? I knew a Chinese girl once. Her name was Soong – Song, that was it, she was a song. That was in Hong Kong, before the war. Pretty little thing. What’s this, Hinchcliff? I didn’t ask for this.’ The butler was offering him a breakfast cup such as is used for soup. The butler did not reply but stood fixed and immovable, looking permanent. Hinchcliff, Phryne felt, would stand there with that cup until Tom drank it or the heavens fell, whichever came first.

‘You just drink it and don’t argue,’ said Cynthia Medenham, unexpectedly firm. Tom gazed fuzzily in her direction and observed, ‘Blondes. Blondes are strong-minded women.’

‘Quite right, my dear. I am strong-minded, so drink up. You should know better than to argue with a blonde, an old newspaperman like you,’ she said, and Tom reached over, tried to pinch her cheek, missed, and swallowed the coffee in one complicated movement. His eyes, for a moment, opened wide. Phryne reflected that it must have been concentrated caffeine.

The saddle of mutton was brought in with some ceremony. There were boiled potatoes and cabbage in butter to accompany this. Phryne was wondering what on earth to do. The host was supposed to carve and she would not have liked to be within knife’s reach of a drunken Tom Reynolds, who was given to wide, all-encompassing gestures. He might not mean to slash pieces off his guests, but he might do it nonetheless. She resolved to dive under the table at the first sign of mayhem.

But Mr Hinchcliff knew his duty. The mutton had been meticulously sliced in the kitchen, and the housemaid was carrying the platter in triumph along the table before the master noticed that he had been supplanted.

From the end of the table where convention had trapped her, too far away for effective action, Evelyn Reynolds stared at Phryne with desperate eyes, begging her to do something.

Phryne let go of Lin Chung’s hand and said to Tom, ‘These are excellent potatoes. Do you grow them?’

‘Yes,’ said Tom, blinking. ‘The soil’s perfect for potatoes, we got three truckloads out of the north field last year. Lucky, too. You can live on potatoes. Look at all those Irishmen. We might have to, if the river rises any higher.’

‘I’m sure that your wife has the catering well in hand, Tom,’ soothed Phryne.

‘Yes, m’wife is a capable woman, capable. Pity about the boy. She’d have been different if the boy had turned out well. But he went to the bad. Lots of boys do, you know. I went to the bad myself.’

‘Tom, do shut up,’ said Phryne.

‘Ah, Jack.’ He noticed Jack Lucas for the first time. ‘Nice boy, Jack. So was his father. His father was a nice boy. Man.’

‘Have some cabbage,’ urged Miss Medenham nervously. ‘Do you grow the cabbages, too?’

‘Cabbages,’ said Tom owlishly. ‘Babies grow under cabbages, eh, don’t they? Eh, Annie? Did you find them under a cabbage?’

This pronouncement caused the housemaid to drop the dish, clap both hands to her face, and run blindly out of the room. Tom Reynolds gaped after her.

While there was a certain fascination in anticipating what he might say next, Phryne drew the line at cruelty. ‘Tom, you must pull yourself together,’ she said in a fierce undertone. ‘You’re drunk and you’re babbling. Stop it at once. I’m ashamed of you.’

‘I’m ashamed of me, too,’ his face fell and he looked like he was going to cry. Phryne looked around for help. Hinchcliff materialised at her side.

‘I’m afraid that Mr Reynolds is ill,’ she said flatly. ‘He has caught a chill. Lin darling – would you mind?’

Tom was minded to protest, but Lin caught him in an unbreakable hold and he and the butler escorted him firmly out of the dining room.

‘How did old Tom get that drunk that fast?’

asked Cynthia. ‘I’ve never seen him so plastered.’

‘I expect he’s worried about Lina. What do you think happened to her?’

‘My dear,’ Miss Medenham leaned forward conspiratorially, ‘they haven’t found a trace of her, except for that trail of boots that your Mr Lin’s man followed. He sounds exciting. Is he really a hunter?’

‘Yes, he’s called ‘‘tiger-slayer’’ and he can track like a hound.’ Phryne also leaned closer.

‘I’d love a tiger skin. To lie on, you know.’ Miss Medenham had obviously been reading Elinor Glyn and her own fiction. ‘But about the maid, it’s too spooky. I’m locking my door tonight, I can tell you. It might be that old tramp, that Dingo Harry. But what does he want with her? It’s too deliciously exciting.’

A vision of the girl’s dead face rose before Phryne’s eyes and she gulped the remains of her hock. Jack Lucas said, ‘You think something awful happened to Lina, don’t you? Well, it won’t be old Dingo Harry. He’s a red-ragger. If he was breaking into houses and stealing girls, it would be one of the ladies, not an oppressed daughter of the labouring classes.’

Miss Medenham suppressed a shriek and Phryne said, ‘That sounds familiar,’ as the returning Mr Hinchcliff filled a glass with claret and set it before her. Lin Chung sat down again and nodded at Phryne’s inquiring glance. ‘I know a couple of wharfies who think like that.’ She suddenly missed Bert and Cec and wished that she had them here. They were infinitely reliable. What they would have made of Cave House would have been worth hearing, also. She imagined the stocky Bert taking off his hat and saying, ‘Strewth!’ and Cec behind him echoing, ‘Too right’, and felt immediately better.

‘You know this Dingo Harry then?’ breathed Miss Medenham, hoping not to be disappointed of her monster.

‘He’s all for the working man,’ said Jack. ‘Gerry and I used to meet him quite often at the caves.

He knows all about them. He used to be a geologist, then the grog got him and he came out here, prospecting. That fell through and he makes a living out of dingo trapping. He likes caves. He says there’s miles of them, all through the hills, and tunnels and seams of metals and maybe even ores. Best-educated swaggie I ever met. He looks a bit wild and woolly but he’s all right. I can’t imagine him hurting anyone.’

‘Then who was it?’ Cynthia accepted a piece of lemon tart and poured cream onto it with a distracted hand.

‘Don’t know,’ said Jack Lucas shortly.

‘Tell me what you think of the decor,’ said Phryne, searching for another topic. The young man smiled and his blue eyes lit with mirth.

‘It’s amazing, isn’t it? It can’t really date, because it’s such a mixture. I mean, the medieval panelling and the marble fireplaces and those magnificent Morris windows.’

‘Are any of the antiques really antique?’

‘Oh, yes. The original owner bought up big at the Paris Exhibition. The settle in the hall is fifteenth-century. The big chippendale table in the parlour is genuine, as is the Sheridan love-seat in gold-coloured satin in the little parlour. These are real Sevres plates, ghastly as they are, the whole set from soup to dessert. Have you got a battle on yours?’

Phryne scraped away the gelée au citron to ascertain. ‘Yes, Salamanca.’

‘I’ve got Albuera,’ said Miss Medenham.

‘You’re lucky – I’ve got a portrait of Blücher, enough to sour cream.’ Jack poured some over his charlotte russe in a spirit of scientific enquiry.

‘So this would be your profession, would it?’ asked Phryne. ‘Antiques?’

‘I never thought of it, actually,’ he said, holding a spoonful suspended in the air. ‘I suppose it could be.’

‘Think about it,’ said Phryne, suddenly remembering a French voice talking about plain air. ‘I think I can see a way out of your little difficulty, Mr Lucas.’

‘You can?’

‘I think so, but perhaps we can talk about it another day. There is no hurry. What about you, Miss Medenham? Are you interested in antiques?’

‘My dear, I just had my flat entirely renovated and threw all of the old things away. I want something madly moderne, frightfully gay. It’s all colours, all angles, even the chairs are cubes.’

‘What did you do with your old furniture?’ asked Jack.

‘I sold it to a rag-and-bone man, my dear. I just wanted the space. Now I’ve got oodles of light and air, free of all that heavy brass and cedar and mahogany.’

‘I see,’ said Jack Lucas.

Mrs Reynolds cast her glance around the table and rose.

‘Lord, I forgot about leaving the gentlemen to their port,’ exclaimed Phryne. ‘Come on, Miss Medenham. You can tell me all about your new flat.’

‘I’ve got red walls in the parlour,’ said Miss Medenham as the gentlemen rose with a scraping of chairs. The ladies filed out, and Mr Hinchcliff put two crystal decanters on the table.

The drawing room contained the apparatus for coffee and tea and small plates of nuts and biscuits. Phryne listened with half an ear to Cynthia’s extremely detailed description of her new furniture and eavesdropped shamelessly on the other conversations.

Judith was sulkily drinking coffee and trying not to hear her mother’s lecture on proper behaviour. Phryne heard, ‘You’ll never catch a young man if you continue to beat them at tennis,’ before deciding that she could guess the rest and passed on. Miss Cray had sought her virtuous couch early and Miss Mead was sitting next to Letty Luttrell, discussing – of all things – adulterous love. Phryne edged her chair closer.

‘But it was a very sad book,’ Letty was saying.

‘She had to go back to her husband and he had to go back to his wife.’

‘They had obligations and had taken vows,’ said Miss Mead gently.

‘But do vows have to bind forever?’ asked Letty. ‘What if one finds that one has made a mistake, a dreadful mistake?’

‘The Church says one has to stay. Even the most brutal husband must be obeyed, they say.’

Miss Mead turned a heel on the small fluffy bootee she was knitting and Letty said in a fierce whisper, ‘I know what the Church says. What do you say?’

‘I say, leave him if you can, my dear,’ said Miss Mead unexpectedly.

This caught Miss Medenham’s attention also. She broke off her enumeration of her new cubist cutlery and said incredulously, ‘What did you say, Miss Mead?’

‘I said that a brutal husband need not be endured.’ The skilled hands continued to knit, the thread looping exactly over the centre of the crossed needles. ‘Why, what is your opinion, Miss Medenham?’

‘I think the same. Can you leave him, Letty?’

‘I . . . don’t know.’ Mrs Luttrell was taken aback by being the centre of all this conversation. Even Joan Fletcher had ceased berating her daughter to listen. ‘I think he’d kill me if I tried.’

‘Oh, come now, Letty, you’re exaggerating,’ scoffed Cynthia. Letty, for answer, pulled back the loose sleeves of her pale-blue woollen gown. The delicate wrists and thin forearms were marked across with black bruises. Phryne felt ill.

‘God, Letty, how long has he been doing that?’

‘He was kind when he wanted me to marry him,’ said Letty quietly. ‘He bought me violets, I remember. I’ve never been able to bear the scent of violets since. My boy was killed, you see, and I had nothing to live for and my mother has three daughters and he has a lot of money. Once we were married he changed. He’s jealous. If I talk to a man, he questions me for hours, accuses me of all sorts of things.’

‘And he beats you,’ said Mrs Reynolds.

‘Yes,’ said Letty dismissively.

‘But now there’s another man,’ said Judith excitedly.

Mrs Luttrell shrank, blushing bright-red. Phryne restrained an urge to kick Miss Fletcher and said, ‘We didn’t mean to pry, Mrs Luttrell. Why don’t you and Miss Mead go over to the piano to continue your discussion and we’ll stay here. Would anyone like some more coffee?’ Letty caught at her arm.

‘No, no, it’s all right,’ she protested. ‘You see, I’ve got no one to talk to. He doesn’t like me to have friends. This is my only chance to talk. What should I do?’

‘Have you got any money of your own?’ asked Phryne. Letty shook her head. ‘What about your lover?’

Letty looked doubtful. ‘I don’t think there’s any money.’

‘It might be an idea to find out, if you are serious,’ said Miss Mead. ‘You haven’t any children, my dear – children make it difficult. But no one should stay and be tortured – the laws allow you to leave.’

Phryne knew that the laws might allow Mrs Luttrell to leave, but unless she intended passing the time between her departure and the decree absolute under medical supervision in a convent, the Major would declare to the Court that she was a loose woman and had deserted him without cause. Letty would find herself disgraced and out on the street without a sou or a sequin. However, even that might be better than being beaten and continually denigrated. Phryne was surprised to find that the browbeaten Mrs Luttrell had any spirit left at all.

‘I want to run away,’ said Letty plaintively. ‘Miss Fletcher is right, there is someone. It’s funny, really.’ Her lips curved in a smile so sad that Phryne had to take a sip of Cointreau to still the pang. ‘Will would never have brought me here if he had known.’

‘Known what?’ asked Miss Fletcher. Phryne moved into easy kicking distance of the young woman and resolved to apply her silver shoe without fear or favour at the very hint of another faux pas.

‘Why, that my own darling is here,’ said Mrs Luttrell. ‘The one I love is here, in this house.’