Free Blood and Circuses by Kerry Greenwood Page B

beautiful smile, which invited trust.
    ‘We will find a way. First thing is for you to tell me everything that Garinic said. And when you’ve finished, Sergeant Grossmith will tell me all about Lizard Elsie.’
    Phryne Fisher was visiting Foy and Gibson’s and had bought an armload of clothes. Cotton dresses, patterned with flowers which never grew in any garden. Underclothes of the respectable poor; one pair of washing silk for Sundays, and the rest of cheap Sea Island cotton in a distressing shade of pink. She had also purchased three pairs of sandals, two pairs of soft dancing shoes, a couple of Sylk-Arto nighties, a straw hat, a cheap fibre suitcase and a down quilt. It had an apricot cover emblazoned with white daisies. Dot thought it rather nice.
    ‘I’ll need a costume, too,’ said Phryne. ‘I presume that it will be provided. I can hardly ask any of the usual people to make it up for me. This is going to be exciting, Dot! I’ve got too reliant on things and people. It will do me good to manage on my own for a while.’
    Dot hefted the parcel and led the way out of the shop.
    ‘Have you ever managed on your own, Miss Phryne?’ she asked as Mr Butler piled the parcels into the car.

CHAPTER SIX
    He smelt of lamp-oil, straw, orange-peel,
horses’ provender and sawdust and he
looked the most remarkable sort of centaur,
compounded of the stable and the play-house.
    Charles Dickens
Hard Times
    Phryne ate well, Mrs Butler having been invigorated by her niece’s wedding. There she had put down the pretensions of three of her most irritating relations by referring, in passing, to her employer the Honourable Miss Fisher’s rank as just below the relict of a duke and above the daughters of baronets. Mrs Butler’s relations had never seen a baronet, even at a distance, and had been properly silenced. Mrs Butler’s triumphs were always reflected in her cookery. Phryne finished the exalted form of shepherd’s pie and pushed a piece of lettuce around her plate.
    ‘Have you ever managed on your own?’ Dot had asked, and Phryne was now wondering if she ever had. She had been surrounded with people since birth. First her sisters, her brother and her parents in that small set of rooms in Collingwood. There she had been poor, hungry, sometimes, and always cold. There her younger sister had died of diphtheria one winter. Phryne had gone badly clad to Collingwood Primary School and learned the rudiments of literacy, and there had been people there, too, who could be charmed or coerced into helping the little girl with the strange name get what she wanted.
    Then the great change had come and the family had been uprooted and dragged across the ocean to the counties and wealth, not because of any virtue in themselves but because the War had killed the younger sons of every family in Europe. Mr Fisher had been translated into a lord and Phryne had been sent sullenly to boarding school to be made into a suitable daughter of the aristocracy. At school she had been unpopular because she was wild and did not care about the things the school cared about; standards of behaviour and learning and sport. People again, all around her, in the dorms and on the playing fields. Malleable, useful people. After that, Melbourne had been easy. She had money and position, beauty and style.
    She had never been alone.
    Phryne allowed Mr Butler to take away the plate. What am I worrying about? she wondered. The circus was composed of people just as society was, just as school had been. There was always a man to be persuaded, bought, daunted or charmed.
    ‘And I’m the woman to do it,’ she said aloud.
    ‘Miss?’ asked Mr Butler.
    ‘Nothing to signify, Mr B.’ He hovered at her shoulder.
    ‘Another glass of wine, Miss Fisher?’
    ‘Thanks.’
    He poured the wine, a rich red Burgundy, and retired to the kitchen.
    Phryne looked around her dining room, which was hung with pale damask. The carpet, patterned with green leaves, had been