Free Introducing the Honourable Phryne Fisher by Kerry Greenwood

the sharpest hips and shoulder blades in Melbourne. She made Phryne feel unduly robust and healthy, an odd sensation.
    She allowed herself to be drawn forward by bony hands, glittering with a burden of precious stones, into a brilliantly lit ballroom. It was domed, huge, and full of people; a long buffet was laid along one wall, and a jazz band was conducting their usual assault on the five-bar stave in the musicians’ gallery. Hideously expensive and overblown tuberoses and orchids were everywhere, lending a heavy and exotic scent to the hot air. The effect was somewhat tropical, costly and vulgar. Mrs Cryer stated that, having heard they’d met, she had seated Phryne next to Mr Sanderson, the MP at dinner, which allowed Phryne the luxurious idea that there might be a human being in this assemblage despite appearances. Then her hostess dropped a name that caused Phryne’s painted mouth to curve in a private smile.
    ‘You may know the Hon. Robert Matthews,’ shrilled Mrs Cryer. ‘We’re all so fond of Bobby! He’s playing for the gentlemen, in the cricket match. I’m sure that you’ll get on terribly well.’
    Phryne, who had been the cause of Bobby’s banishment to this foreign shore, was tolerably certain that she would not get on terribly well with him; and that, moreover, when she had known the young man, he had not been an Honourable. She caught the eye of that gentleman across the room at this point in her hostess’s discourse, and he sent her a look in which pleading and fury were so nicely mingled that Phryne wondered that her hair did not catch fire. She smiled amiably at him and he looked away. Mrs Cryer had not intercepted the glance, and bore Phryne with her across the floor, which had been polished to the slipperiness of ice, to introduce her to the artistic guests.
    ‘We are fortunate to have snared the Princesse de Grasse,’ said Mrs Cryer in a far-too-loud aside. ‘And she sponsered the premier danseur and danseuse of the Compagnie des Ballets Masqués— they are all the rage this season, perhaps you have seen them?’
    Phryne caught up with her hostess and managed to free her hand.
    ‘Yes, I saw them in Paris last year,’ she said, recalling the strange, macabre charm of the dancers performing a ballet masqué in the tattered splendour of the old Opera. It had been primitive but spine-chilling—they had performed the mystery play of Death and the Maiden. Paris had been intrigued, but the Compagnie des Ballets Masqués had vanished, just as they were becoming the rage. So they had come to Australia! Phryne wondered why. She slowed her pace, smiling at Mr Sanderson, MP, as she passed him, and receiving a conspirational grin in return. The artists were solidly established at the buffet, as artists generally are, and only abandoned eating when Mrs Cryer was at their elbow.
    ‘Princesse, may I introduce the Hon. Phryne Fisher? Miss Fisher, this is the Princesse de Grasse, and also Mademoiselle . . . er . . .’
    ‘De Lisse, and this is my brother Sasha,’ put in the young woman. She and her brother, evidently twins, were tall, long-legged and graceful, with similar features; pale, elegant, high-cheekbones and deep, expressive brown eyes. They both had curly brown hair, identically cut, and were dressed alike in leotards and tights of unrelieved black. Sasha bent over her hand with a flourish, and declared: ‘But mademoiselle is magnifique! ’
    Privately, Phryne agreed with him. There was no one in the gathering who surpassed her in style and elegance, unless it was these two dancers in their plain garments which proclaimed the essential beauty of their bodies. The Princesse de Grasse, about whose title Phryne had serious misgivings, was small and wizened and Russian, dressed in a flaming red gown and a sinfully lengthy sable cape. She laid a chill claw on Phryne’s wrist and smiled a sardonic smile; wonderfully expressive, it seemed to take in their hostess, the room, the food and the