Free Murder on a Midsummer Night by Unknown Page B

said Sister Immaculata with a twinkle in her eye. ‘I have been craving chocolate eclairs for weeks.’
    Phryne waved over the waitress.
    ‘Chocolate eclairs, cakes, scones and cream,’ she ordered. ‘And tea for three, please.’
    Phryne beguiled her tea with wondering about Sister Immaculata. She was stocky and brisk, perhaps a little pale, and none of her hair could be seen under the ecclesiastical headgear. But she had been born in 1874, which meant that she was fifty-four, an age at which most women without upper-class privileges were crones, either toothless and stringy or epicene, moustached and fat. Her skin was soft and almost unwrinkled and her movements were sure. And her appetite, as she reached for the plate of cakes, was excellent. She and Dot accounted for most of the food, while Phryne drank sugarless tea with lemon and tried not to melt.
    She envied Mr Butler, who had probably slipped into that neat-looking little pub and was doubtless sinking a well-earned beer by now.
    The fourth eclair defeated Sister Immaculata. She looked at it longingly, reached out for it, then sighed. She drank off the lees of her tea and set the cup down with a decisive little click.
    ‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘That was a wonderful tea. I only have a light dinner, you see, because I have to go into the water after dark, and you mustn’t bathe with a full stomach. Shall we walk? I should like to breathe some fresh air.’
    ‘Into the gardens,’ suggested Phryne, who had seen a high fence with a rank of thick pine trees inside it just down the road. Those barriers might deflect this tearing north wind a little.
    ‘Tell me the subject of this enquiry, Miss Fisher, so I can order my thoughts as we walk,’ suggested the nun.
    ‘We want you to remember your mother,’ said Phryne. ‘It is possible that she bore a child, long before she met your father, and we need to find out if that is so. And there aren’t a lot of people we can ask.’
    ‘I see,’ said Sister Immaculata. She folded her hands across her well-filled middle and preceded Phryne down the road to the garden gate. The wind tore at her veil, but she did not unclasp her fingers to subdue it. She glided ahead like a plump, self-contained ghost and Phryne followed her.
    The gate clicked open, and then shut. At once the wind was defeated and the sound of it died down to a gentle murmur. Inside the garden, it was still. A few of the sandy holidaymakers had penetrated its silence, but they too seemed to have been hypnotised by the aromatic quiet and were lying on the grass, dozing, their sunburn slicked with milk of roses, their children and goods piled around them. Phryne thought they looked like refugees from some war against the weather.
    Sister Immaculata led the way to the lily pond, which had real lotus blossoms rising from its muddy depths, and across a little rustic bridge to the aviary. There she sat down on a bench and motioned Phryne and Dot to sit beside her. In the huge enclosure, a peacock thought about displaying his magnificent tail, lifting it with a froufrou as from a silk petticoat, then decided it was too hot even to impress the brown undistinguished peahens and put his head back under his wing. A scurry of quail ran across the floor of the cage, like little clockwork birds. They were so charming that Phryne was just crossing them off her list of edible poultry—with regret—when the nun began to speak.
    ‘My mother was not a happy woman,’ she said, looking down at her hands, now holding her rosary. ‘I don’t think she had ever been happy. My father was a good man and did all he could to please her, but . . . she wasn’t happy. She was lovely,’ said Sister Immaculata. ‘So beautiful. When I was little she used to let down her hair over me, like a waterfall of black silk. Scented with lilac. I always think of her when I smell lilac.’
    ‘She married an older man,’ hinted Phryne. ‘And not an Irish Catholic.’
    ‘Yes,’ said