Free Queen of Flowers by Kerry Greenwood Page B

her own tin of dark chocolates to go with it.
    Orkney. What a strange place. Ian Hamilton had written to her for a while. She remembered receiving an invitation to his wedding and later an announcement about a son. That must have annoyed the Hamiltons. The eldest son had turned out to be a wastrel and a bounder. Oh, and red-headed, charming James Murray. She had almost forgotten him. And he was worth remembering.
    She must have fallen into a doze, because she was startled out of it by frantic banging on the door.
    Miss Anna Ross to Miss Mavis Sutherland 11 December 1912
    I’m sad today because Rory and his friends are going to Sydney for a month. They have an engagement with the Folk Song Society playing them tunes and singing songs for them to record on these odd wax discs, called gramophone records. They are thick heavy things and very brittle, but—it’s almost magic—
    they can give you back a voice or a tune. I had heard a gramophone before and Mama says that if we finish the year well we can buy a machine. The boarders will like it and they can play their own records, which will be a saving. You have to wind it up. The machine, I mean, not the boarders.
    Rory has been courting me and he is so sweet and gentlemanly and lovely that I am in a whirl. He gives me flowers and sings to me and everyone has noticed how particular his atten-tions are except Mama, who just scolds me for inattention.
    I don’t think she knows that I exist except as another pair of 61
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    QUEEN OF THE FLOWERS
    hands, scrubbing, serving, washing, cooking. The house is full and Rory and his friends will pay a month’s rent so their rooms will be kept while they are away. That also means that they plan to come back because oh, Mavis, Rory says he loves me, he loves me! And I love him so it cannot be wrong that when we met by chance—entirely by chance—at the top of the stairs, he clasped me in his arms and kissed me.
    If I marry him I will go with him to his home in Skye and then perhaps I might see you again. Dearest Mavis, I miss you so much, especially now when I desperately want someone to talk to and there is no one.
    Your loving friend Anna
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    CHAPTER FIVE
    Something in her bosom wrings
    For relief a sigh she brings
    And O, her een, they spak sic things!
    Robert Burns
    ‘Duncan Gray’
    Phryne tied her dressing gown and found her slippers and her little gun. She heard Mr Butler get up and stamp along the hall, and she flew down the stairs to stand behind him as he opened the door. St Kilda was not a safe place—nowhere was a safe place, really, but St Kilda had all the problems to be expected in a seaport—and anything threatening Phryne’s household this morning was going to be looking death in the eye. Phryne had been startled and she did not like that feeling.
    On the doorstep was a frantic woman. Her hair straggled around her shoulders. She had a nightdress on under her coat and her feet had been thrust into someone’s tartan slippers. But her voice was educated and there was a chauffeur waiting inside the big Daimler parked at the kerb.
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    ‘Oh, Miss Fisher, I’m so sorry to wake you, but it’s Rose!
    Is she here?’
    By now everyone had been roused by the noise. Phryne turned to her two daughters, who were clad in red woolly gowns and slippers and were looking apprehensive. Ruth was holding Molly by the collar. Phryne slipped the little Beretta into her pocket. This caller had already been scared enough, by the look of her.
    ‘Girls?’ Both heads shook, both sets of plaits bounced. ‘Dot?’
    ‘No, Miss Phryne,’ said Dot, still half asleep.
    Phryne addressed the woman on the steps. ‘Sorry, no Rose.
    I haven’t seen her since we had lunch at Anatole’s. Would you like to come in?’
    Mrs Butler would be in the kitchen already, putting on the