Free Urn Burial by Kerry Greenwood Page B

to the bit where her English gentleman comes out to plead with her to return. Have you read it?’
    ‘Not that one,’ said Phryne, concealing the fact that hell would freeze over before she wasted her eyesight on Midnight of the Sheik. ‘But I always wondered what novelists read.’
    ‘Oh, as to my art, Miss Fisher, that’s another 76
    thing. It bubbles up from inside me, from the deep wells of creativity,’ said Miss Medenham. ‘Some-times I feel that I am in touch with the other side –
    with other great writers who long to be reincarnated.’
    ‘Oh? Who?’
    Miss Medenham settled down for a cosy gossip about herself, automatically leaning back to emphasise her unfashionable bosom and crossing her long, slim legs. She was wearing a red jersey dress under the red coat, and champagne-coloured silk stockings. Her fair hair was shoulder length and straight as a drink of water. ‘Emily Bronte¨, of course.
    Didn’t you notice the fire and passion of my last novel, the depth, the wind blowing through it?’
    Phryne wondered whether to admit that she had stuck fast three pages into the dense prose of Earth, Miss Medenham’s latest offering. She decided that there would be too many ructions about it if she did, meaning that she would subsequently be both forced to read it and endure an inquisition about it from the author to make sure that she had appreciated it properly. Than which she would rather be boiled in oil. Phryne also suppressed the opinion that the bandit-lover had been remarkably clean and well-educated for a Spanish peasant, resembling rather an Oxford gentleman with picturesque trappings. Earth had been a book which cried out to be left lying behind the sofa whence it had fallen from the reader’s nerveless hand.
    ‘Of course,’ she lied. ‘Are you working on something new?’
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    ‘I’m waiting for inspiration,’ said Miss Medenham. ‘Actually, I was also looking for Jack. I thought he came in here.’
    ‘An inspiring young man,’ commented Phryne dryly.
    ‘Yes,’ Miss Medenham smiled suddenly, a com-plicit gamine grin, and Phryne liked her better immediately. She might write dreadful books, but she had a suitable appreciation of young men.
    ‘Would a poet do as well?’ asked Tadeusz from another alcove. Phryne decided that the library had never been empty – it had multiple hiding places. She filed the fact for future reference.
    Miss Medenham raised her china-blue eyes and gave the poet an assessing glance. She stood up, smoothing down the clinging dress over her curved body, her hand lingering on one hip. ‘Yes, I think you might be just as inspiring,’ she decided.
    Tadeusz held out his arm and Miss Medenham sidled close to him.
    They left the library together. Phryne, wondering if anyone else was tucked into the recesses, toured the shelves. The brewer who built it had probably never read anything but a lading bill in his life. His wife, however, had purchased full sets of all the classics, as well as a row of yellow-covered sprightly French romances and bound volumes of Punch and Country Life. She examined Punch briefly –
    Mafeking appeared to have been relieved – and read a few heavily satirical lines about Boers. Shoving the volume back onto the shelves, she reflected that nothing dates like topical humour.
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    The next alcove contained all the books which Tom had published himself, in no particular order.
    Books on Furniture-making for the Beginner flanked volumes on the Horrors of War, and slim suede-clad poets clung to strong female writings about Higher Thought. Phryne saw a book by an author she liked but The Mysterious Affair at Styles was wedged in between a volume of Victorian sermons and a very solid tome on Sanitary Reform. She slid the sermons out and a slip of paper dropped to the polished parquet.
    TONIGHT, it promised in bold black capitals.
    USUAL PLACE.
    Phryne was about to replace it when she was struck with a thought, and sat down to examine the note. She