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headband, and she carried a bound book. She had dragged her hair back into an unbecoming bun and walked as though her feet hurt, which indeed they might, due to her refusal to wear sensible shoes. She allowed Mr Burton to kiss her hand without a blink, smiled at the company, and took her seat next to the girls. She accepted a cocktail from Mr Butler, gulped it down, and accepted a refill which also vanished with disconcerting speed.
    ‘We were talking about the circus, Miss Eliza,’ said Mr Burton.
    ‘Do you work in a circus, Mr Burton?’ asked Eliza. Even her voice had lost its ‘haw-haw’ edge. Phryne thought her greatly improved. ‘I thought that my sister said that you were a scholar.’
    ‘One can be both, Miss Eliza. I am completing my doctorate of philosophy at present, studying the literary depictions as opposed to the real social conditions among the poor.’
    ‘I don’t quite follow,’ confessed Eliza. Neither did Phryne. Lin Chung shook his head. Both young women looked blank. Mr Burton explained.
    ‘Well, for instance, if the ladies will forgive my breach of taste, authors who write about prostitutes always follow Dickens’ lead in saying that they come to bad ends, suicide and so on—you will remember Little Em’ly and her cry of “Oh, the river!” Admittedly Dickens saved Little Em’ly’s life and sent her to Australia, a favourite literary device for removing inconvenient members of the cast to a place where No One Will Know.’
    ‘Still is,’ put in Eliza unexpectedly, starting Phryne on quite a novel train of thought. But Eliza had always been the good daughter, she told herself. Stayed in the manor and did the flowers. Went to the hunt balls. Poured tea for the county. Had memorised Debrett.
    ‘Indeed,’ agreed Mr Burton. ‘Whereas most prostitutes stop being prostitutes when they have, for instance, paid off their debts, saved enough to open a business, accepted a proposal of marriage, got diseased, educated their children, divorced their husband, inherited money or decided to move to another city and get a straight job. Prostitutes do not kill themselves at a greater rate than the general population. But what is even more curious is, from Dickens onwards, the authors know that they are not depicting the truth. If they have done any research at all, actually talked to any of these women, they know that they are just people, and have all the varied motives which people have.’
    ‘Then why doesn’t someone write a realistic book?’ asked Phryne.
    ‘Because no publisher would publish it,’ said Mr Burton.
    ‘You are right,’ said Eliza, gulping down her third cocktail. Phryne glanced at Mr Butler, who made an almost imperceptible movement which might have been a nod. The next cocktail for Eliza would be plain orange and bitters. ‘Look at Beatrice and Sydney Webb. They wrote the truth about the conditions of the working poor in London and they had to establish their own publishing house to get it released. None of the nice people who owned and rented out those dreadful buildings, running with rats, wanted to know what state they were in.’
    ‘And that’s regrettable but not unexpected,’ said Phryne.
    Eliza leaned forward in her chair and said earnestly, ‘I’ve seen them, Phryne! Terrible. Pigs wouldn’t live in them. Rats and . . . er . . . bugs. So filthy that no scrubbing could ever clean them.’
    ‘And you have seen them?’ asked Phryne, with a delicate hint of disbelief. She wanted this new Eliza to keep talking. Eliza flushed a little.
    ‘I have! I went with Ally, Alice, I mean Lady Alice Harborough, we . . . I mean, she was starting a housing mission in the East End. Those houses were a disgrace. Even the ones owned by the church, Phryne!’
    ‘What’s a housing mission, Miss Eliza?’ asked Ruth. She knew all about houses which could not be made clean by scrubbing. She had spent her childhood scrubbing them.
    ‘One buys a house,’ said Miss Eliza. ‘One