Read Online The Castlemaine Murders by Kerry Greenwood - Free Book Online Page B

of the awful ones, to start with, because they’re cheap. Then one hires otherwise unemployed men to clean, replaster, sewer, plumb, wire for electricity, then paint and tile and so on. There are a thousand details and they have to be right. The people are people, not animals. They like nice things. Everyone likes nice things, don’t they?’ Everyone nodded. They liked nice things, that was agreed.
    Eliza had entirely shed her affected accent and in her voice one could hear a faint echo of Collingwood and Richmond. Phryne found this consoling. Perhaps Beth had not gone forever.
    Eliza continued: ‘Then one rents the rooms to people. They pay less than a commercial rent but they agree to keep the place clean and in repair—and they do, they really do.’
    ‘Of course they do,’ said Ruth. ‘If they went from one of those bone-dirty houses to a nice clean house, then they’d keep it clean. It’s not hard to keep new houses clean. But not old ones, eh, Jane?’
    ‘No.’ Jane looked down at her hands as if momentarily surprised to find them clean and soft, with neat short nails, instead of the grimy claws they had been. ‘Not even possible, I think. No matter how much you scrub.’
    Mr Burton seemed enlightened and was about to comment when Phryne signalled him to remain silent.
    ‘So one repairs one house,’ commented Phryne. ‘There is a lot of the East End, Eliza, and all of it frightful.’
    ‘One has to start somewhere,’ retorted Eliza. ‘With the rents from the first house one buys a second, and so on. Ally— Lady Harborough has seven houses now, a whole street. It was the only street which didn’t get typhoid last year.’
    ‘And you work with this charitable lady?’ said Mr Burton. ‘That is good of you.’
    ‘No!’ Eliza jumped as if she had sat on an unexpected hairbrush. ‘No, I just heard . . . I just heard about it. In passing. May I have another cocktail, Mr Butler?’ she asked in her county voice. ‘They are most agreeable, are they not?’
    Mr Burton, a little surprised, agreed that Mr Butler’s cocktails were marvels of their type and the conversation became general. Phryne cursed under her breath. Beth had almost emerged through Eliza then, and just as she was getting interesting Eliza had popped back like the Demon King in a pantomime. Damning and blasting all sisters, Phryne led the way into her dining room, clinking a little as she walked and trailing her undersea clouds of glory.
    Dinner was one of Mrs Butler’s best efforts. After a very hard working life with a jovial gentleman, Mr and Mrs Butler had only agreed to oblige Miss Fisher if she did not entertain a great deal, so Phryne had given most of her dinner parties at the Windsor, a very superior hotel. She might have a few people for drinks, perhaps, or those little lunches at which Mrs Butler excelled, but Phryne did not like large parties cluttering up her small house and usually only invited close friends to share the Butler cuisine. This suited the Butlers.
    Tonight, with the added spur of Miss Eliza’s freely expressed views on Australia not being a patch on Europe, and St Kilda not even being a patch on Melbourne itself, Mrs Butler felt that she needed to make a point about the advantages of fresh vegetables, admirable dairy products, eggs which had only been snatched from the hen an hour before and the sort of meat which even the famed farmers of the whole continent of Europe could not equal. Much less surpass.
    Therefore, laid out on the buffet was the Cold Collation of the Gods. Small cups of perfectly seasoned vichyssoise were gathered at one end of the white-draped buffet. Plump pink prawns studded the seafood aspic as thickly as daisies in a springtime meadow. A whole baron of beef squatted glistening in a bed of dark green bitter lettuce, rare, paper-thin slices rolling from its side. An entire salmon, sliced and decorated with radish flowers, lay shining in a silver dish. A nearby salver held oysters,