The Castlemaine Murders by Kerry Greenwood Page B

shouting “Fire!” Enough of this . . . I am not cut out to be a guide to youth. I think youth can get itself into enough trouble without my help, don’t you, Youth?’
    Jane grinned and agreed.
    Lin Chung arrived at the door, dead-heating a gentleman in faultless evening costume whose top hat came up to the level of his second coat button. Lin, whose savoir-faire was legendary, bowed slightly. The top hat bent in his direction.
    ‘Do I have the pleasure of meeting Mr Burton?’ he asked.
    ‘And you, sir, must be Mr Lin. Delighted.’
    It was such a deep, cultured voice that Lin regretted that he could not see the gentleman’s face. Mr Butler opened the door and admitted them, taking the gentlemen’s coats and conducting them into the drawing room with his usual suavity.
    Phryne had been thinking about this visit, and the fact that her entire house was built for people two feet taller than her guest. After a consultation with Mr Butler, a suitable chair had been fixed to a wooden crate, covered with blue velvet. This would allow Mr Burton to sit almost at eye level with the guests and incidentally obviate the crick in the neck which Phryne always got from conversing with her friend.
    ‘How kind of you to come,’ exclaimed Phryne, allowing Mr Burton to kiss her hand and leading him to his throne. She wanted him to be able to see and appreciate her new dress.
    Phryne expected to entertain often in her sea-blue, sea-green rooms and she needed a cocktail dress which complemented the rooms. In blue or green the clothes had a regrettable tendency to meld into the general colour scheme, so guests saw an uneasy Gustav Klimt vision of their hostess’s head and limbs as if emerging from the wallpaper. This clearly would not do. But red or purple were too garish and shocking in the soothing greens and one could not wear cloth of gold all the time.
    She had taken the problem to Madame Fleuri, High Priestess of the Mode, who had surveyed the rooms, scribbled notes, accepted a glass of wine, scribbled more notes and then vanished into her atelier for three weeks, emerging with a dress she called ‘Opalescence’. It had cost Phryne a fortune. She had not grudged a penny of it.
    Josiah Burton surveyed Phryne with deep appreciation. She had always been elegant, even when—as he had first seen her— wearing a Woolworth’s fuji dress with half the fringes torn off. Now she was clad in a slim sheath of steel grey silk. Over it was a cloud grey silk georgette wrap which was almost transparent, sewn with paillettes of mother of pearl down to the weighted handkerchief points of the skirt, along the scoop neck and the shoulder straps. A string of pearls swung nearly to her knees, knotted halfway. A panache of pearl shells was in her black hair. Grey silk stockings and shoes completed the ensemble. She turned to be admired, chiming a little.
    ‘A sea-nymph,’ said Mr Burton.
    ‘A mermaid,’ said Lin Chung.
    ‘Isn’t she absolutely beautiful?’ asked Ruth of Jane. Jane nodded. She would never be as interested in clothes as Phryne was, but she knew an effect when she saw it. Phryne shone with a moonlight gleam against the blue and green, like the mermaid to which Mr Lin had likened her. The paillettes glinted when she moved, as though she were shedding drops of sea-water. Ruth thought that she looked even more beautiful than the heroine of her latest romance, A Fisher Maid .
    Phryne perched on a chair to allow Mr Butler to distribute glasses of his gin cocktail, a drink which ‘promotes ease and eloquence, Miss Fisher, while avoiding any sense of excess’. Phryne had asked which ingredient took away any extravagance in the drink and he had replied with a definitively straight face, ‘That would be the lemon juice, Miss Fisher.’ Whereupon Phryne had given up, reflecting that every religion has its mysteries.
    Jane found that by carefully aligning herself with one of Phryne’s many mirrors, she could gaze on Mr Burton without