Kerry Greenwood: Raisins and Almonds

Three

Nigredo is called the Raven.

Elias Ashmole, Theatrum Chemicum Brittanicum 1689

Phryne swept past Mr Butler and paused in the doorway of her own sea-green, sea-blue parlour in her bijou Esplanade house. She needed a bath to rinse the prison smell off her person and she wanted to sit down and take off her rather tight shoes, but it was a very pretty picture.

Dot's policeman, Hugh Collins, who had been a faithful kitchen visitor, had been let into the parlour, probably on the urgent petition of the girls, to tend to something which whimpered. Phryne could not see into the grocer's box, but both her adopted daughters were deeply concerned. The fairer Jane's countenance was creased; the darker Ruth was biting the end of her plait, which she always did when she was worried. September holidays had brought the girls home from school, and they were dressed in the warm colours they affected when at home rather than the severe school uniform, designed to iron out from any female body the slightest shred of sexual attraction. Jane was in green and Ruth in red, and the fire lit their faces: Hugh's sharpened with concentration, the girl's with concern. They looked like Rembrandt figures, strange in the modern parlour like the inside of a shell and surrealistic. Phryne stood still until there was a sharp yap. Hugh said, 'There, that's done it, poor little bitch,' and the creature in the box stopped whimpering.

'Miss Phryne,' exclaimed Ruth, leaping up and dragging Jane with her. 'Look what we found. Mr Collins fixed her leg. He reckons someone kicked her! How could anyone kick a poor little thing like that?'

'There is always someone willing to kick puppies,' said Phryne, kneeling down next to the carton. A wretched scrap of damaged black and white fur shivered on an old jumper.

'Girls, I don't ...' she began, to be met by two shocked faces.

'Oh, Miss Phryne, please,' said Jane, catching at Phryne's hand. 'She's only a little dog.'

'Little dogs grow up,' said Phryne reluctantly 'I really don't want a dog, girls.'

Jane recovered first. She gave the puppy a final caress and stood up. 'Come on, Ruthie,' she said to her adoptive sister, clearly resigned to the loss of the animal as she had been resigned to other losses.

'She's only a puppy, and if we put her out she'll die,' protested Ruth. Phryne was entirely unprepared for this assault on her emotions. Reflecting that the object of the argument was not only an infant but injured, could conveniently decease any moment and might as well do it in comfort, she patted the girl's shoulder.

'All right, Ruth dear, as long as you and Jane look after it you can keep it. Now tuck the box in the chimney alcove, injured creatures need heat. Have you got a name for her? Hello Hugh, how nice to see you again. Perhaps we should have some tea, it's a vile day outside, an early north wind, and ...' she continued, and was embraced by both girls, their faces against her own. She caught sight of the group in the mirror: the laughing Ruth and the exultant Jane, embracing Phryne, Jane's unplaited hair flowing like silk across her broadcloth shoulder and breast, supporters to her Dutch-doll face. She turned and quickly kissed each glowing cheek, coloured as gracefully as geranium petals. She hadn't actually wanted a dog, but then she hadn't wanted daughters either and they had turned out to be very interesting and hardly any trouble at all, considering.

'Thank you, Miss Phryne,' said Jane. 'She won't be any trouble. We'll walk her and wash her and Mr Collins thinks she's a sheepdog so she won't grow too big.'

Despite a private feeling that she had heard that tune before, Phryne allowed them to help her into her chair and remove her shoes and Mr Butler handed her one of his special cocktails, which she savoured quietly. A hint of almond, perhaps? Was that noyau, certainly cherry brandy, and ... as always, she gave up. Mr Butler's cocktails were his own sacred mystery The girls sat down on the floor with the box and Hugh Collins resumed his place at Phryne's wave. Dot sat on the arm of his chair, an impropriety which she would never have allowed herself if the friendship had not progressed to consideration of marriage.

'How did you get involved in this, Hugh?' asked Phryne, sipping her cocktail. Constable Collins and Dot had tea.

'I was coming to deliver a parcel for Dorothy, Miss Fisher, and the girls said they'd found a puppy. Poor little thing had a dislocated hip, but I've put it back. Some mongrel kicked her, I expect.'

'Oh, well, poor little creature,' said Phryne. 'Make sure that she's fed, won't you, Ruth?' Ruth was the sensible one, who had engineered her own escape from bondage and serfdom. Jane, more intellectual and destined perhaps for the medical career she craved, would be thinking about something else. Jane always was. It was part of her slightly distracted charm.

They did her credit, Phryne thought, looking at Dot refilling Constable Collins' tea cup. Dot was well dressed and solidly respectable, though at her first encounter with Phryne she had been desperate, dishevelled and heavily armed. Ruth, rescued from slavery in a boarding house, was clean and combed and becoming delightfully plump, her devotion to food destining her for a domestic career. Mrs Butler said that she showed promise as a cook, but was 'too bold' with spices and heavy handed with pastry, though she made excellent soup and was an angel with anything involving yeast. Jane, rescued from far darker bondage, was thinner and paler and clever in an offhand vague way which alternately exasperated her adoptive parent and astonished her. As long as someone was around to make sure that Jane got on the right tram with the right change and then got off at the right stop for her examinations, Phryne was convinced that all available academic honours would be hers. The boarding school, which also housed princesses and diplomat's children, had accepted the orphans without surprise; after all, their background might be dubious, but they were the adoptive children of the Hon. Miss Phryne Fisher, well known to be extremely rich and exceptionally well-connected, being the daughter of a Duke. She was also socially adept to the level of Ipsissimus and not to be crossed by any organization that wished to remain in the mode.

Therefore Ruth the slavey and Jane the whore's daughter mingled with the daughters of the upper classes, and quite liked each other, each side considering the other unbearably exotic.

And although the north wind scoured the unreliable spring outside, inside Miss Fisher's parlour everyone was getting on splendidly.

The girls had settled down on the hearth rug. Ember the black cat had walked in, sniffed the canine scent, hissed briefly, then analysed it as a small dog with no immediate desire to chase cats. Ember had ascended to Phryne's knee with a precise leap and was now sitting in sphinx pose, nose to the fire, blinking occasionally and looking, as Jane said dotingly, perfectly Egyptian.

'Nice to see you, Hugh dear, are you off duty or have you left the force?' asked Phryne. The large man grinned. He owed Phryne a lot. Because of her he had entered for his detective's exams with his Sergeant's recommendations and was on the way to becoming Detective Constable Collins.

'No fear, Miss Fisher, I'm on nights. Just dropped in for a word with Dot and one of Mrs B's ginger biscuits when the girls came in with that poor little mutt. I'm glad you're going to let them keep her, Miss Fisher. Nice little stocky body, I reckon she's a crossbreed, not too big and going to make a good guard dog. Need a guard dog in St Kilda, with all them alleyways behind the houses.' Constable Collins basked under the affectionate regard of everyone in the room except Mr Butler, who instinctively knew who would walk, brush and care for the new acquisition, and Phryne, who was conscious of being manipulated. Then she remembered Hugh's mention of a parcel.