The Castlemaine Murders (32 page)
‘Is all ending well?’ asked Phryne of Lin Chung. His hand found her knee under the table.
‘We are not going to Melbourne with the others,’ he whispered.
‘No?’ She raised an eyebrow.
‘If you please, we are going to a Chinese farm, where there is a guesthouse of palatial magnificence, and no one will bother us for at least a week. I asked Dot to bring you enough clothes and things,’ he said.
‘Wonderful,’ said Phryne.
She looked around the room. Everyone was present, happy, well fed and contented. Lady Alice and Eliza were holding hands under the table. Both Gaskins looked pleased. Mr Burton was delivering a blistering snub to Mr Harrison, who had not noticed. The policemen were deep in police shop. Dot was discussing a new house with Eliza, so she would be moving out. And Phryne was about to have free range over Lin Chung’s admirable person for a week, without anyone trying to kill her, telephoning her or demanding that she solve some puzzle. She rose to her feet and proposed a toast. More champagne corks popped, one of the most festive sounds in the world.
‘To happy endings!’ she cried.
Everyone drank.
Castlemaine Post
, Express edition, 12 January 1998
Heritage workers who were cutting the grass at the Old Bark Hut
heritage site were alarmed when one of their mowers fell into an
unmarked mine shaft on Saturday. They called in the local
emergency services to retrieve the mower. At the bottom of the shaft,
which was more than ten metres deep, shocked workers found the
body of a man. Sergeant Hutton called in the local historical society
when it became clear that the body had been there for at least fifty
years. The man had been saponified, a condition which occurs
when the stearates in body fat turn to a soapy substance called
adipocere. This usually happens in cold water. He was very well
preserved. From the papers in his pocket, the man seems to have
been called Joseph Smith. (Continued on page 5 . . .)
This is a work of fiction. I have used Castlemaine as a base for it but it is not, and cannot be, accurate to a centimetre. I have taken liberties with names and places. This is what a novel does. I have tried to be as accurate as I possibly could with the assistance of some very knowledgeable people. But if you find some small error and feel the need to tell me that I have got it wrong, please think again. Anyone else is welcome to email me on [email protected] and if you would like to duplicate my research, here are my sources.
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A Difficult Case
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Annual Customs and Festivities in Peking
, trans. Derk Bodde, Hong Kong University Press, Hong Kong, 1965
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Dear Monkey
Bobbs-Merril Co, New York, 1973
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Tell ’Em I Died Game
Rigby Ltd, Sydney, 1963
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The Water Margin
WH Allen and Co, London, 1979
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The Gay Genius
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——,
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,
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Mount Alexander Diggings Committee, 1999
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Mr Butler’s Considering Cocktail
1 part sweet vermouth
4 parts chilled orange juice
dash of angostura bitters
dash of lemon juice
Combine and shake with crushed ice. Decorate with a twist of lemon peel.
ALSO FROM ALLEN & UNWIN
Murder in Montparnasse
Kerry Greenwood
The divine Phryne Fisher returns to lead another dance of intrigue.
Seven Australian soldiers, carousing in Paris in 1918, unknowingly witness a murder and their presence has devastating consequences. Ten years later, two are dead . . . under very suspicious circumstances.
Phryne’s wharfie mates, Bert and Cec, appeal to her for help. They were part of this group of soldiers in 1918 and they fear for their lives and for those of the other three men. It’s only as Phryne delves into the investigation that she, too, remembers being in Montparnasse on that very same day.
While Phryne is occupied with memories of Montparnasse past and the race to outpace the murderer, she finds troubles of a different kind at home. Her lover, Lin Chung, is about to be married. And the effect this is having on her own usually peaceful household is disastrous.
‘Phryne Fisher is young, wealthy, beautiful, smart, confident and independently minded . . . and she has a knack for solving murders when she is not sipping a strengthening cocktail or planning another seduction.’ —
Australian’s Review of Books
ISBN 1 86508 806 4
Away with the Fairies
Kerry Greenwood
Phryne Fisher — dangerous, passionate, kind, clever and seductive. She drinks cocktails, dances the tango, is the companion of wharfies, and is expert at conducting an elegant dalliance.
It’s the 1920s in Melbourne and Phryne is asked to investigate the puzzling death of a famous author and illustrator of fairy stories. To do so, Phryne takes a job within the women’s magazine that employed the victim and finds herself enmeshed in her colleagues’ deceptions.
But while Phryne is learning the ins and outs of magazine publishing first hand, her personal life is thrown into chaos. Impatient for her lover Lin Chung’s imminent return from a silk-buying expedition to China, she instead receives an unusual summons from Lin Chung’s family followed by a series of mysterious assaults and warnings.
‘Snappy one-liners and the ability to fight like a wildcat are appealing in a central character.’ —
City Weekly
ISBN 1 86508 489 1
Death Before Wicket
Kerry Greenwood
The sassy Phryne Fisher sets the seamy side of Sydney alight in her tenth adventure.
Phryne Fisher has plans for her Sydney sojourn — a few days at the Test cricket, a little sightseeing and the Artist’s Ball with an up-and-coming young modernist. But these plans begin to go awry when Phryne’s maid discovers her thoroughly respectable sister has left her family for the murky nightlife of the Cross. And Phryne is definitely not the woman to say ‘no’ when two delightful young men come to her on bended knees, begging for her help in finding their friend innocent of theft. Phryne’s plans for a simple day or two of pleasure are postponed for good.
It all sounds simple enough as Phryne sets investigations into motion, but when greed and fear are the motivating factors, people become ruthless and Phryne finds herself enmeshed in blackmail, secrets, lies and the dangerous influences of deep magic.
‘Pure indulgence . . . a 1920s heroine for the 90s . . . a fast and elegant read.’ —
Who Weekly
ISBN 1 74114 095 1
Raisins and Almonds
Kerry Greenwood
Super-sleuth Phryne Fisher steps, like an elegant cat, through this, her eighth adventure.
In investigating the poisoning of a young man in a bookshop at the Eastern market, and the wrongful arrest of one Miss Sylvia Lee, Phryne Fisher is plunged into a world of Jewish politics, alchemy, poison and chicken soup.
Stopping only for a brief, but intensely erotic, dalliance with the beautiful Simon Abrahams, Phryne picks her way through the mystery with help from the old faithfuls — Bert, Cec, Dot and Detective Inspector ‘Call Me Jack’ Robinson. But ultimately it is her stealth and wit which solve the crime — and all for the price of a song. . . .
‘Phryne Fisher is gutsy and adventurous, and also well endowed with plenty of grey matter. She has it over Robicheaux and Poirot because she’s drop-dead gorgeous.’ —
West Australian
ISBN 1 86508 880 3
Urn Burial
Kerry Greenwood
Phryne Fisher, scented and surprisingly ruthless, is not one to let sleuthing an horrific crime get in the way of an elegant dalliance.
The redoubtable Phryne Fisher is holidaying at Cave House, a Gothic mansion in the heart of the Victorian mountain country. But the peaceful country surroundings mask danger. Her host is receiving death threats, lethal traps are set without explanation around the house and the parlourmaid is found strangled to death.
What with the reappearance of the mysterious funerary urns, a pair of young lovers, an extremely eccentric swagman, an angry outcast heir, and the luscious Lin Chung, Phryne’s attention has definitely been caught.
Phryne’s search for answers takes her deep into the dungeons of the house and of the limestone Buchan caves. But what will she find this time?
‘Fisher is a sexy, sassy and singularly modish character. Her 1920s Melbourne is racy, liberal and a city where crime occurs on its shadowy, largely unlit streets.’ —
Canberra Times
ISBN 1 74114 140 0