‘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 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, freshly opened, with lemon juice in a jug beside. Little squares of rye-bread toast, sliced onions and hard boiled eggs accompanied the black pearls of the Beluga caviar, a gift from the Russian ambassador, which were piled with a lavish hand into their silver dish bedded in crushed ice: the manner in which Phryne always served caviar. An aspic gallimaufry of poultry (the recipe a closely guarded secret which Mrs Butler had promised to her favourite niece, to be communicated on Mrs Butler’s departure to the Grande Cuisine du Ciel) reposed on a broad salver, a golden jelly which trembled slightly. In it one could discern dark meat and white—duck, perhaps, chicken, maybe pigeon, perhaps quail?
With the beasts of the field and the fish of the sea and the fowls of the air went the fruits of the earth. A forest of crisp greenery decorated the salads: the potato salad creamy with mayonnaise which had no acquaintance whatsoever with condensed milk and mustard powder. The salade Russe which added an agreeable note of deep pink. The Caesar salad on which the egg had just set. Bunches of tiny carrots, crisp celery, the first tomatoes, asparagus in hollandaise sauce shiny with cream, sliced cucumbers bursting with vitamins and lettuce of several types completed the table. There were four sorts of chutney, three types of mustard, and mayonnaise with lemon for the fish and without for the salads, and also a perfect vinaigrette.
With the French windows open onto Phryne’s small, enchanting garden where the wisteria and jasmine were just coming into bloom, it seemed to Mr Burton a vision of a gourmet’s heaven.
‘Did you always garden, Miss Fisher?’ asked Mr Burton, trying not to salivate. The college kitchens were known for specialising in Edible Stodge, at which they excelled. He lusted after fresh fish. Oysters. Caviar! But the admirable Miss Fisher, provider of this feast, was speaking. He dragged his attention away from the table.
‘No, it isn’t my doing at all. Lin’s wife, Camellia, a most accomplished young woman, planned it and supervised the planting. It’s very pretty, isn’t it? The Chinese do the best gardens in small spaces. Do have some caviar, Mr Burton.’
Overcome, Mr Burton pressed her unoccupied hand. The right was engaged in scooping caviar onto his plate.
‘Miss Fisher, could I ask you to call me Josiah?’
‘Certainly, and please call me Phryne.’ Phryne was touched. Mr Burton was a complex, dignified man and it was a pleasure to be considered one of his friends. ‘And more caviar, perhaps?’
‘One can never have too much caviar, Phryne,’ agreed Mr Burton. ‘And some of that seafood aspic. Some salmon. A couple of oysters, perhaps.’
‘Phryne, this is an amazing feast,’ said Lin Chung. ‘Please excuse me if I do not indulge in it too freely. I have already eaten one banquet today.’
‘At Mr Hu’s? Of course. You have solved your feud. How did it go?’
‘Basically a no-score win,’ said Lin. ‘Perhaps just a few grains of caviar. And one slice of that roast beef.’
The guests sat down with loaded plates. Dot, Phryne noticed, favoured fresh vegetables with a big dollop of mayonnaise and roasted meat. Jane had discovered the gallimaufry and was dissecting it carefully, identifying each delicious sliver before she ate it. Ruth, who was a steady, patient eater with years of semi-starvation to avenge, had started with a spoonful of everything and was working her way through. So far all of it pleased her.
‘Phryne, this is a banquet!’ exclaimed Eliza. ‘You could feed a hundred . . . no, of course, it is very nice. Very nice indeed. I believe I will have some salade Russe. And some salmon. I didn’t know you got salmon here, except in tins.’
‘Do try the gallimaufry,’ said Phryne, intrigued. ‘Mrs Butler is very proud of it.’
Mr Butler poured the wine, a straw-coloured hock from South Australia, where the vines had been tended in German, which made them pay attention and get on with growing and producing Rhine quality wine, alsbalt! It was refreshing and slightly lemony, with a good bite of tannin. No one said anything much for the next ten minutes, leaving Lin Chung to carry on a light conversation over the clatter of cutlery.
‘The most surprising thing about settling the feud was how matter-of-fact it was,’ he told Phryne, who was capturing the last Beluga pearls with a handy spoon. ‘Mr Hu had his list and we had ours and we just went through them one by one. The missing woman, Lin Wan, and her children are coming to visit her mother tonight, so I’m rather glad to be out of the house—it will be full of noise. Also, Grandmother is displeased with my entirely accidental meeting with Mr Hu. She smells disobedience.’
‘And the gold? Will they be bringing it around on a handcart?’ asked Phryne, sipping her wine.
‘No, it seems that it wasn’t them. It wasn’t the Hu family who killed those couriers. We were wrong. Now I must try and find out what happened in 1857, and that is not going to be easy. It might not even be possible. But I will begin by talking to Mr Hu’s venerable great great grandmother, and my own even more venerable great great uncle, and see what they say. Assuming they can remember anything at all, of course.’
‘Fascinating,’ said Mr Burton, who had eaten as much caviar as was decent, and then a little more, and was starting on his oysters. ‘The feud is settled, then, as though it was an ordinary business transaction?’
‘Yes. We have a list of grievances and so have they and we make what Paris calls a “règlement des comptes”.’
‘And unlike Paris you do not settle it with machine guns,’ commented Phryne. ‘Mr Butler, do tell Mrs Butler that this is one of the most superb dinners of the year.’
‘Of my life,’ agreed Mr Burton. ‘My college would get an Anti-Michelin Award, their speciality being “Unidentifiable Beast in Cold Lumpy Gravy”.’
Mr Butler bowed gravely. He was delighted to see that Mr Burton had not only a healthy appetite for his size, but a healthy appetite for a six foot wharfie after a three day fast. Mr Butler approved of gluttony. It was, he thought, a nice, comfortable vice. Never caused any noise or trouble and the sufferer just expired of an apoplexy, regretted by all those who had attended his excellent dinner parties. At his direction, Mr Butler placed a spoonful of each salad on Mr Burton’s plate, on a bedding of lettuce and mayonnaise.
Phryne sent her plate back for more roast beef and said to Mr Burton, ‘Josiah, if you would be so kind as to cast your mind back to your early days at the circus, I want to hear all about Carter’s Travelling Miracles and Marvels Show,’ said Phryne.
‘Carter’s?’ Mr Burton swallowed his last oyster. Perfect. Very fresh, creamy, with just the right touch of lemon juice. ‘They followed Farrell’s for a while, many years ago. Before my time, really. But I did hear rather a lot about them, and some of their properties were knocking around for sale for years. Why do you want to know about Carter’s? It was a very low, sensational carnie show, full of feejee mermaids and Jenny Hanivers.’
‘Mr Burton, what is a Jenny Haniver?’ asked Jane.
‘It’s a sort of shark, which can be configured (when dead and dried) to resemble any sort of monster. What I meant was, the show was as fake as it could possibly be, and not too scrupulous in its methods either. One of the reasons why it went broke. But before we get onto that, why on earth are you interested in that piddling little raree show?’
‘I think we will tell you that after dinner,’ said Phryne. Lin, Jane, Ruth and Eliza murmured an agreement. Mr Burton decided to trust them, picked up an asparagus spear and used it to emphasise his points.
‘Old Mr Carter started the show, late in the nineteenth century. He came from over Ballarat way, or perhaps it was Bendigo. Someone told me his father had been a gold-miner. He had a tent show, with boxers, you know, and later added a freak show.’
‘Mr Burton,’ said Jane reprovingly.
‘Who is better entitled to talk about freaks?’ asked Mr Burton, smiling at Jane. ‘It is a glorious title. His freaks included, if my memory serves, a thin man, a Chinese who spoke in tongues (though perhaps he was just speaking in Chinese), a dwarf called General Thomas and a fat lady. Also some of those dried-up remnants of God knows what—Jenny Hanivers. Horrible things. I never look at them. Carter’s show moved along the same circuit as all of the travelling shows, crisscrossing or following a circus depending on whom he had quarrelled with lately. He was a bad-tempered, cross-grained old man but basically honest. For a carnie. His son was a miser.’
Temptation overcame Mr Burton and he ate his pointer before the hollandaise dripped onto the tablecloth. Phryne supplied him with another one.
‘A miser? How very unpleasant,’ said Ruth. She associated misers with the old woman who had almost worked her to death.
‘So my father said. He joined the show after General Thomas, his father, left it to retire. Father lasted about two weeks with Carter. He told me that the show was doomed. Only a madman would starve his horses. And his performers. “How can he maintain a fat lady if the poor woman hasn’t had a square meal in weeks?” he said. Grandfather had made a tidy sum and told my father to come home to Eltham and work in the orchard for a few months while he looked around for another position. As it happened, Father stayed. He had a natural talent for apple trees and we didn’t have another son in the business until I found out that I couldn’t prune trees but I could climb them—right up to the top.’