Dead Man's Chest Read Online Free PDF Page B

she winked at him. He maintained the perfect frozen expression of his tribe, but his eyes softened slightly and he filled this distinguished visitor’s glass to the very top with the icy, lemony cocktail.
    ‘You do make good cocktails,’ she told him. He bowed and did not speak. ‘So there’s just you in the house?’ asked Phryne of her hostess.
    ‘During term,’ Mrs Mason answered. ‘During the holidays I have my son and his friends staying—if he isn’t staying with them, of course. They are such good chums. And such high spirits!’
    The butler winced again and so did Mrs Mason. Both of them, Phryne inferred, preferred the spirits to be found in expensive bottles to the ones which kicked sand all over the floor, ground mud into carpets and played cricket in the kitchen garden, to the merry tinkle of breaking windows.
    ‘I’ve only passingly been to Queenscliff before,’ Phryne told Mrs Mason, wondering, inter alia, who had persuaded a woman with such a high complexion that cerise satin was her colour and texture. There ought to be some kind of law against dressmakers like that. Crimes against Couture.
    ‘Oh, it used to be select, very select,’ Mrs Mason answered. She seemed to be listening for something. ‘Mrs Alfred Deakin always stays here, you know. And the dear Archbishop. Lots of church people and politicians. But since the railway went through we have lots of trippers. My dear! Pork-pie hats and trailing braces and eating ice cream in the street!’
    ‘The working classes,’ said Phryne, ‘have their pleasures, too.’
    ‘Working class! No, no, these are small shopkeepers. Trade.’
    Phryne was selecting one of the three crushing rejoinders and was about to inflict it on her hostess when there was a rush of feet and three boys entered, shoving each other at the door and then standing as though emulating the fate of Lot’s wife. Phryne was thus rescued from social ostracism in the select village of Queenscliff. But she wasn’t a bit grateful.
    For there, now shuffling a few feet and looking as though they had been struck repeatedly with a carpenter’s mallet, were her three assailants from the street. Fraser, Jolyon and Kiwi, as she recalled. Fraser was the one with the scowl and the blond hair. Kiwi the taller, all skinned knees and elbows. And the scion of the house, Jolyon, blushing furiously, a well-built lad with brown hair like his mother’s.
    Jane looked at them as though they were a specimen she had in mind to dissect. Ruth gaped until Dot moved close to her and nudged. Phryne smiled sweetly.
    At that smile the boys shuddered. A jellyfish might have managed more tremble per square inch, but only a jellyfish. They hung on her lips. What was she going to say? All she had to do was peach on them and the rest of the holiday would be close confinement and Good Works.
    ‘My son, Jolyon,’ said Mrs Mason, who had not noticed anything wrong in the atmosphere. ‘His friends Tony Fraser and John Patterson. This is the Hon Miss Phryne Fisher and her companion Miss Williams. And her daughters Jane and Ruth. You are late, boys! Go and wash your hands, dinner is almost ready.’
    The boys shook hands solemnly with Phryne and Dot, stared at Jane and Ruth, and barrelled out to do as they were told. But they were not relieved, not yet. There was still dinner to get through, and that Miss Fisher might yet decide to sneak.
    ‘Your son takes after you,’ Phryne observed.
    ‘A little, perhaps, I like to think so,’ Mrs Mason agreed. ‘But he’s going to be as big as his father. It’s as much as his female relatives can do to keep him in socks.’
    Phryne, who had never knitted a sock in her life but was sure that if she needed socks she could find someone to knit them for her, smiled an assent. Mrs Mason took another cocktail. Phryne didn’t. Dot sipped her sherry. Ruth was astounded by the advent of the bad boys in a respectable house, and Jane was groping for a conversational topic. Dot had