The Castlemaine Murders Read Online Free PDF Page B

be them.
    Raising my head, I look at the moon.
    Lowering my head, I think of my home.
    I hope you are well, little sister, and that mother’s cough has cleared up. Continue with your studies and soon there may be a Gold Mountain Uncle returning with his sleeves full of nuggets to buy you a rich husband.

CHAPTER THREE
    This skull was Yorick’s skull.
    William Shakespeare Hamlet
    Phryne went decorously to church with Eliza, Jane and Ruth. She did not often attend but it did make a soothing start to the day. Eliza, instead of sniffing at the youth of the building and the primitive nature of the worship, sank quietly to her knees in a back pew and spent the whole service engrossed in something which looked surprisingly like prayer. Phryne spared a moment to wonder what had converted her acidulated bitch of a sister into a nun and assumed that if female problems or maybe demonic possession were to blame for the bad moods, then maybe angelic possession accounted for this good one. She really didn’t care. Eliza was a sad disappointment to Phryne.
    ‘That sermon,’ ventured Ruth as they left the church and came into sunshine hot enough to char-grill an ox.
    ‘Mmm?’ asked Phryne absently.
    ‘He said that we were emerging from barbarism into civilisation.’
    ‘Did he?’ asked Phryne, settling her cloche and wishing that she had brought a broad-brimmed hat. And a camel. And was on the way to a suitable oasis, with resident sheik and a bucket of sherbert.
    ‘You weren’t listening, were you?’ accused Ruth, who would have appreciated the sheik.
    ‘No, I was wondering about the man in the Ghost Train,’ confessed Phryne.
    ‘So was I,’ agreed Jane. ‘It was just the usual sermon. Like that one on Brotherly Love. I’ve heard it so often I could recite it.’
    As she showed signs of doing this, Phryne said hastily, ‘We’ll talk about the man in the Ghost Train this afternoon, when we go to see Dr Treasure. He has an old friend visiting, an expert on Egyptian mummies. He ought to be good value.’
    ‘A godless occupation for a Sunday,’ commented Eliza. The piety, Phryne noticed, had quite worn off.
    ‘Yes, so you will have to occupy yourself in good works and golden opportunities while we are gone. What were you going to say about the sermon, Ruth?’
    ‘Barbarism. He said that we have left behind the barbarism of the past. And I was thinking, Miss Crich said that the Great War killed more men than any other war—not Alexander, not the Romans or Assyrians, no one killed more people than . . . well, us. Our governments. Aren’t we barbaric still?’
    ‘Oh, yes,’ said Phryne with great feeling. ‘The only difference is that we are trying not to be. We at least know what barbarism is, and we reject it. That has to count for something. But not,’ she added, breaking into the fast scamper of one wearing a tight-fitting skirt, ‘to any great degree of success.’
    Eliza, she noticed, was running beside her. And prudent Eliza, wishing to protect her milk and roses, carried a sunshade. It was frilled and delicate as befitted a lady’s accessory for a warm summer’s day, but it had a steel shaft and handle.
    ‘And how do you expect the horse to get up if you keep beating it?’ Phryne asked a carter, who was flailing at a fallen horse’s eyes with a buggy whip.
    The carter sighted Phryne’s small figure and growled an obscenity. He continued to beat the horse, which was so pinned under the remains of the cart that it could not move.
    Jane was interested, warm-hearted Ruth was aghast. Both of them took a step backwards to allow Phryne room to move. Eliza did not.
    ‘See here, my man,’ she began. Her aristocratic tone attracted the carter’s full wrath and he came up from his stooping position roaring. Eliza was caught by the arm and uttered a ladylike shriek.
    Phryne dodged around him, removed his whip with a quick twist, and called to an enthralled crowd, ‘Come and heave this cart off that poor horse