Raisins and almonds - Poisoned Pen Press (UK)

4 Kerry Greenwood
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