Death Before Wicket: Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries 10 by Kerry Greenwood Read Free Book Online Page B

he offered it.
    ‘Come along, m’dear, they’ve all drunk quite enough of my sherry, let’s go and sit down. The University cooks have been slaving all day on this meal—be a pity to keep them waiting.’
    Phryne found herself at the head of a procession as the gowned figures fell in behind the VC, two abreast, and paced decorously towards the tables and the dais, passing the illuminated windows and the bosses and corbels. She matched her pace to her escort’s and enjoyed the swing of her gown and the patch-and-glow of the hanging lamps. It was very beautiful, like a medieval dance, and the gowned procession cast shadows of itself as it passed on the grey and white marble of the floor.
    ‘Now, m’dear, do sit down,’ said Charles Waterhouse frankly, ‘because I can’t until you do and I’m a bit weary.’
    Phryne sat as the server shoved her chair forward. The VC and the Senate followed, and the silence was broken by the scraping of chairs and the scurrying of liveried servers who were hauling in tureens of soup and decanting it into the University’s expensive white china.
    The Reverend Doctor of Divinity (Dublin) James O’Malley stood and began to intone a grace from a card he held partially concealed in his hand. Phryne, having very little Latin but a lot of French and Italian, grasped that they were thanking the lord for his mercy in providing bounteous meats. The soup smelled delicious. Beef bouillon, if she was any judge. She surveyed the mob in the hall to take her mind off how hungry she was.
    There was the ‘uncomfortable chap’, Anderson, still haranguing his neighbour despite the silence required for grace. There was the anthropologist with the beautiful eyes, Dr Edmund Brazell, a picture of piety. She was seated between the VC and a tall man with silvery hair who was listening to the Reverend Doctor with barely concealed loathing. When the Irish voice had intoned the last word he snapped ‘Amen,’ and added, ‘Nice to meet you, Miss Fisher. I’m John Bretherton, Classics.’
    ‘And you don’t like the way the Reverend Doctor reads Latin.’
    ‘No. He’s read it often enough, why can’t he recite it? He’s got a card in his sleeve, you can see it. And entire social classes would have been exiled from Rome for massacring the tongue as he does. No one cares about Classics nowadays—I put it down to the war. What was your university, Miss Fisher? I observe you are wearing an Arts hood, but it might be the spare—last week it was Veterinary Science.’
    ‘Neither. I have no university. I’m here as a guest.’
    ‘Very kind of you to alleviate the masculinity of this assembly.’ He recovered gracefully. ‘All chaps together can get very crude.’
    ‘I shall do my best to provide an example of the purity of womanhood,’ said Phryne with a very creditable straight face. John Bretherton looked at her for an astounded moment then gave a short bark of laughter.
    ‘I’m glad to have made your acquaintance,’ he said, picking up his spoon.
    ‘“How pleasant it is to stand in the marketplace, taking notes on one’s neighbour’s behaviour,”‘ she quoted, and he put the spoon down again.
    ‘You knew that he was my favourite Roman, how did you know that?’
    ‘A satirical cast of expression and a very discerning eye,’ said Phryne. ‘Who but Juvenal would really speak to you? You can do me a service.’
    ‘My gifts, such as they are, are yours,’ he said, fascinated.
    ‘Tell me all about your fellows,’ she said, and Professor John Bretherton grinned. ‘And tell me all about the burglary of the Dean’s safe,’ she added, and the grin widened.
    ‘Such a scandal,’ he began. ‘But, Miss Fisher, do eat your soup and I shall eat mine, and we shall discourse further. Old Charlie’s engrossed in trying to talk to even older Charlie, so we shall not be overheard.’
    The VC was indeed bellowing conversation into the wrinkled ears of a gowned man of fabulous antiquity. Phryne was