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while I reason with this gentleman. There will be shillings if this is done very quickly,’ she added as the carter dragged Eliza towards him.
    Then something astonishing happened. The aristocrat, daughter of at least a hundred distinguished earls, lost her manner, her accent, and her temper. The carter found himself being dragged off balance by a fury who snarled through bared teeth, ‘Shut your filthy mouth! If you call me that again, you bludger, I’ll knock out your eye with this sunshade! Now take your hands off me! Who asked you to manhandle a lady, you bastard?’
    Phryne, energised and warmed by the return of a small sister who had flanked her indomitably by the pig bins of the Victoria market, poked the whip into the middle of the driver’s unsavoury back. He was a big, red-faced, broken-toothed bully, greasy with breakfast sausages and stinking of beer. Phryne knew the type.
    ‘Let my sister go,’ said Phryne clearly. ‘She means it, you know. And that sunshade is London made. Steel. Which eye don’t you need?’ The carter released Beth, who shook herself like a cat ruffled by unauthorised handling. Phryne did not allow the carter to turn around. Her gentle voice continued from behind his back, which was disconcerting. ‘Now we are going to get your horse up, and you are going to behave, and the Inspectors of Cruelty will be round in the morning to make sure that you don’t beat the poor beast to death because we have embarrassed you. Assuming it can still trudge, of course. How are the men going, Beth?’
    ‘They’ve heaved the cart off,’ said Beth. ‘They’ve got it onto four hoofs again. It’s favouring the off-fore, but nothing’s broken as far as I can see.’
    ‘Name and address?’ asked Phryne, and wrote down the grudgingly given details in a small notebook. ‘You may turn around now,’ she told him.
    When the carter realised that he had been bailed up and reproved by a woman barely over five feet tall in a cloche hat, he swelled with outrage, remembered the sunshade, and released his beery breath.
    ‘Good, lead it carefully, now. Thank you, gentlemen,’ said Phryne, distributing shillings with a liberal hand to her stalwart helpers. ‘Now, Beth, I think we could do with a nice cup of tea.’
    ‘Bugger that,’ said Beth, fanning herself with her straw hat. ‘We need a drink.’
    Phryne and her sister walked arm in arm along Acland Street. The sun shone. The breeze blew the scent of ozone and Turkey lolly and the vinegar scent of best black silks brought out for Sunday. Phryne was suddenly very happy.
    ‘Good afternoon, Dr Treasure. Such a bore to bother you on a Sunday afternoon,’ apologised Phryne. The room looked just as it always had. Crowded. Shelves bore books, anatomical specimens far too vividly displayed in gin-clear alcohol, a pair of crossed oars with a kangaroo skin behind them and a rather out of place teddy bear. He was a battered, humorous and much loved bear with an air of slightly cynical world weariness and someone was going to miss him fairly soon. And in all probability, they would then scream. Dr Treasure’s family occupied the parts of his house without, Phryne hoped, interesting viscera in jars, and he had two small children much given to vociferation.
    ‘You know, Miss Fisher, I’ve never been bored in your presence,’ replied Dr Treasure, offering her a chair next to a table bearing an ominous, shrouded burden. He took her hand and kissed it.
    Dr Treasure was an expert in many sciences, frequently consulted in the deepest secrecy by important persons, and very firmly married. Phryne found this refreshing. She could flirt with Dr Treasure without the risk of being invited to any impromptu game of swap-the-spouse. He was tall, with the curly blond hair, guileless blue eyes and rosy cheeks of the country boy he had been, and Phryne liked him very much.
    ‘Well, we’ve laid him out—definitely a him, he’s very well preserved,’ observed the doctor,