Earthly Delights (32 page)

Kylie and Goss pounced on them with cries of joy. They moderated these and soon were covered in kittens. The mother cat nestled into their laps. Between them they had just enough lap for one cat. Cherie immediately claimed the calico mother as her own as soon as we could find homes for her kittens. That shouldn’t be too difficult. They were very cute.

‘They can’t be yours,’ I said to Horatio. ‘You are no longer that way inclined. How on earth did she get up here? And what has she been eating? Who fed her?’

‘Him,’ said Trudi, pointing to Horatio. ‘I find rat tails. He bring rats every day.’

So that was where the Mouse Police’s rats had been going. Horatio would not hunt for himself, of course, he might disarrange a whisker or chip a claw. He was just wandering down to the bakery, borrowing some of the Mouse Police’s nightly haul, and then springing from balcony to balcony up the building to feed the mother cat. Whose kittens were certainly no offspring of his. Why had an unrelated ex-tom cat done this?

‘These are mysteries,’ said Meroe. And they were. The only mystery destined to be left unsolved. And that was a nice,
gentle, quiet mystery. The only type that I have any intention of being involved in again. I thought of the dead boys, the furious hatred of the old man, the smooth calm of Lestat. Not nice. Not going to do that again. Memo to the universe re Corinna Chapman as an investigator: I quit.

MUFFINS

The secret of muffins is a hot oven, a well greased muffin tin and speed. You want to have all the measured ingredients ready on the table, fling them together, give them a fast stir so that they blend, then glop them into the trays and into the oven before they get depressed and sink. There is nothing to be done with sunken muffins except feed them to a pig or use them as mulch.

PLUM PUDDING MUFFINS

2 cups plain flour

½ cup sugar

1½ teaspoons baking powder

1½ teaspoons bicarb of soda

1 cup chopped candied peel, sultanas, chopped dried fruit

1 teaspoon of cinnamon

pinch of allspice

1 beaten egg

1 cup milk

2 tablespoons melted butter

tablespoon rum or brandy

Heat the oven to 300°C. Spray the muffin tins with oil. Mix all the dry ingredients together in a large bowl. Mix the egg, milk, butter and alcohol together. Pour it all at once into the muffin mix, stir it with a fork and put it into the prepared tins. Bake for about 15 minutes until they smell cooked but before they are burned on the bottom.

HERB SCROLLS

Yeast is a living creature. If you heat it too hot, it dies. If you let it get too cold, it will die. If you want to capture some wild yeast, chop a handful of sultanas and leave them in a jar in warm water until they start to froth. That is the beginning of your mother of bread or starter. Don’t do this unless you are prepared to feed it a cup of flour a day and otherwise to care for it like a mother. You can get the same results by adding a cup of rye flour and a cup of blood-heat water to a pint of real ale and leaving it in the sun until it starts to bubble. Water is blood heat when it feels neither cold nor warm in your mouth. Never put cold water in yeast or it will turn up its little pseudopodia and die on you.

If you just want to try the recipe, you’ll need:

12 g sachet of dried yeast

500 g of plain white flour

1 tablespoon sugar

About 300 ml water (blood heat)

1 teaspoon salt

1 cup chopped fresh herbs

Mix everything except the herbs together for awhile. If you have a mixer with a dough hook, use it until the dough has combined and starts to pull away from the sides. If you are using your hands, keep mixing until it does that. Flour is chancy. If it’s too dry, add more blood-heat water. If it’s too wet, add more flour. Flub it onto a floured board and knead until it feels elastic (this is one of those things you have to learn by doing, like sex or swimming). Then pat it out into a flattish rectangle like an unrolled Swiss roll. Cover it with a damp cloth and leave it to rise (sticking the whole thing in a clean plastic bag and putting it into a warm bed works).

Preheat the oven to 180°C. When the dough is all swollen, spread your herbs and a pinch of pepper on the up side, roll it up, and glue the seam together with water. Lay it on the bench and cut it into slices. Cook for about 10 minutes. Tastes gorgeous even if it’s not exactly round or is a bit singed at the edges.

HAPPY BAKING!

ALSO BY KERRY GREENWOOD

The Castlemaine Murders

Kerry Greenwood

Phryne Fisher is back—as smart and sassy as ever.

Phryne Fisher, her sister Beth and her faithful maid, Dot, decide that Luna Park is the place for an afternoon of fun and excitement with Phryne’s two daughters, Ruth and Jane. But in the dusty dark Ghost Train, amidst the squeals of horror and delight, a mummified bullet-studded corpse falls to the ground in front of them. Phryne Fisher’s pleasure trip has definitely become business.

Digging to the bottom of this longstanding mystery takes her to the country town of Castlemaine where it soon becomes obvious that someone is trying to muzzle her investigations. With unknown threatening assailants on her path, Phryne seems headed for more trouble than usual.

Meanwhile, Phryne’s lover Lin Chung has his own mystery to solve. Feuding families and lost gold fill his mind until he learns that Phryne herself has become missing treasure.

‘Greenwood is the class act of local crime writing.’

—
Weekend Australian

ISBN 1 74114 074 9

Murder in Montparnasse

Kerry Greenwood

The divine Phryne Fisher returns to lead another dance of intrigue.

Seven Australian soldiers, carousing in Paris in 1918, unknowingly witness a murder and their presence has devastating consequences. Ten years later, two are dead … under very suspicious circumstances.

Phryne’s wharfie mates, Bert and Cec, appeal to her for help. They were part of this group of soldiers in 1918 and they fear for their lives and for those of the other three men. It’s only as Phryne delves into the investigation that she, too, remembers being in Montparnasse on that very same day.

While Phryne is occupied with memories of Montparnasse past and the race to outpace the murderer, she finds troubles of a different kind at home. Her lover, Lin Chung, is about to be married. And the effect this is having on her own usually peaceful household is disastrous.

‘Phryne Fisher is young, wealthy, beautiful, smart, confident and independently minded … and she has a knack for solving murders when she is not sipping a strengthening cocktail or planning another seduction.’

—
Australian’s Review of Books

ISBN 1 86508 806 4

Urn Burial

Kerry Greenwood

Phryne Fisher, scented and surprisingly ruthless, is not one to let sleuthing an horrific crime get in the way of an elegant dalliance.

The redoubtable Phryne Fisher is holidaying at Cave House, a Gothic mansion in the heart of the Victorian mountain country. But the peaceful country surroundings mask danger. Her host is receiving death threats, lethal traps are set without explanation around the house and the parlourmaid is found strangled to death.

What with the reappearance of the mysterious funerary urns, a pair of young lovers, an extremely eccentric swagman, an angry outcast heir, and the luscious Lin Chung, Phryne’s attention has definitely been caught.

Phryne’s search for answers takes her deep into the dungeons of the house and of the limestone Buchan caves. But what will she find this time?

‘Fisher is a sexy, sassy and singularly modish character.

Her 1920s Melbourne is racy, liberal and a city where crime occurs on its shadowy, largely unlit streets.’

—
Canberra Times

ISBN 1 74114 140 0