DEATH BEFORE WICKET - Poisoned Pen Press (UK)

Kerry Greenwood
and whispered in Phryne’s ear for some time. Against her will,
her eyebrows rose.
‘Really?’ she asked. Incest was not new, perhaps, but surely
close to the last taboo. The advanced age in which she found
herself demanded free money, free love and free beer—not that
it got them—but incest seemed too extreme even for the more
altitudinous of the fauves. And that was in Paris.
‘That’s what they say. That’s when his wife threw him out.
And we don’t know how long he’ll last with the University, either.
They don’t appreciate what he does.’
‘What does he do?’
‘He shuts himself in with his students and they can’t leave
until they have undergone self-examination. Not to go out of
someone’s sight, to pee in a bottle and use a wastepaper basket
for a lavatory, never to leave the others, until they have it. The
University don’t like it. They have to call in cleaners. They don’t
know what he’s doing for us, making us see.’
‘See?’ asked Phryne.
‘Yair.’ Bill’s face was radiant. For a moment, he looked like a
cheap religious lithograph and the blurred lighting cast a glow
around his head like the halo of a saint. Then Jack nudged him
and said, ‘You’re talking to a sheila. She can’t understand.’
‘I can’t?’ asked Phryne, resisting the urge to stub her gasper
out on the young man’s hand. His venom was catching. Another
womaniser who didn’t even like women, she thought. There
were a lot of them about.
‘But there are sheilas here who do understand,’ protested Bill.
‘Don’t be such a woman-hater, Jack. Jeez, I dunno. Nice lady
wants to give us money and you’re putting her off. But they’re
stuffed shirts, up at the University. You won’t find any real
poets up there. Remember the Hermes scandal? The University
magazine published a poem by one of our friends, Bert Birtles.
Real nice. A remembrance of how his girl lay in his arms with
the moonlight coming in through the window and the birds
cooing on the roof.’