The Spotted Dog Read online

  PRAISE FOR

  Kerry Greenwood

  THE CORINNA CHAPMAN SERIES

  ‘What a delightful character the unflappable baker and reluctant investigator Corinna Chapman is … Greenwood is a long-established and prolific winner of many crime-writing awards, already a fixture in the history of Australian crime writing … this is a charming, funny and affectionate portrait of Melbourne.’ The Sydney Morning Herald

  ‘… the endearing Corinna retains her love of food, cats, gin and her tall, dark and handsome boyfriend Daniel … The clever, whimsical crime writing [is] precisely the charm of Greenwood’s off-beat series.’ The Courier Mail

  ‘Gentle, funny and filled with eccentric characters. This mystery is a thoroughly entertaining read.’ Woman’s Day

  ‘… there’s plenty to sink your teeth into.’ The Saturday Age

  ‘Cheerful, enjoyable and absolutely incredible.’ Good Reading

  THE PHRYNE FISHER SERIES

  ‘Miss Fisher is quicker, kinder, racier and more democratic than any character from Dame Agatha … if you haven’t fallen for her yet, prepare to be seduced.’ The Australian Women’s Weekly

  ‘Kerry Greenwood captures the 1920s style perfectly as she weaves crime and intrigue in the dark streets of Melbourne Town, together with the glamorous high life of the one and only Phryne Fisher … Step aside, Miss Marple. Kerry Greenwood has given us the most elegant and irrepressible sleuth ever.’ The Toowoomba Chronicle

  ‘It’s Underbelly meets Miss Marple …’ Emporium

  ‘Always elegant, always sophisticated, always clever and damn it always right, Phryne is the finest detective to be found in the 1920s.’ The Ballarat Courier

  ‘Miss Fisher as usual powers through this newest case with grace, poise and unerring confidence, the sense of underlying tension is palpable …’ The Age

  ‘Kerry Greenwood’s writing is always a joy.’ Stiletto

  ‘Together with Greenwood’s witty and fluid, elegant prose, Phryne Fisher is a sheer delight.’ The Toowoomba Chronicle

  Kerry Greenwood is the creator of the bestselling, beloved contemporary crime series featuring the talented Corinna Chapman, baker and sleuth extraordinaire. There are currently six previous novels in this series with The Spotted Dog as Corinna’s most recent adventure.

  Kerry’s much-loved 1920s crime series, featuring the marvellous Miss Phryne Fisher in twenty novels, has been developed for television and screened on ABC TV in Australia. The series is sold in print in the UK and US, as is the television series.

  Kerry Greenwood is also the acclaimed author of several books for young adults, the Delphic Women series and is the editor of two collections. She has been long-listed, shortlisted and is a winner of the Davitt and the Ned Kelly awards. Kerry is also the recipient of the Ned Kelly Lifetime Achievement Award (2003) and the Sisters in Crime Lifetime Achievement Award (2013).

  ALSO BY

  Kerry Greenwood

  THE CORINNA CHAPMAN SERIES

  Earthly Delights

  Heavenly Pleasures

  Devil’s Food

  Trick or Treat

  Forbidden Fruit

  Cooking the Books

  THE PHRYNE FISHER SERIES

  Raisins and Almonds

  Death Before Wicket

  Away With the Fairies

  Murder in Montparnasse

  The Castlemaine Murders

  Urn Burial

  Queen of the Flowers

  Ruddy Gore

  Blood and Circuses

  Green Mill Murder

  Death at Victoria Dock

  Murder on the Ballarat Train

  Death by Water

  Cocaine Blues

  Flying Too High

  Murder in the Dark

  A Question of Death

  Murder on a Midsummer Night

  Dead Man’s Chest

  Unnatural Habits

  Murder and Mendelssohn

  First published in 2018

  Copyright © Kerry Greenwood 2018

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. The Australian Copyright Act 1968 (the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or 10 per cent of this book, whichever is the greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for its educational purposes provided that the educational institution (or body that administers it) has given a remuneration notice to the Copyright Agency (Australia) under the Act.

  Allen & Unwin

  83 Alexander Street

  Crows Nest NSW 2065

  Australia

  Phone: (61 2) 8425 0100

  Email: [email protected]

  Web: www.allenandunwin.com

  ISBN 978 1 76052 848 5

  eISBN 978 1 76063 761 3

  Internal design by Bookhouse, Sydney

  Set by Bookhouse, Sydney

  Cover design: Nada Backovic

  Cover illustrations: Nada Backovic, iStock and Shutterstock

  DEDICATED TO DAVID GREAGG, THE STOUT AND HELPFUL BEAR;

  ALSO WITH THANKS TO ANWYN DAVIES, ALEX LEWIS, ELOISE WILLMAN,

  MARK DEASEY, HARJONO, KENDALL CROCKER,

  ELIZABETH ANN SCARBOROUGH, ALICE ROOD, MARI ELEANOR,

  THE KINGDOMS AND BARONIES OF THE SOCIETY

  FOR CREATIVE ANACHRONISMS,

  AND ALL THE WONDERFUL STAFF AT ALLEN & UNWIN

  CONTENTS

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FUORTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  RECIPES

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  CHAPTER ONE

  Cry Havoc! And let slip the dogs of war!

  WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, JULIUS CAESAR, ACT 3, SCENE 1

  There should be a law against four am.

  Unfortunately there isn’t, which meant that I had to get up. I left my beautiful Daniel asleep in my new big bed (what with the two of us and one very sprawly cat, there wasn’t room in my old one) and found my sheepskin slippers. I shoved one sleepy foot down and felt something moist and furry and heard a crunch.

  Horatio raised his stripy head, ears pricked. I suddenly understood. I had complained about the last mouse because he had left it on the kitchen table. So he had found another place to store it. Somewhere safe. Somewhere hidden.

  I disposed of the corpse and left my slipper on the balcony to be dealt with later. Perhaps Daniel could cope with it. He was an ex-soldier, after all. The Israeli army’s loss was my gain. I put on the coffee then had a shower, scrubbing my feet with a lot of soap and a nailbrush. A size-twenty woman does really unpleasant things to a dead mouse in her slipper.

  I hate four am.

  Insula, where I live and work, is as quiet as an Egyptian pyramid at this hour. I am the only one awake, save for my faithful apprentice Jason, whose proud duty it is to open the bakery a
nd get everything fired up for my arrival. Therese Webb, a craftsperson extraordinaire with a medieval bent, would be dreaming of ladies and unicorns, while Professor Dion Monk, retired professor of classics, murmurs Juvenal’s satires in his sleep. Mrs Dawson would be quietly smiling at reminiscences of a life well-lived in society. Trudi would be dreaming of tulips and speculaas. Meroe would be slumbering virtuously in pagan bliss, and Mrs Pemberthy and her revolting little dog Traddles – the only flies in Insula’s otherwise harmonious ointment – would be tossing and turning, if there was any justice in the world. Mistress Dread might be still out and about, of course; I couldn’t say. Hers is an exciting world of Bondage, Discipline and Leather which I am content to admire from a distance. In other words, all was calm, quiet and serene.

  As was I, so long as I had coffee. No one bakes bread without drinking coffee. I paired my second cup with a slightly failed croissant. I still can’t get them right. They are perfectly canonical croissants, I suppose, but not anything like those of the proper artisan boulanger in Montparnasse, where I used to live. My theory is that croissants are like wine. Terroir – the environment in which the grapes are grown – is critically important in winemaking. No doubt croissants needed flour milled from wheat grown in French earth and butter made from the milk of French-speaking cows. And I probably needed to bake them in a French oven. In France.

  Still, toasted and eaten in conjunction with some of Therese Webb’s raspberry jam, they tasted fine. Horatio got plain ordinary cat food. Putting that mouse into my slipper had been mischievous. He did, however, get his dab of butter. I am mere putty in the paws of my felines.

  Into the stout overall and cap and the stouter shoes. Down the stairs to the bakery – aptly named Earthly Delights – where the big air conditioners have already come on, along with the ovens. Jason was there, reading a comic while waiting for his first rising to mature.

  ‘Cap’n on deck!’ he said, jumping to his feet and saluting.

  Jason is an ex-heroin addict who was saved by patisseries and now lives in Insula in a grace-and-favour apartment. He is thin, growing all the time, with curly blond hair like Harpo Marx. I bless the day he discovered Hornblower and then Patrick O’Brian. Barely literate, he was nevertheless sufficiently spellbound to persevere with Master and Commander and decided he wanted to be a midshipman. I love having a midshipman. Also, he is going to be a very good baker. Happily, his ardour for bread has not been cooled by falling in love with a lot of unsuitable girls. He has a weakness for tall, aloof blondes. So far, they don’t have a weakness for him.

  Colliding with my ankles in a furry scrum were Heckle and Jekyll, aka the Mouse Police, a rough-and-ready pair of pied old comrades. They are the first, last and best defence against rodents in my bakery. I viewed the place of slaughter. Two rats, seven mice and a spider. Quite a big spider. I approved, and doled out cat food with a liberal hand. The Mouse Police, at least, knew how to present their prey. Out in the open, for a start.

  ‘Steady as she goes, Midshipman,’ I ordered, and began pulling out the tins for my sourdough, a staple of the business. My sourdough had originally come from Italy, nestled in my old master’s wife’s bosom, or so he claimed. Yeast is immortal. In every little cell the strain of yeast which a certain prophet’s people did not have time to allow to rise may even now be multiplying. A charming thought for four am, when charming thoughts are few.

  ‘It’s gonna be hot again,’ said Jason, shaping loaves and dropping each one into an oiled tin. The first load went into the oven.

  ‘Bugger,’ I commented in a heartfelt tone. If it had not been for my new air-conditioning system, which rendered the temperature in the bakery ‘hot’ rather than ‘infernal’, I would have melted into a large puddle with shoes in its centre.

  Knead, shape, bake, knead, shape, bake. Jason took over the challah, because he was very proud of his ability to break eggs with one hand. I started crushing spices for the fruit loaves. Bara brith today: a Welsh recipe. Everything went along smoothly. The bakery filled with the enchanting scent of baking bread. Loaves went in flabby and came out shiny.

  At six I opened the door onto Calico Alley, and the Mouse Police shot out with cries of starvation. They were going to stand over Kiko of the Japanese restaurant for fish scraps. So menacing were they I would not be at all surprised to see them hauling home a whole tuna by the tail.

  The sun was already striking hot and golden down the alley. Once summer arrives in Melbourne it invariably outstays its welcome. Bushfires. Parched lawns. Trudi, our gardener, swearing and collecting every drop of wastewater to keep her flowers alive. Relentless heat. I was sick of it before it started. Alas, the thing about weather is that it’s compulsory.

  I caught the plastic-wrapped paper as the delivery cyclist flung it at my head. I wasn’t going to read it until the baking was over. Bad news makes for soggy bread, and that’s all the news we get these parlous days. Best to skip straight to the crossword.

  Mrs Dawson, retired society hostess and example to us all, was coming back from her early-morning walk. She was clad in scarlet cotton trousers and a hand-knitted cotton jumper with a Welsh dragon on the front. She asked for sourdough, was duly given the first loaf out of the oven, and gave me in return the exact change and a sweet smile.

  The city was beginning to wake. Inside, Jason had put his challah in the oven and was compounding the muffin of the day. I could smell the ingredients: orange flower water, dates, pistachio nuts and candied peel. Yum! Oasis muffins. The boy is a genius with muffins.

  I knew I ought to go back to the kitchen and mould my pasta dura, a light, white Italian bread with a hard crust that my customers loved. But instead I remained in the doorway, brushing flour from my green apron, because down the alley came a man.

  The light was behind him. He was of medium height. Stocky, with short hair. Jeans and a khaki T-shirt. Something about him said ‘cop or soldier’. His eyes flicked from side to side, as if hunting for enemies. Snipers in Centre Arcade? I didn’t think it likely. He was moving uncertainly. Drunk? It must have been a monumental night, to be weaving his way home at six-thirty.

  He came closer, his boots ringing on the cobbles. (Soldier, then.) Close enough for me to see that he had light blue eyes with dark smudges under them, cropped black hair, tanned skin. He was shaking. No smell of alcohol, though.

  He held out a much-creased envelope and I took it. It was addressed to Sgt Alasdair Sinclair. On the back was written Daniel Cohen will help you, the words signed Sr Mary. There was no way I was going to ignore anything which came from that admirable and formidable nun. What Sister Mary said went. She was, as one of her clients had told another, ‘in damn big with God’.

  ‘Corinna?’ the soldier asked. Scottish voice.

  ‘I’m Corinna,’ I told him.

  ‘I’m Alasdair,’ he replied. ‘They told me about you.’ And then he promptly slid out of sight.

  I caught him before he hit the ground and dragged him into the bakery. Jason grabbed his other arm and together we hauled him up to sit in the cook’s chair.

  ‘Who’s the undead dude?’ asked Jason.

  ‘Has a note to see Daniel from Sister Mary,’ I said. ‘Shut and bar the door, Midshipman. Stand here, belt him with an oven slide if he gives you any trouble, and I’ll go and get our private detective.’ Jason regarded him dubiously. ‘What’s wrong with him?’ My apprentice didn’t handle emergencies well. ‘Has he been shot or something?’

  ‘He’s not bleeding,’ I pointed out. ‘On second thought, I’ll watch him and you fetch Daniel – here, take the envelope. And put the coffee on before you go.’

  He did as requested, then belted up the internal stairs as fast as Heckle when a tin is opened in another room. Speaking of whom, the Mouse Police had returned, fish-scented, and were giving our guest the once-over. No danger; Heckle looked away and began his post-tuna wash. I am rather relying on Heckle to take out a burglar if necessary, probably by devouring him from the ankles u
p. He’s an ever-hungry cat. Jekyll strolled over, put a paw on the sergeant’s dusty boot then sat down on it. Right. The bakery approved of him.

  He wasn’t unconscious, but his eyes were shut, as though he had expended his last reserves of energy in getting to my bakery, though I couldn’t imagine why. I poured out a glass of chilled water and touched him gently on the shoulder.

  He flinched. Not a good reaction.

  ‘Water,’ I told him, holding the glass to his lips so that he could drink. He drained it.

  ‘More?’ I asked. He was not injured as far as I could see, but very tired.

  Then his eyes opened.

  Oh. Not tired. Sleepless. Haunted. I got a full-on dose of terror and nightmare.

  Acting entirely on instinct, I knelt down and embraced him.

  He smelt of male human, cheap soap and fear in roughly equal proportions. He put his head on my shoulder and sighed; he seemed to find my shoulder quite comfortable, as if he could easily fall asleep, which might be difficult to fit into a day’s baking. But I felt so sorry for him – he had clearly seen too many horrors for one man to absorb – that I stayed where I was. Presently I became aware that tears were sliding down my neck. He was weeping, without a sound or a sob.

  Jason skidded back into the bakery and stopped on a sixpence when he saw me kneeling on the floor holding a man in my arms. A man who was not Daniel. ‘Corinna?’ he quavered.

  ‘It’s all right,’ I assured him. ‘Where’s Daniel?’

  ‘On his way. He’s just getting dressed and feeding Horatio.’

  ‘I’ve already fed Horatio.’ That cat was an opportunist’s opportunist. He could teach classes. ‘Start on the pasta dura, will you, if you’ve finished your muffins and challah?’

  ‘Jeez!’ he said, and dived for the oven.

  The muffins came out perfect and the challah was gorgeous, slicked golden with egg yolk. The scents began to penetrate the half-swoon of my soldier. He sniffed. Nothing is more indicative of home, of safety, than the smell of baking bread. He sighed and began to sit up.

  Now he would be embarrassed and I have no patience with embarrassment. I began to talk fast. ‘What will you have with your coffee: an Oasis muffin, an egg-and-bacon one, or a slice of bread?’