“Try a sip, Miss. It’s my mother’s recipe and it’s defrosting that young constable real good. We were worried about you, Miss,” said Mrs. Butler.

Phryne took the glass and tried a sip. It was warm, and Phryne was still cold. Mrs. Butler beamed.

“You drink that up, Miss. I’ve got some chicken broth heating at this very moment. You’ve had a shock — can’t have you catching the megrims.”

“I don’t think that we have the megrims any more, Mrs. B.”

“You watch a murder and then go to bed on an empty stomach and megrims you will have. Soup in ten minutes,” said Mrs. Butler, and nodded to her husband, who hovered nervously at the door.

“She’ll be fine,” she said quietly. “Nerves of steel. Why don’t you have a sup of my toddy too? It’s been a long night.”

Dot, Mrs. Butler, Mr. Butler and the young policeman all had another glass of toddy on the strength of it. It began to rain again.

Phryne sat in her parlour and thought about the young man’s last words.

“My mother is in Riga.” Latvia. The Russian revolution and the Houndsditch massacre. When had all they happened? The year 9, or thereabouts.

The cuts on her body, inflicted by the flying glass, began to make themselves felt. There would certainly be a reckoning. For Phryne’s scratches, the ruin of her clothes, the damage to her car, and the theft of life from a beautiful young man with a gold ring in his ear and a blue tattoo on his neck.

Kerry Greenwood, Death at Victoria Dock (1992), page 10