Raisins and Almonds (12 page)

'What's going on here?' asked the policeman, and Bert was disappointed.

'Murder!' screamed Mr Gunn. 'He poisoned Mr Rosenbloom!'

'That coot's crazy!' yelled Mr Lane. 'I didn't poison nobody. Lemme up and I'll knock your block off!' he added to Mr Gunn, who did not move.

'You let him up,' ordered Constable Clarke. 'You two come into the shop. You and you,' he pointed to Bert and Cec, 'see what you can do for the victim. You,' he pointed to a boy, 'run for Dr Stein, tell him we need him quick. All the rest of you, on your way, please. Nothing more to see here.'

The crowd, which was anticipating lots of distractions to come, stayed put. The constable blew his whistle for assistance.

'Mate,' said Bert, 'I reckon we need some water. I reckon he's taken strychnine and I reckon that Miss Phryne's going to want to know all about this.'

'Too right,' said Cec. The stricken man was panting with effort, but the tremors which ran through all his muscles would not allow him rest. Cec removed his coat and wrapped it around him.

'You'll be all right, mate,' he soothed. 'Try and sit up a little, now. That's the ticket. Boy's gone for the doctor.'

Mr Rosenbloom's teeth gnashed together as he tried to speak. 'Pain,' he grunted.

Bert, who knew no harm of the tubby foreman, said, 'Where's that bloody doctor?'

A youngish man with a permanently worried face came through the Eastern Market escorted by a proud boy, and dropped unaffectedly to his knees on the pavement.

'We need to get him inside—can you carry him?' he asked Bert and Cec, who lifted Mr Rosenbloom with some effort. They hauled him into the printer's shop and deposited him in the room's only chair.

'Sit him down here, good, now, I am going to give you something to drink, and then an injection for the convulsions, and soon you will sleep,' said the doctor. Such was the conviction in his quiet voice that Bert instantly believed him, and so did the stricken Mr Rosenbloom.

'Come next door,' he nodded to Cec.

The birdshop was loud with denunciations. Bert drew the policeman aside by one sleeve.

'I reckon you'd better call Detective Inspector Robinson,' he informed the blue serge land mass which was Constable Clarke.

'Oh, do you? And who're you?' asked the constable, unimpressed.

'Just call him. He's been looking for the poison what done in that bloke in the bookshop. Strychnine, it was. This is the same stuff.'

The constable glared at Bert and Bert glared back. There was a long interval when neither man lowered his gaze. After a minute, Clarke stepped to the door and called one of the others who had come in answer to his whistle. Three officers were occupied in keeping the crowd back.

'Call Detective Inspector Robinson, Cadet Richards,' he ordered. 'I think that this has a bearing on his murder case.'

Bert grinned at him. The recriminations in the shop rose again.

'Shut up!' roared the constable. The walls shook and bird seed fell like brightness from the air. Sheer surprise produced silence. The constable took out his notebook and his pencil.

'Now, I want your names,' he began.

Bert and Cec listened as the two men identified themselves.

'Now what's all this about murder?'

'He poisoned his chooks and my finches, and then he tried to poison Mr Rosenbloom!' declared Mr Gunn.

'He's cuckoo,' said Mr Lane pityingly 'All I did was offer Mr Rosenbloom a handful of sunflower seeds, he's foreign, he likes eating them.'

'And Mr Rosenbloom then became ill?'

'Keeled right over,' said Mr Lane. 'But I didn't poison him.'

'Show us these sunflower seeds,' said the policeman. Mr Lane led the way into the back of his shop. A small sack of seeds stood on top of a table, next to a couple of penned chickens. A boy looked up from a huge ham sandwich and allowed his mouth to fall open. Bert tipped it shut with a careful forefinger.

'We'll have to wait until Dr Stein tells us what came over Mr Rosenbloom,' said the policeman. 'Where did you get these sunflower seeds, Mr Lane?'

'I ... er ... bought them.'

'Yes,' said the constable, pencil poised. 'Who from?'

'My usual supplier is Doherty's,' said Mr Lane.

'Did these come from Doherty's, then?' The constable knew an evasion when he heard it.

'Well, in a manner of speaking, yes.' Mr Lane wiped his upper lip. 'These were a special sale, just the once.'

'Who sold them to you?'

'A mate of mine,' said Lane. 'I don't want to get him into trouble.'

'You'll be in trouble if you don't tell me what I want to know right now. A man could be dying out there,' said Clarke.

'All right, all right, it was one of the boys, Dusty Miller. He's pushed for cash and so he sold me some seeds.'

'Did you have reason to believe that these seeds had been stolen or unlawfully obtained?' asked Clarke heavily.

'No, I was sure it was all on the level, he's square, Dusty is. Good sort of young lad.'

'Oh yes,' said Constable Clarke. 'And why did you say that Mr Lane had poisoned your finches, Mr Gunn?'

'Oh, well, it was nothing, I just ... er ... borrowed a handful of sunflower seeds for my finches, I would have put them back ...'

'You been pinching my feed!' yelled Mr Lane, thankful that the black spot of legal attention appeared to have passed from him. 'You thief!'

'That's enough,' said Clarke.

'He knew the seeds were poisonous, he sold two chooks which had died of poisoning, I saw his boy plucking them!' Mr Gunn was not going to let go of his grievance.

'Dead in the pen,' agreed the boy At a glare from his master, he corked his mouth with sandwich again.

'See?' demanded Mr Gunn.

'All right, all right,' said Constable Clarke. 'That's enough. From both of you.'

Bert, who had been looking at the sunflower seeds, caught a glimpse of something in the sack which had no business being there.

'There's a stain on the left side of this sack,' he commented. 'And I reckon ...', he probed the seeds with a stick, '... yes, there,' he said with satisfaction, as a small uncorked glass bottle emerged from the black and white striped shells. It still had a few white crystals in the bottom. 'That's done you a bit of good with Jack Robinson,' he said to Constable Clarke. 'I reckon you've found his missing bottle of strychnine.'

Mercury and Sulphur, Sun and Moon, agent and patient, matter and form are the oposites. When the virgin or feminine earth is thoroughly purified and purged from all superfluity, you must give it a husband meet for it: for when male and female are joined together by means of the sperm, a generation must take place in
the menstruum.

Edward Kelley,
The Theatre of Terrestrial Astronomy

Phryne received reports as she was dressing for dinner. The girls had enjoyed their afternoon with I the Levin family, which had been lavish as well as informative.

'We're coming up to the fast of Yom Kippur,' Jane told Phryne, sitting on her bed and watching her select a flame red dress, shake her head and return it to the wardrobe. 'On the twenty-fourth of September. That's the holiest day of the year. The Day of Atonement,' said Jane.

'I like the sea green better,' observed Ruth. 'It's just the same colour as lettuce. What are they atoning for?'

'Everything,' said Jane. 'They can't eat or drink for the whole day, from dawn to dusk. Everyone, though not sick people or women who are expecting. Rebecca says she's going to be allowed to do the whole fast this year. She says it's to teach her what it's like to starve and thirst.'

'I know that already,' said Ruth soberly Jane and Ruth exchanged glances. They were considering their school mates, who had certainly never been hungry for more than ten minutes in their well-padded lives.

'I think it's a good sort of thing to do,' decided Ruth.

'So do I,' agreed Phryne, who also knew all that she needed to know about privation.

'And I found out about giraffes,' said Jane. 'I asked Mr Levin. He says it is kosher for the same reason that camel isn't. Giraffes have hoofs, but camels have hard feet. But he said that the Talmudic teachers say that if it is a choice between eating non-kosher food and starving, one is required to live, so one could eat camel if the alternative was death. He pinched my cheek and laughed,' said Jane philosophically, who could take the rough with the smooth in pursuit of knowledge.

Phryne chuckled. 'What shall I wear? I'm going to dinner and then to the Kadimah, which may be anything from an anarchists' den to a Sunday School—well, no, not precisely that, perhaps.'

'Where are you dining?' asked Jane.

'The Society.'

'You must really like this one,' commented Ruth. The Society was one of Phryne's favourite restaurants. She only took people she really liked to the Society.

'I do,' said Phryne. 'What do you think, Dot, the green or the red? Or maybe the tunic and Poitou trousers?'

'Are you going to be doing anything active?' asked Dot, who had divulged her story about Mrs Katz and the broken plate. 'I mean, not climbing around anything in the dark or that?'

'No, mostly sitting, with a little quiet elegant dining and some driving.'

I'd wear the green and a fillet,' said Dot.

The girls nodded in unison. Phryne therefore dressed in a cocktail length dark green dress of figured satin, with black shoes and stockings and a long, long necklace of amber-coloured glass beads which winked and twinkled halfway to her knees. She found an amber cigarette holder, fitted a gasper into it, and allowed Dot to place a gold fillet with a black panache made of one curled ostrich feather on her sleek sable head.

Ember levitated onto the bed and thence onto the dressing table and batted at the beads.

'Where's your puppy, Ember?' asked Phryne, removing the string from his strong claws.

'Shut in the kitchen until she gets used to the house. Puppies take a long time to get used to the idea,' said Jane. 'It only took Ember one day—didn't it, precious?'

Ember snuggled up to the caressing hand, radiating consciousness of being a cat (and therefore naturally superior) and Jane cooed.

Bert and Cec, come to report, found the scene touching, if a trifle over-feminine.

Phryne sat them down in her parlour and supplied them with beer.

'We found your bottle of strychnine,' said Bert. 'Detective Inspector Jack Robinson himself came down and looked at it. It was in the sunflower seeds.'

'I thought there was something odd about them sunflower seeds,' exclaimed Dot. 'Everyone was pinching them from everyone else!'

'Unlucky for poor old Rosenbloom, but the doc says that he only got a small dose and he'll be all right.'

Phryne begged Bert for footnotes, and he obliged. Phryne took out her notebook.

'So the sunflower seeds were stored—where?'

'In the undercroft, in old man Doherty's bins. Because he don't buy as much as say wheat or corn, the sunflower seeds are in little sacks. Doherty's boy Miller admitted pinching one bag and selling it to Hughes to finance his system on the horses, and did his boss go crook! Nearly sacked him on the spot, but let him stay provided he promises never to put another bet on a horse. Might be the making of him. Betting systems buy more bookies Rolls Royces than anything else. Silly cow. Where was I?'

'Undercroft,' said Cec. Phryne wondered if he talked less because it allowed him to drink more, but decided that this was unfair. Cec didn't drink very much more than Bert, who was now approaching his point with relish.

'But this is the important bit. These particular sunflower seeds was in the front because the bag was busted, and Doherty was going to throw them away. He says if he can't guarantee hand on heart that they're good feed, he won't sell 'em, and that's probably why the Miller boy thought it'd be sort of all right to take it. So they were next to the rubbish bin. Doherty's store is on the main way through the storage area, and the cop reckons that the murderer threw the bottle at the bin and missed. It went into the seeds, the stopper fell out—it was in the bag too—the dope spilled and wet the sack, and the remains dried up inside. They're taking them for testing but I reckon its strychnine all right.'

'Where are the conveniences in the Eastern Market?' asked Phryne, who hadn't noticed them.

'On the ground floor, nearest Exhibition Street,' answered Dot, who had.

'So Miss Lee wouldn't need to pass the storage bins to go there?'

'No,' agreed Bert. 'She would have had to go downstairs, for starters.'

'Bert, she wasn't out of sight of someone all morning except for that brief visit to the Ladies'. How could she have thrown a bottle into the sunflower seeds?' asked Phryne.

'I put that to the cop,' Bert said uncomfortably. 'But he says she must have had an accomplice.'

'Does he,' said Phryne, heavily ironic. 'The plot keeps changing, doesn't it? First there was Miss Lee as a lone maddened spinster killing the young man who done her wrong—or refused to do her wrong, perhaps. Now there's Miss Lee as a woman scorned with an accomplice who can't throw straight. Very convincing, I don't think.'

'That's silly,' said Jane, with conviction.

'I'm with you there, Janie,' said Bert. 'You want us to stay in the market, Miss?'

'Yes. Dot will give you the name of the agent who sent the books. I want to find that carter. He might have seen something. There's more to learn and there is some sort of dirty work at the crossroads, Bert dear, I'm positive of it.'

'Female intuition?' asked Bert.

'Absolutely.'

Dot gave Bert the carbon of the dispatch note, which had
Wm Gibson, Cartage
and an address in Carlton on it over the blotted contents. The room emptied. Bert and Cec were escorted to the door by Jane and Ruth. Ember stalked after them, scenting cold meat in the kitchen. The Butlers were going out for the evening and sometimes Mrs Butler forgot to lock the pantry. Phryne allowed Dot to put her into a loose velvet coat which had cost a prince's ransom and picked up a pouchy handbag on a string. Phryne had had enough of trying to hang onto a coat with one hand and a bag with the other and use a putative third hand for useful things, like opening doors, stroking beautiful young men and holding her cigarette.

'Have we got enough to go on with, or not?' sighed Phryne. 'More questions, not fewer. Who were the two thugs, speaking Yiddish, who tied up poor Mrs Katz and broke her plate and ransacked her house? What paper were they looking for, and if it was the piece of paper I showed to Rabbi Difficult, what use is it? Even decoded, it doesn't mean anything. Who killed Shimeon Ben Mikhael? If that bottle contained the strychnine he was poisoned with, who gave it to him and when? Not Miss Lee and not, presumably, in her shop. Can we trace his movements? Have we got anywhere with the clerk?'

'No, Miss, and not likely to, unless we advertise,' replied Dot.

'Well, we have done very well for one day. Bert and Cec have found the strychnine and they can look for the carter. Strange that he hasn't come forward with all this publicity, but perhaps he doesn't read the newspapers or he was on some fiddle or frolic of his own. And you have found Mrs Katz. Excellent work, Dot dear. Expect a bonus. Are you going out?'

'Me and the girls are going to the pictures. Hugh's taking us.' Dot blushed, though a more blameless way of meeting one's beloved than by taking two adolescents to see the new Douglas Fairbanks was hard to imagine, Phryne thought. 'I hope you have a lovely time. Don't wait up for me,' said Phryne, and went out in a wave of Jicky.

Simon was waiting in the parlour. Phryne descended the stairs, making her entrance, and he was gratifyingly struck by her elegance.

'Where are you taking me?' he asked, wonderingly, a question which could mean many things. Phryne chose the practical answer.

'To the Society for dinner and then to Kadimah, where I expect to hear many interesting things from all your friends. Come along,' she extended a hand, and he went willingly.

'I didn't know there was anything really good at this end of town,' he remarked, as Phryne stopped the car in Bourke Street, almost to the Treasury.

'Once,' Phryne said, 'there was a man who was just stopping off on his way from Italy to his home in the Argentine, but as has happened to a lot of people, he liked it here so he stayed. He set up a meeting place for Italians in Little Bourke Street. He makes real coffee,' said Phryne, a confirmed caffeine addict. 'He was successful so he moved to a bigger place. It's just a simple restaurant but I expect that he will flourish. You'll like him. His name's Guiseppe Codognotto and he's a superb chef. Oh, I hadn't thought. Can you eat his food?'

'Yes, of course,' replied Simon, a little nettled. 'But I will have my coffee black.'

'The only way,' agreed Phryne, and opened the door.

The Society was bright and warm and they went in on a gust of air scented with basil. Robby the waiter, fair haired and elegant, appeared to take Phryne's coat and murmur admiration of the green dress and suddenly Simon felt as though he had been coming to this place for years. He sat down and beamed.

'Very nice,' said Robby ambiguously, looking at Phryne and then at Simon. 'Nice to see you again, Miss Fisher. You match the decorations.' Phryne's green satin was indeed much the same shade as the green pines in the mural of Capri behind her.

'Thank you Robby dear, I don't need a menu. The gentleman is Jewish and I'm starving. Feed us,' said Phryne, and leaned back in her comfortable chair.

Robby returned with a bottle of wicker-clad chianti, which he opened with an ease which spoke of long practice. Simon looked at it dubiously.

'Isn't that the stuff that tastes of red ink?'

'Generally, yes, but this won't,' promised Phryne. Simon was delighted to find that it didn't. It was a light vintage tasting of crushed grapes. He watched Phryne sipping, noticing the way that the red wine was matched by her ruby mouth, how she passed her tongue neatly over her wet lower lip.

'This wine is the colour of your mouth,' he said. 'You don't really want to go to Kadimah and listen to a lot of people talking, do you?'

'Yes,' said Phryne uncompromisingly 'I do.' She slid one fingernail over the back of his hand and he shivered. 'But I haven't forgotten you,' she added.

'I haven't forgotten you,' he replied. 'I love you.'

'No, you don't,' said Phryne gently. 'You love the idea of me. You love the femaleness of me. I told your mother that I was just borrowing you, and that I'd give you back. I have had that conversation before,' she added, remembering Lin Chung's alarming grandmother. 'But I'll love you while I have you, dear Simon.'

Robby, who had been waiting for a break in the conversation, put down two plates of pasta with a thin red sauce.

'Fettucine puttanesca
,' he said, grinning at Phryne, who grinned back. Fettucine in the manner of whores, eh? Phryne resolved to clip Robby's ears for him when she got him alone.

'Now pay attention, because this is the best pasta you will ever have,' she instructed.

Simon found that spaghetti, which he had only previously experienced as white gluey worms in a tinned tomato sauce, could melt in the mouth. The sauce was sharp, almost sweet, and strongly garlicky. He was glad that Phryne was eating the same thing. It was so delicious that he put off his further declarations of eternal passion until he had wiped his plate with a piece of bread, as he saw Phryne doing. It would have been a sin to waste any of that sauce, anyway.

'Tell me about Zionism,' she said, as Robby filled her glass. He had the talent of being always there when needed and impalpable and invisible when not needed. Phryne had noticed this admirable quality before and wondered if he had any will o' the wisp in his family.

'Zion has always been the hope of the Jews,' said Simon. His face lit with a fervour almost as strong as his passion for Phryne. She was pleased with the success of the question. She had distracted him from making any more unwise speeches, and she needed to know about Zionism. 'Every year when the youngest child asks the questions, he asks, "Why is this night different from all the other nights?" And he is told that it was the night that God chose us and brought us out of Egypt and bondage. But we pray "Next year in Jerusalem". Next year in Zion. One day it
will
be next year in Zion.'

'Palestine. Your father says it is desert and swamp.'

'It will bloom,' said Simon confidently. 'We just need the will.'