Raisins and Almonds

Eight

I ever conceived that in metalls there were great secrets provided that they are first reduced by a proper Dissolvent, but to seek that Dissolvent or the matter whereof it is made in Metalls is not only Error but Madness.

Thomas Vaughan, Euphrates

Phryne remembered the translation, took a brief look at it, saw nothing but a few lines of numbers and letters, and put the papers in her safe deposit as she changed for lunch. Bert and Cec were not likely to be able to help her with such things and she dismissed it, for the moment, from her mind. She was more willing to do so because she really did not want to think about the Rabbi Elijah.

Who was difficult. Truer word was never spoken, yet she could not account for the effect he had managed to produce in her level-headed self. She dressed quickly in a light shift patterned with wisteria, anxious to rid herself of black. The day was warm and heading towards hot. She was easing her feet into green sandals when her room was augmented by two girls in identical heliotrope smocks, Ember the black cat and one small puppy, which dived instantly for Phryne's discarded shoe and worried it ferociously, pinning down the unresisting pump with one tiny paw and obviously intending to teach it something—probably, Phryne thought, how not to be a shoe.

'No, Molly, we don't eat shoes. No,' chided Ruth, removing it before the puppy's milk teeth could scar the black kid. To her amazement, the puppy relinquished its prey, put its ears on alert, and appeared to obey. It was, Phryne realized, waiting for something. Ruth gave it a very small bit of dog biscuit and it licked her hand.

'That's very good,' said Phryne.

'She has to live with us,' explained Ruth earnestly. 'So she can't make a mess of our things.'

'And you've given her a name,' said Phryne, putting both shoes into the rack out of temptation's way. Even puppies who were resolved to be good could be distracted from the way by a really luscious kid upper.

'Jane named her.'

'Why "Molly", Jane?' asked Phryne, watching in fascination as Ember corralled the small dog and washed its face.

'She looks like a Molly,' said Jane positively. 'We came to ask, can we go to Rebecca Levin's house today? She's invited us for afternoon tea.'

'Yes, and pay attention to anything said about Zionism, the Messiah, an old man called Rabbi Elijah, or the murder in the Eastern Market. Are you lunching with me? Bert and Cec are coming.'

'Yes, Miss Phryne,' they chorused. Then, observing a certain contemplative look on Molly's face, the two girls rushed the puppy downstairs into the garden, with Ember streaking after via the bannister. He had found out how to do this by accident, slipping down fast, all paws together and tail outstretched for balance, and Phryne suspected that he was showing off.

Obscurely cheered by their undemanding company, Phryne finished dressing and descended to the dining room where, by the sound of masculine conversation, Albert and Cecil had arrived.

Phryne liked Bert and Cec more than most people she had ever met. They were, of course, red raggers, but they did not espouse any particular figurehead or warlord, being neither Marxists or Leninists or Trotskyites. They were IWW—Industrial Workers of the World, called Wobblies. Their main aim appeared to be the establishment of the perfect Communist State, and although their philosophy would seem to encompass the mass slaughter of all capitalists, they kindly did not include Phryne in this category and she looked forward to their stout defence of her person when The Day arrived and she was about to be strung up to a lamp post. 'Nah, she's a good sheila,' Bert would drawl. Cec would say, 'Too right,' and the rope would be removed from around her neck by the respectful Comrades ...

This fantasy amused Phryne as she entered her drawing room.

Bert—short and balding and becoming stout—was drinking beer, as was his custom, and Cec—tall and lanky and blond—had a small glass of arak, a drink he had encountered at Gallipoli. Simon had accepted a glass of white wine and Phryne took another cocktail—two before lunch! she reproved herself Then she forgave herself instantly. It had been a long morning. The girls were exhibiting Molly to the assembly Phryne marvelled at their ease in company. That had been the hardest thing for the newly ennobled Phryne to learn and she still had no taste for idle chat, but jane and Ruth could have been taken into any drawing room in Melbourne without disgracing themselves. Phryne was proud of them.

Cec had the puppy cupped in his big hands and was examining her points. Molly, like all creatures, trusted him instantly and chewed unceasingly at his thumb as he said slowly, 'I reckon she's part sheep dog, eh, Bert?'

'Yair, maybe,' agreed Bert, not wanting to hurt anyone's feelings. 'The inside part. Maybe a touch of whippet, too. Got that deep chest.'

'Reckon,' agreed Cec, detaching the teeth from his thumb and giving the puppy back to Jane. Ember wreathed himself around Cec's ankles, and the tall man bent down to stroke him.

'Ember thinks that Molly is his kitten,' said Jane.

'Well, that's fine,' said Cec. 'Cats are good mothers.'

'But Ember is a boy cat,' Jane pointed out. Bert said something like 'Not any more,' took a gulp of beer, and caught Simon's shy smile. He grinned at the young man. Mr Butler struck the gong—a custom on which he insisted—and they went into lunch.

In deference to the weather, there were small egg and bacon tarts, a couple of cold chickens and a whole salmon on a bed of torn lettuce, lovingly enveloped in a mayonnaise cloak. It sat next to a neatly carved ham and a profusion of salads. Phryne, who loved beetroot, observed that it was in aspic and thus she might preserve her dress unstained. There was something about the nature of beetroot which made it fly as for refuge to the most expensive cloth available. Only the Chinese laundries could really remove beetroot stains.

'Spinach salad and boiled eggs,' said Mr Butler. 'Asparagus vinaigrette, Miss Fisher. Cucumber and onion. I hope all is to your satisfaction, Miss? Can I help you to some salmon?'

'Oh, you can,' said Phryne, suddenly ravenous. Mrs Butler's mayonnaise was not made with condensed milk and mustard. It was an alchemical combination of oil and egg and, since it was to be for the salmon, lemon juice. It was delicious. So was the salmon, the scales and fins of which evidently had been the magnet which had drawn Ember that morning to disembowel the dustbin. Phryne had heard Mr Butler grumbling about it in the yard. Ember was a cat with expensive tastes.

The rest of the company was obviously as hungry as Phryne, and there was a clatter of cutlery as each diner marked down a dish as his or her own. Their tastes, luckily, were different. Simon took cold chicken and cucumber. Bert tucked into salmon mayonnaise as though he hadn't been born in Fitzroy and had only seen them in tins. Cec had ham and salade Russe. He liked beetroot, too. Dot, who loved onions and sharp tastes, feasted on cucumber in vinegar, spinach and bread and butter. Jane preferred egg and bacon tart and Ruth a taste of everything on the table. Ruth had been hungry all her life until Phryne had rescued her, and still found such a variety and amount of food astonishing. If she struck a taste which did not please her, she swallowed it anyway and moved on to the next. Mr Butler was quietly pleased. Mrs B had been worried about the salmon. Cooking such a huge fish whole was a task requiring split second timing. One moment it was still grey and raw in the middle, the next falling off the bone and overdone. The kitchen had been tense all morning. Now he could tell her that it had gone down a treat. He might even get a taste of it himself. And tonight Mrs B would be calm enough to appreciate the pictures. There was a new Norma Shearer, The Student

Prince. It sounded good. Mr Butler thought that Norma Shearer was a bit of all right.

After about ten minutes, Phryne put down her fork and sighed. Nothing like food to centre the spirit and steady the nerves. The asparagus, particularly, had almost reconciled her to Rabbi Elijah. She sipped a little more of the new hock coming out of South Australia—quite good, if a little young to leave its mother—and said, 'Ladies, gentlemen. We have a case.'

'Yair?' asked Bert. 'I suspicioned as much, but since you invited us to such a bonzer lunch me and Cec'll listen to whatever you want to say.'

'Good. This is the Eastern Market murder, you've read about it?' The company nodded. 'Well, then, this is what happened.' Phryne ran through the sequence of events as seen by Miss Lee. 'I'm investigating the papers found in his pocket. They seem to have a Jewish connection. Dot, I want you to go to the Eastern Market and talk to the stallholders around Miss Lee's shop. Someone must have noticed who came in and out that morning, and you might be able to find someone who knew the customers.'

'Someone ought to have noticed that hat,' agreed Dot. 'Even Miss Lee remembered it real well.'

'See what you can find out, Dot. And you Bert dear, I want you and Cec to take a job at the market, and see what there is to be seen.'

'You don't have nothing to go on,' protested Bert.

'Quite right. It's pure intuition. Something is afoot and I want to know what it is. Just exist there and see what information drifts your way. Usual rates?'

The two men looked at each other.

'How long?' asked Bert. 'Only we can't leave the taxi business for more'n say a week tops—Cec's saving up to get married end of next year.'

'Oh, congratulations!' said Phryne. Phryne's first case had involved her with a rapist and abortionist. One of his pitiful victims had been Alice Greenham, the girl of Cec's heart, but she had hitherto put off his suit until she felt that he had had enough time to change his mind. His dogged refusal to do so had at last, it seemed, paid off. Cec grinned.

'Champagne with dessert, if you please, Mr Butler,' said Phryne. 'Can you tell Mrs B with my congratulations that we could not have had a better lunch at the Ritz in London? It was superb. Especially the salmon mayonnaise,' added Phryne, who had been aware of a certain amount of plate-flinging while it was cooking. Mr Butler bowed and withdrew to get the champagne glasses and tell his wife the good news.

'All right, Miss, we'll do it,' conceded Bert, 'but it ain't going to be easy if you don't know what we're looking for.'

'I know. Give it a try. I'm gambling on a feeling— that's never reliable as a cause of action but it often works, eh?'

Bert agreed and took some more chicken.

'What about us?' asked Ruth, taking up an asparagus spear and sliding it into her mouth. She wasn't sure how to eat them until she had seen Phryne do the same. The taste was new and she savoured it. Phryne was watching. Was Ruth to be pro- or anti-asparagus? She liked feeding her adopted daughters new things; their reactions were different. Jane decided right away if a taste was good or not. Ruth was willing to give even boiled pumpkin ten or more tries before she decided that she loathed it. Ruth reached for another piece. Asparagus was definitely on her menu.

'You're going to afternoon tea with the Levin family. Just watch and listen. Customs will not be different, or not noticeably. If it's a kosher house you won't get milk with your tea if there are meat sandwiches. Talk to Simon about it—he'll brief you. Now, this afternoon I will see the autopsy report on the poor young man, and we'll go from there.'

'But, Miss Fisher,' protested the scion of the Abrahams fortune, 'you haven't given me a task! I'm part of this team, too, aren't I?'

'I have a task for you,' said Phryne, with such deep meaning that Simon blushed and took a sip of wine the wrong way.

When he had finished coughing, the conversation turned to the Eastern Market and the changing face of the city. Dessert was fruit salad with a little Cointreau. Jane and Ruth stayed to toast Cec's coming nuptials in a little champagne before they went for their briefing with Simon on Jewish Customs and How Not To Outrage Them.

He found them disconcerting. They sat either side of him on the couch, looking sweet and very young, and asked acute questions which indicated that they had not only heard everything he had said but had analysed it.

'So the kosher laws are derived from Leviticus,' mused Jane. 'Cloven-hoofed mammals that chew the cud. Would that include giraffe?' she asked.

'I don't know,' said Simon.

'What about whale?'

'I don't know,' he repeated. 'A whale isn't a fish, is 'No,' replied Jane patiently, 'it's a cetacean, but in the bible the whale that swallows Jonah is called "a great fish" so the desert fathers probably thought a whale was a fish, and it certainly has bones. Unlike a shark, which is cartilaginous.'

'Well, we cannot eat flake.' Simon was delighted to have something to offer.

'Hmm. I can see that I should have talked to Rebecca about her customs before. They are really interesting,' said Jane. She collected Ruth and they left the room to find the bible and read Leviticus in preparation.

Simon hoped that the Levins were better informed about the laws than he was.

Detective Inspector Robinson was tired. He hated arresting women for murder, especially real ladies like Miss Lee, and he was no further along in his case. His chief was getting testy and when he got real testy, bulls with sore feet were kindergarten children compared to him. He hated the heat, and the papers were saying that the next day was going to be stinking. Phryne waited as he put down a large buff folder on the table, ostentatiously turned his back on it, and was conducted to a small table laid with an embroidered cloth. It depicted a garland of native slipper orchids and maidenhair fern. Phryne had ordered it made especially for him. He liked it; the orchids were botanically correct. He slumped down into a comfortable chair and was supplied by Mr Butler with a cup of very strong, very sweet tea. On the table reposed an array of scones, strawberry jam and cream, and a copy of The Hawklet, a pink periodical emanating from Little Lonsdale Street which was guaranteed to elevate and amuse a tired police officer.

'Adultery and Divorce!' screamed the headline. 'Hotel Maid's Evidence!'

The Detective Inspector split a scone, slathered it with jam and cream, sighed happily and began to read.

Phryne took the buff folder and extracted the autopsy report on one Shimeon Ben Mikhael otherwise known as Simon Michaels, native of Salonika. As she read she made notes, and tried not to think of a dark young man dissected on a cold marble table. Much better to just think of him as a body.

Observations: a tall young man somewhat underweight, bearded, recently washed and healthy Some bruises on the right knee and hip, as though he had recently fallen, probably sustained in the spasm which had also cracked his spine. Small transverse cut on the ball of the right index finger. A clean cut, probably from a razor or from the edge of a piece of paper. The pathologist paid no further attention to it or to the bruises. No tattoos, scars, or identifying marks and he had all his own teeth. His wisdom teeth had not fully erupted so his age was estimated at between sixteen and twenty-five. Cause of death: strychnine poisoning. Contents of stomach: a starchy scented fluid composed of bread and black tea. Subject died about one hour after eating this austere last meal. Fingernails and contact traces: substance under the nails referred for chemical analysis. Phryne leafed through the folder and found another report. It was found to be common glue, such as is used by carpenters and shoemakers. Chemical burns on the hands.

To the sound of a Detective Inspector slurping his way through a second cup of tea, Phryne reviewed her notes. There was no doubt that he had died of the effects of strychnine. The pathologist had made a note:

'No strychnine found in the stomach contents, but it passes into the bloodstream quickly, being one of the most fast-acting poisons.'

Phryne replaced all the pages, ordered them quickly, and closed the folder. She replaced it exactly as it had been, laid her notebook on the hall table, and came in saying brightly, 'Well, Jack dear, how nice to see you! Is Mr Butler looking after you? No, really, I couldn't eat another thing, Mr B, not after that wonderful lunch.'

'Miss Fisher,' said the policeman, standing up and swallowing a mouthful of scone. 'Nice of you to ask me to tea. No one has a hand with scones like Mrs Butler.'

He wasn't adverting to the report which he had carelessly left on the table where any passing nosy woman could read it, so Phryne didn't mention it either. She sat down at the tea table. 'Any news?'

'No, no one seems to have seen anything. However, I've got hopes of something breaking soon. Has to be soon, or the case'll go stale and my chief'11 go spare. You got anything?'

'Not really, but you shall have it as soon as any of it makes sense. You know Miss Lee didn't do it, Jack, don't you?'

'We haven't got a lot of evidence, certainly,' admitted the policeman. 'But have you found anyone else who fits as well?'

'I'll meet the rest of his friends tonight,' said Phryne. 'At Kadimah, in Drummond Street. Then we shall see what we shall see, and hear what we shall hear. There's some secret element in this, Jack. I've had those papers translated. They were in a code, and they translate into another code. The pictures are all the stages making the philosopher's stone.'

'Like Johnson's play, The Alchemist?' asked the policeman. He had been to a night course in Elizabethan drama and had never regretted it. Shakespeare was now his constant companion.

'Yes, like that,' answered Phryne, a little taken aback. 'I'll find out more when I have time to read the texts. I've even got Elias Ashmole's Theatrum Chemicum Brittanicum. Miss Lee found it in a French auction and bought it for the dead man. Poor thing. Never even saw it. However, I don't know if it will help. The Rabbi had a lot of books, but they were all in Hebrew and he said that he knew nothing about alchemy.'

'Rabbi?'

'Rabbi Elijah. Simon Michaels was his student. He lives in St Kilda. If you are going to talk to him, Jack, I have to tell you that he's ... difficult.' She smiled at her choice of words.

'Difficult?'

'Really difficult,' Phryne emphasized.

'Well, must be going,' said Jack Robinson reluctantly. He had, however, cleared the plate of scones. 'I'm afraid that you may have taken on an impossible task, Miss Fisher. I don't see how you're going to find this murderer when the resources of the police force can't track him down.'

'But the resources of the police force aren't trying to track him down,' Phryne pointed out reasonably. 'You don't believe he, she or they exist. I do. So I have the advantage,' she said, escorting him to the door.

'About the only advantage I have,' she added, as the door shut on Jack Robinson and the buff folder.

She poured herself a cup of the cooling tea and thought. She had sent Dot to the market to look for the customers, Bert and Cec to the understorey to find out whatever it was that was making her feelers twitch. The girls were still with Rebecca Levin, having studied up on Leviticus. Mr and Mrs Butler had a free evening tonight, and Phryne needed to read some alchemy so that she would have a sporting chance of understanding Kadimah's conversation on the topic.

She took her notebook up to her own room, scribbled for a while, then sat down to attempt to acquire some grasp of alchemy and of the Holy Kabala, which she felt was a big task for one rather somnolent afternoon.

She laid out Waite's The Holy Quabbalah, the Theatrum, Thomas Vaughan's Lumen de Lumine and Euphrates, the Secreta Secretorum by Roger Bacon and Dee's Monas Heiroglyphica. The Emerald Tablet Explain 'd by an anonymous Elizabethan lay open on her bed.

She read solidly for an hour, swore, lit a cigarette and rolled over onto her back with Secreta Secretorum balanced on her stomach. The black letter Elizabethan printing was easy to read but it made very little sense, and as for the Holy Quabbalah, she had grasped only the very first of the first principles, that is, that it needed a lifetime's study.

'And I don't have a lifetime,' she said aloud. Thomas Vaughan the Brecon man was the easiest alchemist to follow, and by far the most charming.

On the same day my deare wife sickened, being a Friday, and at the same time of day, namely in the evening, my gracious God did put into my head the Secret of extracting Oyle of Halcali, which I had once, accidently, found at Pinner in Wakefield in the dayes of my deare wife. But it was againe taken from me by wonderful judgement of God for I could never remember how I did it, but made an hundred attempts in vaine. And now my Glorious God (whose name be praysed forever) hath brought it again into my mind and on the same day as my deare wife sickened; and on the Saturday following, which was the daye she dyed on, I extracted it by former practice.

And how his wife felt about it, left to die without her husband, was another matter of course. Phryne resisted the urge to fling the books out of the window and began again.

What was alchemy? An attempt, the difficult rabbi had said, to raise matter to its perfect state. Good. That meant base metal into gold and men into immortal bodies. And how did one go about this task?

One first acquired a patron with a lot of money, and purchased or made a lot of equipment. Phryne wondered whether to tell Mrs Butler that her bain marie which kept the soup warm was an alchemical vessel invented by Miriam, sister of Moses—later called Maria Prophetissa in case Miriam seemed too Jewish—who had founded alchimia practica. Previously it had been a theory. Miriam seems to have actually tried to do it, thought Phryne, wondering if she had succeeded. The first principle was solve et coagula, that is, to dissolve and to recombine. Thomas Vaughan told her 'in this matter is all the essentiall principles, or ingredients of the elixir, are already shut up in Nature and wee must not presume to add anything to this matter ... for the stone excludes all extractions, but what distill immediately from their own chrystalline universal Minera'. Keeping that in mind, one began to make the first mixture, the so-called gold yeast. Everyone was vague on what else went into it except for gold in fine powder and a lot of mercury metal. Then, knowing that there are three elements— salt, sulphur and mercury—one cooked this gold yeast with some other ingredient, called Terra Adamae— Adam's earth, the material of the first creation. Phryne noted that since one could not just send down to the grocer's for half a pound of Adam's earth, that there must be a recipe for that also, but could not find one.

The first stage was reached when the material turned black. The illumination from Simon Michaels' books showed it: the head of a crow, beak open. This melanosis was also, in the Emerald Tablet, called Adam's earth. Phryne stopped trying to reconcile the varying accounts and continued with her list.

Adding some other liquid, variously described as 'womanseed' or more bluntly 'monthly blood', to the black mixture and heating it again with orpiment and borax made it turn white: the leukosis or albedo stage, the purifying or purgation of the mixture. The picture fluttered onto the satin bedspread: a white dove.

Distilled in an alembic, the funnel-shaped vessel, the matter was sublimated by high heat and the gas trapped in a coil of pipe. This was conjunction the mystic marriage where the red king lay with the white queen. The two entwined crowned figures joined the other pictures and Phryne scribbled busily.

Then, if one was really lucky, xanthosis or yellowing would take place with the addition of unslaked lime, ground bones and more mercury. It occurred to Phryne that with the amount of mercury vapour that these wise men were breathing, it was no wonder that they saw visions of Hermes Thrice Great. In due course they would also have seen rhinoceroses on scaling ladders.

Finally, after the work of years, the mixture buried in fresh horse dung to be heated to just the right temperature, the watcher would see the span of colours called the peacock's tail and would achieve rubedo and 10515, completion. The red king would be enthroned and the lapis philosophorum would elevate the alchemist to heights of knowledge such as other men would never share.

Thou shalt see ... a shining carbuncle most temperate splendour, whose most subtile and depurated parts are inseparably united into one with a concordial mixture, exceedingly equal, transparent like crystal, compact and most ponderous, easily fusible in fire, like resin or wax yet flowing like smoke; entering into solid bodies and penetrating them like oil through paper; friable like glass, in powder like saffron, but in whole Mass shining like a ruby His life would be crowned. He would be untouchable, immortal. He would not seek riches, as Elias Ashmole said, And certaynly he to whom the whole of nature lies open, rejoyceth not so much that he can make Gold and Silver, or the Divells to become Subject to him, as that he sees the Heavens open, the Angells of God Ascending and Descending, and that his own name is fairely written in the Book of Life.' He would live forever in his dark robes, wrapped in his ecstatic visions, and his lamp would never go out, for it would be fuelled by Oil of Eternity.

Phryne closed her books and glanced out the window. It was darkening towards dusk. She heard the tree branches scrape the glass. The wind must have changed. I am getting uncommonly jumpy, she told herself.

Surely no one was really trying to make a philosopher's stone in 1928? It sounded both ridiculous and impossible. The instructions and recipes were all vague and where, exceptionally, they weren't vague, they were all different. If Ashmole said that one used mercury, bole ammoniack and saltpeter and Robert Fludd said that the same operation was achieved using slaked lime, verdigris and oil of tartare, then how could the chemical result be the same?

Phryne, in common with all girls at her school, had learned a little chemistry, known with a jolly laugh as 'stinks'. She recalled watching as the teacher poured mercury into a chamber and heated it. Phryne had seen it oxidize into a red powder, then she had watched in amazement as the powder had been heated again and little beads of silvery metal had popped up out of the oxide. That was alchemy, Phryne thought.

She got up and washed her face. She was losing her sense of proportion.

But if he wasn't trying to make a philosopher's stone, why did Simon Michaels have those parchments in his pocket, and why did an honest shoemaker like Yossi Liebermann burn his landlady's table with chemical experiments?

It promised to be an interesting evening.