Raisins and Almonds

Eleven

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.'

Tell me about this movement, then. Is it a political party?'

'No, not at all—well, yes.' Simon explained. He started again. 'It used to be wholly religious until late last century, when Herzl, Theodore Herzl, didn't actually found but crystallized Zionism as a political movement at the first Zionist Congress in 1897. People went to Palestine and started farms, businesses, bought land from the Turks, they owned it then. Later we bought land from the Arabs. Baron Rothschild has poured money into it, although patronage has its own problems, but everything has problems. Herzl said we had to find political support or we would never survive, but no one likes Jews, and although some of the most anti-Semitic countries supported a homeland—they want to get rid of us—Herzl was in favour of Uganda and we cannot have that. Who is to say that Africa would be safer than anywhere else? And there must be a place which is ours—ours alone.'

'Africa, certainly, would not seem to be a good choice. It's just a little unstable—but surely, so is Palestine?' Phyrne was interested. She saw his point.

'Herzl died in 1904, I think it was. Then there was a terrible quarrel which led to some people leaving—the ultra religious, for instance, who believe that only God can restore us and wait for a Messiah. We divided into Practical Zionism and Theoretical Zionism, which was eventually resolved in 1911 into Synthetic Zionism, largely due to Chaim Weizmann arguing everybody into a reasonable frame of mind, a mensch, that Weizmann. The Zionists kept the faith through the Great War ...'

'Pesce,' said Robby, who was worried that the food would get unacceptably chilled if he waited for a break in this discourse. 'Grilled mullet, steamed celery and boiled potatoes. Eat it while it's hot,' he chided. Simon, startled, picked up his fork without thinking.

'You sound like my mother,' he said to Robby, who smiled mysteriously and wafted off in his will o' the wisp fashion.

The fish Phryne was eating was soaked in butter, but that given to her escort was brushed lightly with olive oil. Phryne was immensely impressed. Her faith in the Society had not been misplaced. The fish flaked away from the fork, perfectly cooked, perfectly delicious.

'Simple cuisine is the hardest to manage,' said Phryne, trying not to gobble. 'There are no rich sauces to mask overdone food or disguise something not quite fresh.'

'Certainly,' agreed Simon, through a mouthful.

A respectful interval followed. When Robby had cleared the plates and poured the last of the wine, Simon continued. 'Then there was the Balfour Declaration. 1917. Weizmann had managed to get the British Government to declare that Palestine ought to be a Jewish State. Sokolow had persuaded several European powers to agree—France and Italy, for example. And the Americans had brought in President Wilson. He died soon after, it was sad. But then the British, who have Palestine as a Protectorate, restricted immigration to avoid offending the Arabs. Zionism now is bending all its efforts to promoting immigration and arguing with the British.'

'Are you getting anywhere?'

'It's hard to tell. They said we couldn't be farmers— my father says that Jews cannot be farmers—but we are farmers now. We have a university at Jaffa which teaches agriculture as well as all the other subjects. And General Allenby even lifted the quarantine on trade with Trieste to provide myrtles for the Feast of Tabernacles. It will work. It has to work!'

'Your father does not think so,' commented Phryne. Simon was too full of an excellent dinner to lose his temper, but his voice rose a notch.

'Father is too comfortable. He does not care about the rest of the world. His family, his factory, that is all. But Sokolow reported on the rise of anti-Semitism in the world. A scoundrel called Hitler in Germany published Mein Kampf in 1924, a long rant about the Jews, a declaration of war against us. He is a gangster, but some people will always listen to such scum. Germany, some fear, will rise again after the war reparations are paid, and Germany has never been our friend. Mussolini in Italy is anti-Semitic. Hungary and Rumania and Poland are no safe places for Jews, and Russia is allowing pogroms. The Revolution does not include the Chosen people. We make the ideal scapegoat. The world will go hungry again. Whose fault is it? The Jews. The world will have plagues. Who causes plagues? The Jews. The Jews of Spain were fat and rich, but they walked over the mountains and died in the journey when Isabella and Ferdinand needed the Church on their side. The Jews here think they are safe, too. But they are not. One cannot find safety by assimilating, until there is no Jewishness left in us. How many of those Spanish Jews thought of themselves as Spanish first and Jewish second? They died all the same and it was their neighbours who stoked their fires and looted their houses.'

'And what is happening now in Palestine?' asked Phryne, shaken by Simon's passionate sincerity.

'We are building and learning and persisting,' said Simon. 'We have patience. Except that I don't have enough of it,' he admitted,, relaxing a little and drinking more wine.

'So no one in your family shares your views?'

'Uncle Chaim does, but he would never say so. He does not want to quarrel with my father. But I can talk to him, when the other fellows are at work.'

'The other fellows?'

'You've met them, they'll be at Kadimah tonight. Mrs Grossman's lodgers. The Kaplans, Yossi Liebermann and Isaac Cohen. It's a pity about Uncle Chaim. He has really good ideas. He did a degree to become a pharmaceutical chemist, except that he didn't finish it, and he had a really good scheme to make artificial silk, but he couldn't get capital and when he did someone else had already invented it.'

'Oh?' Phryne was wondering what Robby was intending to bring for dessert.

'That's definitely the way the world is going, you know, Phryne. Artificial things. Like art silk, much cheaper than real silk and you can wash it—are your stockings art silk?'

'Certainly not,' said Phryne, brushing away a hand which was, of course, only attempting to gauge the reality or superficiality of her underclothing.

'Artificial wood, that chap and his Bakelite—Uncle Chaim had an idea about that, too. And artificial rubber, except that no one's managed to do that yet. Rubber must be more difficult than it looks. And ...'

'Indeed,' agreed Phryne. 'This, however, is real.'

Robby put down a bowl piled with a strange fluffy yellow substance which smelt of egg, marsala and sugar.

'Zabaglione^ he said triumphantly. He poured her a glass of Chateau Yquem Sauterne, fragrant and grapey. Phryne sipped, smiled, and picked up her spoon.

Over cafe negro, black as night and sweet as sin, Simon returned to his previous subject.

'Tonight?' he pleaded. Phryne touched his lips with one forefinger.

'Perhaps,' she whispered.

Robby, manifesting himself at her left shoulder with a light for her cigarette, did not voice his own opinion aloud.

'Half your luck!'

Kadimah was as ordinary as a church hall, and as extraordinary as a landing of Well's Martians. It was as sane as porridge and as lunatic as singing mice.

There was a row of them, over to one side. They were singing a Yiddish song about—perhaps—cheese, or the dangers of mousetraps. 'There is no such thing as a free munch', possibly. Phryne was a little overwhelmed. She followed the willowy form of her lover to the set of tables and chairs farthest from the door, where the singing mice were somewhat muted by distance.

Nearby was an English language class, patiently repeating 'Am, is, are, was, were, be, been,' in the charge of a tired young woman with seamstress' hands. The students and revolutionaries were seated in a group, with one teapot per person, one cup and one ashtray should anyone have tobacco. Only one person was smoking; a pipe evidently loaded with old rope.

A play was rehearsing next to the singing mice— whose ears, now Phryne had recovered enough to look, were made of stiff paper and whose whiskers were definitely glued on.

'The Young Judeans,' said Simon. 'They're doing the 1928 Follies. Should be a very funny show. It's at Monash House on the third of October and there's a dance afterwards. Would you accompany me?' he asked, and Phryne nodded. She could not pass up an offer like that.

An urn occupied a table near the students, flanked with cups and pots. A very plump, very pretty young woman in a jazz dress carried a large tray piled with little sandwiches and biscuits—the remains of supper— to the brooding young men and smiled at them. The ones whose attention was not on the table or a fierce discussion in an undertone smiled in return and all hands, even those of the most absorbed, reached instantly for the food.

'They should be finished with their rehearsal soon,' said Simon hopefully. 'Then we only have Louis, and you'll like Louis.'

'I will?'

Simon pointed to a frail-looking boy with glasses. He was sitting perfectly still, his bony knees bare and his knobbly wrists revealed by a too-short, too-tight jumper, reading a massive folio which Phryne realized was an orchestral score. Occasionally he raised one hand and wiggled his fingers in the air. He was completely self-absorbed. His only claims to beauty were his thick black hair, which had been home-cut by an amateur hand, and the pure Middle Eastern line of his forehead, nose and chin. His profile could have belonged to a Pharaoh. One of the Children of Israel had been seduced, Phryne was sure, to lie down in a Princess' arms. What Louis would be like when he grew into his limbs left Phryne feeling a trifle breathless. At the moment, however, he was both gawky and spotty.

The players were packing up, promising to meet again next week. The singing mice detached their whiskers and ears. The room emptied of the scented, highly coloured throng and left it to the students and the English class, which was also putting its notebooks away and returning its cups. Soon the room was relatively quiet.

'This is Miss Fisher,' Simon introduced her. 'You've met her before. This is David Kaplan, this is his brother Solly and his brother Abe, this is Isaac Cohen and this is Yossi Liebermann—you going to run away again, Yossi?' Yossi ducked his head at Phryne and muttered something which no one could hear. He got up abruptly and went out.

Phryne sat down, careful of her stockings on the scratchy wooden chair. Simon supplied her with a cup and one of the Kaplans poured her some thin tea. Phryne did not look for milk or sugar. She opened her cigarette case and offered the company a gasper.

They all accepted.

'I've been hearing about Zionism,' she began.

'From Simon?' asked David Kaplan incredulously. 'You've been hearing about Zionism from Simon? You've been hearing about Zionism from Simon?'

'Why not?' asked Phryne. 'Doesn't he know about it?'

'Simon is a theorist,' scoffed Solly Kaplan.

'And you're not?' Phryne decided that this was going to be one of those robust debates and returned the ball briskly.

'We are for Practical Zionism. These governments— they will not listen to us. The best argument is force,' snarled Isaac Cohen.

'Force? Hasn't enough blood been shed? Besides, the armies of Zion, whoever heard of such a thing? Jews do not fight,' objected Simon.

'No, we just die,' snapped Abraham Kaplan. 'What do you mean, Jews do not fight? Have we not been in armies? Have we not won the Croix de Guerre and the Iron Cross and the Victoria Cross?'

'Not all at once. There will always be brave men. But you are not talking about a country, with a government and an army and borders on a map. We have no country,' said Simon.

'We should take one, then.' Isaac Cohen was thin and his liquid eyes seemed designed for love-making, not war.

'You are still of the opinion that we should declare war on the Arabs and take the land?' asked Simon.

'I am. And if we reach the medicine of metals, we shall win a country of our own where no Jew need cower.'

'That's the lapis philosophorum,' said Phryne, who recalled the phrase. 'You're talking about finding the universal solvent.'

Five pairs of eyes looked at her. She looked back.

'What do you know of such matters?' asked Solly Kaplan.

'"Tis a stone and not",' quoted Phryne with Ben Jonson. '"A stone; a spirit, a soul, and a body. If you coagulate it, it is coagulated. If you make it flie, it flieth.'"

Silence fell. Finally Isaac Cohen asked, 'Simon, who is she?'

'She's The Honourable Miss Phryne Fisher. She's a student of the Great Art. She's my lover,' replied Simon, allowing them to choose which definition they pleased.

'She is a Zionist?' demanded Abe, incredulously.

'She's a friend to Zionism. And she saved Rabbi Elijah from being tormented by some children.'

'She knows the rabbi?' asked Solly.

'Certainly,' said Phryne. She did not like being discussed while she was present in this way. 'He gave me a vision. Beware of the dark, he said, dark tunnels under the ground. "There is murder under the ground, death and weeping; greed caused it". That's what he said.'

The others exchanged glances.

'Now there is this,' said Phryne, laying her cards on the table. 'Shimeon Ben Mikhael is dead, murdered, in the bookshop. He was a friend of yours, wasn't he?'

'Poor Shimeon,' murmured Solly, lowering his eyes.

'And Miss Lee is taken for his murder and is in jail and unless I come up with something, she will hang. And she didn't do it, did she? You know how Simon Michaels died.'

'No!' Isaac Cohen leapt to his feet. 'We don't know. All night we talked about it, and accused each other, and we don't know. You have to believe it, lady. We liked him, we mourn him, we will say kaddish for him, such a miesse meshina, an ugly fate ...'

'All right, you don't know how he died or who killed him, but you know something, that is plain. I want you to help me. I will go over there and you can talk about it. I will not insult you by offering a reward, but you know that Mr Abrahams is rich and he will not be unappreciative. I want to know what you and that difficult old man have been doing. I want to know what causes Yossi to burn his landlady's table with chemical experiments. You can't really be expecting to find the philosopher's stone, not in this day and age. I don't believe it. I want to know what you are doing. If it does not bear on my investigation, I don't have to tell anyone, and I won't.'

Phryne walked away across the empty hall as the argument bloomed behind her. Voices were raised. Phryne could not understand Yiddish, which was probably what they were speaking.

Phryne felt alien and isolated. As Solly leapt to his feet to pound the table, the gawky boy Louis opened a violin case, tucked the instrument under his chin, and began to play.

Not a popular tune but Bach. Not a Jewish song, but the Ave Maria. His skill was partly constrained by the cheap instrument, but each note was perfect, full and round. Phryne, who had been about to go into Drummond Street out of the sound of the quarrel, sat down. Louis did not see her or notice her appreciation. His eyes were shut. His strong fingers shifted and pinned each note to its pitch. It was not the over-emotional rendering expected of a boy, a sob in every string, but a mature performance good enough for the Albert Hall.

He completed the work, sighed, then opened his eyes, propped his score open at Violin Concerto in A Minor: allegro assai and began to play phrases, trying them one way and then another.

'Bach is difficult,' offered Phryne, wanting to hear Louis' voice.

'Nah,' said the boy, as if he was speaking to himself. His accent was pure Carlton. 'Bach's controlled. It's the wild ones that are crook for me. Tchaikowsky. The Brahmns gypsy dances. Ravel's flamin' Bolero. Bach's simple,' he said, and tried the phrase again, now faster, now slower.

He was a pleasure to listen to, so Phryne listened.

Louis had worked his way through the whole of the Violin Concerto in A and was well into the Concerto for Two Violins and Strings in D Minor when Phryne heard the ordinarily placid Simon shout 'Zoll zein shah!'

This brought almost instant silence.

'Enough!' He pounded the table in turn, so that one of the cups dropped and smashed. 'Make up your minds! Either we tell the lady or we don't! I can't stand any more of this endless arguing, round and round and round in circles!'

'We tell her some,' decided David Kaplan. 'And we apologize for the noise.'

Phryne came back to her place at the table, crunching over fragments of thick white china. David Kaplan took her hand and kissed it.

'You like Louis' playing, eh? He's good? He lives in a room with his father and he can't play there. He's auditioning for the orchestra as soon as he's old enough.'

'He's a mazik, that Louis. He'll go far,' opined Phryne, who had had a Yiddish lesson from Mrs Abrahams. She was pleased with the goggle she elicited from the students.

'We study the Torah, lady. With Rabbi Elijah. And the Holy Kabala. There are ways of reading the Torah, you see, different ways.'

'Notarikon, Temurah and Gematria,' said Phryne, composedly.

'Er ... yes. Temurah is about anagrams, words spelt backwards or scrambled. Notarikon relates to the abbreviation of Hebrew words, you see, we do not have vowels. Gematria is about numbers turned into letters, and letters to numbers. It is the perfect way to hide a code, say, or a string of figures. The Book of Splendour tells us that we must look always for hidden meanings, the emanations of the Divine, what the Christians call Thrones, Dominations and Powers. So when we got interested in alchemy, Yossi here was reading Paracelsus and he began looking under the surface of the experiments in the Occulta Philosophica, and ...'

Solly Kaplan took up the tale. 'Paracelsus was the first great chemist, as well as an alchemist. He knew how to transmute mercury, for instance, into oxide and back into metal. He had a recipe for the philosopher's stone, so we tried it, and we got nowhere, Miss, as you would expect. Then Yossi began to work on glues and ...'

'Do not tell,' warned Isaac.

Solly looked hurt. 'Not about the experiment, no, but no harm in the other things, is there? Then there was Zion, you see. We need guns. It will only be a matter of time before Palestine is attacked and we need to fight. Because of Yossi's work we had something to sell, but we are not fools. We needed to exchange information with an intermediary without him knowing who we were. So we left the notes in Miss Lee's shop, because we know that she will never sell the books in the corner. Shimeon must have tried to retrieve the paper. Someone killed him for it. It is lost,' he said desolately.

'But it is not gone forever, while you still have Yossi,' said Phryne.

There was another silence, in which Louis mastered another phrase of the adagio of his violin concerto.

'He can't remember what he did,' wailed Solly suddenly, clutching at his forehead. 'Once, he got it to work once, and he noted down all the proportions, but he tried to repeat it and it doesn't work. And now Shimeon is dead and someone has the compound!'

'Tell him to keep trying,' urged Phryne. 'Tell him to repeat the experiment and vary the ingredients. I don't suppose you feel like telling me either what you were selling or to whom you were selling it?'

They shook their heads.

'So Shimeon went to deposit the paper and he died. And you haven't seen the paper since?'

'No,' David replied.

'All right. Tell Yossi to keep working. Remember also that it might be better to register the patent the usual way. When you get the money, you can always buy guns for Palestine with the proceeds. Now, I want to see all of your shoes.'

'Our shoes?' asked Isaac, bewildered. 'You want to look at our shoes V

'If you please,' said Phryne, quietly determined.

One by one they removed their shoes and Phryne inspected them. Leather soles retained particles of white china, such as studded her own soles from the broken cup. But not one of the shoes she was shown, from Simon's immaculate Oxfords to Isaac's broken and unpolished ex-army boots, showed a crumb of red, blue or gold from Mrs Katz's plate.

She returned their footwear and stood up.

'If you decide to tell me more,' she informed the group, 'you can always find me at this address.' She gave David Kaplan her card.

He was still staring at it as Louis played Phryne and Simon out with the first strains of Ravel's flamin' Bolero.