Raisins and Almonds

Three

Nigredo is called the Raven.

Elias Ashmole, Theatrum Chemicum Brittanicum 1689

Phryne swept past Mr Butler and paused in the doorway of her own sea-green, sea-blue parlour in her bijou Esplanade house. She needed a bath to rinse the prison smell off her person and she wanted to sit down and take off her rather tight shoes, but it was a very pretty picture.

Dot's policeman, Hugh Collins, who had been a faithful kitchen visitor, had been let into the parlour, probably on the urgent petition of the girls, to tend to something which whimpered. Phryne could not see into the grocer's box, but both her adopted daughters were deeply concerned. The fairer Jane's countenance was creased; the darker Ruth was biting the end of her plait, which she always did when she was worried. September holidays had brought the girls home from school, and they were dressed in the warm colours they affected when at home rather than the severe school uniform, designed to iron out from any female body the slightest shred of sexual attraction. Jane was in green and Ruth in red, and the fire lit their faces: Hugh's sharpened with concentration, the girl's with concern. They looked like Rembrandt figures, strange in the modern parlour like the inside of a shell and surrealistic. Phryne stood still until there was a sharp yap. Hugh said, 'There, that's done it, poor little bitch,' and the creature in the box stopped whimpering.

'Miss Phryne,' exclaimed Ruth, leaping up and dragging Jane with her. 'Look what we found. Mr Collins fixed her leg. He reckons someone kicked her! How could anyone kick a poor little thing like that?'

'There is always someone willing to kick puppies,' said Phryne, kneeling down next to the carton. A wretched scrap of damaged black and white fur shivered on an old jumper.

'Girls, I don't ...' she began, to be met by two shocked faces.

'Oh, Miss Phryne, please,' said Jane, catching at Phryne's hand. 'She's only a little dog.'

'Little dogs grow up,' said Phryne reluctantly 'I really don't want a dog, girls.'

Jane recovered first. She gave the puppy a final caress and stood up. 'Come on, Ruthie,' she said to her adoptive sister, clearly resigned to the loss of the animal as she had been resigned to other losses.

'She's only a puppy, and if we put her out she'll die,' protested Ruth. Phryne was entirely unprepared for this assault on her emotions. Reflecting that the object of the argument was not only an infant but injured, could conveniently decease any moment and might as well do it in comfort, she patted the girl's shoulder.

'All right, Ruth dear, as long as you and Jane look after it you can keep it. Now tuck the box in the chimney alcove, injured creatures need heat. Have you got a name for her? Hello Hugh, how nice to see you again. Perhaps we should have some tea, it's a vile day outside, an early north wind, and ...' she continued, and was embraced by both girls, their faces against her own. She caught sight of the group in the mirror: the laughing Ruth and the exultant Jane, embracing Phryne, Jane's unplaited hair flowing like silk across her broadcloth shoulder and breast, supporters to her Dutch-doll face. She turned and quickly kissed each glowing cheek, coloured as gracefully as geranium petals. She hadn't actually wanted a dog, but then she hadn't wanted daughters either and they had turned out to be very interesting and hardly any trouble at all, considering.

'Thank you, Miss Phryne,' said Jane. 'She won't be any trouble. We'll walk her and wash her and Mr Collins thinks she's a sheepdog so she won't grow too big.'

Despite a private feeling that she had heard that tune before, Phryne allowed them to help her into her chair and remove her shoes and Mr Butler handed her one of his special cocktails, which she savoured quietly. A hint of almond, perhaps? Was that noyau, certainly cherry brandy, and ... as always, she gave up. Mr Butler's cocktails were his own sacred mystery The girls sat down on the floor with the box and Hugh Collins resumed his place at Phryne's wave. Dot sat on the arm of his chair, an impropriety which she would never have allowed herself if the friendship had not progressed to consideration of marriage.

'How did you get involved in this, Hugh?' asked Phryne, sipping her cocktail. Constable Collins and Dot had tea.

'I was coming to deliver a parcel for Dorothy, Miss Fisher, and the girls said they'd found a puppy. Poor little thing had a dislocated hip, but I've put it back. Some mongrel kicked her, I expect.'

'Oh, well, poor little creature,' said Phryne. 'Make sure that she's fed, won't you, Ruth?' Ruth was the sensible one, who had engineered her own escape from bondage and serfdom. Jane, more intellectual and destined perhaps for the medical career she craved, would be thinking about something else. Jane always was. It was part of her slightly distracted charm.

They did her credit, Phryne thought, looking at Dot refilling Constable Collins' tea cup. Dot was well dressed and solidly respectable, though at her first encounter with Phryne she had been desperate, dishevelled and heavily armed. Ruth, rescued from slavery in a boarding house, was clean and combed and becoming delightfully plump, her devotion to food destining her for a domestic career. Mrs Butler said that she showed promise as a cook, but was 'too bold' with spices and heavy handed with pastry, though she made excellent soup and was an angel with anything involving yeast. Jane, rescued from far darker bondage, was thinner and paler and clever in an offhand vague way which alternately exasperated her adoptive parent and astonished her. As long as someone was around to make sure that Jane got on the right tram with the right change and then got off at the right stop for her examinations, Phryne was convinced that all available academic honours would be hers. The boarding school, which also housed princesses and diplomat's children, had accepted the orphans without surprise; after all, their background might be dubious, but they were the adoptive children of the Hon. Miss Phryne Fisher, well known to be extremely rich and exceptionally well-connected, being the daughter of a Duke. She was also socially adept to the level of Ipsissimus and not to be crossed by any organization that wished to remain in the mode.

Therefore Ruth the slavey and Jane the whore's daughter mingled with the daughters of the upper classes, and quite liked each other, each side considering the other unbearably exotic.

And although the north wind scoured the unreliable spring outside, inside Miss Fisher's parlour everyone was getting on splendidly.

The girls had settled down on the hearth rug. Ember the black cat had walked in, sniffed the canine scent, hissed briefly, then analysed it as a small dog with no immediate desire to chase cats. Ember had ascended to Phryne's knee with a precise leap and was now sitting in sphinx pose, nose to the fire, blinking occasionally and looking, as Jane said dotingly, perfectly Egyptian.

'Nice to see you, Hugh dear, are you off duty or have you left the force?' asked Phryne. The large man grinned. He owed Phryne a lot. Because of her he had entered for his detective's exams with his Sergeant's recommendations and was on the way to becoming Detective Constable Collins.

'No fear, Miss Fisher, I'm on nights. Just dropped in for a word with Dot and one of Mrs B's ginger biscuits when the girls came in with that poor little mutt. I'm glad you're going to let them keep her, Miss Fisher. Nice little stocky body, I reckon she's a crossbreed, not too big and going to make a good guard dog. Need a guard dog in St Kilda, with all them alleyways behind the houses.' Constable Collins basked under the affectionate regard of everyone in the room except Mr Butler, who instinctively knew who would walk, brush and care for the new acquisition, and Phryne, who was conscious of being manipulated. Then she remembered Hugh's mention of a parcel.

'Oh, of course, it's your birthday next week, Dot dear, isn't it? We've an appointment with Madame tomorrow, don't forget, for your suit. If you really insist on a suit?'

Dot nodded. When offered a handmade garment of her choice as Phryne's birthday gift, she admired all the beautiful evening dresses that Madame Fleuri constructed for the fattest purses, if not the best figures, in Melbourne. But what she wanted was a dark brown wool suit made with Madame's exquisite tailoring, finish and style. Dot wanted a garment that she could wear for the rest of her life. Oddly enough Madame, who was really French, understood this desire. 'If you still 'ave this garment, Mademoiselle,' she told Dot at her first fitting, 'you can be married in it, and even buried in it in the fullness of time, and while you 'ave my suit, you will never be without something respectable to wear.' Phryne was delighted to see the Parisian couturiere and the lady's maid smile at one another with perfect understanding.

However, puppies and constables and handmade suits aside, there was the case and Phryne wanted the opinion of her family. She told the story of the young man dead in the bookshop, Miss Lee and the prison interview, and the Jewish connection as seen by everyone involved in the matter, Jack Robinson and Mr Abrahams alike. The girls thought about it. Dot leaned against Hugh Collins, who shyly embraced her. The fire crackled. The puppy snored faintly in her exhausted sleep. No one spoke. Then Ruth commented, 'There are Jewish girls at school. One of them's terribly clever—Jane talks to her. Mostly they're standoffish, stick together and don't talk to the gentiles—they're all very rich, of course. One of them's Mr Abrahams' niece, I think, if he's the man who owns half the Eastern Market, she was talking about it, eh, Jane?'

'Mmm?' Jane had been staring into the fire.

'Pay attention, can't you? Rebecca Levin, isn't she Mr Abrahams' niece?'

'Yes, I believe so. I like Rebecca. We were talking about Euler's Grand Equation, you know, which links the five fundamental numbers. It's such a pretty thing,' said Jane, who had never been induced to regard clothes with anything but passing interest. Ruth sighed affectionately. 'Becky wants to do science at University, she's fascinated with numbers. She told her father that it's well known that there's a whole system of prediction based on Kabala, which is a Hebrew invention, so there's no reason why she should be doing something anti-religious by going to University to study pure mathematics. She says that her uncle will pay her fees if her father won't. They're all expected to learn, you know, even the girls. We met Mrs Levin, remember, Miss Phryne, at the school concert? With Becky's sister, Anne.'

'Oh, yes, voluble lady in puce, as I recall, very chatty about how pretty her girls were. I'm glad they're clever,' replied Phryne, whose memories of the school concert were not compelling enough to feature in her autobiography when she got around to writing it.

'Yes, really clever,' agreed Ruth. 'But nice with it. Anne has to make sure Becky has breakfast and walks the right way home, just like I do with Jane. Mrs Levin invited us to tea last week, but we were going to the dentist so we had to refuse.'

'Accept for this week, or would you rather invite them here?' asked Phryne.

'We've never seen their house, so we'd rather like to go there, Miss Phryne, but it depends on which would help your investigation,' said Jane, still staring into the fire and appearing to think about something else—perhaps Euler.

'Go to their house, and tell me all about it,' said Phryne. 'What did you make of Miss Lee, Dot?'

Dot, suddenly conscious of being embraced by Hugh Collins, sat up abruptly and blushed. 'I don't think she did it, Miss. I'd be lonely living like she does, but I reckon it's what she's always wanted. She wouldn't be likely to fall for any man, tall, dark or handsome, but if she did I reckon she'd pick well. Even if it all went wrong, she'd retreat back into her room and shut the door, not go looking for revenge like someone on the movies. The story's silly, Miss, like you said, a movie script. And there hadn't nothing been spilled on that floor, I'd swear my life on it. But there's something missing—how did he get the poison? And who killed him and why? I reckon that Miss Lee's the easiest target, Miss, and it's real hard to prove a negative, like Jane was explaining to me the other day. We have to find out who that man was and why someone killed him—and how they did it—before the law's going to let Miss Lee go.'

'Aren't you being a bit hard on Detective Inspector Robinson, Dorothy?' asked Hugh uneasily. Dot removed herself from the arm of the chair and sat down on the couch with Phryne.

'No,' said Phryne quickly, before Dot could reprove her friend. 'We understand his position entirely, he needs a murderer and Miss Lee looks good on a superficial inspection. But we don't think she did it and we need to look at Mr Michaels very hard. Now what other information can we get, hmm? I've seen the scene of the crime but it had been extensively tidied. Nothing out of place—Miss Lee is a neat woman. Nothing unusual in the shop that I can think of offhand.'

'You need the autopsy report,' said Hugh.

'Can I get it?'

'I don't see why not,' said Hugh Collins, redeeming himself instantly and causing Dot to return to her perch. 'I'll just borrow a copy from the file.'

'Not yet,' said Phryne. 'I'll ask Jack for it. Then if he refuses you can borrow it for me and I shall get it back to you as soon as I can get it photographed. Also I need to know what was in his pockets, where he lived, and everything known about him—but I'll ask Jack, Hugh dear. Let me keep you in reserve in case official channels fail me.'

Phryne smiled at the young Detective Constable to be. She did not want to blight his career unless it could not be helped. But she was determined to remove Miss Lee from the custody of the law.

The telephone message which was delivered just before lunch confirmed her resolution. Miss Lee, allowed comforts, had a request for some books to while away the hours in her cell. She had never had time before, but she was being lodged and fed without any effort of her own, so she was intending to learn Latin.

Phryne resolved that the books would be collected that afternoon and went back to the fire.

After a good lunch—the weather might be unreliable but the new asparagus was bang on time and Phryne adored asparagus, lightly steamed and dipped in melted butter—she called Jack Robinson and asked him to adorn her dinner table. He declined, pleading pressure of business.

'Where are you going this afternoon, Jack dear?' asked Phryne.

'Back to the Eastern Market. Tell you what, Miss Fisher, why don't you sort of accidentally meet me there by Miss Lee's shop at about three? I've got all the neighbours to speak to and it's an interesting place, you'll like it and you might see something that I miss.'

'What a nice proposition,' said Phryne. 'See you there.' She rang off, called for her coat and hat, and walked through to the kitchen. The girls were occupied with a cooking lesson, and Phryne went out on Jane's learned discourse on the chemical interaction of water and bicarbonate of soda in scone dough.

'Very interesting,' said Mrs Butler, 'but if you don't mix them fast and get them into the oven quickly, they won't do you credit.'

'Quite,' agreed Jane, wiping flour onto her face.

Phryne parked the Hispano Suiza in the Spencer Street Oil Shop where the car had been rebuilt. John Lawless was always pleased to see both Phryne and the machine again. She left the car in the care of that greasy young man, who was already sliding a polishing cloth over the gleaming red coachwork, and hopped on the Bourke Street tram.

She paid her penny and slid her punched paper ticket into her left-hand glove. It was a sunny day with a cold wind—typical of Melbourne in spring, which showed the city at her most capricious and uncomfortable. Bitter dust made Phryne sneeze. She lit a gasper and blew smoke pleasurably out the door as the tram clanked down the Bourke Street hill past William Street and the courts, Queen Street and the lawyers, Elizabeth Street and the GPO and passed all of the great emporia— Buckley and Nunn's, Myers, Coles, and Foy and Gibsons. Surprising numbers of women, hats askew, breathing heavily, crowded past the stylish figure of Miss Fisher, carrying paper dressmaker's bags and squashy parcels. Phryne noticed that Myers was having a sale and stopped wondering about them.

Ting ting went the conductor's bell, the tram laboured up the hill, and Phryne stood up, balancing carefully on the cross-hatched wooden floor. More than one delicate example of the cobbler's art had gone the way of all footwear when the heel had caught in that flooring. This happened so commonly that the cobbler at the corner of the Eastern Market had a small sign outside, advertising 'Get You Home: Heels Mended, Sixpence'. He had been known to ritually bless the name of the Tramways.

She alighted at the corner of Bourke and Exhibition and stood outside the dress shop, admiring the market.

It was a three-storey building made like a rather restrained Palladian cake, with once-white frosting and pillars and a dark stone facade. Phryne knew that it was three storeys on one side and one on the other, occupying as it did a sloping site. It had none of the baroque tiled additions and riotous ironmongery of the main provisions market at the top of Victoria Street. The Eastern Market, she thought as she crossed Bourke Street and walked towards the main entrance, was the place to buy anything small or strange. Because rents of the stalls were so low, odd crafts could afford an outlet. She walked out of the cold wind under the verandah and heard the market noise and smelt the market smell. She stood still to appreciate it, her back to the tiny leaded window of Miss Jane Trent, Umbrella Repairer. Phryne loved markets.

Although most of the wholesale fruiterers were based at the Victoria Market, a few supplied the barrows which went out every day into the street. The tubercular soldiers from the Great War who had been told to get an outdoor occupation sold choice fruit, vegetables and flowers from them, and they were stored overnight in the basement of the Eastern Market. Phryne could smell the new spring blooms which she most enjoyed, which came before the roses—hyacinths, crocuses, freesias— and also a wave of mandarins and lemons from a barrow trundling past. She heard the rumble of carts, the whistle of caged birds from Lane Bros, who had one live finch in a cage above a whole flock of speckled chickens, and Wm Gunn, who had a huge cage full of finches above a pen in which one very red-combed rooster glared aggressively with mad bird eyes through the mesh. As Phryne walked, she heard the language of the carters, one of whom was begging his fellow in extremely emphatic terms to move the flamin' euphemism of a cart so that decent working men could get past and earn a crust or he would knock his sanguinary block off. The cart was one of the few horse-drawn drays left, and clearly belonged to someone who was not taking the spirit of the go-ahead get-ahead twenties seriously. When Phryne came around to the head of the wagon, which had wedged itself at an angle in one of the entranceways so that nothing could get past it either way, the driver had worked himself into such a temper that he had torn off his coat, leapt down, and was offering to fight anyone and everyone.

For a moment, Phryne enjoyed the spectacle. The tunnel to the undercroft was lit with electric bulbs, which lent such a strange and glaring light to the faces that they looked like a Dante illustration of demons and sinners, though sorting them out into sinner and demon was beyond Miss Fisher—they all looked equally villainous. She surveyed the cart and its relation to the trucks, blinked, and realized that it was fixable, though the solution was not evident to anyone in the middle. Picking her way between fuming hoods and yelling drivers, she went to the head of the horse, which was standing patiently enough, took it by the headstall and began to turn it. The dray body perforce came too, and as it was higher off the ground than most of the trucks, it passed over the bonnet of a Dodge without scratching the paint. The horse came placidly with Phryne, the owner gradually becoming aware that the dray was moving away. 'What're you doing?' he yelled.

'I'm shifting your cart,' said Phryne coldly. 'Don't speak to me in that tone of voice, and you as much use as a steampowered grapefruit. Come along, Dobbin.'

'You let go o' my nag!' the drayman screamed, bringing a promising riot to a halt as the rest of the drivers stared.

'Certainly,' said Phryne promptly, releasing the headstall. 'If you continue down that way I see no reason why this should not work. In fact, I'll come with you,' she added, hopping up onto the dray seat and gathering the reins. The horse, who had been very bored with standing still until his hoofs ached with all that human noise assaulting his fringed ears, was not going to stop, so the driver had to run after the dray and fling himself aboard. The trucks fell in behind and the flow of traffic into the undercroft of the Eastern Market resumed.

Phryne had never been under the market before. She relinquished the reins to the driver as he flung himself into his seat and remarked affably, 'This is like the crypt of a church. I had no idea it was here. Where does it come out?'

'Little Collins Street,' replied the driver, utterly unable to decide on a proper reaction. This sheila had taken control of his horse when the stubborn brute had walked the wagon into a corner, and was now coolly chatting in a society voice as though nothing particular had happened. She was obviously a lady and he did not really feel like chancing his arm by crossing her. Generations of men who had refused to pull forelocks kept his gnarled hand away from his cap but he replied civilly.

'See, Miss, this is where the wine cellar is for the whole of Melbourne, it's nice and cool but it ain't damp, they say that's good for plonk. My boss keeps his drays down here, though the nags are stabled up above. The stallholders store things here too. Trouble is that they banned us from bringing the big trucks into the market, so now all the produce mostly goes to the Vic market, pity really, I always liked coming into the city. This is where I leave me dray, Miss. Let me just help you down.'

Phryne accepted a hand and jumped lightly down onto cold clean cobbles.

'There's a staircase over there, Miss,' said the drayman from the horse's head. 'Take you up into the middle of the market.'

Phryne nodded and smiled and walked in the opposite direction. The drayman was about to call after her, but thought again. That, he realized as he uncoupled the tug girth and allowed his horse to walk out between the shafts, was a determined woman, and his mum had always told him not to get in the way of a determined woman.

Phryne followed her nose to a side of the market which was clearly a cellar. Wooden walls had been built and from behind them came a strange rumbling noise and a strong medicinal smell. A slightly glazed watchman was sitting in front of the gate, which was fixed with a strong iron chain and padlock. The rich smell came mostly from him. Phryne judged it to be rather good port and hoped that it belonged to someone who could afford to lose a few bottles. This cellar occupied a fair chunk of the undercroft, which now smelt less of wine and more of horses and almost overwhelmingly of oranges. The barrows were being loaded with new fruit, and the scent was strong enough to sting Phryne's eyes. Trucks chuntered past, their drivers alert in the half-light, half-dark.

The rest of the cellar appeared to be occupied by piles of boxes, sacks, mountains of chaff-bags and half a real haystack. The roof was supported by heavy beams, soot blackened, and the stone ceiling between was of vaulted brick which might once have been red. She found the staircase and climbed up, emerging onto the central floor of the market, which was buzzing with people.

The Eastern Market was Phryne's sort of market. She sauntered past little shops selling all manner of fascinating things, like sequins and beads and feathers for hats, eye veils and galoshes and singing birds, bunches of snowdrops or hyacinths and a pound of galvanized nails wrapped in a paper poke, toffee apples as bright as red glass and red glass Venetian apples as shiny as toffee.

She watched a huge carter swing the hammer down onto a 'Gauge Your Strength' machine and heard the bell ring as she walked down the iron-lace staircase to the lower quadrant, which sold guitar strings and framed art moderne prints of ladies in Russian dress and sad clowns, sheet music and baskets, and packets of cooling feverfew and chamomile tea from Broadbent and Sons, Herbalists.

By the time she had found her way back to the main entrance to Miss Lee's shop, Phryne was carrying a new shopping basket which contained her own purse, a posy of blue hyacinths, a copy of 'The Basin Street Jazz', a packet of autumn-coloured sequins for Dot, a packet of flea powder for her new arrival and a blue leather collar and lead into which, she feared, the puppy would certainly grow. Phryne also had a one-ounce paper of strychnine—price two shillings—bought from a nearby chemist, who had asked her to sign the poisons book, which she had obligingly done, and no one had questioned whether Miss Jane Smith was actually her name, or asked her why she wanted such a deadly poison. This was instructive, she felt. For herself she had purchased a slightly off-centre silver ring with a big flawed sapphire in it, wrapped around with beautifully made silver snakes, and for the girls two small silver rings made of daisies.

She was sitting down in Mrs Johnson's teashop and examining her purchases when an official voice said, 'Well, Miss Fisher? Visiting the scene of the crime?'

'Jack dear, do sit down, have some tea?'

'Thanks, don't mind if I do.' He sat down heavily in the red-painted chair and rummaged for his pipe. Phryne opened her gold cigarette case and offered him a gasper, but he shook his head.

'Cut your wind, those things will, Miss Fisher. Two teas, Mrs Johnson,' he said to the hovering attendant. Phryne did not speak until he was sipping his strong liquorish black tea, loaded with sugar. She showed him the chemist's packet, done up with sealing wax.

'What's that?'

'Strychnine. I just bought two shillings' worth, enough to kill several horses, and no one asked me why I wanted it.'

'Hmm. Well, I can't find Miss Lee's rat poison. The autopsy'11 be this afternoon, do you want to come?'

'Not particularly, Jack dear, if you tell me about the report.'

'I'll do that. I don't like this any more than you do, you know.'

Phryne sipped her tea, which was very good, hot and strong. Her feet hurt and she was suddenly very sorry for Miss Lee, cut off from this bustling and fascinating place, which changed all the time. Detective Inspector Robinson evidently caught her thought.

'Miss Lee's asked for some Latin grammar books, you know that? I never met a murderer who wanted to further their education on remand. I'm going in to her shop to get her a grammar and some writing paper. Oh, and I've something to show you, too. Come on,' said Robinson, laying four pennies on the table to pay for the tea.

He unlocked the shop and looked around helplessly at the books all marked in foreign languages. The shop smelt dusty and unloved.

'I'll find her a grammar or two,' said Phryne. 'What have you got to show me?'

'What was in the dead man's pockets,' said Jack Robinson, opening a paper bag with 'Evidence, not to be removed' on it. He laid out the contents on Miss Lee's desk.

'Hmm. Two passports, I see. One British, one Greek. Looks like the same photograph.' Phryne looked at the dead man's face: serious and very young, dark and Middle Eastern. 'His visa, about to run out, as you said. A pen knife, a wallet, a purse which closes with rings— I've never seen a man with a purse like that—a packet of Woodbines and a box of wax matches. Purse contains five pence ha'penny. Wallet contains several letters in a language which I don't know, a script I don't know, either. It must be Hebrew—it's not Greek, anyway, Jack dear.'

And these scraps, which is more of it, whatever it is. Plus these drawings. They look old,' said Jack gloomily.

Phryne unfolded a piece of parchment, and stared at the drawing. It was inked in black and coloured in red and gold. It seemed to show a red lion being burned on a golden fire. Underneath were letters. Aur, she read. 'Hmm. That's Latin for gold. There's a lot more but it makes no sense, at least not to me. I need a classicist. What did your experts say, Jack?'

'We asked one of our own members, he can read Hebrew, and he says it don't make sense, it's just a jumble of letters, like a code.'

'And the Latin?'

'Haven't seen about that yet. Do you want to do me a favour, Miss Fisher? I don't want to put all this through the evidence book in case it proves to be something which might cause a breach of the peace. So I'll lend it to you, if you guarantee to let me know what it's about if it's germane to the case. Is it a deal?'

'You're trusting me very far, Jack dear,' said Phryne gently.

He took her hand and clasped it. His forgettable face was blank with worry.

'I do trust you,' he sard. 'Is it a deal?'

'Deal,' said Phryne. 'And I know just the man to ask.'