Raisins and Almonds pf-9

by Kerry Greenwood

  '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 th
at 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 singi
ng 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.