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 too
k 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.
Twelve
Water: This is the first Element ... the most Ancient principles, and the Mother of all things amongst Visibles. Without the mediation of this, Earth can receive no blessing at all for the moysture is the proper cause of mixture and fusion ... The Common Element of Water is not altogether contemptible, for there are hidden treasures in it.
Thomas Vaughan, Magia Adamica
All right,' said Simon, as Phryne started the engine and the Hispano-Suiza purred into life. 'The chemistry I sort of understand. The argument about Zion, that has been going on for a long time. At least since Bar Kochba. But the shoes, Phryne darling, / should understand the shoes?'
'I thought of it when I walked on the bits of that cup you smashed in the heat of discussion. Broken china sticks in the soles. Someone invaded the house of a Mrs Katz today, and searched it for "the paper". In the process they shattered a very old and distinctive plate. There was no trace of it in your friends' shoes, though Yossi left before I could examine his. Therefore those present did not break into Mrs Katz's house.'
'Katz? In Carlton? She's Max Katz's wife. Is she all right? How does she come into it? Why did you think that we might have done it?'
'Because she was in the bookshop, the lady in the awful hat. Now what paper could they be looking for, hmm?'
'Yossi's compound,' said Simon.
'I should have looked at it more closely. It was just a string of letters and numbers, but that's what a chemical formula is. Like H20 or 02. Water and oxygen. Do you know any chemistry, Simon?'
'Me? I'm a shoemaker. I wonder what Yossi was working on? A new glue, perhaps? In shoemaker's glue, there's a lot to improve. You have to keep it hot, it's very inconvenient. And carpenters use the same stuff.'
'Possibly. In any case, we know that it probably wasn't your friends who were searching Mrs Katz's house for the paper. There is someone else in this, some other party.'
'The buyer. He hasn't got the formula,' said Simon. 'Because we've got it.'
'And he's looking for it,' said Phryne. 'He knows it's not with the Katzes. I hope Bert and Cec can find that carter tomorrow. He might be in danger.'
'Oh, danger, Phryne, please!' scoffed Simon.
'They broke into a house and tied an old woman to a chair. They left a pan on the stove. The house could have burned down; that would have been murder,' Phryne reminded him.
Simon did not speak until the big car was rolling off the road onto the grass. 'Where are we going?' he asked. 'You're going to drive into the sea?'
'What time is it?' asked Phryne.
Simon consulted his watch. 'Nearly midnight.'
'It's a hot night and there's no moon,' said Phryne softly. 'We can leave the car here and no one will see us. I'm going swimming.' She stopped the engine and pulled off her shoes and stockings. Simon heard the clatter of her beads as she dropped them, and could see a flash of milk-white flank and thigh as she stood up to take off her dress and then her cami-knickers.
He caught his breath. She was naked: even her head was bare of the ostrich feather fillet. In one smooth movement she vaulted out of the car onto the prickly grass, and was running towards the sea.
He tore at his buttons with shaking fingers.
He caught her by sound in the darkness. The air was heavy and thick, and the sea kissed his naked flesh; a city's ocean, which slapped ashore and made genteel little waves which ran whispering down the sand. Behind him St Kilda went on with its late night life. There weary painted women solicited for trade in beery streets where the six o'clock drinkers had swilled and vomited. He had yearned after the whores once, desperately curious about the sexuality of women. He had envisaged seduction, the urgent plea and the concession which allowed him access to the flesh he desired.
But not even in tangled sweaty sheets at three in the morning, despairing of ever finding a lover, had he imagined anyone like Phryne.
She was wet and her skin was cold, but under his hands it was scalding. Arms wreathed around his neck and a mouth met his, opening, salty and soft. She pulled him down into the embrace of the water, sliding around and under him like a fish, so that he ducked and dived, grabbing for her as she eluded him, laughing and then coughing as he breathed ocean.
She was as fast and sleek as a seal. The distant street light showed him her head as she emerged, a frill of foam around her neck, her black hair plastered to her head like a depraved Pierrot.
'Such a beautiful boy,' she crooned, slipping forward with the wave and kissing him hard. 'Come, come to me.'
He grabbed again and this time she allowed herself to be caught; she yielded to his embrace, clinging to him in the salt water which bore them both up.
'Oh, my nymph,' he gasped. 'Nereid, I'm yours.'
She moved again so that he was on the shingle, lying just above the backwash of the waves, supine, astonished, wholly at her mercy. Her mouth and hands caressed him, then she was astride him, just visible in the distant light as she sank down onto him and moved as though she was riding Thetis' horses of the sea. He thought of conjunction the crowning alchemical mystery, as his hands found her breasts, and then he lost capacity for thought altogether. He did not know how long it was until he groaned, and heard Phryne cry aloud like a seabird.
Late, sandy and incompletely dressed, Phryne parked her car and brought Simon i
nto the house. She led him up the stairs and into her apartment.
'A shower,' she said, pulling off the green dress. Under it she was naked. She dropped stockings, shoes, underclothes and jewellery on the floor. Simon began to remove his hastily donned garments, wondering why fly buttons were so prone to desertion. He had lost two. Phryne flung him a gown and he pulled it on, still astounded at the ferocity of her passion.
She showered thoroughly, rinsing the salt off her skin and the sand from her hair, then yielded her place to the young man. Such a beautiful boy, she thought, observing that he was somewhat abraded around buttock and back by the shingle. Prior experience had taught Phryne that it was wise not to be underneath if making love on sand.
'Oh, Phryne,' sighed Simon, 'that was ...'
'Astonishing?' asked Phryne, towelling her hair. 'Yes. Lovely.'
He was a little disappointed by her response. After all, he had given her all he had to give. She leaned past the fall of water and kissed him gently.
'You are quite delightful,' she said, and went into her bedroom.
He heard her exclaim, 'Jesus wept!' and he got out of the shower and draped the gown over his wet body. He would dry quickly enough in the hot night, no matter what his mother said about catching cold. Phryne was looking at a room which had been comprehensively ransacked.
'The others,' she said, and ran for the stairs, her black kimono billowing behind her.
Downstairs was silent. Simon was behind her as she opened the girls' door and exclaimed with relief when she heard them breathing peacefully. He followed her to the kitchen where she opened the Butlers' door and listened for Mr Butler's snore and Mrs Butler's whuffle. Both present and correct. Beside the combustion stove, which had not been lit, there was a faint noise. But it was only Ember rising from beside his puppy and suggesting politely that although it appeared to be the middle of the night, if Phryne thought it was breakfast time then he was ready to graciously fall in with her wishes.
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