Raisins and Almonds (15 page)

'Dot, if you say "We might have all been murdered in our beds", I'll scream,' said Phryne, who had woken up cross. 'We weren't touched and that's fortunate for the burglar. Otherwise I'd have his guts for garters. Curse the horrible little hoodlum.'

'You might say, "May beets grow out of his stomach",' suggested Simon, sleepy with satiated desires, lapped in more luxury than he had ever imagined. 'That was one of
zayde'
s, my grandfather. He was good at curses. His favourite was "May a fire burn in his belly to boil his brains." Wicked tongue, my grandfather,
alav ha-sholom.'

'Amen,' agreed Phryne. 'It's all right, Dot, don't worry. If it would make you feel better, why not ask Hugh to sleep in the spare room for the next couple of nights? This should be over soon.'

'Oh?' asked Dot, uneasily.

'Yes,' said Phryne. 'After a suitable interval for ablutions and breakfast, I am taking Jack Robinson to the bookshop to show him the murder weapon, and shortly thereafter I expect to get Miss Lee out of quod.'

'The murder weapon?' asked Simon, after looking at Dot for guidance and realizing that she was as ignorant as he was. 'It's still in the shop?'

'I hope so,' said Phryne, and refused to say any more.

Miss Lee had moved onto the fourth declension. She wondered, occasionally, sleepless at three in the morning, if she would master the whole lexicon before they hanged her, which seemed to be a terrible waste of an education.

But one must not give way. Because she was on remand, she was allowed to receive gifts. Every day fresh flowers arrived, and chocolates, books and cigarettes. The last bunch was red roses, from Mr Abrahams.

Someone still believed that she was innocent. And the remarkable Phryne Fisher was still investigating.

'Manus, manus, manum,'
sang Miss Lee. '
Manus, manui, manu.'

'What's a man gotta do to get an answer?' asked Bert of Cec, as they stood before a gate which was not only closed but had two braces nailed across it.

'I don't reckon we're gonna get an answer, mate,' opined Cec.

'Yair, looks like Wm Gibson, Carter, has cashed it in and gone to the South Sea Isles, all right. You should be able to see over the fence if I can give you a bit of a boost.'

Bert bent and Cec rose. He held on to the shaky grey timber and reported, 'Nothing in the yard, mate. Let me down. No truck. There's a busted-looking old dray, and that's all. Not even a cat.'

'Well, that's torn it,' said Bert, removing his hat and scratching his bald spot. Working for Miss Fisher, he reckoned, was hard on a bloke's hair. His had already been appreciably thinned by some of her cases. It was going to be hot. The streets already had the faint, glazed look which spoke of pavements just about to soften and shimmer.

'P'raps the neighbours'd know,' suggested Cec, diffidently.

'You take that side of the street,' sighed Bert, 'and I'll take this.'

They split up and began knocking on doors. Bert began to long for the good old days of ferrying drunks from one side of the city to the other. More than that, he could do with a good cold beer.

Phryne, policemen in tow, opened the door of Miss Lee's shop. The little bell rang tinnily. The room was clean, but already a slight film of dust was settling on the polished desk. It felt shabby and desolate. Jack Robinson was not in the mood for excitable females, though he was vaguely wondering why she was carrying a craft knife and a pair of thick gloves.

'Well, Miss Fisher?'

'Now, Jack, is the shop the same? No one has been here?'

'It looks the same,' he said warily.

'I've told you all about Yossi's formula. I have told you about Mrs Katz and the burglary of my own house. Now there's something I have to conjecture. Part of the fun of being a conspiracy is the ridiculous mumbo-jumbo which men so enjoy. Passwords, you know, and secret handshakes and all that sort of thing. It must be something endowed with the male hormone we hear so much about in these glandular days. Anyway, like schoolboys playing catch with trinitrotoluene, those unworldy scholars used to pass their information to each other by putting it in one of the unread books in Miss Lee's shop. Shimeon the go-between put the formula into a book.'

'No, he didn't,' objected the policeman. 'We've had all those books out and shaken. There wasn't anything hidden in them.'

'That's what you think. I was talking to these poor bunnies last night and they told me that Shimeon had hidden the formula in a book. I thought as you did, and then Simon showed me how to conceal something in a book so that no casual search will ever find it.'

Phryne walked to the bookcase which concealed the Great Unread. 'Now, I don't know which of these it is. I remember Dot saying that—now what was it?

Unfortunately we can't use the dust as a guide, now they are all dusty We'll try the leather-bound folios. What have we here?' She laid them on the counter with a thump. '
The Letters of Sir Walter Scott.
Volume 9 of Hansard for 1911.
Sermons in Stones
by the Rev. Walters. Now, which is the most deadly?'

'Probably Hansard,' opined Detective Inspector Robinson, who did not admire politicians.

'We'll try that first. The way this must have worked is that Shimeon put his message in one book, and picked it up from another. God knows why. Gimme the knife, Simon.'

Phryne put on the gloves and slit the binding of the folio from one end to the other.

'No, nothing in Hansard,' she commented. 'What about Sir Walter?'

The leather and stiffening peeled away from the blade.

'Miss Fisher, if you've dragged me here to watch you mutilate books ...' began Jack Robinson, who had other things to do. Phryne bit her lip. She turned the sermons so that light fell on the spine, and slit the binding for the third time.

'See?' she said.

'What am I looking at?' asked Robinson.

'A murder weapon,' said Phryne. 'No, don't touch. Not unless you want to join Shimeon. That's what killed him.'

'It's just a bit of sharp metal, part of a razor blade, embedded in the spine,' objected Jack Robinson.

'That's exactly what it is,' said Phryne. 'Simon, demonstrate how one would remove a message. Use another book,' she added hurriedly.

Simon hefted a large volume, opened it, and groped in the interstice. Robinson felt suddenly very ill. To cover this, he took out his pipe and made a great show of lighting it.

'Shimeon comes into the shop,' said Phryne. 'He is supposed to plant the formula first and then to collect his reward, perhaps a note which says that an arms dealer has been arranged for this war in Palestine, God help them. But he didn't do that. Perhaps he was cleverer than the others, or more suspicious. Perhaps that goes with being born in Salonika, where they know more about conspiracy than gentle innocent Australia. You can see how it happened, Jack. Exactly as Miss Lee says it happened. He opened the book, groped for the hiding place as Simon is doing, then his right index finger met the razor blade. A thin cut, like a paper cut. It was a trivial injury, so he didn't scream and draw attention to himself. But it was a fatal injury, because the blade was loaded with strychnine crystals. You can still see them. Someone has used paste to make the blade sticky. Then he turned to Miss Lee, falling, and held out his hand to her, to draw attention to the wound. He tried to speak to her, but he failed.'

Simon stared at the exhibit, still holding the book. He was as white as a sheet. The attendant constable noticed that he looked very sickly and moved towards him.

'They found no strychnine in the stomach,' said Robinson. 'There's a report from the toxicologist, too. It was pure strychnine, chemically pure. Not the mixture they use to poison rats. This is an awful thing,' he said slowly. 'A trap for the most unsuspecting. Just when he thought that he was going to get what he wanted.'

'A cruel thing,' said Phryne. 'The product of a cunning mind.'

'But whose mind?' demanded the policeman.

'Ah, that,' said Phryne, 'we have yet to ascertain. But I tell you one thing, Jack dear, it wasn't Miss Lee.'

'She could have been an accomplice,' said Robinson, without conviction.

'Have a heart,' begged Phryne.

'You're right. We'll release her this afternoon. All charges dropped and her release proceeding from sure and certain knowledge of her complete innocence,' said Robinson, heavily.

'There's a good policeman.' Phryne patted his arm.

'Someone set a trap for poor Shimeon,' whispered Simon. 'And killed him as coldly as you kill a mouse.'

'Yes, and with the same poison,' agreed Robinson absently.

There was a crash as the book hit the floor, but the alert constable managed to catch Simon.

The Detective Constable had no imagination, so he was not shocked by the murder weapon or the collapse of the dark boy, which he had expected. But he was horrified by the way Miss Fisher had called his chief 'Jack, dear'.

He had never thought of Detective Inspector Robinson in that light before.

As they left the shop, a woman in shabby clothes caught at Miss Fisher's arm. 'Excuse me, Miss, are these the jacks who are saying Miss Lee's a murderer?'

'They're the ones,' agreed Phryne. 'Who are you?'

'I'm Mrs Price. I clean this shop and I'm here to tell them they're wrong. You the head cop? You're looking for the rat poison, ain't yer?'

Jack Robinson said 'Mind your language, Mrs Price. Yes, I am looking for the rat poison. Do you know what happened to it?'

'Yair,' said the cleaning woman angrily. 'I spilled it and I threw it away. I been sick with the 'flu and I didn't know about all this till my son told me tonight. So that's where it went, right?'

'Right,' said Detective Inspector Robinson, humbly.

... there is in nature a certain Spirit which applies himself to the matter, and actuates in every generation.

Thomas Vaughan,
Anima Magica Abscondita

Strewth,' Bert declared after two fruitless hours.

'What have you got, mate?'

'Not much,' said Cec. 'Well, something. Not many people live around here.'

'Lotta dogs, but,' said Bert, who had been bailed up in two different yards by hounds which Mr Baskerville might have considered overdrawn.

'Yair. Met a few nice dogs,' said Cec, whom all animals instantly recognized as a friend of a different but related species.

'You'd get on like a blood brother with a tarantula,' snarled Bert, mopping his brow.

'Never met one of them,' said Cec, interested. 'But I had a pet huntsman. My landlady went crook, so I had to find him another home. Used to feed him flies.'

'What've you found?' asked Bert, who was a confirmed arachnophobe. He did not want to think about Cec's communion with his many-legged friends.

'Lady at the house over there says that Gibson's been gone for six months. Says he sold up his stuff and went to join his daughter in Queensland—so you were almost right about the South Sea Isles.'

'That can't be right,' objected Bert. 'The bloke delivered a box to Miss Lee's last week. We've got the dispatch note.'

'Can't have,' insisted Cec. 'The old lady was pretty clear about it. Said she missed him being there. She's crippled, and she liked watching his trucks go in and out. Poor old chook. But she's got a good dog to keep her company. A blue heeler called Sally.'

'I hope they'll both be very happy,' said Bert sarcastically. 'But we're at a dead end, then.'

'Yair, well, Mrs Hebden told me that all Gibson's stuff went to a dealer, and she gave me his name. And she says his top cocky driver, bloke the name of Black Jack Alderton, practically lives at the Albion Hotel since his latest job folded. That's at the corner of Faraday Street and Lygon Street, isn't it? That's the next step.'

'Bloody beauty,' said Bert. 'I gotta get out of the sun, it's as hot as bloody Cairo.'

Miss Lee looked up from her book. The hard-faced warder was there.

'You're to pack up your things, Lee,' she said crisply. 'Governor's waiting.'

Miss Lee closed the book and reached for her bag. She had been moved from cell to cell over the last four days and was used to packing quickly. She laid the last garment in her case, clicked the latches, and asked, 'Where am I going?'

'Governor'll tell you,' said the guard. 'Off remand, anyway.'

That must mean that she was going to trial. Miss Lee followed the wardress through the corridors. The floors in the prison were scrubbed every morning by a special punishment detail; they were so clean that an unwary mouse might skid on them. The walls were an unrefreshing shade of mud. Miss Lee preceded the wardress at the proper distance. In that moment she realized that her body belonged to the State, that she would never be free, and that her days on earth had been numbered by men who would shortly judge her, condemn her and kill her. And that there was nothing at all she could do to affect her fate.

She would have run if there had been anywhere to run, but she was still Miss Lee, who prided herself on her control.

Inside her, someone was weeping hysterically.

The journey seemed to last for years. Miles of disinfected corridors were passed. They reached the Governor's office, and she stood at attention before it as the wardress negotiated entry. It was not until she smelt Nuit D'Amour perfume in the Governor's office that she began to hope. No one in prison smelt of anything but soap. The scent emanated from a small woman with Dutch-doll hair, a jewel-blue dress and cloche and a handful of papers. She was flanked by a plain young woman in beige linen and a policeman with a forgettable face.

'Miss Lee, I've come to take you home,' said Phryne.

'You've found the murderer?' Miss Lee fought down elation.

'We soon will. But the police know that it isn't you. Have you got everything? Good. Here is the order for release, here is Jack Robinson to confirm that there are no charges against you and that you are a pure and stainless soul, and here is my companion, Dot, who is going to stay with you for today I know you would rather be alone, but we still have a few ends to tie up. This way, Miss Lee,' said Phryne.

Miss Lee found herself holding out her hand to the Governor, and almost thanked her for having her.

'Goodbye, Miss Lee,' said the thin woman, and smiled bleakly. 'Congratulations.'

'Thank you,' gasped Miss Lee, who had regained her honorific with her freedom.

It was not until the last set of prison doors shut behind her that she found herself wondering if she would ever get to the fifth declension—
res, fides
and
spes.

'Well, you're out of that horrible place and you're a free woman again,' said Phryne. 'Anything you want, just name it.'

'I want a bath,' said Miss Lee promptly. 'A real bath with real soap. I want a boiled egg and some bread and butter and a cup of real tea. Then I want to go and walk around the city.'

'It's yours,' said Phryne. 'Dot will look after you. She will also tell you everything that has happened.'

'Where will you be?' asked Miss Lee, bewildered by the speed of events. An hour ago she had been a condemned prisoner. Now she was sitting in a very expensive red saloon car and the suburbs were speeding past.

'I have to go and talk to a chemist,' said Phryne.

Bert put down his empty glass and licked a little foam from his upper lip.

'That hit the spot, eh, mate?'

'Too right.'

The pub was filling rapidly as the temperature outside climbed. The Albion was a spacious pub, built in the days when a public house with any pretensions to gentility had to have fourteen foot ceilings, brass taps and a polished wooden bar you could skate down. It had no floor coverings, but the black and white tiles were cool in the heat. Bert, in his reflective moments, considered that if heaven didn't have a well-appointed pub where a man could sit down over a beer for a yarn with the other angels, then he didn't want to go there.

'Mate,' Cec nudged him. 'Looks like trouble.'

Even in Arcadia, thought Bert resignedly, and looked where Cec indicated. A bulky middle-aged man was raising his voice to carry over the hum of peaceful voices. His dark face was flushed with beer. He had been in the pub for a while. Five empty glasses were on his table and his ashtray was full of butts. The fact that these had not been cleared away spoke volumes of the Management's desire not to retain him as a customer.

'What I mean to say is the rotten cow shouldn't ha' sacked me just like that,' declared the drinker, sharing his grievance with the pub at large. 'Just because I lost his flamin' dustcoat. It was an old rag anyway. It's going against the dignity of the working man to make him wear a dustcoat.'

'That was six months ago,' said the barman resignedly. 'You gotta get over this, Jack.'

'I ain't had a job that lasted more than a few days since,' complained Jack. 'This country's going down the gurgler, that's where it's going. Things ain't been the same since the war—that's what done for us fighting men.'

'You weren't in the Great War,' said a nearby drinker. 'You spent your whole time in the bloody pay corps while we was sweatin' blood at Pozieres.'

'About now,' said Bert to Cec, and ordered another beer.

'How will it go?' asked Cec. Bert was never wrong about the progress of a fight.

'He'll scream at the digger that he was too in the fighting,' predicted Bert.

'I fought all right!' yelled Jack.

'Then some other coot will put his oar in ...' said Bert.

'No, you bloody wasn't. Anyway, Alderton, what's happened to all that money you was flashing around? Lost it on the gees?' asked another drinker, evidently devoid of the sense of self-preservation so essential in tete-a-tetes in Australian hotels, or else fancying his chances.

'Then Alderton will stand up and offer to fight everyone ...' said Bert.

'I'll fight any man in this pub!' howled Black Jack Alderton, pulling off his coat.

'And then someone will king-hit him,' said Bert.

The soldier from Pozieres rose to the challenge. He was small, with a gamecock walk and big hands, so pale that the inexperienced might have thought that he was afraid. But Bert knew that he was flooded with cold rage. His dad had always told him that the red-faced were blusterers, not to be taken seriously. 'But if you see a bloke who's pale and shaking, son,' Bert's father had instructed, 'then run like blazes, because he might flamin' kill you.' Bert watched with interest, hoping that he would not have to interfere.

Without any preparation or parley, the soldier walked up to the big man and hit him matter-of-factly on the point of the chin. A beautiful punch, thought Bert. Perfectly placed, delivered with just the right amount of force and exactly what was needed to restore the peace of the Albion. Mr Alderton was jarred off his heels and went down with a crash.

'Silly coot,' someone remarked.

'That's our man,' said Bert to Cec.

'What do you want to do?'

'I reckon that the barman is about to assist Mr Alderton into the street. Perhaps we can do it for him,' said Bert.

No one commented as they shouldered through the crowd, lifted Mr Alderton by the heels and shoulders, and carried him out. The barman opened the door for them.

'What are you goin' ter do with him?' he asked, curiously.

'Sell him to the white slave trade,' grunted Bert, manoeuvring the body down the worn front steps.

'Well, I hope you get a good price for damaged goods,' said the barman. 'Don't bring him back, will yer?' he added, and closed the door.

Bert and Cec placed Mr Alderton gently on the cobbles of the lane next to the hotel. The man was already beginning to stir and groan. Bert knew that he was also about to throw up. This looked like a good place to do it in—the lane had a suitable gutter running down the middle of it and water was available from a nearby tap.

'We want you to answer some questions,' he said.

'Jus' go away and let me die,' groaned the patient.

'Not yet,' said Bert. 'You get to die later. There might be a quid in it,' he hinted. One bloodshot eye peeled open.

'How much?'

An unpleasant interlude followed. The ex-driver was in such a bad way that Cec was forced to go into the pub and buy a hip flask of brandy to bring Black Jack up to his usual operating level, which was not very high.

'Now go over it for us,' said Bert patiently.

'More brandy.'

'Not yet, you'll be seein' snakes, and I want you with us. Do you remember delivering a box to the bookshop in the Eastern Market last Thursday?'

'No,' said Black Jack.

'Then you're no use to us,' said Bert, getting up and brushing the knees of his trousers. 'Or anyone else,' he added, looking down at the disgusting figure now sitting on the cobbles.

'No, wait,' said Alderton, grasping at Bert's knees. 'I didn't deliver it myself. But I know about it.'

'Yair?' asked Cec with strong disbelief. He had no time for drunks. 'What d'ya know?'

'I used to work for Gibson, but he sold up and moved out. I ain't found a decent job since then. But when I put on my driver's coat to take this box to the market, from Ballarat it was, bloody heavy.' Black Jack stopped, having lost his thread.

'You put on your driver's coat,' prompted Bert.

'Yair, I put it on and found that I had a pad of Gibson's old waybills in the pocket. I hadn't worn the coat for a while. I got to the market and I was unloading in the underneath part, you know, where the trucks go. See, the boss had just sacked me, that box was my last delivery, then I was goin' to be out on the street again, so long, son. I was crook on it.'

'Yair, life is tough for the working man,' agreed Bert. For the first time in his life, he was sympathizing with a capitalist. 'What happened in the undercroft?'

'This bloke came up to me, see, and said he was playing a joke on a friend. He wanted to borrow my dispatch book and my dustcoat and cap and gloves. He said he'd deliver the box. Well, what's a man to do when he's got a coot offerin' a pound for a simple little joke? I didn't see no harm in it. He scribbled a name on my own dispatch note, so the bloody boss couldn't say I was half-inchin' his delivery.'

'So what happened then?' asked Bert. He was revolted. He had no difficulty with or moral objection to most crime—some of his best friends were criminals, and property was theft after all—but he hated liars, and Black Jack Alderton wasn't even a very good liar. Didn't see any harm in it, indeed. Bert wondered if his dive into the bottle had anything to do with the murderous implications of this simple little joke.

'Why didn't he just take your dispatch book, then?'

'Dunno.' Mr Alderton's face creased. Cec wondered how many brain cells he had left. He was reaching a working estimate—about six—when Bert asked, 'What did this bloke who liked expensive jokes look like?'

'Didn't see him clear,' replied Alderton. 'He had to be about the same size as me, I reckon, or me coat wouldn't have fitted him. I thought he talked sort of funny. I'd had a few,' he admitted. 'That's why the boss threw me out. They're always out to do down the honest man.'

'Yair,' said Bert. Cec was impressed with how much scorn Bert could pack into one syllable. 'Here's your quid,' he added, dropping it into Mr Alderton's spattered lap. 'Don't drink it all at once.'

Phryne dropped Miss Lee at her own house. Dot, possessed of fellow feeling, insisted on the bath being the best available, and the best bath in Melbourne was certainly Miss Fisher's. The ex-prisoner's reserve was showing signs of cracking under Dot's practical sympathy—had she not herself been on the edge of murder when Phryne Fisher had swanned into her life? Dot knew how hard it was to be rescued.

Phryne told Dot not to spare the bath salts and to give Miss Lee some clothes if she needed them, and turned the car to Hawthorn, where Jack Robinson's chemist lived. She had expressed her need for absolute confidentiality to that admirable officer, and he had instantly come up with the name. Dr Alexander Treasure, analytical chemist, was her man he said. Robinson had said that Treasure had no curiosity at all and had given him the highest recommendations for honour and integrity.