Raisins and Almonds

city. Dessert was fruit salad with a little Cointreau. Jane and Ruth stayed to toast Cec's coming nuptials in a little champagne before they went for their briefing with Simon on Jewish Customs and How Not To Outrage Them.

He found them disconcerting. They sat either side of him on the couch, looking sweet and very young, and asked acute questions which indicated that they had not only heard everything he had said but had analysed it.

'So the kosher laws are derived from Leviticus,' mused Jane. 'Cloven-hoofed mammals that chew the cud. Would that include giraffe?' she asked.

'I don't know,' said Simon.

'What about whale?'

'I don't know,' he repeated. 'A whale isn't a fish, is 'No,' replied Jane patiently, 'it's a cetacean, but in the bible the whale that swallows Jonah is called 'a great fish' so the desert fathers probably thought a whale was a fish, and it certainly has bones. Unlike a shark, which is cartilaginous.'

'Well, we cannot eat flake.' Simon was delighted to have something to offer.

'Hmm. I can see that I should have talked to Rebecca about her customs before. They are really interesting,' said Jane. She collected Ruth and they left the room to find the bible and read Leviticus in preparation.

Simon hoped that the Levins were better informed about the laws than he was.

Detective Inspector Robinson was tired. He hated arresting women for murder, especially real ladies like Miss Lee, and he was no further along in his case. His chief was getting testy and when he got real testy, bulls with sore feet were kindergarten children compared to him. He hated the heat, and the papers were saying that the next day was going to be stinking. Phryne waited as he put down a large buff folder on the table, ostentatiously turned his back on it, and was conducted to a small table laid with an embroidered cloth. It depicted a garland of native slipper orchids and maidenhair fern. Phryne had ordered it made especially for him. He liked it; the orchids were botanically correct. He slumped down into a comfortable chair and was supplied by Mr Butler with a cup of very strong, very sweet tea. On the table reposed an array of scones, strawberry jam and cream, and a copy of The Hawklet, a pink periodical emanating from Little Lonsdale Street which was guaranteed to elevate and amuse a tired police officer.

'Adultery and Divorce!' screamed the headline. 'Hotel Maid's Evidence!'

The Detective Inspector split a scone, slathered it with jam and cream, sighed happily and began to read.

Phryne took the buff folder and extracted the autopsy report on one Shimeon Ben Mikhael otherwise known as Simon Michaels, native of Salonika. As she read she made notes, and tried not to think of a dark young man dissected on a cold marble table. Much better to just think of him as a body.

Observations: a tall young man somewhat underweight, bearded, recently washed and healthy Some bruises on the right knee and hip, as though he had recently fallen, probably sustained in the spasm which had also cracked his spine. Small transverse cut on the ball of the right index finger. A clean cut, probably from a razor or from the edge of a piece of paper. The pathologist paid no further attention to it or to the bruises. No tattoos, scars, or identifying marks and he had all his own teeth. His wisdom teeth had not fully erupted so his age was estimated at between sixteen and twenty-five. Cause of death: strychnine poisoning. Contents of stomach: a starchy scented fluid composed of bread and black tea. Subject died about one hour after eating this austere last meal. Fingernails and contact traces: substance under the nails referred for chemical analysis. Phryne leafed through the folder and found another report. It was found to be common glue, such as is used by carpenters and shoemakers. Chemical burns on the hands.

To the sound of a Detective Inspector slurping his way through a second cup of tea, Phryne reviewed her notes. There was no doubt that he had died of the effects of strychnine. The pathologist had made a note:

'No strychnine found in the stomach contents, but it passes into the bloodstream quickly, being one of the most fast-acting poisons.'

Phryne replaced all the pages, ordered them quickly, and closed the folder. She replaced it exactly as it had been, laid her notebook on the hall table, and came in saying brightly, 'Well, Jack dear, how nice to see you! Is Mr Butler looking after you? No, really, I couldn't eat another thing, Mr B, not after that wonderful lunch.'

'Miss Fisher,' said the policeman, standing up and swallowing a mouthful of scone. 'Nice of you to ask me to tea. No one has a hand with scones like Mrs Butler.'

He wasn't adverting to the report which he had carelessly left on the table where any passing nosy woman could read it, so Phryne didn't mention it either. She sat down at the tea table. 'Any news?'

'No, no one seems to have seen anything. However, I've got hopes of something breaking soon. Has to be soon, or the case'll go stale and my chief'11 go spare. You got anything?'

'Not really, but you shall have it as soon as any of it makes sense. You know Miss Lee didn't do it, Jack, don't you?'

'We haven't got a lot of evidence, certainly,' admitted the policeman. 'But have you found anyone else who fits as well?'

'I'll meet the rest of his friends tonight,' said Phryne. 'At Kadimah, in Drummond Street. Then we shall see what we shall see, and hear what we shall hear. There's some secret element in this, Jack. I've had those papers translated. They were in a code, and they translate into another code. The pictures are all the stages making the philosopher's stone.'

'Like Johnson's play, The Alchemist?' asked the policeman. He had been to a night course in Elizabethan drama and had never regretted it. Shakespeare was now his constant companion.

'Yes, like that,' answered Phryne, a little taken aback. 'I'll find out more when I have time to read the texts. I've even got Elias Ashmole's Theatrum Chemicum Brittanicum. Miss Lee found it in a French auction and bought it for the dead man. Poor thing. Never even saw it. However, I don't know if it will help. The Rabbi had a lot of books, but they were all in Hebrew and he said that he knew nothing about alchemy.'

'Rabbi?'

'Rabbi Elijah. Simon Michaels was his student. He lives in St Kilda. If you are going to talk to him, Jack, I have to tell you that he's ... difficult.' She smiled at her choice of words.

'Difficult?'

'Really difficult,' Phryne emphasized.

'Well, must be going,' said Jack Robinson reluctantly. He had, however, cleared the plate of scones. 'I'm afraid that you may have taken on an impossible task, Miss Fisher. I don't see how you're going to find this murderer when the resources of the police force can't track him down.'

'But the resources of the police force aren't trying to track him down,' Phryne pointed out reasonably. 'You don't believe he, she or they exist. I do. So I have the advantage,' she said, escorting him to the door.

'About the only advantage I have,' she added, as the door shut on Jack Robinson and the buff folder.

She poured herself a cup of the cooling tea and thought. She had sent Dot to the market to look for the customers, Bert and Cec to the understorey to find out whatever it was that was making her feelers twitch. The girls were still with Rebecca Levin, having studied up on Leviticus. Mr and Mrs Butler had a free evening tonight, and Phryne needed to read some alchemy so that she would have a sporting chance of understanding Kadimah's conversation on the topic.

She took her notebook up to her own room, scribbled for a while, then sat down to attempt to acquire some grasp of alchemy and of the Holy Kabala, which she felt was a big task for one rather somnolent afternoon.

She laid out Waite's The Holy Quabbalah, the Theatrum, Thomas Vaughan's Lumen de Lumine and Euphrates, the Secreta Secretorum by Roger Bacon and Dee's Monas Heiroglyphica. The Emerald Tablet Explain 'd by an anonymous Elizabethan lay open on her bed.

She read solidly for an hour, swore, lit a cigarette and rolled over onto her back with Secreta Secretorum balanced on her stomach. The black letter Elizabethan printing was easy to read but it made very little sense, and as for the Holy Quabbalah, she had grasped only the very first of the first principles, that is, that it needed a lifetime's study.

'And I don't have a lifetime,' she said aloud. Thomas Vaughan the Brecon man was the easiest alchemist to follow, and by far the most charming.

On the same day my deare wife sickened, being a Friday, and at the same time of day, namely in the