Raisins and Almonds

that's different. Cec can identify eight different types with his eyes shut. Which they mostly are after eight beers, eh mate?'

'Too right,' said Cec.

The severe young woman unbent. She knew real ignorance when she heard it.

'I'll have to catch Rosybum when he comes back. I'll get him at Gunn's, that's where he's gone, he lives for the day when he can teach that cockatoo to finish a sentence. Can you pack them back into boxes, please?' Cec fetched a handcart. Miss Harrison of Harrison's Shoes knelt next to the shorter and stouter of the new labourers. Bert, she observed, could find the sizes and the boxes and match them almost quicker than she could, and she was impressed.

'Just load them all up and bring them through to the shop. I'll sort them out with him later. It's a good deal, they're excellent shoes at that price. After all,' she said philosophically, preceding them up the ramp, the shoes piled on the handcart, 'perhaps the customers would prefer a court heel. What do you think?'

'Too right,' agreed Cec.

He resolved to ask Miss Fisher, when he next saw her, what a Louis heel was. Maybe Alice would like Louis heels for the wedding. And she was wearing white. Miss Fisher, when appealed to for a decision, had agreed that white was the only possibility So what if she'd had a little slip? So had Cec and no one was trying to debar him from his own wedding because he wasn't a virgin. In fact he'd gone to considerable trouble and expense to make sure he wasn't a virgin.

No, white it was to be, and Dot Williams had very kindly agreed to go with Alice to the first fitting, in case she was nervous. No one in her family wanted her to marry. She was earning good money at the grocer's shop, and her dad was a soak. But she had made up her mind. She was marrying him, and her dad couldn't say nothing about it.

Cec allowed his train of thought to wander even further, until he was brought back to the present by his mate Bert nudging him and advising him that he was grinning like a loon and asking whether he had taken leave of his senses?

'Here you are with a soppy smirk on your dial and we're supposed to be paying attention,' scolded Bert.

'All right, mate, here I am,' said Cec soothingly. Bert was a good bloke, but he was prone to go crook when he was nervous.

And Bert was nervous because he didn't know what to look for in this big bustling market. Neither did Cec, but his Scandinavian ancestors had bequeathed him some Viking fatalism. If they were meant to find out, they'd find out.

They delivered the shoes for Miss Harrison and she was so mollified that she offered them a tip, which they took graciously.

'Now what?' asked Bert.

'I reckon we stroll around to the birdshop and see what Mr Rosybum wants us to do next,' said Cec. 'And we get an idea of what this place looks like. He'll be with his birds for half an hour. What's up the stairs?'

They climbed, to be greeted with a wave of scents, all manner of flowers and wet stone. The top floor was full of florists—John Lane and several Irelands. They noticed Tintons Glass and China Repairer, Albert Fox, Fruiterer. Strolling by they saw through his window a man in titanic struggle with a pineapple, which was resisting having its crown chopped off. His language was most restrained. It reminded Bert of a book of Realist posters someone had sent Miss Fisher. He mentioned it to Cec. 'They could make a bloody huge bronze out of it and call it 'Spirit of Fruit' or 'Man Conquering Nature',' he suggested.

Cec chuckled. They stopped at Miss Ivy Brown, Pastrycook, and bought a pie and sauce. The rest of the top floor was inhabited by a couple of fancy good shops, a music seller and a maker of the sort of solid leather trunks which can stand by themselves and house a modest family of three, and their dog.

'Wouldn't want to get a bodgy cargo net under that,' said Cec consideringly. 'Make a bloody big hole in the dock,' agreed Bert through his pie. 'Good pies, these. Right, now what about the next floor down? Just a quiet stroll, mate.'

'Too right.' Cec was relieved. It looked like Bert was getting the feel of the place. He always liked to do that. In the trenches at Pozieres, Bert had often suggested a little recce into No Man's Land. He said it relieved the monotony.

They walked into Exhibition Street in time to hear a scream.

'Murder!'

Ten

Whole Dispositions, vertues and natural motions depend on the Activitie of the heavenly motions and influences.

John Dee, Mathematicall Praeface

Dot wasn't sure what to do next. Here she was at the correct address in Carlton. It was a workman's house, of light and dark stone with a slate roof, very dark and uninhabited-looking. She had unlatched the wrought-iron gate, tripped over the statutory misplaced brick and rung the doorbell. It had made a ratchety broken sort of noise, a strangled clockwork grunt.

Dot knocked firmly with one gloved hand and the front door swung open.

So she stood in the dark doorway, wondering what to do. It was clearly unsafe to leave one's front door open. No one would have done so unless they were at home. If it had been someone whom Dot had previously met she would not have hesitated. But there was something so intrusive about entering a house where she had not been introduced ...

While she was thinking about it, she listened. The house, as far as she could see, was of the usual Carlton cottage design. Two rooms beside a central corridor, leading into a main parlour which had the kitchen and the bathroom behind it. All the blinds were closed, even though the day was not hot. The house smelt of furniture polish and burning; something had been left unattended on the stove.

That decided Dot. There was probably something wrong in a house where the front door was ajar, but there was definitely something wrong in a house where the front door was ajar and something had been left on the stove. Possibly the lady of the house had been called to an emergency and had neglected to take what Dot's nose told her was probably fish cakes off the gas, but if that was the case she would not be offended if a stranger came in and, with the best of motives, prevented her house from catching fire.

Dot hurried down the hall, through a disordered parlour and into the kitchen, where she found a gagged woman in a heap on the floor and a pan well alight on the stove.

Dot opened the back door. Then she grabbed a teatowel, wadded it up and carried the flaming pan out into the yard. She laid it down and smothered it with earth. The pan had been burning for some time. It fumed unpleasantly. Then Dot returned to the woman.

She wasn't dead, Dot was pleased to note. She was already trying to sit up, hindered by being attached to a chair by what Dot judged were probably stockings.

'Mrs Katz?' Dot asked. 'Don't struggle, I'll try and get the knots undone.' Dot first stood the chair up and then removed the gag, another teatowel.

' Wasser,' croaked the woman. Dot spoke only English but this was clear enough.

'Water?' she asked. The woman nodded. Dot brought her a glass of water and held it as she gulped, then knelt to try and undo the knotted stockings.

Mrs Katz, who appreciated a rescuer who knew how expensive stockings were and did not immediately dive for a knife to cut them, coughed and said,'Oy gevalt, such a thing to happen!'

'What did happen?' asked Dot, managing to release the bonds on Mrs Katz's ankles. Her wrists had been tied more tightly, or perhaps she had struggled. Her hands, which were veined, had swollen alarmingly. 'I think I've got this knot; stay still for a bit.'

Years of housework had given Dot strong fingers and a childhood spent untangling her little brother's fishing line had made her supernaturally good at knots. It was a matter of allowing the line to unravel itself from what she had heard Phryne call a point d'appui. Dot found the central hitch in Mrs Katz's bindings and the stocking unwound itself from around the arm of the wooden chair.