Raisins and Almonds

'Dead in the pen,' agreed the boy At a glare from his master, he corked his mouth with sandwich again.

'See?' demanded Mr Gunn.

'All right, all right,' said Constable Clarke. 'That's enough. From both of you.'

Bert, who had been looking at the sunflower seeds, caught a glimpse of something in the sack which had no business being there.

'There's a stain on the left side of this sack,' he commented. 'And I reckon ...', he probed the seeds with a stick, '... yes, there,' he said with satisfaction, as a small uncorked glass bottle emerged from the black and white striped shells. It still had a few white crystals in the bottom. 'That's done you a bit of good with Jack Robinson,' he said to Constable Clarke. 'I reckon you've found his missing bottle of strychnine.'

Eleven

Mercury and Sulphur, Sun and Moon, agent and patient, matter and form are the oposites. When the virgin or feminine earth is thoroughly purified and purged from all superfluity, you must give it a husband meet for it: for when male and female are joined together by means of the sperm, a generation must take place in the menstruum.

Edward Kelley, The Theatre of Terrestrial Astronomy

Phryne received reports as she was dressing for dinner. The girls had enjoyed their afternoon with I the Levin family, which had been lavish as well as informative.

'We're coming up to the fast of Yom Kippur,' Jane told Phryne, sitting on her bed and watching her select a flame red dress, shake her head and return it to the wardrobe. 'On the twenty-fourth of September. That's the holiest day of the year. The Day of Atonement,' said Jane.

'I like the sea green better,' observed Ruth. 'It's just the same colour as lettuce. What are they atoning for?'

'Everything,' said Jane. 'They can't eat or drink for the whole day, from dawn to dusk. Everyone, though not sick people or women who are expecting. Rebecca says she's going to be allowed to do the whole fast this year. She says it's to teach her what it's like to starve and thirst.'

'I know that already,' said Ruth soberly Jane and Ruth exchanged glances. They were considering their school mates, who had certainly never been hungry for more than ten minutes in their well-padded lives.

'I think it's a good sort of thing to do,' decided Ruth.

'So do I,' agreed Phryne, who also knew all that she needed to know about privation.

'And I found out about giraffes,' said Jane. 'I asked Mr Levin. He says it is kosher for the same reason that camel isn't. Giraffes have hoofs, but camels have hard feet. But he said that the Talmudic teachers say that if it is a choice between eating non-kosher food and starving, one is required to live, so one could eat camel if the alternative was death. He pinched my cheek and laughed,' said Jane philosophically, who could take the rough with the smooth in pursuit of knowledge.

Phryne chuckled. 'What shall I wear? I'm going to dinner and then to the Kadimah, which may be anything from an anarchists' den to a Sunday School—well, no, not precisely that, perhaps.'

'Where are you dining?' asked Jane.

'The Society.'

'You must really like this one,' commented Ruth. The Society was one of Phryne's favourite restaurants. She only took people she really liked to the Society.

'I do,' said Phryne. 'What do you think, Dot, the green or the red? Or maybe the tunic and Poitou trousers?'

'Are you going to be doing anything active?' asked Dot, who had divulged her story about Mrs Katz and the broken plate. 'I mean, not climbing around anything in the dark or that?'

'No, mostly sitting, with a little quiet elegant dining and some driving.'

I'd wear the green and a fillet,' said Dot.

The girls nodded in unison. Phryne therefore dressed in a cocktail length dark green dress of figured satin, with black shoes and stockings and a long, long necklace of amber-coloured glass beads which winked and twinkled halfway to her knees. She found an amber cigarette holder, fitted a gasper into it, and allowed Dot to place a gold fillet with a black panache made of one curled ostrich feather on her sleek sable head.

Ember levitated onto the bed and thence onto the dressing table and batted at the beads.

'Where's your puppy, Ember?' asked Phryne, removing the string from his strong claws.

'Shut in the kitchen until she gets used to the house. Puppies take a long time to get used to the idea,' said Jane. 'It only took Ember one day—didn't it, precious?'

Ember snuggled up to the caressing hand, radiating consciousness of being a cat (and therefore naturally superior) and Jane cooed.

Bert and Cec, come to report, found the scene touching, if a trifle over-feminine.

Phryne sat them down in her parlour and supplied them with beer.

'We found your bottle of strychnine,' said Bert. 'Detective Inspector Jack Robinson himself came down and looked at it. It was in the sunflower seeds.'

'I thought there was something odd about them sunflower seeds,' exclaimed Dot. 'Everyone was pinching them from everyone else!'

'Unlucky for poor old Rosenbloom, but the doc says that he only got a small dose and he'll be all right.'

Phryne begged Bert for footnotes, and he obliged. Phryne took out her notebook.

'So the sunflower seeds were stored—where?'

'In the undercroft, in old man Doherty's bins. Because he don't buy as much as say wheat or corn, the sunflower seeds are in little sacks. Doherty's boy Miller admitted pinching one bag and selling it to Hughes to finance his system on the horses, and did his boss go crook! Nearly sacked him on the spot, but let him stay provided he promises never to put another bet on a horse. Might be the making of him. Betting systems buy more bookies Rolls Royces than anything else. Silly cow. Where was I?'

'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.'