Raisins and Almonds pf-9 Page 12

  'I was busy that day,' said Mrs Johnson. 'That silly girl of mine got herself married, and now she's in the family way, and she's sick. I was run off my feet. I didn't poke my nose out of my own door until Miss Lee came in and said that the young man was dead. White as a sheet, she was, poor girl. I really must go, tell her I was asking after her, will you?'

  Dot continued her walk to the grain and feed shop. It had a number of sacks outside. Each one had its cat, couchant. Dot wondered if the hay cat always sat on hay, or whether it swapped with the corn cat, the wheat cat and the chicken food cat. They were well fed and sleepy, and moved obligingly when the merchant came to measure out his produce with a tin scoop. Dot, fascinated, noticed that as soon as the man was finished, the cat leapt back and settled down again. Clearly everyone in this shop was well adjusted to their roles.

  'Yes, Miss?' asked a burly man. Dot explained her mission.

  'Miss Lee, eh? Never believed she done it. You want the boys? Dusty! Smithy!' he bellowed, in a huge voice which shook the walls. 'You talk to the lady,' he ordered, as two young men came skidding into the shop. One was still carrying a tally.

  'We're short a sack of sunflower seed,' said one. Dot refrained from comment. Crime appeared to be endemic in the Eastern Market. She explained what she wanted for what felt like the thousandth time, and the shorter young man nodded intelligently.

  'You're trying to eliminate the innocent, eh? That's what Sexton Blake does, eliminate the innocent. Me and Smithy went to the shop about oh, I don't know, tennish? On our smoko. We wanted a book on how to win on the gees, because we ain't been doing too flash lately. Miss Lee sold us one, and we'll be millionaires when Smithy works out his system, eh Smithy?'

  Smithy nodded uneasily.

  'Was there anyone in the shop when you came in?'

  'This weird female in a hat with a bird on it who was giving Miss Lee h..., er, having an argument about what an atlas was. I mean, everyone knows what an atlas is! And someone had just delivered a big box full of books, I stubbed my toe on it. Anyway, we looked around a bit and then the hat went away, we bought our book, had a cup of coffee at Mrs Johnson's, and came back here. Then we had to take a horse to the farrier's so we missed all the excitement.' Mr Miller sounded rather disappointed.

  'System,' said their boss with infinite scorn. 'Youse'll both be in Queer Street with Smithy's system. If there was such a thing, bookies'd be begging in the street, and yer don't see that happening, do yer? Well, then.'

  'Yes, Boss,' murmured his subordinates, not very convinced.

  'And I want that quid back that I lent you out of me own kick. If that's what you're spending it on.'

  'Aw, Boss, don't be a Jew ...' wheedled one of the young men.

  Dot took her leave. She stood at the door, caressing the corn cat, which was a tortoiseshell, while she considered what to do next. It angled its jaw into her fingers and purred.

  'Nice kitty,' said Dot. 'Now, I'm going well. Only the clerk to find. We can get the carter from the dispatch note, it will be in Miss Lee's ledger. No, I can't see any line of enquiry which might lead me to the clerk. I wonder if Miss Phryne has thought about an advertisement? With a reward. That might bring him out of the woodwork.'

  She looked down at a sharp hiss. The wheat cat had decided that if there was any patting going it wanted some too, and the corn cat was objecting to this intrusion into her territory. Dot stroked both, then drew the piece of butcher's paper from her purse.

  The lady in the hat was called Mrs Katz, and she lived in Carlton. Dot walked around the corner of the market into Bourke Street, past tailors and mercers and Rob't Fulton, Chemist down the hill to Swanston Street, where she caught the number 11 tram.

  Miss Lee paused in the construing of a difficult verb in The Gallic Wars to remember with a desperate pang that she was captive and in danger of death. The fact hit her like a physical pain and she clutched at her breast, feeling her heart knife.

  Then she returned her gaze to the page and the prison guard heard her murmuring 'Rego, regis, oh, Lord, protect me, God have mercy on me, regis ...'

  That one wouldn't have to be dragged screaming to the gallows, thought the guard approvingly She wouldn't give any trouble to her executioners.

  Simon Abrahams was sulking.

  Here he was, witty, handsome and young, possessed at last of a lover, a beautiful woman who had lain in his arms and ravished his senses, and she had deserted him. She had basely sent him away while she studied alchemy (of all things), enjoining him to be a good boy and not bother her while she was trying to make sense of a lot of medieval writings in illiterate Latin and middle English. There he could not help, not having studied at a university, as her other lovers doubtless had. He kicked at an inoffensive wainscot. How dare it lurk there, being blessedly insensitive wood, while his heart was bleeding?

  His mother called out to him not to kick the furniture. He gave the wainscot another boot, careful to make less noise. It was no use complaining about Miss Fisher to Mama. Phryne had made a splendid impression on Mama, who had insisted on telling all the old stories about life in Paris when she and Papa had been so poor. They weren't poor now and Simon was desperately ashamed of those stories.

  Papa was visiting the shoe workshops, which he did at least once a week, to talk to the staff and the managers. But there was someone who always had time to listen to the sorrows of the young Simon. Someone who had always been the repository of all Simon's secrets and had never told. Someone who shared his enthusiasms, though he would never publicly disagree with Papa.

  Simon stopped assaulting the skirtingboard and went to find Uncle Chaim.

  Bert and Cec followed Matt Rosenbloom, the foreman, down the steps to the undercroft of the Eastern Market and into a wide, echoing space. It was harshly lit with strung electric bulbs, which augmented the obsolete gaslight but left pools of black shadow in between. The footing was treacherous and uneven, and the patched shadow and glare made it hard to see any pits or holes. It was full of boxes, bales and sacks and smelt of so many scents that Bert gave up trying to analyse them, deciding that the essence could be sold to the public as Eau de Trade.

  'Tomorrow you can work in the main cellar,' observed Mr Rosenbloom, who had been told to employ these men for as long as they liked and was constitutionally incurious. He was required to see that the shoeshop was supplied, that the boxes delivered to the market contained the correct boots in the correct sizes, and he wasn't employed even to resent the way his Australian employees called him Rosybum. In a way it was probably a compliment, he thought. He had come a long way from Stuttgart to Poland and then Rome, and reserved his passions for Mrs Rosenbloom and birdwatching. That reminded him that he had time for a chat with that nice Mr Gunn of the birdshop, and he left Bert and Cec to deal with a severe young woman with a ledger. She was standing in the middle of a heap of shoes, all spilled out of their boxes.

  'This delivery is wrong,' she declared. 'I definitely ordered ten pairs of the brown glace kid court with a Louis heel. Look at this.' She held up an offending shoe. 'Does that look like a Louis heel to you?'

  'Me, Miss?' Bert was all innocence. 'We're just here for the heavy work, Miss. Now if it came to beer, now, 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.

  7 should know?' demanded Mrs Katz. She stood up, shedding stockings, rubbing her mistreated wrists. 7 should understand? I am about to cook a few fish cakes for my lunch, I just lay them in the pan, and suddenly there they are, screaming at me, where is the paper? I tell them what are you doing in my house, is this Russia, anyway, what paper, I don't know nothing about no paper. Then they grab me—see, what bruises!—and tie me here, and then I hear such noises, everything they must be turning over, breaking, stealing, and then the tall one comes back, says, nothing there, and they're gone, I hear the door slam, leaving the pan on the stove which they should have known would burn, I sit here, I struggle, the house it will burn down, Maxie when he comes home will find nothing but smoking ruin, I can't get free because they tie me so tight, oy, bandits, gonifs, what have they taken?'

  'I don't know,' said Dot. 'We'd better call the police.'

  'No!' Mrs Katz seized Dot's sleeve, a surprisingly strong grip for those reddened claws. 'No, please, lady, not the police. Anyway,' she demanded, 'thank you for rescuing me, don't think I'
m not grateful, wonderful you should come in nick of time, but, Miss, who are you?'

  'My name is Dorothy Williams,' replied Dot, rather relieved to be able to declare herself. 'I came because you were in the bookshop the other day, just before the young man died there.'

  'I was?' asked Mrs Katz evasively. Dot nodded.

  'Your hat was there,' she said. 'I saw it in the hall. It's a very distinctive hat.'

  'Is good, yes?' said Mrs Katz, giving up her attempt to avoid admitting that she had been in Miss Lee's shop. 'I like it. Max says it is too big, but I don't like the sun. Max says I look like mushroom. He's got no style. Oy, Maxie, what will Max say about this? And my good fish cakes is all burned. Miss, do you know what those gonifs wanted? Do you know what this is all about?'

  'No,' admitted Dot. 'Not really. But I'm sure that Miss Fisher will. Why won't you let me call the police, Mrs Katz?'

  'We're in new country,' muttered Mrs Katz. 'We don't want no trouble. No old country trouble.'

  'Old country? What do you mean?'

  Mrs Katz shut up like an oyster. Dot considered her. She was perhaps fifty, dressed in an art silk dress with rather too many brooches. Her hair was dyed an unconvincing shade of gold and she was made up with pancake and lipstick but the effect was oddly attractive and innocent, as though a child had amused itself with her mother's cosmetics. Her wrist bore a heavy gold bracelet and there were small gold rings in her ears. Robbery had not been the motive for this incursion into a respectable Carlton household.

  'Perhaps I can give you a hand with the tidying up,' Dot offered, giving up on the police.

  'No, no, you put the kettle on if you will be so kind, we'll have some tea, how can I explain to Max what happened, maybe he'll understand, he's got a better kopf than me, he'll be home by three, oy, what a terrible thing ...'

  Mrs Katz pottered off into the parlour and Dot put the kettle on and then followed. She found her hostess on her knees, picking up the sad fragments of what had been a fine plate, red and blue china embossed with gold.