Raisins and Almonds pf-9 Page 19

  'So tomorrow he just has to go in and purchase it,' said Robinson. 'We can't arrest a man for buying a book—not that sort of book, anyway. He could just claim that he had a taste for Walter Scott or whichever it was. Or was missing Volume 9 from his 1911 Hansard.'

  'Yes, that's the flaw. We need to precipitate the action.'

  'And how do we do that?' asked Bert, with deep suspicion.

  'We announce, in certain company, that Miss Lee has donated a big box of unsold books to the Fiji and Island Mission. She's a Methodist, you know. It's credible because she did exactly that two months ago, though what the South Sea Islanders are going to make of Volume 3 of The Proceedings of The Royal Society for 1896, Hansard, Walter Scott's Letters and the Rev. Walters' Sermons is more than she or I can imagine. She's packed it in the shop and stored it in the undercroft for the carrier, and it's going off to Tonga tomorrow.'

  'And has this been done?' asked Jack Robinson. Phryne looked at Dot, who nodded.

  'Yes, clearly marked and all sealed up, except for the one which had the poison, of course. The hard bit was getting her to agree to send them useless books, she said that wasn't charity but rubbish collection. But I talked her round by saying she could unpack it later and send some good ones instead.'

  'Good. I suggest that my carters carry this box down to the undercroft before the market closes tonight. Then we wait,' said Phryne.

  'Is this an endgame, Miss Fisher?' asked Robinson, detaching Molly from his shoe. She had relinquished her attack on leather, but was working her way through his shoelaces.

  'No, not chess, Jack. It's more like snakes and ladders,' Phryne replied.

  Simon had left Phryne's house in a bad mood. He felt that he was being excluded from the action, which was about to get interesting. He also felt that his undoubted beauty was being insufficiently appreciated. He called on Yossi, but he was at work. He ended up, after some desultory wanderings, in the Kadimah, where there was always someone to talk to.

  The Kaplans welcomed him gloomily and he filled his teapot and threw in a pinch of tea.

  'It's terrible,' said David.

  'Oy,' agreed Solly. 'Tell us something we don't know.'

  'Yossi's work lost and the guns for Zion, where will we get them now?' asked Abe, drawing Hebrew letters in spilt tea.

  'The rabbi's angry with us,' David informed Simon. 'He won't even see us.'

  'Shut the door and yelled at us to go away and repent of our sins,' affirmed Abe.

  'Because we were using holy text for secular purposes,' concluded Solly.

  'Oy,' said Simon. 'And my lover threw me out this morning and told me to go away and play like a boy.'

  'You are a boy,' Abe pointed out. 'And the pleasures of the flesh are a snare.'

  'Far too young to have a lover. The strange woman's kiss goes down like wine, but her steps lead to perdition,' quoted David.

  'Shah,' pleaded Simon. 'Enough.'

  'What says the sage? "Deliver us from the woman, the strange woman who flatters with her words, for her house inclines to death, and her paths unto the dead,"' added Isaac Cohen.

  Simon was struck with a vision of Phryne, white and predatory in the half-dark. He could feel her remembered nipples hardening under his hands. He shifted in his seat and decided that there were things to be said for the flattering woman, even if her paths did lead to death. But he had received his breakfast time orders from the same stranger, and if he carried them out he might get to spend another night in her bed.

  'I know where Yossi's formula is,' said Simon.

  'You know? You didn't tell us before? Where?' demanded David.

  'It's in the book. Shimeon did as he was told, before he died.'

  'But how can we get it?' asked Solly.

  'I should know?' asked Simon, almost disliking his friends. They were all leaning forward with identical hungry expressions. Had one of them set that pitiless trap which had slaughtered poor Shimeon? Was one of them, gottenyu, a murderer?

  Suddenly he wanted to be home, eating kasha and being scolded for not telling his mother where he was. But he would go on with his task. 'The lady who owns the shop, Miss Lee, she's giving the unread books away, to the Island Missions. They'll be packed up and in the undercroft of the market tonight. And that's all I could find out,' he said, forestalling further questions.

  'Simon,yeled tov, good boy!' exclaimed Solly, clapping him on the back. 'So, we get the book, we find the formula, we give it to the people we know of, and ...'

  'Next year,' said David Kaplan, 'in Jerusalem.'

  Simon still felt bad. He did not want to be thanked for his part in this trap which Miss Fisher was constructing at the Eastern Market. He wandered about a little, bought a bunch of cornflowers, his mother's favourite, and was waiting for a tram when a car pulled up beside him and a familiar voice invited, 'Get in.'

  Simon and the cornflowers did as they were instructed.

  'No, I don't know where he is,' Phryne told Mrs Abrahams, now sounding shrill. 'I haven't seen him. Have you tried Kadimah?'

  'The caretaker I sent down special to see if he was there,' said Julia Abrahams. 'Been there, the young men said, gone hours ago. Where can he be?'

  'I'll find him,' Phryne assured her. 'And I'll send him home.'

  'Is he all right?' wailed Mrs Abrahams.

  'I don't know, but I expect so.' Phryne was not at all sure. The young man should have surfaced from even the most monumental sulk by now. 'But I'll find him,' she promised.

  'Such a clip I'll give him when he gets here,' said Mrs Abrahams, and rang off, only slightly mollified.

  Phryne dined early and well with her conspirators. Bert and Cec had borrowed suitable garments for moving large boxes. Phryne was dressed in men's clothes, suitable for whatever might happen. She had serge trousers, men's shoes and a soft dark shirt, and looked almost epicene to eyes unused to women in trousers.

  There was a rumbling in the sky as they left. The air was close and very hot.

  'Thunder tonight,' said Bert, looking at the sullen sky.

  'There's going to be a storm,' agreed Robinson.

  Fifteen

  Surely in vain the net is spread in the sight of any bird.

  And they lay in wait for their own blood; they lurk privily for their own lives.

  The Holy Bible, Proverbs 1:17-18

  The undercroft was darkening as one by one the glaring electric bulbs in their wire cages were switched off It was hot and humid. The air was foul with exhaust fumes. The market stank of spoiling oranges from the fruiterer's pig bin, old peaches and mangoes past their prime.

  Phryne Fisher had found a comfortable barrel to sit on, with a good view of the pile of packages and boxes which were stacked ready for the carrier's van on the morrow. She was shielded from casual view by the galvanized iron gate of Mr Doherty's feed and grain store. She wondered if he had any sunflower seeds and stifled a high-tension chuckle. Next to her Detective Inspector Robinson sat and worried. His men were placed as carefully as in a chess game, but there were three entrances and he knew that he could not control them all if his pieces had to remain out of sight. He had a deal with Miss Fisher. No tricks, no denunciations, no pyrotechnics. He just wanted the murderer to come and claim the formula, and then he could be quietly arrested.

  He had not been able to search every nook and cranny of the market, either, not without attracting attention which might warn the murderer off. He was fairly sure that no one was hidden there, but he was not certain and he liked to be certain. Also, he was hot. There didn't seem to be a lot of air in the air.

  Bert and Cec had done this sort of thing before. They were not fazed by darkness or heat or suspense. Cec wondered, sometimes, if they would ever be really astonished or really afraid ever again. They seemed to have worn such emotions out, at Gallipoli and in the mud of Pozieres. Still, it made no odds. He only wished this murderous bloke would make his move. He could do with a smoke.

  He sank into dreams of his wedding, w
ith only one whisker alert for action.

  He'd already bought the ring.

  Above, the Eastern Market closed. Phyrne saw the last of the trucks leave. The returned soldiers parked their fruit barrows, covering their cargo against dust, and filed out into the street, talking and coughing. The last of the cleaners slid his or her big broom into its place. Rubbish bins were filled with the detritus of the day's trading. This enriched the already heavy air with an overlay of sweepings. Phryne suppressed a sneeze.

  She also had things to think about. Where, for a start, was the irritating but beautiful Simon? His mother had not found him and he had not been seen since he had left Kadimah before lunch. It would be just like Simon, thought Phryne, to go to a deserted warehouse after dark and tell no one where he had gone, just because an anonymous note told him to. He would probably also burn the note. But surely no son of that remarkably durable couple, the Abrahams', would have entirely missed out on a certain inborn cunning? Surely he must have learned something from his parent's stories?

  On the other hand, he could still be sulking. In which case, after his mother had scolded him Phryne would take him out to dinner.

  She thought about Miss Lee, another remarkable woman. Straight out of bondage, she had handled the press with resource. The screaming headlines in The Herald with a female by-line—who would have thought it?—were evidence of her wisdom. 'Bookshop owner cleared of murder charges', it had said. 'Police apologize.' In much smaller letters which seemed to convey some scepticism, the front page added 'Police confident of early arrest'. Phryne hoped that this very public retraction and absolution would silence gossip, but knew that it would persist. But Miss Lee had handled confinement with aplomb. A woman who could concentrate on Latin declensions under such circumstances could handle gossip.

  Phryne was just rehearsing her own knowledge of that language—capio, capere, cepi, captum—when she heard a creak.

  The door into the undercroft from Exhibition Street was opening.

  Phryne felt the tension level in the hot air rising. A slim dark figure was fumbling along the wall, looking for a light switch. There was a crash as he tripped over and a choked scream as he was apprehended by Robinson, who recognized him.

  'Yossi Liebermann,' grunted the policeman. 'Now don't struggle, young man. We're after bigger game than you. You're small fry. Now sit still and don't say a word and maybe I won't charge you with breaking and entering, for which you'll get six months. No, Constable, it's not the one,' he said to his offsider, who had run to his aid. 'Tell the others to stay where they are and keep mum. This is just a young fool and nothing's going to happen to him if he gives his word to be quiet.'

  'I give my word.' Yossi, released, crouched by Phryne's side. She put down her hand and he grasped it urgently. His hand was hot and sweaty with fear and shock.

  'Miss, please ... my formula,' he pleaded, almost in a whisper.

  'Shah,' said Phryne. 'Later.'

  'How did you know that he wasn't the murderer?' asked Phryne of Robinson in an undertone.

  'No one as clever as this bastard would come to burgle a dark cellar without a light,' grunted the policeman. Phryne nodded.

  Silence fell again. Phryne began to suffer from the dark-induced illusion which caused so many sentries to pepper innocent shadows with shot during a long night. She thought she saw movement, then realized that it was her own eyes requiring some contrast to this black dark. The smell of rotten fruit enveloped the watchers, and the bitter city dust settled down on them.

  Yossi, at Phryne's side, was kneeling on the hard floor, and Phryne could hear him as he rocked and swayed. 'Shema Yisroel,' he began, very quietly. 'Hear O Israel, the Lord, the Lord is One.' It was the martyr's prayer, the last words of so many Jews tortured and murdered by so many people through the ages. Rabbi Akiva had died with those words on his lips. Phryne fidgeted, then folded her hands. She wondered how soldiers managed to stay alert and not become exhausted, and decided that they must be like cats. Ember could crouch, paws out, head up, like a sphinx before a mousehole for hours and hours, perfectly composed and utterly alert for the twitch of a mouse's nose through the gap. And he could control himself not to move until it had come all the way out of the hole, so that it would have to turn to retreat, before the clawed paw came thudding down, merciless and faster than sound.

  What am I doing, playing games with lives? thought Phryne, as the night deepened outside, the air grew heavier and the trams clanged past.

  She strove for the cat's resting trance, and achieved it so well that she heard Jack Robinson's hand move to touch her.

  The door had creaked again.

  A bright pinpoint of light flickered and moved over the walls and then the floor. A heavy tread. Phryne saw nothing of the incomer but the gleam of his shoes. He passed her hiding place and located the pile of boxes.

  The torch was laid on the floor. The unseen person shoved the boxes aside until he found the one addressed in big black letters to the Mission to the Islands. A knife blade flashed as the paper was cut and the box opened.

  The noise of breaking laths was loud in the hot darkness.

  The unknown had not spoken, but now he muttered as he pulled out books and threw them to the floor. Finally he found what he wanted, opened the book and felt in the spine.

  Yossi gave a convulsive jerk, and Phryne suppressed him with a heavy hand on his shoulder. The man examined the bit of paper by the light of the torch. He stowed it carefully in an inner pocket.

  Then all the lights came on. There stood the murderer. Phryne at last met the cunning mind which had contrived a rat-poison death for Shimeon Ben Mikhael.

  Uncle Chaim Abrahams turned and ran.

  Phryne and Yossi sprang up, knowing that he could not get far. Here was the bulky man who had bought the disguise of a drunken carter and had been in Miss Lee's shop that morning, defacing a book. Here was the man who had flung the remains carelessly into the bin, and caused accusations of murder in the bird dealer's. Here was the man who was dealing for Yossi's compound, who listened to Simon talk about Zion and Palestine, who was so sympathetic to the aspirations of the young. Chaim who had no head for business, who had always failed, who had had to be humiliatingly rescued by his brother who had even married the woman Chaim loved.

  The doors were guarded, but Chaim was not heading for the doors. He ran not along but up, clattering up the stairs into the market. Ten policemen, Bert and Cec, Yossi and Phryne raced after him.

  They heard him pounding ahead as they reached the first gallery They were close enough to hear his panting breath as he ran along the top storey They ran him to earth by the flowershops, and then they stopped.

  Uncle Chaim had a hostage, and he was holding a very sharp knife to his throat.

  'Simon,' said Phryne. 'I might have known it.'

  She turned to address a remark to Yossi Liebermann, but he had vanished.

  'Chaim,' she said to the man. 'Let him go.'

  'I should let him go?' demanded Chaim Abrahams. 'Never. You let me go and maybe I won't kill him.'

  'Uncle,' said Simon. He was on his knees, his hands tied behind his back. His face was dirty and he had, perhaps, been crying. But his voice was soft and there was no thread of hysteria in it. 'Uncle, you can't kill me,' he said.

  'I can,' said Chaim.

  'Simon,' said Phryne, and the boy tried to smile.

  'I'm all right. He hasn't hurt me, he's just tied me up.'

  'Send for his brother,' said Phryne to Robinson in a low voice. Then she addressed the murderer cheerily, sounding in her own ears like a district visitor. 'Now, now, a respected gentleman like you, Mr Abrahams, why are you making a scene like this? We've got you bang to rights, put down the knife.'

  'Him, I've got,' said Chaim, between his teeth. He took a fistful of Simon's hair and shook it. 'You come any closer, he's dead.'

  'Keep back,' ordered Robinson. He did not like the wild look in Chaim's eye. He turned from the scene and walked away o
ut of Chaim's hearing. 'Go and get the boy's father, Constable, on the double. Keep a man at each door, keep the public out if any come along on a dirty night like this. And get me a marksman with a rifle. Station him out of sight if you can. He's to fire as soon as he's got a clear shot. Might save the boy's life.'

  'Yes, sir. What are you going to do?'

  'I'm going to wait,' said Detective Inspector Robinson grimly.

  Thunder rolled. The storm was getting closer.

  'I'm going to get a chair,' said Phryne conversationally. 'So tiring to stand on a night like this, don't you think?'

  She sat down on a wrought-iron bench and regarded the tableau critically It was rather sculptural. Chaim was standing behind the kneeling boy, and the knife was held firmly in his tremorless hand. Phryne greatly feared that Chaim was determined, and that if she didn't think of something very impressive the boy was going to die.

  'Simon, how did he catch you?' she asked, sadly. 'Was it a note telling you to go down to the warehouse after dark and tell no one?'

  'He picked me up in the car,' said Simon. 'I was going home. Then he drove me here and said that he had something he wanted to check—I thought it was the shoe shop—we came up here and then he produced a knife and tied me up and gagged me and stowed me under the counter in there. I've been trying to get loose for hours.'

  'Your mother was looking for you,' said Phryne meaningly.

  'Oy, I'm in trouble,' said Simon, managing a creditable grin.

  'Hey,' interjected Chaim, 'what about me?'

  'What about you?' asked Phryne coldly. 'If you'll excuse me, this is a private conversation. Simon, I won't leave you,' she said.

  'Tell me you love me,' he said. Phryne did not like being blackmailed but the circumstances were, she supposed, special.