Raisins and Almonds (4 page)

'Where are you going this afternoon, Jack dear?' asked Phryne.

'Back to the Eastern Market. Tell you what, Miss Fisher, why don't you sort of accidentally meet me there by Miss Lee's shop at about three? I've got all the neighbours to speak to and it's an interesting place, you'll like it and you might see something that I miss.'

'What a nice proposition,' said Phryne. 'See you there.' She rang off, called for her coat and hat, and walked through to the kitchen. The girls were occupied with a cooking lesson, and Phryne went out on Jane's learned discourse on the chemical interaction of water and bicarbonate of soda in scone dough.

'Very interesting,' said Mrs Butler, 'but if you don't mix them fast and get them into the oven quickly, they won't do you credit.'

'Quite,' agreed Jane, wiping flour onto her face.

Phryne parked the Hispano Suiza in the Spencer Street Oil Shop where the car had been rebuilt. John Lawless was always pleased to see both Phryne and the machine again. She left the car in the care of that greasy young man, who was already sliding a polishing cloth over the gleaming red coachwork, and hopped on the Bourke Street tram.

She paid her penny and slid her punched paper ticket into her left-hand glove. It was a sunny day with a cold wind—typical of Melbourne in spring, which showed the city at her most capricious and uncomfortable. Bitter dust made Phryne sneeze. She lit a gasper and blew smoke pleasurably out the door as the tram clanked down the Bourke Street hill past William Street and the courts, Queen Street and the lawyers, Elizabeth Street and the GPO and passed all of the great emporia— Buckley and Nunn's, Myers, Coles, and Foy and Gibsons. Surprising numbers of women, hats askew, breathing heavily, crowded past the stylish figure of Miss Fisher, carrying paper dressmaker's bags and squashy parcels. Phryne noticed that Myers was having a sale and stopped wondering about them.

Ting ting went the conductor's bell, the tram laboured up the hill, and Phryne stood up, balancing carefully on the cross-hatched wooden floor. More than one delicate example of the cobbler's art had gone the way of all footwear when the heel had caught in that flooring. This happened so commonly that the cobbler at the corner of the Eastern Market had a small sign outside, advertising 'Get You Home: Heels Mended, Sixpence'. He had been known to ritually bless the name of the Tramways.

She alighted at the corner of Bourke and Exhibition and stood outside the dress shop, admiring the market.

It was a three-storey building made like a rather restrained Palladian cake, with once-white frosting and pillars and a dark stone facade. Phryne knew that it was three storeys on one side and one on the other, occupying as it did a sloping site. It had none of the baroque tiled additions and riotous ironmongery of the main provisions market at the top of Victoria Street. The Eastern Market, she thought as she crossed Bourke Street and walked towards the main entrance, was the place to buy anything small or strange. Because rents of the stalls were so low, odd crafts could afford an outlet. She walked out of the cold wind under the verandah and heard the market noise and smelt the market smell. She stood still to appreciate it, her back to the tiny leaded window of Miss Jane Trent, Umbrella Repairer. Phryne loved markets.

Although most of the wholesale fruiterers were based at the Victoria Market, a few supplied the barrows which went out every day into the street. The tubercular soldiers from the Great War who had been told to get an outdoor occupation sold choice fruit, vegetables and flowers from them, and they were stored overnight in the basement of the Eastern Market. Phryne could smell the new spring blooms which she most enjoyed, which came before the roses—hyacinths, crocuses, freesias— and also a wave of mandarins and lemons from a barrow trundling past. She heard the rumble of carts, the whistle of caged birds from Lane Bros, who had one live finch in a cage above a whole flock of speckled chickens, and Wm Gunn, who had a huge cage full of finches above a pen in which one very red-combed rooster glared aggressively with mad bird eyes through the mesh. As Phryne walked, she heard the language of the carters, one of whom was begging his fellow in extremely emphatic terms to move the flamin' euphemism of a cart so that decent working men could get past and earn a crust or he would knock his sanguinary block off. The cart was one of the few horse-drawn drays left, and clearly belonged to someone who was not taking the spirit of the go-ahead get-ahead twenties seriously. When Phryne came around to the head of the wagon, which had wedged itself at an angle in one of the entranceways so that nothing could get past it either way, the driver had worked himself into such a temper that he had torn off his coat, leapt down, and was offering to fight anyone and everyone.

For a moment, Phryne enjoyed the spectacle. The tunnel to the undercroft was lit with electric bulbs, which lent such a strange and glaring light to the faces that they looked like a Dante illustration of demons and sinners, though sorting them out into sinner and demon was beyond Miss Fisher—they all looked equally villainous. She surveyed the cart and its relation to the trucks, blinked, and realized that it was fixable, though the solution was not evident to anyone in the middle. Picking her way between fuming hoods and yelling drivers, she went to the head of the horse, which was standing patiently enough, took it by the headstall and began to turn it. The dray body perforce came too, and as it was higher off the ground than most of the trucks, it passed over the bonnet of a Dodge without scratching the paint. The horse came placidly with Phryne, the owner gradually becoming aware that the dray was moving away. 'What're you doing?' he yelled.

'I'm shifting your cart,' said Phryne coldly. 'Don't speak to me in that tone of voice, and you as much use as a steampowered grapefruit. Come along, Dobbin.'

'You let go o' my nag!' the drayman screamed, bringing a promising riot to a halt as the rest of the drivers stared.

'Certainly,' said Phryne promptly, releasing the headstall. 'If you continue down that way I see no reason why this should not work. In fact, I'll come with you,' she added, hopping up onto the dray seat and gathering the reins. The horse, who had been very bored with standing still until his hoofs ached with all that human noise assaulting his fringed ears, was not going to stop, so the driver had to run after the dray and fling himself aboard. The trucks fell in behind and the flow of traffic into the undercroft of the Eastern Market resumed.

Phryne had never been under the market before. She relinquished the reins to the driver as he flung himself into his seat and remarked affably, 'This is like the crypt of a church. I had no idea it was here. Where does it come out?'

'Little Collins Street,' replied the driver, utterly unable to decide on a proper reaction. This sheila had taken control of his horse when the stubborn brute had walked the wagon into a corner, and was now coolly chatting in a society voice as though nothing particular had happened. She was obviously a lady and he did not really feel like chancing his arm by crossing her. Generations of men who had refused to pull forelocks kept his gnarled hand away from his cap but he replied civilly.

'See, Miss, this is where the wine cellar is for the whole of Melbourne, it's nice and cool but it ain't damp, they say that's good for plonk. My boss keeps his drays down here, though the nags are stabled up above. The stallholders store things here too. Trouble is that they banned us from bringing the big trucks into the market, so now all the produce mostly goes to the Vic market, pity really, I always liked coming into the city. This is where I leave me dray, Miss. Let me just help you down.'

Phryne accepted a hand and jumped lightly down onto cold clean cobbles.

'There's a staircase over there, Miss,' said the drayman from the horse's head. 'Take you up into the middle of the market.'

Phryne nodded and smiled and walked in the opposite direction. The drayman was about to call after her, but thought again. That, he realized as he uncoupled the tug girth and allowed his horse to walk out between the shafts, was a determined woman, and his mum had always told him not to get in the way of a determined woman.

Phryne followed her nose to a side of the market which was clearly a cellar. Wooden walls had been built and from behind them came a strange rumbling noise and a strong medicinal smell. A slightly glazed watchman was sitting in front of the gate, which was fixed with a strong iron chain and padlock. The rich smell came mostly from him. Phryne judged it to be rather good port and hoped that it belonged to someone who could afford to lose a few bottles. This cellar occupied a fair chunk of the undercroft, which now smelt less of wine and more of horses and almost overwhelmingly of oranges. The barrows were being loaded with new fruit, and the scent was strong enough to sting Phryne's eyes. Trucks chuntered past, their drivers alert in the half-light, half-dark.

The rest of the cellar appeared to be occupied by piles of boxes, sacks, mountains of chaff-bags and half a real haystack. The roof was supported by heavy beams, soot blackened, and the stone ceiling between was of vaulted brick which might once have been red. She found the staircase and climbed up, emerging onto the central floor of the market, which was buzzing with people.

The Eastern Market was Phryne's sort of market. She sauntered past little shops selling all manner of fascinating things, like sequins and beads and feathers for hats, eye veils and galoshes and singing birds, bunches of snowdrops or hyacinths and a pound of galvanized nails wrapped in a paper poke, toffee apples as bright as red glass and red glass Venetian apples as shiny as toffee.

She watched a huge carter swing the hammer down onto a 'Gauge Your Strength' machine and heard the bell ring as she walked down the iron-lace staircase to the lower quadrant, which sold guitar strings and framed art moderne prints of ladies in Russian dress and sad clowns, sheet music and baskets, and packets of cooling feverfew and chamomile tea from Broadbent and Sons, Herbalists.

By the time she had found her way back to the main entrance to Miss Lee's shop, Phryne was carrying a new shopping basket which contained her own purse, a posy of blue hyacinths, a copy of 'The Basin Street Jazz', a packet of autumn-coloured sequins for Dot, a packet of flea powder for her new arrival and a blue leather collar and lead into which, she feared, the puppy would certainly grow. Phryne also had a one-ounce paper of strychnine—price two shillings—bought from a nearby chemist, who had asked her to sign the poisons book, which she had obligingly done, and no one had questioned whether Miss Jane Smith was actually her name, or asked her why she wanted such a deadly poison. This was instructive, she felt. For herself she had purchased a slightly off-centre silver ring with a big flawed sapphire in it, wrapped around with beautifully made silver snakes, and for the girls two small silver rings made of daisies.

She was sitting down in Mrs Johnson's teashop and examining her purchases when an official voice said, 'Well, Miss Fisher? Visiting the scene of the crime?'

'Jack dear, do sit down, have some tea?'

'Thanks, don't mind if I do.' He sat down heavily in the red-painted chair and rummaged for his pipe. Phryne opened her gold cigarette case and offered him a gasper, but he shook his head.

'Cut your wind, those things will, Miss Fisher. Two teas, Mrs Johnson,' he said to the hovering attendant. Phryne did not speak until he was sipping his strong liquorish black tea, loaded with sugar. She showed him the chemist's packet, done up with sealing wax.

'What's that?'

'Strychnine. I just bought two shillings' worth, enough to kill several horses, and no one asked me why I wanted it.'

'Hmm. Well, I can't find Miss Lee's rat poison. The autopsy'11 be this afternoon, do you want to come?'

'Not particularly, Jack dear, if you tell me about the report.'

'I'll do that. I don't like this any more than you do, you know.'

Phryne sipped her tea, which was very good, hot and strong. Her feet hurt and she was suddenly very sorry for Miss Lee, cut off from this bustling and fascinating place, which changed all the time. Detective Inspector Robinson evidently caught her thought.

'Miss Lee's asked for some Latin grammar books, you know that? I never met a murderer who wanted to further their education on remand. I'm going in to her shop to get her a grammar and some writing paper. Oh, and I've something to show you, too. Come on,' said Robinson, laying four pennies on the table to pay for the tea.

He unlocked the shop and looked around helplessly at the books all marked in foreign languages. The shop smelt dusty and unloved.

'I'll find her a grammar or two,' said Phryne. 'What have you got to show me?'

'What was in the dead man's pockets,' said Jack Robinson, opening a paper bag with 'Evidence, not to be removed' on it. He laid out the contents on Miss Lee's desk.

'Hmm. Two passports, I see. One British, one Greek. Looks like the same photograph.' Phryne looked at the dead man's face: serious and very young, dark and Middle Eastern. 'His visa, about to run out, as you said. A pen knife, a wallet, a purse which closes with rings— I've never seen a man with a purse like that—a packet of Woodbines and a box of wax matches. Purse contains five pence ha'penny. Wallet contains several letters in a language which I don't know, a script I don't know, either. It must be Hebrew—it's not Greek, anyway, Jack dear.'

And these scraps, which is more of it, whatever it is. Plus these drawings. They look old,' said Jack gloomily.

Phryne unfolded a piece of parchment, and stared at the drawing. It was inked in black and coloured in red and gold. It seemed to show a red lion being burned on a golden fire. Underneath were letters. Aur, she read. 'Hmm. That's Latin for gold. There's a lot more but it makes no sense, at least not to me. I need a classicist. What did your experts say, Jack?'

'We asked one of our own members, he can read Hebrew, and he says it don't make sense, it's just a jumble of letters, like a code.'

'And the Latin?'

'Haven't seen about that yet. Do you want to do me a favour, Miss Fisher? I don't want to put all this through the evidence book in case it proves to be something which might cause a breach of the peace. So I'll lend it to you, if you guarantee to let me know what it's about if it's germane to the case. Is it a deal?'