Raisins and almonds - Poisoned Pen Press (UK)

Raisins and Almonds 11
to fear the robbers. But now she was weeping desolately. Her
make-up was being eroded into runnels by her tears, and Dot
offered her a handkerchief.
‘Perhaps it can be mended,’ said Dot.
‘No, it’s kaput,’ said Mrs. Katz. But she gathered up the pieces
nonetheless. She and Dot stood the furniture up again, and they
surveyed the room. Books had been emptied out of a bookcase,
shaken and flung down. A small table and two easy chairs had
been upturned and the springs were now showing in the chairs
where the undersides had been ripped.
‘They were looking for something,’ said Dot.
‘Something small,’ agreed Mrs. Katz, drying her eyes. ‘Ai,
such a silly woman I am, to cry over a plate when we are all alive,
but my mother it belonged to. Apart from her Sabbath silver it
was all I could bring…but the silver is still here,’ she said with
relief, setting up a beautiful nine-branched candlestick on the
mantel and counting out spoons and forks into their wrappings
of tissue. Dot shook out and refolded a much-darned white
damask tablecloth, and Mrs. Katz replaced it in a wooden chest
with the silver and the candlestick.
‘It is a Menorah,’ she said unexpectedly to Dot. ‘We are Jews.’
‘Yes,’ agreed Dot, re-shelving books. Mrs. Katz appeared to
be waiting for her to say something. ‘That’s what this case is
about,’ she added. ‘Mr. Abrahams asked Miss Phryne to look
into the murder in the bookshop.’
‘Abrahams asked her? Benjamin Abrahams? And she agreed?’
‘Yes, she’s a detective,’ said Dot, and blushed slightly.
Detective never seemed like a really respectable profession to
Dot and she still wasn’t entirely used to it.
‘Mr. Abrahams, he is respected man,’ commented Mrs. Katz,
after a pause. ‘Abrahams is a mensch, that’s what Max says. See,
this—I am glad this is not broken. This belonged to my grandfather,
who made such things.’
She turned a brass key, and then lifted the lid of a small, intricately
carved wooden box. It began to play a Strauss waltz, very
tinkly and pretty, and in the box a small clockwork bird opened