Raisins and almonds - Poisoned Pen Press (UK)

0 Kerry Greenwood
and gradually started to recover from the shock. The voices rose
to fever pitch then began to die down.
‘That’s the last revelation I have for today,’ said Phryne. ‘Not a
nice one but it is the last. Everyone else in this room is definitely
who they say they are.’
She looked around. The students were clumped together. The
three Kaplans had the advantage of knowing each other from birth.
Yossi was well known. Everyone was now known, except this strange
woman who had seduced Simon and solved the mysteries.
There was something that everyone was dying to know but
no one liked to ask.
Mrs. Katz took another biscuit and nudged her husband,
who shrugged. Julia Abrahams looked at her husband, but he
was staring into his glass. The students shifted and muttered
but did not speak. Then Simon rose from his chair and came
to sit next to Phryne.
‘I have to know,’ he said. His parents looked fondly at him.
Simon could be relied on to ask the question on everyone’s lips.
Such a good boy.
‘Phryne darling,’ said Simon, forgetting that his mother was
listening. ‘Tell us. Please. We have to know.’
‘What?’
Simon took Phryne’s hand in both his own. ‘How did you
know that the spy was Isaac Cohen, I mean, Ivan Vassiliov?’
‘A spy can learn a language,’ said Phryne. ‘A spy can study
Torah, be circumcised, and can acquire a protective veneer of
shared history or shared study. But one thing cannot be faked.
You can authenticate an Englishman by asking him to sing
Humpty Dumpty or Old King Cole or asking him about the Old
Woman Tossed Up in a Blanket. You can verify a Pole by asking
him to say a little prayer, which every Polish child learns at its
mother’s knee. Orphaned, lost, brought up by wolves, every
child born in Poland knows his Our Father.’
‘So?’ asked Julia Abrahams.
‘So I just took them into the next room, and asked them to
sing me Raisins and Almonds,’ said Phryne.