Raisins and almonds - Poisoned Pen Press (UK)

Chapter Four
Albedo is the flight of the white dove.
—Elias Ashmole,
Theatrum Chemicum Brittanicum 1689
Phryne left telephone messages for the beautiful Simon
Abrahams and his elusive father, who were both out according
to their maid. Phryne dined early because of the girls, and retired
to her leaf-green bedroom with a couple of books on Judaism,
a glass or two of champagne, and a headache.
This became rapidly worse as she read her way through Mr.
Louis Goldman’s The Gentile Problem. The Jews, he proved, had
always been people apart and distinct by custom and appearance,
devoted to their own laws, which enjoined education,
careful diet and cleanliness on their followers. This meant that,
preserved from plague in filthy medieval cities, they had been
accused of witchcraft and burned. They had been forbidden any
business except that of lending money at interest, and they had
been tried and condemned for usury. The Jew of Venice with
his ‘my daughter! my ducats!’ did not seem comic to Phryne
any more as she stared at the illustrations: Jews burned in fires,
drowned in rivers, hanged higher than Haman. Instead she heard
Shakespeare’s Shylock saying, ‘Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a