Raisins and almonds - Poisoned Pen Press (UK)

0 Kerry Greenwood
on the window. She turned the corner past the hardware shop
into a street of little houses, dominated by the huge red brick
wall of the Nurses’ Home. Yossi Liebermann, it seemed, lived
in Faraday Street in a boarding house, and Faraday Street was
entirely lined with resting vans and horseless drays. This had
meant that Phryne had to park her own car in Lygon Street and
walk directly into the gale. She wished for a huge safety pin to
secure her coat. She was confident of her ability to make this
fashionable, if necessary.
The hot wind grabbed at her hair and pulled at her garments. She
lost her grip on the edge of the coat and it bellied and flapped like a
sail. Phryne Fisher was about to lose her temper with her garments,
and her young man watched with some interest as she dragged the
coat off and rolled it into a loose, crease-forming bundle.
‘There are times when I swear I consider that all fashion
designers hate women,’ she snarled. ‘Give me a man who designs
clothes that can be worn in weather! What’s the number of the
house, Simon?’
‘Here, I believe.’ Simon opened the front door of a small
single-fronted house. Simultaneously he put his fingers to his
lips, reaching up and touching a little tube, like a metal casemoth,
nailed aslant inside the doorway.
‘What’s that?’ she asked, coming in gladly out of the dust into
a dim hallway and a very strong smell of soup. Someone was
making stock. Phryne smelt an odd addition to this domestic
scent: something like glue?
‘It’s a mezuzah. It’s a bit of the Torah, the Book of Laws, the
part of the bible which tells us to love God,’ he said. ‘Shalom,
Yossi! How are you, old fellow? This is my friend, Miss Fisher.’
A thin young man, already balding, stooped down and
took Phryne’s hand very gingerly, as though she might bite.
‘Delighted,’ he said in a thick accent which was not quite
German or Russian but had elements of both. ‘Simon, I have no
fitting place to entertain a lady, you know that, and it’s Sunday,
only Kadimah will be open…’