It was very fine. The figure was of a young girl caught in a windstorm. Her finely detailed hands and face were made of ivory. She wore a decorated cloche hat and a raincoat which the wind was blowing so that the cloth flattened against her body and billowed behind her like a bell. Under the heavy cloth Phryne saw a froth of lacy bronze petticoat. One hand was holding her hat, and the other was grabbing her rebellious garment. It was innocent, charming and accomplished and Phryne liked it very much.
A lovely thing,' she said to Simon. He smiled and his mother made a harsh hissing noise. Mr Abrahams patted her arm but he might as well have been patting the slender carved mahogany arm of his chair. Phryne knew the signs. This was a maternal lioness on guard against a predator who was stalking one of her cubs. This could be borne, as Phryne knew that her intentions were honourable. However, if this dinner was not going to be unbearably dull, she needed to get Mrs Abrahams alone. An explanation would either clear the air or expel Miss Fisher from the house—and either would be preferable to this subdued hostility.
'Mrs Abrahams, perhaps you could show me the paintings in the hall? I should like another look at that Renoir,' she asked, and the lady of the house accepted reluctantly.
When the door had safely closed on the slightly puzzled male faces, Phryne said, 'What have you got against me, Mrs Abrahams?' and watched the closed face come alive in dazzling rage. Porcelain, she fancied, cracked as Julia Abrahams demanded, 'What do you want with my son?'
'I just want to borrow him,' said Phryne sweetly 'I'll give him back when you want him. I know I can't keep him and I won't hurt him.'
Mrs Abrahams cocked her sleek black head and considered her visitor. When she spoke again, her voice had the same lilt as her husband's.
'You don't want to marry him?' 'No.'
There was a pause, then Simon's mother demanded, 'What's wrong with him?'
Phryne released the laugh she had been suppressing, and after a moment Mrs Abrahams joined in. Her finishing school poise slid from her like a cloak from the shoulders and she laughed so hard that she had to lean her immaculate back against the wall.
Phryne, who had been wondering what a sensual man like Benjamin Abrahams had seen in his stiff cold wife, was enlightened. Her whole attitude had changed, her immobile face was mobile, and she was hiccuping with mirth. Finally she groped for a handkerchief and wiped her eyes.
'Ai, what a pickle I've been in,' she confessed. 'Ever since Simon told us about you. Such a beautiful lady— he's been singing your praises for days, and then Bennie employed you to get the excellent Miss Lee out of jail, so you would be close to my son and you could not fail to notice his ... his ...'
'Infatuation,' Phryne completed the sentence. 'Don't worry. I can manage him. He is not,' she added, her hand on the door, 'the first young man in that condition that I have seen.'
'No, he wouldn't be,' agreed Mrs Abrahams. 'You must call me Julia. Come and look at the Renoir, now, and let's not make liars of ourselves. It's a pretty thing, isn't it? I was so angry with Bennie when he bought it, it took all our savings. But he told me he'd buy me a fur coat when he sold it, and he made our fortune just after that with the Michelangelo red-chalk Madonna, so I got my fur coat and kept the girl and the cat as well.'
'The Michelangelo? Oh, please do call me Phryne, Julia. I have a feeling that I heard about it. I was in Paris, just after the war.'
'You were? It was the coup of my Bennie's career as a dealer. After that he packed up and moved here, because one cannot count on two miracles in a lifetime. There we were, Bennie and me, I had married against my father's wishes, he did not like Ben because he was so poor and he thought I was wasting my expensive education, but we were in love, and we sold pictures and objets d'art. Ben went to all the auctions of deceased estates, and in one Italian sale, an old man who died without heirs, he bought a big trunk of drawings and etchings for a few francs because he thought it might contain some of the Hokusai screen pictures popular in the nineties—that's what he could see at the top. They were an inspiration to the Impressionists, you know, and I used to remount them as pictures and we could always sell them. It was difficult, because they were printed on very cheap paper. We hauled the trunk home to our atelier, which was freezing, it was the middle of winter, so cold that ice was forming on the inside of our windows, and we upturned it so that all the prints and scrolls fell out onto the oilcloth. And Bennie was unrolling them and sorting them while I was making coffee, and I heard him say a very rude word.'
'And she turned and saw me unrolling a full length red chalk sketch of the Madonna, a study for a sculpture, perhaps. On vellum so old that it cracked,' said Mr Abrahams' rich voice from the door. And I said "Look, Julia," and she looked, and there were the initials in the corner, clear as the day Michelangelo drew them, and she sat back on her heels and said, "First, some coffee, and then we rejoice that God has not forgotten us." But I was so nervous that when the coffee came I spilled it, though not on the Michelangelo drawing. Come, beautiful ladies, if you have finished with the Renoir we can sit down, hmm?' He led the way into the library and they sat down again. Julia sipped her sherry, smiling, and her male relatives exhaled a breath of not-very-well-concealed relief.
'Then what happened?' asked Phryne, agog.
'Oh, then we carried it together—such a journey, we were terrified that something would happen to tear the miracle from us—into the lie de Cite to the Sotheby's man, and the relief when we laid it on his table and Bennie gave him the receipts for the provenance, they had to check of course that the dead count's family had such a thing in their possession, but it was clear title, inventory entries right back to the day they bought it from Michelangelo's estate. The dead man had no heirs, so we weren't taking anything away from anyone, such a great thing the Lord did for us. And we didn't have any money for a celebration so we had to walk back in the snow, you remember?' she asked fondly, and Benjamin Abrahams chuckled.
'I could smell trouble in France—there were synagogues desecrated and much anti-Semitic dreck in the newspapers. The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, Jehl Even when everyone knows that it is a Russian forgery, they were reprinting it. So when the chalk drawing was sold, we came out here to join my brother Chaim, he was not doing well in business and wanted a position, and he's family, of course, and a great help Chaim is, my right-hand man, eh Chaim?'
'A mitzvah,' said Chaim. A blessing.'
'No, no, Chaim, don't say that. You're too modest. I couldn't have managed without you,' said his brother.
Chaim shook his head, smiled, and took some more sherry. It was evidently an old argument. Mr Abrahams continued, 'So I came here and bought a house and a little property, we are very lucky. And you, Miss Fisher?'
'Phryne, please. I was born here and I was very poor until a lot of young men were killed in the Great War, and then I was suddenly rich and hauled off to England. After I left school there wasn't anything for me to do but Good Works or flower arranging, so I ran away to Paris, and then I came here because a man hired me to find out if his daughter was being poisoned by her husband. I like it here. I bought a house in St Kilda, I have a maid and a staff and two adopted daughters, a cat called Ember and just yesterday my household was increased by a new puppy. I've been very lucky, too,' said Phryne, who was always willing to count her blessings.