Observations: a tall young man somewhat underweight, bearded, recently washed and healthy Some bruises on the right knee and hip, as though he had recently fallen, probably sustained in the spasm which had also cracked his spine. Small transverse cut on the ball of the right index finger. A clean cut, probably from a razor or from the edge of a piece of paper. The pathologist paid no further attention to it or to the bruises. No tattoos, scars, or identifying marks and he had all his own teeth. His wisdom teeth had not fully erupted so his age was estimated at between sixteen and twenty-five. Cause of death: strychnine poisoning. Contents of stomach: a starchy scented fluid composed of bread and black tea. Subject died about one hour after eating this austere last meal. Fingernails and contact traces: substance under the nails referred for chemical analysis. Phryne leafed through the folder and found another report. It was found to be common glue, such as is used by carpenters and shoemakers. Chemical burns on the hands.
To the sound of a Detective Inspector slurping his way through a second cup of tea, Phryne reviewed her notes. There was no doubt that he had died of the effects of strychnine. The pathologist had made a note:
'No strychnine found in the stomach contents, but it passes into the bloodstream quickly, being one of the most fast-acting poisons.'
Phryne replaced all the pages, ordered them quickly, and closed the folder. She replaced it exactly as it had been, laid her notebook on the hall table, and came in saying brightly, 'Well, Jack dear, how nice to see you! Is Mr Butler looking after you? No, really, I couldn't eat another thing, Mr B, not after that wonderful lunch.'
'Miss Fisher,' said the policeman, standing up and swallowing a mouthful of scone. 'Nice of you to ask me to tea. No one has a hand with scones like Mrs Butler.'
He wasn't adverting to the report which he had carelessly left on the table where any passing nosy woman could read it, so Phryne didn't mention it either. She sat down at the tea table. 'Any news?'
'No, no one seems to have seen anything. However, I've got hopes of something breaking soon. Has to be soon, or the case'll go stale and my chief'11 go spare. You got anything?'
'Not really, but you shall have it as soon as any of it makes sense. You know Miss Lee didn't do it, Jack, don't you?'
'We haven't got a lot of evidence, certainly,' admitted the policeman. 'But have you found anyone else who fits as well?'
'I'll meet the rest of his friends tonight,' said Phryne. 'At Kadimah, in Drummond Street. Then we shall see what we shall see, and hear what we shall hear. There's some secret element in this, Jack. I've had those papers translated. They were in a code, and they translate into another code. The pictures are all the stages making the philosopher's stone.'
'Like Johnson's play, The Alchemist?' asked the policeman. He had been to a night course in Elizabethan drama and had never regretted it. Shakespeare was now his constant companion.
'Yes, like that,' answered Phryne, a little taken aback. 'I'll find out more when I have time to read the texts. I've even got Elias Ashmole's Theatrum Chemicum Brittanicum. Miss Lee found it in a French auction and bought it for the dead man. Poor thing. Never even saw it. However, I don't know if it will help. The Rabbi had a lot of books, but they were all in Hebrew and he said that he knew nothing about alchemy.'
'Rabbi?'
'Rabbi Elijah. Simon Michaels was his student. He lives in St Kilda. If you are going to talk to him, Jack, I have to tell you that he's ... difficult.' She smiled at her choice of words.
'Difficult?'
'Really difficult,' Phryne emphasized.
'Well, must be going,' said Jack Robinson reluctantly. He had, however, cleared the plate of scones. 'I'm afraid that you may have taken on an impossible task, Miss Fisher. I don't see how you're going to find this murderer when the resources of the police force can't track him down.'
'But the resources of the police force aren't trying to track him down,' Phryne pointed out reasonably. 'You don't believe he, she or they exist. I do. So I have the advantage,' she said, escorting him to the door.
'About the only advantage I have,' she added, as the door shut on Jack Robinson and the buff folder.
She poured herself a cup of the cooling tea and thought. She had sent Dot to the market to look for the customers, Bert and Cec to the understorey to find out whatever it was that was making her feelers twitch. The girls were still with Rebecca Levin, having studied up on Leviticus. Mr and Mrs Butler had a free evening tonight, and Phryne needed to read some alchemy so that she would have a sporting chance of understanding Kadimah's conversation on the topic.
She took her notebook up to her own room, scribbled for a while, then sat down to attempt to acquire some grasp of alchemy and of the Holy Kabala, which she felt was a big task for one rather somnolent afternoon.
She laid out Waite's The Holy Quabbalah, the Theatrum, Thomas Vaughan's Lumen de Lumine and Euphrates, the Secreta Secretorum by Roger Bacon and Dee's Monas Heiroglyphica. The Emerald Tablet Explain 'd by an anonymous Elizabethan lay open on her bed.
She read solidly for an hour, swore, lit a cigarette and rolled over onto her back with Secreta Secretorum balanced on her stomach. The black letter Elizabethan printing was easy to read but it made very little sense, and as for the Holy Quabbalah, she had grasped only the very first of the first principles, that is, that it needed a lifetime's study.
'And I don't have a lifetime,' she said aloud. Thomas Vaughan the Brecon man was the easiest alchemist to follow, and by far the most charming.
On the same day my deare wife sickened, being a Friday, and at the same time of day, namely in the evening, my gracious God did put into my head the Secret of extracting Oyle of Halcali, which I had once, accidently, found at Pinner in Wakefield in the dayes of my deare wife. But it was againe taken from me by wonderful judgement of God for I could never remember how I did it, but made an hundred attempts in vaine. And now my Glorious God (whose name be praysed forever) hath brought it again into my mind and on the same day as my deare wife sickened; and on the Saturday following, which was the daye she dyed on, I extracted it by former practice.
And how his wife felt about it, left to die without her husband, was another matter of course. Phryne resisted the urge to fling the books out of the window and began again.
What was alchemy? An attempt, the difficult rabbi had said, to raise matter to its perfect state. Good. That meant base metal into gold and men into immortal bodies. And how did one go about this task?
One first acquired a patron with a lot of money, and purchased or made a lot of equipment. Phryne wondered whether to tell Mrs Butler that her bain marie which kept the soup warm was an alchemical vessel invented by Miriam, sister of Moses—later called Maria Prophetissa in case Miriam seemed too Jewish—who had founded alchimia practica. Previously it had been a theory. Miriam seems to have actually tried to do it, thought Phryne, wondering if she had succeeded. The first principle was solve et coagula, that is, to dissolve and to recombine. Thomas Vaughan told her 'in this matter is all the essentiall principles, or ingredients of the elixir, are already shut up in Nature and wee must not presume to add anything to this matter ... for the stone excludes all extractions, but what distill immediately from their own chrystalline universal Minera'. Keeping that in mind, one began to make the first mixture, the so-called gold yeast. Everyone was vague on what else went into it except for gold in fine powder and a lot of mercury metal. Then, knowing that there are three elements— salt, sulphur and mercury—one cooked this gold yeast with some other ingredient, called Terra Adamae— Adam's earth, the material of the first creation. Phryne noted that since one could not just send down to the grocer's for half a pound of Adam's earth, that there must be a recipe for that also, but could not find one.