Jack frowned in disgust and placed the last of his dictionaries on the discard pile beside his chair. Phryne glanced up from her seat at the desk, where she was just finishing off the last of her own books. "No luck?" she enquired.
"None. I hope to God it isn't aboriginal: we may never translate it."
Phryne shook her head absently, setting aside the dictionary she had just finished with and reaching for the last one. "Nothing about that murder seemed particularly 'aboriginal' to me. AMNON obviously means something to the killer: it's just a question of whether it was a personal comment from killer to victim, or intended to have meaning for whoever found the body." She set the last book aside, a brief shake of her head indicating that it had been no more helpful than the others. "If it was intended for the victim, it would have been done while he was still conscious. Let's assume it was intended to be understood by whoever found the body. That means it can't be foreign. A name would make sense. But a name from where?"
"I've never come across it before."
She quirked her lip at him. "So it probably isn't Shakespeare, then. Where else might one find a name that isn't widely used but would still be fairly widely recognisable?"
They were silent for a moment, Jack frowning at the carpet, Phryne casting her eyes around the room for inspiration. Idly, she ran her gaze along her shelves, hoping that a title might leap out at her. Almost immediately, one did. "Of course!" She was across the room in a moment, retrieving the book from the shelf and waving it triumphantly at Jack. "The Bible. What other book is as widely known, and found in almost every home in Australia? And what other book contains a cast of thousands of obscure characters and events, known to the initiated, but a mystery to the less religiously inclined?"
He was on his feet and at her side as her smile faded in the face of an obvious problem.
"I agree that it seems like the right answer, but even if Amnon is in there, how do we find him? Dot didn't recognise the name, so it must be obscure, and we hardly have time to read the whole book."
Once again they both frowned in thought, until Phryne handed the pristine, leather-bound volume to Jack and reached up onto the shelf again. "We don't have to: we just have to look him up." She carried a large, heavy book over to the desk and set it down. "Strong's Exhaustive Bible Concordance. A complete alphabetical index of every single word in the Bible."
"Every single word?"
"With its Hebrew or Greek root, and cross-referenced to every other occurrence of the original word in scripture. Hence 'exhaustive'."
"I would never have picked you for a biblical scholar, Phryne," he remarked as he set the Bible down by her hand.
"Jack! You know I've been an ardent pursuer of biblical knowledge for years."
He snorted with laughter at the double entendre as Phryne heaved open the cover of the concordance and continued their search for 'Amnon', then leaned over her shoulder with his arm curled almost absently around her waist. Her small cry of triumph informed him that this time she had found what they were after.
"Here. Second Samuel 3, verse 2. A son of king David. And again at Second Samuel 13, verse 1. There's a whole cluster of them."
Jack was already flipping through the pages of the Bible, endeavouring to locate the requisite section. "Here." He sat down in her chair, and she moved unthinkingly to his lap. He glanced up at her, then back down at the book in his hands, and read aloud. "'And it came to pass after this that Absalom the son of David had a fair sister, whose name was Tamar; and Amnon the son of David loved her. And Amnon was so vexed that he fell sick for his sister Tamar; for she was a virgin; and Amnon thought it hard for him to do anything to her.'"
He paused, and they glanced at one another again. "I think I can see where this is going," Phryne remarked grimly, and Jack abandoned reading aloud in favour of skimming ahead.
"He rapes her," he confirmed in tones every bit as grim as Phryne's, still skimming. "And King David is 'very wroth' but doesn't seem to do anything about it."
"Of course not."
"Mmm. But Absalom feels differently, and murders Amnon two years later."
"Well as far as I'm concerned, he had it coming." Phryne folded her arms and scowled, her eyes glittering dangerously.
He sighed. "Unfortunately, the law does not see it your way. We have our Amnon; now we just need to locate our Absalom." He gave a sad smile. "And our poor Tamar, wherever she may be."
"It isn't fair, Jack! Some poor girl is raped by her brother, and instead of helping protect her we're going to take away the only person who cares enough about her to do something about it."
"Phryne..." He set the Bible aside and wrapped his arms around her as he had wanted to do so many times in the past when she was upset. He pulled her face into the crook of his neck, feeling her shift her body to fit more snugly against his. He kissed her cheek. "I understand how you feel, love. I do. But we can't abandon the law in favour of vengeance. Think what horrors that would unleash." He sighed, wishing he could fix things somehow. "Phryne?" He nudged her head gently with his until she looked up at him, eyes glittering with angry tears, lips pouting not artfully for once but in genuine sorrow. He used his thumb to caress her cheek and drew her down for a kiss. "I'm sorry, love, that I can't make it any different."
She nodded, calmer now, her hand caressing the back of his neck. "I do understand, Jack. I know what we have to do."
He shook his head slightly. "You don't have to, Phryne, not if you don't want to. I can handle this case with Collins: you don't have to be involved." The kindness – the understanding – in his tone and the look on his face astounded her, and she found herself thinking, not for the first time, that perhaps being vulnerable with this man wasn't so bad. "I don't want to see you unhappy. Having to arrest 'Absalom' for murder, knowing that he will hang... I can understand why you don't want to be involved in that."
"But you have to be."
He nodded. "It's my job. I am the law's servant-"
"-not its master," she finished for him, and as he nodded again, a slight smile on his lips, she made her decision. "This is our case. I want to see it through."
She had expected some resistance, some comment to imply that her personal feelings might compromise her involvement, but instead he just nodded for a third time. "Very good."