Castlemaine Murders Part 15

'Yes, so better you just pa.s.s as Father Chung, don't you think?' Ching Ta was not going to allow a few centuries of feud to get between him and that lacquered duck. Not to mention allowing this benevolent enemy to acquire merit by improving the lives of the indigent. 'What we don't have is money for medicine or new clothes. The Ah sisters haven't been out of the house since July because they tore their only good dress.'

'That can be amended. I shall speak to a builder today, and also arrange for new clothes to be bought and repairs to be done. You could also do with some furniture,' added Lin. 'A carpenter shall make some for you.'

'No need,' said the priest. 'If we have funds, then the ox, the cart and the young lady can go and buy ready-made at Niebuhr's General Merchants. We can at least get Old Lady Chang a bed of her own. I've been trying to get her to leave that shack and come and sleep, at least, in the temple, but she accused me of having designs on her person and said that she had quarrelled with all the G.o.ds and wasn't going to sleep with any of them unless they paid her.'

'I am sure that conversation with such a witty lady will be improving,' said Lin politely. 'Miss Fuchsia, if you please, come here. These people are now in your care. I will hire cleaners and a cook; you are not a housekeeper. You will purchase suitable furniture and clothes, serve tea, and read aloud. You will help with tasks like embroidery and you will listen to tales of the old days and I will pay you five shillings a week. Will you accept this task?'

Fuchsia thought about it. She would have to come into Castlemaine, that haven of forbidden delights, every day. She would have money to spend and a position of her own. Lin could hear her contrasting this with a lifetime of having her arms up to the elbow in washing-up water, confined to the farm under Great Aunt Wing's disapproving eye. She made her decision. It was no contest, really.

'You do me too much honour, Cousin,' she murmured, casting down her eyes in the proper fashion. Ching Ta beamed.

'A very virtuous maiden,' he decided. 'Old Man Lo will be delighted. He loves poetry and he can't read now that his eyes are so bad. Come and meet the others,' he said, and Lin and Fuchsia followed him.

Three of the little houses were basically sound, Lin decided, needing only a few bits of carpentry and the odd new window latch or door k.n.o.b. They had been kept as clean as possible but they were bare and sad, lacking even the calendar picture of a smiling girl which enlivened even the garages of the west. He could send a selection of cheap scroll pictures for the walls, once they had been made sound and freshly whitewashed. He had a box of them in the silk shop, to be given away free with large purchases. Two days' work would make these little houses very comfortable, he thought. Old Lady Chang would need a new house, and that would have to be built with all speed as he did not know how long Ching Ta would be able to cope with her. He mentioned the problem to Fuchsia.

'Take her back to Great Aunt,' suggested Fuchsia sweetly. 'Until her new house is ready.'

Her tone suggested a certain underlying glee. Lin decided to take no official notice of it. It was a good solution.

The Ah sisters would not come out, telling the good Father Chung from behind the door that they were delighted to see him and would welcome him suitably if they could. Old Man Lo grumbled about how long it had taken the Sam Yup Society to send any help but was mollified by the promise of poetry.

Then Fuchsia, Lin Chung and Second Cousin Kong rode into Castlemaine proper to purchase a few households' worth of goods.

Only ten minutes into their negotiations with Niebuhr's, Home Furnishings, Lin was very glad that he had picked Fuchsia. She knew exactly what she wanted, was not daunted by the size of the task, and was not going to take no for an answer. Niebuhr's clerk had never met anyone like her and fell in with her every wish, enunciated in her clear little voice from under the shady hat.

There was more to a household than a few beds and chairs, Lin found. There were also buckets and pots and cups and saucers and bowls and cutlery and rush mats and linen and tablecloths and sheets and mattresses and curtains. There was also soap and towels and embroidery silks and powder and hairpins. Two loads went back to the little houses before Fuchsia was satisfied. Lin did wonder why she had insisted on a trestle table and a lot of cheap folding chairs, but a.s.sumed that inside that glossy black head resided the same organising genius shared by Great Aunt Wing and Grandmama Lin.

Lin loitered outside M'Creery and Hopkin, the drapers, as Fuchsia worked her magic on the astounded Miss Lobban. It was amazing. Yesterday she had been an insolent, frightened, rebellious girl. Now she was a competent woman. Remarkable what power and responsibility can do, Lin thought, considering what it had done for him. His thoughts returned to the words of the aged and unpleasant Old Lady Hu. Look for the couriers by the third blazed tree on the Moonlight road, she had said. That was very close to where the Lin farm was now. Perhaps the solution was near at hand. That still did not explain how the scholar-herbalist Sung Ma, who must have been trusted, and three other servants had vanished without a trace.

He saw himself reflected in the window. The ca.s.sock suited him. It was very close to a Chinese scholar's gown, which he had never worn. A hand on his shoulder made him turn around.

'Good morning!' exclaimed a stout, well-dressed gentleman in identical dress. 'I noticed you from across the road and I believe that you are taking charge of those poor Chinese people in Union Street. Father John,' he introduced himself. 'From Saint Michael's.'

'Chung,' said Lin, praying to a variety of G.o.ds for guidance and protection. 'From Canton.'

'I don't know any of the mission people,' said Father John. Lin thanked his lucky stars. 'But they say that the situation in China is very bad now.'

'So bad that my little mission was dissolved and I was sent home,' said Lin. 'I am attached to Saint Saviour's in Brunswick. I am travelling around, tending to the remnant Chinese people.'

'But, Father Chung, I have some doubts about those people,' said Father John, leaning closer. He was scented with pipe smoke and starch. 'I believe that some of them cling stub-bornly to their pagan ways.'

'They are very old,' said Lin gently. 'As old people go back to the language they spoke as children, they also go back to old superst.i.tions. We must care for their bodies,' said Lin, remem-bering sermons from a hundred school chapels. 'G.o.d will find a safe place for their souls.'

'I believe that you are a good man,' said Father John. He had made up his mind. 'If there is anything which we can provide, ask for it. You will find me in the church,' he said over his shoulder as he strode away. 'Tea every day at four for the schoolchildren whose parents are working. And you might like to come to Sung Eucharist at ten on Sunday.'

And there goes another good man, thought Lin, watching the straight back and determined stride. If the devil came to Castlemaine, he would get such a belting with that vicar's umbrella that he'd think himself back in h.e.l.l.

Fuchsia emerged in a flurry with an extraordinary number of bags.

'Cousin, that was the vicar!' she exclaimed. 'He stopped to talk to you!'

'And we had a nice conversation about souls,' said Lin. 'Have you finished the shopping?'

'Yes, for the moment,' she answered. 'I need some real green tea and medicines from the Health and Harmony Medicine and Tea Import Company in Bendigo. That's where Great Aunt Wing gets her tea, herbs and pearl pills from. Miss Lobban allowed me to telephone an order to them and they will put the parcel on the ten twenty-five. I have used your credit freely, Cousin. I hope all is as you wish.'

'You are doing beautifully,' Lin rea.s.sured her. 'I want to talk to the old people about the old days, and I want to find out some secrets which they may know. How do you suggest that we arrange this?'

Fuchsia blushed with pleasure. No one had ever consulted her opinion before. She thought before she answered.

'Presenting all these new things will please the old people, but it will also upset their day,' she said. 'The rest of the morning will have to be spent in arranging and rearranging the new furniture and then in washing and arraying themselves in their new clothes. We will need Second Cousin Kong to move heavy things around. Perhaps we might put on Little Flower's nosebag and put her behind the houses so that she will be out of the way and doesn't get a chance to kick anyone. The s.p.a.ce under the pepper trees in front of the houses is very suitable for what I have in mind. If you would like to go away for four hours, most admired and generous Cousin Chung, I think I can arrange a sight for you which will please your eyes and meet your purposes.'

'I shall go to the art gallery,' said Lin. 'And cultivate my taste for beauty.'

He bowed and walked away.

In the sixteenth year of the reign of the glorious Emperor Lord of the Dragon Throne Kwong Sui of the Ching Dynasty, Cold Dew, ninth month, sixteenth day.

To the respected Uncle from the errant nephew Sung Ma, greetings in haste. I have been given one more task to perform, Uncle, and because it is for the Lin family who have been so good to me, I shall perform it. Then I shall return for your welcome. Bid my young sister Mai expect me at her husband's residence in Canton before the end of the summer. I have already booked my pa.s.sage on the SS Annabel Wilson, leaving Melbourne on the 29th of July 1857, solar calendar.

The one whose strength is no longer bitter, Sung Ma.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN.

Despite ten years' exile and isolation The sight of a dimple caught him unawares Nothing should be more feared than this d.a.m.nation How many lives are wrecked by women's snare?

Chu Shi, translated by Lin Yutang Phryne occupied her morning with a saunter and a cup of coffee at the Midland Hotel. It was reasonable coffee, though not the dangerous inky beverage which her caffeine-addicted body really required. She mused on Thomas Beaconsfield and his strange fate. If Phryne at Luna Park had not grabbed the boot of what she thought was a carnival dummy, a thing she had never done before, the lost heir to the marquisate of Harborough would have remained forever lost.

And that was what someone had in mind. And the question was, why?

What did it matter? Even if one of the great grandparents of one of the n.o.ble families had proved to be a murderer, this was not a bar to acceptability in polite society. Phryne recalled several t.i.tled people positively revelling in the appalling things their ancestors had done during the Hundred Years' War or, even more recently, reciting the Dirty Doings at the Crimea starring Sir Francis Bingham, later Lord Lucan, which she had had inflicted on her by one of Cardigan's relatives, was it? She regretted that she had not paid more attention to ancestral gossip while she had been living in a miasma of it. As far as Phryne could remember, every family had a least one black sheep of whom they were secretly rather proud, whether it was for worshipping Satan in the h.e.l.lfire Club, losing all the family property at vingt-et-un, debauching dairymaids or marrying Gaiety girls. She supposed that the General Earl Haig could not be considered a black sheep. He was just an ordinary monster who killed all those young men...The aristocracy would forgive each other anything except shooting a fox.

So why bother about dead-very dead-Thomas Beacons-field now? Who cared if someone killed him in 1857?

Where, as Jack Robinson would say, was the money? Cui bono?

Phryne ordered another cup, asking the server to treble the amount of coffee and heat the water until it was really boiling and she would happily pay a sixpence.

There were three possibilities, she decided. An inheri-tance, an insurance claim or a bet. It should be possible to find out about the will of the late Thomas Beaconsfield, a.s.suming he had made one and a.s.suming that it was on record. St Katherine's House in London would have it and someone could find it for Phryne for the fee of one shilling. If there had been an insurance policy then Lady Alice Har-borough would possibly know. Phryne had a vague feeling that some scandal attached to that name. No, it was the Marchioness, presumably Lady Alice's mother, who had- done something. Run away with the chauffeur? No, worse. She had sold her jewellery and joined a mission. She had gone to Africa to nurse lepers and her husband, the Marquess of Harborough, had filed for divorce. A pa.s.sion for good causes clearly ran in the female line of the Harboroughs.

Which was entirely unrelated to what Phryne was supposed to be considering. If the bone of contention or benefit of some sort had been a bet, it would seem to be safely locked in the past except, again, there must be some reason why a living person was trying to block Phryne's research. Didn't they put bets on the book at White's? And how could one gain access to it? No, she struck that idea from her mental notepad. It was too silly. Inheritance or insurance. Both would need research which could not be done in Castlemaine.

And why should she search for old newspapers when that policeman-was his name Laurence?-was supposed to be doing it for her? It was far too nice a day to sit in an archive. Most of which, in Phryne's experience, were under the ground and had not been dusted since the declaration of the Boer War.

Phryne braved the Imperial's imprisoned telephone again with a fresh purse of pennies and persisted until she gained not only Russell Street Police Station itself but her old friend Detective Inspector 'call me Jack' Robinson.

'Miss Fisher,' he said gloomily. Phryne could envisage his unremarkable countenance and smell the dank scent of police station tea, which in other places would have been cla.s.sified as 'drain cleaner' or 'tar derivative'.

'Jack dear,' Phryne began. 'I'm in Castlemaine. Just wondered if anything had turned up on that bit of newspaper found in the mummy.'

'Oh, yes, Miss Fisher, it was the Mount Alexander Mail all right.'

'Good. The man's name is, in all probability, the Lord Thomas Beaconsfield, son of the Marquess of Harborough. He vanished one night in 1857 from the goldfields along with his mate. All I know about the mate is that he was a pink-faced lad called Chumley.'

'And you found this by . . .?' he trailed the question. She could hear him making notes. Jack Robinson was always supplied with at least a dozen very sharp pencils.

'Listening for half the night to an amazing local bore. I have, however, his dad's reminiscences of the goldfields, which contain, among other things, this information. The dad in question, one Jim Harrison, moved into the abandoned Beaconsfield claim and struck it moderately rich.'

'How did Beaconsfield end up as an Egyptian mummy?' asked Jack Robinson, reflecting that it was a question he had never asked before in a lifetime of asking questions.

'One Professor Beecham, who embalmed unclaimed corpses, seems to have done it, and then the body was sold with his effects to Carter's Travelling Miracles and Marvels Show. He became the Wild Colonial Boy, to be sold later to Luna Park as a rather unconvincing cowboy. Come to think of it, the original moleskins had TB embroidered inside the waistband. You can check.'

'Good. Now, why is anyone interested in him in 1928?'

Phryne sighed.

'A very good question, and one to which I do not have the answer.'

'Hmm,' said Robinson.

'However, it is probable that a relative, Lady Alice Harbor-ough, is in Australia. And also that Roderick Cholmondeley, heir of the Duke of Dunstable, may be the person sending my household surprise packages.'

'I'll look into that,' said Robinson. 'Already found out a bit about the Roderick boy. He's been making enquiries up and down about an Amelia Gascoigne, who kept a boarding house in Port. Hired a private detective, who mentioned it to one of our blokes. Been looking up birth certificates, he has. Says it's a change from lurking outside hotel rooms. Ran advertis.e.m.e.nts in all the papers. Cholmondeley is staying at Scott's and we are keeping an eye on him. Luna Park wants to talk to him about sabotaging their mermaid to deliver bad fortunes. Funny sense of humour, the n.o.bility. We found the owner of that motor-cycle which nearly ran Miss Dot down. It was a hired bike. The hirer was described as a thin, darkish bloke with no identifying marks who might have been English. He paid a pound for a week's hire and brought it back after one day. Gave an address in Station Street, Port Melbourne which does not exist. According to the owner of the bike he gave his name as Thomas Atkins.'

'Oh, very funny,' said Phryne flatly.

'Might be a clue. He might have been a soldier. You staying in Castlemaine?'

'For the present. I'm at the Imperial. You can call me here and leave a message.'

'Very well, Miss Fisher. Nice little town. You can't get into too much trouble in Castlemaine.'

'I devoutly hope not,' Phryne told him, and hung up. She had just seen Lin Chung walk past and strolled out to fall in behind him.

He walked slowly, enjoying the air, and turned at the corner to go into the art gallery, housed in the post office until the splendid new gallery could be built. Since the arguments about it had gone on since 1913, and would probably continue, the paintings were safe enough where they were, in this staid stone building on the corner of Lyttleton and Barker Streets. There was something satisfying about a building with a bell tower. Especially when it was crammed with paintings.

'I have always thought Elioth Gruner underappreciated,' she remarked quietly to the elegant figure in the ca.s.sock. 'Australia is so suited to post impressionism.'

'The quality of the light,' agreed Lin, not looking around from his perusal of In the Orchard. 'This McCubbin is partic-ularly fine. You can feel the settling, peaceful chill as the sun goes down and the man returns to family and dinner and firelight.'

'I always thought of him as a swaggie, hoping for a bed in the cowshed and a handout,' said Phryne.

Lin smiled and did not reply.

'How are you getting on with your puzzle?' asked Phryne.

'I think I shall have some more pieces of the jigsaw in a few hours,' he said. 'I have been playing the bountiful young master and it is surprisingly pleasant. You?'

'I've got the mummy's name and when he died and who embalmed him and why, and how he got to Luna Park,' she said. 'But why someone is pursuing me now-not the faintest. This is a good collection, isn't it? Someone must have bought up bundles of post impressionists when the place still had some gold left over.'

'This has always been a prosperous place,' replied Lin. 'It has that comfortably wealthy feeling about it, as though it hasn't starved or been seriously threatened for a long time. Very hard to stay alert. Ah! Here is a map of the diggings.'

'What a mess,' said Phryne. 'Holes everywhere. I see that they closed the camp and made everyone move into their nice, well laid out town. A good idea. Did you find your Chinese people?'

'Yes, in Union Street. They are terribly poor. I have just bought a lot of furniture and goods and talked to Tonks about sending a builder to repair three of the cottages and build another one, demolishing a bark shack in which a very old pros-t.i.tute was lying on the floor... but I have done better than just buying them presents. I have brought them Miss Fuchsia.'

He explained about Fuchsia. Phryne was impressed.

'I suppose she was restless and discontented because she had no scope to show what she could do,' she remarked, moving to look at a fine Rupert Bunny painting of a woman and child at the beach. 'She's probably another Grandmother Lin in training.'

'That is a frightening thought,' said Lin gravely. 'And you are probably right.'

'Do you think,' said Phryne, 'that someone would go to all this trouble, bombs and a.s.saults and so on, just for the honour of their family?'

'It is possible,' Lin replied. 'We would be looking for a very young, idealistic person to whom their family was very important, though. I don't know how many of them there are in this modern world.'

'Hmm,' she said. 'I believe that there may be one. But better I should look for a baser motive, I think.'

'Always wise,' agreed Lin. 'One can always rely on base motives.'

'Have a cup of coffee with me?'

'I had better get back to Union Street. But I will see you tonight,' said Lin. They were standing shoulder to shoulder, considering the Rupert Bunny, and Lin's hand moved very gently to touch the back of Phryne's hand. A thrill ran right through her, grounding in the base of her spine.

'Tonight,' she said.

In a nearby mirror she watched his slim back as he walked out of the post office. She sighed and continued her perusal of the gallery's collection.

When Lin returned to Union Street it had been transformed. The bark hut had been felled-one touch would have done it, Lin decided-and the remains removed, and a taciturn man and a boy in a straw hat were measuring for foundations. The s.p.a.ce under the pepper trees had been swept and sprinkled with water to lay the dust, and the trestle table had been erected. On it was a red tablecloth, for celebration, and all of the food which he had brought from Melbourne, with the addition of mounds of rice. He saw new dishes, chopsticks, plates, cups, and each setting had its own teapot. These were not new. They were clearly old and valued companions. A Chinese household may be bare of every comfort and down to its last brush and sewing needle, but it always has a teapot.

The residents, too, had been transformed. At one end of the table sat the priest, Ching Ta, his beard freshly combed, wearing a new shirt. Next to him were two very old ladies wearing art silk dresses patterned with hibiscus flowers; one blue, one yellow. Two old men, which must have been Mr Lo and his brother, were wearing their own clothes, and the third lady, Mrs Lo, had the red version of the hibiscus dress.

The greatest transformation of all was to be found in an old woman who had clearly once been very beautiful. Her abundant white hair had been washed and dressed in a chignon with a high comb. Old Lady Chang was dressed in an elaborate embroidered gown. She had been propped up with several pillows and while she might not have been able to endure sitting up for long, she was magnificent for the moment. Lin bowed to the table in general.

'Adoptive relatives,' he said, deciding that extreme formality would please them, 'I have provided a small and unpalatable dinner for you. Will it please you to taste it?'

'It pleases, Adoptive Grandson,' said Ching Ta, reaching for the lacquered duck. Ching Ta's view was that if you are going to break vows, you should break them hard and repent after-wards. 'And while we are eating, perhaps you will tell us what brings such a munificent benefactor to our unimportant hovels?'