Castlemaine Murders Part 16

Fuchsia served tea, rice and then holiday treats to the old people. She was neat, un.o.btrusive and properly deferential; she behaved not as though she was a servant, but as though she was a favoured daughter of the household demonstrating her respect.

'I am trying to find out what happened to the couriers of a certain amount of gold,' said Lin. 'This goes to the honour of my family. I need to know where they went on the twenty-first of July 1857, when they fell out of history. Their leader was a scholar called Sung Ma.'

'So long ago,' sighed a Miss Ah. 'We will have to think about this, Adoptive Grandson.'

'No need to think,' cackled Old Lady Chang. 'I was eighteen that year. You were sixteen, Annie. Sung Ma saw me once, just once, and fell in love with me.'

'A carnal love,' scoffed Miss Ah.

'There is no other kind,' snapped Old Lady Chang.

'In your experience,' sneered the other Miss Ah.

'Be civil, women!' snarled Old Man Lo with his mouth full. 'If you spoil the first good dinner I have had in twenty years, I will strangle all of you and sell your carca.s.ses to the cat food man. Not that he'd have you,' he added. 'The kind adoptive grandson is asking you a polite question. Answer politely.'

'Sung Ma was my lover,' said Old Lady Chang. She paused for a challenge, but none came. 'One night he came to me with tears in his eyes and said that he was going home and begged me to come with him. He said he would take me as his first wife. He said that he had adequate means and that his family would accept me. I said yes, but only if we take the Lin gold. The Lins are Sze Yup, I said, our enemies. Steal their gold and we shall make merry on it in Canton.'

'And what did Sung Ma reply?' asked Fuchsia, interested.

'That he'd not betray his trust. That he was shocked that I could suggest such a thing. He left me...yes, he left me. I was angry.'

The lines of the old face, blurred with age, were still fine. She must have been bewitching when young, thought Lin. As beautiful as a G.o.ddess, with the internal ethics of a demon. A fox-spirit.

Fuchsia flicked a finger and Second Cousin Kong lifted Old Lady Chang up in her nest of pillows as she coughed. Each cough shook her frail body, from the elaborate coiffure down to the lily feet. Lin wondered if it would shake her apart.

The rest of the diners returned their attention to their food. Lin wished he had brought three lacquered ducks. It was amazing how much these wispy little people, so thin that sunlight ought to go right through them, could eat. He hoped that Fuchsia had bought pills to prevent indigestion, though he was sure that that thorough young woman would have added them to the order for the Health and Harmony tea company.

Mr Lo's brother offered an observation. 'It was all the fault of her worthless brother,' he said, nodding to Fuchsia as she refilled his tea cup. 'Chang Gao was a big, strong, lazy ruffian and decided, once their father died, that his sister would earn his living for him. She could not refuse. She could not even walk far without help. She could not scrub or cook or muster sheep, could she?'

'More virtuous women could sew,' said Miss Annie severely. 'And did, until our eyes were ruined and our fingers bled. More virtuous women made shoes and paper fans. I and my sister made artificial flowers.'

'Artificial flowers won't bring in enough to suit a bully like Chang Gao,' said Mr Lo.

Mrs Lo gave Mr Lo a look which would have scorched paper. He subsided.

Miss Chang had recovered and Fuchsia gave her some wine. A little colour came into her chalk-white face. She looked at Lin Chung and tapped two fingers on the back of his hand, a flirtatious gesture which made the Misses Ah bridle and hiss.

'My brother found out when the gold was to be trans-ported,' she said. 'He told me he would hunt the couriers and steal the gold. I was angry with Sung Ma. He looked at me as though...he looked at me...' she was fading. Fuchsia gave her more wine. 'Elder Brother went out on that day in July that you said. He was to find the couriers and beat them and take the gold. He never came back. Never. Neither did Sung Ma. I had to take what lovers I could. Crude men. They did not understand the Chinese custom of concubinage. They thought I was a...a...'

'Wh.o.r.e,' snarled Miss Annie. 'And so you were.'

Miss Chang screamed an epithet at Miss Annie and then collapsed.

At a signal from Fuchsia, Second Cousin Kong picked up the fainting Miss Chang and bore her into the priest's house. Fuchsia went with him, taking a selection of dainties and all the pillows. Lin paused to wonder how Great Aunt Wing, a woman of ferocious virtue, was going to cope with Miss Chang. Perhaps Great Aunt Wing would welcome a challenge.

'Does anyone else know any more of the story?' he asked the diners.

'They pa.s.sed my house and I sold them tea,' said Miss Annie. 'Three men, led by Sung Ma-he was very good-looking, sister, do you remember? So refined, for all that he called himself a coolie. Old Lady Loong told me that she saw them heading towards the Moonlight road. If that scoundrel Chang Gao was following, then he would have met them around where the Lin farm is now.'

'Something else,' said Old Man Lo. 'I was a boy at the time. I met Sung Ma alone, later that day, when the riot happened. He was out of breath. He had been running and there was blood on his shirt. He was trying to get back to Golden Point but he couldn't get there because of the miners. He gave me a letter.'

'And did you deliver it?'

Old Man Lo looked surprised at Lin's ignorance.

'No, of course I couldn't. It was to the Lin family. I couldn't go into Sze Yup territory or they would have beaten me. And there was the riot, I was frightened. I gave it to the priest.'

'And what did he do with it?' asked Lin, trying to keep his voice steady.

'I don't know,' said Old Man Lo. 'I haven't thought about it from that day to this. We all had to move, you see, and we came into Castlemaine to get away from the camp. My father bought this plot of land and built houses for us. And the temple, of course.'

'Father Chung,' said Ching Ta, dabbing his lips with a napkin. 'I believe that I can a.s.sist you. If you will come into the temple?'

Lin bowed to the diners and suggested that there was still ample if plain fare if they would do him the honour of eating it. In the temple, Ching Ta stepped past the rec.u.mbent old lady and spilled the box of offering scrolls onto the floor.

'Right at the bottom,' he said. 'We may find something useful.'

Lin gathered an armload of the paper spills and sat down on the priest's new bed to read them. The oldest ones were fragile and turned to confetti in his fingers. Prayers to the G.o.ds, prayers for a good voyage, prayers for a son, prayers for recovery from illness, prayers to Lan Ts'ai-ho, patron of singers, and Ts'ao Kuo-ch'iu, patron of actors. Hundreds of prayers to Kwan Yin, G.o.ddess of Mercy, and Tou Mou, the Mother of Stars. Hundreds more to the G.o.d of Wealth. The little scrolls crumbled and fell as he unrolled them until one met his touch which was folded, not rolled, and heavier than the little temple offerings. He opened it very carefully on Ching Ta's table and weighted the end with his inkstone.

It was written in fluent, eager calligraphy in a scholar's hand. Lin read it aloud.

'Esteemed patron, I have been hunted by the Sam Yup and have committed murder in self defence. I have hidden the gold in a place we know of and I am leaving with my fellows to take ship for Canton. I fear our journey was betrayed and this was my own most grievous fault. Spring betrays even virtuous men. I pray to the G.o.ddess Nu Kua for your future success and pros-perity. The unworthy scholar Sung Ma bids farewell to the Second Gold Mountain.'

'You'll never find it now,' croaked old Lady Chang from the floor. 'That b.a.s.t.a.r.d Sung Ma must have killed my brother Gao! That's why he never came home to me! My sweet Elder Brother! Sung Ma murdered you!'

Old Lady Chang began to cry. Fuchsia patted away her tears. Lin and Ching Ta faced each other across the table.

'We say nothing of this,' suggested Lin.

'What is there to say?' shrugged Ching Ta. 'Old Lady Chang must live here with us. Why outrage the virtuous with the deeds of the wicked? She will be judged soon enough.'

'Indeed,' said Lin warmly.

'And your generosity will not go unacknowledged by heaven,' said Ching Ta.

Lin knew what this meant. He was now committed to care for these people until they died. They had told him all he needed to know about the fate of the couriers. And the Lin family would save on offerings at the Feast of Hungry Ghosts. Sung Ma and the unrelated couriers had not died on Lin family business. They had fled, and their funerary arrangements could properly be returned to their own families.

Lin presided over the rest of the feast and then inspected and approved of Fuchsia's arrangements. Each little house now had rush mats on the floor, a bed per person, a cupboard for cutlery and crockery, and various comforts. Each person now had at least three changes of clothes and new linen and blankets. Ching Ta was engaged in writing, in his best calli-graphy, the four blessings of health, long life, wealth and many children on red paper for each lintel.

Lin reflected how much power mere money had. Lying in the purse it was just coins. Let loose from confinement, it was blankets against the cold, and candied chestnuts. It was an old lady clad in a new dress with hibiscus flowers on it.

Now it was time to load up Old Lady Chang and introduce her to Great Aunt Wing. It was likely to be an instructive meeting. Lin folded Sung Ma's letter and pocketed it. He needed to read it again and consider it. A scholar like Sung Ma would not risk a plain declaration of the hiding place of the gold, but neither would he omit it. There were many perils in the world. The Lin to whom the letter was addressed-Lin Chiang, probably-might have died or forgotten and then the gold would be lost. There was a clue in the letter, and Lin Chung must find it. And there were the blazed trees. Something itched at the back of his mind. What connected salt, pig, and black? Another list, chanted by his tutor, from The Yellow Emperor's Cla.s.sic of Medicine. Of course. The element of water, he remembered. Its season is winter. Its star is mercury. Its flavour is rotten. Its weather is cold. Its cereal is bean, its sound is moaning, its animal is the pig, its colour is black, its mineral is salt, its direction is...north. North of the blazed trees Sung Ma had hidden the gold.

But now to return to the farm and-Lord, he had nearly forgotten-attend Tommy's wedding feast. And then to take the car into Castlemaine, to see if Miss Fisher was interested in Anglican priests at all.

In the festival of Pure Brightness on the day of Sweeping the Graves. From Magistrate Li of the third quarter of the city of Canton to his esteemed father-in-law Sung.

May your house be forever prosperous. I have the honour to report that your nephew and my brother-in-law Sung Ma has arrived safely in this city, to your niece's great delight. My dear wife Mai was beside herself with joy to see her much loved brother return from such a perilous voyage. He is still weak from his journey and a fever he suffered on board ship, so he is staying here and will celebrate my son's first birthday with us. This is for your eyes only, venerable Father-in-Law. Sung Ma showed me his poems and it is to be feared that he suffered a disappointment, even a betrayal, in love while in the Second Gold Mountain. But he professes himself happy to entertain your choice as to a wife, asking only that she not be beautiful. He wishes for a kind and generous girl of some education and does not mind if she is plain or even crippled as long as her heart is good. Meanwhile we will feed him well and he is already recovered enough to play the poetic couplets game with us after dinner. He is a very fine poet. I am sorry to hear of your quarrel with the Lin family. I had meant to write to them to ask about Sung Ma. But I believe that we can soothe his mind here. He loves the courtyard with the peach trees and is sitting there now, drinking a little wine and talking to his sister. I believe that you will see him recovered within three months, and returned to your house to meet his new wife. The son-in-law bows respectfully.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN.

And what of the daughters? Their business was to get married: and I can remember the time when there was no other hopeful opening in life for them.

George Bernard Shaw The Intelligent Woman's Guide to Socialism and Capitalism Mr Butler came into the garden with a card on his much- prized and personally polished silver salver. 'A Lady Harborough to see you, Miss Eliza.' 'Alice?' Eliza leapt up, spilling Ember from her lap. He fell neatly, landed with all paws in position, and stalked away to the end of the garden, thoroughly miffed. Dot put down her sewing. 'Show her out here, Mr Butler, and bring some cool drinks. Or perhaps tea. Whichever she would prefer.'

Mr Butler vanished, reappeared with a small plump woman in a flowered hat, booked his orders for tea and cooling drinks and dematerialised. Lady Alice took the chair which was offered, removed the hat and shook out her hair. Dot was unimpressed. Lady Alice was a short, plain woman with brown eyes and straggly brownish hair, out of breath and running to fat. Marquess's daughters ought to look more tailored, Dot considered, if not beautiful. But her voice was very sweet, though her manner was distracted.

'Oh, my dear,' she said in a voice which strove for a social tone and failed. 'How very nice-oh, how very nice to see you again!'

Eliza embraced her. As the two faces touched, Dot discov-ered what Miss Eliza was not telling Miss Phryne, wondered if Phryne had already guessed, and expected that she had. No wonder Miss Eliza had turned down two eligible marriages! Even the prettiest young man in the world would not meet Miss Eliza's requirements in a mate. They held each other close for nearly a minute while Dot sought out Ember and soothed his ruffled feelings. She found him behind the chicken run, one of his favourite sulking places. Dot always suspected that he liked the way the chickens panicked when he yawned casually in their general direction. Dot was not surprised to find Li Pen there, standing as silently as a young tree. He nodded at her and she went back to the table.

Returning, she saw that Lady Alice was holding a gla.s.s of Pimms Number One Cup and was sipping it absent-mindedly. Dot was introduced. Lady Alice gave Dot her hand and smiled without, Dot was convinced, seeing her at all.

'I came because I feared for your safety,' said Lady Alice abruptly, taking Eliza's hand. 'I've got myself embroiled, and I've embroiled you, in the most frightful mess, Beth, and I really can't tell you how sorry I am, or how foolish I've been.'

How curious, thought Dot, that Miss Eliza's pa.s.sionate friend calls her by the same name as her sister did when she was a child.

'You can tell me,' said Eliza. 'I don't care how foolish you have been now that I've got you with me again. You will stay? Tell me that you will stay,' she pleaded.

'Yes, dear, I will stay, if somehow we can extricate ourselves from this pickle. I never wanted to let you go to Australia without me,' said Lady Alice. 'But I could not afford the ticket on my own and my father, as you know, has practically disowned me, especially since he has formed a new attachment now that mother is divorced. His new prospective wife is twelve years younger than me and...well, we would not suit. She calls me a dowdy old b.i.t.c.h and I call her a tart, and there is a chance that we are both right.'

'Ally, you mustn't say that!' protested Eliza, hugging her friend again.

'What seems to be the trouble, Lady Alice?' asked Dot firmly. If these two got onto billing and cooing it could be months before Dot found out the facts. Ally and Beth had a billing and cooing deficit at least two months long. Lady Alice blinked at the brisk tone.

'I had better explain it to your sister as well, Beth. Where is she?'

'Castlemaine,' said Dot. 'Tell us instead and we'll tell her.'

'Castlemaine? Then she's in terrible danger!' exclaimed Lady Alice. 'That's where he's gone!'

Phryne Fisher viewed the note with quiet scorn. It was a piece of cheap Woolworth's lined paper and written on it in wobbly capitals were the instructions 'Meet me at the stables and you will hear something to your advantage. Tell no one. Bring this note with you. At seven o'clock tonight.'

'Really,' said Phryne. She had idled away the day, wondering what more she could do in Castlemaine, and was about to climb the stairs in pursuit of a nice bath and something cool to wear to dinner. 'You have been reading too many Gothic novels, my dear anonymous sir or madam. I am not going to put on a pair of high-heeled shoes and a low-necked nightgown, tell no one and walk trustingly into that nice dark partly ruined building at seven o'clock tonight, bringing the note so that it can be destroyed and I can vanish without a trace. I may have been born in Collingwood but it wasn't yesterday. A small consulta-tion with Bill is indicated, I believe. The people who are pursuing me are here, which is a blessing, not back in Melbourne, hara.s.sing my family, and that is good. And nothing is going to stop me meeting Lin Chung tonight-nothing. It is still light enough to canva.s.s the stables,' said Phryne to herself, and went to find Bill Gaskin.

Lin Chung was very pleased. Dealing with Miss Chang, thor-oughly exhausted and exigent after a b.u.mpy cart journey, had taken Great Aunt Wing's attention away from her household, who had therefore relaxed and stopped dropping things. Tommy was there with his newly married Maisie, who had been carried off by attentive Chinese girls, fascinated with her shiny golden hair and her blue eyes. Lin knew they were in the bridal chamber, trying on different garments and cosmetics, and giggling. Tommy was allowed to go away and commune with his fish until it was time for him to get dressed. Cousin Tan had stabled Little Flower too casually and was having a bite on his arm dressed by Aunt Tilly. Lin had bathed in his admirable spring-fed bath, adopted a proper Chinese gown for the marriage ceremony, and was sitting on the west verandah, a lantern and a gla.s.s of wine on the table beside him, rereading Sung Ma's last letter to Lin Chiang and breathing in the scent of jasmine flowers.

The letter must contain a clue. There was nothing now discernible painted or scratched into the surface of the paper. There were no words to be got from scrambling the letters or reading it backwards. The message was in the text, so he needed to a.n.a.lyse the text. 'Esteemed patron'-the usual form of address of a scholar in a hurry. Otherwise he would have put the name and all the t.i.tles. 'I have been hunted by the Sam Yup and have committed murder in self defence'. Plain narrative. The murder would be the accidental killing of the ruffian Chang Gao, whose fox-spirit sister would have told him of the timing of the gold shipment. Only Miss Chang could ever miss Chang Gao. The enmity between Sze Yup and Sam Yup had already caused a couple of riots on the goldfields by 1857 and doubtless would have caused more, as in those unenlightened days each side considered the other brutish, uneducated and greedy. Sam Yup would have loved to rob Sze Yup, and vice versa. Chang Gao must have forgotten that scholars are taught to fight, and that Sung Ma was an honourable person who had refused his sister's proposition. 'I have hidden the gold in a place we know of and I am leaving with my fellows to take ship for Canton'. More narrative. Lin tried the phrase 'a place we know of' several times in different dialects to see if it was suggestive of anything, but it wasn't. He sighed, sipped, and read on.

'I fear our journey was betrayed and this was my own most grievous fault'. Certainly was. But Miss Chang must have been utterly adorable when young. How was poor Sung Ma to know she was a fox-spirit? 'Spring betrays even virtuous men'. By which he meant the emotions of spring-love or l.u.s.t. 'I pray to the G.o.ddess Nu Kua for your future success and prosperity'. Just a moment.

Lin sat up. He was not entirely familiar with the complete pantheon of Chinese G.o.ds. Nu Kua was not one of whom he knew. She was not one of the pure ones, the beneficent deities. She was some sort of land G.o.ddess, wasn't she? He forced his mind back to the long lists he had learned when he was a child. His tutor's singsong voice came back into his mind. She was, in fact, the G.o.ddess of...

Lin Chung picked up the lantern and strode into the house, calling for Uncle Tao, Second Cousin Kong, a sledgehammer and a sack.

'Tell me about the wall,' said Lin as he hiked his embroidered hem to his knees and hurried Uncle Tao across the onion field.

'It's very old,' said Tao, running to keep up. 'It's the first wall, made by the ancestor. He built it double, to be strong. That's all I know, Cousin.'

'Imagine the scene,' said Lin, inspecting the wall. It was five feet high and three feet wide. 'There is a riot. The Lin couriers are ambushed and run for the farm, even though there is no one here as they are all hiding or at the diggings. Or they may have been ambushed here. The attacker is killed and they know that they are in trouble. If the law catches them they will hang. Sung Ma sees the half-built wall. He drops the gold in between the two walls and pulls some capping across so that it is hidden. Then he and his fellows run for Canton. But he leaves a message, though it never got delivered. He blazes three trees with the message "north". And in the letter, he commends Lin Chiang to the protection of Nu Kua, the G.o.ddess...'

'. . . of walls,' said Uncle Tao. 'Where should we strike?'

'I don't know.'

'Oldest bit,' rumbled Second Cousin Kong. 'You always build a wall from the road back to the house. Here?'

'Try,' said Lin.

It was a still, quiet, peaceful evening. Outside the chatter and rush of the wedding night house it was silent, except for the cooing of pigeons and a couple of kookaburras laughing. Whenever he had been in any difficulty in the bush, Lin remembered, he had noticed kookaburras falling off their branch laughing at the human, who, as it might be, had just fallen over a log, skinned his knee, picked up a hot frying pan, or hammered a tent peg into his foot. Lin did not consider that kookaburras were birds of good omen. But they would have to do.

The sledgehammer made a satisfying smash as Second Cousin Kong limbered up a few muscles and hit the wall. It boomed.

'So it is hollow,' said Uncle Tao.

A stone moved, slid, took another stone with it. A section of wall collapsed and they leapt back out of the way. No gleam of gold. Nothing but old sticks and rags. Or were they sticks? They had snapped like sticks...

Lin stirred the dusty ma.s.s with his foot, drawing back his silken hem in distaste. A skull rolled and showed him empty eye sockets.

'We have found Chang Gao, I suspect. Try again, Second Cousin.'

'Here?' asked Second Cousin Kong. He struck. A stone groaned. Kong struck again, then stood, hammer raised, dumbfounded.

The drystone fence fountained gold.

Kong's hammer had split one rock in half, and through the hole, onto the gra.s.s, gold nuggets no larger than grains of rice poured like sand. Uncle Tao shoved the sack underneath. The grains of gold whispered as they flowed. Kong, Lin Chung and Uncle Tao stood, amazed, and listened to the noise. Finally it died away. The sack was half full and too heavy for Lin to lift. The kookaburras had stopped laughing.

Uncle Tao said consideringly, 'He thought fast, that Sung Ma, hiding the body as well as the gold. But he gave the gold an uneasy guardian. We stayed away from this place for six months, until it had all calmed down. By then he was fallen away to bones and didn't smell any more.'

'And then we finished the fence and never looked inside. Well, Uncle, that's our mystery solved. Second Cousin, if you would be so kind, go and get some more sacks. We can gather up Chang Gao and have him properly buried. And we should sieve this part of the wall, tomorrow, for any leftover gold. Thank you very much for your a.s.sistance, Second Cousin Kong. I have already promised your farm new pigsties. What can I give you? A new horse, perhaps?'

'No,' said Kong. 'I like Little Flower. She never bites me. Let me take Fuchsia into town every day, Cousin. She is too pretty to be out alone. She needs someone to protect her.'

'Exactly my thought,' said Lin, hoping that Fuchsia wouldn't be too unkind to Second Cousin Kong's boyish heart. 'And you are the man to look after her.'

Second Cousin Kong swung the sack of gold into his embrace and grinned.

'They will be starting the ceremony soon,' said Uncle Tao. 'We must hurry.'