The Castlemaine Murders (21 page)

‘I can have books about birds sent from the city,’ said Lin. ‘If I do that, will you read them?’

‘Yes, honourable Cousin,’ the boy whispered.

‘And if you read the bird books then you will also read other books,’ Lin said as magisterially as possible. ‘Then you may be learned enough to write a book of your own. About birds.’

‘Yes, honourable Cousin!’ exclaimed the boy, who had never thought of education as being about anything important. ‘I will!’

‘See that you do,’ said Lin, and waved the boy away.

‘Idle, useless layabout called Fuchsia!’ Great Aunt Wing ushered in one of the pretty girls. ‘Won’t wash dishes because it will dirty her hands! Won’t go out into the sun because of her complexion! Thinks only of her appearance!’

‘Who speaks for her?’ asked Lin. The girl looked insolent and frightened. Pushed too far, Fuchsia might run for Melbourne, and what would happen to an unprotected Chinese girl in the city did not bear thinking about.

‘She is gentle,’ said Uncle Tao. ‘She cares for the sick very carefully. She reads to me very fluently and knows a lot of poems by heart.’

‘I may have a task for her,’ said Lin. ‘Let her stand by the door. If she suits, then she will have a profession and will be paid a salary and she can spend it on cosmetics if that is what she wishes.’

‘Wants to marry a ghost!’ snarled Great Aunt Wing, dragging a young man forward by his collar. She hit him over the back of the head so hard that she drove him to his knees. The young man looked up and stared straight into Lin’s face, a breach of protocol.

‘Who speaks for him?’ asked Lin.

Uncle Tao was silent. No one, it appeared, spoke for this unfortunate young Lin.

‘Speak for yourself, then,’ said Lin. ‘What is this about?’

‘Maisie,’ said the young man, sullenly. ‘She wants to marry me and I want to marry her but they won’t let me.’

‘How old are you?’

‘Twenty-two, Cousin.’

‘We cannot stop you from marrying whoever you wish,’ Lin said gently.

‘But I am owed a share of the profits,’ objected the young man. ‘After all, it’s not the first time this has happened. Remember Hu Ky, who became Annie Reilly!’

‘Hu Ky?’ asked Lin. Someone had said that name to him. Yes, that frightful Hu grandmother. Liely, she had said. Reilly to her Cantonese ear would be Liely. Lin shivered a little. What a woman. What a family. But he should not keep this young man on his knees so long.

‘Come and sit at the table and we will talk privately. What is your name?’

‘They call me Tommy,’ said the young man reluctantly.

‘And I am Lin Chung. Everyone else can go back to their duties,’ said Lin, waving a dismissive hand. ‘Except you, Miss Fuchsia. Sit down in that chair and wait for me, if you please.’

Great Aunt Wing scowled but collected the others and everyone left, closing the door.

‘Tell me about Maisie,’ said Lin quietly.

‘Her father has a horse stud down on the Campbells Creek,’ said Tommy, readily enough. ‘She’s his third daughter and he doesn’t care much for her. His son is just about ready to take over the run when his father retires at the end of the year. The old man is going to his sister’s at Shepparton. There won’t be room for Maisie at her brother’s house. His new wife can’t stand her. She’s a good girl,’ protested Tommy passionately.

‘I’m sure she is,’ said Lin. ‘Why not marry her and bring her here?’

‘Because Great Aunt Wing would make her life hell,’ said Tommy dispassionately. ‘I’ve been working here all my life with the fish. If I could buy a bit of land down on the flats, I could make ponds and breed trout. Good market for trout. And yabbies. Build a little house. I could get the land and the water rights for next to nothing.’

‘How close to nothing?’ asked Lin Chung.

‘I reckon twenty pounds would do it. Maybe thirty for some building materials. We wouldn’t want much to start with, Maisie knows that. I got the licence. We could get married tomorrow.’

‘That,’ said Lin, ‘is an idea. Very well. I will personally advance you fifty pounds. This is not family money, you understand, but my own. If your Maisie is still of the same mind, you shall marry her tomorrow and bring her here to begin with, so that she may learn some Chinese ways and please you. You may have family labour to dig your ponds and that will give you enough capital to build a little house. In return for your past labour you shall have provisions from the farm for five years, free of charge. I will undertake to explain the situation to Great Aunt and she will not make trouble.’

‘You’re a braver man than I am,’ said Tommy, tongue loosened by shock.

‘I trained on Grandmother,’ said Lin. ‘Now, tell me all about Hu Ky and Mr Reilly.’

‘Honoured Cousin, after such a generous gift I will tell you anything you like. But the Venerable Ones know more about it than me.’

The boy was clearly itching to get away to his Maisie and it would be cruel to keep him.

‘Off you go,’ said Lin. He was getting the hang of the dismissive gesture. ‘Send in Great Aunt Wing and ask for some tea and salted pine nuts.’

‘And me, Cousin?’ asked Fuchsia, from her footstool by the door.

‘I will find you something to do which will not soil your hands,’ said Lin. ‘Stay out of Great Aunt’s way, and when she has left this room, you come back.’

Fuchsia squeaked her thanks and escaped as Great Aunt Wing came in, escorting a boy with tea.

Lin waited until the old woman was seated and said slowly, ‘I have solved your problem with Tommy. I will finance his venture with the trout personally. He will not be a drain on the farm’s finances and I think a little exile might be good for him. And did not the ancients say that “nothing must come between a man and his wife”?’

Great Aunt made a complicated movement which might have been a sitting-down flounce, but said nothing. Lin felt a little dizzy. So far, he was getting away with this.

‘And Fuchsia will be well occupied and will certainly work hard in the profession I have in mind. Now, Great Aunt, tell me all about Hu Ky and Mr Reilly.’

‘It was long ago,’ said Great Aunt. ‘During the Gold Rush. The respectable daughter of a respectable merchant was given in marriage—proper marriage, mind, not concubinage—to a Mr Reilly who came here as a miner. He found gold and was comfortable and able to support a wife. And he spoke Cantonese, having been a sailor. Alice’s father deemed him appropriate and his descendants are still here. Why?’

‘Old Mrs Hu mentioned a sister and I wondered if perhaps there was a connection. The Hu family didn’t steal that gold, Great Aunt. I did a settlement with Mr Hu and it wasn’t them. Therefore I am searching, very late in the day, for four hundred ounces of gold which went missing in 1857 and I also need to discover the fate of the couriers. There were four, led by someone called Sung, or so Great Great Uncle said.’

‘I never did think it was the Hu family,’ exclaimed Great Aunt Wing, slapping her brocaded knee. ‘I was friends with some of the Hu girls before they left for Melbourne and they all said that their ancestors hadn’t stolen it, that they also had searched and no one knew what became of it, or of the bearers. What a mystery!’ Great Aunt Wing appeared to have forgotten about Tommy, which was all to the good. ‘There were four couriers, so they say, led by a scholar turned herbalist called Sung Ma. If it wasn’t the Hu family, then the Ah camp was closest to the Moonlight road. I wonder if any of them are still alive? Well, Great Nephew, we will help as we can. Should we recover that much gold I am sure that you will allow us a reasonable sum for new pig pens.’

‘You shall have pig pens which will be the envy of the neighbourhood,’ promised Lin. ‘I am taking the wagon into Castlemaine tomorrow morning and Fuchsia will come with me. Now, how much notice will you need for Tommy’s marriage feast? And I am sure that, since the girl is a stranger and will not be staying in your domain, you will treat Tommy’s Maisie as you would an honoured guest,’ he said without emphasis.

There was a nerve-wracking pause during which Great Aunt Wing stared straight into Lin Chung’s eyes. He did not blink. Then she gave a resigned nod.

‘The feast will be ordered as you wish for tomorrow night, Great Nephew,’ she said quietly. ‘The young woman will not be able to complain of her treatment here. And if you are really intending to travel in the wagon tomorrow, it must be cleansed. Its last load was horse dung. I will send Fuchsia to you instantly,’ she added, making it perfectly clear that she knew what he had arranged with the young Miss. The ability to know exactly what skulduggery was being concocted under her roof was a sixth sense of all old Chinese ladies, Lin knew. He took a sip of tea and nodded in return. He was unexpectedly weary. Being head of a family was exhausting. He arranged that Fuchsia would accompany him on the morrow, fending off the young woman’s questions. He allowed a small cousin to conduct him to the seldom used, elaborate guest house, availed himself of a mineral water bath, and went to sleep, along with the rest of the farm, as the sun went down.

Phryne caught herself as she was falling asleep into her glass of wine. Old Bill Gaskin was sweeping the floor with short, stabbing strokes. His broom whispered, unlike Mr Harrison’s voice. The bar was closed, but as a bona fide traveller, Phryne could sit there all night and before Mr Harrison got to anything like a peroration it might well be dawn. She forced her concentration to a point and was rewarded at once.

‘Then there was doctors—well, they called themselves doctors—they were a bodgy lot! There was old Doctor Andersen, he was locked up because he took some bit of some poor kid’s stomach and kept it—kept it in a jar! Then there was a bloke called Beecham who guaranteed to embalm a body so that it would never rot, not never. They called him the Egyptian Professor because he was always talking about the old Gyppoes. Dad said he was as mad as a cut snake.’

Phryne dared not interrupt. Tempting as it was to take this ruffian by the throat and squeeze gently until he told her everything she needed to know, this would probably mean that he would lose his place in his reminiscences and not for anything would Phryne agree to listen to them all again. She was making a mental note to address the League of Nations on the subject of including ‘listening to Mr Harrison for more than ten seconds’ as cruel and unusual punishment under their Geneva Convention when at last he concluded his sentence and told her what she wanted to know.

‘Doc Mercer took over from the Professor when he died suddenly in 1858. He told my dad that there were all sorts of stuffed things in the house, all meant to be willed to some university somewhere, but the old Prof never made a will. So Doc Mercer knocked them down to a travelling show for a few shillings. Even the stuffed crocodile. Dunno what they wanted with that.’

‘And the name of the show . . .?’ insinuated Phryne, a delicate whisper which the addled old person might decide had come from his own mind, if he had one.

‘Carter’s, they had the bushranger. Said he was Black Douglas but he wasn’t. Reason I know was, Black Douglas escaped from jail and started a little sheep farm out Mansfield way. So their Wild Colonial Boy wasn’t Douglas. I always thought it was a fake anyway. It was shiny. Corpses ain’t shiny as a rule. But we had bushrangers in them days! We had Mad Dog Morgan—he was a brutal sort of bloke. Only time he wasn’t thinking of murder was when he was asleep, and then he was dreamin’ of it.’

Young Billy Gaskin brought Mr Harrison another beer and Miss Fisher more coffee, another bottle of wine, a sympathetic smile and a selection of grapes, biscuits and several small cheeses, compliments of the kitchen, which was now closing.

‘How fascinating,’ lied Phryne. ‘Doctors . . .’ she allowed the phrase to trail away.

‘Doctor Beamish said there’d be hell to pay,’ blurred Mr Harrison. ‘If it got into the general population.’

‘What?’ asked Phryne, her lips close to his ear.

‘Leprosy,’ exclaimed Mr Harrison. ‘That was it! Beamish said that there was leprosy in those dirty Chinese. He set up a lepers’ camp. There weren’t many, he said, but it was another reason to get them off the fields. Drive ’em over the Murray! Filthy devils!’

Fairly soon, Phryne knew, the rein on her temper was going to break and she was not sure what she was going to do. It would, she knew, be worth watching.

‘Murder . . .’ she insinuated again.

‘They was dangerous places, the goldfields. They used to have a cartload of bodies some nights, especially Sat’d’y night. No work on Sunday so every man Jack got stinking drunk. The beer was good here even then, you see! And no one to say what happened or who woodened ’em over the bonce with a shovel. All sorts of fights to watch if you liked fights, the lascars and the Jamaicans, the proddy and the bog Irish, even the Chinks fought each other a couple of times. Don’t know what about, some Chink reason. That How Qua Ah Kim, the interpreter, he told my dad that one lot were from the five provinces and the other lot from the four provinces and they hated each other. Laugh? The old man nearly died to watch ’em tearing each other’s pigtails off.’

Phryne spared a moment to be exceedingly glad that Old Mr Harrison was no longer with us. She was confident that he was burning in hell.

‘Then the unclaimed bodies used to go to Prof Beecham to be embalmed, you know, in case someone could come and identify them, but after he died, Doc Mercer sent them into the undertakers in Bendigo. They did a very nice corpse, I have to say. Not dry and shiny like the Professor’s.’

‘Well, Mister Harrison, it has been very kind of you to talk to me so long,’ said Phryne, seeing that the old blighter’s glass was at last empty. He grabbed for her arm, missed, and tried again. Old Bill Gaskin stopped sweeping and undid Mr Harrison’s fingers.

‘Wait, I haven’t told you about the Stockade,’ he protested.

‘That’s enough for tonight,’ said Bill. ‘You could talk the leg off an iron pot, you could.’

‘My dad was there! He saw them build the fence out of logs and hoist the Eureka flag! Every man took an oath of loyalty to the Southern Cross.’

‘Yair, and betrayed it. Your dad run like a rabbit as soon as the soldiers came,’ observed Bill Gaskin dispassionately. ‘You run your forge as a non union shop and you squeeze your workers till the pips squeak. Eureka, my arse,’ said Bill. ‘Beg pardon, Miss. And as for them poor bloody Chinese, Madge’s hubby’s grandpa said they was nice quiet people and he always camped next to them because they wouldn’t cut his throat and pinch his gold while he slept. Unlike your brave Eurekas. Come on, you old pest, give the lady’s ears a rest.’