The Castlemaine Murders (23 page)

Meanwhile, coffee, and a visit to the newspaper office. The
Mount Alexander Mail
had been operating at the time when the brave policeman Thomas Cooke had stopped the riot at Golden Point. Presumably, it had archives.

They might even know where they were. Mostyn Street ho, thought Phryne.

Lin Chung alighted outside four tumbledown houses in Union Street and brushed falling peppercorns off his cassock. Second Cousin Kong knocked at the first door and it sagged open, missing a hinge.

It was dark within. Lin called out ‘Hello?’ in Cantonese and heard something stirring. Second Cousin Kong found a curtain and drew it aside.

The room was bare of any comfort. The house was a badly built bark shack off which most of the bark had peeled. The floor was of beaten earth. The roof had holes in several places and slimy pools showed where the rain had fallen. Lin gestured and Second Cousin Kong reached down and lifted an old, old Chinese lady and hefted her without effort into the light.

His reward was a feeble blow across the nose and a faint scream of outrage.

‘Who are you?’

‘I am Lin Chung,’ said Lin. ‘Adoptive Grandmother, I am here to find you a better place to live.’

‘Why?’ The old eyes were pearled.

‘Because it is my wish,’ said Lin Chung. This seemed to comfort the old lady and she relaxed in Second Cousin Kong’s embrace.

‘Try the next house,’ ordered Lin, and Fuchsia pushed at the door. This one opened and revealed a bare, swept room where an old man was drinking tea and reading a scroll book. Scriptures of some kind, Lin assumed. Behind him, against the far wall, was an altar with the usual deities and a meagre single joss stick burning in a brass bowl. Kwan Yin smiled blandly on this tiny offering. Under the stand for the incense was a large box in which the little scrolls with wishes on them were placed. It was almost full and must have been there for many years. The old man looked up in surprise, allowing his scroll to roll up under his lifted hand.

‘Adoptive Grandfather, may I lay this woman in your room while I arrange for her future? I am Lin Chung, and I have funds to disburse for better housing and care.’

‘You have managed to get her out of her hovel!’ The old man leapt to his feet. ‘More than I could do, Adoptive Grandson. Though I never tried using an ox,’ he added, sighting up the slopes of Second Cousin Kong.

‘Oxen are useful,’ rumbled Kong, laying the old woman in her wrappings down on a clean patch of floor.

‘Are you the priest?’ asked Lin. The old man bowed.

‘I am Ching Ta, at your service. A Follower of the Five Forbiddens. With our state of extreme poverty, this has not been too onerous.’

‘Are there other Chinese people in this street?’

‘The Ah sisters in the next house,’ said the old man, eyeing the bundles which Second Cousin Kong was carrying into the temple. ‘Old Man Lo and his wife and brother next to them. We are the last. When they are all dead I shall pack up this temple and go to Bendigo, where I have relatives. Do I smell lacquered duck?’

‘You do. Come with me to these other people and give me the benefit of your advice. Would it be better to buy a new house and have the people live together, or shall I have these houses repaired? Rebuilt, in the case of the old lady’s shack.’

‘They would not be happy living together,’ opined the old man. ‘The old woman on my floor, Old Lady Chang, she was a concubine—well, that’s putting it politely. The Ah sisters detest her. She can’t stand Old Man Lo, because he was once her . . . well. Better to repair and provide some care for them. The Sam Yup Benevolent Society sends us sacks of rice and we still have some money to buy vegetables and sometimes a little meat.’

‘So you are Sam Yup? The Lin family are Sze Yup, the four provinces,’ said Lin. ‘We are by way of being hereditary enemies, Adoptive Grandfather.’

‘Yes, so better you just pass 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 gods 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 knob. 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 assumed 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 cassock 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 gods 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 stubbornly 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 superstitions. We must care for their bodies,’ said Lin, remembering sermons from a hundred school chapels. ‘God 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 hell.

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 reassured 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 space 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 passage
on the SS
Annabel Wilson
, leaving Melbourne on the 29th of July
1857, solar calendar.