The Castlemaine Murders (26 page)

Returning, she saw that Lady Alice was holding a glass 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 passionate 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 bitch 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 consultation with Bill is indicated, I believe. The people who are pursuing me are here, which is a blessing, not back in Melbourne, harassing my family, and that is good. And nothing is going to stop me meeting Lin Chung tonight—nothing. It is still light enough to canvass the stables,’ said Phryne to herself, and went to find Bill Gaskin.

Lin Chung was very pleased. Dealing with Miss Chang, thoroughly exhausted and exigent after a bumpy 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 glass 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 analyse 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 titles. ‘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 lust. ‘I pray to the goddess 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 gods. 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 goddess, 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 goddess 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 goddess . . .’

‘. . . 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 mass 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 grass, 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 assistance, 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.’

Leaving Second Cousin Kong to gather up Chang Gao’s remains and dispose of them respectfully for the moment, Lin and Uncle Tao traversed the field as it began to get dark.

‘To think it was there all along,’ sighed Uncle Tao.

‘The ways of heaven are most peculiar,’ agreed Lin.

His mission was accomplished. The Lin gold was found at the cost of some merit-acquiring charity, a new wall and new pigsty. Only a few hours and a wedding feast stood between him and Miss Phryne Fisher, and he was full of the emotions of spring.

The family Sung wishes to announce that scholar Sung Ma,
recently returned from the Second Gold Mountain, will marry
Tsao Pan, daughter of retired scholar Tsao Mai-te. The wedding
will take place at the home of Uncle Sung on the first auspicious
day of the third month in the next year, as Sung Ma then completes
his mourning for his mother.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

For a short parting, I can bear it well,
But for a long parting, tears wet my breast.

Su Tungpo, translated by Lin Yutang

It wasn’t hard to find Bill Gaskin because he was looking for Phryne. As she strolled into the stable yard in the late afternoon sunlight he beckoned her into his shed and closed the door.

‘Sorry to stop you, Miss, but I heard that you know something about Thomas Beaconsfield.’

Phryne leaned against the edge of a scarred workbench and stared at this gnarled and sooty member of the working classes. Bill Gaskin reminded Phryne of that headline about sons of toil buried beneath tons of soil.

‘Yes, I do,’ she said. ‘How on earth did you hear that?’

‘Young Billy was passing by the phone cabinet,’ said Bill, mumbling a little. ‘And he meant no harm, Miss, but he heard the name, and then, well, he listened.’

‘All right,’ said Phryne. ‘I’ll tell you all I know and then you can tell me why you know the name. I was in the Ghost Train at Luna Park,’ she began. As the story progressed she noted that Bill Gaskin was becoming more and more emotional. Finally, when she had wound down to the reminiscences of Jim Harrison and the bombs in the post, he rummaged under some sacks, produced a bottle of rum and a cash box. He gulped some of the spirit and then opened the cash box. It was full of letters.

‘I dunno what to do,’ he said.

‘Start by telling me all,’ suggested Phryne, waving away the offer of the bottle.

‘My mum died this year,’ said Bill.

‘I’m sorry,’ began Phryne, but he waved at her to stop.

‘She wasn’t, so you needn’t be. My dad died years before, I can hardly remember him, and my stepfather was a good bloke. Mum kept a boarding house in Port, which she’d had from Dad’s mother, old Mrs Gascoigne. We shortened the name a bit to make it sound less foreign. We knew there was some sort of mystery about Dad. Grandma Gascoigne said things like ‘If only they knew . . .’ about him and hinted that he had rich relatives in England which, if it weren’t for her pride, she could have got money off. I never paid much attention and, anyway, she died not long after Dad.’