The Castlemaine Murders (13 page)

I had the honour of an introduction to Lin Hua, the head of the
clan. He stays in the city and engages in trade. His brother Lin
Chiang is on the goldfields. We will begin to walk there tomorrow.
Mr Lin was kind enough to replenish my medicine box and lend
me a copy of a novel,
Gold Plum Vase,
to beguile my leisure. I am
not sure that I shall have any but it was kind of him. I left my
copy of Su Tungpo’s poems with him for safekeeping. I can recite
all the poems in it and Mr Lin was very pleased to see it. His family
have been in this city for several years and they mean to stay. His
great house is already being built. It is very beautiful but will be
surrounded by a great wall, like a castle.

Barbarian people hiss at us in the street. They don’t want us
here. Just let me get some gold, and I will gratify their wish and
leave immediately.

I will send this letter back with the ship. May the goddess have
you in her hands, little sister, and your mother and sister. Ask
Uncle if you are in any difficulty.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Every woman knows that the most strongminded
woman in a house can set up a domestic tyranny
which is sometimes a reign of terror.

George Bernard Shaw
An Intelligent Woman’s Guide
to Socialism and Capitalism

Tuesday began badly. Phryne heard the phone ring, leapt out of bed, and stepped full on Ember’s tail. He yowled with pain, gave her a disgusted look, and stalked out of the room, forcing Phryne to chase him to apologise. That meant the sacrifice of her breakfast bacon to soothe Ember’s hurt feelings. The girls had been reproachful when Phryne told them that they had to stay in the house unless they took Li Pen as an escort, so they had declined to go swimming and were playing a noisy and irritating game of snakes and ladders in the parlour. Dot was still pale and experiencing motorcycle films before her eyes. Mr and Mrs Butler were trying to be staunch and this was always trying. And Eliza had retired to her bed and refused to get up, saying that she had a migraine and adamantly refusing the services of a doctor.

Phryne dressed suitably, dealt with all the immediate problems, and was about to order Dot back to bed also when a telegram arrived from Reverend Mother Immaculata of the Good Shepherd informing her that Mrs Carter, now Sister Elizabeth, was coming into Melbourne to be seen by a specialist and might be properly interviewed at the Motherhouse of the Convent in Victoria Street, Fitzroy. Phryne made her dispositions instantly.

‘Good. Dot, go back to bed and allow yourself to be looked after. Mrs Butler, look after Dot. If my sister asks for a doctor, call Doctor MacMillan. Mr Butler, I leave my house in your hands. No one is to leave the house without Li Pen. Molly, be good. You may go and lick Dot better if you wish. Now, I’m off,’ she declared, and went out to the Hispano-Suiza. The inmates of the house heard a roar and the car was gone.

‘Well, I might be better for a bit of a rest,’ confessed Dot. She allowed herself to be helped up the stairs by Mrs Butler, followed by Mr Butler bearing a refreshing orange crush and two aspirins. They were followed by Molly, with Li Pen bringing up the rear.

When Dot had been clad in her nightdress and tucked into her bed with a couple of aspirins and a glass of orange crush inside her, an interesting new detective story to hand and an affectionate black dog lying at her feet, she sighed with relief. She really was that tired. And Molly was a nice dog.

Mr and Mrs Butler descended the stairs and listened at Miss Eliza’s second-floor door. They heard some sad little noises which might have been sobbing. On enquiry through the door, Miss Eliza said that she wanted quiet and told them to go away.

There seemed nothing left to do but to descend further to the kitchen, where Li Pen shelled peas, Mrs Butler cut up a chicken carcass for a nice stock to make chicken soup for Dot, and Mr Butler read them snippets from the paper. In the parlour, the snakes and ladders noise had died down now that Phryne was not there to be impressed by the magnitude of their disappointment. The house settled into peace. Molly fell asleep. After a chapter of her new Agatha Christie, the book slid quietly to the floor and Dot dozed off, the motorcycle, with decreasing frequency, buzzing through her dreams.

The really noticeable thing about convents, thought Phryne as she drove the car into the convent’s stable yard, the thing which you could not miss about convents, was the wall. Make it high, the religious had ordered, make it thick, top it with broken glass, make it absolutely plain to any passer-by that this is a wall meant to keep all oversexed youth, maniacs and heretics out and all devout women in. This was an unusually solid wall, even for a convent, and it was matched by the sort of door which was usually known, in Gothic fiction, as a dread portal. It was four inches thick, had iron hinges and was studded with square head nails, in case the said attackers actually got over the said wall. They would have been foiled by this door even if they had brought their very own battering ram.

Phryne got out of the car and climbed the steps. She pulled a bell which rang somewhere deep and echoing inside. A little hatch opened in the middle of the door.

‘I’m Phryne Fisher,’ she said to the square inch of face she could see. ‘Here to see Sister Elizabeth.’

‘Reverend Mother telephoned,’ said the Portress, who sounded very young. ‘Come in, Miss Fisher, if I can only get this darned door open.’ There was a sound of crunching and scraping. ‘There we are.’

Phryne entered into the wash of scent which always accompanied all-female establishments of a virtuous kind: yellow soap, furniture polish, candlewax, incense and roses. There was a faint under-scent which Phryne recognised as femaleness; musk, perhaps, and blood.

Sister Portress, who appeared to be about sixteen from her fresh complexion, bustled Phryne along a corridor shining with cleanliness, skidding a little on the freshly waxed floor. She showed Phryne into a parlour remarkable for its lack of comfort, which had to be deliberate. A horsehair sofa of uncompromising firmness sat next to two straight-backed, hard-seated chairs. A table bore a devotional work of paralysing dullness and the whitewashed walls bore a Sacred Heart. This image always made the more-or-less Protestant Phryne uneasy; it seemed primitive, even cruel, the visible heart wrapped around with its thorny crown. The blond Christ appeared unaffected by it, Phryne noticed. He was smiling.

Phryne smiled back.

Two nuns entered. One was old and comfortable, and had brought her knitting. The other was a thin woman, heavily lined, with eyes so tired of the world that Phryne regretted her own irruption into this peaceful place.

‘I am Sister Mary Magdalen,’ said the older nun, sitting down and angling her needles. She had an Irish accent. ‘You may stay ten minutes. You may not touch Sister Elizabeth. At any time she can decide to end the interview and then you must go.’

‘Can I shake hands?’ asked Phryne.

The nun shook her head. ‘Not unless you’re a relative.’

Phryne ordered her questions so as not to waste time.

‘Very well, then, hello, Sister Elizabeth, my name is Phryne Fisher and I’ve got involved in a very odd mystery to which I think you may be the key. Mr Burton suggested I talk to you. He sends you his best regards.’

‘Then I’ll talk to you,’ said Sister Elizabeth. ‘Mr Burton was very good to me when . . . when my husband was alive.’ Her voice creaked, as though it was not often used.

‘You were Mrs Carter, were you not, of Carter’s Travelling Miracles and Marvels Show?’

‘Yes,’ said Sister Elizabeth faintly.

‘The show had several dummies which you sold to Luna Park,’ said Phryne. ‘Can you remember them?’

‘Yes,’ said Sister Elizabeth. ‘A vampire, they were just coming into fashion with Varney the Vampire and Count Dracula, you know, and a werewolf, and . . . a couple of others.’

‘One was a cowboy,’ said Phryne, watching all she could see of Sister Elizabeth very carefully. The white wimple outlined her face in a starched frame. The faded blue eyes blinked once or twice and then she shook her head with a whisper of veil.

‘No, no cowboy. There was the Wild Colonial Boy, of course.’

‘The Wild Colonial Boy? Tell me about him,’ urged Phryne. Mrs Carter took up her rosary and the beads ran through fingers which trembled.

‘Hold up, Sister,’ said Sister Mary Magdalen bracingly. ‘Take a sniff of the salts, now.’ She gave Phryne a hard stare. ‘She doesn’t like to talk about her former life,’ she told Phryne. ‘It upsets her.’

‘I’m not surprised,’ said Phryne. ‘And I wouldn’t have bothered her but I need to know about the Wild Colonial Boy. I really need to know,’ she emphasised. ‘It’s me or the cops,’ she whispered.

Sister Mary Magdalen responded, ‘We can’t be having with that, at all. Have another sniff, Sister.’

Sister Elizabeth sniffed and gasped.

The older nun gave her a brisk pat. ‘There you are, Sister, now let’s get this over with and you can go back to the garden.’

‘You work in the garden?’

‘Finest roses in the whole convent,’ boasted Sister Mary Magdalen. ‘That’s why she took the name Elizabeth, after Saint Elizabeth of Hungary.’

‘The miracle of the roses,’ said Phryne. Dot had told her that roses were the only scent allowed in convents in honour of this saint, who had lied to her husband with divine permission and reward. Phryne was wearing Floris Tea Rose for that reason.

‘I always wanted a garden but we never stopped travelling,’ said Sister Elizabeth, a little recovered. ‘You wanted to know about the Wild Colonial Boy. My husband’s father bought him somewhere; on the Bendigo road, I think. From a man. A deceased estate, I think. But the Wild Colonial Boy wasn’t a dummy. He was a real man, God rest his soul in Heaven.’

‘Amen,’ said Sister Mary Magdalen and Phryne in chorus.

‘I told my husband it was indecent,’ protested the nun. ‘I said it would be only proper to give him a Christian burial. But Joe wouldn’t listen. People did come to see him,’ she added. ‘He was a bushranger. Someone had embalmed him. A doctor or someone. Then they sold the body to old Mr Carter. There was . . .’ Her brow wrinkled under the wimple. ‘No, I can’t recall. Something funny about the sale. They told us to keep him hidden and not to show him in . . . some place. I don’t remember . . .’

‘No matter. Thank you very much, Sister Elizabeth.’ Phryne was very tempted to prompt and didn’t. Sister Elizabeth was probably very suggestible and she did not want to contaminate her testimony, should it be needed.

‘Wait,’ said Sister Elizabeth. ‘I’ve been here three years now and I was going to ask Reverend Mother to throw away the worldly things I brought with me into the convent. But there’s something there which might help you. If you can wait, Sister Portress will bring it to you. Tell Mr Burton hello from me.’

‘Farrell’s will be back in December,’ said Phryne. ‘They’ll call when they are in town.’

‘Yes,’ said Sister Elizabeth. She stood, smoothed down her habit, and went out. Sister Mary Magdalen rose also.

Just at the door, Sister Elizabeth turned back. Her face was anguished.

‘You’ll bury him?’ she asked. ‘A proper burial, in sacred ground?’

‘Yes,’ said Phryne. ‘I promise.’

Sister Elizabeth burst into tears and went out. Sister Mary Magdalen gathered up her knitting and gave Phryne an approving nod. ‘That will do her the world of good,’ she said. ‘That dead man’s been on her conscience a good while, I’d guess. You stay here and I’ll send Sister Portress with the things. God bless you,’ she said briskly, and followed Sister Elizabeth.

Phryne read the devotional work, ‘An Admonishment to Young Women’, for ten minutes. Sister Portress rescued her before she committed the sin of throwing the book at the wall, shoved a cloth bag into her hands, and hurried her out, as though the worldliness of this scented, terribly fashionable lady might be contagious.

Outside, Phryne got into her car as the dread portal slammed behind her. She examined the bag. It was a grubby cash bag, probably postal in origin, with ‘pennies’ stencilled on the front. Inside were a variety of objects. Red tickets, identical to the one found in the mummy’s shoe. A roll of flyers for Carter’s Travelling Miracles and Marvels Show. A description of the exhibits, which included the ‘Wild Colonial Boy, Last of the Bushrangers, preserved by a secret art’. Under the rest, a postcard.

There he lay, the spit and image of the mummy as cleaned by Dr Treasure. He was dressed in better clothes but the boots looked the same with their kangaroo hide laces. And that was the face. She stared at it for a while, wondering how she was going to be able to give him a Christian burial as she had promised. Who knew if he had been a Christian? But at last she knew where he had come from.

As she cranked and started the Hispano-Suiza and drove off down Brunswick Street, waving at outraged traffic cops, she was singing it.

‘There was a Wild Colonial Boy, Jack Doolan was his name . . .’

Lin Chung was escorted into a small hot parlour where two old ladies were seated, one either side of a small, bright fire. He began to sweat instantly. It must have been a hundred degrees inside. The scent of sandalwood incense was almost a stench. Old Lady Hu was evidently a Buddhist. A gemstone statue of Kwan Yin stood on the mantelpiece. An ancient piece and probably beyond price.

‘Let the young man sit down,’ said a very old lady. ‘Bring tea,’ she ordered.

The attentive Hu maid vanished so fast there was a sort of ‘flick’ as she went.

‘Close the door, there is a draught. A draught at our age can be fatal. I am Hu Ta. Well, you are the young man of the Lin family, who have at last admitted that we did not steal their gold, is that correct?’

‘It is correct,’ said Lin. ‘We were misinformed.’

‘By the Hakka, the tartar barbarians. Can’t even speak a decent language. Or possibly by the Sam Yap. We are Sze Yap, of course, as are the Lin family, I believe. Those Hakka degenerates,’ said the old lady. ‘They always hated us. I have always thought that they stole the gold themselves. And now over seventy years later you are going to find it? A noble quest,’ she said caustically. ‘Not one which will be attended by any success, of course.’