The Castlemaine Murders by Kerry Greenwood

a market, when it grew to a town. Even then they spat at us, even refused to deal with us. Until they got scurvy,’ Lin Gan chuckled. ‘Then they bought our cabbages again. Fools.’
    ‘Venerable One, what happened in the riot?’
    ‘We heard the camp roaring,’ he said, looking back into the past. ‘Always noisy, the goldfields, always a babble of languages, but this was different. It was like a tiger roaring, a roar that says “I am strong”. A roar that says “I am hunting and you are my prey”. I was scared even before we heard them coming up the hill, hundreds of feet, and that mob noise ahead of them as they came on like wild boar, breaking trees, snapping branches. We wanted to run, but we were against the foot of a rise; behind that was a marsh. There was nowhere to go. I remember cousin Chung saying that when he heard the noise he ran through a whole speech he was intending to deliver to the Black Judge of the Netherworld. I was too scared to do anything. I just stood there and wet my pants.’
    His hands were trembling and Lin had to hold the cup to tip the whisky into his mouth. He recovered enough to continue.
    ‘There were hundreds of them, all roaring, led by five men, two lascars as black as demons, three of the straw-headed ones. And then, just as I knew we were all going to die, out stepped Constable Cooke, the one we called ‘Gem-eye’. He had bright eyes, like gems. He was a big man and he stood there, not moving, as the mob yelled and poured up the hill, and then they stopped, because he didn’t move. And they yelled at him to move and he didn’t move, and I don’t know what he said because I never learned English, but then he raised his rifle and pointed it at the five leaders, one after another, and then all of a sudden, like a dam breaking, they backed down. I never saw such a thing before. He never moved. They backed away and then they ran and they were all gone and it was quiet again. Then Gem-eye, he walked over to us and said that we’d be safe that night and he’d call the Protector, and he said that the mob would have to go over him before he’d let them hurt us, and then he sat down under a tree with his rifle in his hands and he stayed there all night.’
    ‘That was a brave man!’ exclaimed Lin Chung, who had never heard this account before.
    ‘And not even Chinese,’ said Lin Gan, still amazed after seventy years.
    ‘What happened then?’
    ‘He went back to his police station when the Protector came to us. I heard that the mob had broken all of his windows. He was in trouble because of that. Glass was very scarce and expensive. We used to give him vegetables as soon as we had a garden. I heard—yes, I am sure—that he was dismissed from the police force and he went to the quartz mine. We didn’t see him again. He was a good man. They don’t make men like that these days. I can still see him, standing like a sea-wall, quite still, while the waves broke on him.’
    Lin Gan stared back into the past for some minutes. It was not kind to tire the old man. Lin stood up.
    ‘Thank you for your wisdom, Venerable One,’ said Lin Chung, handing over the flask. The old man caught his arm.
    ‘Sit a while, Great Great Nephew.’
    Lin sat down again.
    ‘You did well to settle the feud,’ said the old man. Lin suppressed a stare of astonishment.
    ‘Thank you,’ he managed.
    ‘And your grandmother will forgive you her demotion in time,’ continued the old man, sipping a little whisky.
    ‘I hope so,’ said Lin.
    ‘I like your wife Camellia,’ observed Lin Gan. ‘She is clever with gardens. I saw her planting, I saw the garden she designed for your concubine and I watched her tie up this very jasmine. She will be a good wife to you.’
    ‘I hope so,’ said Lin.
    ‘But you must leave us all for a time,’ said Lin Gan, his old eyes as bright as bradawls in his walnut face.
    ‘I must?’ asked Lin, overwhelmed by unaccustomed compliments.
    ‘Of course,’ said Lin