The Garden of Evening Mists

Following the high commissioner’s assassination, Magnus and Frederik Pretorius install new security fences and spotlights around Majuba. Magnus’s wife, Emily, gives Yun Ling a tour of the clinic she runs for estate workers and mentions local rumors of Japanese gold buried in the hills during the war. After Aritomo returns Yun Ling’s maps, Magnus gives her a tour of the tea plantation.

Disturbed by the instability and by Aritomo’s refusal, Yun Ling decides to leave. On a final walk, she finds a distressed young girl who is a member of the Indigenous Semang people. The girl leads a reluctant Yun Ling to a hut in the forest. When she opens the door,  Yun Ling sees that the three people inside, presumably the girl’s family, have been murdered, their throats slit. She takes the girl back to Majuba House, where Frederik calls the police and an official named Toombs, whose title is Protector of Aborigines. Toombs interviews the girl and learns that her name is Rohana and that the murder victims were her sister, brother, and cousin. From the girl’s story, Toombs deduces that the killers, four men, were members of the Malayan National Liberation Army (MNLA), the guerilla group fighting for independence from Britain, though he refers to them as “CTs” for “communist terrorists.