The Luminaries

Löwenthal reached across the workbench, put his hand over the pile of pennies, and swept them into his apron pocket. ‘I don’t mean to the Crown lot,’ he said. ‘I mean to your old friend Wells. This is his widow we’re talking about, after all. His widow, and his inheritance, and his memory. You’ll do as you please, of course. But if I were you, I’d make it my business to attend the party tonight.’ ‘Why?’ Tauwhare spat out the word contemptuously.

‘Why?’ said Löwenthal, picking up his composing stick again.

‘Why show loyalty to your good friend Wells? Only that I would have thought you owed it to the man, after selling him out to Francis Carver.’

JUPITER IN SAGITTARIUS

In which Thomas Balfour suffers a lapse of discretion; old subjects are revived; and Alistair Lauderback pens a letter of complaint.

Alistair Lauderback had not been in Hokitika since Wednesday morning, chiefly for the reason that the wreck of the Godspeed was wholly visible from his suite of rooms on the upper floor of the Palace Hotel, and the sight of it caused him no end of bitterness. When he was offered the chance to give an address at the Greymouth Town Hall, and to cut a ribbon on a shaft mine near Kumara, he accepted both invitations heartily, and at once. At the moment we join him—the moment Tauwhare took his leave of Löwenthal—Lauderback was making his way across the Kumara wetlands at a great pace, with a Sharps sporting rifle propped against his shoulder, and a satchel full of shot in his hand. Beside him was his friend Thomas Balfour, similarly armed, and similarly flushed with virtuous exertion. The two had spent the morning shooting at game, and they were now returning to their horses, which were tethered at the edge of the valley, visible from this distance as a small patch of white and a small patch of black against the sky.

‘Hell of a day,’ Lauderback exclaimed, as much to himself as to Balfour. ‘It’s a glorious hell of a day! Why, it almost makes one forgive the rain, does it not—when the sun comes out like this, at the end of it all.’

Balfour laughed. ‘Forgiven, maybe,’ he said, ‘but not forgotten. Not by me.’

‘It’s a grand country,’ said Lauderback. ‘Look at those colours! Those are New Zealand colours, rinsed by New Zealand rain.’

‘And we are New Zealand patriots,’ said Balfour. ‘The view’s all ours, Mr. Lauderback. There for the taking.’

‘Yes indeed,’ said Lauderback. ‘Nature’s patriots!’

‘No need for a flag,’ said Balfour.

‘How lucky we are,’ said Lauderback. ‘Think how few men have laid eyes upon this view. Think how few men have walked this soil.’

‘More than we expect, I don’t doubt,’ said Balfour, ‘if the birds have learned to scatter at the sight of us.’

‘You give them too much credit, Tom,’ said Lauderback. ‘Birds are very stupid.’

‘I shall remember that, next time you come home with a brace of duck and a long account of how you snared them.’

‘You do that: but I shall make you hear the story all the same.’

For Thomas Balfour this good-humoured exchange was very welcome. Over the past three weeks Lauderback had been excessively bad company, and Balfour had long since tired of his capricious moods, which alternated brittle, vicious, and sour. Lauderback tended to revert to childish modes of behaviour whenever his hopes were dashed, and the wreck of the Godspeed had wrought an unbecoming change in him. He had become very jealous of the company of crowds, needing always to be surrounded and attended; he would not spend any length of time alone, and protested if he was required to do so. His public manner was unchanged—he was exuberant and convincing when speaking from a pulpit—but his private manner had become altogether peevish. He flew into a temper at the slightest provocation, and was openly scornful of his two devoted aides, who chalked these vicissitudes of humour up to the taxing nature of political life, and did not protest them. That Sunday they had been granted a reprieve from Lauderback’s company, owing to a shortage of rifles, and, equally, to Lauderback’s disinclination to share; instead they would spend the period of their master’s absence at the Kumara chapel, contemplating, at Lauderback’s instruction, their sins.

Alistair Lauderback was an intensely superstitious man, and he felt that he could date the sudden change in his fortune to the night of his arrival in Hokitika, when he came upon the body of the hermit, Crosbie Wells. When he dwelled upon all the misfortunes he had suffered since that day—the wreck of the Godspeed in particular—he felt soured towards all of Westland, as though the whole forsaken district had been complicit in the project of embarrassing his successes, and frustrating his desires. The ruin of the Godspeed was proof, in his mind, that the very place was cursed against him. (This belief was not as irrational as might be supposed, for the shifty movement of the Hokitika bar owed, in the large part, to the silt and gravel that was carried down the Hokitika River from the claims upstream, and now clotted the river mouth, invisibly, in ever-changing patterns that answered only to the tide: in essence, the Godspeed had met her end upon the tailings of a thousand claims, and for that, every man in Hokitika could be said to be partially to blame for the wreck.)

Some days after Godspeed’s ruin Thomas Balfour had confessed to Lauderback that, in fact, the shipping crate containing Lauderback’s documents and personal effects had disappeared from Gibson Quay, due to a mistake of lading for which no one man seemed to be accountable. Lauderback received this information dispiritedly, but without real interest. Now that the Godspeed was ruined, he had no reason to blackmail Francis Carver, the purpose of which had only been to win his beloved ship back again: the barque’s bill of sale, stowed in his trunk among his personal possessions, was no longer of any use to him as leverage.

Lauderback had recently taken to playing dice in the evenings, for gambling was a weakness to which he periodically fell prey whenever he felt shamed, or out of luck. He demanded, naturally, that Jock and Augustus Smith take up this vice also, for he could not endure to sit at the table alone. They dutifully complied, though their bets were always very cautious, and they bowed out early. Lauderback placed his bets with the grim determination of a man for whom winning would mean inordinately much, and he was as chary of his tokens as he was of his whisky, which he drank very slowly, to make the evening last until the dawn.

‘You weren’t going to ride back this afternoon, were you?’ he said to Balfour now, with an emphasis that suggested regret.

‘I was,’ Balfour said. ‘That is—I am. I mean to be in Hokitika by tea-time.’

‘Put it off a day,’ Lauderback entreated. ‘Come along to the Guernsey tonight for craps. No sense to ride back on your own. I have to stay on to cut a ribbon in the morning—but I’ll be back in Hokitika by to-morrow noontime. Noontime on the inside.’

But Balfour shook his head. ‘Can’t do it. I’ve a shipment coming first thing to-morrow morning. Monday sharp.’

‘Surely you don’t need to be present—for a shipment!’

‘Oh—but I need the time to tally up my finances,’ Balfour said with a grin. ‘I’m twelve pounds redder than I was on Wednesday—and that’s twelve pounds into your pocket, you know. One pound for every face of the dice.’

(Balfour concealed the real reason for his haste, which was that he wished to attend the widow’s ‘drinks and speculation’ in the front room of the Wayfarer’s Fortune that evening. He had not spoken of Mrs. Wells to Lauderback since the politician made his confession in the dining room of the Palace Hotel, having judged it prudent to let Lauderback introduce the subject himself, and on his own terms. Lauderback, however, had also avoided any mention of her, though Balfour felt that his silence was of a taut and even desperate quality, as though at any moment he might burst out, and cry her name.)

‘That takes me back to my schooling days,’ Lauderback said. ‘We got one lash for every pip of the dice—if they caught us. Twenty-one pips on a single die. There’s a trivial fact I’ve never forgotten.’

‘I won’t stay until I’m down twenty-one pounds, if that’s your angle.’

‘You ought to stay,’ Lauderback persisted. ‘Just one more night. You ought to.’

‘Look at that marvellous fern,’ said Balfour—and indeed it was marvellous: furled perfectly, like the scroll of a violin. Balfour touched it with the muzzle of his gun.

The recent alteration in Lauderback’s humour had had a very injurious effect upon his friendship with Thomas Balfour. Balfour was certain that Lauderback had not told him the whole truth about his former dealings with Francis Carver and Crosbie Wells, and this exclusion left him very disinclined to pander to him. When Lauderback expressed his dissatisfaction on the subject of Westland, and sandbars, and cold-cut dinners, and disposable collars, and imitation, and German mustard, and the Premier, and bones in fish, and ostentation, and ill-made boots, and the rain, Balfour responded with less energy and admiration than he might have done but one month prior. Lauderback, to put it plainly, had lost his advantage, and both men knew this to be so. The politician was loath to admit that their friendship had cooled, however; he persisted in speaking to Balfour exactly as he always had done—that is, in a tone that was occasionally supercilious, always declamatory, and very rarely humble—and Balfour, who could be very supercilious himself if only he put his mind to the task, persisted in resenting him.

Presently they retrieved their horses, saddled up, and set off for Kumara at a slow trot. After they had been riding for a short while, Lauderback took up the thread again.

‘We had talked of stopping off at Seaview together—on the return journey,’ he said. ‘To take a look at the foundations for the gaol-house.’

‘Yes,’ said Balfour. ‘You’ll have to tell me all about it.’

‘I suppose I’ll have to go alone.’

‘Alone—with Jock and Augustus! Alone in a party of three!’

Lauderback shifted on his saddle, seeming very disgruntled. Presently he said, ‘What’s the gaoler’s name again—Sheffield?’

Balfour glanced at him sharply. ‘Shepard. George Shepard.’

‘Shepard, yes. I wonder if he’s angling for a shot at Magistrate. He’s done very well on the Commissioner’s budget—to get everything moving so smartly. He’s done very well indeed.’

‘I suppose he has. Hark at that one!’ Balfour pointed with the end of his crop at another fern frond, more orange than the first, and furrier. ‘What a pleasant shape it is,’ he added. ‘The motion of it—eh? As though it’s stilled in motion. There’s a thought!’

But Lauderback was not to be distracted by the pleasant shape of ferns. ‘He’s right in the Commissioner’s pocket, of course,’ he said, still referring to George Shepard. ‘And I gather he’s the Magistrate’s old friend.’

‘Perhaps they’ll keep it in the family then.’

‘Smacks of ambition. Don’t you think? The gaol-house, I mean. His devotion to the project. His devotion to the whole affair. He’s done very well about it.’

Lauderback, as an ambitious man, was very much the kind to be suspicious of ambition in others. Balfour, however, only snorted.

‘What?’ said Lauderback.

‘Nothing,’ said Balfour. (But it was not nothing! He detested it when a man received moral credit—however distantly—for something undeserved.)

‘What?’ said Lauderback again. ‘You made a noise.’

‘Well, tally it all up,’ Balfour said. ‘Timber for the gallows. Iron for the fencing. Stone for the foundation. Twenty navvies on a daily wage.’

‘What?’

‘Commissioner’s budget my hat!’ Balfour cried. ‘That money must be coming in from another quarter—from another source! Tally it up in your head!’

Lauderback looked across at him. ‘A private investment? Is that what you mean?’

Balfour shrugged. He knew full well that George Shepard had funded the construction of the gaol-house with Harald Nilssen’s commission on Crosbie Wells’s estate—but he had vowed to keep the secret, at the council of the Crown Hotel, and he did not like to break his promises.

‘Private investment, you said?’ Lauderback persisted.

‘Listen,’ said Balfour. ‘I don’t want to break any oaths. I don’t want to tread on any toes. But I will say this: if you stop in at Seaview, you ought to sniff around a bit. That’s all I’m saying. Sniff around, and you might come up with something.’

‘Is that why you’re heading home early?’ Lauderback demanded. ‘To avoid Shepard? Is this something between the two of you?’

‘No!’ Balfour said. ‘No, no. I was tipped off, that’s all.’

‘Tipped off? By whom?’

‘I can’t say.’

‘Come on, Tom! Don’t go proud on me. What did you mean by that?’

Balfour thought for a moment, squinting over the valley floor towards the rumpled slopes in the East. His horse was slightly shorter than Lauderback’s black mare, and because he was a shorter man than Lauderback, his shoulders were a clear foot below the other man’s—even when he squared them, which he did now. ‘It’s just common sense, isn’t it?’ he said. ‘Twenty navvies on the foundation at once? All the materials paid up in cash? That’s not the way that Council funding gets paid out. You know that yourself! Shepard must be dealing ready money.’

‘Which one is it?’ said Lauderback. ‘Common sense—or a tip-off?’

‘Common sense!’

‘So you weren’t tipped off.’

‘Yes, I was,’ Balfour said hotly. ‘But I might just as well have figured it out. That’s what I’m saying: I might just as well have figured it out on my own.’

‘So what was the point in it?’

‘In what?’

‘Tipping you off!’

Balfour was scowling. ‘I don’t know what you’re saying,’ he said. ‘You’re not making any sense.’

But Lauderback was making perfect sense, and Balfour knew it. ‘What doesn’t make sense, Tom,’ he said, ‘is that you’re the one tipped off about a gaol-house! What does Balfour Shipping care about public funding, and how it’s spent? What do you care about a private investment—unless it’s wrapped up in something else?’

Balfour shook his head. ‘You’ve got me wrong,’ he said.

‘Something to do with one of the felons maybe,’ Lauderback said. ‘A private investment—in exchange for—’

‘No, no,’ Balfour said. ‘Nothing like that.’

‘What then?’

When Balfour did not immediately respond, Lauderback added, ‘Listen: if it has to do with private funding, that’s a campaign matter, and I need to know. Anything that gets rushed over the Commissioner’s desk right before an election is worth looking at—and clearly this man Shepard is rushing something. Looks to me as though he’s got political designs, and I want to know what they are. If it’s all a matter of common sense, then why don’t you just tell me what you know—and if anyone asks me, I’ll pretend I worked it out on my own.’

This seemed reasonable enough to Balfour. His affection for Lauderback had not dissolved altogether over the course of the last month, and he wanted to remain in the politician’s good opinion, despite any new opinions he might have developed, in his turn. It could not hurt to tell him where Shepard’s money was coming from—not if Lauderback could pretend to have worked it out on his own!

Balfour was pleased, also, by the sudden sharpness of Lauderback’s expression, and the eagerness with which the older man was pressing him for news. He disliked it when Lauderback was broody, and this sudden change in the politician’s humour put Balfour in mind of the old Lauderback, the Lauderback of Dunedin days, who spoke like a general, and walked like a king; who made his fortune, and then doubled it; who rubbed shoulders with the Premier; who would never dare to beg a man to stay on one extra night in Kumara, so that he would not have to take his sorrows to the gambling house alone. Balfour was sympathetic to this old Lauderback, of whom he was still very fond, and it flattered him to be begged for news.

And so, after a long pause, Balfour told his old acquaintance what he knew about the gaol-house: that the construction had been funded by a cut of the fortune discovered in Crosbie Wells’s cottage. He did not say why, or how, this arrangement had come about, and he did not say who had tipped him off about the situation. He did say that the investment had occurred at George Shepard’s instigation, two weeks after Crosbie Wells’s death, and that the gaoler was very anxious to keep it quiet.

But Lauderback’s legal training had not been for nothing: he was a canny inquisitor, and never more than when he knew that he was being told a partial truth. He asked the value of the cut, and Balfour replied that the investment totalled a little over four hundred pounds. Lauderback was quick to ask the reason why the investment comprised ten percent of the total value discovered in the cottage, and when Balfour remained silent, he guessed, with even more alarming quickness, that ten percent was the standard rate of commission, and perhaps this investment represented the commission merchant’s fee.

Balfour was appalled that Lauderback had figured this out so quickly, and protested that it wasn’t Harald Nilssen’s fault.

Lauderback laughed. ‘He consented! He gave his commission away!’

‘Shepard had him in a corner. He’s not to blame. It was an inch short of blackmail, the way it played out—really. You oughtn’t make a meal of it. You oughtn’t, for Mr. Nilssen’s sake.’

‘A private investment, upon the eleventh hour!’ Lauderback exclaimed. (He was not particularly interested in Harald Nilssen, whom he had met only once at the Star Hotel in Hokitika, over a month ago. Nilssen had struck him as a very provincial type, rather too accustomed to a loyal audience of three or four, and rather too garrulous when drinking; Lauderback had written him off as bore, who was self-satisfied, and would never amount to anything at all.) He stood up on his stirrups. ‘This is politics, Tom—oh, this is politics, all right! Do you know what Shepard’s trying to do? He’s trying to get the gaol-house underway before Westland gets her seat, and he’s using a private investment to spur the enterprise along. Oh-ho! I shall have something to say about this in the Times—rest assured!’

But Balfour was not particularly assured by this, and nor did he feel inclined to rest. He protested, and after a short negotiation Lauderback agreed to leave Nilssen’s name out of it—‘Though I shan’t spare George Shepard the same courtesy,’ he added, and laughed again.

‘I take it you don’t fancy him as Magistrate,’ Balfour said—wondering whether Lauderback had designs upon that eminent position himself.

‘I don’t give two shakes about the Magistrate’s seat!’ Lauderback returned. ‘It’s the principle of the thing: that’s what I shall stand upon.’

‘Where’s the principle?’ Balfour said, with momentary confusion: Lauderback did care about the Magistrate’s seat. He had begun by mentioning it, and in a very surly humour at that.

‘The man’s a thief!’ Lauderback cried. ‘That money belongs to Crosbie Wells—dead or alive. George Shepard has no right to spend another man’s money as he pleases, and I don’t care what for!’

Balfour was quiet. Until this moment Lauderback had never once mentioned the fortune that had been discovered in Wells’s cottage, or expressed interest in how it was to be deployed. Nor had he once mentioned the legal debacle that revolved around the widow’s claim upon her late husband’s estate. Balfour had assumed that this silence owed to the fact of Lydia Wells’s involvement, for Lauderback was still too embarrassed of his past disgraces to mention her name. But now it seemed almost as though Lauderback had leaped to Crosbie Wells’s defence. It seemed as though the issue of Crosbie Wells’s fortune was an issue about which Lauderback cherished a very raw opinion. Balfour glanced at the other man, and then away. Had Lauderback guessed that the fortune discovered in Wells’s cottage was the very same fortune by which he had been blackmailed the year before? Balfour’s interest was whetted. He decided to provoke the other man.

‘What does it really matter?’ he said lightly. ‘Why, most likely that fortune had already been stolen from somebody else; it certainly didn’t belong to Crosbie Wells. What’s a man like him doing with four thousand pounds? It’s no secret that he was a wastrel, and the step from a wastrel to a thief is short indeed.’

‘There’s no proof of that,’ Lauderback began, but Balfour interrupted him.

‘So what does it really matter, if someone steals it back after he’s dead and gone? That’s my question. Chances are it was dirty money in the first place.’

‘What does it matter?’ Lauderback exploded. ‘It’s the principle of the thing—it’s as I say: the principle of it! You do not solve a crime by committing another. Thieving from a thief—it’s still a crime, whichever way you try and dress it! Don’t be absurd.’

So Lauderback was Crosbie Wells’s defender—and a very sore defender, by the looks of things. This was interesting.

‘But you are getting the almshouse you wanted,’ Balfour said—still speaking lightly, as though they were discussing something very trivial. ‘The money is not to be squandered. It is to be used for the erection of a public works.’

‘I don’t care whether Governor Shepard is lining his pockets or building an altar,’ Lauderback snapped. ‘That’s an excuse, that is—using the end to justify the means. I don’t deal in that kind of logic.’

‘And not just any public works,’ Balfour continued, as if Lauderback had not spoken. ‘You will get your asylum after all! Come; do you not remember our conversation at the Palace? “Where’s a woman to go”? “One clean shot at another kind of a life”—all of that? Well: we are soon to have that one clean shot! George Shepard has made it so!’

Lauderback looked furious. He remembered very well what he had said about the merits of asylum three weeks ago, but he did not like his own words to be quoted back to him unless the purpose of the reference was commendation alone.

‘It is disrespectful to the dead,’ he said shortly, ‘and that is all I will say about it.’

But Balfour was not so easily dissuaded. ‘I say,’ he exclaimed, as though the thought had just occurred to him, ‘the gold that Francis Carver put up against your Godspeed—that had been sewn into the lining of—’

‘What about it?’

‘Well—you never saw it again, did you? Nor heard tell of it. And then the very same sum—more or less—turns up in Crosbie Wells’s cottage, barely a year later. A little over four thousand pounds. Perhaps it’s the very same pile.’

‘Very possible,’ said Lauderback.

‘One wonders how it got there,’ said Balfour.

‘Indeed one does,’ said Lauderback.

At the Golden Lion they parted ways—Lauderback having evidently given up on his wish that Balfour remain in Kumara a second day, for he bid his friend goodbye very curtly, and without regret.

Balfour set off for Hokitika in a state of considerable discomfort. He had promised to keep Nilssen’s confidence, as he had on behalf of each one of the men of the Crown, and he had broken that promise. And for what? What had he gained, by reneging on his oath, and breaking his word? Disgusted with himself, Balfour dug his heels into his mare’s flanks, spurring her to a canter; he kept her at that pace until he reached the Arahura River, where he was obliged to dismount, walk the creature down to the beach, and lead her carefully across the shallows at the place where the torrent of fresh water fanned out over the sand.

Lauderback had not stayed to watch his friend ride off. He had already begun forming his letter in his mind: his lips were pursed in concentration, and there was a furrow in his brow. He led his horse to the stables, pressed a sixpence into the groom’s hand, and then retired at once to his rooms upstairs. Once alone, he locked the door, dragged his writing desk into the diamond-shaped patch of light beneath the window, fetched a chair, sat down, and pulled out a fresh sheet of paper; after some final moments’ contemplation with his pen against his lips, he shook out his cuff, leaned forward, and wrote:

A POSTHUMOUS INVESTMENT?—To the Editor of the West Coast Times.

18 February 1866

Sir—

It is desirable for Mr. GEORGE SHEPHERD to publish in these pages a list of names of persons appointed to the construction of the Hokitika gaol-house upon the terrace at Seaview; also to transmit a statement of works contracted for, and entered into; to reveal the amount of money voted for all such works, the subsidies of sums advanced to date, and the extra amounts required (if any) for their completion, or to render them more serviceable.

Such a publication may serve to ameliorate what the undersigned believes to have been a gross breach of conduct on Mr. Shepherd’s part: that the preliminary construction of the Hokitika gaol-house was funded by a private donation made without the consent of the Provincial Council, the Westland Public Works Committee, the Municipal Board, or indeed, the investor himself—for the investment was made some two weeks after the man’s own death! I allude here to Mr. CROSBIE WELLS whose estate has been the subject of much speculation in these pages. It is my understanding that the endowment (such as it might be termed) was extracted from Mr. Wells’s dwelling posthumously, and later apportioned, without public knowledge, to the erection of the future gaol. If this understanding is a false one I shall stand corrected; in the meantime I request immediate clarification from Mr. Shepherd himself.

I hold that the transparency of Mr. Shepherd’s conduct in this affair is desirable not least because of the nature of the institution he wishes to build, and the origin of the sum in question; but also for the reason that financial transparency in the management of public funds is of paramount importance given that this undeveloped region of our province is so rich in gold and therefore so sadly prey to the primitive temptations of corruption.

I maintain a high regard for Mr. Shepherd’s intentions, &c., in the instigation of this project, as I am sure he acts in the interests of the common settler and with due respect for colonial law. I beg only to restate my belief that all private endorsements of public works must be made transparent for the benefit of all, and to assure you, Sir, and all of the province of Westland that I am

Yours, &c.,

Mr. ALISTAIR LAUDERBACK, PROVINCIAL COUNCILMAN, M.P.

He sat back and read the document through aloud, and in ringing tones, as if in rehearsal for an important public address; then, satisfied, he folded the paper, slid it into an envelope, and addressed the envelope to the editor of the West Coast Times, marking it as both ‘to be read upon receipt’, and ‘urgent’. When the thing was sealed he reached into his vest, and checked the time: it was almost two o’clock. If Augustus Smith rode direct for Hokitika now, he could reach Löwenthal before the Monday morning edition of the Times had gone to proof. Better sooner than later, Lauderback thought, and went in search of his aide.

MERCURY IN CAPRICORN

In which Gascoigne repeats his theories, and Moody speaks of death.

Walter Moody was finishing his luncheon at Maxwell’s dining hall when he received a message that the cargo of the Godspeed had at last been cleared, and his trunk had been delivered to his room at the Crown Hotel.

‘Well!’ he exclaimed, as he passed the messenger a twopenny bit, and the boy scampered away. ‘That puts paid to my so-called apparition at last—does it not? If Emery Staines was on board, they would have surely found his corpse among the cargo.’

‘I doubt it would have been so neat as all that,’ said Gascoigne.

‘You mean his corpse might not have been reported?’

‘I mean his corpse might not have been found,’ Gascoigne said. ‘A man—even an injured man—could fight his way towards a hatch … and the wreck was not entirely submerged. I think it far more likely that he was swept away.’

Over the past three weeks Moody had struck up a very cordial acquaintance with Aubert Gascoigne, having discovered that the latter’s character improved very much in successive interviews—for Gascoigne was very skilled at adapting himself to every kind of social situation, and could court another man’s favour with great success if only he put his mind to the task. Gascoigne had determined that he would befriend Moody with a force of ambition that, if known, might have caused the latter some alarm; as it was, however, Moody thought him a very sophisticated personage, and was pleased to have an intellectual equal with whom he could comfortably converse. They took luncheon together nearly every day, and smoked cigars at the Star and Garter in the evenings, where they played partners at whist.

‘You are persisting with your original theory,’ Moody observed. ‘Jetsam, not flotsam.’

‘Either that, or his remains have been destroyed,’ Gascoigne said. ‘Perhaps he called to be rescued, only to be killed, tied to something heavy, and then dropped into the sea. Carver has rowed out to the wreck a fair few times, as you know—and there has been ample opportunity for drowning.’

‘That is also possible,’ Moody said, folding the delivered message into halves, and then quarters, and running his thumbnail along each fold. ‘But the problem remains that we cannot know for certain one way or another, and if you are right that Staines has drowned, whether by chance or by design, then we shall never know at all. What a poor crime this is—when we have no body, and no murderer!’

‘It is a very poor crime,’ Gascoigne agreed.

‘And we are very poor detectives,’ Moody said, meaning this as a closing statement of a kind, but Gascoigne was reaching for the gravy boat, and showed no sign at all of wishing to conclude their discussion.

‘I dare say we shall feel excessively foolish,’ he said, pouring gravy over the remainder of his meal, ‘when Staines is found in the bottom of a gully, with a broken neck, and not a sign of harm upon him.’

Moody pushed his knife a little closer to his fork. ‘I am afraid that we all rather want Mr. Staines to have been murdered—even you and I, who have never met the man in our lives. We would not be contented with a broken neck.’

Moody’s jacket was hanging over the back of his chair. He knew that it would be impolite to reach back and put it on, when his friend had not yet finished his luncheon … but now that he knew his trunk had been recovered at last, he was very anxious to leave, and go to it. Not only did he not yet know whether his belongings had survived the wreck, he had not changed his jacket and trousers in three weeks.

Gascoigne chuckled. ‘Poor Mr. Staines,’ he agreed. ‘And how Mrs. Wells is making sport of him! If my shade were summoned to a shilling séance … why, I should be aghast, you know. I should not know how to take the invitation.’

‘If mine were summoned, I should be relieved; I should accept at once,’ Moody said. ‘I daresay the afterlife is a very dreary place.’

‘How do you conceive it so?’

‘We spend our entire lives thinking about death. Without that project to divert us, I expect we would all be dreadfully bored. We would have nothing to evade, and nothing to forestall, and nothing to wonder about. Time would have no consequence.’

‘And yet it would be entertaining, to spy upon the living,’ Gascoigne said.

‘On the contrary, I should consider that a very lonely prospect,’ Moody said. ‘Looking down on the world, unable to touch it, unable to alter it, knowing everything that had been, and everything that was.’

Gascoigne was salting his plate. ‘I have heard that in the New Zealand native tradition, the soul, when it dies, becomes a star.’

‘That is the best recommendation I have yet heard, to go native.’

‘Will you get your face tattooed—and wear a skirt made of grass?’

‘Perhaps I will.’

‘I would like to see that,’ Gascoigne said, picking up his fork again. ‘I would like to see that even more than I should like to see you don your slouch hat and knee-boots, and fossick for gold! I have yet to believe even that, you know.’

Moody had purchased a swag, a cradle, and a digger’s costume of moleskin and serge, but apart from a few indifferent forays into Kaniere, he had not really applied his mind to the prospect of panning for gold. He did not yet feel ready to begin his new life as a digger, and had resolved not to do so until the case pertaining to Emery Staines and Crosbie Wells was finally closed—a resolution that he had made under the pretence of necessity, but in reality there was nothing at all for him to do except to wait for new information, and, like Gascoigne, to continue to speculate upon the information he already possessed.

He had twice extended his board at the Crown Hotel, and on the afternoon of the 18th of February, was about to do so for a third time. Edgar Clinch had invited him to transfer to the Gridiron, suggesting that he might like to take up the room formerly occupied by Anna Wetherell, which now stood empty. The handsome view over the Hokitika rooftops to the snow-clad Alps in the East would be wasted on a common digger, and Moody, as a gentleman, would find pleasure in the harmonies of nature that other men would likely miss. But Moody had respectfully declined: he had grown rather fond of the Crown, shabby though the establishment was, and in any case he did not like to mingle too closely with Edgar Clinch, for there was still a very good chance that the case of Crosbie Wells’s hoarded fortune would go to trial, in which event Clinch—along with Nilssen, and Frost, and sundry other men—would certainly be called in to be questioned. The thirteen men had sworn, each upon his honour, to keep the secret of the council at the Crown, but Moody did not like to rely on another man’s honour, having little confidence in any expression of integrity save his own; he expected, in time, that at least one of the other twelve would break his word, and he had determined, in anticipation of that event, to remain aloof from them.

Moody had introduced himself to Alistair Lauderback, having discovered, through their mutual background in the law, that they shared several acquaintances in common: lawyers and judges in London whom Lauderback variously exalted, decried, and dismissed, in a recitation of confident opinion that brokered neither interruption nor reply. Moody listened to him politely, but the impression he formed was an unfavourable one, and he had left the scene of their first acquaintance with no intention of repeating it. He saw that Lauderback was the kind of man who did not care to court the good opinion of any man whose connexions could not benefit his own.

This had been quite contrary to his expectation; in fact Moody had been very surprised to discover that his natural sympathies aligned far more closely with the gaol’s governor, George Shepard, than they did with the politician Lauderback. Moody had met Shepard only in passing, at a Public Assembly in Revell-street, but he admired the gaoler as a man who kept himself in check, and who was unfailingly courteous, however cold and rigid the expression of his courtesy might be. The summation of Shepard’s character by the council at the Crown Hotel had been as critical as Lauderback’s had been sympathetic—which only showed, Moody thought, that a man ought never to trust another man’s evaluation of a third man’s disposition. For human temperament was a volatile compound of perception and circumstance; Moody saw now that he could no more have extracted the true Shepard from Nilssen’s account of him than he could have extracted the true Nilssen from his portrayal of Shepard.

‘Do you know,’ he said now, tapping the folded message with his finger, ‘until this afternoon, I half-believed that Staines was still alive. Perhaps I was foolish … but I did believe that he was aboard that wreck, and I did believe that he would be found.’

‘Yes,’ Gascoigne said.

‘But now it seems that he can only be dead.’ Moody tapped his fingers, brooding. ‘And gone forever, no doubt. Hang not knowing! I would give any money for a seat at the widow’s séance tonight.’

‘Not just the widow’s,’ Gascoigne said. ‘Don’t forget that she is to be assisted.’

Moody shook his head. ‘I hardly think this business is Miss Wetherell’s doing.’

‘She was mentioned in the paper by name,’ Gascoigne pointed out. ‘And not only by name: her role was specifically indicated. She is to be the widow’s aide.’

‘Well, her apprenticeship has been extraordinarily short,’ Moody said, with some acidity. ‘It makes one rather doubt the quality of the training—or the quality of the subject.’

Gascoigne grinned at this. ‘Is a whore’s praxis not the original arcana?’ he said. ‘Perhaps she has been in training all her life.’

Moody was always embarrassed by conversation of this kind. ‘Her former praxis is arcane, in the proper sense of the word,’ he conceded, drawing himself up, ‘but the female arts are natural; they cannot be compared to the conjuration of the dead.’

‘Oh, I am sure that the tricks of both professions are more or less the same,’ Gascoigne said. ‘A whore is the very mistress of persuasion, just as a sibyl must be persuasive, if she is to be believed … and you must not forget that beauty and conviction are always persuasive, whatever the context in which they appear. Why, the shape of Anna’s fortunes is not so very greatly changed. You may as well keep calling her Magdalena!’

‘Mary Magdalene was no clairvoyant,’ Moody said stiffly.

‘No,’ Gascoigne agreed, still grinning, ‘but she was the first to come upon the open tomb. She was the one to swear that the stone had been rolled away. It bears mention, that the news of the ascension first came as a woman’s oath—and that at first the oath was disbelieved.’

‘Well, tonight Anna Wetherell will make her oath upon another man’s tomb,’ Moody said. ‘And we will not be there to disbelieve it.’ He twitched his knife and fork still straighter, wishing that the waiter would come and clear his plate away.

‘We have the party beforehand to look forward to,’ said Gascoigne, but the cheer had gone from his voice. He too had been excessively disappointed by his exclusion from the widow’s impending communion with the dead. The exclusion rankled him rather more bitterly than it did Moody, for he felt, as the first friend Lydia Wells had made in Hokitika, that a place ought properly to have been reserved for him. But Lydia Wells had not once paid a call upon him, since the afternoon of the 27th of January, and nor had she once received him, even for tea.

Moody had not yet met either woman formally. He had glimpsed them hanging drapes in the front windows of the former hotel, silhouetted darkly, like paper dolls against the glass. Perceiving them, he felt a rather strange thrill of longing—unusual for him, for it was not his habit to envy the relations that women conduct with other women, nor really, to think about them with any great interest at all. But as he walked past the shadowed frontage of the Wayfarer’s Fortune and saw their bodies shifting behind the contorting pane he wished very much that he could hear what they were saying. He wished to know what caused Anna to redden, and bite her lip, and move the heel of her hand to her cheekbone, as if to test it for heat; he wished to know what caused Lydia to smile, and dust her hands, and turn away—leaving Anna with her arms full of fabric, and her dress-front stuck all over with pins.

‘I think that you are right to doubt Anna’s part in all this—or at least, to wonder at it,’ Gascoigne went on. ‘I got the impression, when I first spoke to her about Staines, that she held the boy in rather high esteem; I even fancied that she might care for him. And now by all appearances she is seeking to profit from his death!’

‘We cannot be certain of the degree of Miss Wetherell’s complicity,’ Moody said. ‘It depends entirely upon her knowledge of the fortune hidden in the gowns—and therefore, of Mr. Lauderback’s blackmail.’

‘There has been no mention of the orange gown—from any quarter,’ said Gascoigne. ‘One would think Mrs. Wells might have been more active in its recovery, had Anna told her that it was stowed beneath my bed.’

‘Presumably Miss Wetherell believes the gold was paid out to Mr. Mannering, as she instructed.’

‘Yes—presumably,’ Gascoigne said, ‘but wouldn’t you suppose that in that case, Mrs. Wells would pay a call upon Mannering, to see about recovering it? There’s no want of love between them: she and Mannering are old friends from gambling days. No: I think it far more possible that Mrs. Wells remains entirely ignorant about the orange gown—and about all the others.’

‘Hm,’ said Moody.

‘Mannering won’t touch it,’ Gascoigne said, ‘for fear of what will happen down the line—and I’m certainly not going to take it to the bank. So there it stays. Under my bed.’

‘Have you had it valued?’

‘Yes, though unofficially: Mr. Frost came by to look it over. Somewhere in the neighbourhood of a hundred and twenty pounds, he thought.’

‘Well, I hope for Miss Wetherell’s sake that she has not confided in Mrs. Wells,’ Moody said. ‘I dread to think how Mrs. Wells might respond to such a revelation, behind closed doors. She would only blame Anna for the loss of the fortune—I am sure of it.’

Suddenly Gascoigne put down his fork. ‘I’ve just had a thought,’ he said. ‘The money in the dresses became the money in the cottage. So if the widow’s appeal goes through, and she receives the fortune as her inheritance, she’ll get it all back—less the money in the orange gown, of course. She’ll end up where she started, after all.’

‘In my experience people are rarely contented to end up where they started,’ Moody said. ‘If my impression of Lydia Wells is accurate, I think that she will feel very bitter about Anna’s having been in possession of those dresses, no matter what Anna’s intentions might have been, and no matter what the outcome.’

‘But we’re fairly certain that Anna did not even know about the gold she was carrying—at least, not until very recently.’

‘Mr. Gascoigne,’ Moody said, holding up his hand, ‘despite my youth, I possess a certain store of wisdom about the fairer sex, and I can tell you categorically that women do not like it when other women wear their clothes without their asking.’

Gascoigne laughed. Cheered by this joke, he applied himself to finishing his luncheon with a renewed energy, and a good humour.

The truth of Moody’s observation notwithstanding, it must be owned that his store of wisdom, as he had termed it, could be called empirical only in that it had been formed upon the close observation of his late mother, his stepmother, and his two maternal aunts: to put it plainly, Moody had never taken a lover, and did not know a great deal about women, save for how to address them properly, and how to dote upon them as a nephew and as a son. It was not despite the natural partialities of youth that the compass of Moody’s worldly experience was scarcely larger than a keyhole, through which he had perceived, metaphorically speaking, only glimpses of the shadowed chamber of adulthood that lay beyond. In fact he had met with ample opportunity to widen this aperture, and indeed, to unlock the door altogether, and pass through it, into that most private and solitary of rooms … but he had declined these opportunities with quite the same discomfort and stiff propriety with which he fielded Gascoigne’s rhetorical teases now.

When he was one-and-twenty a late night of carousing in London had led him, by the usual methods and channels, to a lamp lit courtyard not far from Smithfield Market. This courtyard, by the authority of Moody’s college chums, was frequented by the most fashionable of whores—so identifiable for their red Garibaldi jackets, brass-buttoned, that were the height of Parisian fashion at the time, and alarming to English ladies for that reason. Although the military style of their jackets gave the women a deliberate and brazen look, they pretended at shyness, turning away so they might look at the men over the rounded curve of their shoulders, and feint, and titter, and point their toes. Moody, watching them, felt suddenly sad. He could not help but think of his father—for how many times, over the years of Moody’s youth, had he come across the man in some dark corner of the house, to perceive, upon his father’s lap, a perfect stranger? She would be gasping unnaturally, or squealing like a pig, or speaking in a high-pitched voice that was not her own, and she would leave behind her, always, that same greasy musk: the smell of the theatre. Moody’s college chums were pooling their sovereigns and cutting straws to draw for the first pick; silently, he withdrew from the courtyard, hailed a hansom, and retired to bed. It was a point of pride for him, thereafter, that he would not do as his father had done; that he would not fall prey to his father’s vices; that he would be the better man. And yet how easy it might have been—to contribute his sovereign, and select his straw, and choose one of the red-shirted ladies to follow into the cobbled alcove on the dark side of the church! His college chums supposed him to have set his sights upon a clerical vocation. They were surprised, some years later, when Moody enrolled at Inner Temple, and began to study for the Bar.

It was therefore with a very well-concealed ignorance that Moody played interlocutor to Gascoigne, and Clinch, and Mannering, and Pritchard, and all the others, when they spoke of Anna Wetherell, and the esteem in which they held her, as a whore. Moody’s well-timed murmurs of ‘naturally’ and ‘of course’ and ‘exactly so’, combined with a general rigidity of posture whenever Anna’s name was mentioned, implied to these men merely that Moody was made uncomfortable by the more candid truths of human nature, and that he preferred, like most men of exalted social rank, to keep his earthly business to himself. We observe that one of the great attributes of discretion is that it can mask ignorance of all the most common and lowly varieties, and Walter Moody was nothing if not excessively discreet. The truth was that he had never spoken two words together to a woman of Anna Wetherell’s profession or experience, and would hardly know how to address her—or upon what subject—should the chance arise.

‘And of course,’ he said now, ‘we ought to be cheered by the fact that Miss Wetherell’s trunk did not follow her to the Wayfarer’s Fortune.’

‘Did it not?’ said Gascoigne, in surprise.

‘No. The lead-lined dresses remain at the Gridiron, along with her pipe, and her opium lamp, and other miscellaneous items; she never sent for them.’

‘And Mr. Clinch has not raised the issue?’

‘No,’ said Moody. ‘It is cheering, I think: whatever role Miss Wetherell played in Mr. Staines’s disappearance, and whatever role she is to play in the ridiculous séance this evening, we can at least be fairly certain that she has not confided in Mrs. Wells absolutely. I take heart in that.’

He looked about for the waiter, for Gascoigne had finished eating, and he wished to settle his account as soon as possible, so that he might return to the Crown, and unpack his trunk at long last.

‘You are anxious to depart,’ Gascoigne observed, wiping his mouth with his table napkin.

‘Forgive my rudeness,’ Moody said. ‘I am not tired of your company—but I am rather anxious to be reunited with my possessions. I have not changed my jacket in some weeks, and I do not yet know the degree to which my trunk survived the storm. It is possible that all my clothes and documents were ruined.’

‘What are we waiting for? Let us go, at once,’ said Gascoigne, for whom this explanation was not only entirely reasonable, but also something of a relief. Gascoigne feared very much that his own society was tiring, and he was made very anxious whenever a man he respected showed boredom in his company. He insisted upon settling the cheque himself, shooing away Moody in the manner of an indulgent governess; once this was done, the two friends stepped out into the noisy rush of Revell-street, where a party of diggers was swarming cheerfully past. Behind them came a shout from a surveyor on horseback, reining in, and above them, the solitary bell in the Wesleyan chapel, which was striking the hour, once, twice. Raising their voices above this noise—the creaking wheels of a gig, the snap of canvas, laughter, hammering, the shrill voice of a woman calling to a man—the two friends bid one another good afternoon, and shook hands very warmly as they parted ways.

THE LESSER MALEFIC

In which certain key facts are disputed; Francis Carver is discourteous; and Löwenthal is provoked to speak his mind.

It was Löwenthal’s practice, when a letter of inflammatory accusation was delivered to the West Coast Times, to contact all parties concerned before the paper went to press. He judged it right to give fair warning to any man about to be lambasted, for the court of public opinion in Hokitika was a court of severe adjudication, and a reputation could be ruined overnight; to every man so threatened, he extended the invitation to pen a reply.

Alistair Lauderback’s long-winded and rather haphazard address on the subject of Governor Shepard’s professional dereliction was no exception to this rule, and upon reading it through, Löwenthal sat down at once to make a copy of the document. The copy he would set into type; the original he would take to the Police Camp, to show to the gaoler himself—for Shepard would certainly wish to defend himself upon several counts, and it was still early enough in the day that his reply could be included, as a response to Lauderback’s, in the Monday edition of the Times.

Löwenthal was frowning as he set out his writing implements. He knew that the information about Shepard’s private investment could only have been leaked by one of the twelve men of the Crown, which meant that someone—sadly—had broken his vow of silence. As far as Löwenthal knew, the only man who had any kind of acquaintance with Alistair Lauderback was his friend, Thomas Balfour. It was with a heavy heart that the newspaperman pulled out a fresh sheet of paper, unscrewed the cap on his inkwell, and dipped his nib. Tom, he thought, with admonition, Tom. He shook his head, and sighed.

Löwenthal was copying out Lauderback’s final paragraph when he was roused by the sound of the bell. Immediately he stood, laid his pen upon his blotter, and walked through to the shop, his face already relaxing into a smile of welcome—which froze, ever so slightly, when he saw who was standing in the doorway.

The incomer wore a long grey coat with velvet-faced lapels and turned velvet cuffs; the coat was made of a tight weave of some shiny, sealskin-like variety that turned an oily colour when he moved. His cravat was piled high at his throat, and the lapels of his shawl-collared waistcoat were turned up at the sides, lending an added bulk to his shoulders, and an added thickness to his neck. There was a heavy quality to his features, as though they had been hewn from some kind of mineral: something elemental and coarsely grained that would not polish, and that weighed a great deal. His mouth was wide, and his nose flattened; his brow protruded squarely. Upon his left cheek was a thin scar, silvery in colour, which curved from the outer corner of his eye down to his jaw.

Löwenthal’s hesitation was only momentary. In the next instant he was bustling forward, wiping his hands on his apron, and smiling very broadly; when his hands were clean, he extended both his palms to his guest, and said, ‘Mr. Wells! How good to see you again. Welcome back to Hokitika.’

Francis Carver narrowed his eyes, but did not take the bait. ‘I want to place an advertisement,’ he said. He did not step into the bounds of the other man’s reach; he remained by the door, keeping eight feet of distance between them.

‘Certainly, certainly,’ said Löwenthal. ‘And may I say: I am both honoured and gratified that you have sought my paper’s services a second time. I should have been very sorry to lose any man’s custom through an error of my own.’

Again Carver said nothing. He had not removed his hat, and made no move to do so.

But the newspaperman was not intimidated by Carver’s insolence. Smiling very brightly, he said, ‘But let us not talk of former days, Mr. Wells; let us talk of today! You must tell me what I can do for you.’

A flash of irritation darkened Carver’s face at last. ‘Carver,’ he corrected. ‘My name’s not Wells.’

Satisfied, Löwenthal folded his hands. The first two fingers of his right hand were stained very darkly with ink, which created a curiously striped effect when he laced his fingers together—as though his two hands belonged to two different creatures, one black, the other fawn.

‘Perhaps my memory is faulty,’ he said, ‘but I feel I do recall you very vividly. You were here nearly a year ago, were you not? You had a birth certificate. You placed an advertisement about a missing shipping crate—for which you were offering some kind of a reward. There was some confusion regarding your name, I remember. I made a mistake in the printing—omitting your middle name—and you returned the following morning, to identify the error. I believe your birth certificate was made out as Crosbie Francis Wells. But please—have I mistaken you for another man?’

Again Carver did not reply.

‘I have always been told,’ Löwenthal added after a moment, ‘that I have a remarkably good memory.’

He was taking a risk, in speaking impertinently … but perhaps Carver would be drawn. Löwenthal’s expression remained pleasantly impassive. He waited for the other man to speak.

Löwenthal knew that Carver was lodging at the Palace Hotel, from which place he conducted the unhappy business of arranging for the wreck of the Godspeed to be hauled ashore. This was a project that would surely have been undertaken slyly, and with much restriction, had Carver been taking pains to conceal a murdered man aboard the foundered ship. But by all reports—including that of the shipping agent, Thomas Balfour—Carver had been most forthcoming in his business. He had submitted a cargo inventory to the Harbourmaster; he had met with delegates from each of Hokitika’s shipping firms, in order to settle their accounts; and he had several times rowed out to the wreck himself, in the company of shipwrights, salvage vendors, and the like.

‘My name’s not Wells,’ Carver said at last. ‘That was on behalf of someone else. It doesn’t matter now.’

‘I beg your pardon,’ Löwenthal said smoothly. ‘So Mr. Crosbie Wells had lost a shipping crate—and you were helping him retrieve it.’

A pause, then, ‘Yes.’

‘Well then, I do hope you were successful in that project! I trust the crate was eventually returned to him?’

Carver jerked his head in annoyance. ‘It doesn’t matter,’ he said. ‘I told you.’

‘But I would be remiss,’ Löwenthal said, ‘if I did not offer my condolences to you, Mr. Carver.’

Carver studied him.

‘I was very saddened to learn of Mr. Wells’s death,’ Löwenthal continued. ‘I never had the pleasure of meeting him, but by all accounts he was a decent citizen. Oh—I do hope I’m not the man to break the news to you—that your acquaintance is deceased.’

‘No,’ Carver said again.

‘I am glad of that. How did you know one another?’

The flash of irritation returned. ‘Old friends.’

‘From Dunedin, perhaps? Or further back?’

Carver did not look inclined to answer this, so Löwenthal went on, ‘Well, I expect it must be a great comfort to you, to know that he died peacefully.’

Carver’s mouth twisted. After a moment he burst out, ‘What’s peaceful?’

‘To die in our sleep—in our own homes? I dare say it is the best that any of us can hope for.’ Löwenthal felt that he had gained some ground. He added, ‘Though it was a great pity his wife was not present at his passing.’

Carver shrugged. Whatever sudden fire had prompted his last outburst had been smothered just as suddenly. ‘A marriage is a man’s own business,’ he said.

‘I couldn’t agree with you more,’ Löwenthal said. He smiled. ‘Are you at all acquainted with Mrs. Wells?’

Carver made an inscrutable noise.

‘I have had the pleasure of meeting her, but only briefly,’ Löwenthal went on, undeterred. ‘I had intended to go along to the Wayfarer’s Fortune this evening—as a sceptic, of course, but with an open mind. Can I expect to see you there?’

‘No,’ Carver said, ‘you can’t.’

‘Perhaps your scepticism about séances exceeds even mine!’

‘I don’t have an opinion about séances,’ Carver said. ‘I might be there or I might not.’

‘In any case, I expect Mrs. Wells welcomed your return to Hokitika very gladly,’ said Löwenthal—whose conversational gambits were becoming tenuous indeed. ‘Yes: I am sure she must have been very pleased, to know that you had returned!’

Carver was now looking openly annoyed. ‘Why?’ he said.

‘Why?’ said Löwenthal. ‘Because of all the fuss over his estate, of course! Because the legal proceedings have been halted precisely on account of Wells’s birth certificate! It’s nowhere to be found!’

Löwenthal’s voice rang out rather more loudly than he had intended, and he worried briefly that perhaps he had overplayed his hand. What he had said was perfectly true, and what’s more, it was public knowledge: Mrs. Wells’s appeal to revoke the sale of Wells’s estate had not yet been heard by the Magistrate’s Court because no documentation had survived the dead man that might have served as proof of his true identity. Lydia Wells had arrived in Hokitika several days after her late husband had been buried, and therefore had not identified his body; short of digging his body up (the Magistrate begged the widow’s pardon) there was, it seemed, no way of proving that the hermit who had died in the Arahura Valley and the Mr. Crosbie Wells who had signed Mrs. Wells’s marriage certificate were the same man. Given the enormity of the inheritance in question, the Magistrate thought it prudent to delay the Court proceedings until a more definite conclusion could be reached—for which pronouncement Mrs. Wells thanked him very nicely. She assured him that her patience was of the most stalwart female variety, and that she would wait for as long as necessary for the outstanding debt (so she conceived of the inheritance) to be paid out to her.

But Carver was not provoked; he only looked the editor up and down, and then said, in a voice of surly indifference, ‘I want to place a notice in the Times.’

‘Yes, of course,’ Löwenthal said. His heart was beating fast. Drawing a sheet of paper towards him, he said, ‘What is it that you are wishing to sell?’

Carver explained that the hull of the Godspeed would shortly be dismantled, and in advance of this event, he wished to sell her parts at auction on Friday, care of Glasson & Rowley Salvage. He gave his instructions very curtly. No part was to be sold prior to auction. No privilege would be given, and no correspondence entered into. All inquiries were to be directed, by post, to Mr. Francis Carver, at the Palace Hotel.

‘You see I am making careful note of it,’ Löwenthal said. ‘I will not make the mistake of omitting any part of your name—not this time! Say—I don’t suppose that you and Crosbie were related?’

Carver’s mouth twisted again. ‘No.’

‘It’s true that Francis is a very common name,’ Löwenthal said, nodding. He was still making note of the name of Carver’s hotel, and did not look up for several seconds; when he did, however, he found that Carver’s expression had soured still further.

‘What’s your name?’ Carver demanded, accenting the fact that he had not bothered to use it before. When Löwenthal replied, Carver nodded slowly, as if committing the name to heart. Then he said, ‘You’ll shut your f—ing mouth.’

Löwenthal was shocked. He received the payment for the advertisement and wrote up Carver’s receipt in silence—penning the words very slowly and carefully, but with a steady hand. This was the first time he had ever been insulted in his own office, and his shock was such that he could not immediately respond. He felt an exhilaration building within him; a pressure; an exultant, roaring sound. Löwenthal was the kind of man who became almost gladiatorial when he was shamed. He felt a martial stirring in his breast that was triumphal, even glad, as if a long-awaited call to arms had sounded somewhere close at hand, and he alone had felt its private resonation, drumming in his ribcage, drumming in his blood.

Carver had taken up the receipt. He turned, and made to leave the shop without either thanking Löwenthal or bidding him goodbye—a discourtesy that released a surge of outrage in Löwenthal’s breast: he could contain himself no longer. He burst out, ‘You’ve got a lot to answer for, showing your face around here!’

Carver stopped, his hand upon the doorknob.

‘After what you did to Anna,’ Löwenthal said. ‘I was the one to find her, you know. All bloody. It’s not a way to treat a woman. I don’t care who she is. It’s not a way to treat a woman—still less when she’s expecting, and so close to being due!’

Carver did not answer.

‘It was a hair short of a double murder. Do you know that?’ Löwenthal felt his anger mounting into fury. ‘Do you know what she looked like? Did you see her when the bruises were going down? Did you know that she had to use a cane for two weeks? Just to be able to walk! Did you know that?’

At last Carver said, ‘Her hands weren’t clean.’

Löwenthal almost laughed. ‘What—she left you in a bloody pool, then? She boxed you senseless? What is the phrase—an eye for an eye?’

‘I didn’t say that.’

‘She killed your child? She killed your child—so you killed hers?’ Löwenthal was almost shouting. ‘Say the words, man! Say them!’

But Carver was unmoved. ‘I meant she’s no blushing flower.’

‘Blushing flower! Now I expect you’re going to tell me she brought it all upon herself—that she deserved it!’

‘Yes,’ said Francis Carver. ‘She got what she was owed.’

‘You are short on friends in Hokitika, Mr. Carver,’ said Löwenthal, levelling his ink-blackened finger at the other man. ‘Anna Wetherell may be a common whore but she is treasured by more men in this town than you can hold off, armed or no, and you ought not to forget that. If any harm should come to her—let me warn you—if any harm—’

‘Not by my hand,’ Carver said. ‘I’ve got nothing more to do with her. I’ve settled my dues.’

‘Your dues!’ Löwenthal spat on the floor. ‘You mean the baby? Your own child—dead, before its own first breath! That’s what you call dues!’

But suddenly Carver was looking at him with a very amused expression.

‘My own child?’ he repeated.

‘I’ll tell you, though you haven’t asked,’ Löwenthal shouted. ‘Your baby’s dead. Do you hear me? Your own child—dead, before its first breath! And by your hand!’

And Carver laughed—harshly, as though clearing something foul from his throat. ‘That whore carried no baby of mine,’ he said. ‘Who told you that?’

‘Anna herself,’ Löwenthal said, feeling a flash of trepidation for the first time. ‘Do you deny it?’

Carver laughed again. ‘I wouldn’t touch that girl with a boathook,’ he said, and before Löwenthal could reply, he was gone.

SUN IN AQUARIUS

In which Sook Yongsheng pays another unexpected call; Lydia Wells has a most prophetic notion; and Anna finds herself alone.

Anna Wetherell had not visited the opium den in Kaniere since the afternoon of the 14th of January. The half-ounce of fresh resin that Sook Yongsheng had gifted her that afternoon ought to have lasted no more than two weeks, by Anna’s habitual rate of consumption. But now over a month had passed, and Anna had not once returned to Kaniere to share a pipe with her old companion, or to replenish her supply—an absence for which Ah Sook could not produce any kind of reasonable explanation.

The hatter missed the whore’s visits very much. Every afternoon he waited, in vain, for her to appear at the edge of the clearing beyond the bounds of Kaniere Chinatown, her bonnet hanging down her back, and every afternoon he was disappointed. He guessed that she must have ceased to take opium altogether: either that, or she had decided to source the drug from the chemist directly. This latter alternative ought to have been the more hurtful to Ah Sook, for he still suspected that Joseph Pritchard had played a part in engineering Anna’s overdose, on the night of the 14th: he still believed, despite many assurances to the contrary, that Pritchard had tried for some reason to end Anna’s life. But in fact it was the former alternative that was the more difficult for Ah Sook to bear. He simply could not believe—did not want to believe—that Anna had managed to rid herself, once and for all, of her addiction.

Ah Sook was very fond of Anna, and he believed that she was fond of him also. He knew, however, that the intimacy that they enjoyed together was less a togetherness than it was a shared isolation—for there is no relationship as private as that between the addict and his drug, and they both felt that isolation very keenly. Ah Sook loathed his own enslavement to opium, and the more he loathed it, the more his craving for the drug strengthened, taking a disgusted shape in his heart and mind. Anna, too, had loathed the habit in herself. She had loathed it all the more when she began to swell with child, and her trade in Hokitika dwindled, and she was left with days and weeks of twilit smoke, an acreage of time, that softened at the edges, and blurred, until the baby died, and Anna’s dependence acquired a desperation that even Ah Sook did not attempt to understand. He did not know how the baby came to perish, and had not asked.

They never spoke in the Kaniere den—not as they lit the lamp, not as they lay back, not as they waited for the resin to soften and bubble in the bowl. Sometimes Anna filled Ah Sook’s pipe first, and held it for him as he took the smoke into his body, and breathed, and slipped away—only to wake, later, and find her stretched out beside him, supple and clammy, her hair plastered wet against her cheek. It was important to the lighting of the pipe that no words were ever spoken, and Ah Sook was pleased that they had adopted this practice without any kind of negotiation or request. As the conjugal act cannot be spoken of aloud for reasons both sacred and profane, the ritual of the pipe was, for the pair of them, a holy ritual that was unspeakable and mortified, just as it was ecstatic and divine: its sacredness lay in its very profanity, and its profanity, in its sacred form. For what a solemn joy it was, to wait in silence for the resin to melt; to ache for it, shamefully, wondrously, as the sweet scent of it reached one’s nose; to pull the needle through the tar; to cut the flame, and lie back, and take the smoke into one’s body, and feel it, miraculous, rushing to one’s very extremities, one’s fingers, one’s toes, the top of one’s head! And how tenderly he looked upon her, when they woke.

On the afternoon of the widow’s séance (it was a Sunday—a provocative scheduling on Mrs. Wells’s part, and one of which she was very well aware) Ah Sook was sitting in the rectangular patch of sunshine that fell through the doorway of his hut, scraping clean the bowl of his opium pipe, humming through his teeth, and thinking about Anna. This had been his occupation for the better part of an hour, and the bowl was long since clean. His knife no longer turned up the reddish powder left by the burnt opium gum; the long chamber of the pipe was clear. But the redundant motion matched the redundancy of his repeating thoughts, and helped to reassure him.

‘Ah Quee faat sang me si aa?’

Tong Wei, a smooth-faced young man of thirty, was watching him from the other side of the clearing. Ah Sook did not respond. He had pledged not to speak of the council at the Crown Hotel, or the events that preceded it, to any man.

The lad persisted. ‘Keoi hai mai bei yan daa gip aa?’

Still Ah Sook said nothing, and presently Tong Wei gave up, muttering his displeasure, and sloped off in the direction of the river.

Ah Sook sat still for a long while after the lad’s departure, and then all of a sudden he sat back, uttered an oath, and folded his knife away. It was hell to spend his days waiting for her, thinking about her, wondering. He would not endure it. He would journey to Hokitika that very afternoon, and demand an audience with her. He would go at once. He rolled up his pipe and tools, stood, and went inside to fetch his coat.

Ah Sook had only understood part of what was discussed in the smoking room of the Crown Hotel three weeks prior. In his confusions he had received no aid from his compatriot, for Ah Quee’s English was even more severely limited than his own, and none from the remaining men of the Crown, whose collective patience was worn very thin by any request for clarification from Chinese men. Balfour’s narration had been much too swift and poetically accented to be readily understood by a foreign ear, and both Ah Sook and Ah Quee had left the assembly at the Crown with only a partial understanding of all that had been discussed.

The crucial points of ignorance were these. Ah Sook did not know that Anna Wetherell had quit her lodgings at the Gridiron Hotel, and had taken up instead with Lydia Wells. He also did not know that Francis Carver was the master of the ship Godspeed, the craft that had foundered on the Hokitika bar. When the assembly at the Crown broke up, soon after midnight, Ah Sook had not followed the other men to the Hokitika spit to look over the wreck: shipping misadventures did not interest him, and he did not like to be on the Hokitika streets after dark. He had returned, instead, to Kaniere, where he had remained ever since. As a consequence, he still believed that Francis Carver had departed nearly a month ago for Canton, and would not be due back in Hokitika for some time. Thomas Balfour, who had quite forgotten imparting this piece of misinformation to Ah Sook in the first place, had not thought to disabuse him.

By the time the bells rang out half past three, Ah Sook was mounting the steps to the veranda of the Gridiron Hotel. At the front desk, he requested an audience with Anna Wetherell, pronouncing her name with both gravity and satisfaction, as though the meeting had been scheduled many months in advance. He produced a shilling, to show that he was willing to pay for the privilege of the whore’s conversation, and then bowed very deeply, as a gesture of respect. He remembered Edgar Clinch from the secret council, and had judged him, then, to be a decent and reasonable man.

Clinch, however, only shook his head. He gestured, repeatedly, towards the newly washed Wayfarer’s Fortune, on Revell-street’s opposite side, and spoke a flurry of words; when Ah Sook did not understand, Clinch brought him outside by the elbow, pointed at the hotel opposite, and explained, more slowly, that Anna now took her lodging there. Eventually Ah Sook spied a thrust of movement in the front window of the former hotel, and perceived that the figure behind the glass was Anna; satisfied, he bowed to Clinch a second time, retrieved his shilling from the other man’s palm, and pocketed it. He then crossed the thoroughfare, mounted the steps to the Wayfarer’s veranda, and rapped smartly upon the door.

Anna must have been in the foyer, for she answered the door within seconds. She appeared, as was her habit of late, in the distracted posture of a lady’s maid, full of annoyance and disapproval, keeping one hand upon the doorframe, so as to be ready to close the door at once. (Over the past three weeks she had received a great many callers: wistful diggers, for the most part, who missed her presence at the Dust and Nugget in the evenings. They begged to buy her a glass of champagne, or brandy, or small beer, and to ‘shoot the bull’ at one of the brightly lit saloons along Revell-street—but their pleading had no effect: Anna only shook her head, and shut the door.) When she saw who was on the threshold, however, she pulled the door open wide, and made an exclamation of surprise.

Ah Sook was surprised also; for a moment he simply stared. After so many weeks of recalling her shape to his mind—here she was! Was she truly so altered? Or was his memory so imperfect, that she seemed, standing in the doorway, to be a wholly different woman than the one with whom he had passed so many luxurious afternoons, with the cold light of winter falling slantwise through the square of the window, and the smoke winding about their bodies, in coils? Her dress was a new one: black, and cut very severely. But this was not merely a new dress, Ah Sook thought. This was a different woman altogether.

She was sober. Her cheeks held a new lustre, and her eyes were brighter, larger, and more alert. The syrupy quality to her movements was gone—and gone, too, was the slightly dreamy gauze that had always overlaid her features, like a veil of lawn. Gone was the vague half-smile, the trembling corner of her mouth, the awed confusion—as though she were privy, always, to some small bewilderment that no one else could see. In the next moment Ah Sook’s astonishment had given way to bitterness. So it was true. Anna had rid herself of opium’s dragon. She had cured herself—when he had tried for over a decade to do the same, remaining, always, that shapeless creature’s slave.

Anna made a little snatching motion with her hand, as though wishing to steady herself upon the frame of the door. In a whisper she said, ‘But you can’t come in—you can’t come in, Ah Sook.’

Ah Sook waited a moment before he made his bow, for he trusted his own first impressions, and he wished to make this impression last. She was much thinner than he remembered: he could see the bones of her wrist quite plainly, and her cheeks were sunken in.

‘Good afternoon,’ he said.

‘What do you want?’ Anna whispered. ‘Yes—good afternoon. You know I’m not taking opium any more. Did you know that?’

He peered at her.

‘Three weeks,’ she added, as if to persuade him. ‘I haven’t had a pipe in three weeks.’

‘How?’ said Ah Sook.

She shook her head. ‘You have to understand it: I’m not the same as I was.’

‘Why you come no more to Kaniere?’ Ah Sook said. He did not know how to say that he missed her; that each afternoon before her arrival he used to arrange the cushions on the daybed just so, and tidy his belongings, and make sure his clothes were neat and his pigtail tied; that as he watched her sleep he had often been near-choked with joy; that he had sometimes reached out his hand and let it hover within an inch of her breast, as though he could feel the softness of her skin in that smoky space between his flesh and hers; that sometimes after she took her pipe he would wait some time before taking his own, so that he could watch her, and fix her image in his mind, to remember.

‘I can’t come to see you any more,’ Anna said. ‘You mustn’t be here. I can’t come.’

Ah Sook studied her sadly. ‘No more smoke?’

‘No more,’ Anna said. ‘No more smoke, and no more Kaniere.’

‘Why?’

‘I can’t explain it—not here. I’ve stopped, Ah Sook. I’ve stopped it altogether.’

‘No more money?’ said Ah Sook, trying to understand. He knew that Anna had laboured under an enormous debt. She owed a great deal of money to Dick Mannering, and the debt mounted every day. Perhaps she could no longer afford the drug. Or perhaps she could no longer afford the time to make the journey, to take it.

‘It’s not money,’ Anna said.

Just then a female voice called out Anna’s name, from deep in the well of the house, and asked, in a tone of impatient condescension, to know the name and business of the caller at the door.

Anna turned her chin to the side but did not move her eyes from Ah Sook’s face. ‘It’s just a chink I used to know,’ she called. ‘It’s nothing.’

‘Well, what does he want?’

‘Nothing,’ Anna called again. ‘He’s only trying to sell me something.’

There was a silence.

‘I bring to you—here?’ said Ah Sook. He cupped his hands together and proffered them to her, indicating that he was willing to deliver the resin himself.

‘No,’ Anna whispered. ‘No, you can’t do that. It’s no use. I just—the thing is—I can’t feel it any more.’

Ah Sook did not understand this. ‘Last piece,’ he said, meaning the ounce he had gifted her on the afternoon of her near-death. ‘Last piece—unlucky?’

‘No,’ Anna began, but before she could speak further there were quick steps in the passage, and in the next moment a second woman had appeared at Anna’s side.

‘Good afternoon,’ she said. ‘What is it that you are selling? That will do, Anna’—and at once Anna melted back from the doorway.

Ah Sook had also taken a step backwards—but in shock rather than submission, for this was the first he had seen of Lydia Greenway in nearly thirteen years. The last time that he had laid eyes upon her was—when?—at the Sydney courthouse, she in the gallery, he in the dock; she red-faced, fanning herself with an embroidered sandalwood fan, the scent of which had floated down to reach him, recalling, in a rush of emotion, his family’s warehouse on the Kwangchow waterfront, and the sandalwood boxes in which the merchants packed their bolts of silk, before the wars. She had been wearing a gown of pale green—this he remembered well—and a bonnet covered in lace; she had kept her face perfectly grave, throughout the trial. Her testimony, when she gave it, had been short and to the point. Ah Sook had not understood a word of it, save for when she pointed directly at him, evidently to identify him to the court. When Ah Sook was acquitted of the murder she had betrayed no emotion of any kind: she had only risen, mutely, and left the courtroom without a backward glance. Over twelve years had passed since that day! Over twelve years—and yet here she was, monstrously present, monstrously unchanged! Her copper hair was as bright as ever; her skin was fresh, and hardly lined. She was as plump and buxom as Anna was gaunt.

In the next moment her features also slackened—which was unusual, for Lydia’s expressions were typically very artfully manicured, and she did not like to show surprise—and her eyes became wide.

‘I know this man,’ she said, in a tone of astonishment. She brought her hand up to her throat. ‘I know him.’

Anna looked from Ah Sook to Mrs. Wells, and then back again.

‘How?’ she said. ‘Not from Kaniere!’

Ah Sook had acquired a film of perspiration on his upper lip. He said nothing, however, and merely bowed; perhaps they would think that he could not understand them. He turned back to Anna, feeling that if he kept eye contact with Lydia Greenway for even a moment longer, she would recall where they had met before. He could still feel her in the periphery of his eye, watching him.

Anna was frowning too. ‘Perhaps you’re thinking of a different man,’ she said to Mrs. Wells. ‘It’s often hard to tell Chinamen apart.’

‘Yes—perhaps,’ said Mrs. Wells. But she was still staring at Ah Sook. Whether she had placed him already or not, he could not tell. He cast about for something to say to Anna, but his mind was blank.

‘What do you want, Ah Sook?’ said Anna. She did not speak unkindly, but with longing; there was a pleading, almost fearful look in her eye.

‘What did you call him?’ said the older woman, quickly.

‘Ah Sook,’ Anna said. ‘Mister Sook, I suppose. He’s the dealer at Kaniere.’

‘Ah!’ Her gaze sharpened immediately. ‘Opium!’

So she had placed him. She had remembered who he was.

At once, Ah Sook changed his tack. He turned to Anna and announced, ‘I buy you. Top price.’

The widow laughed.

‘Oh,’ Anna said. She had flushed very red. ‘No. You can’t do that. I suppose nobody told you. I’m done with whoring now. I’m not a whore any longer. No selling. Not for sale.’

‘What you now?’ said Ah Sook.

‘Miss Wetherell is my assistant,’ said Mrs. Wells—but Ah Sook did not know the word. ‘She lives here now.’

‘I live here now,’ Anna echoed. ‘I don’t take opium any more. Do you understand? No more smoke. I—I’ve given it up.’

Ah Sook was bewildered.

‘Well, goodbye,’ Anna said. ‘Thank you for calling.’

Suddenly Mrs. Wells’s wrist shot out. She grabbed Ah Sook’s forearm in her milky hand, and squeezed it tight. ‘You must come to the séance this evening,’ she said.

‘He doesn’t have a ticket,’ Anna said.

‘An Oriental presence,’ said Mrs. Wells, ignoring her. ‘It will be just the thing! What did you call him again?’

‘Ah Sook,’ said Anna.

‘Oh yes,’ said Mrs. Wells. ‘Just think of it: an Oriental presence, at this evening’s séance!’

‘Is a séance an Oriental practice?’ Anna said, doubtfully.

Ah Sook did not know the word—but he knew Oriental, and guessed that he was the subject of their discussion, and the cause, presumably, of Lydia’s sudden look of greed. It was astonishing to him that she could have changed so little over the course of a decade, when Anna, over the course of a month, had altered so very much. Looking down at her hand, wrapped tight around his forearm, he was surprised to see a band of gold upon her finger.

‘Mrs. Carver,’ he said, and pointed to the ring.

The woman smiled—more broadly this time. ‘I fancy he has a touch of the prophet in him,’ she said to Anna. ‘How is that for a notion?’

‘What do you mean, Mrs. Carver?’ Anna said to Ah Sook. She was frowning.

‘Wife of Carver,’ said Ah Sook, unhelpfully.

‘He thinks you’re Carver’s wife,’ said Anna.

‘He’s only guessing,’ said Mrs. Wells. To Ah Sook she said, ‘Not Mrs. Carver. My husband is dead. I am a widow now.’

‘Not Mrs. Carver?’

‘Mrs. Wells.’

Ah Sook’s eyes widened. ‘Mrs. Wells,’ he repeated.

‘It is very well his English is so limited,’ the widow said to Anna, conversationally. ‘That way he will not get distracted. His composure will not falter. Isn’t he handsome! He will do us very well, I think.’

‘He knows Carver,’ Anna said.

‘I’m sure he does,’ said Mrs. Wells, with a breezy tone. ‘Captain Carver has a great many Oriental connexions. I expect they’ve done business with each other here in Hokitika. Come into the parlour, Ah Sook.’ She gripped his arm tighter. ‘Come along. Just for a moment. Don’t be a baby; I’m not going to hurt you! Come inside.’

‘Francis Carver—in Guangdong?’ said Ah Sook.

‘In Canton; yes, it’s very likely,’ said Mrs. Wells, mistaking Ah Sook’s question for a statement. ‘Captain Carver was based in Canton. He was based there for many years. Come along into the parlour.’

She shepherded Ah Sook into the parlour, pointing to the far corner of the room. ‘You will sit upon a cushion—there,’ she said. ‘You will observe the faces around you, and contribute a cool air of judgment to our mystical séance. We shall call you the Eastern Oracle—or the Living Statue of the Orient—or the Dynastic Spirit—or some such thing. Which do you prefer, Anna? The Statue—or the Oracle?’

Anna did not have a preference. It was clear to her that Lydia Wells and Ah Sook recognised each other, and that their shared history had something to do with Francis Carver, and that the widow did not wish to speak of it aloud. She knew better than to press the point, however, and asked, ‘What will be his purpose?’

‘Merely to observe us!’

‘Yes, but to what end?’

The widow waved her hand. ‘Didn’t you see the spectacle at the Prince of Wales? Nothing sells tickets like an Oriental touch.’

‘He’s not unknown in Hokitika, you know,’ Anna said. ‘He’ll be recognised.’

‘As will you!’ Mrs. Wells pointed out. ‘That won’t matter a jot.’

‘I don’t know,’ said Anna. ‘I’m not sure.’

‘Anna Wetherell,’ said Mrs. Wells, with pretended annoyance. ‘Do you remember last Thursday, when I proposed hanging the sketch of the Bagatto at the top of the stairs, and you protested, claiming that the print would be shadowed by the attic landing, and then I hung it anyway, and the light was quite as perfect as I promised it would be?’

‘Yes,’ Anna said.

‘Well—there,’ said Mrs. Wells, and laughed.

Ah Sook had not understood a word of this. He turned to Anna and frowned very slightly, to show her that she needed to explain.

‘A séance,’ Anna said, uselessly.

Ah Sook shook his head. He did not know the word.

‘Let’s try it,’ said Mrs. Wells. ‘Come—come to the corner—Anna, get the man a cushion to sit upon. Or would a stool be more ascetic? No, a cushion: then he can fold his legs as the Eastern men do. Yes, come here—further—further. There.’

She pushed Ah Sook down upon the cushion, and took several quick steps backwards, to appraise him from the other side of the room. She nodded with delight.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Do you see, Anna? Do you not think it fine? How solemn he is! I wonder if we might ask him to smoke a pipe of some kind—for the curling smoke around his head would be rather nice indeed. But smoke indoors makes me ill.’

‘He has not yet given his consent,’ Anna observed.

Mrs. Wells looked faintly irritated; she did not protest this observation, however, but advanced upon Ah Sook, smiled, and peered down at him, her hands on her hips. ‘Do you know Emery Staines?’ she said, enunciating clearly. ‘Emery Staines? Do you know him?’

Ah Sook nodded. He knew Emery Staines.

‘Well,’ the woman said, ‘we are going to bring him here. Tonight. And speak with him. Emery Staines—here.’ She pointed at the floorboards with a lemon-scented hand.

A ray of understanding passed over Ah Sook’s face. Excellent: the prospector must have been found at last—and found alive! This was good news.

‘Very good,’ he said.

‘Tonight,’ said Mrs. Wells. ‘Here, at the Wayfarer’s Fortune. In this room. The party will begin at seven; the séance, at ten.’

‘Tonight,’ said Ah Sook, staring at her.

‘Precisely. You will be here. You will come. You will sit, as you are sitting now. Yes? Oh, Anna—does he understand? I can hardly tell; his face is such a perfect statue. You see what gave me the idea—the Living Statue!’

Slowly, Anna explained to Ah Sook that Lydia was requesting his presence, that evening, at a meeting with Emery Staines. She used the word séance several times; Ah Sook, who had no reason to have ever learned that word, deduced by context that it was a gathering or meeting of some scripted kind, which Emery Staines had been invited to attend. He nodded to show that he understood. Anna then explained that Ah Sook was invited to return, that evening, and take his place upon the cushion in the corner, exactly as he was sitting now. Other men had also been invited. They would sit in a circle, and Emery Staines would stand in the centre of the room.

‘Does he understand it?’ said Mrs. Wells. ‘Does he understand?’

‘Yes,’ said Ah Sook, and then, to show her: ‘A séance with Emery Staines, tonight.’

‘Excellent,’ said Mrs. Wells, smiling down at him in the same way that one might smile at a precocious child after the recitation of a sonnet—which is to say, with an admiration that was a little distrustful, and somewhat contrived.

‘A whore in mourning and an Eastern mystic,’ she went on. ‘It is quite perfect; I am chilled simply thinking of it! Of course a séance is not an Oriental tradition’—in response to Anna’s earlier question—‘but have I not said every day this fortnight that in this business, the ambience is half the battle? Ah Sook will do us very well.’

Anna looked away, and said, lightly, ‘Of course he must be recompensed.’

The widow turned upon Anna with a very chilly look, but Anna was not looking at her, and could not receive it; in the next moment, her expression cleared again. Carelessly she said, ‘Of course! But you ought to ask him how much he thinks he deserves for such easy work. Ask him, Anna; seeing as you are his special friend.’

Anna did so, explaining to Ah Sook that the widow was willing to pay him a fee for his contribution to the séance that evening. Ah Sook, who had not yet understood that Emery Staines was going to be present in spirit only, thought this a wonderful proposition. He was rightly very suspicious of the offer, and made his suspicion known. A rather absurd negotiation followed, and at length Ah Sook agreed, more for her sake than for his own, to receive a fee of one shilling.

Ah Sook was no fool. He knew very well that he had not really comprehended what was to happen that evening. It was very strange to him that Anna had placed such a high emphasis upon the fact that Emery Staines would stand in the very centre of the room, with all the others ranged around him, and it was even stranger still that the widow was willing to pay him a wage for doing nothing at all. He concluded that he was to play a part in a scripted drama of some kind (in which guess, of course, he hit very close upon the mark) and reasoned that whatever humiliation he might suffer as a consequence, it was surely worth it, to get a chance to speak to Mr. Staines. He accepted the widow’s invitation, and her promise of payment, in the certainty that his uncertainties would resolve themselves in time.

With this, their negotiations were concluded. Ah Sook looked at Anna. They held one another’s gaze a moment, Ah Sook steadily, and Anna—it seemed—with a cool detachment that the hatter did not recognise at all. But was that even detachment? Or was he simply unused to the clarity of her expression, now that her features were not overlaid by opium’s thick veil? She was so changed. If he had not known her better he might have almost called her expression haughty—as though she fancied herself a cut above Chinese society, now that she was no longer a whore.

Ah Sook decided to take her cool expression as a cue to leave, and rose from his cushion. He had calculated that he had time enough to walk to Kaniere and back again before the sun went down, and he wished to inform his compatriot Quee Long that Emery Staines would be present, that very evening, at the Wayfarer’s Fortune on Revell-street. He knew that Ah Quee had long desired an audience with Staines, wishing to interrogate the young prospector upon the matter of the Aurora gold; he would be very pleased to discover that Staines was alive.

Ah Sook bowed to the widow, and then to Anna. Anna returned his bow with a shallow curtsey, the kind that bespoke neither longing nor regret, and then turned away at once, to straighten the lace on the arm of the sofa.

‘You’ll be back tonight—for the séance. Tonight,’ said Lydia Wells. ‘Say six o’clock.’

‘Six o’clock,’ Ah Sook echoed, and pointed at the cushion he had just vacated, to show that he understood. He glanced one last time at Anna, and then Lydia Wells gripped his arm and ushered him into the foyer. She reached around him and opened the door, flooding the space with the sudden light of the day.

‘Goodbye,’ said Ah Sook, and stepped over the lintel.

But the widow did not close the door behind him, as he had expected; instead she reached for her shawl, wrapped it around her shoulders, and followed Ah Sook out on to the veranda. To Anna she said, ‘I am going out for a spell; I’ll be back in an hour or so.’

Anna, from the parlour, looked up in astonishment. Then her expression closed. She nodded woodenly, crossed the parlour, and came to the door to latch it in Mrs. Wells’s wake.

‘Good afternoon, Mrs. Wells,’ she said, her hand on the frame. ‘Good afternoon, Ah Sook.’

They descended the steps to the street, where they parted ways: Ah Sook to the south, towards the river, and Lydia Wells to the north. After several steps Mrs. Wells cast a look over her shoulder, as if to appraise the building from the street, and Anna hurriedly moved to close the door.

She kept her hand upon the knob, however, and did not turn it; after a moment she opened it again, very quietly and carefully, and put her eye to the crack. Lydia was walking swiftly now; she had not turned, as Anna had expected she might, to pursue Ah Sook, and demand a private audience with him. Anna pulled the door open a little wider. Would she double back? Surely that was why she had left so abruptly—to talk in private with the man she so very plainly recognised! But presently Ah Sook rounded the corner on Gibson Quay and disappeared, and Lydia Wells, at almost the same moment, stepped over the ditch at the side of the road, and mounted the steps of—Anna squinted—which establishment? A two-storeyed building—beside Tiegreen’s Hardware and Supply. One of the saloons, perhaps? Evidently there was someone on the porch, for Lydia Wells lingered for a moment, exchanging words, before she opened the door of the establishment, and disappeared inside—and as the door swung to, Anna caught a flash of pale blue paint, and recognised the building. So Lydia Wells had gone to pay a social call. But upon whom? Anna shook her head in wonderment. Well, she thought, whoever it was, he was not a common digger by any measure. He must be a man of some consequence, for he was lodging at the Palace Hotel.

SATURN IN LIBRA

In which Harald Nilssen reneges upon a contract; the holy book is opened; Cowell Devlin is confounded; and George Shepard forms a plan.

Harald Nilssen had just brewed and steeped his four-o’clock pot of tea, and was sitting down to a plate of sugared biscuits and a book, when he received a summons in the penny post. It was from George Shepard, and marked ‘urgent’, though the gaoler did not specify a reason why. Doubtless it concerned some detail of infinitesimal consequence, Nilssen thought, with irritation: some piece of gravel in the gaol-house foundation, some drop of coffee on the gaol-house plans. Sighing, he fitted a quilted cosy around his teapot, exchanged his jersey for a jacket, and reached for his stick. It was jolly bad form to bother a man on a Sunday afternoon. Why, he had been working six days out of seven. He deserved a day of rest, without George Shepard plaguing him for receipts, or wage records, or quotes on salvage. The penny post was an added insult—for Shepard could not even trouble himself to walk the five short blocks from the Police Camp to Gibson Quay; instead he insisted that Nilssen come to him, as a servant to a liege! Nilssen was in a very bad temper as he locked the door of his office behind him, and strode off down Revell-street with his hat set at an angle and his coat-tails flared.

At the Police Camp Mrs. George answered the door. She directed Nilssen, with a very sorry aspect, into the dining room, and then fled before Nilssen could speak any words of politeness, pulling the door so firmly closed behind her that the calico wall gave a shudder, and Nilssen had the fleeting sensation of being at sea.

The gaoler was sitting at the head of the table, where he was making short work of a cold meal composed of jellied meats, various cold puddings of homogenous consistency, and a dense bread of some dark, large-crumbed kind. He held himself very straight as he stacked his fork, and did not offer Nilssen a chair.

‘So,’ he said, when the door had closed, and he had swallowed his mouthful. ‘You told somebody about our agreement; you broke your word. Whom did you tell?’

‘What?’ said Nilssen.

Shepard repeated his question; Nilssen, after a pause, repeated his bewilderment, at a slightly higher pitch.

Shepard’s expression was cold. ‘Do not lie to me, Mr. Nilssen. Alistair Lauderback is to publish a letter in the Times to-morrow morning, lambasting my character. He claims that a percentage of the fortune discovered on Crosbie Wells’s estate was invested in the Hokitika gaol-house. I do not know how he came upon this information, and I wish to know. At once.’

Nilssen faltered. How was it possible that Alistair Lauderback knew about his commission? One of the Crown men must have broken his word! Balfour, perhaps? Balfour and Lauderback were close familiars, and Nilssen had never seen Lauderback in the company of any of the rest. But what reason could Balfour have, to betray him? Nilssen had never wished him any kind of harm. Could it have been Löwenthal? Perhaps—if the letter was to be published in the paper. But Nilssen could not believe that Löwenthal had broken his word any more than he could believe it of Balfour. He watched Shepard assemble a forkful of jellied meats, pickled cucumber, and hash, and inexplicably (for Nilssen was not at all hungry) his own mouth began to water.

‘Whom did you tell?’ Shepard said. ‘Please mark this moment as the end of my patience: I will not ask you again.’ He put his mouth over his assembled forkful, slid the food off the fork, and chewed.

Nilssen did not know how to respond. The truth, of course, was that he had told twelve men—Walter Moody, plus the eleven others who had been summoned to the smoking room of the Crown. He could hardly admit to having betrayed Shepard’s secret to twelve men! Ought he to pretend that he had told no one at all? But it was obvious that he had broken his confidence to someone—if Lauderback knew! His mind was racing.

‘I can’t think how it might have happened,’ he said, in desperation. ‘I can’t think.’

Shepard was busy stacking another mouthful on the back of his fork. ‘Did you go to Lauderback yourself?’ he said, his eyes fixed intently upon his dinner. ‘Or did you go to another man—who went to Lauderback in his turn?’

‘I haven’t spoken five words to Lauderback in all my life,’ Harald Nilssen said, with much indignation.

‘Who, then?’ Shepard looked up, his utensils loose in his hands.

Nilssen said nothing. He had begun to perspire.

‘You are keeping a digger’s honour, I see,’ Shepard said with disapproval. ‘Well, at least someone has your loyalty, Mr. Nilssen.’

He turned back to his dinner, and did not speak for what Nilssen felt was a very long while. Shepard was dressed in his Sunday suit of black; he had flung his coat-tails to the sides of his chair so that they would not be creased beneath him while he ate. His high-waisted trousers and collarless vest had a disapproving, funereal look, and his wide cravat—somewhat out of fashion, Nilssen noticed with a touch of condescension; his own cravat was thin and loosely tied, following the style of the day—seemed to accent the gaoler’s aspect of admonishment still further. Even his cold supper was abstemious in its plainness. Nilssen himself had dined upon half a boiled chicken, served with mashed buttered turnip and a great deal of white sauce; he had drunk half a pitcher of a very nice wine, besides.

From elsewhere in the house, a clock sounded the quarter hour. Mrs. George moved beyond the flimsy walls, padding from room to room. Shepard remained fixated on his meal. Nilssen waited until Shepard had cleaned his plate of every last crumb, hoping that once his meal was concluded, the gaoler might begin to speak. When it became evident that this hope was a false one, he said, somewhat feebly, ‘Well—what are you going to do?’

‘My first action,’ Shepard replied, daubing his mouth with a table napkin, ‘will be to relieve you of all duties pertaining to the construction of the gaol-house. I will not be served by a man who breaks his word.’

‘The investment will be returned to me?’ said Nilssen.

‘Not at all,’ said Shepard. He tossed the table napkin onto his plate. ‘In fact I consider that a most unreasonable request, given that the work is already well underway.’

Nilssen worked his mouth. At length he said, ‘I understand.’

‘You will not break your digger’s code.’

‘No.’

‘Incredible.’

‘I am sorry.’

Shepard pushed his plate away, becoming brisk. ‘Mr. Lauderback’s letter will be published to-morrow in the Times; I have an advance copy here.’

Nilssen saw that there was an opened letter on the table next to the gaoler’s plate. He stepped forward, putting out his hand. ‘May I—?’

But Shepard ignored him. ‘The letter,’ he went on, raising his voice slightly, ‘does not refer to you by name. You should know that I will be writing to the editor myself tonight, in order to correct that omission. My response will be published below Mr. Lauderback’s, as a formal reply.’

Nilssen tried again. ‘May I read it?’

‘You may read it to-morrow in the paper, along with every other man in Westland.’ Shepard uttered the phrase with a dangerous emphasis.

‘All right,’ Nilssen said. He withdrew his hand. ‘I take your meaning.’

Shepard paused before adding, ‘Unless, of course, there’s something that you’d like to tell me.’

In a voice of loathsome dejection, Nilssen said, ‘Yes.’

‘Yes?’

‘Yes—there’s something.’

Poor Harald Nilssen! Thinking that he might regain the gaoler’s trust by means of a second transgression, as though by committing a second disloyalty, he might reverse the fact of the first! He had conceded in a panic—for it crushed Nilssen’s spirit to be held in low esteem by other men. He could not bear to know that he was disliked, for to him there was no real difference between being disliked, and being dislikeable; every injury he sustained was an injury to his very selfhood. It was for reasons of self-protection that Nilssen dressed in the latest fashions, and spoke with affectation, and placed himself as the central character of every tale: he built his persona as a shield around his person, because he knew very well how little his person could withstand.

‘Pray continue,’ Shepard said.

‘It’s about—’ (Nilssen cast about wildly) ‘—Mrs. Wells.’

‘Indeed,’ Shepard said. ‘How so?’

‘She was Lauderback’s mistress.’

Shepard raised his eyebrows. ‘Alistair Lauderback was cuckolding Crosbie Wells?’

Nilssen thought about it. ‘Yes, I suppose he was. Well, it would depend on when Crosbie and Lydia got married, of course.’

‘Go on,’ Shepard said.

‘The thing is—the thing is—he was blackmailed—Lauderback, I mean—and Crosbie Wells took home the ransom. That’s the fortune, you see—in Crosbie’s cottage.’

‘How did this blackmail happen? And how do you know about it?’

Nilssen hesitated. He did not trust the gaoler’s expression, which had suddenly become very greedy and intense.

‘How do you know about it?’ Shepard demanded.

‘Somebody told me.’

‘Who?’

‘Mr. Staines,’ said Nilssen—settling upon the man to whom he could do the least damage, in the short term at least.

‘Was he the blackmailer—Staines?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Nilssen, momentarily confused. ‘I mean, yes, maybe.’

‘Are you with him, or against him?’

‘I—I don’t know.’

Shepard looked annoyed. ‘What have you got on him, then?’ he said. ‘You must have something on the man, if you’re not sure about your allegiance.’

‘There was a deed of gift,’ Nilssen said miserably. ‘In Crosbie Wells’s stove—partly burned, as though someone tried to destroy it. The chaplain found it. When he went to the cottage to collect the body, the day after his death. He didn’t tell you about it; he kept it for himself. He didn’t tell Dr. Gillies either.’

Shepard betrayed no flicker of emotion at all. ‘What kind of a deed of gift?’

Nilssen briefly detailed the particulars of the contract. He kept his eyes upon a spot some three feet to the left of the gaoler’s face, and squinted oddly—for a bubble of despair was growing in his chest, pushing out against his breastbone. He had meant to reassure the gaoler of his loyalty by betraying this secret; now he saw that he had only confirmed his disloyalty, and his worthlessness. And yet—despite his misery—there was something terribly relieving about speaking of the Crown conspiracy aloud. He felt that a great weight was being lifted off his shoulders, just as he felt that a terrible weightlessness was settling in its place. He glanced at the gaoler quickly, and then away.

‘Is Devlin your man?’ Shepard said. ‘Did you tell Devlin about this investment—and did he tell Lauderback?’

‘Yes,’ Nilssen said. ‘That’s right.’ (What kind of wretched man was he—to accuse a clergyman? But of course it was only half a lie … and better to accuse one man than all twelve.) ‘I mean,’ he added, ‘I only suppose he told Lauderback. I don’t know. I’ve never spoken to Lauderback about anything at all—as I told you.’

‘So Devlin is Lauderback’s man,’ Shepard said.

‘I don’t know about that,’ said Nilssen. ‘I don’t know about that at all.’

Shepard nodded. ‘Well, Mr. Nilssen,’ he said, rising from the table. ‘That concludes our discussion, I think.’

It panicked Nilssen still further to be dismissed. ‘The part about the deed,’ he said. ‘It’s just—if you’re going to mention it to the Reverend—’

‘I imagine that I will, yes.’

‘Well—can you leave my name out of it?’ said Nilssen, with a look of pure misery on his face. ‘You see: I can tell you where he’s keeping it—the deed, I mean—and that way you can come upon it yourself, and there’s no bridges broken on my end. Will you do that?’

Shepard studied him without pity. ‘Where does he keep it?’

‘I won’t tell you until you give your word,’ said Nilssen.

Shepard shrugged. ‘All right.’

‘Do you give your word?’

‘Upon my honour, I will not speak your name to the chaplain of the gaol,’ Shepard snapped. ‘Where does he keep it?’

‘In his Bible,’ said Nilssen, very sadly. ‘In his Bible, between the Old Testament, and the New.’

Since the construction of the gaol-house had begun in earnest Cowell Devlin and George Shepard had not seen a great deal of one another, save for in the evenings when Shepard returned from the construction site at Seaview to write his letters and tally his accounts. Devlin, who found the atmosphere of the temporary Police Camp much improved in Shepard’s absence, had not pursued a deeper intimacy with the other man. Had he been pressed to pass judgment on the gaoler’s character, he might, after a long pause, have conceded that he pitied Shepard’s rigidity, and mourned the evident displeasure with which Shepard seemed to regard the world around him; after another pause, he might have added that he wished Shepard well, but did not expect the relations between them to develop beyond their present capacity, which was strictly professional, and none too warm.

That day was a Sunday, however, and construction on the terrace had halted for the day. Shepard had spent the morning at chapel, and the afternoon in his study at the Police Camp, from which place Harald Nilssen was now very rapidly departing; Devlin, who had recently returned from the Kaniere camp, was in the temporary gaol-house, preaching to the felons on the subject of rote prayer. He had brought his battered Bible with him, as he always did whenever he left his tent, though the nature of that day’s sermon was such that he had had no cause to open it that afternoon; when Shepard stepped into the gaol-house it was lying, closed, upon a chair at Devlin’s side.

Shepard waited for a lull in the conversation, which came about within moments, owing to his imposing presence in the room. Devlin turned an inquiring face up at him, and Shepard said, ‘Good afternoon, Reverend. Hand me your Bible, would you please?’

Devlin frowned. ‘My Bible?’

‘If you wouldn’t mind.’

The chaplain placed his palm over the book. ‘Perhaps you might simply ask me what it is you seek,’ he said. ‘I pride myself that I do know my scriptures rather well.’

‘I do not doubt it; and yet browsing is a pleasure to me,’ Shepard replied.

‘But of course you have a Bible of your own!’

‘Of course,’ Shepard agreed. ‘However, it is the hour of my wife’s devotions, and I do not like to disturb her.’

For a moment Devlin considered extracting the purloined deed himself—but its charred aspect would surely not escape the gaoler’s comment, and in any case, he was surrounded by felons; where would he hide the thing?

‘What is it that you are looking for, exactly?’ he said. ‘A verse—or an allusion—?’

‘You are very chary of your Bible, for a man of God,’ Shepard snapped. ‘Heavens, man! I only wish to look through the pages! You will deny me that?’

And Devlin was obliged to surrender it. Shepard, thanking him, took the book back to his private residence, and closed the door.

Devlin’s sermon on rote prayer was perversely applicable to the ensuing half hour, for it was with a ritual circularity that his attention kept straying to the gaoler’s study, where the man would be seated behind his desk, turning the thin pages of the book in his great white hands. Devlin did not guess that Shepard might have known about the deed that he had concealed between the testaments, for his nature was not a suspicious one, and he did not take pleasure, as some men did, in believing himself to have been betrayed. He hoped, as the minutes dragged by, that Shepard would restrict his reading to the more ancient parts of the text; he hoped that the book would be returned to him with the charred deed undiscovered and untouched. Devlin knew very well that Shepard’s faith was of a staunchly Levitican variety; it was not unreasonable to hope that he might confine his browsing to the Pentateuch, or to Chronicles and Kings. He was hardly likely to favour the minor prophets … but the Gospels were standard fare, most especially for a Sunday. He was very likely to turn there, whatever his persuasion, and in that case he would almost certainly come across the hidden page.

Finally the afternoon’s discussion came to an end, and Devlin, in a posture of some dread, took his leave of the felons in his spiritual charge. The duty sergeant nodded goodbye, stifling a yawn; Devlin let himself out; a hush fell over the gaol-house. He crossed the courtyard, mounted the steps to the porch of the gaoler’s cottage, and knocked upon the door.

From within Shepard’s deep voice bid him to enter; Devlin did so, and crossed the calico hallway to the gaoler’s study. The door was open; Devlin saw at once that his Bible lay open on the gaoler’s desk, with the charred slip of paper on top of it, in full view.

On this 11th day of October 1865 a sum of two thousand pounds is to be given to MISS ANNA WETHERELL, formerly of New South Wales, by MR. EMERY STAINES, formerly of New South Wales, as witnessed by MR. CROSBIE WELLS, presiding.

Shepard folded his hands and waited for his guest to speak.

‘Something I found,’ Devlin said. ‘But it’s no use to anyone.’

‘No use to anyone?’ Shepard queried, pleasantly. ‘Why on earth do you say that?’

‘It’s invalid,’ Devlin said. ‘The principal hasn’t signed. Therefore it’s not legal.’

Cowell Devlin, like all men who will not admit fault to themselves, was loath to admit fault to any other man. He became very arch and condescending whenever he was accused of doing ill.

‘No indeed,’ said Shepard. ‘It’s not legal.’

‘It’s not binding—that’s what I meant,’ Devlin said, with a slight frown. ‘It’s not binding, in the legal sense.’

Shepard did not blink. ‘Which is rather a shame, wouldn’t you say?’

‘Why is that?’

‘If only Emery Staines had signed it—why, half of the fortune discovered at Crosbie Wells’s cottage would belong to Anna Wetherell! That would be a turn of events, would it not?’

‘But the fortune in the hermit’s cottage never belonged to Emery Staines.’

‘No?’ Shepard said. ‘Forgive me: you seem to be rather more certain of that fact than I am.’

Cowell Devlin knew very well that the gold in Crosbie Wells’s cottage had originated from four gowns, sewn up by Lydia Wells, purchased by Anna Wetherell; he knew that the gold had been siphoned and then retorted by the goldsmith Ah Quee, only to be stolen by Staines, and concealed in Wells’s cottage at some point thereafter. He could not say any of this to Shepard, however; instead he said, ‘There is no reason to think that the fortune belonged to Mr. Staines.’

‘Beyond the fact that Mr. Staines vanished upon the day of Mr. Wells’s death, and Mr. Wells was not, to popular understanding, a man of means.’ Shepard stabbed the deed with his index finger. ‘This certainly seems pertinent, Reverend, to our case at hand. This document appears to indicate that the fortune originated with Staines—and that Staines meant to give half of it—exactly half—to a common prostitute. I would hazard to guess that Crosbie Wells, as his witness, was keeping the fortune for him, when he died.’

This was a reasonable hypothesis. Perhaps Shepard was right upon the latter point, Devlin thought, though of course he was mistaken upon the former. Aloud he said, ‘You are right that it seems pertinent; however, as I have told you already, the contract is not valid. Mr. Staines has not signed his name.’

‘I presume that you found this deed in Crosbie Wells’s cottage, the day you went to collect his remains.’

‘That is correct,’ Devlin said.

‘If you have kept such careful custody of it,’ Shepard said, ‘then I dare say it occurred to you how very valuable this deed might be. To certain persons. To Anna Wetherell, for instance. By this paper’s authority, she could become the richest woman this side of the Southern Alps!’

‘She could not,’ Devlin said. ‘The deed is unsigned.’

‘If it were to be signed,’ Shepard said.

‘Emery Staines is dead,’ Devlin said.

‘Is he?’ Shepard said. ‘Dear me. Another certainty that we do not share.’

But Cowell Devlin was not easily intimidated. ‘The promise of great riches is a dangerous thing,’ he said, folding his hands across his navel in the clerical way. ‘It is a temptation like no other, for it is the temptation of great influence and great opportunity, and these are things we all desire. If Miss Wetherell were to be told about this deed, her hopes would be falsely raised. She would start dreaming of great influence and great opportunity; she would no longer be contented with the life she led before. This was a circumstance I feared. I therefore resolved to keep the information to myself, at least until Emery Staines was either recovered, or found to be dead. If he is found dead, I will destroy the deed. But if he lives, I shall go to him, and show him the paper, and ask him whether he wishes to sign it. The choice would be his own.’

‘And what if Staines is never found?’ the gaoler said. ‘What then?’

‘I made my decision with compassion, Mr. Shepard,’ Devlin said firmly. ‘I feared very much what would happen to poor Miss Wetherell, should that deed of gift be made public, or should it fall into the wrong hands. If Mr. Staines is never found, then no hopes will be dashed, and no blood spilled, and no faith lost. I judge that to be no small mercy. Don’t you?’

Shepard’s pale eyes had become wet: a sign that he was thinking hard. ‘As witnessed by Crosbie Wells,’ he murmured, ‘presiding.’

‘In any case,’ Devlin added, ‘it’s hardly likely that a man would give such a great deal of money to a prostitute. Most likely it is a joke or deceit of some kind.’

Shepard looked suddenly amused. ‘You doubt the woman’s talents?’

‘You mistake me,’ Devlin said calmly. ‘I only meant that for a man to give two thousand pounds to a whore is a very unlikely situation. As a gift, I mean—and all at once.’

Abruptly Shepard shut the Bible with a snap, trapping the purloined document between the pages. He handed the book back to the chaplain, already reaching with his other hand for his pen, as though the affair was no longer of any interest to him.

‘Thank you for the loan of your Bible,’ he said, and nodded to indicate that Devlin was free to leave. He then bent over his ledger, and began to tally up his columns.

Devlin hovered uncertainly for a moment, the Bible in his hand. The charred document protruded from one edge, dividing the profile of the book into unequal halves.

‘But what do you think?’ he said at last. ‘What do you make of it?’

Shepard did not pause in his writing. ‘What do I make of what?’

‘The contract!’

‘I imagine you are right: it must be a joke or deceit of some kind,’ Shepard said. He placed a finger on his ledger, to hold his place, and then reached over to dip his pen into his inkwell.

‘Oh,’ said Devlin. ‘Yes.’

‘The contract is invalid, as you say,’ Shepard said conversationally. He tapped the nib of the pen against the rim of the inkwell.

‘Yes.’

‘The witness is certainly dead, and the principal almost certainly so.’

‘Yes.’

‘But if you want an answer from the horse’s mouth, then perhaps you ought to go along to the Wayfarer’s Fortune tonight, with all the other heathens.’

‘To speak with Mr. Staines?’

‘To speak with Anna,’ the gaoler said, with pointed disapproval. ‘Now, if you don’t mind, Reverend, I have rather a lot of work to do.’

After Devlin had closed the door behind him, Shepard laid down his pen, went to his bookcase, and pulled out a file, out of which he extracted a single sheet of paper: the only copy of the contract he had made, three weeks ago, with Harald Nilssen, under which the commission merchant had promised not to speak of his four-hundred pound investment to any other man. Shepard struck a match on the side of the cabinet and touched it to the piece of paper, holding it lightly by one corner and tilting it until the document was aflame, and the signatures obscured. When he could hold it no longer he tossed it to the floor, watched it shrink to a grey nothing, and kicked the ashes aside with the toe of his boot.

Sitting back down at his desk, he pulled a fresh sheet of paper from beneath his ledger, took up his pen, and dipped his nib. Then, in a slow, measured hand, he wrote:

A GIFT OF CONSCIENCE—To the Editor of the West Coast Times.

18 February 1866

Sir—

I write in response to Mr. ALISTAIR LAUDERBACK, Provincial Councilman, M.P., who casts damaging aspersions upon the undersigned, and therefore, upon all his associates, including the Westland Public Works Committee, the Municipal Council, the Office of the Commissioner, the Hokitika Board, &c. It is my duty to correct Mr. Lauderback’s errors: of propriety, of decency, and of fact.

Indeed the construction of the future Hokitika Gaol-House was aided in the large part by a donation made by a Westland man. Mr. Harald Nilssen, of Nilssen & Co., donated to the Council a sum of approximately four hundred pounds, to be used, as per his personal instruction, for public good. This sum represented the commission received by him as payment for honest employment. It was, as Mr. Lauderback attests, a portion of the fortune discovered on Mr Crosbie Wells’s estate, to which Mr. Nilssen, commission merchant, was legally entitled, as payment for services satisfactorily rendered. Mr. Lauderback will be pleased to recall that, in legal phrasing, a ‘donation’ is distinct from an ‘investment’ in that a donation does not create a relationship of the debtor-creditor

variety; in plain language, a donation does not have to be repaid. In understanding that Mr. Nilssen’s donation was an act of charity of the most virtuous and selfless order, Mr. Lauderback will further acknowledge that no laws have been broken and no regulations breached.

I hold that the profoundest and most enduring testament to progress in civilisation is the creation of public works, and I am satisfied that the Hokitika Gaol-House will bear up under this definition in every respect. Should Mr. Lauderback find this explanation insufficiently transparent for his tastes, I cordially invite him to disclose to the voting public what he has hitherto concealed: that he has enjoyed a formerly intimate relation with Mrs. Lydia Wells, widow to Crosbie. I anticipate Mr. Lauderback’s full disclosure upon this matter, and remain,

Yours &c,

GEORGE M. SHEPARD

When he was done Shepard blotted the page, reached for a clean sheet of paper, and transcribed the letter in full—creating a replica so exact, in fact, that one would have to compare them for quite some time before one perceived the smallest difference. He then folded both pages, sealed them, and wrote two addresses in his laborious hand. Once the wax was dry, he rang the bell for Mrs. George, and asked her to summon the penny postman for the second time that day. This instruction was promptly carried out.

The penny postman was a freckled thing with a mass of yellow curls.

‘This one to Löwenthal at the Times,’ Shepard said. ‘This gets delivered first. And this one goes to Harald Nilssen at the Auction Yards on Gibson Quay. All right?’

‘Is there a message?’ said the young man, pocketing the letters.

‘Only for Mr. Nilssen,’ said Shepard. ‘You tell Mr. Nilssen that he’s expected at work to-morrow morning. Can you remember that? Tell him no complaints, no hard feelings, and no questions asked.’

MARS IN CAPRICORN

In which Gascoigne finds common ground with Francis Carver; Sook Yongsheng acts upon a false impression; and Quee Long gives the avenger some advice.

Aubert Gascoigne had what one might call a lubber’s love of ships. In the last three weeks he had ventured to the Hokitika spit several times, in order to meditate upon the fractured hull of the Godspeed, and to chart her progress as she was shunted, by degrees, closer and closer to the shore. Now that the wreck had at last been hauled onto the sand, he had a much better opportunity to look her over, and to gauge, with his lubber’s eye, the extent of the damage that she had sustained. It was here that he had come, upon taking his leave of Moody—having no other occupation, that Sunday afternoon, for he had read the papers already, and he was not thirsty, and the day was much too bright and cheerful to remain indoors.

He had been sitting with his back against the beacon for some hours, watching the progress of the ship’s recovery, and turning a green-flecked stone in his hands; beside him he had constructed a little castle, the ramparts made of stacks of flattened pebbles, pressed into mounds of sand. When, some time after five, the wind suddenly changed direction, blowing his collar against his neck, and sending a damp chill down his spine, Gascoigne decided to retire. He stood, dusting himself down, and was wondering whether he ought to kick his castle apart or leave it intact when he perceived that a man was standing some fifty yards away. The man’s feet were planted rather far apart, and his arms were folded, as though in disapproval; his posture in general communicated an implacability of the most humourless kind, as did his dress, which was sombre. He turned his head slightly, and Gascoigne caught, for a brief moment, the glassy shine of a scar.

Gascoigne and Francis Carver had never formally met, though of course the latter’s reputation was well known to Gascoigne, coloured chiefly by the report that Anna Wetherell had given more than a month ago on the subject of the murder of her unborn child. Such a report was more than sufficient provocation to avoid the former captain altogether, but Gascoigne’s ill-feeling was of the kind that needed private affirmation, rather than public display: he gained a real pleasure in befriending a man whom he privately had cause to despise, for he liked very much the feeling that his regard for others was a private font, a well, that he could muddy, or drink from, at his own discreet pleasure, and on his own time.

He walked up to Carver, already raising his hat.

‘Excuse me, sir—are you the captain of this craft?’

Francis Carver eyed him, and then, after a moment, nodded. ‘I was.’

The white scar on his cheek was slightly puckered at one end, as when a seamstress leaves the needle in the fabric, before she quits for the day; this phantom needle lay just beyond the edge of his mouth, and seemed to tug it upward, as if trying to coax his stern expression—unsuccessfully—into a smile.

‘If I could introduce myself: Aubert Gascoigne,’ Gascoigne said, putting out his hand. ‘I am a clerk at the Magistrate’s Court.’

‘A clerk?’ Carver eyed him again. ‘What kind?’ Rather reluctantly, he shook Gascoigne’s hand—showing his reluctance by way of a grip that was limp and very brief.

‘Very low-level,’ Gascoigne said, without condescension. ‘Petty claims, mostly—nothing too large—but there is the occasional insurance claim that comes across our desks. That craft, for example.’ He pointed to the wreck of a steamer, lying on its side just beyond the river mouth, some fifty yards from where they were standing. ‘We managed to scrape even on that one, though barely. The master was very well pleased; he had been facing down a five-hundred-pound debt.’

‘Insurance,’ said Carver.

‘Among other things, yes. I have some personal acquaintance with the subject also,’ Gascoigne added, pulling out his cigarette case, ‘for my late wife’s father was a maritime insurer.’

‘Which firm?’ said Carver.

‘Lloyd’s—of London.’ Gascoigne snapped open the silver case. ‘I have been charting Godspeed’s progress, these past few weeks. I am gratified to see that she has been hauled clear of the surf at last. What a project it has been! A monumental effort, if I may praise the work of the crew … and your work, sir, in commandeering it.’

Carver watched him for a moment, and then turned his gaze back to the deck of the Godspeed. With his eyes fixed on his foundered craft, he said, ‘What do you want?’

‘Certainly not to offend you,’ Gascoigne said, holding his cigarette lightly between his fingers, and pausing a moment, his palms upturned. ‘I am sure I do not mean to intrude upon your privacy in any way. I have been watching the progress of the ship’s recovery, that’s all. It is rather a rare privilege, to see such a craft upon dry land. One really gets a sense of her.’

Carver kept his eyes on the ship. ‘I meant: are you set to sell me something?’

Gascoigne was lighting his cigarette, and took a moment to answer. ‘Not at all,’ he said at last, blowing a white puff of smoke over his shoulder. ‘I’m not affiliated with any insurance firms. This is a personal interest, you might say. A curiosity.’

Carver said nothing.

‘I like to sit on the beach on Sundays,’ Gascoigne added, ‘when the weather is nice. But you must tell me if my private interest offends you.’

Carver jerked his head. ‘Didn’t mean to be uncivil.’

Gascoigne waved the apology away. ‘One hates to see a fine ship come to ground.’

‘She’s fine all right.’

‘Marvellous. A frigate, is she not?’

‘A barque.’

Gascoigne murmured his appreciation. ‘British-made?’

He nodded. ‘That’s copper sheathing you can see.’

Gascoigne nodded absently. ‘Yes, a fine craft … I do hope she was insured.’

‘You can’t drop anchor at a port without insurance,’ Carver said. ‘Same for every vessel. Without it they won’t let you land. Thought you’d know that, if you know anything about insurance at all.’

He spoke in a voice that was flat and full of contempt, seeming not to care how his words might be interpreted, or remembered, or used.

‘Of course, of course,’ Gascoigne said airily. ‘I mean to say that I am glad that you are not out of pocket—for your sake.’

Carver snorted. ‘I’ll be a thousand pounds down when all is said and done,’ he said. ‘Everything that you can see right now is costing money—and out of my pocket.’

Gascoigne paused a moment before asking, ‘What about P&I?’

‘Don’t know.’

‘Protection and indemnity,’ Gascoigne explained. ‘Against extraordinary liabilities.’

‘Don’t know,’ Carver said again.

‘You don’t belong to a shipowners’ association?’

‘No.’

Gascoigne inclined his head gravely. ‘Ah,’ he said. ‘So you’ll have been liable for all this’—indicating, with a sweep of his hand, the beached hull before him, the screw jacks, the horses, the tugboats, the rollers, and the winch.

‘Yes,’ said Carver, still without emotion. ‘Everything you can see. And I’m bound to pay every man a guinea more than he’s worth, for standing about and tying his shoelaces—and untying them—and conferencing about conferencing, until everyone’s out of breath, and I’m a thousand pounds down.’

‘I am sorry,’ Gascoigne said. ‘Would you like a cigarette?’

Carver eyed his silver case. ‘No,’ he said after a moment. ‘Thanks. Don’t care for them.’

Gascoigne drew deeply on his own cigarette and stood for a moment, thinking.

‘You certainly seem set to sell me something,’ Carver said again.

‘A cigarette?’ Gascoigne laughed. ‘That was offered quite free of charge.’

‘I reckon I’m still freer for having turned it down,’ said Carver, and Gascoigne laughed again.

‘Tell me,’ he said. ‘How long ago did you purchase this ship?’

‘You’ve got a lot of questions,’ Carver said. ‘What’s your business asking them?’

‘Well, I suppose it doesn’t really matter,’ Gascoigne said. ‘It would only matter if you made the purchase less than a year ago. Never mind.’

But he had snagged Carver’s interest. The other man looked over at him and then said, ‘I’ve had her ten months. Since May.’

‘Ah!’ Gascoigne said. ‘Well. That’s very interesting. That could work in your favour, you know.’

‘How?’

But Gascoigne didn’t answer at once; instead he squinted his eyes, and pretended to brood. ‘The man who sold it to you. Did he pass on conventional cover? That is to say: did you inherit an extant policy, or did you take out a policy on your own account?’

‘I didn’t take out anything,’ Carver said.

‘Was the vendor a shipowner in the professional sense? Did he own more than just Godspeed, for example?’

‘He had a couple of others,’ Carver said. ‘Clipper ships. Charters.’

‘Not steam?’

‘Sail,’ said Carver. ‘Why?’

‘And where did you say you were coming from, when you ran aground?’

‘Dunedin. Are you going to tell me where all these questions are headed?’

‘Only from Dunedin,’ Gascoigne said, nodding. ‘Yes. Now, if you’ll forgive my impertinence once last time, I wonder if I might ask about the circumstances of the wreck itself. I trust there was no dereliction of duty, or anything of that kind, that caused the ship to founder?’

Carver shook his head. ‘Tide was low, but we were well offshore,’ he said. ‘I dropped sixty-five feet of chain and she caught, so I dropped two anchors and another twenty feet of chain. I made the call to keep her on a reasonable leash and wait until the morning. Next thing we knew, we were broadside on the spit. It was raining, and the moon was clouded over. The wind blew out the beacons. Wasn’t anything anyone could have done. Nothing that might be called dereliction. Not under my command.’

This, for Francis Carver, was a very long speech; at its conclusion he folded his arms across his chest, and his expression closed. He frowned at Gascoigne.

‘Listen,’ he said. ‘What’s your interest on account of? You’d do well to tell me plain: I don’t like a slippery dealer.’

Gascoigne remembered that the man had murdered his own child. The thought was strangely thrilling. Lightly he said, ‘I’ve thought of something that might be of some help to you.’

Carver’s scowl deepened. ‘Who says I need help?’

‘You’re right,’ said Gascoigne. ‘I am impertinent.’

‘Say it, though,’ said Carver.

‘Well, here,’ said Gascoigne. ‘As I mentioned before, my late wife’s father worked in shipping insurance. His speciality was P&I—protection and indemnity.’

‘I told you I don’t have that.’

‘Yes,’ Gascoigne said, ‘but there’s a good chance that the man who sold you this ship—what was his name?’

‘Lauderback,’ said Carver.

Gascoigne paused in a show of surprise. ‘Not the politician!’

‘Yes.’

‘Alistair Lauderback? But he’s in Hokitika now—running for the Westland seat!’

‘Go on with what you were saying. P&I.’

‘Yes,’ Gascoigne said, shaking his head. ‘Well. There’s a good chance that Mr. Lauderback, if he owned several ships, belonged to some sort of a shipowners’ association. There’s a good chance that he paid a yearly fee into a mutual fund, called P&I, as an additional insurance that was of a slightly different nature than what you and I might think of as conventional cover.’

‘To protect the cargo?’

‘No,’ said Gascoigne. ‘P&I works more like a mutual pool, into which all the shipowners pay a yearly fee, and out of which they can then draw down funds if they find themselves liable for any damages that regular insurers refuse to touch. Liabilities of the kind that you’re facing now. Wreck removal, for instance. It’s possible that Godspeed could remain protected, even though the ownership of the ship has changed.’

‘How?’ He spoke the word without curiosity.

‘Well, if P&I was taken out some years ago, and this is the first significant accident that this particular ship has sustained, then Mr. Lauderback might be in credit against Godspeed. You see, P&I doesn’t work like regular insurance—there aren’t any shareholders, and no company, really: nobody’s looking to make a profit off anyone else. Instead it’s a co-operative body of men, all of them shipowners themselves. Every man pays his dues every year, until there’s enough in the pool to cover them all. After that, the ships stay covered—at least, until something goes wrong, and then somebody has to dip into the pool for some reason. The notion of being “in credit” applies very nearly.’

‘Like a private account,’ Carver said. ‘For Godspeed.’

‘Exactly.’

Carver thought about this. ‘How would I know about it?’

Gascoigne shrugged. ‘You could ask around. The association would have to be registered, and the shipowners would have to be listed by name. This is assuming that Lauderback indeed belongs to such a group, of course—but I would venture to say that it’s very likely that he does.’

In fact this was more than likely: it was certain. Alistair Lauderback did have protection and indemnity against all his crafts, and each ship was in credit to the tune of nearly a thousand pounds, and Carver was legally entitled to draw down these funds to help pay for the removal of the wreck from the Hokitika spit, so long as he filed his appeal before the middle of May—whereupon a year would have passed since the sale of the craft, and Lauderback’s legal obligation to Godspeed would cease. Gascoigne knew all this for certain because he had made the inquiries himself, first in the offices of Balfour Shipping, and then in the news archives of the Times, and then at the Harbourmaster’s office, and then at the Reserve Bank. He knew that Lauderback belonged to a small co-operative of shipowners called the Garrity Group, so named for its most prominent member, John Hincher Garrity, who was (as Gascoigne had discovered) an enthusiastic champion of the Age of Sail, the imminent twilight of that era notwithstanding, and who was also, it transpired, the incumbent Member of Parliament for the electorate of Heathcote in the East, and Lauderback’s very good friend.

We ought to clarify that Gascoigne had made these inquiries in the service of a separate investigation—one that was not concerned with maritime insurance, or with John Hincher Garrity, in the slightest. Since the night of the 27th of January he had spent long hours in the Harbourmaster’s office, poring over old logs and old pages of the shipping news; he had worked with Löwenthal to examine all the old political bulletins in the Leader, the Otago Witness, the Daily Southern Cross, and the Lyttelton Times; and he had skimmed through all the archives at the Courthouse that pertained to George Shepard’s appointment, the temporary Police Camp, and the future gaol. He had been looking for something very particular: one thread of evidence to connect Shepard to Lauderback, or Lauderback to Crosbie Wells, or Crosbie Wells to Shepard—or perhaps, to connect all three. Gascoigne felt very sure that at least one of these possible connexions was significant to the mystery at hand. So far, however, his research had turned up nothing useful at all.

The discovery that Godspeed was insured against extraordinary damages was no exception to this ‘nothing useful’, for Lauderback’s insurance history had no bearing upon the case of Crosbie Wells, and nor was it connected in any way to George Shepard, or to the gaol-house currently under construction. But Gascoigne did have some experience in the field of maritime insurance, as he had admitted to Francis Carver, and he had not lied in saying that the subject was of some curiosity to him, being the profession of his former father-in-law, and therefore the subject of much drawing-room conversation over years past. He had made a note of Lauderback’s affiliation to the Garrity Group with interest, filing it away in his mind as something to be examined in better detail at a later time.

Aubert Gascoigne knew that Francis Carver was a brute, and he did not care to court his friendship; he felt, however, that to get Carver on his side would be somehow valuable, and he had solicited the other man’s attention on the spit that afternoon with that purpose in mind.

Carver was still thinking about protection and indemnity. ‘I suppose I’d need Lauderback’s consent,’ he said. ‘To lay claim to that cover. I suppose I’d need him to sign something.’

‘Perhaps you would,’ Gascoigne replied, ‘but the fact that only ten months have passed since Godspeed changed hands might be worth something. That might be a loophole.’ (Indeed it was.) ‘And the fact that you inherited a standard policy from Lauderback might be worth something, too: why, if you inherit the whole, you inherit its parts, do you not?’ (Indeed you do.) With a flourish Gascoigne concluded, ‘You were sailing in New Zealand waters, and if there was no dereliction on your part, as you say, then it’s very possible that you will be entitled to lay claim to those funds.’

He had done his research well. Carver nodded, seeming impressed.

‘Anyway,’ Gascoigne said, sensing that the seeds of curiosity had been adequately sowed, ‘you ought to look into it. You might save yourself a great deal of money.’ He turned his cigarette over in his hand, examining its ember, to give Carver a chance to look him over unobserved.

‘What’s your stake in this?’ said Carver presently.

‘None whatsoever,’ said Gascoigne. ‘As I told you, I work for the Magistrate’s Court.’

‘You’ve got a friend in P&I, maybe.’

‘No,’ Gascoigne said. ‘I don’t. That’s not the way it works—as I’ve told you.’ He flicked the end of his cigarette onto the rocks below the beacon.

‘You’re just a man who tells another man about loopholes.’

‘I suppose I am,’ Gascoigne said.

‘And then strolls away.’

Gascoigne lifted his hat. ‘I shall take that as my cue,’ he said. ‘Good afternoon—Captain …?’

‘Carver,’ said the former captain, shaking Gascoigne’s hand very firmly this time. ‘Frank Carver’s my name.’

‘And I’m Aubert Gascoigne,’ Gascoigne reminded him, with a pleasant smile. ‘I can be found at the Courthouse, should you ever need me. Well—good luck with Godspeed.’

‘All right,’ Carver said.

‘She really is a marvellous craft.’

Gascoigne, strolling away, felt a kind of dawning wonder at himself. He kept his face forward, and did not look back—knowing that Carver’s dark eyes had followed him down the spit, and around the edge of the quay, and all the way to the southern end of Revell-street, where he turned the corner, and disappeared from view.

Sook Yongsheng, en route to Kaniere to seek an interview with his compatriot Quee Long, was at that moment very deep in thought, his hands locked behind his back, his eyes fixed sightlessly upon the ground before him. He hardly registered the figures he passed along the roadside, nor the laden dray-carts that clattered by, nor the infrequent riders making for the gorge—every man hatless and in shirtsleeves, enjoying the pale summer sun that seemed, for its rarity, to shine with a providential, good-hearted light. The mood along the Kaniere-road was merry; through the trees there came, occasionally, a snatch of a hymn, sung unaccompanied and in unison, from one of the makeshift chapels at the inland camps. Ah Sook paid no attention. His reunion that morning with Lydia Greenway—now Lydia Wells—had deeply unsettled him, and as a kind of conciliation to his unrest he was replaying his own history in his mind—narrating the very same tale, in fact, that he had related to Ah Quee three weeks ago.

When Francis Carver had first made his introduction to the Sook family he had been but one-and-twenty, and Ah Sook, as a boy of twelve, had very naturally looked up to him. Carver was a terse and brooding young man, born in Hong Kong to a British merchant trader, and raised at sea. He was fluent in Cantonese, though he cherished no love for China, and meant to leave that place as soon as he acquired a ship of his own—an ambition he referenced very frequently. He worked for the Kwangchow branch of the merchant firm Dent & Co., of which his father was a high-ranking official, and he was responsible for overseeing the transfer of Chinese wares to and from the export warehouses along the Pearl River. One of these warehouses was owned by Sook Yongsheng’s father, Sook Chun-Yuen.

Sook Yongsheng understood very little about the financial operations of his father’s business. He knew that the Sook warehouse served as a liaison point for buyers, the majority of which were British merchant firms. He knew that Dent & Co. was by far the most illustrious and well connected of these firms, and that his father was very proud of this association. He knew that his father’s clients all paid for their wares in silver ore, and that this was a further point of pride for Sook Chun-Yuen; he knew also that his father hated opium, and that he held the imperial commissioner, Lin Tse-Hsu, in very high esteem. Ah Sook did not know the significance of any of these particulars; but he was a loyal son, and he accepted his father’s beliefs without comment, trusting them to be both virtuous and wise.

In February 1839, the Sook warehouse was targeted for an imperial investigation—a fairly routine procedure, but a dangerous one, for under Commissioner Lin’s decree, any Chinese merchants harbouring opium faced the penalty of death. Sook Chun-Yuen welcomed the imperial forces into his warehouse cordially—where they discovered, hidden amongst the tea, some thirty or forty crates of opium resin, each weighing roughly fifty pounds. Sook Chun-Yuen’s protestations came to nothing. He was executed without trial, and at once.

Ah Sook did not know what to believe. His natural trust in his father’s honesty prompted him to believe that the man had been framed, and his natural trust in his father’s acumen made him doubt that the man could have been framed. He was in two minds—but he had no time to contemplate the matter, for within a week of the execution, war broke out in Kwangchow. Fearing for his own safety, and for the safety of his mother, who had been driven near to madness with grief, Ah Sook turned to the only man he knew to trust: the young delegate from Dent & Co., Francis Carver.

It transpired that Mr. Carver was more than happy to take on the Sook family business as a holding, and to accept all burdens of organisation and management upon himself—at least, he said, until Ah Sook’s grief had run its course, and the civil wars had quieted, or resolved themselves. In a show of kindness to the boy, Carver suggested that he might like to continue working in the export trade, in order to honour the memory of his late father, disgraced though that memory now was. If Ah Sook wished it, Carver could find work for him packing merchandise—a decent, honourable job, if menial, which would see him through the war. This proposition gratified Ah Sook extremely. Within hours of this conversation he had become Francis Carver’s employee.

For the next fifteen years Ah Sook packed chaff around specimens of porcelain and china, wrapped bolts of printed silk in paper, stacked caddies of tea into boxes, loaded and unloaded packages, hammered the lids of shipping crates, pasted labels onto cartons, and itemised those finely wrought and purposeless objects that were termed, upon the merchandise inventories, Chinoiserie. He saw Carver only infrequently over this period, for the latter was often at sea, but their interactions, when they happened, were always cordial: it was their custom to sit upon the wharf together and share a bottle of liquor, gazing out over the estuary as the water turned from brown to blue to silver, and finally to black, whereupon Carver would rise, clap his hand upon Ah Sook’s shoulder, toss the empty bottle into the river, and depart.

In the summer of 1854 Carver returned to Kwangchow after several months’ absence, and informed Ah Sook—now a man of nearly thirty years—that their agreement was finally to come to an end. His lifelong ambition to one day command a trade vessel had at last been realised: Dent & Co. was to establish a trade run to Sydney and the Victorian goldfields, and his father had chartered a handsome clipper ship, the Palmerston, on his behalf. It was a fine promotion, and one that Carver could not ignore. He had come, he said, to bid the Sook family, and this era of his life, goodbye.

Ah Sook received Carver’s farewell with sadness. By this time his mother was dead, and the opium wars had given way to a new rebellion in Kwangchow—one that was bloody, and incensed: it promised war, and perhaps even the end of empire. Change was in the air. Once Carver was gone, the warehouse sold, and the relationship with Dent & Co. dissolved, Ah Sook would be severed from his former life completely. On impulse, he begged to be taken along. He could try his hand on the Victoria goldfields, to which place many of his countrymen had already sailed; perhaps, he said, he could forge a new life for himself there, as they had done. There was nothing left for him in China.

Carver acquiesced to his suggestion without enthusiasm. He supposed that Ah Sook could come along, though he would be required to pay for his own ticket, and keep well out of the way. The Palmerston was scheduled to break her journey in Sydney, spending two weeks loading and unloading cargo at Port Jackson before continuing on to Melbourne in the south; during these two weeks, Ah Sook must keep to himself, and not bother Carver—henceforth styled ‘Captain’—in any way. When the Palmerston landed at Port Phillip, they would part as amicable strangers, owing nothing, expecting nothing; thenceforth, they would never see each other again. Ah Sook agreed. In a frenzy of sudden excitement, he relinquished his few possessions, changed his meagre savings into pounds, and purchased a standard ticket in the highest class of berth that Carver would permit him to occupy (third). He was, he soon discovered, the ship’s only passenger.

The journey to Sydney passed without incident; looking back, Ah Sook remembered it only as a static, nauseated haze, slowly brightening, like the onset of a migraine. As the craft made her long approach into the wide, low throat of the harbour, Ah Sook, weak and malnourished after many weeks at sea, struggled from his berth at last, and ventured topside. The quality of the light seemed very strange to him; he felt that in China the light was thinner, whiter, cleaner. The Australian light was very yellow, and there was a thickened quality to its brightness, as though the sun were always on the point of setting, even in the morning, or at noon.

Upon reaching the mooring at Darling Harbour, the ship’s captain hardly paused to exchange his sea legs for a steadier gait: he walked down the Palmerston’s gangway, along the quay, and into a dockside brothel, without so much as a backward glance. His crew was fast upon his heels; in no time at all, therefore, Ah Sook found himself alone. He left the ship, committing the location of its mooring to memory, and promptly set off inland—resolving, somewhat naïvely, to get a measure of the country in which he was to live.

Ah Sook’s English was very poor, simply for the reason that he and Carver had always conducted their conversations in Cantonese, and he was not acquainted with any other English-speaking men. He looked for Chinese faces on the docks, in vain; venturing further inland, he walked the streets for hours, looking for a painted sign—even a single character—that he could understand. He found nothing. Presently he ventured to the customhouse, where he produced one of the banknotes that he had folded inside the band of his hat, and held it up: perhaps the money could speak where he could not. The customhouse official raised his eyebrows—but before he said a word, Ah Sook’s hat was wrenched from his hand. He wheeled about and saw a boy, barefoot, running at speed away from him. Outraged, Ah Sook yelled, and gave chase, but the boy was fast, and knew the warren of the docks familiarly; within minutes, he was gone.

Ah Sook searched for the boy until well after nightfall. When finally he gave up and returned to the customhouse, the customs officials only shook their heads and spread their hands. They pointed inland, and spoke a volley of words. Ah Sook did not know what they were pointing at, or what they were saying. He felt a sob rising in his throat. His hatband had contained all the money he owned, save for the single banknote that he had been holding in his other hand: he was now all but destitute. Distraught, he removed his boot, placed this last banknote in the worn hollow beneath his heel, replaced his boot, and returned to the Palmerston. At least, he thought, there was one man in Sydney who could speak Cantonese.

Ah Sook approached the brothel cautiously. From within he could hear the sound of a piano—the timbre unfamiliar to him: he felt that it had a squarish, comfortable sound. He was lingering on the threshold, wondering whether he should knock, when the door was wrenched open, and a man appeared in the doorway.

Ah Sook bowed. He attempted to explain, as courteously as he was able, that he wished to speak to a man named Carver, captain of the Palmerston. The man in the doorway responded with a string of unintelligible sounds. Ah Sook persisted, repeating Carver’s name very slowly and carefully. He received the same response. Next he tried to indicate with the flat of his hand that he wished to step around the man, and venture inside, so that he might speak to Carver himself. This was a mistake. The man grabbed Ah Sook’s shirt collar with one enormous hand, picked him up, and threw him bodily into the street. Ah Sook fell painfully, jarring his wrist and his hip. The man pushed up his shirtsleeves and advanced down the stairs. He took one final drag of his cigar before throwing it, with a flick of his wrist, sideways into the quay. Then, grinning, he put up his fists. Ah Sook became very anxious. He put up his hands also, to indicate that he did not wish to fight, and begged for mercy. The man called something over his shoulder—perhaps an instruction—and within moments a second man, his face much thinner, his nose more hooked, had appeared at the doorway of the brothel. This second man darted around behind Ah Sook, hauled him to his feet, and pinned his hands behind his back—a pose that left his face and torso undefended. The pair exchanged words. Ah Sook struggled, but he could not wrench his wrists free. The first man, raising his forearms in front of his face, shifted his weight lightly from foot to foot. He approached and then retreated several times, stepping very lightly, and then darted forward and began to batter Ah Sook’s face and stomach with his fists. The man behind him crowed something. The first grunted in return and fell back, only to advance again in the same style, and release a second flurry of blows. Soon the revellers inside the brothel were roused. They spilled into the street, bringing the noise of their party with them.

Francis Carver appeared in the doorway of the brothel. He had removed his jacket; he was in ruffled shirtsleeves and a blue necktie, tied with a sloppy four-in-hand knot. His placed his hands loosely upon his hips and surveyed the fight with an irritated look. Ah Sook met his eyes.

‘Mh goi bong ngoh,’ he cried through a mouthful of blood. ‘Mh goi bong ngoh!’

Francis Carver seemed to look right through him. He made no sign that he could understand Ah Sook at all. One of the other revellers said something, and Carver responded in English, shifting his gaze away.

‘Pang yao! Ho pang yao!’

But Carver did not look at him again. A copper-haired woman appeared next to him in the doorway, snaking beneath his arm; he caught her around the waist, and pulled her body close to his own. He murmured something into her hair. She laughed, and they went back inside.

Soon the second man could not support the dead weight of Ah Sook’s body; he dropped him, complaining, evidently, of the blood that had spattered on his jacket and his cuffs. The first man began to kick Ah Sook where he lay, but evidently this was not as entertaining as his former sport, and soon the crowd lost interest and dispersed. The first man gave Ah Sook a final kick in the ribs with the toe of his boot, and then returned inside also. When he re-entered the brothel there was a rising wave of laughter, and then the piano struck up a new tune.

Using his elbows and his knees, Ah Sook dragged his broken body to the alley, out of sight. He lay in the shadow, feeling a sharp pain each time he drew a breath. He watched the masts of the ships move back and forth. The sun went down. After a time he heard the lamplighter’s tread upon the quay, and near him, the hiss and thump as the gas lamp was ignited. The darkness turned grey. He feared that all his ribs were broken. He could feel a sticky wetness, like a sponge, above his hairline. His left eye had closed. He did not know if he had strength enough to stand.

Presently the rear door of the brothel opened, spilling yellow light onto the stones. Quick steps padded into the alley. Ah Sook heard the clink of a tin bowl being set down upon the cobbles, and then felt a cool touch of a hand upon his brow. He opened his right eye. A young woman with a thinly pointed face and buck-teeth was kneeling before him. Murmuring phrases he did not understand, she dipped a square of cloth in warm water, and began to daub the blood from his face. He let her voice wash over him. She was wearing a starched apron, in the manner of a barmaid: she must work inside, he thought. This guess was confirmed when, after a moment, there came a shouted summons from within, and, muttering, she put the cloth down and darted away.

Several hours passed. The piano player ceased, and the noises from within began to dwindle. Ah Sook slept a while, and awoke to find that all was very quiet, and the barmaid had returned. This time she was carrying a caddy under one arm, several implements rolled in cloth, and a spirit lantern. She knelt beside him, placing the lantern carefully upon the cobbles, and twisting the dial so the globe flared white. Ah Sook turned his head, as gently as he was able, and saw, with some surprise, that the caddy she was carrying bore his own family name, stamped in Chinese. He gave a start, which the woman interpreted strangely; she smiled and nodded, and placed her finger against her lips, to signify a secret. She then opened the caddy, fished around amongst the tea leaves, and withdrew from the interior a small square package, wrapped in paper. She smiled at him. Ah Sook was confused. He turned his head painfully to the right, so as to see the implements the woman had unrolled from her bundle—and saw a short, inelegant pipe, laid out next to a needle, a knife, and a tin bowl. He turned back to her, questioningly, but she was busy adjusting the wick of the lamp, assembling the pipe, and preparing the resin. When at last the opium was bubbling, and a tendril of white smoke escaped the thin aperture of the bowl, she pressed the mouthpiece of the pipe to Ah Sook’s lips. He was too exhausted to decline. He took the vapour into his mouth, and held it there.

There came a dawn in his chest, a liquid light. A perfect calm flooded through his body. The pain in his head and chest drained out of him, as simply and suddenly as water seeping through a piece of silk. Opium, he thought, dully. Opium. It was extraordinary. The drug was extraordinary. It was a miracle, a cure. She passed him the pipe again and he supped from its end greedily, like a beggar supping from a spoon. He did not remember passing out of consciousness, but when he next opened his eyes it was daylight, and the barmaid was gone. He was lying propped between two slop-crates at the back of the building, with a blanket spread over his body, and another folded beneath his cheek. Someone—the barmaid, perhaps?—must have dragged him there. Or had he come here of his own accord? Ah Sook could not remember. He had a terrible headache, and the pain in his ribcage had returned. From within the building he could hear splashing water and the sound of knives.

Then he remembered the can of opium, buried in the middle of the box of tea. Dent & Co. had been paying for their wares in opium—for Britain had no more silver, and China had no need for gold. How could he have been so stupid? Francis Carver had been smuggling the drug into China, using the Sook family warehouse as a liaison point. Francis Carver had betrayed his father. Francis Carver had turned away from him, and pretended not to understand his cry. Ah Sook lay on his side in the alley without moving. A deadly conviction was swelling in his chest.

Over the course of the next week the buck-toothed woman kept him fed, watered and sedated. She checked upon him several times daily, always under the pretence of feeding the pig, emptying the dishwater, or taking the laundry to the buckled line; after nightfall, she came with the pipe, and fed him smoke until the pain lessened, and he fell asleep. She conducted these ministrations in silence, and Ah Sook, as he watched her, was quiet too. He wondered about her. One night she came out with her own eye blackened. He raised his hand to touch it, but she frowned, and turned away.

Within a few days Ah Sook could stand, though it was painful to do so, and within the week he could walk slowly around the yard. He knew that the Palmerston had only scheduled a fortnight’s stopover in Sydney; soon it would be departing for the Victorian goldfields, in the south. Ah Sook no longer cared whether he continued on to Melbourne. He wanted only to confront Carver before the clipper sailed.

Since the Palmerston had reached her mooring Carver had not spent a single night aboard: he spent his nights at the dockside brothel, in the company of the woman with copper-coloured hair. Ah Sook saw him approaching every evening, striding along the quay with his arms swinging and his coat-tails flared. He did not leave the brothel until the early hours of the afternoon, and very often the copper-haired woman accompanied him to the alley doorway to bid him a private goodbye. Ah Sook had twice glimpsed the pair walking along the docks together, well after sundown. They spoke as intimates. Each leaned in close to listen when the other spoke, and the woman’s hand was always in the crook of Carver’s elbow, pressing close.

The eighth night after Ah Sook’s assault was a Sunday, and the carousing at the brothel quit well before midnight, in accordance with curfew. Ah Sook crept around to the front of the place and saw Carver silhouetted in the central window of the upper floor, leaning his forearm against the lintel and looking down into the dark. As Ah Sook watched the red-haired woman came up behind him, caught his sleeve in her hand, and pulled him back out of sight, into the depths of the room. Keeping to the shadows, Ah Sook crept back to the sash window above the kitchen cutting-board, and slid it open. He climbed inside. The room was deserted. He looked around for a weapon, selecting, finally, a bone-handled cleaver from the rack above the board. He had never wielded a weapon of any kind against another man, but it gave him confidence, to feel the thing heavy in his hand. He moved to find the staircase in the gloom.

There were three doors at the top of the staircase, all of them closed. He listened at the first (only silence) and then the second (muted scuffling) and then the third, behind which he could hear the rumble of a man’s voice, the creak of a chair, and then a woman’s low reply. Ah Sook tried to estimate the distance from the edge of the house to the upper window at which he had seen Carver standing moments before. Could this third door lead to that central room—did it square? Yes: for he was ten feet from the edge of the landing, and if he imagined the brothel’s frontage in his mind, the window was easily twelve feet from the building’s edge. Unless the second door led to a larger room, of course, and this third door led to a small one. Ah Sook put his ear to the door. He heard the man raise his voice and speak several words in English—sharply, and with a terse accent, as though he were very displeased. It must be Carver, Ah Sook thought. It could only be Carver. Full of sudden fury, he wrenched the door open—but it was not Carver. It was the man who had beaten him, little more than a week earlier. He had the buck-toothed woman on his lap, one hand encircling her throat, the other spread flat across her breast. Ah Sook stepped back in surprise—and the man, roaring his displeasure, threw the woman from his lap, and leaped to his feet.

He uttered a string of syllables that Ah Sook did not understand, and reached for his revolver, which was lying on a nightstand next to the bed. In the same instant, the buck-toothed woman reached into her bosom and withdrew a muff pistol. The man levelled his gun and pulled the hammer—Ah Sook flinched—but the mechanism jammed; there was a spent casing in the breech. By the time the man had tipped his revolver up to release the spent casing, the woman had rushed upon him and shoved the muzzle of her pistol into his temple. Distracted, he tried to push her away—and there was a clap—and the man crumpled. His revolver fell from his hand, and thudded upon the floor. Ah Sook had not moved. The buck-toothed woman darted forward, removed the revolver from the dead man’s hand, and fitted her own muff pistol in place of it. She then thrust the heavy revolver upon Ah Sook, closed his fingers over the barrel, and motioned for him to leave, and leave quickly. Bewildered, he turned on his heel, revolver in one hand, cleaver in the other. She grabbed his shoulders, yanked him back, and directed him, instead, to the servants’ stairwell on the other side of the hall—down which he vanished, hearing footsteps, and clamour, on the main stair.

Outside Ah Sook tossed both weapons into the water and watched them sink rapidly out of view. There came screaming from inside, and muffled shouts. He turned and began to run. Before he reached the end of the quay he heard footsteps behind him. Then something struck him on the back, and he fell face-first upon the ground. He gave a grunt of pain—his ribs were still very tender—and felt his hands being cuffed, roughly, behind him. He did not protest as he was hoisted to his feet, marched to the horse post, and shoved against it; his captor then cuffed him, with a second pair of handcuffs, to the iron ring, where he remained until the policeman’s wagon arrived to take him to gaol.

Ah Sook could not make head or tail of the questions that were put to him in English, and at length his interrogators despaired of him. He was not afforded the courtesy of a translator, and when he said the name ‘Carver’ the policemen only shook their heads. He was placed in cramped custody with five other men. In due course the case was heard, and judged to warrant a trial, which was scheduled to take place some six weeks later. By this time the Palmerston must have long since departed; Carver, in all likelihood, was gone for good. Ah Sook passed the next six weeks in a state of great anxiety and dejection, and awoke on the morning of his trial as if upon the day of his very execution. How could he hope to defend himself? He would be convicted, and hanged before the month was out.

The case was heard in English, and Ah Sook, from the dock, understood virtually none of it. He was surprised when, after several hours of speeches and swearings-in, Francis Carver was brought to the stand in handcuffs. Ah Sook wondered why this witness was the only one to have been restrained. He stood up as Carver approached the stand, and called out to him in Cantonese. Their gaze met—and in the sudden stillness, Ah Sook, speaking calmly and distinctly, promised to avenge his father’s death. Carver, to his dishonour, was the first to look away.

It was only much later that Ah Sook learned the nature of what transpired during the trial. The name of the man he was accused of having murdered, as he later discovered, was Jeremy Shepard, and the buck-toothed woman who had nursed Ah Sook back to health was his wife, Margaret. The copper-haired woman was Lydia Greenway; she was the proprietrix of the Darling Harbour brothel, which was known as the White Horse Saloon. At the time of his trial, Ah Sook knew no names at all; it was not until the morning after his acquittal that he found a copy of the Sydney Herald and was able to pay a Cantonese trader to translate the account given in the courthouse pages—which, owing to its sensational nature, ran over three columns, nearly filling an entire page.

The case of the prosecutor, according to the Sydney Herald, rested upon three points: firstly, that Ah Sook had a very good reason to bear a grudge against Jeremy Shepard, given that the latter had beaten him senseless the week before; secondly, that Ah Sook had been apprehended fleeing the White Horse Saloon in the moments after the shot was fired, which naturally made him the most likely suspect; and thirdly, that Chinese men, in general, could not be trusted, and indeed bore an inherent malice against all white men.

The defence, in the face of these charges, was lackadaisical. The lawyer reasoned that it was unlikely that Ah Sook, being but a fraction of Shepard’s height and weight, could have got close enough to place the muzzle of the pistol against the other man’s temple; for this reason, the possibility of suicide ought not to be ruled out. When the prosecutor interjected to assert that the act of suicide was, by the testimony of his friends, vehemently against Jeremy Shepard’s nature, the defence ventured the opinion that no man on earth was wholly incapable of suicide—a surmise that received a sharp reprimand from the judge. Begging the judge’s pardon, the lawyer concluded his argument by suggesting, as a kind of general summation, that perhaps Sook Yongsheng had only fled the White Horse in alarm: a shot had just been fired, after all. When he sat down the prosecutor made no effort to hide his smirk, and the judge sighed very audibly.

At last the prosecutor called for the testimony of Margaret Shepard, Jeremy Shepard’s widow—and it was here that the trial took a startling turn. Upon the stand, Margaret Shepard flatly refused to corroborate with the prosecutor’s line of questioning. She insisted that Sook Yongsheng had not murdered her husband. She knew this to be true for a very simple reason: she had witnessed his suicide herself.

This startling confession gave rise to such an uproar in the court that the judge was obliged to call for order. Ah Sook, to whom these events would only be translated long after the fact, never dreamed that the woman was risking her own safety in order to save his life. When Margaret Shepard’s questioning was allowed to continue, the prosecutor inquired as to why she had hitherto concealed this very vital information, to which Margaret Shepard replied that she had lived in great fear of her husband, for he abused her daily, as more than one witness could attest. Her spirit was all but broken; she had only just mustered the courage to speak of the incident aloud. After this poignant testimony, the trial dissolved. The judge had no choice but to acquit Ah Sook of the crime of murder, and to release him. Jeremy Shepard, it was decreed, had committed suicide, may God rest his soul—though that prospect was, theologically speaking, very unlikely.

Ah Sook’s first action, upon his release from gaol, was to seek news of Francis Carver. He learned, to his surprise, that in fact the Palmerston had been apprehended in the Sydney Harbour some weeks ago, following a routine search. Francis Carver had been found in breach of the law on charges of smuggling, breach of customs, and evasion of duty: according to the report given to the maritime police, there were sixteen young women from Kwangchow in the ship’s hold, all of them severely malnourished, and frightened in the extreme. The Palmerston had been seized, the women had been sent back to China, Carver had been remanded in gaol, and Carver’s relationship with Dent & Co. had been formally dissolved. He had been sentenced to ten years of penal servitude at the penitentiary upon Cockatoo Island, effective instant.

There was nothing to do but wait for Carver’s sentence to elapse. Ah Sook sailed to Victoria, and began to dig the ground; he acquired some facility in English, apprenticed himself to various trades, and dreamed, with increasing lucidity, of avenging his father’s murder by taking Carver’s life. In July 1864 he sent a written inquiry to Cockatoo Island requesting to know where Carver had gone upon his liberation. He received an answer three months later, informing him that Carver had sailed to Dunedin, New Zealand, upon the steamer Sparta. Ah Sook bought a ticket there also—and in Dunedin, the trail suddenly went cold. He searched and searched—and found nothing. At last, defeated, Ah Sook gave up the case as lost. He bought a miner’s right and a one-way ticket to the West Coast—where, eight months later, he chanced upon him: standing in the street, his face newly scarred, his chest newly thickened, counting coins into Te Rau Tauwhare’s hand.

Ah Sook found Ah Quee sitting cross-legged on a shelf of gravel, some few feet from the boundary peg that marked the Aurora’s southeast corner. The goldsmith held a prospector’s dish in both hands, and he was shaking the dish rhythmically, flicking out his wrists in the confident motion of a man long-practised in a single skill. There was a lit cigarette in the corner of his mouth, but he did not appear to be smoking it: the ash shredded finely down his tunic as he moved. Before him was a wooden trough of water, and beside him, an iron crucible with a flattened spout.

His rhythm followed a circular pattern. First he shook the largest stones and clods out of his dish, keeping to a persistent tempo, so that the finer sands tumbled, by degrees, to the bottom of the pan; then he leaned forward, dipped the far edge of the pan into the clouded water, and with a sharp movement tilted the pan back towards his body, swirling the liquid carefully clockwise, to create a vortex in the dish. Gold was heavier than stone, and sank to the bottom: once he skimmed the wet gravel from the surface, the pure metal would be left behind, shining wetly, tiny points of light against the dark. Ah Quee plucked out these glistering flakes with his fingers, and transferred them carefully to his crucible; he then refilled his dish with earth and stones, and repeated the procedure, with no variation whatsoever, until the sun sank below the treetops to the west.

The Aurora was a good distance from both the river and the sea, an inconvenience that accounted, in part, for its undesirability as a goldmine. It was necessary for Ah Quee to transport his own river water to the claim every morning, for without water, his task was all but impossible; once the water was clouded with dirt and silt, however, it was very hard to see the gold, and he was obliged to tramp back to the river, in order to fill his buckets again. A tailrace might have been constructed from the Hokitika River, or a shaft might have been dropped for a well, but the goldmine’s owner had made it clear from the outset that he would spare the Aurora no resources at all. There was no point. The two acres that comprised the Aurora was only barely payable ground: it was only a dull patch of stones, treeless. The tailing pile at Ah Quee’s back, testament to long hours of solitary industry, was long and low; a burial mound, under which no body had been interred.

Ah Quee looked up as Ah Sook approached.

‘Neih hou.’

‘Neih hou, neih hou.’

The two men regarded each other with neither hostility nor kindness, but the gaze they shared was long. After a moment Ah Quee plucked the last of the cigarette from his mouth, and flicked it away over the stones.

‘The yield is small today,’ he said in Cantonese.

‘A thousand sympathies,’ replied Ah Sook, speaking in his native language also.

‘The yield is small every day.’

‘You deserve better.’

‘Do I?’ said Ah Quee, who was in an irritable temper.

‘Yes,’ said Ah Sook. ‘Diligence deserves to be rewarded.’

‘In what proportion? And in what currency? These are empty words.’

Ah Sook placed the palms of his hands together. ‘I come bearing good news.’

‘Good news and flattery,’ Ah Quee observed.

The hatter took no notice of this correction. ‘Emery Staines has returned,’ he said.

Ah Quee stiffened. ‘Oh,’ he said. ‘You have seen him?’

‘Not yet,’ said Ah Sook. ‘I am told that he will be in Hokitika tonight, at a hotel upon Revell-street where a celebration has been planned to welcome his return. I have been invited, and as a gesture of my good faith, I extend my invitation to you.’

‘Who is your host?’

‘Anna Wetherell—and the widow of the dead man, Crosbie Wells.’

‘Two women,’ said Ah Quee, sceptically.

‘Yes,’ said Ah Sook. He hesitated, and then admitted what he had discovered that morning: that in fact Crosbie’s widow was the very same woman who had operated the White Horse Saloon in Darling Harbour, who had testified against Ah Sook at his own trial, and who had once been the lover of his enemy, Francis Carver. Formerly Lydia Greenway, her name was now Lydia Wells.

Ah Quee took a moment to digest this information. ‘This is a trap,’ he said at last.

‘No,’ said Ah Sook. ‘I came here of my own accord, not under instruction.’

‘This is a trap to capture you,’ said Ah Quee. ‘I am sure of it. Why else would your presence be so specifically requested at the celebration tonight? You have no connexion to Mr. Staines. What purpose can you serve, in a party to welcome his return?’

‘I am to play a part in a staged drama. I am to sit on a cushion, and pretend to be a statue.’ This sounded foolish even to Ah Sook. He rushed on: ‘It is a kind of theatre. I shall be paid a fee for my participation.’

‘You shall be paid?’

‘Yes; as a performer.’

Ah Quee studied him. ‘What if the woman Greenway is still in league with Francis Carver? They were lovers once. Perhaps she has already sent word to him, that you will be present at the party tonight.’

‘Carver is at sea.’

‘Even so, she will notify him as soon as she can.’

‘When that happens, I will be ready.’

‘How will you be ready?’

‘I will be ready,’ Ah Sook said, stubbornly. ‘It does not matter yet. Carver is at sea.’

‘The woman’s allegiance is with him—and you have sworn to avenge yourself upon him, as she must remember. She cannot wish you well.’

‘I will be on my guard.’

Ah Quee sighed. He stood, brushing himself down, and then he paused, inhaling sharply through his nose. He advanced several steps upon Ah Sook, and gripped his shoulders in both hands.

‘You reek with it,’ he said. ‘You are reeling on your feet, Sook Yongsheng. I can smell the stink of it from twenty paces!’

Ah Sook had indeed detoured past his den at Kaniere, to smoke his late-afternoon pipe, of which the effects were very plainly visible; but he did not like to be chastised. He wrestled himself from Ah Quee’s grasp, saying sourly, ‘I have a weakness.’

‘A weakness!’ Ah Quee cried. He spat into the dirt. ‘It is not weakness: it is hypocrisy. You ought to be ashamed of yourself.’

‘Do not speak to me as to a child.’

‘A man addicted is a childish man.’

‘Then I am a childish man,’ said Ah Sook. ‘It is not of consequence to you.’

‘It is of great consequence to me, if I am to accompany you tonight.’

‘I have no need of your protection.’

‘If that is what you believe, you are deluded,’ said Ah Quee.

‘Deluded—and a hypocrite!’ said Ah Sook, feigning astonishment. ‘Two insults, when I have been nothing but courteous to you!’

‘You deserve to be insulted,’ said Ah Quee. ‘You indulge the very drug that killed your father—and you have the audacity to style yourself his defender! You insist he was betrayed—and yet you betray him, every time you light your lamp!’

‘Francis Carver killed my father,’ said Ah Sook, stepping back.

‘Opium killed your father,’ said Ah Quee. ‘Look at yourself’—for Ah Sook had stumbled against a root, and partly fallen. ‘You are a fine avenger, Sook Yongsheng; one who cannot even stand on his own two feet!’

Furious, Ah Sook put a hand out to steady himself, hauled himself upright, and rounded on Ah Quee, his pupils dark and soft. ‘You know my history,’ he said. ‘I was first given the drug as a medicine. I did not take it of my own accord. I cannot help its power over me.’

‘You had ample time to shake your addiction,’ said Ah Quee. ‘You were imprisoned for weeks before your trial, were you not?’

‘That interval was not sufficient to rid me of the craving.’

‘The craving!’ said Ah Quee, full of contempt. ‘What a pathetic word that is. No wonder it has no place in the history you recounted to me. No wonder you prefer such grand words as honour, and duty, and betrayal, and revenge.’

‘My history—’

‘Your history, as you tell it, dwells far longer on your own injustices than on the shame that was brought upon your family. Tell me, Sook Yongsheng. Are you avenging yourself upon the man who killed your father, or the man who refused to come to your aid outside the White Horse Saloon?’

Ah Sook was shocked. ‘You doubt my motives,’ he said.

‘Your motives are not your own,’ said Ah Quee. ‘They cannot be your own! Look at yourself. You can hardly stand.’

There was a silence between them. From the adjacent valley there came a muffled crack of gunshot, and then a distant cry.

Finally Ah Sook nodded. ‘Goodbye,’ he said.

‘Why do you farewell me?’

‘You have made your opinions clear,’ said Ah Sook. ‘You disapprove of me; you are disgusted by me. I will go to the widow’s celebration tonight regardless.’

Though Ah Quee’s temper was quick to flare, he could not bear to be made the villain in any dispute. He shook his head, breathing hard through his nose, and said, ‘I will come with you. I want very much to speak to Mr. Staines.’

‘I know,’ said Ah Sook. ‘I came here on good faith, Quee Long.’

When Ah Quee spoke again, his voice was quiet. ‘A man knows his own heart. I was wrong to doubt your motivation.’

Ah Sook closed his eyes briefly. ‘By the time we reach Hokitika,’ he said, opening them again, ‘I will be sober.’

Ah Quee nodded. ‘You will need to be,’ he said.

CARDINAL EARTH

In which Walter Moody makes a startling discovery; several confusions are put to rest; and a symmetry presents itself

‘

.

Walter Moody, upon taking his leave of Gascoigne, had returned at once to the Crown Hotel, to which place his trunk had been delivered. He wrenched the door open, crossed the foyer at a pace, and took the stairs to the upper landing two by two; when he reached the door at the top of the stairs, he fumbled with his key in the keyhole, and cursed aloud. He was suddenly absurdly impatient to lay eyes upon his possessions—feeling that his reunion with the treasured items of his former life would somehow repair a connexion that, since the wreck of the Godspeed, had seemed very unreal.

Of late Moody’s thoughts had been drifting, with increasing frequency, back to his reunion with his father in Dunedin. He found that he regretted the haste with which he had quitted the unhappy scene. It was true that his father had betrayed him. It was true that his brother had betrayed him. But even so, he might have been forgiving; he might have stayed on, and heard Frederick’s part in the story. He had not seen his brother while in Dunedin, for he had fled the scene of reunion with his father before Frederick could be summoned, and so he did not know whether Frederick was well, or married, or happy; he did not know what Frederick had made of Otago, and whether he meant to live out his days in New Zealand; he did not know whether his father and brother had dug the ground as a party, or whether they had gone mates with other men, or whether they had prospected alone. Whenever Moody dwelled upon these uncertainties, he felt sad. He ought to have sought an audience with his brother. But would Frederick have desired such a thing? Even that Moody did not know. Since arriving in Hokitika he had thrice sat down to write to him, but after penning the salutation and the date, sat motionless.

At last the key turned in the lock. Moody shoved open the door, strode into the room—and stopped. There was indeed a trunk in the middle of the room, but it was a trunk he had never seen before. His own trunk was painted red, and was rectangular in its dimensions. This one was black, with iron straps, and a long square hasp through which a horizontal bar had been thrust to keep it closed; its lid was domed, and slatted like a barrel that had been laid upon its side. There were several baggage labels plastered to the half-barrel of the lid, one marked ‘Southampton’, one marked ‘Lyttelton’, and the standard ‘Not Wanted On Voyage’. Moody could tell at once that the trunk’s owner had always travelled first class.

Instead of ringing the bell to inform the maid of the mistake, Moody closed the door behind him, locked it, and moved forward to kneel before the unfamiliar chest. He unfastened the hasp, and heaved open the lid—and saw, pasted to the underside, a square of paper that read:

PROPERTY

OF MR. ALISTAIR LAUDERBACK,

PROVINCIAL

COUNCILMAN, M.P.

Moody exhaled, and sat back on his heels. Now this was a misunderstanding! So Lauderback’s trunk had been aboard Godspeed, as Balfour had suspected: the shipping crate must indeed have been wrongly taken from the Hokitika quay. Moody’s trunk, like Lauderback’s, was not engraved with the name of its owner, and bore no particular marks of identification save for on the interior, where his name and address had been stamped into a square of leather and sewn into the lining of the lid. Presumably the two trunks had been switched: Moody’s trunk had been delivered to Lauderback’s rooms at the Palace Hotel, and Lauderback’s, to the Crown.

Moody thought for a moment. Lauderback was not currently in Hokitika: according to the West Coast Times, he was campaigning in the north, and was not due to return until to-morrow afternoon. Suddenly decisive, Moody shucked off his jacket, leaned forward on his knees, and began to go through Lauderback’s belongings.

Walter Moody did not chastise himself for intrusions upon other people’s privacy, and nor did he see any reason to confess them. His mind was of a most phlegmatic sort, cool in its private applications, quick, and excessively rational; he possessed a fault common to those of high intelligence, however, which was that he tended to regard the gift of his intellect as a licence of a kind, by whose rarefied authority he was protected, in all circumstances, from ever behaving ill. He considered his moral obligations to be of an altogether different class than those of lesser men, and so rarely felt shame or compunction, except in very general terms.

He went through Lauderback’s chest swiftly and methodically, handling each item and then replacing it exactly as he found it. The trunk contained largely items of stationery—letter-sets, seals, ledgers, books of law, and all the necessities that might furnish the desk of a Member of Parliament. Lauderback’s clothing and personal effects had presumably been packed elsewhere, for the only item of clothing in this cedar chest was a woollen scarf, which had been wrapped around a rather ugly brass paperweight in the shape of a pig. The trunk carried with it the smell of the sea—a briny odour, less salty than sour—but its contents were hardly even damp; mercifully for Lauderback, the trunk must have been spared a full immersion.

At the bottom of the trunk was a leather briefcase. Moody opened it and withdrew a sheaf of papers, all of them contracts, receipts, and bills of sale. After several minutes’ searching he found the deed for the sale of the barque Godspeed, and pulled that document free of the others—handling it carefully, so that the legal seal did not crumble, or pull away.

The contract had been signed, as Lauderback had attested to Balfour three weeks ago, by a Mr. Francis Wells. The date of the sale also corroborated with the politician’s story: the ship had changed ownership in May of 1865, nine months prior to the present day.

Moody bent closer to look at the purchaser’s signature. ‘Francis Wells’ had signed his false name expansively. The inscriber had made a huge looping flourish on the left-hand side of the capital ‘F’, so large that it might have been a letter of its own. Moody squinted at it sideways. Why, he thought: in fact that flourish might have easily been a C, cursively joined to the next letter. He peered closer. There was even a dot of ink between the C and the F—a dot that one might have taken for a spatter, if one glanced at the paper carelessly—which seemed to suggest that Carver had signed the name deliberately ambiguously, so that it might read either ‘Francis Wells’ merely, or ‘C. Francis Wells’. The penmanship was rather shaky, as often happens when one writes very slowly, wishing to ensure a particular effect.

Moody was frowning. In June of the previous year, Francis Carver had been in possession of Crosbie Wells’s birth certificate, a document that proved (as Benjamin Löwenthal had attested) that Crosbie Wells’s middle name was Francis. Why, Moody thought, it was plain enough: Francis Carver had stolen Crosbie Wells’s birth certificate with the intention of posing as the other man. The ambiguities of this bill of sale must surely be deliberate. If Carver were brought to court on the charge of false impersonation, he could deny that he had ever signed it.

Was the shared name, Francis, merely a happy coincidence? Or could Wells’s birth certificate have been falsified after the fact? A middle name would be very easy to add to any document, Moody thought, and one could easily use a lighter shade of ink, or fade the word somehow, to mask the fact of the later addition. But why should Carver have wanted to falsify his own identity—most especially, upon a bill of sale? How could it have been to his advantage, to use another man’s name?

Moody reviewed what he knew about the matter. Francis Carver had used Crosbie Wells’s identity when speaking to Benjamin Löwenthal in the office of the West Coast Times in June … but he had not used Crosbie Wells’s identity when confronting Alistair Lauderback, the month before. To Lauderback he had called himself Francis Wells … and then he had signed his name with deliberate ambiguity. Bearing in mind Lauderback’s mysterious belief that Crosbie Wells and Carver had been brothers, Moody could only assume that Carver had posed as Crosbie Wells’s brother in his dealings with Lauderback. As to why he might have done such a thing, however, Moody had no idea.

He scrutinised the bill of sale for a long moment, committing its particulars to memory, and then returned it to the briefcase, slotted the briefcase back into the trunk, and continued with his methodical investigation.

At length he was satisfied that the trunk contained no more clues that were of use to him, and, in a gesture that was partly idle, ran his fingers around the edge of the lid. All of a sudden he gave a murmur of surprise. A slim package, squarish in shape, had been slipped beneath the calico lining, so that it lay, concealed, between the cedar and the cloth. He bent closer, and his fingers found a neat slit in the fabric, roughly the size of the span of his hand, and delicately hemmed so that it would not fray. The calico lining was stamped with a tartan pattern, and the slit in the cloth was cleverly disguised against the vertical stripes of the tartan, which ran flush with the edge of the trunk. Moody wormed his fingers into the cavity and withdrew the squarish object that his fingers had located. It was a wad of letters, tied with string.