The Luminaries (43 page)

Löwenthal’s look was almost smouldering. ‘Let me make this very clear,’ he said. ‘I trust in your discretion, just as you trust in mine, and just as we both trust in the discretion of Mr. Clinch. But discretion is a far cry from secrecy, Mr. Frost. I do not consider that any of us is withholding information in the legal sense. Do you?’

In a voice that pretended to be casual Frost said, ‘Well, I suppose we can only hope that Mr. Clinch is of your mind’—meaning, somewhat foolishly, to curry Löwenthal’s favour by applauding his rationale. But Löwenthal shook his head.

‘Mr. Frost,’ he said. ‘You are indiscreet. I do not advise it.’

Benjamin Löwenthal hailed from Hanover, a city that, since his departure from Europe, had fallen under Prussian rule. (With his walrus moustache and severely receded hairline Löwenthal was not unlike Otto von Bismarck, but the correlation was not an
imitative
one: imitation was not a form of self-styling that Löwenthal had ever thought to adopt.) He was the elder son of a textiles
merchant
, a man whose life’s ambition had centred wholly upon giving both his sons an education. This aspiration, to the old man’s immeasurable gratification, he achieved. Soon after the boys’
studies
were completed, however, both parents contracted influenza. They died, as Löwenthal was later informed, upon the very day that the Jewish people were granted formal emancipation by the Hanoverian state.

This event was young Löwenthal’s watershed. Although he was
not superstitious, and so attached no real value to the fact that these events happened contemporaneously, they were nevertheless linked in his mind: he felt a profound sense of detachment from either circumstance, by virtue of their happening on the very same day. At that time he had just been offered a newspaperman’s apprenticeship at
Die Henne
in Ilmenau, an opportunity that both his parents would surely have encouraged him to seize—but because the state of Thuringia had not yet formally emancipated its Jewish citizens, he felt that it would be disrespectful to his
parents
’ memory to accept. He was torn. Löwenthal cherished an outsized fear of catastrophe, and was prone to over-analysis in
self-contemplation
; his reasons for his actions were always many, and rationalised in the extreme. We shall pass over these reasons why, and remark only that Löwenthal chose neither to move to Ilmenau nor to remain in Hanover. Immediately following his parents’ deaths, he left Europe altogether, never to return. His brother Heinrich took over their father’s business in Hanover, and Benjamin Löwenthal, degree in hand, sailed across the Atlantic, to America—where, for the months and years and decades after that, he recounted this very history to himself, in exactly these words, in exactly this way.

Repetition is a fortification like no other. Over time Löwenthal’s conception of the story of his past had become fixed and (by virtue of its fixity) unassailable. He lost the capacity to talk about his life in any other terms but those he had prescribed: that he was a moral man; that he was a man confronted with paradox; that he was a man who had done the right thing, who did the right thing, who would do the right thing. All of his choices, in his mind, had been moral choices. He ceased to be able to distinguish between
personal
preference and moral imperative, and he ceased to accept that such a distinction was possible. It was as a consequence of all of this that he chastised Charlie Frost so freely now.

Frost’s eyes were lowered. ‘I can be discreet,’ he said quietly. ‘You needn’t worry about me.’

‘I will go and speak to Tom myself,’ Löwenthal said, crossing the room in two strides, and holding open the door for the banker to
leave. ‘I thank you for the invitation. I shall see you tonight, at the Crown.’

Dick Mannering, upon returning from Kaniere, had gone at once to the Gridiron Hotel, where he found Edgar Clinch alone in his private office, sitting at his desk. The magnate sat down without invitation, talked for some time about the afternoon’s occurrences, and very swiftly described the proposed conference that was to take place that evening. The men had decided, for reasons of
prudence
, to meet upon neutral ground, and the smoking room of the Crown Hotel, as the least attractive room of the least popular establishment in all of Hokitika, had seemed to all the assembled company to be a very sensible choice. Mannering talked with great exuberance, for he liked the idea of a secret council very much; he had always longed to be a member of a guild, the kind possessed of arcane histories, and feudal rankings, and a code. Presently he became aware, however, that the hotelier did not appear to be
listening
very closely. Clinch had placed both palms of his hands flat on the desk before him, as though to steady himself against a wind, and during Mannering’s long speech he had not once altered his posture, though his gaze darted anxiously around the room. His usually florid face was very pale, and his moustache was twitching.

‘
You
look as if something’s on your mind—I declare it,’ said Mannering at last, and in a rather sulky tone, for he was sure that whatever this preoccupation was, it could hardly be as exciting as his afternoon in Chinatown, or the prospect of a secret conference to discuss the perplexing disappearance of a very wealthy man.

‘The widow was here,’ said Edgar Clinch, hollowly. ‘She had business with Anna, she said. She went upstairs—and not half an hour later, she was back down again, with Anna in tow.’

‘Lydia Wells?’

‘Lydia Wells,’ Clinch echoed. In his mouth her name was like a curse.

‘When?’

‘Just now,’ said Clinch. ‘They left together, the very moment before you got here.’ He fell silent again.

Mannering made an impatient noise. ‘Don’t make me beg you for it.’

‘They know each other!’ Clinch burst out. ‘They
know
each other—Lydia and Anna! They’re the best of friends!’

This revelation was not news to Mannering, who was a frequent patron of the House of Many Wishes in Dunedin, and had seen the two women together at that place before: in fact it was at the House of Many Wishes that Mannering had first engaged Anna Wetherell to work for him. He shrugged. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘What’s the problem?’

‘Thick as thieves,’ Clinch said mournfully. ‘And thieves is right, Dick. Thieves is what I mean.’

‘Who’s a thief?’

‘They’re in on it together!’ Clinch cried.

Really, Mannering thought, Clinch could be terribly irksome when he was vexed; he became altogether unintelligible. Aloud he said, ‘Is this about the widow’s appeal?’

‘
You
know what I’m talking about,’ Clinch said. ‘
You
know.’

‘What?’ Mannering said. ‘Is it about the fortune? What?’

‘Not the Wells fortune. The
other
fortune.’

‘What other fortune?’

‘You know!’

‘On the contrary: I have not the least idea.’

‘
I’m talking about Anna’s dresses
!’

This was the first time Clinch had ever mentioned the gold he had discovered in Anna’s dress the previous winter—when he
carried
her upstairs, and lowered her into the bath, and he picked up her gown, and felt a heaviness along the seam, and broke the thread of the hem, and withdrew, in his fingers, a shining pinch of it. The pressure of a long-time concealment lent an almost crazed aspect to his outburst now; for he was still convinced that the magnate was embroiled in a scheme of some kind, although he had never figured out, exactly, what this scheme might properly entail.

But Mannering only looked confused. ‘What?’ he said. ‘What’s all this about?’

Clinch was scowling. ‘Don’t play stupid.’

‘Excuse me: I am doing no such thing,’ Mannering said. ‘What are you talking about, Edgar? What do a whore’s fashions have to do with the price of anything at all?’

Studying him, Edgar Clinch felt a tremor of doubt. Mannering’s bewilderment seemed perfectly genuine. He was not behaving like a man exposed. Could that mean that he had
not
known about the gold hidden in Anna’s gowns? Could Anna have been colluding with quite another man—behind
Mannering’s
back? Clinch felt bewildered also. He decided to change the subject.

‘I meant that mourning gown,’ he said, clumsily. ‘The one with the stupid collar that she’s taken to wearing this past fortnight.’

Mannering waved his hand. ‘She’s just being pious,’ he said. ‘Giving herself airs. It’ll blow over.’

‘I’m not so sure,’ Clinch said. ‘Last week, you see, I told her she had to make good her debts before she quit walking the streets—and we had words, and I suppose I got angry, and I threatened to turn her out of the hotel.’

‘What’s that got to do with Lydia Wells?’ said Mannering impatiently. ‘So you lost your temper. What’s that got to do with anything?’

‘Lydia Wells just paid Anna’s debt,’ Clinch said. At last he lifted his hands from the desk: beneath them, slightly damp from the pressure of his palms, lay a crisp banknote, made out for a sum of six pounds. ‘Anna’s gone over to the Wayfarer. Indefinitely. Got a new profession, she says. Won’t answer to the name of whore.’

Mannering looked at the banknote, and did not speak for a moment.

‘But that’s her debt to
you
,’ he said at last. ‘That’s just for rent. She owes
me
a hundred pounds—and then some! She’s in the red—and she’s in it deep—and she answers to
me
, d—n it! Not to you, and certainly not to Lydia bloody Wells! But what do you mean—won’t answer to the name of whore?’

‘Just that,’ said Edgar Clinch. ‘She’s done with the profession. So she says.’

Mannering’s face had turned purple. ‘You can’t just walk out on your own job. I don’t care if you’re a whore or a butcher or a bloody baker! You can’t just walk out—not when there’s a debt
outstanding
!’

‘That’s the—’

‘In mourning, she said!’ Mannering cried, leaping up. ‘For a time, she said! Give a girl an inch and she takes a bloody mile! Not on my watch, all right! Not with a hundred pounds against her name! No indeed!’

Clinch was looking at the magnate coldly. ‘She said to tell you that Aubert Gascoigne has the money for you,’ he said. ‘She said to tell you that it’s hidden underneath his bed.’

‘Who in hell is Obur Gaskwon?’

‘He’s a clerk at the Magistrate’s Court,’ Clinch said. ‘He filed the widow’s appeal on Crosbie Wells’s fortune.’

‘Aha!’ said Mannering. ‘So we’re coming back around to
that
, are we? I’ll be God-d—ned!’

‘There’s another thing,’ Clinch said. ‘Mr. Gascoigne was up in Anna’s room this afternoon, and shots were fired. Two shots. I asked him about it afterwards—and he countered by mentioning the debt. I went up to look. There’s a hole in Anna’s pillow. Right through the middle. The stuffing came out.’

‘Two holes?’

‘Just one.’

‘And the widow saw it,’ Mannering said.

‘No,’ Clinch said. ‘She came later. But when Mr. Gascoigne left, he
did
say that he was going to talk to a lady … and then she showed up about two hours after that.’

‘What’s the other fortune?’ Mannering said suddenly. ‘You said there was another fortune.’

‘I thought—’ Clinch dropped his gaze. ‘No. It doesn’t matter. I made a mistake. Forget it.’

Mannering was frowning. ‘What obligation does Lydia Wells have, to pay off Anna’s debt?’ he said. ‘Where’s her profit there?’

‘I don’t know,’ Clinch said. ‘But the two of them seemed very intimate this afternoon.’

‘Intimate—that’s not a profit.’

‘I don’t know,’ Clinch said again.

‘They were on each others’ arms? They were in good spirits? What?’

‘Yes,’ said Clinch. ‘They were linked at the elbow—and when the widow spoke, Anna leaned in close.’

He fell silent, dwelling on the memory.

‘And you let her go!’ Mannering barked suddenly. ‘You let her go—without asking me—without calling me over? She’s my best girl, Edgar! You know
that
without me telling you! The others aren’t a patch on Anna!’

‘I could hardly have detained her,’ Clinch said, looking sour. ‘What would I have done—locked her up? And anyway, you were in Kaniere.’

Mannering leaped up from his chair.

‘So Chinaman’s Ann is no longer
any
man’s Ann!’ He thumped his hat on his leg. ‘She makes it seem altogether simple—does she not? Quitting her profession! As if we could all just wake up one morning, and decide …!’

But Edgar Clinch did not care to pursue this rhetorical line. He was meditating, sorrowfully, upon the fact that to-morrow was Sunday, and the first Sunday in many months when he did not have the drawing of Anna’s bath to look forward to. Aloud he said, ‘Maybe you ought to go and speak to Mr. Gascoigne about that money.’

‘Do you know what makes me angry, Edgar?’ Mannering said. ‘Second-hand news makes me angry. Picking up after other men makes me angry. Hearing all this from you—it makes me angry. What does Anna want me to do? Knock on the door of a man I barely know? What would I say? “Excuse me, sir, I believe there’s a great deal of money under your bed, and Anna Wetherell owes it to me!” It’s disrespectful. Disrespectful is what it is. No: as far as I’m concerned, that girl is still in my employ. She is still very much a whore, and her debt to me is still very much unpaid.’