The Luminaries (51 page)

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:

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.

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.’