Текст книги "The Luminaries"

Автор книги: Eleanor Catton

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‘Hell of an outfit, she is,’ Balfour added. ‘Marvellous.’

The aides exchanged a glance.

‘Surely that brings home our point, Mr. L,’ said Augustus Smith finally, breaking the spell. ‘Even a barque handles better than a brigantine; she does it with half the crew and half the fuss. He can’t deny that.’

‘Yes,’ Lauderback said, rousing himself. He turned to Jock. ‘You can’t deny that.’

Jock was chewing; he grinned through his mouthful. ‘I will deny it. Give me half the weight in rigging over half the crew—there’s your fuss. I’d take speed over handling any day.’

‘How about a compromise?’ said Augustus. ‘Barquentine.’

Jock shook his head. ‘I’ll say it again: three masts is one too many.’

‘More speed than a barque, though.’ Augustus touched Lauderback’s elbow. ‘What about your Flight of Fancy? She was fore-and-aft rigged on the mainmast, was she not?’

Balfour had not intuited the aides’ objective—to divert the conversation away from the subject he had introduced—and he thought that perhaps the politician had not heard him correctly. He raised his voice and tried again. ‘Your Godspeed—as I say. She’s a regular, these parts. Hell of an outfit. I’ve seen her over the bar a fair few times. Seems to me she’s got both speed and handling. My word, she’s a marvellous craft.’

Alistair Lauderback sighed. He threw his head back and squinted up at the rafters, and a foolish smile trembled on his lips—the smile of a man who is unused to embarrassment, Balfour realised later. (He had never, before that morning, heard Lauderback confess a weakness of any kind.)

At last Lauderback said, still squinting upward, ‘That barque is no longer in my possession.’ His voice was strained, as though his smile had made it thinner.

‘That so!’ Balfour said, surprised. ‘Made a swap, did you—something bigger?’

‘No: I sold her, outright.’

‘For gold?’

Lauderback paused, and then said, ‘Yes.’

‘That so!’ Balfour said again. ‘Just like that—you sold her. Who’s buying?’

‘Her master.’

‘Hoo,’ said Balfour, exhaling cheerfully. ‘Can’t envy you there. We have heard some stories about that man around here.’

Lauderback did not reply. Still smiling, he studied the exposed beams of the ceiling, the cracks between the floorboards of the rooms above.

‘Yes,’ Balfour repeated, sitting back, and tucking his thumbs beneath his lapels. ‘We have heard some stories around here. Francis Carver! Not a man I’d care to cross, all right.’

Lauderback looked down in surprise. ‘Carver?’ he said, frowning. ‘You mean Wells.’

‘Master of the Godspeed?’

‘Yes—unless he sold it on.’

‘Burly fellow—dark brows, dark hair, broken nose?’

‘That’s right,’ said Lauderback. ‘Francis Wells.’

‘Well, I don’t mean to contradict you flat,’ Balfour said, blinking, ‘but that man’s name is Carver. Perhaps you’re confusing him with the old fellow who—’

‘No,’ Lauderback said.

‘The hermit—’

‘No.’

‘Who died—the man you came across, two weeks ago,’ Balfour said, persisting. ‘The dead man. His name was Wells, you know. Crosbie Wells.’

‘No,’ Lauderback said, for the third time. He raised his voice slightly. ‘I am not mistaking the name. Wells was the name on the papers, when I signed the barque across. It was always Wells.’

They looked at each other.

‘Can’t understand it,’ Balfour said at last. ‘Only I do hope you didn’t get stiffed. Strange coincidence, isn’t it—Frank Wells, Crosbie Wells.’

Lauderback hesitated. ‘Not quite a coincidence,’ he said carefully. ‘They were brothers, I thought.’

Balfour gave a shout of laughter. ‘Crosbie Wells and Frank Carver, brothers? Can’t imagine anything more unlikely. Only by marriage, surely!’

Lauderback’s foolish smile returned. He began stabbing with his finger at a crumb.

‘But who told you that?’ Balfour added, when the other did not speak.

‘I don’t know,’ said Lauderback.

‘Carver mentioned something—when he signed the papers?’

‘Maybe that was it.’

‘Well! If you say so … but to look at them, I’d never have believed it,’ Balfour said. ‘One so tall and striking, the other such a wastrel—such a runt—!’

Lauderback quivered; his hand made a compulsive movement on the table, as if to reach and grasp. ‘Crosbie Wells was a wastrel?’

Balfour waved his hand. ‘You saw him dead.’

‘But only dead—never living,’ said Lauderback. ‘Strange thing: you can’t tell what a fellow really looks like, you know, without animation. Without his soul.’

‘Oh,’ Balfour said. He contemplated that idea.

‘A dead man looks created,’ Lauderback continued. ‘As a sculpture looks created. It makes you marvel at the work of the design; makes you think of the designer. The skin is smooth. Fine. Like wax, like marble—but not like either: it doesn’t hold the light, as a wax figure does, and it doesn’t reflect it, like stone. Has a matte finish, as a painter would say. No shine.’ Suddenly Lauderback seemed very embarrassed. He rounded off by demanding, rather rudely, ‘Have you ever seen a man fresh dead?’

Balfour tried to make light of it (‘Dangerous question to ask—on a goldfield—’) but the politician was waiting for an answer, and at length he had to concede that he had not.

‘Shouldn’t have said “seen”,’ Lauderback added, to himself. ‘Should have said “bore witness”.’

Augustus Smith said, ‘Jock put his hand on the fellow’s neck—didn’t you, Jock?’

‘Ay,’ said Jock.

‘When we first came in,’ said Augustus.

‘Meant to rouse him,’ said Jock. ‘Didn’t know that he had already passed. He might have been sleeping. But here’s the thing: his collar was damp. With sweat, you see—it hadn’t yet dried on him. We figured he couldn’t have been more than half an hour dead.’

He would have said more, but Lauderback made a sharp movement with his chin, to silence him.

‘Can’t figure it out,’ Balfour said. ‘Signed his name Wells!’

‘We must be thinking of different men,’ said Lauderback.

‘Carver has a scar on his cheek, right here. White in colour. Shaped like—like a sickle.’

Lauderback pursed his lips, then shook his head. ‘I don’t recall a scar.’

‘But he was dark-haired? Thick-set? Brutish, you might say?’

‘Yes.’

‘Can’t figure it out,’ Balfour said again. ‘Why would a man change his name? And brothers! Frank Carver—and Crosbie Wells!’

Lauderback’s mouth was working beneath his moustache, as if he was chewing on his lip. In quite a different voice he said, ‘You knew him?’

‘Crosbie Wells? Not a bit,’ said Balfour. He settled back in his chair, pleased to be asked a direct question. ‘He was building a sawmill, way out in the Arahura—well, you saw the cottage; you’ve been there. He’d done his shipping through me—equipment and so forth—so I knew him to look at him. Rest his soul. Had a Maori fellow for a mate. They were in on the mill together.’

‘Did he strike you—as a kind of a man?’

‘As what kind of a man?’

‘Any kind.’ Lauderback’s hand twitched again. Flushing, he amended his question: ‘I mean to say: how did he strike you?’

‘No complaints,’ Balfour said. ‘Kept his business to his business, you know. From his talk I’d call him London-born.’ He paused, and then leaned forward conspiratorially. ‘Course, they’re saying all sorts about him, now that he’s gone.’

Again Lauderback did not respond. He was being very strange, Balfour thought; the man was tongue-tied, even red-faced. It was as if he wanted Balfour both to answer some very specific question and to cease talking altogether. The two aides seemed to have lost interest—Jock was pushing a piece of liver around his plate, and Augustus’s head was turned away; he was watching the rain beat at the window.

Out of the corner of his eye, Balfour considered them. The two men were as satellites to Lauderback. They slept on bolsters in his room, accompanied him everywhere, and seemed at all times to speak and act in plural, as if they shared a single identity between them, as well as a name. Until that morning Balfour had thought them pleasant chaps, convivial and quick-witted; he had thought their devotion to Lauderback a fine thing, though their constant presence had occasionally worn his nerves rather thin. But now? He looked from one to the other, and realised that he wasn’t sure.

Lauderback had hardly spoken a word to Balfour about the final chapter of his journey over the Alps, two weeks prior. Most of what Balfour knew about the night of his arrival had come from the West Coast Times, which had published an abridged version of the account Lauderback had given, in writing, to the law. Lauderback was not suspected of having played any part in the deaths, one attempted, the other actual: the coroner’s report removed any doubt that Crosbie Wells had died of purely natural causes, and the physician was able to prove that the opium by which Anna Wetherell had nearly perished was her own. But Balfour wondered, now, whether the paper’s account had been the truth.

He watched Jock Smith push his piece of liver back and forth. It was very strange that Lauderback seemed, all of a sudden, so intensely curious about the living character of Crosbie Wells; it was even stranger to think that Crosbie Wells, who had been mild, and common, and lacking in any kind of influence, should enjoy a familial connexion—or any kind of connexion!—to the notorious Francis Carver. Balfour could not believe it. And then there was the matter of the whore in the road. Was that event just a coincidence, or did it connect somehow to Crosbie Wells’s untimely passing? Why had Lauderback been so reluctant to speak of either encounter—reluctant, that is, until now?

He said, partly to rekindle the conversation, and partly to keep his imagination from drifting to make unfounded accusations of his friend, ‘So you sold the barque to Carver—only you thought his name was Wells—and he told you, by the bye, that he had a brother Crosbie, squirrelled away.’

‘I can’t remember now,’ Lauderback said. ‘It was nearly a year ago. Long gone.’

‘But then you come across the same man’s brother—fresh dead—a year later!’ Balfour said. ‘On the other side of the Alps, no less … in a place you’ve never set foot before! There’s queer odds on that, wouldn’t you say?’

Lauderback said, rather loftily, ‘Only a weak mind puts faith in coincidence’—for it was his habit, when under pressure, to assume a condescending air.

Balfour ignored this maxim. ‘Alias Carver?’ he mused. ‘Or alias Wells?’ But he was watching the politician as he spoke.

‘Shall I fill us another pitcher, Mr. L?’ said Augustus Smith.

Lauderback rapped the table. ‘Yes: fill us another. Good.’

‘Godspeed weighed anchor around two weeks back,’ said Balfour. ‘She goes back and forth from Canton, does she not—tea-trading? So I expect we won’t be seeing Carver around these parts for a while.’

‘Let’s drop the subject,’ Lauderback said. ‘I made a mistake with the names. I must have made a mistake with the names. It doesn’t signify.’

‘Hang tight,’ said Balfour. A new thought had struck him.

‘What?’ said Lauderback.

‘It might signify. Given that the sale of his estate has been appealed. It might signify to the widow, if Crosbie Wells had a brother tucked away.’

Lauderback was smiling again, tremulously. ‘The widow?’

‘Ay,’ Balfour said darkly, and was about to go on, but Lauderback said, all in a rush, ‘There was no sign of a wife at the cottage—no sign at all. To all appearances he—the fellow—lived alone.’

‘Indeed,’ Balfour said. Again he was about to elaborate, but Lauderback interrupted:

‘You said that it might signify—news about a brother. But a man’s money always goes to his wife, unless his will says otherwise. That’s the law! I don’t see how a brother could signify. I don’t see it.’

He bent his head towards his guest.

‘There is no will,’ Balfour said. ‘That’s the problem. Crosbie Wells never made one. No one knew if he had any family at all. They didn’t even know where to send a letter, when he passed—they only had his name, you see, not a home address, not even a birth certificate, nothing. So his land and cottage are returned to the Crown … and the Crown has the right to sell it on, of course, so it goes on the market and it sells the very next day. Nothing stays long on the market around here, I can tell you. But then, with the ink still drying on that sale, a wife turns up! No one knew a scrap about a wife before that day—only she’s got the marriage papers—and she signs herself Lydia Wells.’

Lauderback’s eyes bulged. Now, at last, Thomas Balfour had his complete attention. ‘Lydia Wells?’ he said, almost in a whisper.

Augustus Smith looked at Jock, and then away.

‘This was on Thursday,’ Balfour said, nodding. ‘The Court can’t fault her papers—they’ve sent away to Dunedin, of course, just to verify. But something’s off. The way she pops up so quickly, wanting to get her hands on the estate—when Crosbie never spoke of her. And another thing is fishy: this lady is a d—n class act. How Crosbie Wells managed to get himself married to a lady like that—hoo!—is a mystery that I for one would pay to know the answer to.’

‘You’ve seen her—Lydia—here? She’s here?’

The name was familiar in his mouth: so he knew her, Balfour thought; and he must have known the dead man, too. ‘Ay,’ he said aloud, careful not to let any trace of his suspicion show. ‘Coming off the packet steamer, Thursday. Dressed up to the nines, she was; swarming down the ladder like a regular salt. Dress in a knot over her shoulder, drawers gathered up in her hand. All the hoops and buckles on display. I’m blowed if I know how Crosbie Wells landed a piece like her—I’m blowed.’

Lauderback was still looking shocked. ‘Lydia Wells, wife of Crosbie Wells.’

‘Ay—so her story goes.’ Balfour studied his acquaintance, and then suddenly put down his glass and leaned forward. ‘Look here, Mr. Lauderback,’ he said, placing his palm upon the table between them. ‘Seems you’re holding on to something that’s preventing you from talking plain. Why don’t you share it?’

This request, so simply made, unlocked a dam in Alistair Lauderback’s heart. As is the case for so many governing men, who are accustomed to constant service of the highest quality, and who rarely find themselves alone, Lauderback tended to think of his attendants in utilitarian terms. Certainly Balfour was a nice enough chap—shrewd in his business, cheerfully intemperate, and ready with a laugh—but his value as a man was equal to the value of the role he filled: in Lauderback’s mind, he was replaceable. What lay beyond his most immediately visible qualities, the politician had never troubled himself to learn.

It is always a starkly private moment when a governor first apprehends his subject as a man—perhaps not as an equal, but at least as a being, irreducible, possessed of frailties, enthusiasms, a real past, and an uncertain future. Alistair Lauderback felt that starkness now, and was ashamed. He saw that Balfour had offered friendship, and he had taken only assistance; that Balfour had offered kindness, and he had taken only the benefit of use. He turned to his aides.

‘Fellows,’ he said, ‘I want to talk to Balfour man to man. Go on and leave us for a spell.’

Augustus and Jock rose from the table (Balfour observed with a flash of competitive triumph, unusual for him, that they both looked very put out) and left the dining room without a word. When they had gone, Lauderback exhaled deeply. He poured himself another measure of wine, but instead of taking a draught he held the glass between the heels of his hands, and stared at it.

‘Do you miss England, Tom?’ he said.

‘England?’ Balfour raised his eyebrows. ‘Haven’t set foot in sunny England since—well. Since before my hair was grey!’

‘Of course,’ Lauderback said apologetically. ‘You were in California. I had forgotten.’ He fell silent, chastising himself.

‘Round here, everybody’s always talking about home,’ said Balfour. ‘Can’t help but think that the pleasure’s in the missing.’

‘Yes,’ said Lauderback, very quietly. ‘Just so.’

‘Why,’ Balfour went on, encouraged by the other man’s assent, ‘most boys keep one foot on the boat, you know. Head back as soon as they’ve made their dust. What do they do? Buy a life, find a sweetheart, settle down—and then what do they dream about? What do they wish for? They dream about the diggings! Back when they could hold the colour in their hands! When all they did here was talk about home. Their mothers. Yorkshire puddings. Proper bacon. All of that.’ He tapped the base of his glass upon the table. ‘England—that’s the old country. You miss the old country. Of course you do. But you don’t go back.’

While he was waiting for the politician to begin speaking, he looked around him. It was well after ten o’clock in the morning, and the dinner crowd had not yet begun to trickle in—which they would presently, for it was Saturday, and a Saturday following a week of rain. The boy at the hearth had gone, taking the rack of hot irons with him; the cook had put away his playing cards, and was hacking at a bone; the scrubbing boys had surfaced from their quarters and were stacking plates and making noise. The clergyman at the table next to theirs was still sitting at his coffee, which had long since cooled. His gaze was focused on the print of the pamphlet he held in his hand and his mouth was pursed in concentration. It was clear that he was not paying his neighbours the slightest attention—but even so, Balfour brought his chair a little closer to Lauderback’s, so that the politician would not have to speak so loud.

‘Lydia Wells,’ Lauderback began, ‘is the mistress of an establishment in Dunedin whose name I should like only to say once, if you don’t mind. The place is called the House of Many Wishes. Stupid name, really. I suppose you’ve heard of it.’

Balfour nodded, but only slightly, so as to imply neither total familiarity nor total ignorance. The establishment to which Lauderback referred was a gambling house of the most decadent order, famous for its high stakes and its dancing girls.

‘Lydia was—a fond acquaintance of mine at that establishment,’ Lauderback continued. ‘There was no money involved. No money changed hands at all—you must understand that. Understand it because it’s the truth.’ He tried to glare at Balfour, but the shipping agent’s eyes were lowered. ‘Anyway,’ he said after a moment. ‘Whenever I was in Dunedin I would pay a call on her.’

He waited, challenging the other man to speak, but Balfour remained silent. After a moment he continued.

‘Now, when I first came to your offices, Tom, you’ll recall that Godspeed was in need of a master. You didn’t want her, and in the months after that I had a fair bit of trouble finding a man I could count on to take up the contract. She was anchored in Dunedin then. Lady needed caulking, and I was out of pocket for repairs on Virtue, as you might remember. All sorts of bills to pay. In the end I made a snap decision, and leased Godspeed privately to a chap named Raxworthy who wanted to set up a run between Australia and the Otago fields. He was a Navy man. Retired, of course. He’d commanded a corvette in the Crimean War—up in the Baltic—and he had a Victoria Cross to show for it. He’d been everywhere. Used to say that if he’d been trailing a rope behind him, he could have tied a knot right around the world. He’d been discharged from the navy on account of gout—bad enough to get his long-term leave, which was due to him anyhow, but not quite bad enough to make him want to swallow the anchor altogether. Godspeed suited him—he’s an old-fashioned type, you know, and she’s an old-fashioned girl.

‘I went back to Akaroa after that, and didn’t hear from Raxworthy for a spell. But I was back and forth down the island fairly frequently, and the next time I called in at Dunedin, I found myself in a bit of trouble. There was a husband. Lydia had a husband. He’d come home while I was gone.’

Balfour narrowed his eyes. ‘Crosbie Wells?’

Lauderback shook his head. ‘Not him. This man was the brute you know as Carver. To me he was Wells. Francis Wells.’

Balfour nodded slowly. ‘But now the very same woman’s saying she’s the wife of Crosbie Wells,’ he said. ‘Somebody’s lying somewhere.’

‘In any case—’

‘Either lying about a marriage,’ Balfour said, ‘or lying about a name.’

‘In any case,’ Lauderback said with annoyance, ‘that doesn’t matter—not just yet. You have to hear it in the proper order. Back then, I didn’t even know Lydia was married. When she was at the gambling house she used her maiden name, you see—Lydia Greenway, she was; I never knew her as Lydia Wells. Of course, once the husband showed up I saw that I was in the wrong. I tried to back right off. Tried to settle things the proper way. But the chap had me in a bit of a corner. I’d just taken up the Superintendency; I was a Councilman. I was recently married myself. I had my reputation to think about.’

Balfour nodded. ‘He played the cuckold. Tried to make a few pounds extra on the side.’

Lauderback’s mouth twisted. ‘It wasn’t that simple.’

‘Oh—the trick’s an old standard,’ Balfour said, trying to commiserate. ‘Plays right into the heart of every man’s fear, of course—and then the blackmail is almost a relief, when it comes. Pay up, and you’ll never hear from me again, all of that. Most often the girl’s involved. I suppose he told you that she was expecting.’

Lauderback shook his head. ‘No.’ He resumed staring at the vessel in his hand. ‘He was much cleverer than that. He didn’t ask for any money—or for anything at all. At least not right away. He told me that he was a murderer.’

The carriage clock on the mantel struck a quarter till the hour. The clergyman at the table next to theirs looked up, patted his thigh, and retrieved his pocket watch from his trouser pocket, in order to synchronise the hands. He wound the key, twitched the dial, wiped the face of the watch with his napkin, and replaced it in his pocket. He then turned back to his pamphlet, cupped his hands around his eyes to narrow his field of focus, and resumed reading.

‘He was very controlled when he said it,’ said Lauderback. ‘Polite, even. Told me there was a fellow on his tail, a mate of the man he’d killed. He didn’t tell me whom he’d murdered, or why—just that it was on account of a murder that he was being pursued.’

‘Didn’t give you any names?’

‘No,’ said Lauderback. ‘None at all.’

Balfour frowned. ‘Where do you figure in all that? I hear that as another man’s quarrel. Or another man’s boast. But in either case, nothing to do with you.’

Lauderback drew closer. ‘Here’s the heart of it,’ he said. ‘He told me I’d been marked as his mate. As his associate. When this avenger caught up with him, and came to take his life … well, after that, the man would come for me.’

‘You’d been marked?’ Balfour said. ‘Marked how?’

Lauderback shrugged and sat back. ‘I don’t know exactly. Of course I’d been at the gambling house a fair bit—and I’d been out and about with Lydia, here and there. I might have been spied upon.’

‘Spying’s one thing,’ said Balfour. ‘But how could a man be marked without his knowing? Marked—like a tattoo—without his knowing! Come—this is only half a tale, Mr. Lauderback! Where’s the meat of it?’

Lauderback looked embarrassed. ‘Well,’ he said. ‘Have you heard of a twinkle?’

‘A what?’

‘A twinkle. It’s a piece of glass, or a jewel, or a scrap of a mirror, that’s inserted into the end of a cigar. One can still smoke quite easily around it, and when the cigar’s in the mouth, like so, you can’t see it at all. Gamblers use them. The gambler’s smoking while he plays; he takes the cigar from his mouth, like this, and holds the thing in his hand in such a way that the twinkle shows him a reflection of another player’s cards. Or he uses it to show his partner his own hand, if he’s playing doubles. It’s a type of cheat.’

Balfour held an imaginary cigar in his hand, splaying his first two knuckles, and extended his arm across the table.

‘Now,’ he said, ‘that seems like a d—ned inefficient way to cheat. So many ways it could fail! What if you were holding your cards close, now? What if you kept them flat on the table? Look: if I reached my arm across the table, like so … you’d pull your cards back, wouldn’t you? Go on—you’d shrink away!’

‘Never mind the details,’ said Lauderback. ‘The point is—’

‘And a fool of a risk,’ said Balfour. ‘How’s a man to make an excuse for a tiny mirror stuck into the end of his cigar?’

‘The point is,’ said Lauderback. ‘Never mind the details. The point is that Wells—Carver, I mean—said that he had a twinkle on me.’

Balfour was still flexing his wrist and cocking his elbow, squinting at the invisible cigar in his hand. He stopped now, and closed his fist. ‘Meaning,’ he said, ‘some way to read your cards.’

‘But I don’t know what it was,’ said Lauderback. ‘I still don’t. It’s driven me mad.’ He reached for the pitcher of wine.

Balfour was wearing a sceptical expression. What kind of leverage was this? A vague mention of revenge, no proper names, no context, and some rubbish about a gambler’s cheat? This was not enough to merit blackmail. Plainly, Lauderback was still concealing something. He nodded to indicate that Lauderback should fill his glass.

Lauderback set the pitcher back on the table and resumed. ‘Before he left,’ he said, ‘he asked for one thing, and one thing only. Raxworthy was short a hand on the Godspeed—it had been advertised in the papers, and Wells had heard about it.’

‘Carver.’

‘Yes: Carver had heard about it. He asked me if I’d put in a word for him. He was going down to the quay in the morning to apply. Asked me the favour man to man.’

‘You did as he asked?’

‘I did,’ Lauderback said heavily.

‘There’s another twinkle on you, maybe,’ said Balfour.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Another connexion, now—the ship—between you both.’

Lauderback thought about that for a moment, seeming very dejected. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘But what could I have done? He had me tied up.’

Balfour felt a sudden rush of sympathy for the other man, and regretted his previous ill humour. ‘Ay,’ he said, more gently. ‘He had you tied.’

‘After that,’ Lauderback went on, ‘nothing happened. Absolutely nothing. I went back to Canterbury. I waited. I thought about that d—ned twinkle until my heart near gave out. I confess I rather hoped that Carver would be killed—that the thug would catch him, so I would know the fellow’s name before he came for me. I read the Otago Witness every day, hoping to see the blackguard’s name among the dead, may God forgive me. But nothing happened.

‘Nearly a year later—this is almost a year ago, maybe February, March last year—I get a letter in the mail. It’s an annual receipt from Danforth Shipping, and it’s filled out in my name.’

‘Danforth? Jem Danforth?’

‘The same,’ said Lauderback. ‘I’ve never shipped with Danforth—not for personals—but I know him, of course; he rents part of Godspeed’s hold for cargo.’

‘And Virtue too, on occasion.’

‘Yes—on occasion, Virtue too. All right: so I examine the receipt. I see that there’s a recurring shipment on Godspeed’s trans-Tasman route under the name of Lauderback. My name. Again and again, on the westbound voyage across the Tasman—each voyage, there it is, shipper Danforth, carrier Godspeed, master James Raxworthy, one shipment of personals, standard size, paid in full by Alistair Lauderback. Me. I tell you, my blood went cold. My name, written so neatly; that column of figures, going down.

‘The amount due was zero pounds. Nothing outstanding. Each month the account had been paid in cash, as the record showed. Someone had engineered this whole business in my name, and paid good money for it, to boot. I had a quick look over my own finances: I wasn’t missing any money, and certainly nothing to the tune of eighty, ninety pounds in shipping fees. I’d have noticed a slow leak of that kind, wherever it was coming from. No. Something was cooking.

‘As soon as I could, I left for Dunedin, to see about the affair myself. This was—April, I suppose. May, maybe. Some time in the early autumn. When I reached Dunedin I hardly even stepped ashore. I made straight for Godspeed. She was at anchor, and rafted up to the wharf, with the gangway down; I boarded, seeing no one at all. I was intending to speak to Raxworthy, of course—but he was nowhere about. In the fo’c’sle, I found Wells.’

‘Carver.’

‘Carver, I mean. Yes. He was alone. Holding a policeman’s whistle in one hand, a pistol in the other. Tells me he can blow the whistle any time. The harbour master’s office is fifty yards from where we’re standing and the hatch is open wide. I keep quiet. He tells me there’s a shipping crate in Godspeed’s hold with my name on it, and a paper trail that connects my name to that shipment every month for the last year. Everything legal, everything logged. In the eyes of the law, I’ve been paying for this shipment for a year, back and forth from Melbourne, back and forth, back and forth, and nothing I can say will disprove that fact. All right, so what’s inside it, I ask. Women’s fashions, he says. Dresses. A pile of gowns.

‘Why dresses, I ask. He gives me a smile—horrible—and says, why Mr. Lauderback, you’ve been sending for the latest fashions in Melbourne every month for a year! You’ve been keeping your lovely mistress Lydia Wells in good nick, you have, and it’s all on the books, to boot. Every time that trunk arrives in Melbourne, it’s shipped in to a dressmaker’s on Bourke-street—the very best, you understand—and every time it leaves, it’s packed full of the finest threads that can be had for money, this face of the globe. You, Mr. Lauderback, are a very generous man.’

Lauderback’s voice had become sour.

‘But how is it that this shipping case came to be registered in my name, I ask him, and he has a good laugh at that. He tells me that every rat in Dunedin knows Lydia Wells, and what she does to make her bread. All she had to do is tell old Jem Danforth I was keeping her in bells and ribbons, but please could he keep her name out of it, out of respect for my poor old wife! The fellow believed her. Logged the shipment in my name. She paid in cash, saying the cash was mine—and nobody mentioned a word to me. Thinking they were being discreet, you realise: thinking they were doing me a d—ned good turn, by not letting their Christian judgment show.