The Luminaries

of a widowed bride’. The day after the wedding, the groom received a large cash payment from the Garrity Group, with which his creditors were paid in full, the last of the copper plating was pried from Godspeed’s hull, and the bones of the ship were given up, at long last, for salvage. He had ended his board at the Palace Hotel, and was now installed at the Wayfarer’s Fortune with his wife.

Over this time a great many men had tramped up the switchback trail to the terrace at Seaview, in order to beg an interview with Emery Staines. Cowell Devlin, on the gaoler’s strict instruction, turned each man away— assuring them that yes, Staines was alive, and that yes, he was recuperating from a very grave illness, and that yes, he would be released from custody in due course, pending the verdict of the Magistrate’s Court. The only exception the chaplain made was for Te Rau Tauwhare, to whom Staines had become, over the course of the past month, extraordinarily attached. Tauwhare rarely stayed long at the gaol-house, but his visits had such an advantageous effect upon Staines’s mood and health that Devlin soon began to look forward to them also.

Staines, Devlin discovered, was a sweet-natured, credulous lad, ready with a smile, and full of naive affection for the foibles of the world around him. He spoke little of the long weeks of his absence, repeating only that he had been very unwell, and he was very glad to have returned. When Devlin asked, cautiously, whether he remembered encountering Walter Moody aboard Godspeed, he only frowned and shook his head. His memory of that period was very incomplete, made up, as far as Devlin could tell, of dream-like impressions, sensations, and snatches of light. He could not remember boarding a ship, and nor could he remember a shipwreck—though he seemed to recall being washed up on the beach, coughing seawater, both arms wrapped around a cask of salt beef. He remembered approaching Crosbie Wells’s cottage; he remembered passing a party of diggers, sitting around a fire; he remembered leaves and running water; he remembered the rotten hull of an abandoned canoe, and a steep-sided gorge, and the red eye of a weka; he remembered nightly dreams about the patterns of the Tarot, and gold-lined corsets, and a fortune in a flour sack, hidden beneath a bed.

‘It’s all a dreadful blur,’ he said. ‘I must have walked out into the night and got lost in the bush somehow … and after that I couldn’t find my way back again. What a good job it was, that old Te Rau found me when he did!’

‘And yet it would have been much better if he had found you sooner,’ Devlin said, still speaking cautiously. ‘If you had returned but three days earlier, your claims would not have been seized. You have lost all your assets, Mr. Staines.’

Staines seemed very unconcerned by this. ‘There’s always more gold to be had,’ he said. ‘Money’s only money, and it does one good to be out of pocket every once in a while. In any case, I’ve a nest egg up in the Arahura Valley, stashed away. Thousands and thousands of pounds. As soon as I’ve recovered, I’ll go and dig it up.’

This, naturally, took a great while to straighten out.

On the third week of April the petty sessions schedule was published in the West Coast Times.

The charges levelled against Mr. Emery Staines are as follows: firstly, the falsification of the January 1866 quarterly report; secondly, the theft of ore lawfully submitted by Mr. John Long Quee against the goldmine Aurora, since discovered in the possession of the late Mr. Crosbie Wells, of the Arahura Valley; thirdly, dereliction of duty to claims, mines, and other responsibilities, the period of absence being in excess of 8 weeks. Hearing scheduled for Thursday 27th April at the Resident Magistrate’s Court, 1P.M., before his Hon. Mr. Justice Kemp.

Devlin, reading this over his Saturday morning coffee, made for the Crown at once.

‘Yes, I saw it,’ said Moody, who was breakfasting on kippers and toast.

‘You must understand the significance of the charges.’

‘Of course. I shall hope for a quick hearing—as will many others, I expect.’ Moody poured his guest a cup of coffee, sat back, and waited politely for Devlin to announce the reason for his visit.

The chaplain placed his hand upon the tabletop, palm upward. ‘You have legal training, Mr. Moody,’ he said, ‘and from what I know of your character you have a fair mind; that is to say, you are not partial, one way or another. You know the facts of this case as a lawyer ought—from all sides, I mean.’

Moody frowned. ‘Yes indeed,’ he said, ‘which means that I know very well that the gold in Mr. Wells’s cottage never came from the Aurora in the first place. It does not belong to Mr. Staines, whichever way one looks at it. You can’t be asking me to stand up in court, Reverend.’

‘That is precisely what I am asking,’ said Devlin. ‘There is a shortage of solicitors in Hokitika, and yours is a better mind than most.’

Moody was incredulous. ‘This is a civil court,’ he said. ‘Do you imagine me performing some sort of grand exposure of the whole story—dragging every last one of you into it—not to mention Lauderback, and Shepard, and Carver, and Lydia Wells?’

‘Lydia Carver, you ought to say now.’

‘Forgive me. Lydia Carver,’ said Moody. ‘Reverend, I do not see how I could be of any use at all, at a court of petty sessions. Nor do I see who would benefit, from a merciless exposure of the whole business—the fortune in the dresses, the blackmail, Lauderback’s personal history, everything.’

He was thinking about the bastard, Crosbie Wells.

‘I am not advocating for a merciless exposure,’ the chaplain said. ‘I am asking you to consider acting as Miss Wetherell’s counsel.’

Moody was surprised. ‘I thought Miss Wetherell had engaged a solicitor already.’

‘I’m afraid that Mr. Fellowes has turned out to be rather less congenial than his name suggests,’ Devlin said. ‘He declined to take Anna on as a client, following the laudanum debacle in the Courthouse last month.’

‘Citing what reason?’

‘He fears being fined for corruption, apparently. She had offered to pay his retainer out of the very same fortune that she was trying to claim, which was rather unwise, all things considered.’

Moody was frowning. ‘Is there not a duty solicitor at hand?’

‘Yes—a Mr. Harrington—but he is very deep in the Magistrate’s pocket, by all accounts. He will not do, if we are going to save Anna from a Supreme Court trial.’

‘A Supreme Court trial? You must be joking,’ said Moody. ‘This will all be resolved at the petty sessions— and in very short time, I am sure. I do not mean to patronise your intelligence, Reverend, but there is a great deal of difference between civil and criminal law.’

Devlin gave him a strange look. ‘Did you read the courthouse schedule in the paper this morning?’

‘Yes indeed.’

‘From start to finish?’

‘I believe so.’

‘Perhaps you ought to look it over once again.’

Frowning, Moody shook open his paper to the third page, flattened it, and cast his eye down the schedule a second time. And there, at the bottom of the column:

The charges levelled against Miss Anna Wetherell are as follows: firstly, forgery; secondly, public intoxication resulting in disorderly behaviour; thirdly, grievous assault. Hearing scheduled for Thursday 27th April at the Resident Magistrate’s Court, 9A.M., before his Hon. Mr. Justice Kemp.

Moody was astonished. ‘Grievous assault?’

‘Dr. Gillies confirmed that the bullet in Staines’s shoulder issued from a lady’s pistol,’ Devlin said. ‘I’m afraid that he let this piece of information slip while in the company of the Gridiron valet, who was reminded of the shots fired in Anna’s room, back in January, and fronted up with that story. They sent a man over to the Gridiron at once, and Mr. Clinch was obliged to hand over Anna’s pistol as evidence. The match between gun and cartridge has since been confirmed.’

‘But Mr. Staines cannot have been the one to bring this charge against her,’ Moody said.

‘No,’ Devlin agreed.