The Luminaries

‘So that I could act as his proxy,’ said Carver.

‘In case of injury, you mean,’ said Moody. ‘Or death.’

‘Yes,’ said Carver.

‘Ah,’ said Moody. ‘Now, let me see if I have this straight, Mr. Carver. As of the beginning of last year, Mr. Wells was the rightful possessor of several thousand pounds’ worth of ore, excavated from a claim in the Dunstan Valley. The ore was stashed in a safe at his residence in Dunedin, where his wife—an old and very fond acquaintance of yours—was living. In May, Mr. Wells returned home to Dunedin from the fields at Dunstan, and, without notifying his wife, cleared the safe. He immediately sank the entire bonanza into the purchase of the barque Godspeed, entrusted that ship and its operation to you, and promptly fled to Hokitika without informing any person of his destination or his design.

‘Of course,’ Moody added, ‘I am making an assumption, in presuming that it was Mr. Wells, and not another party, who removed the ore from the safe … but how else could he have purchased Godspeed? He possessed no shares or bonds of any kind—we are quite sure of that— and the transfer of ownership, printed in the Otago Witness upon the fourteenth of May that year, explicitly states that the ship was bought for gold.’

Carver was scowling. ‘You’re leaving out the whore,’ he said. ‘She was the reason he quit Dunedin. She was the reason he fell out with Lydia.’

‘Perhaps she was—but I will correct you in pointing out that Miss Wetherell was not, at that point in time, a member of the old profession,’ Moody said. ‘The promissory note penned by Mr. Richard Mannering, which I submitted to the court this morning, explicitly states that Miss Wetherell is to be outfitted with an appropriate gown, a muff pistol, perfumes, petticoats, and all other items “in which she is currently deficient”. It is dated June of last year.’

Carver said nothing.

‘You will forgive me,’ said Moody after a moment, ‘if I remark that Mr. Wells does not seem to have benefited very greatly from the sequence of events that unfolded in Dunedin last May. You, however, seem to have benefited a very great deal.’

Justice Kemp waited until Carver had seated himself beside his wife before calling the room sharply to order. ‘All right, Mr. Moody,’ he said, folding his hands, ‘I see that you have a clear direction here, and I will allow you to continue with your present argument, though I will make the remark that we seem to have wandered rather far from the course as set down in this morning’s bulletin. Now: you have submitted the names of two witnesses for the defence.’

Moody bowed. ‘Yes, sir.’

‘In the case of the defence witnesses, Mr. Moody will examine, and Mr. Broham will cross-examine,’ said the justice. He consulted the ledger, then looked up, over his spectacles, and said, ‘Mr. Thomas Balfour.’

Thomas Balfour was duly summoned from the cells.

‘Mr. Balfour,’ Moody said, when he had been sworn in. ‘You are in the shipping business, are you not?’

‘Have been for coming up twelve years, Mr. Moody.’

‘You have Mr. Lauderback’s private account, I understand.’

‘I do indeed,’ said Balfour, happily. ‘I’ve had Mr. Lauderback’s business since the winter of 1861.’

‘Can you please describe the most recent transaction between Mr. Lauderback and Balfour Shipping?’

‘I most certainly can,’ said Balfour. ‘When Mr. Lauderback first arrived in Hokitika in January, he came over the Alps, as you might remember. His trunk and assorted effects were sent by sea. He sent down a shipping crate from Lyttelton to Port Chalmers, and once the crate reached Port Chalmers I arranged for one of my vessels—the Virtue—to pick it up and bring it over to the Coast. Well, she got here all right—the Virtue—with the crate aboard. Arrived on the twelfth of January, two days before Mr. Lauderback himself. Next day, the crate was unloaded—stacked onto the quay with all the rest of the cargo—and I signed for it to be transferred into my warehouse, where Mr. Lauderback would pick it up, after he arrived. But that never happened: the crate was swiped. Never made it into the warehouse.’

‘Was the crate identified on the exterior as belonging to Mr. Lauderback?’

‘Oh, yes,’ said Balfour. ‘You’ll have seen the crates stacked along the quay—they’d be indistinguishable, you know, were it not for the bills of lading. The bill tells you who owns the goods and who’s the shipper and what have you.’

‘What happened when you discovered the crate was missing?’

‘You can be sure I tore my hair out, looking for it: I hadn’t the faintest clue where it might have gone. Well, Godspeed was wrecked on the bar two weeks later, and when they cleared her cargo, what should turn up but the Lauderback crate! Seems it had been loaded onto Godspeed, when she last weighed anchor from the Hokitika port.’

‘In other words, very early on the morning of the fifteenth of January.’

‘That’s right.’

‘What happened when the Lauderback trunk was finally recovered?’

‘I did some sniffing around,’ said Balfour. ‘Asked some questions of the crew, and they told me how the mistake had come about. Well, here’s what happened. Someone had seen the bill of lading—“Mr. Lauderback, bearer”—and remembered that their skipper—that’s Carver—had been on the lookout for a crate so identified, the previous year. They saw this crate on the wharf, the night of the fourteenth, and they thought, here’s a chance to earn a bit of favour with the master.

‘So they open it up—just to be curious. Inside there’s a trunk and a pair of carpetbags and not much else. Doesn’t look terribly valuable, but they figure, you never know. They go off to find Captain Carver, but he’s nowhere to be found. Not in his rooms at the hotel, not at the bars, nowhere. They decide to leave it to the morning, and off they go to bed. Then Carver himself comes flying down the quay in a terrible bother, turns them all out of their hammocks, and says Godspeed weighs anchor at the first light of dawn —only a few hours’ hence. He won’t say why. Anyway, the fellows make a decision. They pop the lid back on the crate, haul it aboard nice and quick, and when Godspeed weighs anchor just before first light, the crate’s in the hold.’

‘Was Captain Carver notified of this addition to the cargo?’

‘Oh yes,’ said Balfour, smiling. ‘The fellows were pleased as Punch—they thought there would be a reward in it, you see. So they wait until Godspeed is under sail before they call him down. Carver takes one look at the bill of sale and sees they’ve botched the job. “Balfour Shipping?” he says. “It was Danforth Shipping, that was the one I lost. You’ve lifted the wrong bloody one—and now we’ve got stolen goods aboard.”’

‘Might we infer from this,’ Moody said, ‘that Captain Carver had lost a shipping crate, identified as belonging to Alistair Lauderback, with Danforth Shipping as its shipper, that contained something of great value to him?’

‘Certainly looks that way,’ said Balfour.

‘Thank you very much for your time, Mr. Balfour.’

‘My pleasure, Mr. Moody.’

Broham, who very plainly had no idea where Moody’s line of questioning was going, waived his right to cross-examine the witness for the defence, and the justice, making a note of this, called the second witness.

‘The Honourable Mr. Alistair Lauderback.’

Alistair Lauderback crossed the breadth of the courtroom in five strides.

‘Mr. Lauderback,’ said Moody, when he had given his oath. ‘You are the former owner of the barque Godspeed, is that correct?’

‘Yes,’ said Lauderback. ‘That is correct.’

‘According to the deed of sale, you sold the ship on the twelfth of May, 1865.’

‘I did.’

‘Is the man to whom you sold the ship in the courtroom today?’

‘He is,’ said Lauderback.

‘Can you identify him, please?’ said Moody.

Lauderback threw out his arm and levelled his index finger squarely in Carver’s face. ‘That man,’ he said, addressing Moody. ‘That’s the man, right there.’

‘Can there be a mistake?’ said Moody. ‘I observe that the deed of sale, submitted to the court by Mr. Carver