The Luminaries

herself was not a digger—she was a woman, for heaven’s sake!—and the gold could not be hers. Someone must have trusted Anna enough to hide this gold in her clothing. And Anna must have trusted that man enough to bear the risk on his behalf.

Then it came to him: Mannering. Dick Mannering owned nearly every Chinaman in Kaniere; they all worked his claims, in exchange for a salary of a kind. Mannering was also Anna’s employer. Why, of course! Mannering was known to be a dirty dealer—what whoremonger was not? And had he not declared, over and over, that Anna Wetherell was the very best of whores?

Clinch turned back to Anna, and was startled to see that her eyes were open, and she was staring at him.

‘How’s the water?’ he said stupidly, shaking out the fold of the dress so that the pinch of gold in his fingers was concealed.

She hummed her pleasure—but she shifted her knee for the sake of modesty, and crossed her arms across her breasts. Her distended belly was a perfect sphere, buoyed high in the cloudy water like an apple in a pail.

‘Did you walk back—all the way from Kaniere?’ Clinch asked. Surely she had not just walked four miles—not when she could hardly hold her head up! Not when she could hardly stand!

She hummed again, breaking the tone in two pieces, to indicate a negative.

‘How then?’ Clinch said.

‘Dick was passing through,’ she mumbled. The words were like treacle in her mouth.

Clinch stepped closer. ‘Dick Mannering—passing through Chinatown?’

‘Mm.’ She closed her eyes again.

‘Gave you a lift, did he?’

But Anna did not answer. She had passed back into sleep. Her head lolled back against the lip of the tub, and her crossed arms fell away from her bosom, struck the surface of the water, sank, and rose again.

Clinch was still holding the pinch of gold in his fingers. Carefully he laid the dress over the back of the chair and then dropped the pinch of gold into his pocket, rubbing his thumb and forefinger together to release the flakes, as if he were salting a stew.

‘I’ll leave you to your bath,’ he said, and withdrew from the room.

But instead of returning downstairs he walked swiftly across the hallway, to Anna’s quarters, and fitted his master key easily into her lock. He entered her room and strode across to the armoire, where she kept her clothes. Anna had five dresses, all of them purchased salvage, from a cargo steamer that had been wrecked upon the bar. Clinch turned to the whoring dress first. With swiftly tapping fingers he moved along every seam, and felt inside the bustle. Like the muslin, this too was veritably stuffed with gold! He turned to the next—and the next— and the next; each dress was the same. Why, Clinch thought, doing some calculation in his head, between these five dresses, Anna Wetherell was hoarding a veritable fortune.

He sat down upon her bed.

Anna never wore the orange dress in Chinatown—Clinch knew that with certainty—and yet that gown was packed with gold, just like the others. So this was not just an agreement with the Orientals, as he had first believed! This was an operation that went beyond the bounds of Chinatown. Beyond the bounds of Hokitika, perhaps. Someone, Clinch thought, was preparing a heist of the first degree.

He considered the alternatives. Could Mannering be using Anna as a mule, to traffic ore out of the gorge without her knowledge? Why, Clinch thought, that task would be easy enough: one only needed to feed her a pipe of opium, and wait for her to drift into sleep, and thereafter the gold could be sewn into her dress, one pinch at a time. Perhaps … but no: it was absurd to think that Mannering would court such a colossal risk without the security of the whore’s own discretion. She was bearing hundreds of pounds on her person, for heaven’s sake—perhaps thousands. She must know about it. Mannering was not a fool when it came to money. He would never place a fortune in the custody of a common whore without insurance. Anna must have provided him with some kind of security—some debt, Clinch thought, some obligation. But what could she possibly have to give, that might serve as a surety on a fortune in pure?

Suddenly furious, Clinch punched the quilt with the heels of his hands. Mannering! The presumption of him—to engineer a deception of this kind, when Anna was living under Clinch’s roof, and supping at Clinch’s table! What if the duty sergeants had come calling—what if they had searched her room? Who would bear the responsibility then? Why, Clinch thought, he ought to have been given a cut of the profit, at the very least—he ought to have been told! And the Chinamen were in on the secret, no doubt. That was galling. Perhaps all of Hokitika knew. Clinch uttered an oath. Dick Mannering, he thought sourly, could be d—ned in hell.

He heard splashing in the room next door—Anna must have roused herself—and wondered, quickly, whether he ought to confiscate the dresses from the wardrobe. He could hold them as ransom against Mannering, perhaps. He could wait until Anna had regained her senses, and question her about the matter. He could force a confession—an apology. But his courage failed him. Edgar Clinch was always stymied by ill feeling; his grievances, though acutely felt, rarely developed beyond their unvoiced expression in his mind. With a heavy heart, he left Anna’s room, returned downstairs, and unlocked the foyer door.

‘Please accept my sincere apologies,’ said Gascoigne.

Clinch blinked. ‘What for?’

‘For insinuating that you had anything other than Miss Wetherell’s very best interests at heart.’

‘Oh,’ said Clinch. ‘Yes. Well, thanks.’

‘Goodbye,’ said Gascoigne.

Clinch received this farewell with disappointment. He had rather hoped that Gascoigne would stay a moment longer—at least until his valet returned from lunch—and talk the issue over. It always pained him to leave a conversation on a less than civil note, and in fact he did want to discuss the issue of Anna’s debt with Gascoigne, however hostile he had been at its first mention. He had not meant to lose his temper with Anna the previous afternoon. But she had lied to him—saying she had not a shilling to call her own, when there were hundreds, even thousands, sewn into the dresses in her wardrobe! The dresses were still there; he checked them periodically, to make sure that the ore had not been removed. Why should he foot the bill for her daily expenses, when she had access to such extraordinary wealth? Why should he be the one to soothe her troubles, when she was conspiring against him, and even telling falsehoods to his face? Months of silence had made him very bitter, and his bitterness had ripened, in an instant, into spite.

He stepped forward, and even put out his hand, meaning to delay Gascoigne’s departure. He wanted to beg him not to leave; he wanted, suddenly, desperately, not to be alone. But what reason could he give, to persuade Gascoigne to stay? Stalling for time, he said, ‘Where are you off to?’

The question rankled Gascoigne. How dreary frontier living could be! Every man was asked to share his private business; it was not like Paris, or London, where one felt the luxury of strangeness on every corner; where one could really be alone.

‘I have an appointment,’ he said curtly.

‘Who’s your appointment? What’s it all about?’

Gascoigne sighed. It was so dull to be asked. Clinch was looking almost sulky—as if Gascoigne’s departure was vexing to him! Why, they had only met ten minutes before.

‘I’m going with a lady,’ he said, ‘to look at hats.’

TRUE NODE IN VIRGO

In which Quee Long is interrupted thrice; Charlie Frost holds his ground; and Sook Yongsheng names a suspect, to everyone’s surprise.

At the very moment that Gascoigne took his leave of Edgar Clinch, slamming the Gridiron’s front door rather discourteously behind him, Dick Mannering and Charlie Frost were disembarking from the ferry onto the stones at