The Luminaries

‘I don’t have an opinion about seances,’ Carver said. ‘I might be there or I might not.’

‘In any case, I expect Mrs. Wells welcomed your return to Hokitika very gladly,’ said Lowenthal—whose conversational gambits were becoming tenuous indeed. ‘Yes: I am sure she must have been very pleased, to know that you had returned!’

Carver was now looking openly annoyed. ‘Why?’ he said.

‘Why?’ said Lowenthal. ‘Because of all the fuss over his estate, of course! Because the legal proceedings have been halted precisely on account of Wells’s birth certificate! It’s nowhere to be found!’

Lowenthal’s voice rang out rather more loudly than he had intended, and he worried briefly that perhaps he had overplayed his hand. What he had said was perfectly true, and what’s more, it was public knowledge: Mrs. Wells’s appeal to revoke the sale of Wells’s estate had not yet been heard by the Magistrate’s Court because no documentation had survived the dead man that might have served as proof of his true identity. Lydia Wells had arrived in Hokitika several days after her late husband had been buried, and therefore had not identified his body; short of digging his body up (the Magistrate begged the widow’s pardon) there was, it seemed, no way of proving that the hermit who had died in the Arahura Valley and the Mr. Crosbie Wells who had signed Mrs. Wells’s marriage certificate were the same man. Given the enormity of the inheritance in question, the Magistrate thought it prudent to delay the Court proceedings until a more definite conclusion could be reached—for which pronouncement Mrs. Wells thanked him very nicely. She assured him that her patience was of the most stalwart female variety, and that she would wait for as long as necessary for the outstanding debt (so she conceived of the inheritance) to be paid out to her.

But Carver was not provoked; he only looked the editor up and down, and then said, in a voice of surly indifference, ‘I want to place a notice in the Times.’

‘Yes, of course,’ Lowenthal said. His heart was beating fast. Drawing a sheet of paper towards him, he said, ‘What is it that you are wishing to sell?’

Carver explained that the hull of the Godspeed would shortly be dismantled, and in advance of this event, he wished to sell her parts at auction on Friday, care of Glasson & Rowley Salvage. He gave his instructions very curtly. No part was to be sold prior to auction. No privilege would be given, and no correspondence entered into. All inquiries were to be directed, by post, to Mr. Francis Carver, at the Palace Hotel.

‘You see I am making careful note of it,’ Lowenthal said. ‘I will not make the mistake of omitting any part of your name—not this time! Say—I don’t suppose that you and Crosbie were related?’

Carver’s mouth twisted again. ‘No.’

‘It’s true that Francis is a very common name,’ Lowenthal said, nodding. He was still making note of the name of Carver’s hotel, and did not look up for several seconds; when he did, however, he found that Carver’s expression had soured still further.

‘What’s your name?’ Carver demanded, accenting the fact that he had not bothered to use it before. When Lowenthal replied, Carver nodded slowly, as if committing the name to heart. Then he said, ‘You’ll shut your f—ing mouth.’

Lowenthal was shocked. He received the payment for the advertisement and wrote up Carver’s receipt in silence—penning the words very slowly and carefully, but with a steady hand. This was the first time he had ever been insulted in his own office, and his shock was such that he could not immediately respond. He felt an exhilaration building within him; a pressure; an exultant, roaring sound. Lowenthal was the kind of man who became almost gladiatorial when he was shamed. He felt a martial stirring in his breast that was triumphal, even glad, as if a long-awaited call to arms had sounded somewhere close at hand, and he alone had felt its private resonation, drumming in his ribcage, drumming in his blood.

Carver had taken up the receipt. He turned, and made to leave the shop without either thanking Lowenthal or bidding him goodbye—a discourtesy that released a surge of outrage in Lowenthal’s breast: he could contain himself no longer. He burst out, ‘You’ve got a lot to answer for, showing your face around here!’

Carver stopped, his hand upon the doorknob.

‘After what you did to Anna,’ Lowenthal said. ‘I was the one to find her, you know. All bloody. It’s not a way to treat a woman. I don’t care who she is. It’s not a way to treat a woman—still less when she’s expecting, and so close to being due!’

Carver did not answer.

‘It was a hair short of a double murder. Do you know that?’ Lowenthal felt his anger mounting into fury. ‘Do you know what she looked like? Did you see her when the bruises were going down? Did you know that she had to use a cane for two weeks? Just to be able to walk! Did you know that?’

At last Carver said, ‘Her hands weren’t clean.’

Lowenthal almost laughed. ‘What—she left you in a bloody pool, then? She boxed you senseless? What is the phrase—an eye for an eye?’

‘I didn’t say that.’

‘She killed your child? She killed your child—so you killed hers?’ Lowenthal was almost shouting. ‘Say the words, man! Say them!’

But Carver was unmoved. ‘I meant she’s no blushing flower.’

‘Blushing flower! Now I expect you’re going to tell me she brought it all upon herself—that she deserved it!’

‘Yes,’ said Francis Carver. ‘She got what she was owed.’

‘You are short on friends in Hokitika, Mr. Carver,’ said Lowenthal, levelling his ink-blackened finger at the other man. ‘Anna Wetherell may be a common whore but she is treasured by more men in this town than you can hold off, armed or no, and you ought not to forget that. If any harm should come to her—let me warn you—if any harm—’

‘Not by my hand,’ Carver said. ‘I’ve got nothing more to do with her. I’ve settled my dues.’

‘Your dues!’ Lowenthal spat on the floor. ‘You mean the baby? Your own child— dead, before its own first breath! That’s what you call dues!’

But suddenly Carver was looking at him with a very amused expression.

‘My own child?’ he repeated.

‘I’ll tell you, though you haven’t asked,’ Lowenthal shouted. ‘Your baby’s dead. Do you hear me? Your own child—dead, before its first breath! And by your hand!’

And Carver laughed—harshly, as though clearing something foul from his throat. ‘That whore carried no baby of mine,’ he said. ‘Who told you that?’

‘Anna herself,’ Lowenthal said, feeling a flash of trepidation for the first time. ‘Do you deny it?’

Carver laughed again. ‘I wouldn’t touch that girl with a boathook,’ he said, and before Lowenthal could reply, he was gone.

SUN IN AQUARIUS

In which Sook Yongsheng pays another unexpected call; Lydia Wells has a most prophetic notion; and Anna finds herself alone.

Anna Wetherell had not visited the opium den in Kaniere since the afternoon of the 14th of January. The half-ounce of fresh resin that Sook Yongsheng had gifted her that afternoon ought to have lasted no more than two weeks, by Anna’s habitual rate of consumption. But now over a month had passed, and Anna had not once returned to Kaniere to share a pipe with her old companion, or to replenish her supply—an absence for which Ah Sook could not produce any kind of reasonable explanation.

The hatter missed the whore’s visits very much. Every afternoon he waited, in vain, for her to appear at the edge of the clearing beyond the bounds of Kaniere Chinatown, her bonnet hanging down her back, and every afternoon he was disappointed. He guessed that she must have ceased to take opium altogether: either that, or