‘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.
‘But this isn’t the half of it. Women’s fashions are not the bloody half of it. This time, he says, there’s something else in the trunk besides gowns. I ask him what. A fortune, he says, stolen, and all of it pure. Stolen from whom, I ask. Stolen from yours truly, he answers, and by my own wife, Lydia Wells—and then he laughs, because of course that’s part of the lie: they’re in on it together, the two of them. Well, what’s he doing with a fair fortune in pure, I ask him, and he tells me that he has a claim up Dunstan way. Was it declared, I say, and he says no. Undeclared means untaxed, which means this shipment is in breach of duty—or at least, it will be, if Godspeed sails on schedule with the next day’s tide.
‘Now, there in the fo’c’sle Carver lets me think about all that for a moment. I’m thinking about what it looks like from above. It looks like I’ve been going behind the husband’s back for a good long while, to court his wife as my mistress. There’s proof of that. It looks like I’ve stolen a fair fortune from the man, and I mean now to ship the gold offshore. It looks like I’ve engineered the whole business to bankrupt and ruin him, both. That’s adultery and theft and even conspiracy right off. But the real clincher is that the gold’s undeclared. I’m facing charges for breach of customs, evading duty, illegal trafficking, all of that. I’m looking at a lifetime in gaol—and I don’t have a lifetime left, Thomas. I don’t have a lifetime left. So I ask him what he wants, and finally he shows his cards. He wants the ship.’
‘Is he an able seaman at this point?’
‘Yes. He works under Raxworthy and he wants Raxworthy gone. He’s figured it all out: how I’m going to sack Raxworthy that very night, how I’m going to cancel the contract on the crew, and sign the ship over to him free and clear. This is an insult, you understand. I laugh. I say no. But he’s got that God-d—ned whistle, and he pretends to make a move to call the harbour master in.’
‘Did you ask to see the gold in the case?’ said Balfour. ‘How did you know he wasn’t bluffing?’
‘Of course I asked to see it,’ said Lauderback. ‘We did all that. Oh, he had laid his foundations with care—I have to credit him for that! There were five dresses in the trunk. Each of them last season’s fashions, in keeping with his story; ready for the dressmaker’s in Melbourne, you see. But hear this! The gold wasn’t just lying free in the case, beneath the gowns. It had been sewn into the very seams of the dresses. By Lydia herself, no doubt: she was a dab hand with a needle and thread. You wouldn’t have guessed at all, until you lifted them out, and felt the weight of them. But a customs officer might not have troubled himself to do that, you see—unless he was tipped off, and knew where to look. When you opened the case, even when you rummaged around, it was just woman’s fashions, nothing else. Yes: it was a very clever plan.’
‘Let me get my head around this,’ Balfour said. ‘If the ship had sailed on schedule …’
‘Then Carver would have come across the trunk in the hold, acting as though he’d never seen it before. He would have brought it up to Raxworthy, feigning outrage and distress and what have you. They were his wife’s dresses, after all—and my name was on the papers. He would have demanded to bring the law to my door, on account of the theft, the adultery, the breach of customs, all of it. Godspeed would never have left the harbour; she’d have been turned around before she reached the heads. Then the law would have come for me—and clapped me in arms.’
‘But surely … if that happened, and the law was called in … you might have just blamed it all on Lydia Wells,’ Balfour said. ‘Surely she would have been gaoled—’
‘Oh yes, she certainly would have been,’ Lauderback replied, cutting him off. ‘But I was not going to risk my own freedom merely to have the satisfaction that she would get her comeuppance too! The two of them would certainly have sided against me, if the whole confounded business came to trial, and that would have bought her a great deal of sympathy—for seeing the light, you see; for repenting; for standing by her lawful husband, and all that rot.’
‘If he really was her lawful husband,’ Balfour pointed out. ‘Now it seems that Crosbie Wells—’
‘Yes, yes,’ Lauderback snapped. ‘But I didn’t know that then, did I? Don’t tell me what I ought to have done, and how I ought to have done it. I can’t bear that. A game plays how a game plays.’
/>
‘Well,’ said Balfour, sitting back, ‘I’m blowed.’
‘He wore me down,’ said Lauderback. He spread his hands in a gesture of defeat. ‘I signed her over.’
Balfour thought for a moment. ‘Where was Raxworthy that night?’
‘At the d—ned gambling house,’ Lauderback said. ‘Having an evening of his life, no doubt, with Lydia Wells at his elbow, blowing on his dice!’
‘Was he in on the secret?’
‘I don’t think so,’ Lauderback said, shaking his head. ‘He had shore leave that night—there was a naval occasion, an official event of some kind. Nothing untoward. And I never got a funny feeling, afterwards.’
‘What’s he doing now?’
‘Raxworthy? Helming the bloody Spirit of the Thames, and bored as a tiger in a carriage car. The man can’t stand steam. He’s furious with me.’
‘Does he know?’
Lauderback looked angry. ‘I’m a public figure,’ he said. ‘If anybody knew about this, you’d know. I’d be sunk. Does he know? Of course he doesn’t know!’
He had become suddenly impatient with his own story, Balfour saw. The narration of the events had only rekindled his shame at having been made a fool.
‘But the sale of the ship,’ Balfour said after a moment. ‘That’s public knowledge—printed in the papers.’
Lauderback swore. ‘Oh yes,’ he said. ‘According to the paper, I sold that d—ned ship for a very reasonable price indeed, and all in pure. Of course I never saw a penny of it. The gold stayed in that d—ned trunk, and when Godspeed made her voyage to Melbourne the next day, the trunk was collected on the other side—as it had been every month for the past year. And then it disappeared, of course. I couldn’t do a thing about it, without bringing down all hell around my ears. God only knows where that gold is now. And he’s got the ship, to boot.’
Lauderback toyed angrily with the cruet stand.
‘What was the true value of the gold in the trunk—to your eye?’
‘I’m no prospector,’ Lauderback said, ‘but by the weight of the gowns I’d estimate it was a couple of thousand, at least.’
‘And you never saw that gold again.’
‘No.’
‘Or heard tell of it.’
‘No.’
‘Did you ever see the girl again—Lydia Wells?’
Lauderback laughed harshly. ‘Lydia Wells is no girl,’ he said. ‘I don’t know what she is—but she’s not a girl, Thomas. She’s not a girl.’
But he had not answered Balfour’s question.
‘You know she’s here—in Hokitika,’ Balfour reminded him.
‘So you mentioned,’ said Lauderback grimly, and would not say more.
What a strange, unbroken beast is adulation! How unpredictably it rears its head, and tears against the bridle of its own making! Balfour’s worship of the other man—that which had so easily become petulance—now became, in rising flood, disdain. To have lost so much—and over a mistress! Over another man’s wife!
Disdain, for all its censorious pretension, is an emotion that can afford a certain clarity. Thomas Balfour watched his friend drain his glass and snap his fingers for another round, and was scornful—and then his scorn gave way to mistrust, and his mistrust to perspicacity. There were elements of Lauderback’s story that still did not fit together. What of the timely death of Crosbie Wells? Lauderback had yet to address that coincidence—just as he had yet to explain why he believed that Carver and Wells had been, of all things, brothers! What of Lydia Wells, who had swept into Hokitika to claim her rightful inheritance, arriving so promptly after his death that the harbour master asked, half in jest, if the Hokitika Post Office had installed a telegraph? Balfour knew without a doubt that he had not been told the whole truth; what he did not know, however, was the reason for this concealment. Whom was Lauderback protecting? Himself merely? Or someone else?
Lauderback’s eyes had sharpened. He leaned forward and stabbed the table with his index finger. ‘You know,’ he said, ‘I’ve just had a thought. About Carver. If his name really is Carver, then the sale of the ship is void. You can’t sign a deed in another man’s name.’
Balfour made no reply. He was distracted by his new appraisal of the other man, and the critical distance that had opened as a sudden gulf of doubt between them.
‘And even if his name is really Wells,’ Lauderback added, brightening further, ‘even if that’s true, Lydia can’t be married to two men at once, can she? It’s as you said: either lying about a marriage, or lying about a name!’
A boy brought a fresh pitcher of wine. Balfour picked it up to refill their glasses. ‘Unless,’ he said as he poured, ‘it wasn’t both at once. She might have divorced the one, and married his brother.’
He used the word ‘brother’ carefully, but Lauderback, who had become excited by this new possibility, did not notice. ‘Even in that case,’ he said, ‘if Carver’s name is really Carver, then his signature is a false one, and the sale of the ship is void. I tell you, Thomas: either way we’ve got him. Either way. We’ve caught Carver in his own lie.’
His relief had made him reckless. Balfour said, ‘So—you’re out to catch him, now?’
Lauderback’s eyes were shining. ‘I shall expose him,’ he said. ‘I shall expose Francis Carver, and take Godspeed back again.’
‘What about the avenger?’ Balfour said.
‘Who?’
‘The fellow who was after Carver. The one who has a twinkle on you.’
‘Never heard a peep,’ said Lauderback. ‘I expect he made all of that up.’
‘You mean he didn’t kill a man?’ said Balfour, lightly. ‘You mean he’s not a murderer?’
‘He’s a blackguard, is what he is,’ Lauderback said. He pounded the table. ‘A blackguard and a liar! And a thief! But I shall catch him on it. I shall make him pay.’
‘What about the elections?’ Balfour said. ‘What about Caroline?’ (This was the name of Lauderback’s wife.)
‘I don’t need to risk all that,’ Lauderback said scornfully. ‘I can do it privately. Catch him on the contract. Blackmail him—as he did me. Give him a taste of his own medicine.’
Balfour stroked his beard, watching him. ‘Well, now.’
‘Carver will have destroyed his own copy of the bill of sale, most likely, if it’s proof of a lie … I suppose I’ll have to get my copy notarised, to be safe.’
‘Well, now,’ Balfour said again. ‘Perhaps we ought to steady up.’
But Lauderback had sat forward in excitement. ‘There’s no need—I can begin right away!’ he exclaimed. ‘I know exactly where the contract is. It’s packed in my trunk, in that shipping crate you’re taking care of for me.’
Balfour felt his guts clench. His face flooded red. He opened his mouth to reply—and then, in cowardice, closed it.
‘Has the Virtue been and gone already?’ Lauderback said. ‘You were expecting her last week, I think.’
There was a roaring in Balfour’s ears. He ought to have come clean about the disappearance as soon as the two men were left alone. Stupid, he shouted internally, stupid! But could he not simply tell Lauderback the truth? It had been no man’s fault that the shipping crate had disappeared—it had been an accident, a blunder of paperwork most likely—and it would show up, sooner or later, in some unlikely situation … a little battered externally perhaps, but none the worse for wear. Surely Lauderback would understand that! If he was calm and honest in making his confession—if he admitted fault—But then
Balfour’s heart gave a judder. There must be a correlation between the trunk in Lauderback’s story—the one packed with women’s dresses, that had made the trans-Tasman crossing every month for a year—and the trunk containing Lauderback’s effects, the fraudulent contract among them, that had so recently vanished from the Hokitika quay. There must be, when Balfour had never before mislaid a shipping crate, nor had one stolen, not in all his years in the business! His heart began to pound. Francis
Carver had blackmailed the politician once before; perhaps he had done so for a second time! Perhaps Carver had stolen the shipping crate! The man was familiar on the Hokitika docks, after all …
Lauderback was casting his eye over the table, looking for a cold morsel; he had not noticed the change in Balfour’s demeanour, as the latter turned over this new possibility in his mind. ‘Has she been through—the Virtue?’ he repeated, without impatience.
‘No,’ said Balfour.
The room seemed to constrict around the lie.
‘Not here yet?’ said Lauderback. He found a waxy onion on the plate Jock Smith had left behind and popped it into his mouth. ‘So I beat my own clipper ship—and on horseback! I wasn’t expecting that! Nothing went belly-up at sea, I hope?’
His good humour was quite restored; he was even giddy. Such a tonic for the spirit is the promise of revenge!
‘No,’ Balfour said again.
‘She’s still in transit, you said?’
Balfour paused a fraction of a second, then he said, ‘Ay—still in transit. That’s right.’
‘Coming West from Dunedin, is she? Or up and through the Strait?’
Balfour was sweating. He watched the movement of Lauderback’s jaw as the other man chewed. In the end he chose the more protracted route. ‘Up and through.’
‘Oh well,’ Lauderback said, swallowing. ‘These things can’t be helped, I suppose. Not in the shipping business. But you’ll let me know the moment it gets here—won’t you?’
‘Ay—of course. Yes. I will.’
‘I shall look forward to it,’ said Lauderback. He hesitated. ‘I say—Tom—there’s another thing. You must understand that what I’ve told you this morning—’
‘Strictest confidence,’ Balfour blurted out. ‘Won’t tell a soul.’
‘With my campaign at the point of—’
‘No need for that.’ Balfour shook his head. ‘No need to say it. Mum’s the word.’