A Cold Wind Down the Grey

by Wendy M Wilson

  He put down the confession and rubbed his eyes with the flat of his hand. Never had a murder affected him the way this one had. George Dobson had been an able, popular young man who had died before he’d had a chance to fulfill his promise after encountering the most brutal gang of men New Zealand had ever seen. Jamie Wilson had not been part of that gang until a few weeks before the murder, but he had wanted to belong, had gone along with them willingly on what he may or may not have thought was a merely a robbery. He had been present when the murder was committed, and had done nothing to stop it – had at the very least helped bury the body. Men had hung for much less. Why should a man like Wilson, with no value to the community, not pay for what he had taken from that community?

  James knew he could not save George Dobson, but he would at least see justice done for the young man and his family. If he didn’t he would never forgive himself. He sat and thought about it for a long time.

  18

  The Arnold Track, 1866: More Bodies

  He arrived at his office the next morning to find the police camp abuzz with news that another body had been found on the Arnold track about four miles from Greymouth. The corpse had two broken legs and was missing its head, which was nowhere to be found.

  “Does anyone know who it is?” James asked Sergeant Slattery.

  “Hard to tell,” said Slattery wryly. “Dressed in the usual clothes, boots, whatever, can’t recognize his face because…”

  “He hasn’t got one?”

  “S’right. Could be the other storekeeper”

  “Other storekeeper? Which other storekeeper?”

  “The other storekeeper that Sullivan mentioned.”

  “I assumed the storekeepers were Mr. Fox, the gold buyer, and Mr. Watts from the iron shack,” said James. “Although Mr. Watts was found back in March…”

  “When Burgess was still in Hokitika,” said Slattery. “Although it does sound like murder. He was naked, and face down in a shallow puddle behind his shack. Hard to commit suicide that way…”

  “What did Dr. Foppoly have to say about it? Any bruising?”

  “There wasn’t an inquest,” said the sergeant. “We didn’t think it necessary at the time. And he’s in the ground now. Could be drink of course. And then there was Mr. Gregory, the storekeeper from Noble’s Gully. He drowned as well.”

  “When was that?” asked James. There seemed to be a surfeit of shopkeepers who could qualify for Sullivan’s murdered, river-tossed storekeeper.

  “In April, but not a suspicious death. He was taking a flat boat up the river to Twelve Mile, amidst a freshet - he insisted on going, even though he was told it was unsafe—and four men drowned because of that decision. They were swept down the river to the wharf at Cobden, four of them clinging to the boat. A Mr. Jackson managed to swim ashore, and he saw two of the others disappear beneath the surface and not come up. Mr. Gregory was still clinging to an oar wedged in the boat, and Mr. Jackson called to him to keep hold. Two men rowed out to save him, but he let go of the boat and was clutching onto a gin case, which kept him afloat for a few minutes. But then he disappeared beneath the waves just as help arrived. We found him on North Beach wearing nothing but trousers, as per usual.”

  James head was starting to spin with all the unnecessary information. “Not a possibility for the headless body, then,” he said.

  Slattery was not done. “In late June, a storekeeper named Mr. McCormack from Old Moonlight drowned. He was with another man, on the same horse, and the horse missed its footing and threw them into the river. The other man swam to safety but Mr. McCormick was washed away. He’s still missing, so…”

  “He could be our headless body,” said James.

  Slattery nodded. “Quite possibly,” he said.

  James sighed. “And now there’s another dead storekeeper out there somewhere?”

  “Just a dead body,” said Slattery. “And we don’t know who he is because…well, you know why not.”

  “Yes. Well, keep me informed,” said James.

  Slattery nodded and was about to leave, but remembered something. “Mr. Watts,” he said. “He was still wearing a ring with his initials, but missing some money; people who knew him said he should have had about thirty pounds on him.”

  James looked at him and waited.

  “And that seems to be what Burgess and his crew do. They leave something valuable so it looks like the person died natural like…and wasn’t robbed.”

  “Very good sergeant,” said James. “It’s possible they were up in Greymouth earlier and returned to Hokitika, and in that case we would know who the storekeeper is that Sullivan…”

  The sergeant wasn’t finished. “No,” he said stubbornly. “I’m having second thoughts about that. Sullivan said they killed a storekeeper and threw his body in the river—the puddle wouldn’t count as a river, would it? And he also said they killed one of their own to keep him quiet. More’n likely Mr. Watts was one of their own. So the body without the head, that might be the mysterious storekeeper.”

  “Worth checking into at any rate,” said James. “I think I’d better get up to the Arnold and check on all known and unidentified bodies. I’ll take my swag with me—I’d best take a revolver as well. Send someone to tell Mrs. James I may not be home for a few nights.”

  “We have a list,” said Slattery. “A list of missing people. It’s quite long…”

  “Could you give me a couple of names?” asked James patiently.

  “There’s a baker,” said Slattery. “He disappeared while baking bread. Left a batch sitting beside the oven. Then there’s Mr. Tapperell, Mr. Montgomery’s storekeeper, who’s been missing for a while. I’m not sure…”

  “A boatman from the Grey was missing as well, wasn’t he?” asked James.

  “Joseph Meirnick,” said Slattery. He was found. He was swept out to sea with those floods and then washed up on the beach a few miles north. He was six feet from the water’s edge and had no marks on him, well just on his face - eels got him in the river, more’n likely - but he was otherwise fresh. Naked but for a pair of high boots and his navy duck trousers, which happens when they’re swept out to sea. There was an inquest on him when…”

  “When I was searching for Dobson,” said James. “Right. Put something in the Argus. Ask the public for names of anyone else who might be missing. Be sure to tell the paper to mention Mr. Tapperell specifically, even though he’s been missing for several months. Say that any information relative to him will be received with thanks.”

  “Oh, and I forgot Cook…”

  “A cook and a baker are both missing?” asked James. “Is there a kidnapper hoping to set up his own hotel, do you think?”

  Slattery shook his head and looked serious, obviously not getting the joke. “No, it’s Mr. Cook. Employed by the Card brothers, down in Saltwater Creek. And there’s Mr. Jolly’s store man, from his branch on the old Totara goldfield. The gold was taken from the store, but he—the store man—left money in the bank when he disappeared. Inspector Broham thought he might be another victim of Burgess…but the general opinion seems to be that he wandered off into the bush in a state of incipient madness, from…”

  James completed his sentence. “From drink,” he said. “That seems to be a common reason for disappearances in these parts.”

  He walked along Mawhera Quay to where several flat boats, manned by eager boatmen, were tied to tree stumps out in the water. He picked one who had a team of five sturdy fellows with him and beckoned them over. They pulled the boat up onto the sand and he stepped in.

  “I need to stop about four miles up, wherever you can find a landing. And a second time across from the coal pits. Then you can put me off at Stillwater Creek,” he said. The creek was about half a mile below the junction of the Arnold and the Grey, where the rivers converged into a narrow gorge with a fast-moving current.

  The trip up the Grey was slow and difficult. The owner of the boat sat at the stern holding the rudder, while the
crew divided into pairs, two pulling on oars, two using poles to keep in the deeper parts of the river. The river flowed initially though a narrow channel and other than the current, the boatmen had an easy pull upstream; after rounding a huge bend the river changed; wide swathes of gravel slowed them down, and the pole men were kept busy keeping the boat in the narrow channels between the sandy areas. When the water became too shallow, most of the men hopped into the water and took hold of ropes to pull the boat. James watched them labouring in the freezing water, sometimes chest-deep. It seemed like a dreadful job, but the men were well paid and happy to do the work, even though they knew the work would shorten their lives.

  At the four-mile mark, with the two islands below which George Dobson’s body had been found just starting to become visible, the boatmen pulled over to a large sandy area. He could see an iron hut not far away, and asked the boatmen to wait for him while he walked to it.

  An old man was sitting outside having a pipe. He nodded at James but said nothing.

  James got right to the point. “Did you know William Watt?” he asked. “The former owner of this…”

  The old man took the pipe from his mouth and spat on the ground. “He’s dead,” he said. “Murdered. Not that the police seem to care.”

  “What makes you think he was murdered?”

  “You think he’d take all’n his clothes off, and lie down and drown hisself in a puddle?” The old man’s voice was heavy with sarcasm.

  James smiled. “I’m sure you’re right. But why would anyone want to drown him?”

  “Had some cash hid away,” said the old man. “Thirty quid, maybe. I’d say that would be enough for someone to kill another human being.”

  “You’ve heard of the murder of Mr. Dobson, I presume?”

  The old man recommenced smoking his pipe and nodded slowly.

  “And you know the police have a gang of men in gaol up in Nelson for his murder, as well as several more?”

  The old man anticipated his next question. “Didn’t see them round here back then,” he said. “Though I did see that Sullivan hanging around up here a couple of days before the Dobson murder. Had a fowling piece, he did. Said he was shooting birds.”

  “Was Mr. Watt acquainted with Burgess do you think?”

  “Maybe,” said the old man. “I did see Sullivan hanging around here, as I said. And Mr. Watt, he wasn’t above a bit of malarkey. But did you check their thumbs, the blokes who murdered Mr. Dobson?”

  “Thumbs?”

  “I didn’t hear tell that any of them had bite marks,” said the old man. “Someone stuck up Johnson, the storekeeper, two men I heard. They took four-pound weight of gold from him. Says he put up a good fight, and bit one of them on the thumb very hard.”

  “Yes, I know of that robbery,” said James. “But I believe Mr. Johnson said there were two men who spoke with strong German accents. And one of the robbers later drowned.” And is still missing, he thought. Yet another possibility for the headless body. The waters of the Grey must be awash in corpses. “We’ll catch him soon,” he said. “The robber who didn’t drown.”

  He disembarked from the flat boat a second time at the ferry dock opposite the coal pits and walked up to a shanty nestled in the cliffs. The owner came out from his shanty to meet him, a short sturdy man with a grizzled but cheerful face. He doubled as a ferryman and a publican, although illegally in the latter case as his shanty was unlicensed to serve alcohol. James would have to charge him with sly grogging at some point, but now wasn’t the time.

  “Morning Alabaster,” he said.

  “Morning Mr. Inspector James,” he said. “Come to see the corpse, ‘ave you?”

  The smell in the shed was strong, pervading the air within twenty feet of the shed—the same sickening smell that had led him to George Dobson’s body. The body had been sewn into a canvas bag, and Alabaster pulled out a bowie knife and slashed it open. James took hold of the two separated sides of the tear and pulled them carefully apart.

  At first it was hard to tell that a human being lay inside. He could see what looked like rotting meat with a large bloody slash at the top. Then he realized he was looking at the headless shoulders of a man.

  “He’s missing his head,” said Alabaster, in case James hadn’t noticed.

  James nodded. “I can see that,” he said. “Where was he found?”

  “My ferry pulled him up,” said Alabaster. “He was bobbing around on the edge of the river - he must have reached here from upstream.”

  “Not on the track then?” asked James. That was what he had been told. “Any idea where he might have come from?”

  Alabaster did have an idea. “See this cut?” He pointed to the place where the head had been. “Looks to me like he got caught in machinery. I’ll bet he was a miner upriver - up by Twelve Mile or Red Jacks, somewhere like that - and he fell and got caught up in the waterwheel that feeds the water race, left his head behind and came down the river. The fall could have broken his arms as well, or that could have been done by my ferry…”

  James looked. The head had been torn off—cut half way across then pulled off the rest of the way. If he’d been alive when he fell he’d have gone through hell before he died. It was to be hoped that he was dead before his head was torn from his body. “I can see what you mean,” he said. “Although I can’t tell whether the injuries are post mortem. Maybe your ferry tore off his head and broke his arms, after he’d been in the river a while.”

  Alabaster seemed unperturbed by that possibility. “Could have been murdered, couldn’t he? Been pushed in by someone who knew he would drown. And then got caught in something that took off his head…”

  “Hard to prove that,” said James. He bent over the corpse again. “Any identifying marks on him?”

  Alabaster leaned forward to take a closer look. “He’s dressed like a miner,” he said. “Now if it was Mr. Tapperell…”

  “You know about him?” asked James.

  “Of course. I believe he may have been heading - coming - this way, but dressed in his Sunday best, and this man clearly is not…”

  “Ahoy there,” said a voice in the distance. The two men stood up. A man in a high bowler and long top coat, holding a crook in his hand, was hailing them from the other side. When he had Alabaster’s attention he made a drinking gesture at him, which Inspector James pretended not to notice. He would definitely send a sergeant up to make a sweep of the sly grog shanties at some point.

  “I’ll be right over,” Alabaster called to him. To James he said, “What would you like to do with him? Should the coroner see him?”

  James shook his head. “Can you find a place back in the bush to bury him? I don’t think there’s anything here that makes me suspect foul play. It looks too much like an accident.” He turned to go, then stopped. “But if his head turns up, let me know.”

  After the corpse was wrapped up again, he went back to the flatboat to continue towards where the Grey met the Stillwater. The river was flowing fast downstream and it took all the strength of the boatmen to get him that last half mile. He would walk up to the Arnold from there, easier now that a bridge spanned the Stillwater Creek. Curtis and Co. had done a good job on that one, although with the Stillwater living up to its name the bridge was probably safe for many years. He paid the boatmen and sent them back down the Grey. Once up at the Arnold he could walk along the track to Arnold Township and on to the lake, where he’d find a room for the night.

  He crossed the Stillwater bridge to the Arnold track, which ran from the Arnold-Grey junction down to Greymouth in one direction, and to Brunner Lake in the other. Above the junction, the Grey basin spread out into a wide valley where every ravine and creek was proving to be rich with gold, and therefore equally replete with miners. From the Arnold Valley east to the mountains, dozens of mining operations, both big and small, had sprung up, hampered only by the bush, the mud, and the lack of good pack roads. It was the condition of these roads that George Dobson had
wanted to investigate, as he walked up from Maori Gully to Arnold Township, and down towards Greymouth.

  James wasn’t finding much evidence related to the Burgess gang, however, and doubted they’d been in this area.

  The walk along the Arnold was arduous. The recent rains and high winds had washed away the banks and fallen trees lay across the track. Every hundred yards or so he was forced to climb over tree trunks and newly-formed streams. Finally, at Arnold Township - not much more than a collection of shacks - he came upon a ferryman sitting on a log enjoying a pipe. His ferry, a small punt capable of carrying two or three people, was secured by a rope to a stump sticking out of the water.

  The Arnold River was narrow in places with frequent muddy shoals, and difficult to navigate. Passengers would often be forced to disembark ashore while the ferryman dragged his craft through rapids. In December, at the same time Mr. Tapperell had disappeared, a flat boat loaded with supplies had pulled from its moorings and been swept away. The owner, a Greek, had been saved, just barely, after a period of insensibility; two other men were swept away and drowned. Their bodies had not been recovered and were probably out to sea by now as they hadn’t washed up on the beach.

  Few other options were available for travel: just the track and the ferry. There’d been talk of constructing a better bridle path beside the river so a horse-drawn boat could be put to work, but nothing had come of it so far.

  “Good day. I’m investigating missing men in the area….”

  “Ah, Mr. Dobson, no doubt,” said the ferryman. He knocked the ash from his pipe on the bottom of his shoe, and stamped out the resulting spurt of flame in the dry grass at his feet. “I ‘eard he’d been found. You’d be the copper who found ‘im then?”