Come to Grief

by Wendy M Wilson

  “Waikawa?”

  “It’s about twenty miles from the point, further north. Porpoise Bay, if you know the area.”

  Frank shook his head. “I don’t know the area at all. We’re from…from Greymouth on the West Coast. We took a ship from Hokitika to Bluff and we’re riding up to Tokanui, or we thought we were.”

  So much for keeping it simple, Mette thought. “You said you found bodies? How awful. How did they get that far?”

  “The tide took them,” he said. “One was a young boy of about twelve with gashes on his leg. Looked like a shark got to him.”

  Mette heard Frank make a sound she’d never heard from him before.

  “And a powerful-looking man with red hair and red whiskers who was naked except for his drawers hanging around his ankles. The sea pulls off the clothing, you know, especially trousers.”

  She heard Frank sigh. “I suppose someone will identify them eventually. There must be bodies all up and down the coast. Dreadful.”

  He nodded, and rode away, apparently not suspecting anything. By now, Sarah Jane was letting Mette know she wanted to be fed. They stopped, and she sat on a fallen log and unbuttoned her dress as Frank paced up and down, thinking.

  “That’s two of them then,” he said eventually.

  “Two of whom?”

  “Of the three men I was following, two are most likely dead, and one is alive. I spoke to William Sampson on the ship after you left. And this morning I found his body in the goods shed in Fortrose. Last night at Otara Station, a man came into the shearing shed where I was sleeping, holding a hammer; he looked as if he wanted to harm somebody. Me, I’m guessing. Charles Brunton told me his name was William McNab, another one of the suspects on the list I was given in Wellington. So he’s still alive. That just leaves one more suspect; Robert Hinton, the American. I think he’s the man they found on the beach up in Porpoise Bay — the man with red whiskers. Red hair isn’t very common. I saw Hinton on the ship. He had very red hair.”

  Mette was puzzled. “One of your suspects is an American with red hair and whiskers. In that case, it can’t be his body at Porpoise Bay. He was on the train from Port Chalmers to Dunedin with me yesterday. And today he was on the train again, on his way to Bluff. I’m sure it’s the same person. Not many people have red hair, and I doubt there are two Americans with red hair in the entire South Island.”

  11

  The Shepherd’s Hut

  Sarah Jane was asleep when they rode up to the Brunton homestead; Mette leaned back against Frank with her eyes closed, but with a tight hold on the baby. He held them both close to his chest, breathing in their scent, relieved and happy to have his family with him again. Mette’s arrest meant nothing, really. They’d sort everything out and head to the Bluff, turn Hinton in to the police, and get the reward. Mette would send for Professor Mann’s manuscript from the post office in Fortrose and translate it, and they’d be flush with cash for the rest of the year.

  He hated being broke. When Colonel Roberts had asked him if he was interested in following the suspected gold robbers, he’d been at the point of returning to the card tables to improve their circumstances. Honest labour hadn’t been working, and his horse farm up near Feilding had become a financial bog. The manager he’d hired was doing his best, but he was a new chum from England, not yet used to the ways of New Zealand. Two horses had died of the strangles, and Dead Shot’s offspring hadn’t been as successful as he’d expected. The filly looked good, but she had the wrong personality for a race horse. Too timid. He’d seen it before — offspring that didn’t take after their parents.

  They rode up the dusty, poplar-lined driveway to the Brunton homestead, through a display of leaves that had turned yellow as autumn closed in.

  The sound of hammers echoed down from the house, and a man in a carpenter’s leather apron could be seen in the yard, a pile of coffins beside him. Mr. Brunton sat nearby in a bath chair offering suggestions. Charles Brunton passed them in his wagon, heading towards the site of the wreck with a load of coffins. He nodded at them and continued on without speaking.

  Mrs. Brunton came from the house to greet them, holding Helen, who looked much cleaner than she had when Frank had passed her to Mrs. Brunton in Fortrose. Mrs. Brunton’s face showed the stress of the past few days. She probably hadn’t slept much, and had heard too many heart-breaking stories; the strain of it all was written on her face.

  “He’s been here,” she said. “And he says he’s coming back. My husband spoke with him, and told him we’d not seen either of you. Lied with a straight face, my husband did, and he’s a Justice of the Peace. Mind you, I told him if he said anything about you being here, Sergeant, he could expect to sleep on the kitchen floor tonight.”

  Frank slid off the horse and helped Mette and Sarah Jane down.

  “Who’s been here?” Mette asked. “Who are you talking about?”

  “Smith. The man who arrested you,” said Mrs. Brunton. “I don’t know where he’s from or who he works for, but I really doubt he’s with the police. I asked to see his warrant card and he refused to show it to me. Said he’d left it in his room.”

  “The sergeant taking me to Invercargill told me Mr. Smith is an assistant commissioner,” said Mette. “And works for someone very important.”

  “He’s not the assistant commissioner of anything connected to the police,” said Mrs. Brunton. “There’s a commissioner of police for the whole country, and if he was second-in-command I’d know about it. For some reason this whole kidnapping is important to him. I have the feeling he isn’t going to give up. With everything that’s going on, you’d think he would join with all the other police arriving in the area. There’s so much to be done.”

  “General Gordon was Assistant Boundary Commissioner to the Border in Crimea when I was there,” said Frank. “Smith could be assistant commissioner of something other than the police. What about the policeman he had with him? The one who arrested Mette. How does he fit in?”

  “I saw him down at the burial site earlier today. I don’t think he knew what was going on. He just believed that Mr. Smith was in a position to tell him what to do.”

  Mr. Brunton had been listening from his perch near the carpenter, and leaned forward. “I suspect Smith works for the government in some capacity — assistant commissioner of the waterworks or something similar. I doubt he’s lying deliberately, he’s just implying something he isn’t. My wife and I think you should go into hiding until things calm down. He’s obviously got some pull.”

  “What about the real kidnappers. Whose baby did they kidnap, and where are they now?”

  “Did you think it might be this baby?” asked Mrs Brunton, jiggling Helen. “She was on the ship from Dunedin, and you said you saw the mother coming on board. Was it really her mother?”

  Frank considered that possibility. “It’d be too much of a coincidence, I would say. The woman drowned saving this baby. If she wasn’t the mother, don’t you think she would have tossed Helen away and saved herself? And the man I thought was with her turns out to have been one of my gold robbery suspects. More likely they were on the way to Melbourne with some of the gold, and brought the baby along as cover. Who would suspect a mother and child of being involved in something like that?”

  Helen started wriggling in Mrs. Brunton’s arms, and reaching out for Frank.

  “Did you know she’s learned how to walk?” said Mrs. Brunton. “Look at this, Sergeant Hardy.”

  She set the baby on her feet, held her by her hands until she was steady, and then let her go. Helen wasted no time. She lunged towards Frank, threw her arms around his legs, and said, “Dada.”

  He picked her up and smiled down at her. “I’m not your father, Helen. I’m Frank. You can call me Frank.”

  Helen smiled back, seeming to understand. “Fah?”

  “Frank,” he said. “Frank.”

  She nodded and grabbed his beard. “Fah.”

  Frank pulled her hand away. “Go
od enough. We don’t know where your father is, Helen, but Fah will find him. ”

  Mette gave him an odd look, and he felt a twinge of guilt. He’d spent more time with Helen than he ever spent with Sarah Jane. He’d had no choice with Helen, but even so he should pay more attention to Sarah Jane and not just play with her for a few minutes and hand her back to Mette. He adored his daughter, of course, when she was behaving. As soon as she cried or soiled herself, back she went to her mother. He’d become all too aware of his lack of responsibility, now he’d spent a couple of days taking care of Helen.

  “Well, we’ll sort Helen’s parentage out eventually,” said Mrs. Brunton. “For now, you’d better head up to the hiding place we’ve arranged for you. Give it a day and come back down tomorrow to see if there’s any more news.”

  “Up? Where are we going to hide? In the shearing shed again?”

  “Better than that.” She pointed towards the hills. “There’s a shepherd’s hut up there about a quarter of a mile away. You can see the roof from here, poking above the trees at the top of the hill. Follow the track up through the paddock. I’ve left you enough food for a couple of days, and some blankets. The shepherd is with the flock in the far paddock on the other side of the lake, so he’s sleeping rough.”

  “This reminds me of the soddy,” said Frank, when they were settled into the shepherd’s hut and tucking in to Mrs. Brunton’s supplies. “Bloody uncomfortable, but at least we were together and alone.” He grinned at her over a mutton and pickle sandwich. “Not that we’re alone now. A bit awkward, isn’t it?”

  Mette blushed. “I grew up in a house with everyone sleeping in the same room. It wasn’t so bad.”

  Frank took her hand, entwining her fingers with his. “What did you do when your parents…?”

  “I put my head under the pillow and blocked my ears.”

  “No pillows here. Maybe we can throw a blanket over Sarah Jane and Helen.”

  “We could wait until they go to sleep.”

  He leaned forward and kissed her. “I have some brandy Mrs. Brunton gave me. We could slip some into their food. Helen anyway. What do you think?”

  Mette frowned. “I would never do that. Not after what happened to Grace Burns.”

  Frank spooned some pap into Helen’s eager mouth, while Mette fed Sarah Jane.

  “All babies aren’t alike, are they?” she said. “Didn’t Mr. Smith have a description of the baby? Helen has bright blue eyes, navy blue almost, and Sarah Jane’s are dark brown. Their hair is a different colour, and Sarah Jane has an olive complexion, like you. I think Helen is older than Sarah Jane, even though they’re about the same size. Actually, when I fed Sarah Jane, Mr.Smith asked what it was like to feed someone else’s baby, because she didn’t look like me.”

  “Did you slap him?” asked Frank.

  “No, but I swore at him, and that just made him think I was a criminal.” She switched Sarah Jane to the other side. “You’d be able to describe Sarah Jane to someone, wouldn’t you?”

  “I’d say she was beautiful like her mother.”

  Mette shook her head and looked away from him. He could see she had some doubts about how well he knew his own daughter, so he said, “I’d say she has big brown eyes and a mop of auburn hair, and takes after me, except that she’s more intelligent than I am, like her mother.”

  That seemed to do the trick, and they finished with the girls and made a bed for them with blankets and a pile of straw. Within minutes, the two girls were breathing quietly, fast asleep in each other’s arms.

  Frank pulled Mette to him and leaned over her. “We’re alone. Finally.”

  She stroked his cheek and smiled up at him. “I’m so glad you’re alive. When I heard the ship had gone down with a massive loss of life I was ready to die myself.”

  He said something that had been on his mind since the wreck. “You know, I’m eighteen years older than you, and will probably die first.”

  “But not yet. Not for another twenty years at least.”

  “Longer than that, I hope. My father’s still alive and he’s seventy-seven.”

  “Thirty-five years. Let’s make the most of it then.”

  He fell asleep draped across Mette’s body, her hands on his back, feeling a comfort he hadn’t felt for weeks. He was in the middle of a pleasant dream, riding Copenhagen along the ridge of his horse farm with Mette seated in front of him, when he was awoken by an animal of some kind landing on his back. He rolled off Mette and sat up abruptly.

  “What was that?”

  Mette turned on her side and said sleepily, “What was what?”

  “Something fell on me.”

  Something scratched his back. He rolled away from it. Was an animal in the hut with them? A possum? A rat? A feral dog?

  In the dark, he saw a small, dark shape crouched on the dirt floor. The hut had one tiny window and the light that came through was blocked by trees. He moved between the shape and Mette, wondering if he could get to Sarah Jane and Helen without it attacking. If it was a possum, as he suspected, it would be dangerous if it felt threatened. But as his eyes got used to the dark, he realized that the shape was human. Helen.

  “For god’s sake, Helen. You scared me.”

  “Fah?” her voice quivered as he picked her up. She put her head on his shoulder, sniffed, and said “Fah.”

  “Is something the matter, Helen?”

  Mette shuffled around them and gathered Sarah Jane in her arms, and rocked her from side to side to keep her calm.

  Frank joined her and copied Mette’s motions. Both the girls looked happier, but now he could see down the hill to the yard in front of the Brunton’s homestead. A shape crossed from behind the trees and moved towards the shearing shed, followed by two more shapes. One of them, the larger of the two, was holding a lantern, which swung back and forth creating shadows on the out buildings.

  He moved back. “Get away from the window, Mette. Someone’s in the yard. I think it’s your friend Smith and his two thugs.”

  “What’s a thug?”

  “It’s a word I heard in India. It means…never mind. They’re down there and looking for us.”

  “Will they come up here, do you think? Should we leave.”

  He took another quick look through the window, and saw the three men staring up towards the shepherd’s hut, one with a hand above his eyes. They must be able to see the roof of the hut. “Looks like they’re thinking about it. Let’s get out of here; we’ll take the blankets and food with us so the hut looks uninhabited.”

  Mette moved Sarah Jane to her hip. “Give Helen to me and you carry everything else.”

  Helen did not want to go to Mette. She pushed away from her and said, “Fah. Fah.” several times, her voice rising to a crescendo.

  Frank took both the girls from Mette. “Hand me the food bag. You take the blankets and your bag.”

  They eased open the door of the hut, not much more than a gate, really, and edged outside.

  The girls leaned away from each other, making them difficult to carry. It wasn’t the weight that bothered him, but the slipperiness. It was like trying to carry a couple of eels. “Round the back of the hut and uphill,” he said. “We’ll get as far away as we can. Once we’re on the other side of the hill we’ll head down to the road.” He looked back towards the yard. In the light from the lantern he saw one of shadows moving in their direction. “Let’s go. They’re coming.”

  Behind the hut, a path ran up to the top of the hill through the stunted bush, which disappeared as they reached the crest. On the other side, there were few trees, but generations of sheep had trodden pathways along the hill and down towards the road. Occasionally a cluster of bushes sprang up between the tracks.

  They stopped to catch their breath, and both the babies began to cry at the same time. Mette dropped her bundle of blankets and took Sarah Jane from Frank. “Shh, shh. They’ll hear you crying.”

  Sarah Jane put her head on Mette’s chest, rooting f
or her breast. “Can we stop somewhere? If I feed her she’ll settle down.”

  “Let’s get down to that patch of bushes down there, and get behind it. You can feed her there. Run.”

  He grabbed the roll of blankets, juggling them with the bag of food and Helen, and followed Mette down the hill towards the cluster of bushes. As he flung himself to the other side, dropping Helen and the blankets, he couldn’t help noticing Mette was not winded; he was momentarily envious of her youth.

  They huddled behind the bush as Mette fed Sarah Jane. He kept an eye on the top of the hill, expecting the three men to appear. Helen started to whimper, and reached for Mette.

  “Now you want her,” said Frank. He jiggled Helen, grinning at her foolishly. If she started to cry as Smith and his henchmen came over the hill, they’d hear her.

  On cue, Helen began to cry, a loud scream that echoed down the valley from where they were hidden.

  “Can you feed her as well?”

  Mette bit her lip. “I really don’t want to. It would be strange.”

  “Better than getting caught by Smith.”

  She stared down at Sarah Jane, and he could see she was upset at the idea. Helen stopped to take a breath, gasping. He could see she was about to start again.

  “Sorry Mette, but I have to do this.” He took his handkerchief and the brandy from his pocket, opened the bottle, and dipped the folded corner of the handkerchief inside.

  Helen opened her mouth for the brandy-soaked handkerchief and sucked it eagerly, her tantrum forgotten.

  “You should have let her suck your finger. That works better than brandy,” said Mette.

  It was a bit late for that information. He leaned forward to see if anyone had come over the crest of the hill, and pulled back hurriedly. One man was standing there, looking around, the moon outlining his body.

  “Have a look at the top of the hill,” he whispered. “Do you think that’s Smith up there?”