The Luminaries

by Eleanor Catton

  ‘Perhaps she was—but I will correct you in pointing out that Miss Wetherell was not, at that point in time, a member of the old profession,’ Moody said. ‘The promissory note penned by Mr. Richard Mannering, which I submitted to the court this morning, explicitly states that Miss Wetherell is to be outfitted with an appropriate gown, a muff pistol, perfumes, petticoats, and all other items “in which she is currently deficient”. It is dated June of last year.’

  Carver said nothing.

  ‘You will forgive me,’ said Moody after a moment, ‘if I remark that Mr. Wells does not seem to have benefited very greatly from the sequence of events that unfolded in Dunedin last May. You, however, seem to have benefited a very great deal.’

  Justice Kemp waited until Carver had seated himself beside his wife before calling the room sharply to order. ‘All right, Mr. Moody,’ he said, folding his hands, ‘I see that you have a clear direction here, and I will allow you to continue with your present argument, though I will make the remark that we seem to have wandered rather far from the course as set down in this morning’s bulletin. Now: you have submitted the names of two witnesses for the defence.’

  Moody bowed. ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘In the case of the defence witnesses, Mr. Moody will examine, and Mr. Broham will cross-examine,’ said the justice. He consulted the ledger, then looked up, over his spectacles, and said, ‘Mr. Thomas Balfour.’

  Thomas Balfour was duly summoned from the cells.

  ‘Mr. Balfour,’ Moody said, when he had been sworn in. ‘You are in the shipping business, are you not?’

  ‘Have been for coming up twelve years, Mr. Moody.’

  ‘You have Mr. Lauderback’s private account, I understand.’

  ‘I do indeed,’ said Balfour, happily. ‘I’ve had Mr. Lauderback’s business since the winter of 1861.’

  ‘Can you please describe the most recent transaction between Mr. Lauderback and Balfour Shipping?’

  ‘I most certainly can,’ said Balfour. ‘When Mr. Lauderback first arrived in Hokitika in January, he came over the Alps, as you might remember. His trunk and assorted effects were sent by sea. He sent down a shipping crate from Lyttelton to Port Chalmers, and once the crate reached Port Chalmers I arranged for one of my vessels—the Virtue—to pick it up and bring it over to the Coast. Well, she got here all right—the Virtue—with the crate aboard. Arrived on the twelfth of January, two days before Mr. Lauderback himself. Next day, the crate was unloaded—stacked onto the quay with all the rest of the cargo—and I signed for it to be transferred into my warehouse, where Mr. Lauderback would pick it up, after he arrived. But that never happened: the crate was swiped. Never made it into the warehouse.’

  ‘Was the crate identified on the exterior as belonging to Mr. Lauderback?’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ said Balfour. ‘You’ll have seen the crates stacked along the quay—they’d be indistinguishable, you know, were it not for the bills of lading. The bill tells you who owns the goods and who’s the shipper and what have you.’

  ‘What happened when you discovered the crate was missing?’

  ‘You can be sure I tore my hair out, looking for it: I hadn’t the faintest clue where it might have gone. Well, Godspeed was wrecked on the bar two weeks later, and when they cleared her cargo, what should turn up but the Lauderback crate! Seems it had been loaded onto Godspeed, when she last weighed anchor from the Hokitika port.’

  ‘In other words, very early on the morning of the fifteenth of January.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘What happened when the Lauderback trunk was finally recovered?’

  ‘I did some sniffing around,’ said Balfour. ‘Asked some questions of the crew, and they told me how the mistake had come about. Well, here’s what happened. Someone had seen the bill of lading—“Mr. Lauderback, bearer”—and remembered that their skipper—that’s Carver—had been on the lookout for a crate so identified, the previous year. They saw this crate on the wharf, the night of the fourteenth, and they thought, here’s a chance to earn a bit of favour with the master.

  ‘So they open it up—just to be curious. Inside there’s a trunk and a pair of carpetbags and not much else. Doesn’t look terribly valuable, but they figure, you never know. They go off to find Captain Carver, but he’s nowhere to be found. Not in his rooms at the hotel, not at the bars, nowhere. They decide to leave it to the morning, and off they go to bed. Then Carver himself comes flying down the quay in a terrible bother, turns them all out of their hammocks, and says Godspeed weighs anchor at the first light of dawn—only a few hours’ hence. He won’t say why. Anyway, the fellows make a decision. They pop the lid back on the crate, haul it aboard nice and quick, and when Godspeed weighs anchor just before first light, the crate’s in the hold.’

  ‘Was Captain Carver notified of this addition to the cargo?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ said Balfour, smiling. ‘The fellows were pleased as Punch—they thought there would be a reward in it, you see. So they wait until Godspeed is under sail before they call him down. Carver takes one look at the bill of sale and sees they’ve botched the job. “Balfour Shipping?” he says. “It was Danforth Shipping, that was the one I lost. You’ve lifted the wrong bloody one—and now we’ve got stolen goods aboard.”’

  ‘Might we infer from this,’ Moody said, ‘that Captain Carver had lost a shipping crate, identified as belonging to Alistair Lauderback, with Danforth Shipping as its shipper, that contained something of great value to him?’

  ‘Certainly looks that way,’ said Balfour.

  ‘Thank you very much for your time, Mr. Balfour.’

  ‘My pleasure, Mr. Moody.’

  Broham, who very plainly had no idea where Moody’s line of questioning was going, waived his right to cross-examine the witness for the defence, and the justice, making a note of this, called the second witness.

  ‘The Honourable Mr. Alistair Lauderback.’

  Alistair Lauderback crossed the breadth of the courtroom in five strides.

  ‘Mr. Lauderback,’ said Moody, when he had given his oath. ‘You are the former owner of the barque Godspeed, is that correct?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Lauderback. ‘That is correct.’

  ‘According to the deed of sale, you sold the ship on the twelfth of May, 1865.’

  ‘I did.’

  ‘Is the man to whom you sold the ship in the courtroom today?’

  ‘He is,’ said Lauderback.

  ‘Can you identify him, please?’ said Moody.

  Lauderback threw out his arm and levelled his index finger squarely in Carver’s face. ‘That man,’ he said, addressing Moody. ‘That’s the man, right there.’

  ‘Can there be a mistake?’ said Moody. ‘I observe that the deed of sale, submitted to the court by Mr. Carver himself, was signed by a “C. Francis Wells”.’

  ‘It’s an out-and-out forgery,’ said Lauderback, still pointing at Carver. ‘He told me his name was Crosbie Wells, and he signed the deed as Crosbie Wells, and I sold him the ship believing all the while that I’d sold it to a man named Crosbie Wells. It wasn’t until eight, nine months later that I realised I’d been played for a fool.’

  Moody dared not make eye contact with Carver—who had stiffened, very slightly, at Lauderback’s falsehood. Moody saw, in the corner of his eye, that Mrs. Carver had reached out a white hand to restrain him: her fingers had closed around his wrist. ‘Can you describe what happened?’ he said.

  ‘He played the jilted husband,’ said Lauderback. ‘He knew I’d been out and about with Lydia—everyone in this room knows it too: I made my confession in the Times—and he saw a chance to turn a profit on it. He told me his name was Crosbie Wells and I’d been out and about with his wife. I never even dreamed he might be telling a barefaced lie. I thought, I’ve done this man wrong, and I’ve made a bad woman of his wife.’

  The Carvers had not moved. Still without looking at them, Moody said, ‘What did he want from you?’

  ‘He wanted t
he ship,’ said Lauderback. ‘He wanted the ship, and he got the ship. But I was blackmailed. I sold it under duress—not willingly.’

  ‘Can you explain the nature of the blackmail?’

  ‘I’d been keeping Lydia in high fashion, over the course of our affair,’ Lauderback said. ‘Sending her old gowns over to Melbourne every month to get stitched up, and then they’d come back with the latest frills or flounces or what have you. There was a shipment that went back and forth across the Tasman in my name, and of course I used Godspeed as my carrier. Well, he’d intercepted it. Carver had. He’d opened up the trunk, lifted out the gowns, and packed a small fortune underneath them. The trunk was marked with my name, remember, and the arrangement with the dressmaker’s in Melbourne was mine. If that bonanza shipped offshore, I’d be sunk: on paper, I’d be foul of the law on theft, evasion of duty, everything. Once I saw the trap he’d laid, I knew there was nothing to be done. I had to give him the ship. So we shook hands as men, and I apologised again—and then, in keeping with his sham, he signed the contract “Wells”.’

  ‘Did you ever hear from Mr. Carver, alias Wells, after that encounter?’

  ‘Not a peep.’

  ‘Did you ever see the trunk again?’

  ‘Never.’

  ‘Incidentally,’ said Moody, ‘what was the name of the shipping company you used to transport Mrs. Carver’s gowns to and from the dressmaker’s in Melbourne?’

  ‘Danforth Shipping,’ said Lauderback. ‘Jem Danforth was the man I used.’

  Moody paused, to allow the crowd in the gallery to comprehend the full implication of this, and then said, ‘When did you realise Mr. Carver’s true identity?’

  ‘In December,’ said Lauderback. ‘Mr. Wells—the real Mr. Wells, I should say—wrote to me just before he passed. Just a voter introducing himself to a political man, that’s all it was. But from his letter I knew at once that he didn’t know the first thing about me and Lydia—and that’s when I put it all together, and realised that I’d been had.’

  ‘Do you have Mr. Wells’s correspondence with you?’

  ‘Yes.’ Lauderback reached into his breast pocket and withdrew a folded piece of paper.

  ‘The Court will note that the document in Mr. Lauderback’s possession is postmarked the seventeenth of December, 1865,’ said Moody.

  ‘Duly noted, Mr. Moody.’

  Moody turned back to Lauderback. ‘Would you read out the letter, please?’

  ‘Certainly.’ Lauderback held the up the paper, coughed, and then read:

  West Canterbury. December 1865

  Sir I observe in the ‘West Coast Times’ that you mean to make the passage to Hokitika overland & therefore will pass through the Arahura Valley lest you make some deliberately circuitous route. I am a voting man and as such I would be honoured to welcome a politician at my home humble though the dwelling is. I shall describe it so that you might approach or direct your course away as you see fit. The house is roofed in iron & set back thirty yards from the banks of the Arahura on that river’s Southern side. There is a clearing of some thirty yards on either side of the cottage & the sawmill is some twenty yards further to the Southeast. The dwelling is a small one with a window & a chimney made of clay-fired brick. It is clad in the usual way. Perhaps even if you do not stop I shall see you riding by. I shall not expect it nor hope for it but I wish you a pleasant journey Westward & a triumphant campaign & I assure you that I remain,

  With the deepest admiration,

  CROSBIE WELLS

  Moody thanked him. He turned to the justice. ‘The Court will note that the signature on Mr. Lauderback’s private correspondence exactly resembles the signature upon the deed of gift penned by Mr. Crosbie Wells upon the eleventh of October, 1865, in which a sum of two thousand pounds is to be given over to Miss Anna Wetherell by Mr. Emery Staines, with Crosbie Wells as witness; it also exactly resembles the signature upon Mr. Wells’s marriage certificate, submitted by Mrs. Lydia Carver, formerly Mrs. Wells, to the Magistrate’s Court two months ago. The Court will further note that these two signatures in no way resemble the signature upon the bill of sale for the barque Godspeed, submitted to the Court by Mr. Francis Carver. Suffice to prove that the signature upon this bill of sale is, indeed, a forgery.’

  Broham was gaping at Moody, open-mouthed.

  ‘Just what do you mean by this, Mr. Moody?’ said the justice.

  ‘Simply that Mr. Carver obtained the barque Godspeed by methods of extortion, impersonation, and fraud,’ Moody said, ‘and used the same tactics in thieving a fortune of many thousands of pounds from Mr. Wells in May of last year—a theft he achieved, presumably, with Mrs. Carver’s help, given that she is now his wife.’

  Broham, who was still struggling to place the events of the past five minutes in sequence in his mind, petitioned for a recess; but his request could hardly be heard above the commotion in the gallery. Justice Kemp, raising his voice to a shout, requested the immediate presence of both Mr. Broham and Mr. Moody in the Magistrate’s office; then he gave the instruction for all witnesses to be placed in custody, and adjourned the court.

  THE HOUSE OF MANY WISHES

  In which Lydia Wells is as good as her word; Anna Wetherell receives an unexpected visitor; and we learn the truth about Elizabeth Mackay.

  The face that number 35, Cumberland-street presented to the thoroughfare was oddly blank: pale clapboard siding; a mullioned shop-window, papered over with butcher’s paper; a pair of curtained sash windows on the floor above. The establishments on either side—Number 37 was a bootmaker’s, and number 33, a shipping agency—had been built very close, masking any sense, from the street, of interior proportion. Walking past it, one might even have presumed the building to be unoccupied, for there were no signs or legends above the doorway, nothing on the porch, and no card in the plate above the knocker.

  Mrs. Wells opened the front door with her own key. She led Anna down the silent passage to the rear of the house, where a narrow staircase led to the floor above. On the upstairs landing, which was as clean and blank as its counterpart below, she produced a second key from her reticule, unlocked a second door, and, smiling, gestured for Anna to step inside.

  A more worldly soul than Anna might have formed an immediate conclusion from the scene that greeted her: the heavy lace curtains; the redundant upholstery; the heady scent of liquor and perfume; the beaded portiere, currently tied back against the doorframe to show the dimly lit bedchamber beyond. But Anna was not worldly, and if she was surprised to encounter a scene of such sweet-smelling, cushioned luxury at a boarding house for girls, she did not express it aloud. On the walk from the quay to Cumberland-street Mrs. Wells had exhibited a great range of refined tastes and particular opinions, and by the time they reached their destination Anna felt more than happy to defer to them—her own opinions seeming, all of a sudden, very pale and feeble by contrast.

  ‘You see that I take very good care of my girls,’ said her hostess. Anna replied that the room was exceedingly handsome, and at this encouragement Mrs. Wells proposed a turn of it, directing Anna’s attention, as they walked, to several ingenuities of decoration and placement, so that her compliments might be hitherto more specifically bestowed.

  Anna’s chest had been delivered as promised, and was installed already at the foot of the bed—a signal that she took to mean the bed was intended to be hers. It had a handsome headboard, the wooden frame of which was all but obscured behind a great mound of white pillows, stacked in piles of three, and it was much broader and higher than the cot in which she habitually slept, at home. She wondered whether she would be required to share a bed with someone else: it seemed much too big for one person. Opposite the bed stood a high-sided copper bath, draped with towels, and beside it, a heavy bell-pull with a tasselled end. Mrs. Wells pulled this now, and from somewhere on the floor below there came a muted jingle. When the maid appeared, Mrs. Wells ordered hot water to be sent up from the kitchen, and a plate of luncheon to follow
it. The maid hardly glanced at Anna, who was very grateful to be ignored, and relieved when the maid left to heat the water on the kitchen stove.

  As soon as she was gone Lydia Wells turned to Anna, smiled again, and begged to take her leave.

  ‘I have appointments uptown which I must keep; but I shall be back in time for supper, and will expect us to take it together. You may ask Lucy for whatever you desire in the world. If she can find it, it will be found. Stay in the tub as long as you like, and use anything on the washstand that strikes your fancy. I insist that you make yourself entirely at home.’

  Anna Wetherell did just that. She washed her hair with a lavender-scented lotion, and scrubbed every inch of her body with store-bought soap, and stayed in the water for the better part of an hour. After she had dressed again—turning her stockings inside-out to show their cleaner side—she spent a long time at the looking glass, fixing her hair. There were several bottles of perfume on the washstand: she sniffed all of them, returned to the first, and dabbed a little on her wrists and beneath her ears.

  The maid had left a cold luncheon on the table below the window, the plate covered with a piece of cloth. Anna lifted the cloth aside, and saw a mound of ham, shaved very nicely, a thick slice of pease pudding, evidently fried, a yellow scone spread with butter and jam, and two pickled eggs. She sat, seized the knife and fork laid out for her, and fell upon it—relishing the flavours, after so many tasteless meals at sea.

  Once the plate was clean, she sat wondering for some minutes whether she ought to ring the bell for the service to be cleared away: would it be more imperious to ring, or not to ring? Eventually she decided not to. She got up from the table and went to the window, where she drew the curtains, and, feeling very contented, stood awhile to watch the traffic in the street. The clock had struck three before she heard any sound from the floor below: sudden voices in the passage, and then footsteps mounting the stairs, and then a brisk two-knuckled knock at the door.

  She had barely time to rise before the door was flung open, and in strode a tall, very dirty man, dressed in yellow moleskin trousers and a faded coat. When he saw Anna, he came up short.