Gascoigne led him into the Magistrate’s office, and closed the door behind him. They sat down on the Windsor chairs that faced the Magistrate’s desk.
‘All right, Mr. Gascoigne,’ said Lauderback at once, sitting forward, ‘here’s the long and short of it. This whole business is a set-up. I never sold Godspeed to a man named Crosbie Wells. I sold it to a man who told me that his name was Francis Wells. But the name was an alias. I didn’t know it at the time. This man. Francis Carver. It was him. He took the alias—Francis Wells—and I sold the ship to him, under that name. You see he kept his Christian name. Only the surname changed. The point is this: he signed the deed with a false name, and that’s against the law!’
‘Let me see if I understand you correctly,’ Gascoigne said, pretending to be bemused. ‘Francis Carver claims that a man named Crosbie Wells purchased Godspeed … and you claim that this is a lie.’
‘It is a lie!’ said Lauderback. ‘It’s an out-and-out fabrication! I sold the ship to a man named Francis Wells.’
‘Who doesn’t exist.’
‘It was an alias,’ said Lauderback. ‘His real name is Carver. But he told me that his name was Wells.’
‘Francis Wells,’ Gascoigne pointed out, ‘and Crosbie Wells’s middle name was Francis, and Crosbie Wells does exist—at least, he did. So perhaps you were mistaken about the purchaser’s identity. The difference between Francis Wells and C. Francis Wells is not very great, I observe.’
‘What’s this about a C?’ said Lauderback.
‘I have examined the forwarded copy of the deed of sale,’ Gascoigne said. ‘It was signed by a C. Francis Wells.’
‘It most certainly was not!’
‘I’m afraid it was,’ said Gascoigne.
‘Then it’s been doctored,’ said Lauderback. ‘It’s been doctored after the fact.’
Gascoigne opened the envelope in his hand, and extracted the bill of sale. ‘On first inspection, I believed that it read merely “Francis Wells”. It was only on leaning closer that I saw the other letter, cursively linked to the F.’
Lauderback looked at it, frowned, and looked closer—and then a deep blush spread across his cheeks and neck. ‘Cursive or no cursive,’ he said, ‘C or no C, that deed of sale was signed by the blackguard Francis Carver. I saw him sign it with my own two eyes!’
‘Was the transaction witnessed?’
Lauderback said nothing.
‘If the transaction was not witnessed, then it will be your word against his, Mr. Lauderback.’
‘It’ll be the truth against a lie!’
Gascoigne declined to answer this. He returned the contract to the envelope, and smoothed it flat over his knee.
‘It’s a set-up,’ Lauderback said. ‘I’ll take him to court. I’ll have him flayed.’
‘On what charge?’
‘False pretences, of course,’ Lauderback said. ‘Impersonation. Fraud.’
‘I’m afraid that the evidence will bear out against you.’
‘Oh—you’re afraid of that, are you?’
‘The law has no grounds to doubt this signature,’ Gascoigne said, smoothing the envelope a second time, ‘because no other documentation survives Mr. Crosbie Wells, official or otherwise, that might serve as proof of his hand.’
Lauderback opened his mouth; he seemed about to say something, but then he shut it again, shaking his head. ‘It was a set-up,’ he said. ‘It was a set-up all along!’
‘Why do you think Mr. Carver saw the need to take an alias with you?’
The politician’s answer was surprising. ‘I’ve done some digging on Carver,’ he said. ‘His father was a prominent figure in one of the British merchant trading firms—Dent & Co. You might have heard of him. William Rochfort Carver. No? Well, anyway. Some time in the early fifties he gives his son a clipper ship—the Palmerston—and the son starts trading Chinese wares back and forth from Canton, under the banner of Dent & Co. Carver’s still a young man. He’s being coddled, really, becoming master of a ship so young. Well, here’s what I found out. In the spring of 1854 the Palmerston gets searched when it’s leaving the Sydney harbour—just a routine job—and Carver’s found to be foul of the law on several counts. Evading duty, and failing to declare, and a pile of other misdemeanours. Each small enough that a judge might turn a blind eye, but the charges come in all at once; when they’re stacked up like that, the law has to come down. He’s given ten years at Cockatoo, and that’s ten years of penal servitude, no less. A real dishonour. The father’s furious. Revokes the ship, disinherits the son, and as a final touch, makes sure to tarnish his name at every dock and shipyard in the South Pacific. By the time Francis Carver gets out of gaol, he has about as good a character as Captain Kidd—in seafaring circles at least. No shipowner’s going to lease a ship to him, and no crew’s going to take him on.’
‘And so he assumed an alias.’
‘Exactly,’ said Lauderback, sitting back.
‘I am curious to know why he only assumed an alias with you,’ Gascoigne said lightly. ‘He does not seem to have assumed the name Wells in any other context, save for when he purchased this ship. He introduced himself to me, for example, as Mr. Francis Carver.’
Lauderback glared at him. ‘You read the papers,’ he said. ‘Don’t make me spell it out to you. I’ve made my apology in public: I won’t do it again.’
Gascoigne inclined his head. ‘Ah,’ he said. ‘Carver assumed the alias Francis Wells in order to exploit your former entanglement with Mrs. Wells.’
‘That’s it,’ said Lauderback. ‘He said that he was Crosbie’s brother. Told me he was settling a score on Crosbie’s behalf—on account of my having made a bad woman of his wife. It was an intimidation tactic, and it worked.’
‘I see,’ said Gascoigne, wondering why Lauderback had not explained this so sensibly to Thomas Balfour two months ago.
‘Look,’ said Lauderback, ‘I’m playing straight with you, Mr. Gascoigne, and I’m telling you that the law is on my side. Carver’s break with his father is commonly known. He had a thousand provocations to assume an alias. Why, I could call in the father’s testimony, if need be. How would Carver like that?’
‘Not very well, I should imagine.’
‘No,’ cried Lauderback. ‘Not very well at all!’
Gascoigne was annoyed by this. ‘Well, I wish you luck, Mr. Lauderback, in bringing Mr. Carver to justice,’ he said.
‘Spare the bromide,’ Lauderback snapped. ‘Talk to me plain.’
‘As you wish,’ Gascoigne said, shrugging. ‘You know without my telling you that proof of provocation is not evidence. A man cannot be convicted simply because it can be proved that he had good reason to commit the crime in question.’
Lauderback bristled. ‘Do you doubt my word?’
‘No indeed,’ said Gascoigne.
‘You just think my case is weak. You think I don’t have a leg to stand on.’
‘Yes. I think it would be very unwise to take this matter to court,’ said Gascoigne. ‘I am sorry to speak so bluntly. You have my compassion for your troubles, of course.’
But Gascoigne felt no compassion whatsoever for Alistair Lauderback. He tended to reserve that emotion for persons less privileged than himself, and although he could acknowledge that Lauderback’s current situation was pitiable, he considered the politician’s wealth and eminence to be ample consolation for whatever inconveniences the man might be encountering in the short term. In fact, enduring a spot of injustice might do Lauderback a bit of good! It might improve him as a politician, thought Gascoigne—who was, in his private adjudications at least, something of an autocrat.
‘I’ll wait for the Magistrate,’ said Lauderback. ‘He’ll see sense.’