‘One of these names must be a false one. If your passengers truly numbered eight, and Walter Moody was truly among them.’
‘Eight—and all accounted for. They took the lighter in to shore that afternoon—six hours, maybe seven hours, before we rolled.’
‘Then he must have taken a false name.’
‘Why would he do that?’
‘Well, perhaps he was lying, then. About having come over on Godspeed.’
‘Why would he do that?’
Evidently Lydia Wells could not produce a response to this either, for after a moment she said, ‘What are you thinking, Francis?’
‘I’m thinking to write my old friend Adrian a letter.’
‘Yes, do,’ said Mrs. Wells. ‘And I shall make some inquiries of my own.’
‘The insurance money did come through. Gascoigne was as good as his word.’
Presently she said, ‘Let’s to bed.’
‘You’ve had a trying day.’
‘A very trying day.’
‘It’ll all come out right, in the end.’
‘She’ll get what she deserves,’ said Mrs. Wells. ‘I should also like to get what I deserve, Francis.’
‘It’s dreary for you, waiting.’
‘Frightfully.’
‘Mm.’
‘Are you not tired of it also?’
‘Well … I cannot show you off in the street as I would like.’
‘How would you show me off?’
Carver did not reply to this; after a short silence he said, low, ‘You’ll be Mrs. Carver soon.’
‘I have set my sights upon it,’ said Lydia Wells, and then nobody spoke for a long time.
EQUINOX
In which the lovers sleep through much commotion.
George Shepard directed Sook Yongsheng’s body to be brought into his private study at the Police Camp and laid out on the floor. The blacking on the man’s chin and throat seemed all the more gruesome in death; Mrs. George, as the body was brought in, breathed very deeply, as though steadying herself internally against a wind. Cowell Devlin, arriving from the Police Camp gaol-house, looked down at the body in shock. The hatter perfectly recalled the hermit, Crosbie Wells, who had been laid out in this very way, two months prior—on the very same sheet of muslin, in fact, his lips slightly parted, one eye showing a glint of white where the lids had not been properly closed. It was a moment before Devlin realised who the dead man really was.
‘The shot was mine,’ said Shepard, calmly. ‘He was drawing his pistol on Carver. Meaning to shoot him in the back, through the window. I caught him just in time.’
Devlin found his voice at last. ‘You couldn’t have—disarmed him?’
‘No,’ said Shepard. ‘Not in the moment. It was his life or Carver’s.’
Margaret Shepard let out a sob.
‘But I don’t understand,’ Devlin said, glancing at her, and then back at Shepard. ‘What was he doing, drawing a pistol on Carver?’
‘Perhaps you might clear up the chaplain’s confusion, Margaret,’ said George Shepard, addressing his wife, who sobbed a second time. ‘Reverend, I’ll be wanting you to dig another grave.’
‘Surely his body ought to be sent home to his people,’ Devlin said, frowning.
‘This one has no people,’ said Shepard.
‘How do you know that?’ said Devlin.
‘Again,’ said Shepard, ‘perhaps you ought to ask my wife.’
‘Mrs. Shepard?’ said Devlin, uncertainly.
Margaret Shepard gasped and covered her face with her hands.
Shepard turned to her. ‘Compose yourself,’ he said. ‘Don’t be a child.’
The woman took her hands from her face at once. ‘Forgive me, Reverend,’ she whispered, without looking at him. Her face was very white.
‘That’s quite all right,’ said Devlin, frowning. ‘You’re in shock, that’s all. Perhaps you ought to lie down.’
‘George,’ she whispered.
‘I consider that you did the ethical thing today,’ the gaoler said, staring at her. ‘I commend you for it.’
At this Mrs. Shepard’s face crumpled. She clapped her hands over her mouth, and ran from the room.
‘My apologies,’ said the gaoler to Devlin, when she was gone. ‘My wife has a volatile temperament, as you can see.’
‘I do not fault her,’ Devlin said. The relations between Shepard and his wife troubled him extremely, but he knew better than to give voice to his fears. ‘It is very natural to feel overcome in the presence of the dead. All the more so, if one has a personal history with the deceased.’
Shepard was staring down at Sook Yongsheng’s body. ‘Devlin,’ he said after a moment, looking up, ‘will you share a drink with me?’
Devlin was surprised: the gaoler had never made such an invitation before. ‘I would be honoured,’ he said, still speaking carefully. ‘But perhaps we might go into the parlour … or out onto the porch, where we will not disturb Mrs. Shepard’s rest.’
‘Yes.’ Shepard went to his liquor cabinet. ‘Do you have a taste for brandy, or for whisky? I have both.’
‘Well,’ Devlin said, surprised again, ‘it’s been an awfully long time since I had a drop of whisky. Some whisky would be very nice.’
‘Kirkliston is what I have,’ said Shepard, plucking out the bottle, and holding it up. ‘It’s tolerable stuff.’ He stacked two glasses, swept them up into his great hand, and gestured for Devlin to open the door.
The Police Camp courtyard was deserted, and chilly in the dark. All the buildings opposite were shuttered, their inhabitants abed; the wind had dropped at sundown, and it was almost perfectly quiet, the silence like the surface of a pond. The only sound came from the moths bumping against the glass globe that hung in a bracket beside the cottage door. There came a fizz of light each time a moth spiralled down into the flame, and then a dusty, acrid smell, as its body burned.
Shepard set out the glasses on the banister rail, and poured them both a measure.
‘Margaret was my brother’s wife,’ he said, handing one of the glasses to Devlin, and draining the other. ‘My older brother. Jeremy. I married her after Jeremy died.’
‘Thank you,’ Devlin murmured, accepting the glass, and holding the liquor to his nose. The gaoler had been too modest: the whisky was more than tolerable. In Hokitika a bottle of Kirkliston cost eighteen shillings, and double that whenever spirits were scarce.
‘The White Horse Saloon,’ the gaoler was saying. ‘That was the name of the place. A dockside tavern at Darling Harbour. He was shot through the temple.’
Devlin sipped at his whisky. The taste was smoky and slightly musty; it put him in mind of cured meats, and new books, and barnyards, and cloves.
‘So I married his wife,’ Shepard went on, pouring himself another measure. ‘It was the moral thing to do. I am not like my brother, Reverend, neither in temperament nor in taste. He was a dissolute. I do not mean to commend myself by contrast, but the difference between us was very often remarked. It had been remarked since our childhoods. I knew virtually nothing of his marriage to Margaret. She was a barmaid. She was not a beauty, as you know. But I married her. I did the dutiful thing. I married her, and provided for her, in her loss, and together we waited for the trial.’
Devlin nodded mutely, staring at his whisky, turning the small glass around in his hand. He was thinking of Sook Yongsheng, lying cold on the floor inside—his chin and throat smeared with bootblack; his eyebrows thickened, like a clown.
‘Poor, brutish Jeremy,’ Shepard said. ‘I never admired him, and to my knowledge, he never admired me. He was a terrible brawler. I expected that one of his brawls would turn fatal, sooner or later; they happened often enough. When I first learned that he had been murdered, I wasn’t terribly surprised.’