Mannering rolled his cigar in his fingers. ‘No papers,’ he said again. ‘What do you make of that?’
‘I don’t know. Perhaps he lost them.’
‘How do you lose your papers, though?’
‘I don’t know,’ Frost said again. He did not like to be pressed to share his views.
‘Perhaps someone burned them. Got rid of them.’
Frost frowned slightly. ‘Who?’
‘That political fellow,’ said Mannering. ‘Lauderback. He was the first upon the scene. Maybe he’s mixed up in this business somehow. Maybe he told Löwenthal about the fortune hidden in the cottage. Maybe he saw the fortune—and told Löwenthal about it—and then Löwenthal told Clinch! But that’s foolish,’ he added, rebutting his own hypothesis. ‘There’s nothing in that for him, is there? And nothing for the Jew. Unless everyone’s getting a cut, somewhere along the line …’
‘Nobody got a cut,’ said Frost. ‘The fortune’s being held in escrow at the bank. Nobody can touch it. At least not until the business with the widow gets straightened out.’
‘Oh yes—the widow,’ said Mannering, with relish. ‘There’s a turn of events for you! What do you make of her? She’s an acquaintance of mine, you know—an acquaintance. Greenway, that’s her maiden name. I never knew her as Mrs. Wells—the mistress Greenway, she was to me. How do you like her, Charlie?’
Frost shrugged. ‘She’s got paperwork on her side,’ he said. ‘If the marriage certificate turns out to be legal then the sale will be revoked, and the fortune will be hers. That’s in the hands of the bureaucrats now.’
‘But how do you like her, I said?’
Frost looked annoyed. ‘She cuts a fine figure,’ he said. ‘I think her very handsome.’ He stuck his cigar in the side of his mouth, and bit down upon it, lending to his expression the shadow of a wince.
‘She’s handsome all right,’ said Mannering happily. ‘Oh, she’s handsome all right! Plays a man like a pianoforte, and what a repertoire—indeed! I suppose that’s what happened to poor old Crosbie Wells: he got played, like all the rest of them.’
‘I cannot make sense of their union at all,’ Frost admitted. ‘What could an old man like Crosbie Wells have to offer—well, even a plain woman, let alone a handsome one? I cannot make sense of her attraction; though of course I can well imagine his.’
‘You are forgetting his fortune,’ Mannering said, wagging his finger. ‘The strongest aphrodisiac of all! Surely she married old Crosbie for his money. And then he hoarded it up, and she had nothing to do but wait for him to die. What else could explain it? When she popped up so soon after his death—like she’d been planning it, you know. Oh, Lydia Wells is a canny soul! She keeps her eyes on the pennies and her fingers on the pounds. She wouldn’t sign her name except to profit.’
Frost did not respond at once, for Mannering’s response had cued him to remember the reason for his visit, and he wished to collect his thoughts before he announced his business; after a moment, however, Mannering gave a bark of laughter, and thumped his fist upon the desk.
‘There it is!’ he exclaimed, with much delight. ‘I knew it! I knew you were in a fix one way or another—and I knew I’d smoke you out! What is it, then? What’s your crime? What’s the rub? You’ve given it away, Charlie; it’s written all over you. It’s something to do with that fortune, isn’t it? Something about Crosbie Wells.’
Frost sipped his brandy. He had committed no crime, exactly—and yet there was a rub, and it did have to do with the fortune, and it did concern Crosbie Wells. His gaze slid over Mannering’s shoulder to the window, and he paused a moment, in contemplation of the view, deciding how best to phrase the matter.
After the fortune discovered in Wells’s cottage had been valued by the bank, Edgar Clinch had made Frost a very fine present, to acknowledge his role in facilitating the sale: a banknote made out to the sum of thirty pounds. The receipt of this banknote had a sudden and intoxicating effect upon Charlie Frost, whose income was devoted, in the main, to the upkeep of parents he never saw, and did not love. In a frenzy of excitement, unprecedented in his worldly experience, Frost determined to spend the entire sum of money, and at once. He would not inform his parents of the windfall, and he would spend every last penny on himself. He changed the note into thirty shining sovereigns, and with these he purchased a silk vest, a case of whisky, a set of leather-bound histories, a ruby lapel-pin, a box of fine imported candies, and a set of monogrammed handkerchiefs, his initials picked out against a rose.
Lydia Wells had arrived in Hokitika some days after this prodigal fit. Immediately upon her arrival she visited the Reserve Bank, announcing her intentions to revoke the sale of her late husband’s cottage and effects. If this revocation proved successful, Frost would be obliged, he knew, to recover those thirty pounds in turn. He could not sell the vest back again, except as worn goods; the books and the lapel-pin he could pawn, but only at a fraction of their worth; he had opened the case of whisky; the candies were gone; and what fool would want to buy a handkerchief embroidered with another man’s name? All in all he would be lucky to recover even half of the amount that he had spent. He would be forced to go to one of Hokitika’s many usurers, and beg for credit; he would bear his debt for months, perhaps even for years; and worst of all, he would even have to confess the whole affair to his parents. The prospect made him sick.
But he had not come to Mannering to confess his humiliations. ‘I am not in a fix,’ he replied curtly, turning his gaze back to his host, ‘but it is my guess that someone else very well might be. You see: I do not believe that fortune belonged to Crosbie Wells at all. I believe that it was stolen.’ He leaned over to tap the ash of his cigar, and saw that the end had gone out.
‘Well—from whom?’ Mannering demanded.
‘That is precisely what I wish to speak with you about,’ the young banker said. There were lucifers in his vest pocket; he transferred his cigar to his right hand, to retrieve them. ‘I had a notion just now, this afternoon, and I wanted to run it by you. It’s about Emery Staines.’
‘Oh—no doubt he’s wrapped up in it all,’ Mannering said, throwing himself back into his chair. (Frost set about lighting his cigar a second time.) ‘Disappearing that very same day! No doubt he’s connected. I don’t hold out much hope for our friend Emery, I’m telling you that. We have a saying on the fields: it’s unlucky to be lucky for long. Have you heard that one? Well, Emery Staines was the luckiest man I’m ever likely to know. He went from rags to riches, that boy, and all without a helping hand from any quarter. I’m wagering that he was murdered, Charlie. Murdered in the river—or on the beach—and his body washed away. No man likes to see a boy make his fortune. Not before he’s thirty. And especially not when that fortune’s clean. I’m wagering whoever killed him was twenty years his senior, on the inside. At least twenty years. How about that for a bet?’
‘Forgive me,’ Frost said, and shook his head very slightly.
‘Oh yes,’ Mannering said, disappointed. ‘You don’t place your money, do you? You’re one of those sensible types. Never toss a coin except to lay it in your purse.’
Frost did not reply to this, having been put in mind, uncomfortably, of the thirty pounds he had recently squandered in such a profligate way; after a moment Mannering cried, ‘But don’t leave me waiting!’—feeling embarrassed, for his last remark had come out rather more as an insult than he had intended it to seem. ‘Give it up! What’s your notion?’
Charlie Frost explained what he had discovered that morning: that Frank Carver owned a half-share in the Aurora goldmine, and that he and Emery Staines were, to all intents and purposes, partners.