‘It appears to me,’ Gascoigne said presently, ‘that someone was waiting for you to smoke that pipe last night. They waited until you were unconscious, and then sewed this gold into your dress.’
She frowned—not at Gascoigne, but at the lump in her hand. ‘Why?’
‘I have no idea,’ the Frenchman said. ‘Who were you with last night, Miss Wetherell? And just how much was he willing to pay?’
‘Listen, though,’ Anna said, ignoring the question. ‘You’re saying that someone took this dress off me, sewed in all this dust so carefully, and then laced me back up—filled with gold—only to leave me in the middle of the road?’
‘It does sound improbable,’ Gascoigne agreed. He changed his tack. ‘Well then: answer me this. How long have you had that garment?’
‘Since the spring,’ Anna said. ‘I bought it salvage, from a vendor on Tancred-street.’
‘How many others do you own?’
‘Five—no; four,’ said Anna. ‘But the others aren’t for whoring. This is my whoring gown—on account of its colour, you see. I had a separate frock for lying-in—but that was ruined, when—when the baby died.’
There was a moment of quiet between them.
‘Was it sewed in all at once?’ Gascoigne said presently. ‘Or over a period? I suppose there’s no way to tell.’
Anna did not respond. After a moment Gascoigne glanced up, and met her gaze.
‘Who were you with last night, Miss Wetherell?’ he asked again—and this time Anna could not ignore the question.
‘I was with a man named Staines,’ she said quietly.
‘I do not know this man,’ Gascoigne said. ‘He was with you at the opium den?’
‘No!’ Anna said, sounding shocked. ‘I wasn’t at the den. I was at his house. In his—bed. I left in the night to take a pipe. That’s the last thing I remember.’
‘You left his house?’
‘Yes—and came back to the Gridiron, where I have my lodging,’ Anna said. ‘It was a strange night, and I was feeling odd. I wanted a pipe. I remember lighting it. The next thing I remember, I was in gaol, and there was daylight.’
She gave a shiver, and suddenly clutched her arms across her body. She spoke, Gascoigne thought, with an exhilarated fatigue, the kind that comes after the first blush of love, when the self has lost its mooring, and, half-drowning, succumbs to a fearful tide. But addiction was not love; it could not be love. Gascoigne could not romanticise the purple shadows underneath her eyes, her wasted limbs, the dreamy disorientation with which she spoke; but even so, he thought, it was uncanny that the opium’s ruin could mirror love’s raptures with such fidelity.
‘I see,’ he said aloud. ‘So you left the man sleeping?’
‘Yes,’ said Anna. ‘He was asleep when I left—yes.’
‘And you were wearing this dress.’ He pointed at the orange tatters between them.
‘It’s my work dress,’ Anna said. ‘It’s the one I always wear.’
‘Always?’
‘When I’m working,’ Anna said.
Gascoigne did not reply, but narrowed his eyes very slightly, and pressed his lips together, to signify there was a question in his mind that he could not ask with decency. Anna sighed. She decided that she would not express her gratitude in the conventional way; she would repay the sum of her bail in coin, and in the morning.
‘Look,’ she said, ‘It’s just as I told you. We fell asleep, I woke up, I wanted a pipe, I left his house, I went home, I lit my pipe, and that’s the last thing I remember.’
‘Did you notice anything strange about your own rooms when you returned? Anything that might show that someone had been there, for example?’
‘No,’ Anna said. ‘The door was locked, same as always. I opened it with my key, I walked in, I closed the door, I sat down, I lit my pipe, and that’s the last thing I remember.’
It wearied her to recapitulate—and she would become still wearier in the days to come, once it transpired that Emery Staines had disappeared in the night, and had not been seen since, by anyone. Upon this point Anna Wetherell would be examined, and cross-examined, and scorned, and disbelieved; she would repeat her story until it ceased to be familiar, and she began to doubt herself.
Gascoigne did not know Staines, having arrived in Hokitika himself only very recently, but watching Anna now, he felt suddenly intensely curious about the man.
‘Could Mr. Staines have wished you harm?’ he said.
‘No!’ she said at once.
‘Do you trust him?’
‘Yes,’ Anna said quietly. ‘As much as—’
But she did not complete the comparison.
‘He is a lover?’ Gascoigne said, after a pause.
Anna blushed. ‘He is the richest man in Hokitika,’ she said. ‘If you have not heard of him yet, you will presently. Emery Staines. He owns most things around town.’
Again Gascoigne’s gaze drifted to the gleaming pile of gold on the table—but pointedly this time: to the richest man in Hokitika, this would seem, surely, like a very small pile. ‘He is a lover?’ he repeated. ‘Or a client?’
Anna paused. ‘A client,’ she said at last, and in a smaller voice. Gascoigne inclined his head respectfully, as if Anna had just informed him that the man had passed away. She rushed on: ‘He’s a prospector. That’s how he made his wealth. But he hails from New South Wales, as I do. In fact we were on the same ship across the Tasman, when we first arrived: the Fortunate Wind.’
‘I see,’ said Gascoigne. ‘Well, then. If he is rich, perhaps this gold is his.’
‘No,’ Anna said, alarmed. ‘He wouldn’t.’
‘He wouldn’t what? Wouldn’t lie to you?’
‘Wouldn’t—’
‘Wouldn’t use you as a beast of burden, to traffic this gold without your knowing?’
‘Traffic it where?’ said Anna. ‘I’m not leaving. I’m not going anywhere.’
Gascoigne paused to drag upon his cigarette. Then he said, ‘You left his bed in the night—did you not?’
‘I meant to return,’ Anna said. ‘And sleep it off.’
‘You left without his knowledge, I think.’
‘But I meant to return.’
‘And despite the fact—perhaps—that he had contracted you to remain until the morning.’
‘I’m telling you,’ Anna said, ‘I only meant to be gone a little while.’
‘But then you lost consciousness,’ Gascoigne said.
‘Perhaps I fainted.’
‘You don’t believe that.’
Anna chewed her lip. ‘Oh, it doesn’t make sense!’ she exclaimed after a moment. ‘The gold doesn’t make sense; the opium doesn’t make sense. Why would I end up there? Out cold, quite alone, and halfway to Arahura!’
‘Surely much of what happens when you are under the effects of opium does not make sense.’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Yes, all right.’
‘But I would be happy to defer to you on that point,’ Gascoigne said, ‘having never touched the drug myself.’
The kettle began to whistle. Gascoigne stuck his cigarette in the corner of his mouth, wrapped his hand in a scrap of serge, and lifted it down from the range. As he poured the water over the tea leaves he said, ‘What about your chink? He touched the opium, did he not?’
Anna rubbed her face—as a tired infant rubs its face: clumsily. ‘I didn’t see Ah Sook last night,’ she said. ‘I told you, I took a pipe at home.’
‘A pipe filled with his opium!’ Gascoigne set the kettle on a rack above the range.
‘Yes—I suppose,’ Anna said. ‘But you might just as well call it Joseph Pritchard’s.’
Gascoigne sat down again. ‘Mr. Staines must be wondering what has happened to you, seeing as you left his bed so abruptly in the night, and did not return. Though I notice he did not come to make your bail today—neither he nor your employer.’