But Lauderback’s legal training had not been for nothing: he was a canny inquisitor, and never more than when he knew that he was being told a partial truth. He asked the value of the cut, and Balfour replied that the investment totalled a little over four hundred pounds. Lauderback was quick to ask the reason why the investment comprised ten percent of the total value discovered in the cottage, and when Balfour remained silent, he guessed, with even more alarming quickness, that ten percent was the standard rate of commission, and perhaps this investment represented the commission merchant’s fee.
Balfour was appalled that Lauderback had figured this out so quickly, and protested that it wasn’t Harald Nilssen’s fault.
Lauderback laughed. ‘He consented! He gave his commission away!’
‘Shepard had him in a corner. He’s not to blame. It was an inch short of blackmail, the way it played out—really. You oughtn’t make a meal of it. You oughtn’t, for Mr. Nilssen’s sake.’
‘A private investment, upon the eleventh hour!’ Lauderback exclaimed. (He was not particularly interested in Harald Nilssen, whom he had met only once at the Star Hotel in Hokitika, over a month ago. Nilssen had struck him as a very provincial type, rather too accustomed to a loyal audience of three or four, and rather too garrulous when drinking; Lauderback had written him off as bore, who was self-satisfied, and would never amount to anything at all.) He stood up on his stirrups. ‘This is politics, Tom—oh, this is politics, all right! Do you know what Shepard’s trying to do? He’s trying to get the gaol-house underway before Westland gets her seat, and he’s using a private investment to spur the enterprise along. Oh-ho! I shall have something to say about this in the Times—rest assured!’
But Balfour was not particularly assured by this, and nor did he feel inclined to rest. He protested, and after a short negotiation Lauderback agreed to leave Nilssen’s name out of it—‘Though I shan’t spare George Shepard the same courtesy,’ he added, and laughed again.
‘I take it you don’t fancy him as Magistrate,’ Balfour said—wondering whether Lauderback had designs upon that eminent position himself.
‘I don’t give two shakes about the Magistrate’s seat!’ Lauderback returned. ‘It’s the principle of the thing: that’s what I shall stand upon.’
‘Where’s the principle?’ Balfour said, with momentary confusion: Lauderback did care about the Magistrate’s seat. He had begun by mentioning it, and in a very surly humour at that.
‘The man’s a thief!’ Lauderback cried. ‘That money belongs to Crosbie Wells—dead or alive. George Shepard has no right to spend another man’s money as he pleases, and I don’t care what for!’
Balfour was quiet. Until this moment Lauderback had never once mentioned the fortune that had been discovered in Wells’s cottage, or expressed interest in how it was to be deployed. Nor had he once mentioned the legal debacle that revolved around the widow’s claim upon her late husband’s estate. Balfour had assumed that this silence owed to the fact of Lydia Wells’s involvement, for Lauderback was still too embarrassed of his past disgraces to mention her name. But now it seemed almost as though Lauderback had leaped to Crosbie Wells’s defence. It seemed as though the issue of Crosbie Wells’s fortune was an issue about which Lauderback cherished a very raw opinion. Balfour glanced at the other man, and then away. Had Lauderback guessed that the fortune discovered in Wells’s cottage was the very same fortune by which he had been blackmailed the year before? Balfour’s interest was whetted. He decided to provoke the other man.
‘What does it really matter?’ he said lightly. ‘Why, most likely that fortune had already been stolen from somebody else; it certainly didn’t belong to Crosbie Wells. What’s a man like him doing with four thousand pounds? It’s no secret that he was a wastrel, and the step from a wastrel to a thief is short indeed.’
‘There’s no proof of that,’ Lauderback began, but Balfour interrupted him.
‘So what does it really matter, if someone steals it back after he’s dead and gone? That’s my question. Chances are it was dirty money in the first place.’
‘What does it matter?’ Lauderback exploded. ‘It’s the principle of the thing—it’s as I say: the principle of it! You do not solve a crime by committing another. Thieving from a thief—it’s still a crime, whichever way you try and dress it! Don’t be absurd.’
So Lauderback was Crosbie Wells’s defender—and a very sore defender, by the looks of things. This was interesting.
‘But you are getting the almshouse you wanted,’ Balfour said—still speaking lightly, as though they were discussing something very trivial. ‘The money is not to be squandered. It is to be used for the erection of a public works.’
‘I don’t care whether Governor Shepard is lining his pockets or building an altar,’ Lauderback snapped. ‘That’s an excuse, that is—using the end to justify the means. I don’t deal in that kind of logic.’
‘And not just any public works,’ Balfour continued, as if Lauderback had not spoken. ‘You will get your asylum after all! Come; do you not remember our conversation at the Palace? “Where’s a woman to go”? “One clean shot at another kind of a life”—all of that? Welclass="underline" we are soon to have that one clean shot! George Shepard has made it so!’
Lauderback looked furious. He remembered very well what he had said about the merits of asylum three weeks ago, but he did not like his own words to be quoted back to him unless the purpose of the reference was commendation alone.
‘It is disrespectful to the dead,’ he said shortly, ‘and that is all I will say about it.’
But Balfour was not so easily dissuaded. ‘I say,’ he exclaimed, as though the thought had just occurred to him, ‘the gold that Francis Carver put up against your Godspeed—that had been sewn into the lining of—’
‘What about it?’
‘Well—you never saw it again, did you? Nor heard tell of it. And then the very same sum—more or less—turns up in Crosbie Wells’s cottage, barely a year later. A little over four thousand pounds. Perhaps it’s the very same pile.’
‘Very possible,’ said Lauderback.
‘One wonders how it got there,’ said Balfour.
‘Indeed one does,’ said Lauderback.
At the Golden Lion they parted ways—Lauderback having evidently given up on his wish that Balfour remain in Kumara a second day, for he bid his friend goodbye very curtly, and without regret.
Balfour set off for Hokitika in a state of considerable discomfort. He had promised to keep Nilssen’s confidence, as he had on behalf of each one of the men of the Crown, and he had broken that promise. And for what? What had he gained, by reneging on his oath, and breaking his word? Disgusted with himself, Balfour dug his heels into his mare’s flanks, spurring her to a canter; he kept her at that pace until he reached the Arahura River, where he was obliged to dismount, walk the creature down to the beach, and lead her carefully across the shallows at the place where the torrent of fresh water fanned out over the sand.
Lauderback had not stayed to watch his friend ride off. He had already begun forming his letter in his mind: his lips were pursed in concentration, and there was a furrow in his brow. He led his horse to the stables, pressed a sixpence into the groom’s hand, and then retired at once to his rooms upstairs. Once alone, he locked the door, dragged his writing desk into the diamond-shaped patch of light beneath the window, fetched a chair, sat down, and pulled out a fresh sheet of paper; after some final moments’ contemplation with his pen against his lips, he shook out his cuff, leaned forward, and wrote: