Thus the ribbon of the Coast—and there at the heart of it all, the Arahura River, taonga, wahi tapu, he matahiapo i te iwi! If the Arahura was Tauwhare’s equator, dividing the land of Te Tai Poutini into halves, then Crosbie’s cottage, situated in the valley more or less halfway between the mountains and the ocean, was his meridian. And yet he could not claim it; his hapu could not claim it; his iwi could not claim it. Before Crosbie Wells’s body had been committed to the ground, those hundred rolling acres in the Arahura Valley had been purchased by a profit-hungry Pakeha, who had sworn, upon his honour, that he had come by the land honestly: there had been no foul play of any kind, he had said, and he certainly had not broken any laws.
‘A hotel?’ said Löwenthal. ‘Or a doss house? Just the name will do.’
‘I do not have an address,’ Tauwhare said.
‘Well, here,’ said Löwenthal, coming to his aid. ‘I’ll write “inquiries care of the editor, Weld-street”. How about that? You can come to me later this week and ask if anyone has inquired.’
‘That’s fine,’ said Tauwhare.
Löwenthal waited for an expression of gratitude, but none came. ‘Very good,’ he said, after a pause. His voice was cold. ‘It’s sixpence, for a week in the columns. Ten pence for a fortnight, and a shilling sixpence for a month. In advance, of course.’
‘A week,’ Tauwhare said, shaking the contents of his purse carefully onto his palm. The small pile of pennies and farthings showed plainly that he was in need of work. His only income since the night at the Crown had been a silver shilling, won on a game of strength two weeks ago. Once he had paid Löwenthal for the advertisement, he would barely have enough to cover the following day’s meals.
Löwenthal watched him count pennies a moment, and then said, in a kinder voice, ‘I say, Mr. Tauwhare: if you’re short of ready money, you might please yourself to head down to the spit. There’s a call for hands on Gibson Quay. You might not have heard it—the bell sounded an hour ago. Godspeed’s out of the water at long last, you see, and they need men to clear the cargo.’
Over the past three weeks the barque had been shunted into shallower waters by two large tugboats; from there her hull had been lifted onto rollers, laid flush with the shore; finally, at low tide that morning, she had been hauled clear of the surf by a team of harnessed Clydesdales and a winch. She was now dry upon the spit—seeming, in her shattered enormity, less like a beached creature of the water than like a fallen creature of the air. Löwenthal had detoured past the spit that morning; he had fancied that the ship had plunged from a great height, and had perished, where she fell. All three of her masts had broken off at the base, and without her sails and rigging she seemed almost shorn. He had gazed at her for a long moment before moving on. Once her cargo had been cleared and her fixings removed she would be dismantled and sold, piecemeal, for salvage and repair.
‘Now that I mention it,’ he went on, ‘we might do very well to have one of our own men on hand, while the cargo’s being cleared. On account of Tom’s shipping crate, I mean—and whatever it was that Mr. Moody thought he saw, below. You can be our eyes and ears, Mr. Tauwhare. You have the perfect excuse, if you’re short on cash, and in need of honest work. Nobody will ask you how or why.’
But Tauwhare shook his head. He had pledged, privately, never to transact with Francis Carver again, under any circumstances. ‘I do not do odd jobs,’ he said, placing six pennies on the countertop.
‘Go on down to the Godspeed,’ Löwenthal insisted. ‘Nobody’s going to ask you any questions. You have the perfect excuse.’
But Tauwhare did not like to take advice from other men, however well intentioned. ‘I will wait for surveying work,’ he said.
‘You might be waiting a good long time.’
He shrugged. ‘Perhaps.’
Löwenthal was becoming annoyed. ‘You aren’t seeing sense,’ he said. ‘Here’s a chance for you to do us all a good turn, and yourself besides. You won’t be able to attend the widow’s party without a ticket, and you won’t be able to buy a ticket if you’ve got an empty purse. Go on down to Gibson Quay, and put in a day’s work, and do us all a favour.’
‘I do not want to attend the party.’
Löwenthal was incredulous. ‘Why on earth not?’
‘You said it would be foolish. A piece of theatre.’
A moment of quiet passed between them. Then Löwenthal said, ‘Did you know they’ve brought in a barrister? A Mr. John Fellowes, from the Greymouth Police. He’s been assigned to straighten out the Crosbie Wells affair.’
Tauwhare shrugged.
‘He’s doing his research as we speak,’ Löwenthal continued, ‘in order to find out if this business warrants an inquiry. He’s making a report for a Supreme Court judge. Supreme Court means murder, Mr. Tauwhare. A murder trial.’
‘I have had no part in murder,’ said Tauwhare.
‘Perhaps not—but we both know that you’re as mixed up in this business as the rest of us. Come! Mr. Moody saw something in the hold of the Godspeed, and you have a perfect chance to find out what he saw.’
But Tauwhare did not care what Mr. Moody saw, or did not see. ‘I will wait for honest work,’ he said again.
‘You might show a little loyalty.’
Tauwhare flared at this. ‘I have not broken my oath,’ he said.
Löwenthal reached across the workbench, put his hand over the pile of pennies, and swept them into his apron pocket. ‘I don’t mean to the Crown lot,’ he said. ‘I mean to your old friend Wells. This is his widow we’re talking about, after all. His widow, and his inheritance, and his memory. You’ll do as you please, of course. But if I were you, I’d make it my business to attend the party tonight.’ ‘Why?’ Tauwhare spat out the word contemptuously.
‘Why?’ said Löwenthal, picking up his composing stick again.
‘Why show loyalty to your good friend Wells? Only that I would have thought you owed it to the man, after selling him out to Francis Carver.’
JUPITER IN SAGITTARIUS
In which Thomas Balfour suffers a lapse of discretion; old subjects are revived; and Alistair Lauderback pens a letter of complaint.
Alistair Lauderback had not been in Hokitika since Wednesday morning, chiefly for the reason that the wreck of the Godspeed was wholly visible from his suite of rooms on the upper floor of the Palace Hotel, and the sight of it caused him no end of bitterness. When he was offered the chance to give an address at the Greymouth Town Hall, and to cut a ribbon on a shaft mine near Kumara, he accepted both invitations heartily, and at once. At the moment we join him—the moment Tauwhare took his leave of Löwenthal—Lauderback was making his way across the Kumara wetlands at a great pace, with a Sharps sporting rifle propped against his shoulder, and a satchel full of shot in his hand. Beside him was his friend Thomas Balfour, similarly armed, and similarly flushed with virtuous exertion. The two had spent the morning shooting at game, and they were now returning to their horses, which were tethered at the edge of the valley, visible from this distance as a small patch of white and a small patch of black against the sky.