The Luminaries

‘You would use a different one?’

‘Yes.’

‘Your child was taken from you?’

A hard look came across A

Gascoigne was silent. He had not yet finished his cigarette, but he dropped it, crushed the ember with the heel of his shoe, and lit another. A

It was very unlike her to burst out in such a way. A

A

‘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,’ A

‘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,’ A

‘How many others do you own?’

‘Five—no; four,’ said A

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.’

A

‘Who were you with last night, Miss Wetherell?’ he asked again—and this time A

‘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!’ A

‘You left his house?’

‘Yes—and came back to the Gridiron, where I have my lodging,’ A

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 unca

‘I see,’ he said aloud. ‘So you left the man sleeping?’

‘Yes,’ said A

‘And you were wearing this dress.’ He pointed at the orange tatters between them.

‘It’s my work dress,’ A

‘Always?’

‘When I’m working,’ A

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. A

‘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,’ A

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 A

Gascoigne did not know Staines, having arrived in Hokitika himself only very recently, but watching A

‘Could Mr. Staines have wished you harm?’ he said.

‘No!’ she said at once.

‘Do you trust him?’

‘Yes,’ A

But she did not complete the comparison.

‘He is a lover?’ Gascoigne said, after a pause.

A

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?’

A

‘I see,’ said Gascoigne. ‘Well, then. If he is rich, perhaps this gold is his.’

‘No,’ A

‘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 A

Gascoigne paused to drag upon his cigarette. Then he said, ‘You left his bed in the night—did you not?’