The Luminaries

‘I meant to return,’ A

‘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,’ A

‘But then you lost consciousness,’ Gascoigne said.

‘Perhaps I fainted.’

‘You don’t believe that.’

A

‘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?’

A

‘A pipe filled with his opium!’ Gascoigne set the kettle on a rack above the range.

‘Yes—I suppose,’ A

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.’

He spoke loudly, meaning to rouse A

‘That’s my business,’ A

‘As soon as we are decided what to do with this pile,’ Gascoigne finished for her. ‘Yes: you ought to do that.’

Gascoigne’s mood had changed again: suddenly, he was extremely vexed. No clear explanation had yet presented itself to him as to why A

‘How much is this worth?’ said A

Gascoigne crushed the stub of his cigarette on his saucer. ‘I think the question you ought to be asking, my dear,’ he said, ‘is not how much; it is who, and why. Whose gold is that? Whose claim did it come from? And where was it bound?’

They agreed, that first night, to hide the pile away. They agreed that if anyone asked A

With this strategy having been decided, Gascoigne then emptied his tartan biscuit tin, and together they swept the gold into it, wrapped the tin in a blanket, and placed the entire bundle in a flour sack that Gascoigne tied with string. He requested, until they had further intelligence, that the sack be stowed at his quarters, beneath his bed. At first A

The following fortnight seemed to pass in a blur. A

Gascoigne had not spoken with A

On the day after Crosbie Wells’s burial, A

All this was ru

A

But A

‘Was it a blank? A false cartridge?’

She shook her head again.

‘Perhaps you and the chemist—perhaps you devised something together.’

That roused her; she pushed away from him with the heels of her hands, and said, in a voice full of disgust, ‘With Pritchard?’

It pleased Gascoigne to see her brighten, even in anger. ‘Well, then: what was he wanting you for?’ he said.