‘He is,’ Shepard said.
‘He will take the seat, I think,’ said Nilssen, rubbing a pinch of tobacco between his fingers. ‘The
Lyttelton Times
is backing his play.’
‘You value him?’
‘Tunnels and railways,’ Nilssen said, ‘that’s his game, isn’t it? Progress, civilisation, all of that. Strikes me that your thinking
squares quite nicely with Lauderback’s campaign.’ He struck a match.
Shepard made to reply, then hesitated. ‘I don’t make a habit of speaking my politics in another man’s office unless I’m invited to do so, Mr. Nilssen.’
‘Oh—please,’ said Nilssen politely, shaking out the match.
‘But with your leave,’ nodding his great pale head, ‘I will say this. I too think that Lauderback will take the seat—Parliament and the Super both. He has a great force of personality on his side, and of course his connexion to the Bar and to the Provincial Council speak highly of his character and skill.’
‘And this is a re-election for him, of course,’ interrupted Nilssen, who very often made a habit of speaking politics in other men’s offices, and forgot for a moment that he had granted the other man licence to speak his own mind. ‘He’s familiar.’
‘He is familiar—to his own circle,’ Shepard said. ‘His loyalty is to Canterbury, and his tunnels and railways—to take your phrase—are the Lyttelton tunnel and the projected railway between Christchurch and Dunedin. As Superintendent he will reapportion whatever funds are not already tied into this tunnel and this railway—as he must, of course, to make good the promises of his campaign.’
‘You may be right about the Super,’ Nilssen said, ‘but as an M.P.? He will
represent
Westland—’
‘Lauderback is a Westland man in electorate only,’ Shepard said. ‘I do not fault him on it—he has my vote, Mr. Nilssen—but he does not know the digger’s life.’
Nilssen looked as if he meant to interrupt again, so Shepard pressed on, raising his voice a little. ‘I arrive now at the business that compelled this interview. I have the Commissioner’s
endorsement
to begin work upon a new gaol-house, away from the Police Camp, on the terrace north of town. You recall it was a company of convicts who first cleared the Hokitika-road? I intend to do the same thing here: I shall use my own convict labour to build the prison at Seaview.’
This notion appealed to Nilssen’s sense of retribution, and he smiled.
‘However, as you have already remarked,’ Shepard continued, ‘Alistair Lauderback’s focus is on transport: in his address to the Council he has argued in favour of using convict labour to build and maintain the Christchurch road. The route over the Alps is still treacherous—unfit for a horseman, much less for a coach.’
‘The Superintendent has the final word on the matter?’ Nilssen asked. ‘Are your convicts not yours to employ?’
‘Alas,’ Shepard said. ‘They are only mine to keep.’
The clerk entered, bearing coffee on a wooden tray. He was in a state of considerable excitement, for it was not often that Nilssen had visitors, and never visitors of such enigmatic repute as Pritchard (who was famous for his opium) and Shepard (who was famous for his wife). The clerk had arranged the coffee pot and saucers on the tray with particular attention, and he carried it high with his elbows cocked and his back held very straight. Nilssen nodded approvingly: it was not their custom for the clerk to wait on his employer, but Nilssen was pleased at the effect it must be
creating
in the mind of his guest. The clerk set the tray upon the sideboard and began to pour. He was hoping that the men would resume their conversation while he was still in the room, and so tried to pour slowly, feeling a pang of regret at the floating grains of chicory that he had added to the coffee grounds for reasons of economy, and now, with their ugly film of grit, seemed to
admonish
his pretensions.
Behind him Shepard said, ‘By the bye, Mr. Nilssen: what do you know about Emery Staines?’
There was a pause. ‘I know that he is missing,’ Nilssen responded.
‘Missing, yes,’ said Shepard. ‘He hasn’t been seen for almost a fortnight. Very strange.’
‘I do not know him well,’ Nilssen said.
‘Don’t you?’ said Shepard.
‘He is an acquaintance—but not a friend.’
‘Ah.’
Nilssen seemed about to cough; then he burst out, ‘Are you
quite
finished, Albert?’
The clerk set down the coffee pot.
‘Shall I leave the tray, sir?’
‘Yes, yes—then go, for God’s sake,’ Nilssen said. He lurched for the cup as it was handed him, causing a small tide of coffee to slop into the saucer, and set it down before him with a clatter. The clerk brought a second cup to Shepard, who made no move to touch it, and pointed to the desk before him without a word.
‘I shall say it plain,’ Shepard said, when the disappointed clerk had shut the door behind him. ‘I mean to begin work on the
gaol-house
at once, before the elections, so that when Lauderback takes office the work is already well underway. I am aware that this may seem to others as if I seek to actively thwart the success of his
campaign
. I come to you to solicit both your business and your discretion.’
‘What do you need?’ Nilssen said cautiously.
‘Materials to build, and perhaps ten or twenty able bodies to begin digging the foundation,’ Shepard said, reaching into his breast for the plans. ‘I can offer you commission at your standard rate. The site has been purchased already, and approved. Here is the architect’s design.’
‘This is the original? Or a copy?’ Nilssen took the papers from Shepard’s massive hand and unfolded them.
‘The original. There is no copy,’ Shepard said. ‘I keep these documents on my person always, of course.’
‘Of course,’ Nilssen agreed, reaching for his spectacles.
‘The reason I have come to you,’ Shepard continued, ‘and not to Cochran, or Morrison, or another competitor whose business—forgive me—is faring rather better than yours at present, owes only in part to your reputation as an efficient man.’
Nilssen looked up.
‘Permit me to speak frankly,’ Shepard said. ‘The matter is
indelicate,
I know; I will try and be as delicate as I can. It has come to my attention that you took home a commission to the value of many hundreds of pounds, upon closing the estate of Mr. Crosbie Wells.’
Nilssen started, but Shepard held up his hand to silence him.
‘Do not implicate yourself by speaking before you have heard what I have to say,’ he said. ‘I will tell you exactly what I know. The man’s body came through the Police Camp before his burial; given that he had no family or friends to speak of, we conducted the wake at the Camp itself. I had the solemn honour of viewing his body, and of being present while the physician checked his vital organs for signs of harm. Dr. Gillies concluded the cause of death was drink; I, with my slender knowledge of the subject, could only agree with his ruling. Dr. Gillies was careful in his examination of the contents of the dead man’s stomach and intestines, however, which contained not only food and spirits, but traces of laudanum—though not enough, I should add, to warrant undue suspicion. I do not believe that Crosbie Wells was poisoned, except by drink.
‘Now: even before the wake was over, Wells’s land and mill were sold. The land, as you know, was reclaimed by the bank, and was then purchased almost immediately by a Mr. Edgar Clinch; while the transaction was perfectly legal, it is nevertheless curious how swiftly the property changed hands. I understand that you were then called upon to clear the cottage and sell on the dead man’s effects, for a fee that would be set against their total value; you accepted this employment, and promptly discovered a great deal of hoarded gold (where was it hidden, in the flour canister?) to the aggregate value of four thousand pounds. A “homeward bounder”, to use the local phrase. Now, Mr. Nilssen, you ought have then been able to walk away with your percentage, which was by now a very handsome cut; the whole enterprise was thwarted, however, when Mr. Wells’s widow landed on the beach, and declared herself. She was one week too late to attend his burial, but not at all too late to contest the sale of his estate, and any transactions that had taken place as a consequence of that sale.
‘As I have said, I do not believe that Crosbie Wells was poisoned,’ Shepard said. ‘But I also do not believe that the hoarded gold belonged to him, much less to his widow. The apparition of the widow Wells is a curiosity in a tale already rather too curious for my taste.’ He paused. ‘Have I said anything so far that you know or guess to be untrue? You can decline to answer that if you wish.’
‘You mean to blackmail me?’ Nilssen managed.
‘Not at all,’ Shepard said. ‘But you must agree this smacks of plotting.’
‘Yes. I do.’
‘I am not a detective,’ Shepard said, ‘and profess no inclination towards that field. I care very little about how much you know. But I must have my new gaol-house, and I see an opportunity for both of us to gain.’
‘Speak it, sir.’
‘The widow Wells has made her appeal, to contest the sale of her late husband’s effects,’ Shepard said. ‘The appeal will take months to action, of course, as legal matters do, and in the meantime the money will be held in escrow by the bank. In the end, I expect that the sale will be revoked, and if no greater plot is exposed, the widow will claim the ’bounder as her own. Incidentally, I have enjoyed
several
conversations with Crosbie Wells these past few months, and he certainly never spoke of being married—not to me, nor to any other man I’ve spoken to.’
Nilssen had a vision of a cat tapping a small rodent back and forth with the flat of its paw, its claws in sheath. He was not guilty—he had done no wrong—and yet he
felt
guilty; he felt
implicated,
as though he had performed a terrible misdeed while sleeping, and had woken to find his bolster smeared with blood. He felt certain that any moment now the gaoler would expose him—but for what crime, he did not yet know. What was the word Pritchard had used?
Associated.
Yes—he felt that acutely.
When he was a small boy Nilssen had stolen a precious button from his cousin’s treasure chest. It was a cuff button from a
military
jacket, brass in colour, and engraved with the lithe body of a fox, running forward with its jaws parted and its ears cocked back. The button was domed, and greyer on one side than on the other, as if the wearer had tended to caress its edge with his finger, and over time had worn the shine away. Cousin Magnus had rickets and a bandy-legged gait: he would die soon, so he did not have to share his toys. But Nilssen’s longing for the button became so great that one night when Magnus was sleeping he crept in, unlatched
the chest, and stole it; he walked about the darkened nursery for a while, fingering the thing, testing its weight, running his finger over the body of the fox, feeling the brass take on the warmth of his hand—until something overcame him, not remorse exactly, but a dawning fatigue, an emptiness, and he returned the button to the place where he had found it. Cousin Magnus never knew. Nobody knew. But for months and years and even decades afterwards, long after Cousin Magnus was dead, that theft was as a splinter in his heart. He saw the moonlit nursery every time he spoke his cousin’s name; he blushed at nothing; he sometimes pinched himself, or uttered an oath, at the memory. For although a man is judged by his actions, by what he has said and done, a man judges himself by what he is willing to do, by what he might have said, or might have done—a judgment that is necessarily hampered, not only by the scope and limits of his imagination, but by the ever-changing
measure
of his doubt and self-esteem.
‘I estimate that it will be at least April before the sale is successfully repealed,’ Shepard was saying, with the same perfect gravity. ‘In the meantime—immediately, in fact—I propose that you invest the entire sum of your commission into the building of my gaol-house.’
Nilssen raised his eyebrows in surprise. ‘But the money is not mine,’ he said, for the second time that afternoon. ‘It has already been revoked de jure, if not de facto. Once the widow’s appeal has been granted, and the sale of the estate declared void, I shall have to pay my commission back in full.’
‘The Council can sponsor your loan, with interest,’ Shepard said. ‘The gaol is publicly funded, after all; by the time your
commission
is recalled, I will be able to draw down funds from the Reserve, and repay you. We shall have a contract drawn up; you may name your terms. Your investment will be secure.’
‘If you have public funding,’ Nilssen said, ‘then why propose this to me at all? What need do you have of these four hundred pounds?’
‘Yours is ready money, and will be privately invested,’ Shepard said. ‘My Council funding has been approved, but not paid out; if I wait for the sum to be apportioned, and deposited into the gaol’s account, I will be waiting for thirty bankers to push my contract
across thirty desks, and back again. It will be March, or April, and the elections will be past.’
‘And Lauderback will have his convicts,’ Nilssen said.
‘Yes, and he will have siphoned off a great deal more of the
district’s
budget, besides.’
‘Very well,’ Nilssen said. ‘Let us suppose that I agree to this, and you get your gaol-house. You said that
both
of us would stand to gain.’
‘Well, yes,’ Shepard said, blinking. ‘You will have employment, Mr. Nilssen. You will get your standard commission on the labour, and the iron, and the timber, and the nails, and every small thing. Legal profit—that is how you stand to gain.’
Nilssen could not fault this (certainly, it had been many weeks since he had contracted work that promised this degree of yield), but Shepard’s method of proposition was making him very
uncomfortable.
The gaoler had used the word
murder
, and called that crime ‘sophisticated’; he had waited until Albert was present as a witness to ask about Emery Staines; and when he narrated the story of the Wells affair, he had made a great show of preventing Nilssen’s
interruption
, lest the commission merchant implicate himself by speaking too much or too soon—thereby assuming that he
could
implicate
himself
in some way. Shepard was treating his host as a guilty man.