The Luminaries

palm over the wet earth that covered Crosbie’s heart, and held it there.
    ‘Weeping may endure for the night, but joy cometh in the morning,’ Devlin said.
    ‘
Whatu
ngarongaro he tangata, toitu he whenua
.’
    ‘May the Lord keep him; may the Lord keep us, as we pray for him.’
    Tauwhare’s palm had made an indentation in the soil; seeing this, he lifted his hand a little, and with his fingertips, smoothed the print away.

    At the
West Coast Times
office on Weld-street, Benjamin Löwenthal’s Shabbat was just coming to an end. Charlie Frost found him sitting at his kitchen table, finishing his supper.
    Löwenthal was rather less pleased to see Frost than he had been to see Thomas Balfour earlier that afternoon, for he guessed, rightly, that Frost was come to speak about the estate of Crosbie Wells—a subject of which he had long since tired. He welcomed Frost into his kitchen courteously, however, and invited the young banker to take a seat.
    Frost, for his part, did not apologise for interrupting Löwenthal’s devotions, for he was not worldly, and he did not know them to be devotions. He sat down at the ink-stained table, thinking it very strange that Löwenthal had cooked himself such an elaborate supper, only to partake of it alone. The candle he took for an eccentricity; he glanced at it only once.
    ‘It’s about the estate,’ he said.
    Löwenthal sighed. ‘Bad news, then,’ he said. ‘I might have guessed it.’
    Frost gave a brief summary of what had transpired in Chinatown that afternoon, describing Mannering’s former grievances with Ah Quee in some detail.
    ‘Where’s the bad news?’ Löwenthal said, when he was done.
    ‘I’m afraid your name came up,’ said Frost, speaking delicately.
    ‘In what context?’
    ‘It was suggested’—even more delicately—‘that perhaps this fellow Lauderback used you as a pawn, on the night of the fourteenth. In coming straight to you, I mean, on the night of the hermit’s death, and telling you all about it. Maybe—just possibly—he came to you by some sort of design.’
    ‘That’s absurd,’ Löwenthal said. ‘How was Lauderback to know that I’d go straight to Edgar Clinch? I certainly never mentionedEdgar’s name to him … and he said nothing out of the ordinary to me.’
    Frost spread his hands. ‘Well, we’re making a list of suspects, that’s all, and Mr. Lauderback is on that list.’
    ‘Who else is on your list?’
    ‘A man named Francis Carver.’
    ‘Ah,’ said Löwenthal. ‘Who else?’
    ‘The widow Wells, of course.’
    ‘Of course. Who else?’
    ‘Miss Wetherell,’ said Frost, ‘and Mr. Staines.’
    Löwenthal’s face was inscrutable. ‘A broad taxonomy,’ he said. ‘Continue.’
    Frost explained that a small group of men were meeting at the Crown Hotel after nightfall, in order to pool their information, and discuss the matter at length. The group was to include every man who had been present in Quee Long’s hut that afternoon, Edgar Clinch, the purchaser of Wells’s estate, and Joseph Pritchard, whose laudanum had been found in the hermit’s cottage following the event of Wells’s death. Harald Nilssen had vouched for Pritchard’s character; he, Frost, had vouched for Clinch.
    ‘You vouched for Clinch?’ said Löwenthal.
    Frost confirmed this, and added that he would be happy to vouch for Löwenthal, too, if Löwenthal was desirous to attend.
    Löwenthal pushed his chair back from the table. ‘I will attend,’ he said, standing, and moving to fetch a box of matches from the shelf beside the door. ‘But there’s someone else I think ought to be present also.’
    Frost looked alarmed. ‘Who is that?’
    Löwenthal selected a match, and struck it against the doorjamb. ‘Thomas Balfour,’ he said, tilting the match, and watching the small flame climb along the shaft. ‘I believe that his information may be of considerable value to the project of our discussion—if he is willing to share it, of course.’ He lowered the match, carefully, into the sconce above the table.
    ‘Thomas Balfour,’ Frost repeated.
    ‘Thomas Balfour, the shipping agent,’ Löwenthal said. Heturned the dial to widen the aperture: there was a hiss, and the globe flared orange-red. ‘He came to you this morning, did he not? I think he mentioned that he had seen you at the bank.’
    Frost was frowning. ‘Yes, he did,’ he said. ‘But he asked some mighty strange questions, and I wasn’t altogether sure of his