The Luminaries

mean.’
    ‘Who’s a thief?’
    ‘They’re in on it together!’ Clinch cried.
    Really, Mannering thought, Clinch could be terribly irksome when he was vexed; he became altogether unintelligible. Aloud he said, ‘Is this about the widow’s appeal?’
    ‘
You
know what I’m talking about,’ Clinch said. ‘
You
know.’
    ‘What?’ Mannering said. ‘Is it about the fortune? What?’
    ‘Not the Wells fortune. The
other
fortune.’
    ‘What other fortune?’
    ‘You know!’
    ‘On the contrary: I have not the least idea.’
    ‘
I’m talking about Anna’s dresses
!’
    This was the first time Clinch had ever mentioned the gold he had discovered in Anna’s dress the previous winter—when he carried her upstairs, and lowered her into the bath, and he picked up her gown, and felt a heaviness along the seam, and broke the thread of the hem, and withdrew, in his fingers, a shining pinch of it. The pressure of a long-time concealment lent an almost crazed aspect to his outburst now; for he was still convinced that the magnate was embroiled in a scheme of some kind, although he had never figured out, exactly, what this scheme might properly entail.
    But Mannering only looked confused. ‘What?’ he said. ‘What’s all this about?’
    Clinch was scowling. ‘Don’t play stupid.’
    ‘Excuse me: I am doing no such thing,’ Mannering said. ‘What are you talking about, Edgar? What do a whore’s fashions have to do with the price of anything at all?’
    Studying him, Edgar Clinch felt a tremor of doubt. Mannering’s bewilderment seemed perfectly genuine. He was not behaving like a man exposed. Could that mean that he had
not
known about the gold hidden in Anna’s gowns? Could Anna have been colluding with quite another man—behind
Mannering’s
back? Clinch felt bewildered also. He decided to change the subject.
    ‘I meant that mourning gown,’ he said, clumsily. ‘The one with the stupid collar that she’s taken to wearing this past fortnight.’
    Mannering waved his hand. ‘She’s just being pious,’ he said. ‘Giving herself airs. It’ll blow over.’
    ‘I’m not so sure,’ Clinch said. ‘Last week, you see, I told her she had to make good her debts before she quit walking the streets—and we had words, and I suppose I got angry, and I threatened to turn her out of the hotel.’
    ‘What’s that got to do with Lydia Wells?’ said Mannering impatiently. ‘So you lost your temper. What’s that got to do with anything?’
    ‘Lydia Wells just paid Anna’s debt,’ Clinch said. At last he lifted his hands from the desk: beneath them, slightly damp from the pressure of his palms, lay a crisp banknote, made out for a sum of six pounds. ‘Anna’s gone over to the Wayfarer. Indefinitely. Got a new profession, she says. Won’t answer to the name of whore.’
    Mannering looked at the banknote, and did not speak for a moment.
    ‘But that’s her debt to
you
,’ he said at last. ‘That’s just for rent. She owes
me
a hundred pounds—and then some! She’s in the red—and she’s in it deep—and she answers to
me
, d—n it! Not to you, and certainly not to Lydia bloody Wells! But what do you mean—won’t answer to the name of whore?’
    ‘Just that,’ said Edgar Clinch. ‘She’s done with the profession. So she says.’
    Mannering’s face had turned purple. ‘You can’t just walk out on your own job. I don’t care if you’re a whore or a butcher or a bloody baker! You can’t just walk out—not when there’s a debt outstanding !’
    ‘That’s the—’
    ‘In mourning, she said!’ Mannering cried, leaping up. ‘For a time, she said! Give a girl an inch and she takes a bloody mile! Not on my watch, all right! Not with a hundred pounds against her name! No indeed!’
    Clinch was looking at the magnate coldly. ‘She said to tell you that Aubert Gascoigne has the money for you,’ he said. ‘She said to tell you that it’s hidden underneath his bed.’
    ‘Who in hell is Obur Gaskwon?’
    ‘He’s a clerk at the Magistrate’s Court,’ Clinch said. ‘He filed the widow’s appeal on Crosbie Wells’s fortune.’
    ‘Aha!’ said Mannering. ‘So we’re coming back around to
that
, are we? I’ll be God-d—ned!’
    ‘There’s another thing,’ Clinch said. ‘Mr. Gascoigne was up in Anna’s room this afternoon, and shots were fired. Two shots. I asked him about it afterwards—and he countered by mentioning the debt. I went up to look. There’s a hole in