The Luminaries

from within heard a single name shouted over and over:
Magdalena
,
Magdalena
,
Magdalena
. I knew then that it was a man inside, and not a rat or beast of any other kind. I moved to pry the tacks from the lid of the case, working as fast as I could, and in due course managed to lever the lid open. I believe this was around two o’clock in the afternoon,’ Moody added, with delicate emphasis. ‘It was some four or five hours before we landed at Hokitika, in any case.’
    ‘Magdalena,’ said Mannering. ‘That’s Anna.’
    Gascoigne looked furious.
    Moody looked at Mannering. ‘Forgive me,’ he said. ‘I’m afraid I don’t follow. Is Magdalena Miss Wetherell’s middle name?’
    ‘It’s a name to give a whore,’ Mannering explained.
    Moody shook his head, to indicate that he still did not understand .
    ‘As every dog is called Fido, and every cow is called Bess.’
    ‘Ah—yes, I see,’ said Moody, thinking privately that the man might have produced two more attractive examples, when he was in the whoring business himself.
    ‘Perhaps,’ said Benjamin Löwenthal slowly, ‘perhaps we can say—with reasonable doubt, of course—that the man inside that shipping crate was Emery Staines.’
    ‘He took a particular shine to Anna, that’s for sure,’ Mannering agreed.
    ‘Staines vanishes the very day Carver weighs anchor!’ Balfour said, sitting forward. ‘And the very day my crate goes missing! Of course: there it is! Staines goes into the crate—Carver swipes the crate—Carver sails away!’
    ‘But for what purpose?’ Pritchard said.
    ‘You didn’t happen to get a look at the docking slip, by any chance? The bill of lading?’
    ‘No, I did not,’ said Moody shortly. He had not yet finished his story, and he did not like being interrupted in mid-performance. But the rapt audience in the room had dissolved, for the umpteenth time that evening, into a murmuring rabble, as each man voiced his suppositions, and expressed his surprise.
    ‘Emery Staines—on Carver’s ship!’ Mannering was saying. ‘Question is, of course, whether he stowed himself away—that’s one option; whether he was brought on board by accident—that’s another; or whether Carver captured him, and chose to lock him in a shipping crate, in full knowledge—that’s a third.’
    Nilssen shook his head. ‘What did he say, though—that the lid was tacked down! You can’t do
that
from the inside!’
    ‘You may as well call it a coffin. How’s the man to breathe?’
    ‘There are slats in the pine—gaps—’
    ‘Not enough to breathe, surely!’
    ‘Tom: your shipping crate. Was there room enough inside it for a grown man?’
    ‘How big is a shipping crate, anyway?’
    ‘Don’t forget that Carver and Staines are business partners.’
    ‘About the size of a dray-cart. You’ll have seen them, stacked along the quay. A man could lie inside quite comfortably.’
    ‘Business partners on a duffer claim!’
    ‘Strange, though, that he’s still in the crate on the way
back
from Dunedin. Isn’t that strange? Seems almost to point to the fact that Carver didn’t know he was there.’
    ‘We ought to let Mr. Moody finish.’
    ‘
That’s
a way to treat your business partner—lock him up to die!’
    The only men who had not joined this rabble of supposition were the two Chinese men, Quee Long and Sook Yongsheng, who were sitting very erect, with their eyes fixed very solemnly upon Moody—as they had been for the duration of the evening. Moody met Ah Sook’s gaze—and though the latter’s expression did not alter, it seemed to Moody that he conveyed a kind of sympathy, asthough to say that he understood Moody’s feeling of impatience very well.
    The lack of a common language had prevented Ah Sook from articulating the full story of his dealings with Francis Carver to the assembly that evening, and as a result, the English-speaking company remained quite ignorant of the particulars of this former association, beyond the fact that Carver had committed a murder, and Ah Sook had resolved to avenge it. Moody regarded him now, holding Ah Sook’s dark gaze in his pale one. He wondered at the history the two men had shared. Ah Sook had confided only that he had known Carver as a boy; he had divulged nothing else. Moody guessed that Ah Sook was around forty-five in age, which would mean he had been born in the early twenties; perhaps, then, he and Carver had known one another during the Chinese wars.
    ‘Mr. Moody,’