The Luminaries

thought for a moment, squinting over the valley floor towards the rumpled slopes in the East. His horse was slightly shorter than Lauderback’s black mare, and because he was a shorter man than Lauderback, his shoulders were a clear foot below the other man’s—even when he squared them, which he did now. ‘It’s just common sense, isn’t it?’ he said. ‘Twenty navvies on the foundation at once? All the materials paid up in cash? That’s not the way that Council funding gets paid out. You know that yourself! Shepard must be dealing ready money.’
    ‘Which one is it?’ said Lauderback. ‘Common sense—or a tip-off ?’
    ‘Common sense!’
    ‘So you weren’t tipped off.’
    ‘Yes, I was,’ Balfour said hotly. ‘But I might just as well have figured it out. That’s what I’m saying: I might just as well have figured it out on my own.’
    ‘So what was the point in it?’
    ‘In what?’
    ‘Tipping you off!’
    Balfour was scowling. ‘I don’t know what you’re saying,’ he said. ‘You’re not making any sense.’
    But Lauderback was making perfect sense, and Balfour knew it. ‘What doesn’t make sense, Tom,’ he said, ‘is that
you’re
the one tipped off about a gaol-house! What does Balfour Shipping care about public funding, and how it’s spent? What do
you
care about a private investment—unless it’s wrapped up in something else?’
    Balfour shook his head. ‘You’ve got me wrong,’ he said.
    ‘Something to do with one of the felons maybe,’ Lauderback said. ‘A private investment—in exchange for—’
    ‘No, no,’ Balfour said. ‘Nothing like that.’
    ‘What then?’
    When Balfour did not immediately respond, Lauderback added, ‘Listen: if it has to do with private funding, that’s a campaign matter, and I need to know. Anything that gets rushed over the Commissioner’s desk right before an election is worth looking at—and clearly this man Shepard is rushing something. Looks to me as though he’s got political designs, and I want to know what they are. If it’s all a matter of common sense, then why don’t you just tell me what you know—and if anyone asks me, I’ll pretend I worked it out on my own.’
    This seemed reasonable enough to Balfour. His affection for Lauderback had not dissolved altogether over the course of the last month, and he wanted to remain in the politician’s good opinion, despite any new opinions he might have developed, in his turn. It could not hurt to tell him where Shepard’s money was coming from—not if Lauderback could pretend to have worked it out on his own!
    Balfour was pleased, also, by the sudden sharpness of Lauderback’s expression, and the eagerness with which the older man was pressing him for news. He disliked it when Lauderback was broody, and this sudden change in the politician’s humour put Balfour in mind of the old Lauderback, the Lauderback of Dunedin days, who spoke like a general, and walked like a king; who made his fortune, and then doubled it; who rubbed shoulders with the Premier; who would never dare to beg a man to stay on one extra night in Kumara, so that he would not have to take his sorrows to the gambling house alone. Balfour was sympathetic to this old Lauderback, of whom he was still very fond, and it flattered him to be begged for news.
    And so, after a long pause, Balfour told his old acquaintance what he knew about the gaol-house: that the construction had been funded by a cut of the fortune discovered in Crosbie Wells’s cottage . He did not say why, or how, this arrangement had come about, and he did not say who had tipped him off about the situation . He did say that the investment had occurred at GeorgeShepard’s instigation, two weeks after Crosbie Wells’s death, and that the gaoler was very anxious to keep it quiet.
    But Lauderback’s legal training had not been for nothing: he was a canny inquisitor, and never more than when he knew that he was being told a partial truth. He asked the value of the cut, and Balfour replied that the investment totalled a little over four hundred pounds. Lauderback was quick to ask the reason why the investment comprised ten percent of the total value discovered in the cottage, and when Balfour remained silent, he guessed, with even more alarming quickness, that ten percent was the standard rate of commission, and perhaps this investment represented the commission merchant’s fee.
    Balfour was appalled that Lauderback had figured this out so