The Luminaries

bare-headed, reckless, whipping the horses into a froth. There was a bulge in his jacket pocket: a glass jar of laudanum, sloshing thickly, so that the rusty liquid left an oily wash of colour on the inside of the glass, that thinned, and then thickened, each time the wheels of the trap went over a stone. Tauwhare was gripping the seatback with both hands, doing his best not to be sick.
    ‘And it was me he said he wanted,’ Pritchard said to himself, exhilarated. ‘Not the doctor—
me
!’

    Charlie Frost, queried by the lawyer Fellowes, told the truth. Yes, the fortune found on Crosbie Wells’s estate had been found already retorted. The smelting was the work of the Chinese goldsmith, Quee Long, who until that morning had been the sole digger employed to work Mr. Staines’s goldmine, the Aurora. Mr. Fellowes wrote this down in his pocketbook, and thanked the young banker very courteously for his help. Then he produced the charred deedof gift that Anna Wetherell had given him, and handed it wordlessly across the desk.
    Frost, glancing at it, was astonished. ‘It’s been signed,’ he said.
    ‘Come again?’ said Fellowes.
    ‘Emery Staines has signed this document some time in the past two months,’ said Frost firmly. ‘Unless that signature is a fake, of course … but I know the man’s hand: that’s his mark. The last time I saw this piece of paper there was a space next to this man’s name. No signature.’
    ‘Then he’s alive?’ said the lawyer.

    Benjamin Löwenthal, turning into Collingwood-street, was surprised to find that Pritchard’s Drug Hall was shut and locked, with a card in the window saying the establishment was closed. He walked around to the rear of the building, where he found Pritchard’s assistant, a boy named Giles, reading a paper on the back stoop.
    ‘Where’s Mr. Pritchard?’ he said.
    ‘Out,’ said the boy. ‘What is it that you’re wanting?’
    ‘Liver pills.’
    ‘Repeat prescription?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘I can sort you. Come on in the back way.’
    The boy put aside his paper, and Löwenthal followed him inside, through Pritchard’s laboratory into the shop.
    ‘It’s not like Jo, to leave his office on a Monday afternoon,’ Löwenthal said, while the boy set about making up his order.
    ‘He went off with a native fellow.’
    ‘Tauwhare?’
    ‘Don’t know his name,’ the boy said. ‘He came by all in a bother. Not two hours ago. Gave his message to Mr. Pritchard, and then Mr. Pritchard packed me off to rent a trap for the both of them, and then they tore off to the Arahura like a pair of night riders.’
    ‘Indeed.’ Löwenthal was curious. ‘You didn’t find out why?’
    ‘No,’ the boy said. ‘But Mr. Pritchard took along a whole jar of laudanum, and a pocketful of powder, besides. The native man said, “He needs medicine”—I heard him say it. But he didn’t say whom. And Mr. Pritchard kept saying something I didn’t understand at all.’
    ‘What was that?’ said Löwenthal.
    ‘“The whore’s bullet”,’ said the boy.

    ‘Why—Anna Wetherell!’
    Clinch’s tone was less astonishment than shock.
    ‘Hello, Edgar.’
    ‘But what are you doing here? Of course you are most welcome! But what are you doing?’ He came out from behind the desk.
    ‘I need a place to be,’ she said. ‘Until five o’clock. May I trespass upon your hospitality for a few hours?’
    ‘Trespass—there’s no trespassing!’ Clinch cried, coming forward to take her hands in his. ‘Why—yes—of course, of course! You must come into my office! Shall we take tea? With biscuits? How good it is to see you. How very lovely! Where is your mistress? And where are you going, at five o’clock?’
    ‘I’ve an appointment at the Courthouse,’ said Anna Wetherell, politely disengaging her hands, and stepping back from him.
    Clinch’s smile vanished at once. ‘Have you been summoned?’ he said anxiously. ‘Are you to be tried?’
    ‘It’s nothing like that. I’ve engaged a solicitor, that’s all. Of my own volition.’
    ‘A solicitor!’
    ‘Yes,’ Anna said. ‘I’m going to contest the widow’s claim.’
    Clinch was astonished. ‘Well!’ he said, smiling again, to cover his bewilderment. ‘Well! You must tell me all about it, Anna—and we must take tea together. I’m so very happy you’ve come.’
    ‘I’m glad to hear that,’ said Anna. ‘I feared you might resent me.’
    ‘I could never resent you!’ Clinch cried. ‘I could