The Luminaries

said. ‘You appear before this court to answer for three charges. Firstly, the forgery of a signature upon a deed of gift. How do you plead?’
    ‘Not guilty, sir.’
    ‘Secondly, public intoxication causing disorderly behaviour upon the afternoon of the twentieth of March this year. How do you plead?’
    ‘Not guilty, sir.’
    ‘And thirdly, the grievous assault of Mr. Emery Staines. How do you plead?’
    ‘Not guilty, sir.’
    The justice made a note of these pleas, and then said, ‘You are no doubt aware, Miss Wetherell, that this court is not authorised to hear a criminal case.’
    ‘Yes, sir.’
    ‘The third of your indictments may be judged to warrant a trial by a higher court. If that circumstance should come to pass, you will be remanded in custody until a Supreme Court judge and jury can be convened. Do you understand?’
    ‘Yes, sir. I understand.’
    ‘Good. Sit.’
    She sat.
    ‘Mr. Broham,’ said Justice Kemp, ‘the Court will now hear your statement.’
    ‘Thank you, sir.’ Broham was a slender man with a ginger moustache and sharp, watery eyes. He rose, squaring the edges of his papers with the edge of the desk.
    ‘Mr. Justice Kemp, fellow members of the Court, ladies and gentlemen ,’ he began. ‘That the smoke of the poppy is a drug primitive in its temptations, devastating in its effects, and reprehensible in its associations, both social and historical, ought among all decent citizens to be a commonplace. Today we shall examine a sorry case in point: a young woman whose weakness for the drug has besmirched not only Hokitika’s public countenance, but the countenance of our newly anointed District of Westland at large …’
    Broham’s statement was lengthy. He reminded the members of the Court that Anna had made an attempt upon her life once before, drawing a connexion between that failed attempt and her collapse on the afternoon of the 20th of March—‘both of which,’he added, with a cynical accent, ‘did well to draw the attention of the public eye’. He devoted a great deal of time to her forgery of Staines’s signature upon the deed of gift, casting doubt upon the validity of the document as written, and emphasising the degree to which Anna stood to gain, by falsifying it. Turning to the charge of assault, he spoke in general terms about the dangerous and unpredictable character of the opium addict, and then described Staines’s gunshot wound in such frank detail that a woman in the gallery had to be escorted from the building. In closing, he invited all present to consider how much opium two thousand pounds would buy; and then he asked, rhetorically, whether the public would suffer such a quantity to be placed in the hands of such a damaged and ill-connected person as Miss Anna Wetherell, former lady of the night.
    ‘Mr. Moody,’ the justice said, when Broham sat down. ‘A statement for the defence.’
    Moody rose promptly. ‘Thank you, sir,’ he said to the justice. ‘I shall be brief.’ His hands were shaking: he splayed them firmly on the desktop before him, to steady himself, and then in a voice that sounded much more confident than he felt, he said,
    ‘I will begin by reminding Mr. Broham that Miss Wetherell has in fact thrown off her dependency, an achievement for which she has earned my most sincere admiration and respect. Certainly, as Mr. Broham has taken such pleasure in describing to you all, Miss Wetherell’s disposition is of the kind that leaves her prey to the myriad temptations of addiction. I myself have never touched the smoke of the poppy, as Mr. Broham has also assured you he has not, and I hazard to guess that one reason for our mutual abstinence is fear: fear of the drug’s probable power over us; fear of its addictive quality; fear of what we might see, or do, were we to succumb to its effects. I make this remark to emphasise the fact that Miss Wetherell’s weakness in this regard is not unique to her, and I say again that she has my commendation for having committed herself so wholeheartedly to the project of her own reform.
    ‘But—whatever Mr. Broham might have you believe—we are not here to adjudicate Miss Wetherell’s temperament, nor to delivera verdict upon her character. We are here to adjudicate how justice might best be served with respect to three accusations: one of forgery , one of disorderly conduct, and one of assault. I do not disagree with Mr. Broham’s contention that forgery is a serious crime, and nor do I