The Luminaries

with a fair fortune in pure, I ask him, and he tells me that he has a claim up Dunstan way. Was it declared, I say, and he says no. Undeclared means untaxed, which means this shipment is in breach of duty—or at least, it will be, if
Godspeed
sails on schedule with the next day’s tide.
    ‘Now, there in the fo’c’sle Carver lets me think about all that for a moment. I’m thinking about what it looks like from above. It looks like I’ve been going behind the husband’s back for a good long while, to court his wife as my mistress. There’s proof of that. It looks like I’ve stolen a fair fortune from the man, and I mean now to ship the gold offshore. It looks like I’ve engineered the whole business to bankrupt and ruin him, both. That’s adultery and theft and even conspiracy right off. But the real clincher is that the gold’s undeclared. I’m facing charges for breach of customs, evading duty, illegal trafficking, all of that. I’m looking at a lifetime in gaol—and I don’t have a lifetime left, Thomas. I don’t have a lifetime left. So I ask him what he wants, and finally he shows his cards. He wants the ship.’
    ‘Is he an able seaman at this point?’
    ‘Yes. He works under Raxworthy and he wants Raxworthy gone. He’s figured it all out: how I’m going to sack Raxworthy that very night, how I’m going to cancel the contract on the crew, and sign the ship over to him free and clear. This is an insult, you understand. I laugh. I say no. But he’s got that God-d—ned whistle, and he pretends to make a move to call the harbour master in.’
    ‘Did you ask to see the gold in the case?’ said Balfour. ‘How did you know he wasn’t bluffing?’
    ‘Of course I asked to see it,’ said Lauderback. ‘We did all that. Oh, he had laid his foundations with care—I have to credit him for that! There were five dresses in the trunk. Each of them last season’s fashions, in keeping with his story; ready for the dressmaker ’s in Melbourne, you see. But hear this! The gold wasn’t just lying free in the case, beneath the gowns. It had been sewn into the very seams of the dresses. By Lydia herself, no doubt: she was a dab hand with a needle and thread. You wouldn’t have guessed at all, until you lifted them out, and felt the weight of them. But a customs officer might not have troubled himself to do that, you see—unless he was tipped off, and knew where to look. When you opened the case, even when you rummaged around, it was just woman’s fashions, nothing else. Yes: it was a very clever plan.’
    ‘Let me get my head around this,’ Balfour said. ‘If the ship had sailed on schedule …’
    ‘Then Carver would have come across the trunk in the hold, acting as though he’d never seen it before. He would have brought it up to Raxworthy, feigning outrage and distress and what have you. They were his wife’s dresses, after all—and my name was on the papers. He would have demanded to bring the law to my door, on account of the theft, the adultery, the breach of customs, all of it.
Godspeed
would never have left the harbour; she’d have been turned around before she reached the heads. Then the law would have come for me—and clapped me in arms.’
    ‘But surely … if that happened, and the law was called in … you might have just blamed it all on Lydia Wells,’ Balfour said. ‘Surely
she
would have been gaoled—’
    ‘Oh yes, she certainly would have been,’ Lauderback replied, cutting him off. ‘But I was not going to risk my own freedom merely to have the satisfaction that
she
would get her comeuppance too! The two of them would certainly have sided against me, if the whole confounded business came to trial, and
that
would have bought her a great deal of sympathy—for seeing the light, you see; for repenting; for standing by her lawful husband, and all that rot.’
    ‘If he really
was
her lawful husband,’ Balfour pointed out. ‘Now it seems that
Crosbie
Wells—’
    ‘Yes, yes,’ Lauderback snapped. ‘But I didn’t know that then, did I? Don’t tell me what I ought to have done, and how I ought to have done it. I can’t bear that. A game plays how a game plays.’
    ‘Well,’ said Balfour, sitting back, ‘I’m blowed.’
    ‘He wore me down,’ said Lauderback. He spread his hands in a gesture of defeat. ‘I signed her over.’
    Balfour thought for a moment. ‘Where was Raxworthy that night?’
    ‘At the d—ned gambling house,’ Lauderback said. ‘Having