The Luminaries

than in another man’s grave?’
    Joseph Pritchard always sought the hidden motive, the underlying truth; conspiracy enthralled him. He formed convictions as other men formed dependencies—a belief for him was as a thirst—and he fed his own convictions with all the erotic fervour of the willingly confirmed. This rapture extended to his self-regard. Whenever the subterranean waters of his mind were disturbed, he plunged inward, and struggled downward—kicking strongly, purposefully, as if hewished to touch the mineral depths of his own dark fantasies; as if he wished to drown.
    Nilssen said, ‘That’s useless speculation.’
    ‘Buried together,’ said Pritchard. He sat back. ‘I’d bet my life.’
    ‘What does it matter what you guess—what you wager?’ Nilssen burst out. ‘
You
didn’t kill him.
You
didn’t murder anybody. It’s on another man’s head.’
    ‘But somebody certainly wants to make it seem as if I did. And somebody’s certainly made
you
look like a d—ned fool, for chasing a herring that turned out to be red!’
    ‘You’re talking appearances.’
    ‘Juries care about appearances.’
    ‘Come,’ said Nilssen, somewhat weakly. ‘You can’t really think that a
jury
—’
    ‘—Will be necessary? Don’t be an ass. Emery Staines is Hokitika royalty. Strange as that sounds. Folk who couldn’t pick the Commissioner from a line-up of drunks know Staines’s name. There’s no doubt there’ll be an inquest. If he fell down the stairs and broke his neck with a dozen men to witness, there would be an inquest. All it’s going to take is one shred of evidence to connect him to the Crosbie Wells affair—his body, probably, whenever they find it—and bang, you’re implicated. You’re a co-conspirator. You’re on trial. And
then
what are you going to say to defend yourself?’
    ‘That I’m not—that we didn’t—
conspire
—’
    But uselessness overcame him, and he did not go on.
    Pritchard did not interrupt the silence. He stared intently at his host and waited. At length Nilssen resumed, struggling to keep his voice calm and practical:
    ‘We mustn’t keep anything back. We must go to the justice ourselves —’
    ‘And risk the charge?’ Pritchard’s voice became lower still. ‘We don’t know half the players, man! If Staines was murdered—look, even if you don’t believe the rest of what I’m saying, you must admit that it’s a d—ned coincidence he disappeared when he did. If he was murdered—and let’s say he was—well, somebody in town has got to know about it.’
    Nilssen tried to be haughty. ‘I for one am not going to stand about and wait with a noose around my neck—’
    ‘I am not proposing that we stand about and wait.’
    The commission merchant sagged a little. ‘What then?’
    Pritchard grinned. ‘You say there’s a noose—well, all right. Follow the rope.’
    ‘Back to the banker, you mean?’
    ‘Charlie Frost? Maybe.’
    Nilssen looked sceptical. ‘Charlie’s no double-crosser. He was as surprised as anyone when the ’bounder turned up.’
    ‘Surprised, that’s easy to fake. And what about the fellow who purchased the land? Clinch—of the Gridiron Hotel. He must have been tipped off somehow.’
    Nilssen shook his head. ‘I can’t believe it.’
    ‘Perhaps you ought to try.’
    ‘Anyway,’ Nilssen said, frowning, ‘Clinch doesn’t stand to gain a penny, now that the widow’s made her claim.
She’s
the one you should be worried about.’
    But Pritchard did not have an opinion about the widow. ‘Clinch doesn’t stand to gain a penny—from Crosbie Wells, maybe,’ he said. ‘But think on this. Staines leases the Gridiron to Clinch, doesn’t he?’
    ‘What are you driving at?’
    ‘Only that a fellow’s never sorry when his creditor is dead.’
    Nilssen turned red. ‘Clinch wouldn’t take another man’s life. None of them would. Charlie Frost? Come off it, Jo! The man’s a mouse.’
    ‘You can’t tell from looking at a man what he’s capable of doing. And you certainly can’t tell what he’s done.’
    ‘This kind of speculation—’ Nilssen began, but he did not know what form his protestation was to take, and he again fell silent.
    Nilssen did not know the vanished prospector, Emery Staines, at all well—though if asked, he would have declared the opposite, for Nilssen tended to profess intimacy whenever it flattered him to do so, and Staines was very much the kind of man with whom Nilssen would have liked