‘Yes,’ Lauderback said, rousing himself. He turned to Jock. ‘You can’t deny that.’

Jock was chewing; he grinned through his mouthful. ‘I will deny it. Give me half the weight in rigging over half the crew—there’s your fuss. I’d take speed over handling any day.’

‘How about a compromise?’ said Augustus. ‘Barquentine.’

Jock shook his head. ‘I’ll say it again: three masts is one too many.’

‘More speed than a barque, though.’ Augustus touched Lauderback’s elbow. ‘What about your Flight of Fancy? She was fore-and-aft rigged on the mainmast, was she not?’

Balfour had not intuited the aides’ objective—to divert the conversation away from the subject he had introduced—and he thought that perhaps the politician had not heard him correctly. He raised his voice and tried again. ‘Your Godspeed—as I say. She’s a regular, these parts. Hell of an outfit. I’ve seen her over the bar a fair few times. Seems to me she’s got both speed and handling. My word, she’s a marvellous craft.’

Alistair Lauderback sighed. He threw his head back and squinted up at the rafters, and a foolish smile trembled on his lips—the smile of a man who is unused to embarrassment, Balfour realised later. (He had never, before that morning, heard Lauderback confess a weakness of any kind.)

At last Lauderback said, still squinting upward, ‘That barque is no longer in my possession.’ His voice was strained, as though his smile had made it thinner.

‘That so!’ Balfour said, surprised. ‘Made a swap, did you—something bigger?’

‘No: I sold her, outright.’

‘For gold?’

Lauderback paused, and then said, ‘Yes.’

‘That so!’ Balfour said again. ‘Just like that—you sold her. Who’s buying?’

‘Her master.’

‘Hoo,’ said Balfour, exhaling cheerfully. ‘Can’t envy you there. We have heard some stories about that man around here.’

Lauderback did not reply. Still smiling, he studied the exposed beams of the ceiling, the cracks between the floorboards of the rooms above.

‘Yes,’ Balfour repeated, sitting back, and tucking his thumbs beneath his lapels. ‘We have heard some stories around here. Francis Carver! Not a man I’d care to cross, all right.’

Lauderback looked down in surprise. ‘Carver?’ he said, frowning. ‘You mean Wells.’

‘Master of the Godspeed?’

‘Yes—unless he sold it on.’

‘Burly fellow—dark brows, dark hair, broken nose?’

‘That’s right,’ said Lauderback. ‘Francis Wells.’

‘Well, I don’t mean to contradict you flat,’ Balfour said, blinking, ‘but that man’s name is Carver. Perhaps you’re confusing him with the old fellow who—’

‘No,’ Lauderback said.

‘The hermit—’

‘No.’

‘Who died—the man you came across, two weeks ago,’ Balfour said, persisting. ‘The dead man. His name was Wells, you know. Crosbie Wells.’

‘No,’ Lauderback said, for the third time. He raised his voice slightly. ‘I am not mistaking the name. Wells was the name on the papers, when I signed the barque across. It was always Wells.’

They looked at each other.

‘Can’t understand it,’ Balfour said at last. ‘Only I do hope you didn’t get stiffed. Strange coincidence, isn’t it—Frank Wells, Crosbie Wells.’

Lauderback hesitated. ‘Not quite a coincidence,’ he said carefully. ‘They were brothers, I thought.’

Balfour gave a shout of laughter. ‘Crosbie Wells and Frank Carver, brothers? Can’t imagine anything more unlikely. Only by marriage, surely!’

Lauderback’s foolish smile returned. He began stabbing with his finger at a crumb.

‘But who told you that?’ Balfour added, when the other did not speak.

‘I don’t know,’ said Lauderback.

‘Carver mentioned something—when he signed the papers?’

‘Maybe that was it.’

‘Well! If you say so … but to look at them, I’d never have believed it,’ Balfour said. ‘One so tall and striking, the other such a wastrel—such a runt—!’

Lauderback quivered; his hand made a compulsive movement on the table, as if to reach and grasp. ‘Crosbie Wells was a wastrel?’

Balfour waved his hand. ‘You saw him dead.’

‘But only dead—never living,’ said Lauderback. ‘Strange thing: you can’t tell what a fellow really looks like, you know, without animation. Without his soul.’

‘Oh,’ Balfour said. He contemplated that idea.

‘A dead man looks created,’ Lauderback continued. ‘As a sculpture looks created. It makes you marvel at the work of the design; makes you think of the designer. The skin is smooth. Fine. Like wax, like marble—but not like either: it doesn’t hold the light, as a wax figure does, and it doesn’t reflect it, like stone. Has a matte finish, as a painter would say. No shine.’ Suddenly Lauderback seemed very embarrassed. He rounded off by demanding, rather rudely, ‘Have you ever seen a man fresh dead?’

Balfour tried to make light of it (‘Dangerous question to ask—on a goldfield—’) but the politician was waiting for an answer, and at length he had to concede that he had not.

‘Shouldn’t have said “seen”,’ Lauderback added, to himself. ‘Should have said “bore witness”.’

Augustus Smith said, ‘Jock put his hand on the fellow’s neck—didn’t you, Jock?’

‘Ay,’ said Jock.

‘When we first came in,’ said Augustus.

‘Meant to rouse him,’ said Jock. ‘Didn’t know that he had already passed. He might have been sleeping. But here’s the thing: his collar was damp. With sweat, you see—it hadn’t yet dried on him. We figured he couldn’t have been more than half an hour dead.’

He would have said more, but Lauderback made a sharp movement with his chin, to silence him.

‘Can’t figure it out,’ Balfour said. ‘Signed his name Wells!’

‘We must be thinking of different men,’ said Lauderback.

‘Carver has a scar on his cheek, right here. White in colour. Shaped like—like a sickle.’

Lauderback pursed his lips, then shook his head. ‘I don’t recall a scar.’

‘But he was dark-haired? Thick-set? Brutish, you might say?’

‘Yes.’

‘Can’t figure it out,’ Balfour said again. ‘Why would a man change his name? And brothers! Frank Carver—and Crosbie Wells!’

Lauderback’s mouth was working beneath his moustache, as if he was chewing on his lip. In quite a different voice he said, ‘You knew him?’

‘Crosbie Wells? Not a bit,’ said Balfour. He settled back in his chair, pleased to be asked a direct question. ‘He was building a sawmill, way out in the Arahura—well, you saw the cottage; you’ve been there. He’d done his shipping through me—equipment and so forth—so I knew him to look at him. Rest his soul. Had a Maori fellow for a mate. They were in on the mill together.’

‘Did he strike you—as a kind of a man?’

‘As what kind of a man?’

‘Any kind.’ Lauderback’s hand twitched again. Flushing, he amended his question: ‘I mean to say: how did he strike you?’

‘No complaints,’ Balfour said. ‘Kept his business to his business, you know. From his talk I’d call him London-born.’ He paused, and then leaned forward conspiratorially. ‘Course, they’re saying all sorts about him, now that he’s gone.’

Again Lauderback did not respond. He was being very strange, Balfour thought; the man was tongue-tied, even red-faced. It was as if he wanted Balfour both to answer some very specific question and to cease talking altogether. The two aides seemed to have lost interest—Jock was pushing a piece of liver around his plate, and Augustus’s head was turned away; he was watching the rain beat at the window.

Out of the corner of his eye, Balfour considered them. The two men were as satellites to Lauderback. They slept on bolsters in his room, accompanied him everywhere, and seemed at all times to speak and act in plural, as if they shared a single identity between them, as well as a name. Until that morning Balfour had thought them pleasant chaps, convivial and quick-witted; he had thought their devotion to Lauderback a fine thing, though their constant presence had occasionally worn his nerves rather thin. But now? He looked from one to the other, and realised that he wasn’t sure.