by Meg Buchanan
William nodded.
Courtney eased away from the door frame. “And he’ll be as keen to keep the bodies a secret as we are. Now I need to go, it keeps my mother happy if I turn up in time for meals.”
William stretched again. “I’ll talk to John. His men are building new yards at the wharf, I should find him there.”
“I thought he was building the abattoirs.”
“It’s the end of that job. Just yards and the office to go. He’ll help us.”
Chapter 3
THE NEXT DAY Courtney rode out to Tirohia with William. It would be good to get McKenzie’s work finished. They’d written the proposals for the new contracts and when they were finished this job, he’d get the paperwork delivered to the councils.
He stopped at a spot which appeared little different to the last time they surveyed it, still covered in raupo, manuka and scrub. He dismounted then scuffed around amongst some reeds and found a totara peg. It had the roman numeral I carved on one side and a II carved on the other.
He moved his arm in a large sweeping gesture to take in the land. “This marks the boundary between Block One and Block Two. You did the drawings from this point to the rise.”
William dismounted too. “I remember. You know land doesn’t change a great deal in fifteen years we could just use the old drawings and copy them. McKenzie would never know.”
Courtney lifted the flap of the pannier and took out the leather satchel containing the level. He untied the tripod and staves from behind the saddle and started to set the theodolite up.
“We’ll do it properly, it’s what we’re being paid for. We’ll shoot a line from this point north then clear the line of sight so we can traverse it.”
William nodded as he went to the pannier and took out a hatchet. “I still don’t understand why we’re going to all this trouble.”
“There were a couple of irregularities I noticed when I looked through the drawings, I wouldn’t mind checking them.”
“Irregularities?” asked William.
“Things that don’t quite add up. We’ll do it properly. It’ll be interesting to see what mistakes we made the first time we were here.”
“Not errors?”
“No, I think they were mistakes. It took me some time to understand how allowing the line to sag could change the measurement. Perhaps you were the same.”
William shrugged. “You were the one teaching me how to do it.”
“So, we’ll find out how good a teacher I was.”
The surveying progressed slowly. A world filled with its own vocabulary and equipment. Near midday, they sat with their notebooks and measurements.
Courtney pulled a log table from the satchel and calculated the numbers using the levels and lines they’d recorded and turned them into accurate sketches of the area while they ate lunch. When the sketches were done he added observations, each length, angle and level carefully recorded while William did the same in his book.
When they’d finished, William took Courtney’s logbook and put it on top of his own. “I’ll draw this up this afternoon.” He put them in his saddlebag then poured a couple of mugs of tea from the billy and sat down again.
Back at the office, late in the afternoon, Courtney checked the old drawings against the new ones William had been working on. It was years since he’d checked William’s work, but he was sure something still didn’t add up, and he didn’t like that feeling. It could just be that it wasn’t always possible to measure accurately. A large part of these drawings represented the side of a mountain, and there were some steep drop-offs and gullies.
He went back to his notebook. He did some calculations then returned to the map and kept checking the dimensions of one drawing against the other. Then he picked up the scale rule and measured the lines on both. When they were going over the land it wasn’t possible to put the chain across everything but there was something he wasn’t seeing, some discrepancy even that didn’t account for.
He saw William glance over, then carry on with his work at the other desk. Usually when William sensed there was a problem, he’d be out of his chair and helping sort it.
Then it dawned on him. Bloody William knew what the problem was. That was why he wasn’t commenting.
“There appears to be a mistake here,” Courtney said finally.
William left his desk, walked over and pretended to look, but it was only a brief glance before he looked up again. “Mistake?” he asked.
Courtney traced a line with his finger across the linen. “There’s an area about twenty chain wide not accounted for.”
William carefully considered the drawing then looked at him. “The land is too steep to survey accurately.” Courtney watched William turn the map around, and stare at the problem area. The drawing merely indicated the ground was ‘precipitous”, there wasn’t much other detail.
Courtney picked up the field journal. “It’s steep but look at these numbers.” He flicked through the pages until he got to the morning’s work and showed William the figures. The mathematics was familiar to them. Neither of them had any problem with sine and cosine so he knew William could understand the disembodied formulae as easily as he could and he’d see the discrepancy.
William straightened up. “Some of the work was subjective.”
“So, you said. But I don’t remember…” Then he trailed off slowly coming to realise what was going on. “This is near where Mere’s family had land before the mining started?”
William nodded and slid his hand over the area in question. “This is an acceptable error.”
“And it’s close to your farm?”
“Bordering it.”
So, William had deliberately fudged the plans. But it was just McKenzie’s claim they were resurveying and away from any of the planned roads or railway lines. Nobody else would pick up the discrepancy.
“Yes, an acceptable error,” he agreed. “It’s definitely not a mistake.” He went back to what he’d been working on. If William had altered the drawings to try and protect a piece of land that was important to Mere, he’d go along with it.
The next morning when Courtney got to work, William was already there.
“Things have changed,” William said as soon as he saw him. “Mr McKenzie has approached me again about selling the claims.”
“When?”
“Last night. I went back to the ridge to see if we’d missed anything and McKenzie turned up. I showed him around because I didn’t want him exploring on his own. We walked straight past the Anderson mine, and he commented how unproductive that mine had been.”
“He’d done his homework.”
William nodded. “Then we went onto my claim and John’s, and he asked if this was where the gold had been found.”
“What did you tell him?”
“I agreed with him. Then he made an offer on the claims and it’s extremely generous, in fact too good to miss.”
“You’ve taken it?”
“Not yet, I told him to let me sleep on it.”
Courtney went to his desk and took out his pens. William might want to sell his claims so he could give up the business, but they still had work to finish. “The man has very poor timing,” he said. “How long are you planning on putting him off?”
“A week, maybe two. At least until we’ve moved those bodies.”
“Did you have time to talk to John last night?”
“No, it was too late once I’d got rid of McKenzie. Mere has invited John and Daisy for dinner tonight, you come too, we can all talk.”
Courtney sat down at his drawing board. “It’s easier to talk to John when Daisy isn’t around.”
William laughed. “This time his wife needs to know what we’re doing. She mightn’t have helped with the killing, but she was part of hiding the bodies. She won’t want them discovered either. She’ll agree to him helping us eventually.”
“You’re counting on self-interest to persuade her?”
“Daisy
is difficult, not stupid.”
This time it was Courtney who laughed. William had always made it clear how much he disliked his best friend’s fiery wife. About as much as she disliked him.
William went to his desk and started to organise the paper there. “There’s something Mere wants to show you. If we go back to the house mid-afternoon, we’ll have time before John and Daisy arrive.”
“What?”
“It’s better to see it,” said William.
“Fine,” said Courtney. He had no problem stopping work mid-afternoon.
A few hours later, he was riding with William and Mere out to the back of their farm. When they got to the fence line, William dismounted.
“We have to walk from here.”
Courtney climbed down off his horse too. “What have you done with Edward and James?” It was unusual to see William and Mere without their children.
“Mere’s mother is minding them.” William brushed past the first stand of ferns, Mere and Courtney followed him, pushing through fronds, all the time climbing further up the mountain. Ferns and trees hung over the track, a great arch almost shielding the sky from view.
“How much further?” They still hadn’t told him where they were taking him.
“Not far.”
They pushed on through the gloom and climbed higher. Then they entered a clearing with a waterfall cascading down into a clear pool, ferns and trees almost obscuring it.
He gazed up at the canopy and then walked to the pool; water cascaded down like a fall of diamonds. He felt awed by the hushed silence of the space. The air had a silver sheen to it, a damp smell of leaf mould and moisture rose from the ground. Mist whispered up from the pool, diffusing the rays of light straying through leaves, giving the waterfall a magical aura, a sombre beauty.
“It’s breath-taking.”
Mere looked around at the serenity and peace. “It is. This is where my grandfather and his family lived fifty years ago.”
He moved about the clearing, taking in the hanging moss, the smooth grey stones and the silver waterfall falling into the mist hovering over the dark reflective water of the pool.
“Come over here.” Mere beckoned him to follow her, and she went over to the sheer granite bank beside the waterfall. The rocks were worn smooth by the action of the water. In the bank at about waist height Mere showed him a bowl shape carved into a ledge in the granite. The bowl constantly filled with water from a single crystal tendril separated from the main flow of the fall. She stood by the granite wall allowing the water to stream over her hands.
He held his hands under the tendril and felt the water warm to the touch. It left a pleasant oily softness to the skin.
“Why is it warm?”
She passed her hand through the stream. “Hot water bubbles up through the earth and warms the water in the bowl. It flows into the pool under the waterfall too.”
Then she walked further along the granite cliff until she came to a narrow opening protected by large rocks and just wide enough for one person to walk through leading to a small cave. He went inside with her and William followed.
“And this is where my grandfather and his family slept.”
“He chose a pleasant place to live, but even just sleeping in here would have been cramped.” The grotto looked too small to have ever been a dwelling. Just a small hollow gouged from the side of the cliff.
“There is enough room,” said Mere.
Courtney turned to William. “Is this why you changed the drawings?”
Willian nodded. “And why we bought the land we did. We needed to protect this.”
“I can understand that, it’s beautiful.”
“And it’s important to Mere and her family,” said William. “Now, back to the house, the old woman will be getting sick of babysitting.”
At the house, William’s mother in law came out to meet them. An old Maori woman, tall, slim, erect and hair just starting to grey at the temples. Apart from slightly darker skin, she looked the way Mere would probably look in thirty years. Still beautiful. James held her hand and Edward ran ahead.
“Have they been good?” Mere asked her mother.
“My mokopuna are always good.” His grandmother bent and kissed James on the forehead. “I need to go if I’m to get home before dark.” The words were spoken with a slight Scottish burr learned from her husband.
“Mere could take you home in the trap,” William offered.
“No, the walk will do me good.” The old woman left just as John and Daisy arrived with their three children.
John used his knife to draw on the tablecloth. “Since we know exactly where the bodies are, and the tunnel is too damaged to reach them, we could just create another shaft, bore in from the other side.” He outlined what he was suggesting.
“Just?” asked Courtney.
William snorted. “John always did like to think big. But he could be right. We go in from somewhere else.”
Courtney leaned back in his chair and shoved his hands in his pockets. It was all very well for William and John to talk about digging another shaft, they’d spent years mining, but it sounded impossible to him.
William poured another whiskey. “How long do you think it would take us?”
Mere started to collect up the dessert plates. John gave his chin a scratch.
“I don’t know. I don’t think the bodies will be far from my original claim. We could do a crosscut from there. Should we go and have a look tomorrow morning? We could see if my mine is still in one piece then step out the distance?”
William shrugged. “A builder and two surveyors have better tools for measuring than stepping it out.”
Daisy folded her arms and stared at her husband across the table. “You’re not going back into that mine.”
Courtney watched John shake his head wearily; he was choosing between his wife and his friends again. It was the way it had been for him for fifteen years. “They need my help, and they’re our only family now.”
Daisy stood and moved away from the table. “Every time you help William, you nearly die.”
John went to his wife and put his arms around her, surrounding her with his bulk and height, the way he always did when she was upset. “It’s not always like that,” he whispered softly. “Be reasonable Daisy.”
Daisy resisted. “We’re respectable people now. We have a nice house in town. A family. You have a business with people working for you. You can’t get involved in something like this again.”
John snorted. “I’m a builder not the mayor, nobody cares what I do, and this time it is for us too. We were there. I helped kill them and hide the bodies, it is our problem as much as William and Courtney’s.” He continued to hold Daisy, his blond hair, just starting to thin, resting against her red curls as he murmured his reasons for wanting to help, friendship, Theobald, the Anderson Mine. “We’re all tied by our past,” he said.
While John and Daisy were talking, Mere sat quietly with James standing leaning into her. Edward, and John and Daisy’s three children, excused from the table were playing in the sitting room.
They all waited for Daisy’s response, certain John would help them, he just needed to win Daisy around. They’d seen him do it before, often. She stood in John’s arms, her head on his shoulder. Finally, she moved away from him, and sighed, as if she’d lost a battle.
“We’ll help.” Her attitude indicated she still felt William caused trouble and John put his life at risk to get him out of it. She turned to Mere, “I could look after Edward and James if you are needed there too.”
Mere smiled at her and nodded. “We would be grateful.”
Chapter 4
IN THE MORNING, when he arrived at the office. John and William were already there. They had the survey maps for the ridge spread out on the trestle table.
“Is it possible?” Courtney asked.
“Yes.” John leaned over the map again. “We think, if we go in here, go down to this drive, break t
hrough here, then dig a crosscut of about thirty feet.”
William rolled up the survey map then tucked it under his arm. “It should take us right where we dropped the bodies. Coming to check?” he asked and picked up his coat.
“Why not?” said Courtney and followed the other two out of the office.
This time they took the old bullock track that followed the river and went past the Anderson mine. They rode on until they come to the track that led to the claims. The old stamper, that giant rusting monster John and William had bought to crush the quartz glowered there.
Courtney looked up at the ridge. A landslide of broken quartz tumbled down to the river, and the old trolleys that had been used to get the rock down from the ridge lay tangled with weeds. The rails the trolleys ran on, were dull now but used to be burnished silver and shiny when they were in use.
“We moved a lot of rock when we were mining,” William commented. “Even after ten years, weeds and water stains have only just started to soften the white of the quartz.”
John’s horse stamped and skittered sideways. “It made us rich.” John reined the horse in.
William nodded and swung down from the saddle. The old post and rail fence they built to corral their horses still partially surrounded the clearing beside the track.
He looped the reins over the first post. “Now let’s make sure we stay free and keep enjoying that money.” He grabbed the bag tied to the saddle and John took two lanterns out of his saddlebag. They all started up the slope and walked between the rails to the old mine site.
At the top Courtney could see the bush had started to grow back over the trenches and the old jenny shed had no roof anymore. “It looks like you just walked away,” he said. “Will everything still work?”
William studied the winch. “I think so. The poppet head is still there and with a bit of cleaning and some grease the jenny should be fine.”