“Yes. Very good I should say.”
“And when was the last time you saw him?”
“When he had started, and was about two hundred yards down the track leading to Greymouth from the Arnold township. He was then alone, and I observed round his shoulders a leather belt, to which a compass hung.”
James thanked Anderson, who sat down.
The next to speak was George Windover, a boatman on the Grey River, who remembered that he had been travelling on a Monday about a month previously and seen various people on the track. He described them laboriously. When he came to the description of men he had seen putting up a tent about a mile and a half from the coal pits, James listened intently. Here would be the crux of the matter. Had he seen the men, and had he seen George Dobson? If he could put them together close to each other the case would be half made. He would just need to discover which of them had done the evil deed.
“What can you tell us about the men you saw putting up the tent?” asked the examiner.
“I thought it was a queer time of the day to camp,” answered Windover.
“What time was it?”
“This was about half-past one or two o’clock. They answered that they were not in a hurry and they did not want to get wet, as it was a little drizzling rain at the time. I afterwards remarked to my mate that the men were foolish to put a tent up there, as there was a good mi-mi close beside them, under which they might have put their tent.”
And Dobson, wondered James, where was Dobson?
Windover continued, answering the unstated thought. “About a quarter of a mile further on we met a young man wearing a pair of glazed leggings. I noticed that he had a gold guard chain, and I asked him what time it was. I do not remember what he said, but I think it was somewhere about two o’clock. I asked him how far it was to the next shanty, and he told me it was a little over a mile.”
“Would you know the men you saw putting up the tent if you saw them again?
Windover looked doubtful. “I don’t think I would.”
“Do you remember anything of how they looked?” asked a juror.
“They were both low-set men, one darker than the other.”
“And the young man you met on the track?”
“He had a fair complexion, no hair on his face. About twenty-two I would say.”
Another witness from Maori Gully gave his evidence, then it was the turn of David Duncan from Arnold Township. He had been driving cattle over the Grey River on Monday, May 28th and had seen a man he knew named DeLacey, on the river, and he could not recall seeing him other than that time. He also saw a couple named Mullins on the track. On Monday night, he had run into Mr. Fox at Arnold Township; Mr. Fox had told him that he had come up from Maori Gully that day and was staying for the night in the township. On Tuesday, he’d gone up the track looking for lost cattle and run into two men with swags heading down towards Greymouth he would recognize again if he saw them. James was about to ask him if he saw one of those men in court, when Duncan beat him to it.
“I believe the man standing there,” pointing to Wilson, “to be one of them. They were carrying blankets but no tents.”
“And could they have left Greymouth the same day and been returning when you saw them?”
“Yes, possibly, but…”
“But?”
“They would have had to have left Greymouth before daylight to have reached that far.”
“Are you sure about the dates on which you saw these men?” asked the magistrate.
Daniel Duncan bristled. “I have the receipts from the cattle drive. I am sure.”
Wilson leaned forward again.
“Could I ask the witness a question?”
The magistrate shook his head. “You are not on trial here, Mr. Wilson, and the jury has nothing to do with you. This inquest is simply to determine how, where, when, and by what means, the deceased came by his death.”
That concluded the witnesses. The magistrate summed up, and sent the jury to deliberate. As they left the room, Wilson stood up and shouted after them: “You are swearing away an innocent man’s blood, without giving him an opportunity to speak. If you allow me to say something I can tell where I slept on the night of the 28th.”
The jury continued from the room, not paying attention, although a few of the men glanced in Wilson’s direction looking somewhat sympathetic. Within a short time, they returned with the verdict.
“That the deceased George Dobson was wilfully murdered by some person or persons unknown, on the Grey and Arnold track, on the 28th of May last.”
Wilson was upset again, assuming for some reason that he had been found guilty.
“I want to make a statement,” he said. “A statement. Before I get sent to Hokitika.”
James walked towards where Wilson stood between a constable and a sergeant.
“Sergeant Hickson can take your statement when you arrive in Hokitika,” he said.
“I want you to take it,” said Wilson stubbornly. “You’ve been in on this from the start. You know what I’ve done, and what I haven’t done. Can’t you take it now?”
James looked around the room. It was empty other than Wilson, himself, and the two policemen, who could act as witnesses. He made a quick decision.
“I’ll take it now,” he said. “But we’ll need to be quick. The coach leaves in an hour.” He turned to the constable. Go over to the Cobb’s booking office at Johnston’s Melbourne Hotel and reserve two seats on the Hokitika Coach.”
Wilson looked relieved.
James gave the customary caution. “Remember, whatever you say will be taken down in writing and used against you in your trial.”
Wilson nodded. “Yes, I know all of that.” He started talking, and James followed along, writing as best he could in his notebook. When they were done, he had the sergeant sign his name on each page of his notebook, read back his statement to Wilson, and asked, “And do you have any more to tell me? The coach is leaving in twenty minutes.”
Wilson added a few more interesting details which caused James and the sergeant to exchange glances. When he was done, the sergeant initialed the added page in the notebook, and James said quietly, “Couldn’t remember where he slept on the night of the 27th because he was drunk. That’s helpful. And he seems to think Dobson went missing on the 29th.”
As he left the courthouse, one of his men, Sergeant Walsh, a big, barrel-chested Irishman, was waiting, walking up and down. He saw James and held up a bag.
“I was over at the hotel in Cobden, the one where Wilson was staying, and found these,” he said. Cobden was on the other side of the Grey, and technically in Nelson, so Walsh should not have been there.
“Did you talk to Mr. Warden Kynnersley first?” Kynnersley was the magistrate in Cobden, on the Nelson side of the Grey.
Walsh shrugged, “Well, now then, not exactly, but…”
James felt a surge of annoyance. Walsh was a good sergeant, but not one to follow procedures. He’d get himself in trouble one of these days…
“What was it you found?” he asked.
Walsh dug his hand into the bag and let a stream of bullets run back into it.
“These,” he said. “In Wilson’s hotel room in Cobden. A bag of bullets.”
“Give them to Sergeant Slattery,” said James. “He’ll know what to do with them.” Not much, unfortunately. They would not be admissible as evidence.
9
Wanganui, 1888: The Boatman’s Steps
“Mr. Inspector James,” said Constable Crozier suddenly.
James was pulled from his reverie. For a moment he forgot that it was 1888, that the events in his mind had long disappeared from the public memory.
“You said you were on the gold escort, back in your old West Coast days.”
They were on Taupo Quay and could see steamers coming from the Heads pushing in against the tide as it raced out to sea. A few ships were already moored and men were running backwards and forwards carryi
ng bales of goods on their heads, or wheeling barrows holding steamer trunks. They stopped near the boatman’s steps and leaned on the parapet, looking down at the eddies of water swirling around the dock.
“I was, but only for one trip,” said James. Hadn’t he mentioned that in his speech?
“Why was that?”
Was the man trying to make conversation with him, or did he care? “It was a very dangerous trip, across the mountains,” James said.
Crozier moved the framed testimonial, balancing it on the sea wall. “Were there Hauhau waiting to attack you?”
James started to smile, but stopped himself. “No, indeed not. No Hauhau. Not in the South Island. The Hauhau were heading this way around that time, I believe, or soon after. Titokowaru came out of Taranaki in the late sixties and swept down the coast to Wanganui, I remember. But nothing like that in Greymouth, just…”
“I was in Wanganui then,” said Crozier. “In late ’68. I’d just joined the force a couple of years before. We were terrified. We thought we were all going to be captured and eaten. Decapitated first. They burned Wanganui.”
“There was some decapitation where I was,” said James. “I found a body without…”
“Not Hauhau though,” said Crozier.
“Not Hauhau. Bushrangers, in my case I believed, an especially vicious group of them. I mentioned them earlier, the Burgess gang. But it was the threat of bushrangers that stopped us continuing the gold escort. Bushrangers and the government not insuring the gold, and the diggers who sent the gold directly to Melbourne by sea. Many reasons.”
“And you stayed in Greymouth after that?” asked Crozier. “After the gold escort was done?”
James nodded. Those had been the days. Back then he’d lived an exciting and dangerous life. Not like now, when arresting a twelve-year-old boy for robbing an orchard seemed to be the extent of his peril. Poor Joshua Bason with his incorrigible father, what a waste it was when a boy like that, able to bring down a rabbit at a hundred yards with his rifle, was not able to make good in life and had to be sent to the industrial school. His father was the one who deserved to be sent away…
“Do you have children?” he asked, thinking of fathers and sons.
Crozier blushed. “I have two boys. I wed two years ago for the first time, a farmer’s daughter, a young woman twenty years my junior. She’s changed my life, she and the boys.”
James looked at the constable with new-found respect. In his forties, and married to a farmer’s daughter in her twenties - one with prospects as well, no doubt. Crozier was not as stupid as he looked.
“Two boys. Well done.”
Crozier’s face reddened even more, if that was possible. “We named the younger one William, after you…”
James was amused. “Why thank you, I’m honoured.” Why had nobody mentioned this to him? He should probably have given the boy a christening gift. What did one give in that situation? A beer stein? A silver spoon perhaps? Although he had already been born with a silver spoon, considering his grandfather was a landowner.
“William Alexander Jubilee Crozier,” said Crozier. “Alexander for me, and Jubilee, for, well, you know…”
James did. Many children had been named Jubilee last year, in honour of the old Queen, who had celebrated her Golden Jubilee in ‘87. He’d read that in London alone over three hundred children had been baptized with that middle name last year, often with the first name Victoria or Albert. What names to saddle children with…not that he hadn’t chosen the occasional odd name himself…
“You have a son, sir? An architect I heard.”
“I do, Thomas, born in Greymouth not long after I started at the police camp. We’re very proud of him, my wife and I.”
“Just the one son?”
“Yes.” Said James. He was feeling uncomfortable. “And two daughters… grandchildren as well. My daughter Louisa has three boys: Stanley, Cyril and Erima. She married a newspaper man, the owner of the Hokitika paper.” The irony of it, he’d thought at the time. His Louisa marrying a newspaperman, after all the battles he’d had with editors and reporters.
“Life on the West Coast must have been exciting,” said Crozier. “With the gold rush and all. An uncle of a friend of mine was there about the same time, Albert Smith?”
James shook his head to show he had not met the man.
“He used to talk about those murders, the ones down in Nelson. Five men, or more, I think he said? That would have been about your time, wouldn’t it?”
“The Maungatapu murders? Yes, I was involved in those - in catching the ruffians. I knew them even before the murders, unfortunately.”
They had reached the end of the quay, and stopped to look out at the water, which churned past them as the tide ran out to sea. This river was not like the rivers on the west coast, which were broad and flat, with channels running between islands of gravel, even after rain. The Whanganui was water from one bank to the other with no breaks or places to cross. James stared into the depths, half expecting to see a body. He had seen so many bodies in Greymouth, men who had drowned in the river and been swept out to sea, only to wash up again on the beach. Mr. Fox, the gold trader, had perished that way, a few years after George Dobson’s murder, still a young man of forty-seven. Fox’s broad Scots brogue echoed in James’ head for a minute, telling him he would nae be intimidated by yon bushrangers.
“How was it that you were involved in murders that happened in Nelson?” asked Crozier. “When you were down in Greymouth.”
“The first murder was in Greymouth,” said James. “George Dobson, a young surveyor. I was already familiar with the gang before the murders, and one of them, a man named James Wilson, came to see me around the time of the murders. He was a bell-ringer in Nelson. The curly-headed bellman, the papers called him, almost as if he was some kind of play actor.”
He stared into the black depths of the water, thinking he could almost see all of them in it, floating just below the surface, the five men murdered on the Maungatapu Track, George Dobson; Burgess, Kelly, and Levy; and Wilson, the scoundrel, who had misled him from the start. His mind drifted back again.
10
Greymouth, 1866: The Suspect
Before the Disappearance of George Dobson
One night late in May of ’66, weeks before he knew anything about George Dobson’s disappearance, James was awoken by the sound of a board creaking on the verandah, and sat up, alert suddenly. Someone was out there. Steps shuffled towards the door, paused, retreated, then came to the door again. Whoever was on his verandah was not trying to disguise his presence, but seemed to be deciding what to do. James swung his legs from the bed and tiptoed down the stairs to the kitchen, where the Enfield hung on the wall, taking it down as quietly as he could. His cartouche filled with ammunition was on the floor beneath it; he scooped it up, and climbed back upstairs to the bedroom. The children were asleep in the other bedroom and he was careful not to wake them.
“Elizabeth.” He lay his hand on her shoulder.
She was awake instantly, the whites of her eyes glinting in the darkness, not moving or making a sound.
“Someone is on the verandah. Load the Enfield and be ready to shoot.”
She sat up and took the gun and the cartouche box.
He slipped on his coat and trousers, checked to make sure his Beaumont and Adams was still in the pocket, and went towards the door, crouching low and staying away from the parlour window. He was almost there when the footsteps came again, followed by a thunderous knocking. Peering through the tiny peephole he’d drilled into the door, he saw a dark shape on his front verandah, outlined in the moonlight. Charlie, roused from his sleep on the kitchen floor, padded to his side, growling softly, his hackles up.
“Stay, Charlie,” he said softly, his hand on the dog’s neck. He heard Elizabeth tear open the packet of powder and plunge the rod into the barrel, forcing the bullet and paper wadding into place. She was an expert loader, could load in the dark with
the best of them, but had never had to shoot at anything more animated than a pumpkin; she could hit one of those without difficulty, but firing at a human being was something different, he knew that.
“Who’s there?”
The shadowy figure moved forward, peering at the peephole. “I have something of great importance to communicate to you, Mr. Inspector James.”
The voice sounded familiar. He could make out a man wearing a black waterproof coat with a comforter around his neck, and a dark slouched hat, rain dripping from its brim. His shoulders were hunched around his ears, his face in darkness.
“Elizabeth, lock the door after me and hold Charlie,” he said.
He stepped out onto the verandah staying near the door, his hand resting lightly on the revolver in his jacket pocket. Jamie Wilson stood there staring back at him, looking much smaller and less-threatening than he had seemed through the peephole.
“I’ve been walking up and down all night,” said Wilson, “trying to make up my mind to talk to you. Two hours it’s been. I need to make a statement before a magistrate.” Wilson’s pale face was twitching, his eyes unfocused and wild. “About Hill and Harmon.”
“You mean Burgess and Kelly?” James was used to the aliases criminals used.
“Yes, yes,” Wilson said. He took off his hat and flicked it, sending a cascade of water downwards. “And I need a guarantee of forgiveness from the magistrate, and some ready to leave the province.” He looked around nervously, as if Burgess and Kelly might jump at him from the bushes. “If they find out I talked to you they’ll kill me, Inspector James, I swear they will.”
“I’ll take you to see Mr. Revell,” said James. “He’ll be at home at the courthouse. He can take your statement there.”
“Right, then,” said Wilson. “But you go on ahead. I don’t want anyone to see me walking with a peeler. It’d get back to them…”
James fetched his coat, put Charlie on a leash, and set out in front of Wilson across the bridge to Mr. Warden Revell’s house in Blaketown, near the courthouse, to make a statement. Before he left he checked on Elizabeth. She was propped up in bed, the Enfield across her lap, sound asleep. He lifted her hand from the stock, took the gun gently from her hands, removed the cartridge, and returned the gun to the wall in the kitchen.
A Cold Wind Down the Grey Page 7