Come to Grief

by Wendy M Wilson

  After a lap or two of Main Street, he returned to the jetty and found the temporary mortuary. He went inside cautiously, expecting to be shocked. He had to take Helen with him, but he held her facing away from the bodies — not that she’d understand what she saw anyway.

  The shed was filled with bodies wrapped in canvas, laid out in two rows, the canvas folded down on the corner of each to expose the upper bodies for identification. Kerosene lamps had been placed at intervals causing shadows to dance on the walls like evil spirits watching over the dead. He made his way slowly along the rows, looking for anyone he recognized. He found the stewardess, Miss Aitken, lying peacefully, her hands crossed on her chest, her hair still pulled back in a tight bun, looking like she was prepared to start work. He patted her on the shoulder, thinking it would help, then recoiled when one arm, still dressed in the shipping line costume, fell away. It had been torn off at the shoulder. He wondered what horror she had endured to lose an arm in the water and how it came to be reunited with her body.

  He took a deep breath and continued on. The next person he recognized was one of the clergymen he’d seen on the wharf in Wellington. Someone had placed a bible on his chest, and he, too, looked like someone who was about to start work. In fact, he looked like he would begin a lecture if anyone awoke him.

  Right next to the clergyman he found Helen’s mother. He held Helen against his chest so she couldn’t see, but she was preoccupied with one of his shirt buttons and didn’t notice. The mother was still wearing her silver bracelet and he slipped it off. He may need it to provide identification at some point. He was the only person who could connect Helen and her mother.

  At the end of the first row of bodies, he found William Sampson. His clothing was damp, indicating that he’d been placed there recently. Frank squatted beside him, made sure no one was looking, and checked his pockets. In one, he found a small key — not the key to the bullion room, which had been much larger. The other pockets were empty. He took the key and slipped it in his trouser pocket, jiggling Helen awkwardly as he did so. She had managed to get her face against his shirt, and transfer a blob of dirt to her nose. He wiped it off with his sleeve, which was somewhat clean.

  Well, that was it then. One gold robbery suspect dead, the other somewhere in the district, and the third, Hinton, who knew where, although probably dead. But until he saw the body Frank wasn’t counting on it.

  He came out of the gloomy shed and into bright sunlight, wondering what he should do next. A horse ridden at full gallop came from the direction of Waipapa, a woman in the saddle whipping it on. She slowed as she approached, pulling back on the reins, and he realized it was Mrs. Brunton. She kept astride the horse, the reins pulled tight to keep the horse in place. It was a lively one, he could see.

  “Thank the Lord I found you, Sergeant Hardy.”

  He gestured in the direction her son had gone. “Your son just left. He went to the general store.”

  “I was at the beach near the wreck and I met your wife and daughter.”

  “Mette?” His heart leapt. She was close? Thank god.

  “It’s not good news, I’m afraid. She was just arrested by two policemen from Dunedin.”

  “Arrested? For what?”

  Mrs. Brunton looked grim. “Kidnapping.”

  “Kidnapping who? Sarah Jane? Surely not.”

  “A baby was kidnapped in Dunedin, and one of the policemen, who claims to be an Assistant Commissioner of Police, although I have my suspicions about that, had been following your wife on the train from Dunedin. It’s all nonsense, of course. Look, Sergeant, you don’t have much time. They’ve sent her off to the lockup in Invercargill with a couple of oafs who were the only men available. Give me the baby and go after them. Rescue your wife and daughter and bring them back to Otara. We’ll hide you until we can work out what to do.”

  “You think I should follow them on foot?”

  She jumped down from the horse and thrust the reins at him. “Take Nightingale. She’s made for you. She’s a man’s horse. I have trouble reining her in.” She took Helen from Frank. “I’ll take the baby and we’ll find Charles at the store. He’ll take us home.”

  “Are you sure? I can’t take…she’s a Hanoverian, isn’t she?”

  She glared at him. “Take the bloody horse. She belongs to my husband and he doesn’t need her. I’ll see you at the house later today. Go!”

  He leapt on the horse and spurred it towards the Bluff road. Mette had been arrested and he had to get her back. Too bad he hadn’t brought a gun with him. Without it he’d have to rely on his hands and his strength. And his rage.

  10

  The Rescue

  Mette felt like she was in a tumbrel on the way to the guillotine. She sat in the wagon bed, her back pressed against a sharp board on the side, her hands shackled in front of her with a pair of stiff metal handcuffs that cut into her wrists. Sarah Jane lay against her leg, propped up with a sack, drooling as she slept, and twitching when she dreamed about something exciting. Mette was desperate to hold her, but if she made a move, one of the two men escorting her to Bluff would spin around and snarl at her. She’d tried that already. The younger man had threatened to make her walk behind the cart on a rope, like a prisoner on a road crew.

  When they had pushed her on board the wagon, she had been terrified they would separate her from her baby. But they’d loaded Sarah Jane beside her like a sack of potatoes, saying they knew the baby wasn’t hers, but they needed to get her back to her parents who were on their way from Dunedin to Invercargill by the Mail Coach.

  “But she is mine,” she said. She hoped the parents of the other baby would realize that Sarah Jane was not the baby that had been stolen from them. What if they didn’t care? What if they were happy to take her lovely daughter away to replace theirs? How would she ever prove she was her mother? Sarah Jane had been born in a hideaway on their farm up near Feilding, and only Frank and three boys had watched the birth. And since then she had moved to Wellington where no one knew her. She didn’t know if Frank had even registered the birth, so much else had been going on.

  The two men escorting her to Invercargill, a constable and a sergeant from the Otago Police Force, were the only people available to take her there, and the detective who had arrested her had allowed them to do the job with reluctance. Mr. Smith wasn’t with them because he had something important to do, he said. He’d told the men to be extra careful with the baby, as it was important she arrived in Invercargill unscathed.

  “I know you have some fondness for the child,” he said to Mette. “So please take care of her. The men will let you feed her if she cries.”

  “Of course I’ll take care of my own bloody daughter,” she said. He shook his head and sighed, and she knew she should not have sworn at him. All she had achieved was to prove to him she was a criminal. Decent women did not swear.

  What had upset her more than anything was realizing that she’d passed Frank as she left Fortrose with Mr. Smith on the wagon loaded with corpses. She’d seen him, but had decided that it wasn’t him because he was holding a baby. And now Mrs. Brunton had told her he’d rescued a baby from the wreck and was carrying her around until he found some relatives to take her off his hands. If she had not been under arrest she would have laughed about the misunderstanding.

  Sarah Jane awoke, whimpering and scratching her fingernails against Mette’s skirt.

  “I have to feed my baby,” she said.

  The younger of the two men, the constable, turned and eyed Sarah Jane. He was almost bald, in spite of his youth, and had a scraggly beard that didn’t help his appearance. He was thin and stooped, and a bigger contrast to Frank than you would ever find. Everyone made her think of Frank at the moment, even an ugly man like him, or the other man, the sergeant, who was large and pompous with a big grey beard and stains on his clothing. Mr. Smith must have been short of men to send these two with her.

  The constable turned away and said over his shoulder,
“She can wait. We’ll be at the river soon. You can feed her while we’re getting on the ferry.”

  “Can I hold her until then?”

  He shook his head dismissively. “Nope. She doesn’t need you. She’ll survive.”

  Sarah Jane reached for Mette, her lips mouthing her usual ma ma. Mette’s heart was breaking. “Please,” she begged the constable. “Mr. Smith said…”

  The constable ignored her.

  A tear rolled down her cheek. She sniffed and raised her shackled hands together to wipe it away. As she did, she noticed that the lock on the handcuff had not engaged properly. It was an Adams single lock, the kind Frank used to carry when he was an investigator. If she could flip the lock open all the way without disturbing the two men she could remove the handcuffs and hold Sara Jane for a few minutes. If nothing else, she would feel more comfortable, and maybe she could think of a way to escape. She imagined running back down the road holding Sarah Jane, and meeting Frank coming in the other direction. It was a comforting fantasy.

  She worked away at the lock, pushing at it with her thumb nail. After several minutes, it snapped open and the two sides of the cuff separated. She waited until the wagon was passing over a bridge, where any noise would be drowned out by the rush of the water, and threw the cuffs into the river. The sergeant had another pair on his belt. She’d seen them. But she would worry about that later. For now, she had her Sarah Jane. She picked her up and hugged her, crying again.

  Through her tears, she saw a shape approaching fast. She could not believe what she was seeing. Wasn’t that Frank on a huge, pale-grey horse, looking like the Young Lochinvar in Sir Walter Scott’s wonderful poem? Was she dreaming? No, it was really him.

  Afraid to alert the two men, she whispered into Sarah Jane’s ear softly. “Daddy’s coming.”

  He caught up to the wagon and passed by, one finger to his lips. He was not carrying the baby she had heard about, which was just as well. A baby would be terrified to be taken on such a horse. She hoped he hadn’t left her somewhere by herself, even temporarily, while he came to save them.

  She was filled with joy. He was not only alive, which she knew already, but right here about to rescue her from these horrible men.

  She considered what he might do, and decided he’d probably find a better place up ahead and stop them somehow. Maybe at the river, although there’d be other people there. She peered round between the men. They were on a flat, grassy plain, with no place for him to hide, but in the distance she could see that the land dropped away. Perhaps that was where the river was. He’d be down there, somewhere, waiting between the trees.

  The horses slowed, and she could feel the road going downhill. Stumpy, windblown trees began to appear on either side of the road. As the trees became larger she waited for something to happen. Surely he would jump out from behind a tree soon, like a highwayman. He would ask them to stand and deliver.

  She had almost given up hope, when he landed beside her in the back of the wagon. He’d dropped down from an overhanging tree branch. Without stopping to say anything, he grabbed the young constable under the armpits, lifted him from his seat, and threw him off the wagon. The constable screamed in a decidedly feminine way, and Mette watched as he landed on his feet beside the wagon, ran a few ungainly steps, and then fell face down on the metalled road. The sergeant was another matter, and resisted as Frank tried to push him from his seat. The pair of them locked together in a bear hug, each trying to throw the other off the wagon.

  Mette heard a sudden noise, and turned from watching Frank and the police sergeant wrestling on the seat. The constable had managed to regain his feet and his composure and was running after the slowing cart, his arms flailing around like a windmill. As they were no longer moving very quickly, he soon reached the wagon and grabbed the tailboard. He ran a few steps in that way, then began to pull himself up, his face bright red with exertion. Mette put Sarah Jane at a safe distance from her father, and edged towards the constable. This was something she’d done before and she knew she needed to wait for the perfect moment. When he was half way up on the wagon, with one hand flat on the floorboard and the other holding something below, balancing as if he were on a seesaw, she grabbed his wrist and pulled up as hard as she could and watched as he flew backwards, looking at her in a surprised way until he hit the road behind them again.

  This time he did not get up, but stayed seated, receding in the distance.

  She could see they were nearly at the river. The ferry was coming across from the far side and would arrive before they did.

  She picked up Sarah Jane and held her close, watching in case the two men tumbled on top of them. “Better hurry, Frank. There are people waiting for the ferry.”

  The sergeant bared his teeth and managed to push Frank back towards the wagon bed. “Better give up, you bastard. And you’re under arrest. Anything you say…”

  “Has he got any cuffs, Mette?” Frank said, his teeth clenched.

  She knelt behind them and reached for the cuffs, holding on to Frank’s knee for balance. “Here they are. They’re Adams Single Lock. I’ve got the key from his pocket.”

  He grunted his thanks. “See if you can slap one on his wrist.” He bent the sergeant in Mette’s direction, both of them red with exertion, and she hooked one of the circles around his wrist. The sergeant was distracted for minute, shaking his hand to rid himself of the cuff. In one move, Frank threw him backwards and hooked the second circle of the handcuffs around the strut of the seat so that he was stretched across the seat on his back like a cast sheep.

  Frank fell back into the bed of the wagon beside Mette and grinned at her. “Well done.”

  The whip was just a few inches from the sergeant’s hand and they could see him straining to reach it with his free hand. Frank picked it up and tossed it on the back of the wagon, then lay across the sergeant’s body, his own body pushing the policeman down, and unleashed the horses, watching as they trotted away, freed from their restraints, the reins dragging behind them. “That’ll keep you for a bit.”

  “You’re not going to get away with this. Assistant Commissioner Smith will track you down and have your guts for gaiters.”

  “Commissioner?” Said Mette. “I thought he was a private investigator.”

  “Not him,” said the sergeant. He was twisting his hand, trying to free himself from the cuff on his wrist. “Assistant Commissioner Smith is the nephew of one of the most important men in Dunedin. He won’t want this escape to ruin his reputation. He’ll track you until he finds you, just see if he doesn’t.”

  Frank picked up Sarah Jane. “Let’s go, Mette. Pay no attention to this cretin.”

  The wagon had come to a stop, and they jumped easily to the ground. Mette had been dying to hug Frank, and she did now, throwing her arms around him and Sarah Jane. “I thought you were dead. Min gut, Frank, I didn’t know what I was going to do without you.”

  The constable had appeared in the distance, limping towards them.

  “We’d better get out of here.” Frank whistled and a huge, pale grey horse appeared from the trees and trotted towards them. “This is Nightingale. Mrs. Brunton lent her to me.” He jumped on the horse and helped Mette and Sarah Jane up in front of him. It felt so right to Mette. It was the first time the three of them had been on a horse together, but it was a very big horse and she was sure it could manage their combined weight.

  “Where will we go? You heard what that man said about Mr. Smith. He’ll be looking for us.”

  “Let him. We’re going to cut across overland west of Fortrose to the Otara Road, and then take that road to Otara Station. Mrs. Brunton has promised to hide us until we can work out what’s going on.”

  “She’s such a nice person,” said Mette. “But why would she hide us from the police? Are you sure she’s not going to turn us in?”

  “She’s a decent Yorkshire lass who doesn’t want some whippersnapper pushing her around,” said Frank. “At least, I think so. I
’ll trust anyone who lets me use a horse like this with no conditions. And she told me her father-in-law was a coachman. He probably knew my father.”

  Mette leaned back on Frank and closed her eyes, feeling his warmth through his shirt. He never felt the cold. “What’s a whippersnapper?”

  He shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s something my father used to say.”

  He spurred the horse into a fast trot.

  By the time they reached the Otara Road she was feeling safe again. The road was heavily treed at the junction, and as they turned into it, they met a young man on horseback trotting towards them.

  “Be careful what you say,” said Frank quietly. “Let’s pretend we’re on our way to visit your relations in Tokanui. If he asks the name, say Jensen. Let’s keep it simple.”

  “And if it gets awkward, I’ll act like I’m stupid,” said Mette. Most English men were quite willing to consider a young Scandinavian woman stupid; it played into their preconceptions.

  The young man nodded to them. “Are you on your way to the wreck?”

  Frank squeezed Mette’s waist, warning her not to say anything. “We heard there’d been a wreck, but we’re on our way to Tokanui to stay with relatives.”

  “In that case, you missed the turn,” said the man. “You can turn left off the next track you come to and that will get you there.”

  “Ah. We’ll take that then. Thank you.”

  The young man had reined in his horse, eager to talk. “I’ve come from Waikawa. We need help there. So much wreckage is coming ashore from the Tararua we can’t keep up with it. And bodies as well. Two so far, but there’ll be more in the next week.”