Come to Grief

by Wendy M Wilson

  She edged over, trying not to disturb Sarah Jane, and peered around the bush.

  “I think so, but it’s hard to tell in the dark.”

  He took another look. The shape had disappeared.

  “Right. We should get moving,” he said. Sarah Jane had fallen asleep at Mette’s breast, and Helen had succumbed to the brandy. “We can leave the blankets and the food under the bush and carry one baby each.”

  Mette buttoned up her dress, balancing the sleeping Sarah Jane on her knee. “Where should we go? Should we go back to the hut?”

  “They must suspect we’re there. I think we should head to the burial site and find a real police inspector. Any intelligent policeman will understand. Several people knew that I pulled Helen from the water.”

  Mette sighed. “I hope so. I’m getting tired of this. I should never have insisted on bringing Sarah Jane.”

  “This will soon be over, and we can claim the reward,” Frank said. “Some of it, anyway. Sampson told me he knew about the gold, and he was travelling with Hinton. I reckon Hinton has it on him.”

  Mette nodded, but he wasn’t sure that she was convinced. She was more optimistic about life than he was, but he was more inclined to rely on luck when money was needed.

  At Tararua Acre, an early morning mist wove itself between the newly filled-graves with their wooden markers, and shovels that had been left in the ground for work to continue on a new day. Four holes had been dug, and left covered with tarpaulins. Empty coffins sat near the pathway to the beach, beside a dray covered with a tarpaulin which appeared to hold bodies. The workers would continue their gruesome work, and would transfer these bodies to coffins, and then into graves when they arrived at daybreak.

  The water was at a distance, down a long, grassy slope, but they could hear the repetitive sound of the waves as they crashed on the shore.

  “We’re too early for anyone, but they’ll be here soon,” Frank said. He dragged a tarpaulin from one of the graves with one hand and threw it against a mound of dirt, then sat with Helen in the centre. His muscles ached from carrying her, and his shoulders felt cramped. “Let’s see if we can get some sleep here until someone arrives. Sit close and we’ll keep each other warm.”

  Mette huddled next to him, with Sarah Jane on her lap. He did not feel as contented as he had when they’d arrived at the Brunton’s. A dark feeling of impending doom had seeped over his soul. Something about the graves and the coffins was bothering him, and the smell of death hung in the air. The thought that he’d die before Mette and lie in a grave like this nagged at him in a way that nothing else did.

  12

  Tararua Acre

  Inspector Buckley and his men appeared out of the mist on horseback, riding in a cluster that reminded Mette of a drawing she’d seen of Odin on his eight-legged horse, Sleipner. Or maybe the four horsemen from the Illustrated Bible she’d bought for Joey…but she didn’t want to think of that, or what it meant to ride a pale horse, like the one Frank had ridden when he rescued her from the police. There had been so much death on this beach, and she could feel in her body the sorrow that came in with every wave.

  She had fed both the girls and changed their napkins, and was holding them close, and keeping them as warm as she could in the cold, grey light of the new day. Frank was walking back and forward along the crest of the slope down to the beach, keeping an eye open for the police, and watching for something to wash up with each wave. She could feel his worry.

  The police were followed by a motley group of gravediggers, treasure hunters, and the desperate families of the dead, searching with fading hopes for a sign that their loved one had survived, or, at the very least, been washed ashore and identified. A man in his fifties riding alone in a green, two-wheeled spring cart came last. He stopped near Mette and began to unload his cart, humming softly to himself.

  He noticed her on the tarpaulin with the girls, and asked, “Do you mind if I set up my camera beside you? The light’s good here, and if I put my equipment on the tarpaulin it will stay clean.”

  “Not at all.” She was interested. She’d seen an image of the Rimutaka train disaster in the newspaper a few months ago, but hadn’t known how they did it. It looked like a drawing, but she didn’t know if the scene had been copied from a photograph, or was actually a photograph which had been traced and transferred to the newspaper in some way. Either way, it had been very clever and had helped her understand the accident.

  “Are you taking a photograph for the newspaper?” she asked.

  “That’ll be the day,” he said. “Photographs in the newspaper? Some say it might happen, but it seems a bit fantastical to me. My partner does a nice woodcut of photographs I take, and sometimes the newspaper publishes those. It’s a slow process, though, and not much use if you want to get something in the paper quickly. Very expensive as well.”

  “You’re just taking photographs to sell, then? For people to remember, or who can’t be here? I imagine anyone who lost someone would want to know where they were lost.”

  He took a three-legged stand from his cart and stood it on the ground, moving it around until it was properly balanced. “Artists are painting scenes of that in Invercargill and Dunedin, and making themselves a few quid.” He took out what looked like two wooden boxes joined together, one smaller than the other, and fixed them to the top of the stand. “I’m here because the police asked me to take photographs of the victims before they’re buried. For identification purposes.”

  “Ah.” That was something she preferred not to know about. What a gruesome job, photographing dead people. She’d seen photographs of parents with their dead children propped up beside them, and it had horrified her: memento mori, they were called. Of course, in this case it made sense. How would she have felt if Frank had disappeared and she didn’t have a body to bury? A photograph would at least be something to hold on to.

  The family members and friends of the lost were walking past the coffins and staring into them, their eyes full of mingled hope and despair. She heard one man exclaim, “That’s him. Thomas Bailey. My head waiter.”

  He wiped the corner of one eye with his little finger and walked over to where Mette sat with the girls. “So sad,” he said to her, obviously wanting to talk to someone. “I didn’t know him well, but he was my head waiter at the Criterion Hotel in Dunedin. I gave him a few days off to visit Invercargill, which I thought he would enjoy, and this is what happened to him. He came from Manchester on holiday with his brother, but his brother returned home a few months ago.”

  “So he has no relatives in New Zealand?”

  The man shook his head and wiped his eyes again, this time with the back of his hand.

  “We will all say a prayer over him as he’s buried,” she said.

  He nodded slowly. “They’re having a ceremony later, for everyone who’s identified today. Prayers are being offered in almost every church in the colony. There were several Wesleyan clergymen on board. They were on their way to a conference in Melbourne. It seems everyone knew someone who was on the ship. It’s a national tragedy.”

  She smiled sympathetically and went back to entertaining Sarah Jane and Helen with stories they didn’t understand. Helen was particularly interested in Hans Christian Anderson’s story, The Princess and the Pea, and laughed happily when Mette said in her best queen’s voice, “Twenty feather beds!” She lingered on the words, wishing she, too, had twenty feather beds. The tarpaulin was cold and uncomfortable with not a feather in sight.

  One of the men who had been checking the coffins wandered towards them, not really looking at them and sighed. “Not there,” he said. “Not there.”

  He was clutching a woman’s shawl to his chest, his face blank with misery.

  “That’s his wife’s shawl,” said the hotel owner as the man moved away towards the ocean. “He was an Able Bodied Seaman on the ship and his wife and child were with him on the voyage. The captain directed him to get in the life boat — the one tha
t put out to sea and met the Kaikanui — and he knew he couldn’t refuse to go; it was his duty. So he lashed his wife to the mast with her shawl, and gave her his watch and all his money. Now all he has left is the shawl, which he found in the seaweed yesterday. He’s searching for his wife and child, but they probably went down with the ship.”

  Mette stared at him, too overcome with sadness to speak. Thank heavens she still had Frank. How close she had come to losing him.

  A dray arrived with more mourners and the hotel owner turned towards it. “I’d best return to Fortrose in the dray and catch the coach to Wyndham,” he said. “I’ll need to write a letter to Thomas’s brother in Manchester and tell him the sad news.”

  “A pity they don’t have the telephone in yet,” said the photographer. “I hear they put up a petition in Fortrose to run a line from there to Wyndham.” He shook his head. “The modern world. It’s very strange, Mrs. Hardy. The next thing you know we’ll all be flying by balloon to the moon.”

  As she watched the hotel owner leave in the dray, she thought of Frank again, imagining herself receiving a letter saying he had gone down with the ship. How horrible that would have been.

  She watching him at the top of the slope, and trying to push the negative thoughts from her her mind, when she saw him turn away from the ocean and approach the group of police. The leader dismounted and fell into conversation with him, nodding as Frank gestured towards the beach. At one point, the leader turned and beckoned to a second man, who dismounted and joined them.

  When he’d finished talking to the officers, he came over to her. Helen was disgruntled, now that Mette had finished her storytelling, and refused to look at him, burrowing her head into Mette’s side, but Sarah Jane reached for him, and he picked her up and hugged her against his shoulder, stroking her hair, until she started to wriggle. He put her back beside Mette, and said, “I think Inspector Buckley’s on our side. The detective who arrested you says he’s certain that Smith is an official of some kind. But the inspector says he’s never heard of anyone named Roderick Smith with any kind of judicial authority.”

  “He fooled me,” said Mette. “Although I thought it more likely he was a private investigator of some kind. Are the police going to let us go?”

  “The inspector wants to talk with the Bruntons first. He says if they’re willing to confirm that I pulled Helen from the water after the shipwreck, and if I swear that Sarah Jane is mine, they’ll let us go. But he wants us to go to the Bluff and stay there until he’s finished here, and keep Helen until he can sort that out. That’ll mean a few days in a Bluff hotel for us. I suppose we can manage that. I still have eight quid on me. How much do you have left?”

  “Four pounds. Will twelve be enough to get us home?”

  He shrugged. “Probably. Depends how long we have to stay in Bluff and wait for Helen’s family to claim her.” He lay beside her, leaning on one elbow. “The inspector said someone’s coming from Fortrose with food. I hope you can last until they get here. I know you’re not used to missing meals like I am.”

  “I drank some of Helen’s condensed milk from your haversack. That will keep me going for now. I used the napkins in your bag for the girls as well. I didn’t know you carried napkins around with you.”

  “Only since I’ve been stuck with Helen. I didn’t know how much work babies were.”

  She yawned, and Frank squeezed her knee. “Not long now.” He looked up at the photographer, who was busy manipulating the two boxes on the stand away from each other, revealing what looked like bellows between them. “Are you here to take photographs of the scene for the hearing?”

  “He’s going to photograph the bodies for identification,” said Mette quickly, to forestall another long explanation.

  “Here comes the first one now,” said the photographer. Two men were carrying an open coffin towards them. “They’re going to prop each coffin at an angle in front of the camera and I’ll take a photograph of the person inside. The good thing is I won’t have to worry about my subjects moving, which is…”

  He stopped, realizing Mette wasn’t amused, and concentrated on the camera. She could see that the two boxes had rails running between them, along which the bellows were stretched. He pulled a black velvet cloth from his bag as well, and she wondered what he intended to do with it.

  Two diggers had stopped in front of them. “Only three unidentified today, Mr. Kebble,” one said. “Two men and a boy.”

  Frank dragged himself to his feet. “Do you need a hand holding them up?”

  “This one’s light. Just a young lad. Found on the beach at Porpoise Bay. They brought him and the other one down last night with one of the men.”

  Frank held the side of the coffin and stared in. He was upset, she could tell. “I know this boy,” he said. “His name is Tommy. He was the brass polisher. He told me his father works at the wharf in Bluff Harbour and got him the job that way.”

  The photographer took out a notebook and pencil and jotted something down. “I’ll put that information with the photograph,” he said. “And we’ll make sure we let his father know. Shouldn’t be hard to find.”

  Frank helped the men lift the coffin up to a forty-five degree angle. They held it still as the photographer slid the bellows back and forth along the rails.

  “I’m changing the focus,” he said to Mette. “If the focus is good, the photograph will be clear. I want to make sure his father will recognize him.”

  She felt a sob rise in her throat. Here was a boy who worked at sea in a job that made him feel important, and gave him a chance to help provide for his family. And now his father would be given a photograph of him lying in a coffin. He’d not even see his body. How terrible.

  The photographer slid a glass plate into the back of the camera, and ducked under the black velvet cloth he’d thrown over the whole thing. “Hold him still for a count of twenty,” he said from beneath the cloth. Everyone froze until the photographer came out from under the cover and smiled. “Done. Next please.” He pulled the plate from the camera and placed it carefully in a box at his feet.

  Frank touched the boy on the cheek before the two diggers lifted the coffin onto their shoulders, and then followed them to one of the graves. They removed the tarpaulin, put a lid on the coffin, hammered nails into the lid to hold it down, and then passed the coffin to two more men waiting to lower the coffin and cover it with dirt. A minister was standing nearby, ready to say a few kind words to any family members or friends who might be present as the boy was lowered into the grave. But of course there was no one except Frank, who had accompanied the coffin to the grave and bowed his head. She wondered how he knew the boy.

  He helped the men load a large body into a second coffin, and joined them in carrying it to the photographer. Mette was not expecting to be upset, knowing this one contained the body of a grown man, which was not as bad as seeing a drowned child. But Frank had looked up at her oddly when he saw the body, as if it might be someone they knew. She waited as they brought it over and tilted it towards the photographer; the man had red hair and whiskers. She put Sarah Jane down on the tarpaulin and went to get a closer look. Then she caught Frank’s eye and shook her head. No, it was not Hinton, the red-haired American. Not a bit like him. Frank nodded, understanding, as he always did. They could talk to each other without words, now that they’d been together for more than three years.

  By the time the third coffin with its terrible cargo was carried over she was sitting on the tarpaulin playing with the girls. This body would certainly be that of a stranger, and her heart, already broken by seeing the boy, Tommy, would be able to absorb the shock. She was not going to think about all these poor people and the tragedy they and their loved ones had suffered. She would not even look at this one.

  But she did. Something made her glance up as the photographer fussed with his camera and the men lifted the coffin into place. She stood slowly and moved closer, wanting to know if her suspicions were correct.
/>   “Frank?”

  He was kneeling behind the coffin holding it in place, and didn’t hear her.

  “Frank?” she said again. “We know this man.”

  Frank eased the coffin to the ground and looked at the body inside. “Get the inspector,” he said to one of the gravediggers. “This man has been murdered.” He turned to Mette. “It’s McNab.”

  In the third coffin, his eyes protruding in what looked like terror, was the man she had seen boarding the Tararua, following the woman who had drowned holding Helen, both of them with that memorable, straw-coloured hair.

  He stared out into the world from which he had recently departed through protruding eyes, his hair standing on end, his head raised from the bottom of the coffin, making it appear as if he were trying to get out. His shirt was open, revealing a mottled purple mark on his neck.

  Inspector Buckley hurried up, looking weary. “What have you found, Sergeant? How do you know he’s been murdered?”

  “This is William McNab, a suspect in the gold robbery from the Tararua last year. I saw him at Otara Station the night after the ship went down, so I know he survived the sinking. And he hasn’t been dead long. Look at the position of his head.”

  Inspector Buckley nodded, and leaned into the coffin, his face close to McNab’s. He felt around his jaw and neck. “Turn him on his side, Hardy. Be careful. There might be blood.”

  Frank obeyed. The inspector knelt and inspected McNab’s back. “All the way, now. Easy. I can’t see a wound, and I can’t smell any poison. I would say by the mark on his neck he’s been strangled, but I’ll have to wait for the autopsy results to be sure.” He raised one of the legs and bent and straightened it. “Rigor mortis has set in on his jaw and shoulders, but hasn’t reached his lower body yet. What time did you say you saw him?”