The Tararua was docked at the railway wharf in Thorndon, one of the more squalid parts of town. To get to the ship, they would need to pass by the infamous Thorndon Club, where a sixpenny membership bought a man the right to drink at any time of the day or night, and fallen women plied their trade at the same price.
Frank didn’t want to go near the Club with Mette and Sarah Jane, but there was no other way to get to the wharf. As they neared the Club he took Mette’s elbow. “Keep your eyes on the ground. It’s pretty rough and I wouldn’t want you to fall.”
Mette, carrying two bags in her hand and Sarah Jane on her back, glanced at him, smiling. “Don’t worry. I’ll be careful.”
As they reached the path in front of the club, a slovenly woman with a grubby white lace shawl draped provocatively around her shoulders leaned out from an upstairs window and coughed to get his attention. Frank glanced up, and she beckoned to him.
“Hey there, handsome. Want to leave your daughter and her wee one for a minute and come on up? Sixpence a pop.”
“What did she say?” asked Mette. She had the end of the shawl holding Sarah Jane in a tight grip to keep it from unravelling.
“Nothing important,” said Frank. His daughter! He’d just turned forty-two and worried about his age compared to the much younger Mette, who was still in her twenties; at least he was fit and healthy and still had all his teeth and no grey hair — well, some in his beard. But he hadn’t been been mistaken for Mette’s father before.
He was having second thoughts about taking Mette with him. If the wharf in Wellington was in a seedy part of town, might not the same be true of Dunedin? How would she manage without him? And what about Sarah Jane? He’d surprised himself with how much he adored his daughter, and worries about what might happen to the pair of them had begun to weigh on him. What had he been thinking, sending them off to a strange town alone, with Mette carrying Sarah Jane on her back like a peasant woman? And were babies that easy to carry around? Too late now to change his mind, but he decided he would at least accompany them to the railway station when they disembarked in Port Chalmers, the port servicing Dunedin.
“We cross here.” He took her hand as they reached the Railway Hotel, guiding her past a gang of urchins who spent their days hanging around the station entrance. “Keep your eyes on the tracks. The wharf is behind the hotel.”
On the wharf, passengers were already climbing the gangplank although the ship wasn’t sailing until high tide later that evening. A group of young men were celebrating their friend’s impending nuptials; he was on his way to Australia to meet his bride, and the others had come to bid him farewell and express their approval.
“You’ll forget all your friends in Wellington,” one said, slipping a flask from his vest pocket. He held it out to the bridegroom, a good-looking man of around thirty with dark hair and a neatly trimmed moustache. The uniform he wore was one Frank hadn’t seen, but he suspected the wearer was an officer on the ship. The would-be bridegroom shook his head and refused the proffered flask with a smile. “I’m on duty,” he said, confirming Frank’s suspicion. “And besides, as you know, I don’t drink.”
Nearby, a cluster of older men watched disapprovingly. Clergymen, Frank guessed. One held a bible to his chest while keeping an eye on the large bag by his feet to make sure no one ran off with it. The group had a long trip before them. The Tararua was on its way to Bluff, and then to Hobart and Melbourne, and most of the passengers were remaining on board after Bluff, including the three ex-crewmen Frank had been told to watch.
The Tararua sat at anchor, her dark blue hull rising and falling with the incoming tide.
“Quite the ship,” Frank said. The bracing wind and the thought of travel invigorated him; he was going to enjoy this voyage. “Beautiful lines, and those engines…it will handle anything the sea throws at it. Plow right through the swells.”
Mette nodded distractedly, ignoring the ship. He’d hoped to calm her nerves by engaging her with small talk. Knowing her fear of fast-moving trains, he assumed she would be nervous about sea travel, even on a ship as safe as this one. The Tararua was a screw-driven steamer with powerful engines, part of the Union Steamship Company fleet, built originally for the Panama Line but now trading between Australia and New Zealand. Nothing to worry about. The ship the safest of any of the hundreds of ships in the coastal waters of New Zealand.
As they climbed the gangplank, he took Mette’s bags from her so she could keep her balance by holding the ropes. Luckily, Sarah Jane was a quiet, contented baby. She had clamped her three teeth onto Mette’s braid and was chewing appreciatively, ignoring the bustle of the ship. She was a bright little girl who seemed to have inherited her appearance from him and her intelligence from her mother, although what little hair she had was reddish blond and stuck straight up, rather than being dark and curly like his. He adored her.
A stewardess, a short, dark-haired woman dressed in the colours of the Union Line, greeted them at the top of the gangplank and took their tickets.
“Welcome aboard. Are you travelling with us to Melbourne?”
“I’m off to the Bluff,” said Frank. “But my wife and daughter will disembark at Port Chalmers. I’ll escort them to the railway station and return to the ship. Will that be a problem, Miss…?”
“Aitken,” said the stewardess. “Jennie Aitken. No of course it won’t be a problem. I’ll make sure the purser knows.”
“Is the captain on board yet? I need to speak with him on an important matter.”
“That’s him on the wharf.” Miss Aitken indicated the group of men he’d seen earlier. “Captain Garrard. This will be his final voyage. He’s getting married when he reaches Melbourne and starting a new life. I believe he’ll be working for his father-in-law.”
“I suppose he’s been the captain of the Tararua for a while?”
She shook her head. “Only for a few months. After the gold robbery last year, the entire crew was fired, including Captain Muir. Captain Garrard was assigned to us after that. His first command, I believe.”
Frank could feel Mette beside him, swaying with the movement of the ocean, holding the rail with both hands. He took her by the elbow. “I’ll take my wife to our quarters and come back up on deck. Would you tell the captain I’d like to speak with him?”
She smiled politely, not wanting to accommodate him too easily. “Could I tell him what it’s about? He’ll be busy once he comes aboard.”
“It’s a police matter.”
“And you are?”
“Sergeant Hardy. Sergeant Frank Hardy.”
“I’ll tell him to expect you.” She glanced down at the passenger list in her hand and looked back at Frank, still smiling. “You’re on the lower deck in an intermediate cabin. Number 6C. The water closet is at the end of the passageway. You’re not sharing with anyone — just the two of you and the baby. Dinner and drinks are available in the saloon, or you can take your evening meal back to your cabin if you wish.” She gestured over her right shoulder. “Take the ladder by the saloon. Give the captain an hour and then check the wheelhouse or the smoking room beside it.”
Their cabin on the lower deck was tiny, with no porthole or private bath — just a wash stand in the corner with a ewer and basin on top and a plain white chamber pot hidden behind a curtain underneath. Frank was unable to stretch to his full height, and there was nowhere to sit, other than on the bed. It reminded him of the cell he’d been confined to in the upper reaches of the Whanganui River two years earlier.
Mette sat on the lower bunk. “Sarah Jane and I will sleep here. You can take the upper bunk. Will you fit?”
“Of course I will.” He patted the mattress on the upper bunk, noticing how lumpy it was. He’d fit if he slept with his knees crushed against his chest, but he was used to that. He’d been hoping to share the lower bunk with Mette, although he’d have even less room if they did. “Can’t Sarah Jane sleep in the upper bunk?”
Mette took off Sarah Jane’s bonnet and put it on the bed, smoothing her daughter’s hair. “Of course not. You know how much she wriggles. She’d fall out of bed and hurt herself. Although I suppose I could prop her up with something. No. Best she sleeps with me. I have to feed her and change her now, so you go ahead and talk to the captain.” She opened one of her bags and took out a fresh cotton napkin and a small wooden box containing burnt flour she carried to sooth the baby’s rashes, setting them beside a book she’d brought with her to read while she fed Sarah Jane. Another one by her favourite author, Hard Times by Charles Dickens. She’d left her current darling, Bleak House, at home, saying it was too heavy to carry.
Mette picked up the baby and the book and gave Frank a look. He escaped to the upper deck to see the captain. He knew when he was in the way.
The captain was in the wheelhouse deep in discussion with the first officer. He turned when Frank tapped on the door frame and said a brusque, “Yes?”
“Frank Hardy. I asked Miss Aitken to tell you I wanted to speak with you.”
“Ah, yes. Sergeant Hardy. What can I do for you? Miss Aitken didn’t say.”
“The Armed Constabulary sent me to follow three suspected gold robbers…”
“Again?” The captain frowned. “This ship was robbed last year. Does the Constabulary think someone intends to rob us again? I don’t believe we’re carrying any gold, although we do have a shipment of silver.”
“This is about the last robbery,” said Frank. “Three crewmen from that trip purchased tickets for this one. We think they may be picking up the ingots somewhere and taking them to Melbourne.”
Captain Garrard shook his head. “Hard to believe…everyone has been investigated very thoroughly. Do you have the names of the men you’re following?”
Frank took out a piece of paper from his pocket. “The first is Robert Hinton. He was a steward I believe.”
“The American,” said the captain. “The Melbourne police had him under surveillance for months. I heard he joined the Otway, on the Western Australia run. He’s on the ship now, you say?”
“He bought a ticket, or so I was told.”
“Tall, dark red hair. Yankee way of talking. I saw him in Melbourne a couple of times. He doesn’t know me though. Who else?”
“William Sampson. He was part of the crew.”
“Less likely to have done it then. Access to the key was an important feature of the robbery, or so I heard. I don’t know him.” He turned to his first officer who was charting a course at the map table. “How about you, Mr. Maloney? William Sampson sound familiar?”
The first officer scratched his cheek with his pencil. “I think so. We were on the Hawea together at one point. Average height and heavyset. Dark hair with mutton chops lining his jaw, a surly expression at all times. You know, I believe I saw the two of them boarding together earlier. I didn’t think anything of it. I should have, I suppose.”
Frank consulted his list. “The third man is William McNab. Another steward. He’s not on board yet; he’s boarding in Port Chalmers.”
The captain and the first officer glanced at each other. “Never heard of him,” said the first officer.
“I’ll ask Miss Aitken to point him out to you after he boards,” said the captain. “But I don’t recognize the name. Are you sure he was one of the crew?”
“His name is on my list,” said Frank. “What was that you said about access to keys?”
“The company had a special strongroom built for gold, in the stern of the ship under the saloon. Only two people had a key. Officials of the Bank of New Zealand brought the gold on board in Port Chalmers; eleven boxes valued at five thousand pounds each. When the ship reached Queen’s Wharf in Melbourne and officials came on board to carry it off, there were only ten. One had been stolen.”
“Were either of the two men with keys considered suspects?”
“One of them was Captain Muir. That was why he lost his job — and his reputation. He runs a hotel in Melbourne now. I’ve spoken to him. He seems like a decent chap. I believe he was cleared. But after the gold went missing, police discovered that a year earlier one of the keys to the strongroom had disappeared from the bar room where it was generally left. Something should have been done at the time, of course, but it wasn’t. And the lock wasn’t changed, either. The police believe the robber was waiting for the right opportunity. With that many boxes it was hard to tell at a glance that one was missing. And the ship doesn’t often carry that much gold. A steward would be more likely to hear there was a large amount of gold on that trip than a crew member.”
“Would you like to see the bullion room, Sergeant?” asked the first officer. “Give you a feel for the situation? There’s no gold there at the moment, just some silver bullion.”
Frank followed the first officer down into the bowels of the ship and through the crew’s quarters. As they passed the ladder to steerage he saw two men huddled by the emergency life jackets: one was tall with dark red hair that ran down the side of his face into a pair of bushy whiskers, the other was short, stocky, and dark-haired. The first officer caught his eye and gestured slightly with his head. Frank nodded at the men and said, “Good evening,” which he would have done even if they weren’t suspects in a gold robbery. He felt them watching him as he continued down the passageway to the bullion room. Were they planning to rob the ship again? He’d have to keep an eye on the strongroom, just in case. No use accepting the job of watching two suspects and letting them rob the ship again. No one was going to give him a reward if that happened.
The first officer showed him the door to the bullion room. He tried the handle and attempted to push the door open with his shoulder. The door didn’t budge. It was a sturdy door made of heart of kauri, fortified with iron bars. No one could get into this room without a key.
The first officer slipped the key from his pocket and unlocked the door, which opened to a small dark room with a metal locker on one side.
“Was the gold in the locker?” Frank asked.
“On any other trip it would have been, but because there were so many boxes, they piled them in the corner. The captain and the first officer checked it every hour, but eleven boxes suddenly reduced to ten - that would have been hard to see. I heard they took one from the back of the pile so it was less apparent.”
He returned to the cabin to find Mette, her hair brushed and braided, ready to go to the saloon for dinner. Sarah Jane was asleep on the lower bunk, propped in place by a pillow and Mette’s Gladstone bag.
Mette touched Sarah Jane’s head gently. “She’ll sleep for the next four hours. We can leave her for an hour. I’d like a tour of the ship, and then I’d like to have tea.”
Climbing the ladder to the upper deck, he heard someone come up from steerage and fall in behind him on the ladder. He turned to greet the person: Robert Hinton, the red-haired American, stared back at him, a faint sneer on his face. He turned back and continued to the saloon. Something in the way Hinton had sneered at him was worrying. Did he suspect something? Had someone recognized him and talked to Hinton? Or worse, had someone already warned Hinton that an investigator was on the ship?