The next morning, while Libby was still asleep, Wiremu carried Bobby to her bed, placing him on the counterpane. He stifled a giggle as the cat made straight for Libby and began licking her face. She put a hand to her cheek. Bobby nudged it so her palm brushed over the top of his head. Libby’s eyes sprang open.
‘B-Bobby!’
The cat tapped her fingers with his paws. Libby’s grin stretched nearly to her ears.
‘No mistaking what she said then,’ Henry observed from the doorway.
Wiremu and Don climbed on top of the bed, grinning and patting Bobby.
‘W-where f-f-find?’
‘Pa found him yesterday, in the bush near your mill,’ Wiremu said. ‘And Mr Price too. He’s in jail, isn’t he, Pa?’ he added.
‘He is. You’ve no need to fear the man any more, Libby.’
Unlike the others gathered in the doorway, watching Libby and the boys playing with Bobby, Sylvia looked ill at ease. ‘The poor mite without his tail. I pray she’ll not harm him again.’
Libby turned sharply. ‘N-not m-m-me.’ She placed one hand on top of the cat’s body and mimed holding something in the other hand. ‘A-Arnold,’ she said, making a sawing motion above the stub of Bobby’s tail. ‘Cut m-mother’s throat if I t-t-tell ’bout man.’
‘Oh my God … it was Price who did that to Bobby, and it was no accident,’ said Henry, sick to his stomach.
A groan came from Sylvia. Grey-faced, she clung to the architrave. With a faintly puzzled expression, she stared at a pool of blood spreading out around her feet. Rocking on her heels, she began a slow slide to the floor.
Ill at ease with women’s affairs, Henry was glad to go in search of the doctor.
‘I tell you, Jimmy, Sylvia losing the baby came as quite a shock,’ Henry said later that morning. ‘All that blood, and the woman looking like she was ready to be fitted for a coffin. Though I’d say it was for the best. Who knows what the child might have inherited from Price?’
Yawning, he reckoned he could easily have stayed in his bed for another hour or so this morning. They’d been up till well after eleven the previous night discussing Mai’s idea to buy the Fairway. Which, although he wouldn’t have admitted it, had him quietly seething with enthusiasm, though more for the profit to be gained from the venture than the odd woman who might be saved from penury and bullying. The topic had switched to the search for Price — or Thwaites, as they now knew him to be. They’d been relieved to hear of his capture, but the discovery of the unidentified body had come as a shock.
‘Poor beggar, I wonder how long he’s been there?’ Jimmy sounded subdued, doubtless thanking fate he was not the victim.
‘A considerable time, I’d say. And if it had not been for Bobby’s grisly find, he’d still be there. It’s plain, Thwaites and Parker did for him. And we thought poor Libby’s tale was the wild imaginings of a demented mind.’
‘Pity he wasn’t burned to death when the cottage went up in smoke. He’d have been no loss to the world, and it would have saved the hangman a job,’ Jimmy commented. ‘Though I confess the thought of the bugger swinging on the end of a rope gives me a great deal of satisfaction. I tell you, Henry, we can be thankful the Budds have lived to tell the tale and there doesn’t seem to have been any permanent harm done to Libby.’
Henry looked to where Wiremu stood on a ladder propped against the back shelves. Libby hovered below him, an arm full of patent medicines, handing them up to him as he placed them on a high shelf.
‘Hard to believe she’s the same girl we brought here the night of the fire,’ Henry said, as Libby’s husky laughter rang out at some joke of Wiremu’s.
‘And it’s hard to believe Sylvia fell for that swine.’ Jimmy shook his head, bemused at Sylvia’s poor judgement. ‘You’d wonder at the woman’s thinking. Still, it’s easy to be wise after the event. Even Will was taken in by the man, and I would have thought him a canny enough judge of character.’
‘True. Poor Sylvia. She’s been badly affected by all these dreadful goings-on.’
‘That she has, as well as suffering some nasty burns. If she’d let me haul her through the window when I first had hold of her instead of turning back to get that damned trinket box, her hands may not have been so severely injured.’
‘You wouldn’t have caught me heading back into that inferno once escape was in sight,’ snorted Jimmy. ‘Box or no box. Not even if it was fashioned from pure gold.’
‘Nor I, but she told me she would rather have died than let Libby down again by leaving her locket containing Will’s hair.’
The police sergeant walked into the shop.
‘Have you any idea yet who Thwaites’ victim might have been?’ Jimmy asked.
‘We do, Mr Edwards, we do,’ the sergeant replied a trifle smugly. Over the years many men had disappeared without trace on the rugged goldfields and the dense bush of the Coast. To have the answer to one of those mysteries so swiftly was bound to give a man satisfaction.
‘And he was …?’
Anne came into the shop with a tray of tea and biscuits for Henry and Jimmy.
The sergeant nodded a greeting. ‘Well now,’ he said, pleased to have an even bigger audience. ‘That guinea case we found with the body had initials engraved on it. J.W.H. And that set me thinking. Years ago a fellow by the name of Jonathan Walter Hartley disappeared, along with a substantial amount of his employer’s money. I recall we thought Hartley had absconded, but Thwaites and Parker were around these parts at the time, and I reckon they probably did for the poor bugger and took off with the money.’
Anne gave a choked cry. ‘What was that name you mentioned?’
‘Thwaites?
‘No, the man he and Parker killed.’
‘Jon Hartley.’ The sergeant’s eyes quickened with interest as he sensed some information in the offing.
Anne reached for the counter, clinging to it for support. ‘Gilpin is my maiden name. My married name was Hartley. Mrs Jonathan Hartley.’
Jon Hartley’s remains were laid to rest a week later, but several days before, Anne asked to visit the site where they’d found her husband’s body.
‘Do you think it’s wise?’ Jimmy asked. What could be gained from doing so?
‘All these years I’ve thought he deserted me. I was convinced he was a thief, when all the time my poor Jon had been murdered. Now I know the truth, I can’t stop thinking of his brutal death and the grave he’s lain in for so long without a soul to tend it.’
‘Then if you must go, I’ll come with you,’ Jimmy offered.
They set out for the swamp the following day.
Anne stood by the makeshift grave, head bowed, lips moving in silent prayer. Having expected hysteria, Jimmy was impressed at the woman’s quiet dignity. Her peace made, she placed a sprig of kowhai in the hollowed-out ground. It was a poignant moment and Jimmy’s heart ached for Anne.
At last she was ready to leave. They walked back along the track to the burnt-out remains of the cottage, Jimmy leading, pushing back encroaching ferns and branches with his cane, clearing the way. Where the track widened near the end he turned to Anne, proffering his arm.
For a moment he thought she might reject him, as he so rightly deserved, but she nodded and quietly slipped her arm through his.