Recalled to Life Read online

  Pieter went to the door. “I have to see the lawyer who has her will now. I expect she’ll have left me a small amount. Maren and the children will stay with you until I return.”

  Maren watched him affectionately as he left. “He’s trying not to be too hopeful,” she said. “Perhaps all she left us was her best china, and it will cost too much to bring it to New Zealand.”

  “What if it’s a lot of money?” said Mette. “Your life might change completely.”

  Maren closed her eyes and smiled. “I’d like to have a hundred pounds,” she said. “I would buy a new bed for us—with a spring mattress—and something better to sit on, like a horsehair sofa to lie down on when I was tired. Also, a perambulator so it would be easier to take the babies for walks, and let them sleep outside in the fresh air. And one of those new coffee machines…and, a family photograph taken at the new portrait studio over next to the Bank of New Zealand.”

  “You’re so practical,” said Mette. “I think I’d prefer to go on a holiday, perhaps to Wellington, and stay in a hotel where I could eat good dinners every night and sleep on a really soft bed.”

  The talk of a holidays and beds reminded Maren of Mette’s situation.

  “When are you and Sergeant Hardy going to be married?” she asked. “Surely you’ll go on a holiday then and sleep in a soft bed.”

  Mette turned pink.

  “Not until March,” she said. “As I’m sure I’ve told you, Mr. Robinson asked me to work in his shop until then. When his son Ernest arrives from England he’ll take over from me.”

  “Poor Sergeant Hardy,” said Maren. “That’s a long time for him to wait.”

  “We see each other every day,” protested Mette. “It won’t be any different when we’re married.”

  Maren leaned over and gave Mette’s hand a squeeze. “I can tell from your face it will be different,” she said. “You and Sergeant Hardy, you haven’t, you know…”

  “Of course not,” said Mette. “We’ll wait until we’re married. The same as you and Pieter.” Her sister had met her husband on the boat from Copenhagen.

  “We arrived in February and Hamlet was born in September.“ Maren’s lips twitched. “Did you not think anything of that? He was born seven months after we married. And he was a large baby, even for nine months.”

  “But how?” asked Mette. “It was so crowded on the ship. How could you…?”

  “Remember the foredeck where all the young couples used to go at night?” asked Maren. “Everyone laughed about it at the time.”

  “I thought…” Mette started. “Then all of you at the same time, on the foredeck…?”

  “I didn’t notice,” said Maren. “It was a bit like being in a barnyard, I suppose, but it was fun as well. We didn’t watch other couples, and they didn’t watch us. We all sort of agreed not to, without saying so.”

  “Georg Dahl was always after me to go to the foredeck,” said Mette, shocked. “You mean he would have expected…?”

  “I believe so,” said Maren. “Unless he was as naïve as you…” She stood abruptly. “Here comes Pieter. He’s walking very fast. I think it must be good news.” She leaned closer to Mette, and said quietly, “Don’t make him wait, Mette. I’m sure he’s a good man, but he’s older than you, and he isn’t a saint. You don’t want to lose him by being silly.”

  Mette’s embarrassment was masked by the arrival of Pieter, who came in shouting, “Min Gud, ah min Gud.”

  “Hvad er det?” said Maren, almost dropping Jens and Paul in her excitement.

  “Please Pieter, tell me at once.”

  “More than…” He took a deep breath and started again. “More than a thousand pounds. I’m not sure because it’s krone, but…”

  Maren gasped and fell back onto the chair, still clutching the twins who were whimpering in harmony.

  “Min Gud,” she said. “Not just a bedstead and a sofa, but a whole new house…and a feather mattress.”

  “That’s not all,” said Pieter, squatting down in front of her, his eyes holding hers. “The house, Aunt Gertrud’s house and all her furniture. She left us that as well. We’ll have to find a way to sell it all, but the lawyer says it may be worth two or three thousand pounds, with the furniture included - if we can find someone we can trust to sell it for us.”

  They stared at each other, unable to speak.

  “What about your sister?” asked Mette. “Did your aunt leave her anything, or will you have to help her?” Mette had made a trip the previous year to bring back Pieter’s recently-widowed sister, Agnete Madsen, and her children from Woodville. Agnete had other plans, however, and had gone to live in Wellington with a horrid Englishman, much to Pieter’s displeasure. Mette had not much liked Agnete.

  He frowned. “She did leave Agnete something, the same amount as she left me, although I’m to have the house completely,” he said. “But Agnete will have her money from me a little at a time, and won’t be able to touch it herself. I was happy about that.”

  “That’s good then,” said Mette. “I wouldn’t trust Mr. Williams with any of her money.” She remembered the pale-skinned, fawning Mr. Williams and felt a prickle of revulsion run down her spine.

  “I should insist she comes to live in Palmerston,” said Pieter. “Where I can make sure she doesn’t get into trouble with another man. Alone, of course, not with this man she lives with.”

  “Should I write a letter…?”

  Pieter rose from his chair. “No,” he said. “A letter won’t do. Someone should go to Wellington to bring her back.” He saw the look on Mette’s face, and added, “Not you of course. Not this time. But remember when you told me I should ask Sergeant Hardy to go to Wellington and bring her back? That’s what I’m going to do.”

  Mette’s heart sank. Frank would go to Wellington, as Pieter asked, and she wouldn’t see him for days. Maybe he’d like Wellington so much he’d want to move there. Sending him down to fetch Agnete had seemed such a good idea when she’d only been a little in love with him and didn’t see him every day anyway. But now…

  “Come Maren,” said Pieter. “I’ll take you over to Mr. Snelson’s General Store with the children. You can buy yourself…whatever you want. I’ll go and talk to Sergeant Hardy. He should fetch Agnete as soon as possible, get her away from Mr. Williams.”

  They left in a flurry of noise and wailing babies. A minute after they left, Maren poked her head back in the door and said with a mischievous smile, “For your wedding present I’m going to buy you a nice new iron bedstead with a spring mattress.” She closed the door, leaving Mette with a bright red face.

  She sat there for several minutes thinking of Frank. Perhaps Maren was right and she wasn’t being fair to him, making him wait. She could leave Mr. Robinson now if she wanted. He’d said so. She wasn’t the only person in town who wanted such work, although perhaps the only one who loved it as much as she did, surrounded always by wonderful books. They could get married soon, if she just left her place at the shop. And then they could be together…

  Thinking of it made her body feel strange, and she stood up and walked around the store stamping her feet, feeling the hobnails on the bottom of her boots reverberate up her legs.

  Someone was outside reading the notice she’d posted in the window, offering to write letters in either English, Danish or German, and to translate any documents as well. He wore a large broad-brimmed hat which partly concealed his face, and she couldn’t see much more than a silhouette, but he looked familiar. She knew some people needed encouragement to come in and talk to her, so she opened the door and looked out, smiling.

  He turned, and for a moment her heart stopped.

  It was Gottlieb, Gottlieb Karlsen, who had attacked her in her bed just a few months ago, and who Frank had killed with a tomahawk when he’d ambushed them in the Manawatu Gorge. It was not possible he could be here. What had happened to the tomahawk in his head? Was it under his hat?

  He smiled back at her, a wide, tooth
y smile, and took off his hat, revealing a tomahawk-free head.

  “Guten tag, Fraulein,” he said. If it was Gottlieb, she thought, her heart now pounding so loudly he must be able to hear, he had grown himself some new teeth. Or maybe they were wooden…she’d heard…

  “Guten tag,” she managed to reply. She held herself upright with the door jamb and knew if she let go she would fall in a heap on the floor of the book shop. She’d seen Gottlieb Karlsen, a tomahawk wedged in his head, fall to his death in the Manawatu River. She’d worried about what would happen if his body surfaced, but not if he himself….

  “Ah, then you are the person who will translate letters?” he asked in German.

  She nodded, unable to speak.

  “Could we talk?” he asked. “Inside?”

  She nodded again and he followed her into the book shop.

  “I’m here on a quest,” he said. “Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Frederic Karlsen. My brother was Gottlieb, Gottlieb Karlsen—you knew him perhaps?”

  Another nod.

  “My brother went missing just a few months ago. He managed a road crew in town.”

  No, he did not, thought Mette, taking a deep breath. But never mind.

  “I live in Australia,” Gottlieb’s brother continued, “In Melbourne, where I am a merchant. But when I received a letter informing me that my brother was missing I closed my dry goods store and left for New Zealand as soon as I was able. He’s my only family, you know, and I had to find him, in spite of….”

  Mette’s frozen muscles started to relax. His brother, and a brother who sounded much more normal than Gottlieb. She could manage that, even though the resemblance was frightening.

  “Were you hoping to retrieve his things?” she asked.

  He shook his head.

  “Not at all. In fact, I doubt very much that he had anything to retrieve. No, what I had hoped to do is find where he might have gone, or where his body rests, if he’s dead.”

  “He’s probably dead,” said Mette cautiously. “He’s been missing, as you said, for some time. People believe he is dead.”

  He shook his head emphatically. “I won’t believe he’s dead until I see his body. Perhaps he was kidnapped, or lost in the bush.”

  “You should talk to Constable Price at the police station,” said Mette, her voice shaking.

  “I’ve spoken with Constable Price,” he said. “He gave me some foolish story about a vengeful Maori who was killing people all over New Zealand. I don’t believe for one minute that he killed Gottlieb. Why would a Maori do that? What I need is a private investigator, an expert. Not one with connections to the police who clearly have something to hide. Do you know such a person in this town?”

  Yes, I do, Mette felt like saying. And he was also the person who killed your brother when your brother attacked us in the Manawatu Gorge. Instead, she said, “I’ll ask around for you, if you wish.”

  He agreed, and left, saying he would return the next day at the same time to see what she had discovered.

  She was not supposed to leave the shop unattended for any reason, but felt she must. She locked the front door and ran towards the Royal Hotel. Frank would know what to do. He always did.

  She was still half way across the Square when she saw Frank walking towards the Foxton tram, which cut across the corner of the Square, wearing his blue greatcoat, a carpet bag in his hand. She was too out of breath to call out to him, but she lifted her skirt higher and ran as fast as she could. She was barely a hundred yards away when the tram pulled away from the station. She could see Frank sitting in a seat at the rear, his back towards her. Gone. Off to Wellington to fetch that stupid Agnete, she was sure.

  She bent over, struggling to catch her breath, rubbing the stitch in her side, then continued towards his office at a slower pace. Will Karira, the Maori constable and Frank’s partner at the agency, would be there. She would ask him what she should do, instead of Frank. Surely he would have a suggestion.

  3

  Grubs and Insects

  He edged around the pit with his hands against the dirt walls to see what kind of cell he was in. His foot kicked against a pail in a corner. Empty, but clearly there for slops. Nothing else, however. His windowless cell was devoid of furniture, or anything that might be used as a weapon…

  He still wore his greatcoat, but the new large-bore Colt Deringer revolver he’d purchased at Gardner and Co. in Wellington was gone from the inside pocket; so was his money clip with Pieter’s ten-pound advance and all his own ready cash. His fingers closed over a small velvet box. The brooch he’d bought Mette at Te Aro House on Cuba Street – a butterfly fashioned out of blue enamel – an impulse buy because it reminded him of what she’d said to him the day he asked her to marry him. It was a beautiful piece, and he knew she’d love it, but as a more practical matter, it had a sharp heavy pin made of steel. He tested the point with his thumb and drew blood.

  Something skittered across the floor; a weta the size of his palm crawled across the toe of his boot. He impaled it with the pin, the sharp point sliding easily through the hard, outer shell of the insect. One decent weapon then. And with wetas on offer he wouldn’t starve if they forgot to feed him. Not as easy to eat as huhu grubs, but still with some sustenance. He flipped it off the pin. A tree weta, which meant it probably came from a tunnel in the dead trunk of a tree buried in the wall of his cell.

  He slid the brooch into his shirt pocket and dug inside his coat again. A box of Vestas. Just a couple left, but something. Down in the dust at the bottom of his pocket he found a small twist of humbugs—another purchase from Te Aro House. He opened the packet and sucked on one to help the dryness in his mouth. That was it for his coat. His trouser pocket yielded a few coins: a shilling, two pennies, a halfpenny, and a couple of farthings. He wasn’t going to be able to bribe his way out of this predicament.

  He edged around the cell, feeling the wall from top to bottom, seeking a gap or entry. It was damp in places, and hard, the soil held in place by heavy totara beams.

  He’d been kidnapped it seemed. But why, and by whom? When had it happened? He could remember being at sea on the steamer from Foxton to Wellington. Had he returned from Wellington? Yes, because he remembered boarding the steamer, the S.S. Stormbird, with Pieter’s dreadful sister Agnete and her two pasty-faced children. She’d boarded with a large steamer trunk of clothing, wearing a crinoline that barely fit through the doorway of the cabin she’d insisted on taking on the saloon deck. She already saw herself as one of the royal princesses: Vicky or Louise. He’d badly wanted to tell her that her tiny inheritance would not elevate her to the crème de la crème of society, even if Palmerston had anything that could be described as society, which – thankfully – it did not. That was one good thing he could say about the town.

  God. Agnete Madsen. He already had his doubts about Mette’s family, and now Agnete was added to the mix. Perhaps he and Mette should move to Napier, or Auckland – or even the South Island. As far away as possible. He’d heard Christchurch was a growing metropolis, as well as being the most English town in New Zealand, and free of conflict with the natives. Dunedin might be even better – further away from Wellington as well.

  His exploration of the wall yielded nothing. He sat on the floor, leaned against the wall, and thought. What had happened in Wellington? Anything unusual? He’d booked into the South Sea Hotel on Lambton Quay, after reading in the Evening Post that it had a splendid billiard table, thinking he might need to entertain himself for a few nights while he searched for Agnete Madsen. But as it happened he’d found her within days. Wellington was small, despite the fact it had been the capital of the colony for over ten years – under 20,000 people.

  He’d started by asking at the hotel for an Englishman named Williams who kept semi-respectable women in his home who were not married to him or related to him; one suggestion led to another, and by the second day he’d tracked her down. She was living in a rundown tin-roofed boarding hou
se built of wooden planks, on Oriental Parade, not far from the Te Aro Swimming Baths. She’d been surprisingly pleased to see him, and when she heard she was about to inherit some money was ready to fetch her valise and leave right away for Palmerston. He’d had to remind her of her children. Obviously, Mr. Williams had not been as generous as she’d hoped.

  He closed his eyes and dozed, waking with a start to the sound of a trapdoor opening. He staggered to his feet.

  “Hey there, you, who are you? What am I doing here?”

  A rope sling holding a basket of food wrapped in leaves was lowered down to him. He grabbed the basket and the sling was pulled up and out of view. He strained upwards, but could see no one, and no one spoke to him.

  “What the hell is going on. Why am I here?”

  A bucket on a hook dropped down, empty, and hung there. He stared at it, then understood its purpose. Slops. He grabbed the used bucket from the corner and switched it with the new one, watching as the old one disappeared slowly into the darkness, not seeing anything.

  He opened the basket of food. At least whoever had him didn’t intend to let him die here. The basket contained the most basic of food for survival – potatoes and kumara, the sweet New Zealand potato – and a bottle of water with a glass stopper. Famished, he ate quickly, and spent the next few hours with his guts roiling, regretting his haste. He hoped that wasn’t to be his food for the day. When he was in the Armed Constabulary back in ‘68 and ‘69 he’d got by on less, at times nothing but water, but he’d become soft, used to three meals a day.

  Daylight came and the sun rose and bore down on him through the branches. The strength of the spring sunlight was weak, but his underground cell became heated; the woody scent of totara and pines wafting through the bars added to the miasma. He thought he could also detect the faint smell of blood, a smell he associated with a slaughter house – or with flogging, of the kind he’d seen so often in the army.