Cowell Devlin

Cowell Devlin is a clergyman whose appointment as chaplain to the planned gaol-house brings him into contact with the people and documents at the center of the Hokitika mysteries. His defining act is to take an unsigned deed of gift from Crosbie Wells’s cottage and keep it hidden in his Bible. He eventually gives it to Anna Wetherell, but his delayed disclosure, conditional offer of help, and refusal to protect her from the consequences of forgery reveal a man whose moral self-image is more stable than his conduct.

Identity and appointment

Devlin arrives in Hokitika aboard the Virtue, two days before Alistair Lauderback and, therefore, two days before Crosbie Wells’s death. The ship, operated by Balfour Shipping, also carries the missing shipping crate containing Lauderback’s trunk and a copy of the Godspeed sale contract. This places the clergyman, before he has taken up any formal duties, close to the chain of events that will connect Wells’s death, the disputed estate, and the ship’s transfer.

His appointment is to serve as chaplain at the new gaol-house at Seaview. Until the building is completed, however, he describes himself as a theology student rather than a serving prison chaplain. A later recollection characterizes him as Irish and Methodist, while noting that he is not Catholic; the recollection is tentative about the details. His role is thus prospective and provisional: the institution he is meant to serve is still being built, and he has not yet settled into a settled pastoral relationship with the people around him.

Wells’s death and the concealed deed

The day after Wells’s death, Devlin accompanies Dr. Gillies to the dead man’s cottage to collect the body. Te Rau Tauwhare arrives with food, sees the familiar form beneath a blanket in the cart, and reacts with shock. Devlin takes pity on him and offers him a place on the journey back to Hokitika, where Wells’s body is to be prepared for burial. The offer gives Tauwhare a way to accompany his friend, and Devlin later proposes that they go to the grave together.

At the cottage, Devlin finds a partly burned document in the ash drawer beneath the range. Someone appears to have tried to destroy it, but the fire caught only one edge; Devlin removes it, brushes away the ash, and finds it still legible. The paper records a proposed gift of two thousand pounds to Anna Wetherell from Emery Staines, dated 11 October 1865, with Wells named as witness. It represents half of the Wells inheritance, but Staines has not signed it. The document is therefore both consequential and incomplete: it records a promise, not a completed transfer.

Devlin does not report finding it. For a fortnight he keeps the deed to himself, carrying it back toward Hokitika pressed against his chest. He does not tell Dr. Gillies or Thomas Balfour, and he does not attach a precise motive to his decision. Rather than resolve whether he has acted from caution, self-interest, or some mixture he cannot name, he lets the question recede. He believes himself virtuous, and when his actions contradict that belief, he sets the memory aside instead of revising his opinion of himself.

The Bible and the choice to disclose

Devlin stores the deed inside his battered Bible, between Malachi and Matthew. The small Canterbury cross stamped into the leather marks the book, while its pages conceal a paper whose importance he does not yet understand. He knows the document has value but does not know exactly what that value is, and he is reluctant to part with it before finding out. The Bible is at once a sign of his clerical office and the private container of evidence he has withheld.

When the matter is raised, Devlin argues that the deed is invalid because Staines did not sign it. He also explains why he has kept it from Anna: news of a large inheritance might raise her hopes and alter her life before Staines’s fate is known. His stated plan is conditional. If Staines is found dead, Devlin says he will destroy the document; if Staines is alive, he will show it to him and leave the decision to sign it in Staines’s hands. In the meantime, he decides to keep the paper until he knows more about the people named in it. His caution may be presented as protection, but it leaves him in control of evidence that belongs to a matter affecting Anna’s future.

At a meeting convened by Benjamin Löwenthal, Devlin agrees only after a long pause. He is thinking of the deed and resolves to bring his Bible, producing the paper if the occasion and timing seem right. His handling of the document is therefore not a single impulsive concealment: he repeatedly weighs whether to reveal it, while preserving his own discretion over when and to whom it will be shown.

Anna Wetherell and the limits of his help

After Lydia Wells leaves the courthouse, Devlin waits before crossing to the Wayfarer’s Fortune, carrying the Bible against his chest. In the parlour arranged for Lydia’s afternoon appointments, he waits for Anna to sit, opens the book, removes the charred deed, and hands it to her without speaking. The physical movement reverses his earlier concealment: the document passes from his private keeping into the hands of the woman named in it.

Devlin then sets out the legal and personal stakes. Anna is associated with several unresolved crimes, including a possible murder, and faces the prospect of a Supreme Court trial. The deed predates Staines’s disappearance by three months; Wells died on the same day Staines vanished; and the promised sum equals half the inheritance. Devlin thinks a lawyer will be able to connect those events. He offers to help Anna, but asks her to trust him and tell him what she knows. His assistance is therefore paired with a request for confidence, not offered as unconditional advocacy.

That boundary becomes sharper when Anna has forged Staines’s signature. Devlin tells her he will accompany her only as far as the courthouse door. What she does with the document is no longer his responsibility, and he will not lie for her or in court: if asked, he will state that she forged the signature herself. His position is consistent with the fact that the deed was unsigned, but it also marks the limit of his sympathy. He has chosen to reveal the paper and help Anna approach the court; he will not turn that help into a false account of what she did.

Professional relationships and care in custody

Devlin’s connection with George Shepard remains formal and cool. Once construction of the gaol-house is underway, the two see little of each other beyond evenings when Shepard returns from the Seaview site to write letters and settle accounts. Devlin finds the temporary Police Camp more comfortable in Shepard’s absence. He regards Shepard as rigid and apparently displeased with the surrounding world, yet wishes him well; he does not expect their relationship to become more than a professional one.

His dealings with Walter Moody are more trusting. Devlin tells Moody that he considers him legally trained and fair-minded, able to understand the case from all sides as a lawyer should. This appeal to impartial judgment fits Devlin’s concern with the evidentiary and legal status of the deed, even as his own earlier decision to conceal it complicates any claim to detached neutrality. At the later court proceedings, Lawrence Broham swears Devlin in and asks how the document first came into his possession, bringing that concealed history into formal scrutiny.

Devlin also shows care when Anna is held in the Police Camp gaol-house. He makes room for her, regrets having to manacle her, and fastens the restraints as loosely as he can. He asks Mrs. Shepard to bring a blanket for Anna’s head, and she silently complies. The scene does not erase his willingness to testify against Anna, but it shows that his legal firmness and his humane concern coexist: he can refuse to shelter her from the truth while still trying to lessen the hardship of her confinement.

Character and narrative significance

Devlin’s central contradiction is not simply that a clergyman commits a questionable act. He withholds a document with serious consequences, delays telling anyone, and handles its disclosure according to his own assessment of the right moment; yet his self-conception as a virtuous man remains intact. The narrative emphasizes the gap between that self-image and the repeated choices by which he keeps control of the deed. His conduct is marked less by a clearly declared scheme than by hesitation, partial disclosure, and the ability to turn away from uncomfortable knowledge about himself.

The deed also makes Devlin a hinge between private evidence and public judgment. Found in a stove after Wells’s death, hidden in scripture, and ultimately placed in Anna’s hands, it passes through settings associated with burial, religious authority, domestic counsel, and the courthouse. Its unsigned state prevents it from serving as straightforward proof of a completed gift, while its terms offer a possible connection among Anna, Staines, Wells, and the inheritance. Devlin’s role is to preserve that uncertain evidence long enough for its implications to emerge, even as his choices about concealment and disclosure become part of the case that must itself be examined.