Walter Moody’s discovery of Crosbie Wells’s letters turns a misplaced trunk into a hidden archive of identity, kinship, and betrayal. Reading the correspondence, Moody connects Francis Carver’s assumed name to Alistair Lauderback’s silence and recognizes that the gold used to blackmail Lauderback came not from Carver’s own claim, but from Crosbie Wells’s fortune. The letters do not settle every question, but they make the scattered clues cohere—and leave Moody with evidence he chooses to conceal rather than immediately disclose.

The misdelivered trunk

Moody comes upon the trunk while thinking about his own estrangement from his father and brother. He has regretted leaving the reunion in Dunedin before he could hear his brother Frederick’s side of the story; in Hokitika, he has tried three times to write to Frederick, each attempt ending after the salutation and date. The interruption arrives as an object in his room: not his rectangular red trunk, but a black, iron-strapped chest with a domed, slatted lid. Its labels record Southampton and Lyttelton, alongside the notice that it was not wanted on the voyage, details that suggest its owner had travelled first class.

Rather than call the maid to correct the delivery, Moody shuts and locks the door and examines the chest. A label identifies it as Alistair Lauderback’s. Inside, he finds a briefcase and a bill of sale, but the decisive clue is concealed beneath the calico lining. His fingers trace a hand-sized slit, carefully hemmed and camouflaged by the tartan’s vertical stripes. From the space between cloth and cedar he draws a square bundle of roughly fifteen letters, tied with string. The trunk’s lining, designed to make the hidden space disappear, has preserved a correspondence that can change the meaning of the case around it.

What the letters disclose

The letters are addressed to Lauderback in a plain hand and arranged from newest to oldest. Moody studies the knot and the bow before untying them, then selects the earliest letter, dated March 1852. The correspondence leads him to a crucial distinction in Lauderback’s past: Lydia Wells had used her maiden name, Greenway, during their affair, and Lauderback said he did not know she was married. Moody finds that Crosbie had told his wife about his illegitimate parentage, while Lauderback had never answered Crosbie’s letters. Lydia therefore knew of Lauderback’s painful family history from early in the affair.

That information alters the apparent origin of the blackmail fortune. Earlier, Carver had used the name Crosbie Francis Wells when advertising for a missing shipping crate containing items of great personal value. The crate held about four thousand pounds in gold sewn into five dresses, with Lydia posing as Carver’s wife. Moody now understands that the gold was Crosbie Wells’s: the correspondence attests that Crosbie had struck it rich at Dunstan. He concludes that Lydia betrayed Crosbie’s secret to Carver and that the two used the stolen fortune both to enrich themselves and to secure the Godspeed from Lauderback.

The letters also clarify how Carver’s assumed identity could serve as leverage. In dealing with Lauderback, Carver had called himself Francis Wells, encouraging the politician to believe that he and Crosbie were brothers. Moody sees how the name could turn Lauderback’s shame over his illegitimacy into a means of coercion. But this is an explanation of the blackmail’s mechanism, not a complete proof of Carver’s history: the reason Carver possessed Crosbie’s birth certificate remains unknown, and the correspondence does not establish that Carver and Crosbie were actually related. Moody’s deductions give the clues a persuasive shape while preserving the gaps in what can be known.

Evidence kept under wraps

The discovery affects Moody personally as well as intellectually. He imagines Crosbie alone in the Arahura Valley, dead beside an empty bottle, and feels kinship with a man who, like himself, had been abandoned by his father and betrayed by a brother. Crosbie had travelled south in pursuit of his brother, watched Lauderback rise through public life, and remained isolated and impoverished; the letters make that parallel more than an abstract resemblance for Moody. They also complicate his judgment of Lauderback, who had eventually visited Crosbie, though Moody cannot determine whether the politician intended to apologize, reconcile, or simply see his half-brother.

Moody recognizes that the letters could matter greatly if the case reached the Supreme Court. He considers copying them, taking them, giving them to an authority, showing them to Aubert Gascoigne, or seeking the opinion of the twelve men associated with the Crown Hotel. He also considers sending the full correspondence to Benjamin Löwenthal for publication in the West Coast Times. Each possibility raises the question of who would benefit from making the information public, and what would follow. With too little time to copy the letters, Moody chooses not to remove them.

Instead, he reties the bundle exactly as he found it, replaces it beneath the lining, restores the trunk’s bar and hasp, and wipes the lid. He rings for the maid and presents the intrusion as a practical complaint: the wrong trunk has been delivered, and his own must have gone elsewhere. He says he expects the mistake to be corrected while he is away, then leaves for the billiard hall. The discovery exposes a hidden chain of theft and blackmail, but its immediate consequence is not public revelation. Moody preserves the evidence in place, carrying away its meaning while leaving the letters concealed.