Partly burned gift deed to Anna Wetherell

The Partly burned gift deed to Anna Wetherell is at once an apparently defective promise of money and a consequential piece of evidence. Found in Crosbie Wells’s cottage after his death, it records Emery Staines’s intention to give Anna £2,000, with Wells as witness. Staines has not signed it, so Cowell Devlin recognizes that it cannot establish a valid gift as written. Yet Devlin hides the paper, and Wells’s signature later gives it an importance beyond the transfer it describes: it helps Walter Moody expose Francis Carver’s forged signature on the Godspeed bill of sale.

Discovery and contents

Devlin finds the document while preparing a fire in Wells’s cottage. It is trapped in the ash drawer beneath the range, where it had fallen after apparently being put into the fire. Only one edge has been slightly scorched; the rest remains legible. Its damaged state preserves a trace of an attempted destruction without erasing the information written on it.

The deed is dated 11 October 1865. It states that £2,000 is to be given to Miss Anna Wetherell, formerly of New South Wales, by Mr. Emery Staines, also formerly of New South Wales, with Mr. Crosbie Wells presiding as witness. Wells’s name bears a shaky signature. The space beside Staines’s name is blank. The paper therefore records a proposed gift, not a fully executed instrument: as Devlin observes, the witness has signed before the principal, and the principal has not signed at all.

The amount takes on an unsettling significance the day after Wells is buried, when a fortune of £4,000 is discovered hidden throughout his cottage. That total is precisely twice the sum named in the deed. The coincidence connects Anna’s possible claim with the much larger question of what happened to the gold, but the document itself does not establish that the money was ever transferred to her.

Devlin’s concealment

Recognizing Anna’s name, Devlin recalls that she has been admitted to the gaol-house after being found unconscious from opium. He folds the deed and pushes it inside his shirt, against his skin, rather than showing it to Dr. Gillies, who is with him at the cottage. They share tea in silence before returning Wells’s body to the Police Camp in Hokitika.

Devlin cannot settle on a single reason for hiding the document. He considers whether the stillness of the dead man’s house prompted an act he imagined as respectful, or whether curiosity about Anna’s case stirred an obscure wish to protect her. The narration presents his uncertainty as characteristic: rather than confront the questionable act directly, he allows competing explanations to blur into a general confusion about his motives. He does not confess what he has done. On the journey back he keeps the deed flat against his chest, and, after arriving at the camp, briefly considers showing it to Governor Shepard before a new commotion distracts him. Anna is beginning to revive, and the opportunity passes.

Devlin later places the paper between the pages of his Bible, between the end of the Old Testament and the beginning of the New. Even after the gold is found, he continues to withhold it. He tells himself that he will show it to Anna when she is stronger and that, for now, keeping the information private is prudent. When Thomas Balfour encounters him later at the Palace Hotel, Devlin reaches protectively for the battered Bible. He does not yet know why the enclosed deed will matter to Balfour and others; he only senses its value and is unwilling to surrender it before understanding what that value is.

A disputed promise and a larger fortune

The deed’s immediate force is limited by its missing signature. It names Staines as the giver, but the blank where he should have signed prevents it from serving as a completed gift. Its wording is also distinct from proof that Anna received the money: it sets out what is to be given, while the record supplied by the document does not show payment. Its association with the £4,000 found in Wells’s cottage intensifies the question of ownership without resolving it.

The wider trail of gold makes that uncertainty consequential. Francis Carver has lost a shipping crate containing a trunk and approximately £4,000 in gold sewn into five dresses. He advertises for the crate under the name Crosbie Francis Wells, using a birth certificate to support that identity. Elsewhere, Ah Quee removes gold from Anna’s dresses, retorts the dust into squares, and stamps them with the name Aurora. Anna later discovers the gold remaining in her orange gown after waking in gaol with no memory of the preceding twelve hours. These separate movements of wealth place Anna’s possible entitlement amid disputed identities, hidden property, and incomplete records; they do not, by themselves, validate the deed.

Wells’s signature and the forgery case

The deed acquires a second evidentiary life when Moody investigates the documents in Alistair Lauderback’s trunk. The trunk contains the bill of sale by which Carver acquired the Godspeed under the name Francis Wells. On that document, the purchaser’s signature is written with a conspicuous flourish and a small mark that leave open whether it might read C. Francis Wells. Moody connects the ambiguity to Carver’s earlier use of the name Crosbie Francis Wells and to the birth certificate he presented when advertising for his lost crate.

At the April court proceedings, Moody compares the signature on Lauderback’s private correspondence with Wells’s signature on the deed dated 11 October 1865 and the signature on Wells’s marriage certificate. He tells the court that those signatures match one another, while none resembles the signature on Carver’s bill of sale. The document that Devlin hid as a possibly useful but legally invalid promise thus becomes part of a comparison that challenges the authenticity of a separate, consequential contract.

Significance

The deed’s changing importance depends on what kind of evidence it can provide. It cannot, as written, prove that Staines completed the promised gift. It can show that Wells signed as witness on a particular date, and that signature can be tested against other records. The same sheet is therefore both deficient in one legal function and valuable in another.

Its physical and custodial history sharpens that distinction. A failed attempt to burn it leaves the writing readable; Devlin’s concealment preserves it, but also delays its disclosure and gives him control over when others can see it. Stored in a Bible, the deed sits between two sections of scripture while remaining a worldly record of money, identity, and obligation. Its path from the ash drawer to the court illustrates how a document’s meaning is not fixed by its original purpose: an unsigned promise to Anna becomes, through Wells’s handwriting, evidence in the case against Carver.