‘Pardon?’ I studied the false teeth more openly now. He watched me doing so.

He took them from the water and thrust them in his mouth, shaking the drops from his fingertips. ‘They’re Waterloo teeth—have you heard the expression? I had them made in Boston some years ago. The, er, the soldiers have no further use for them, if you take my meaning. They set them in porcelain. Very hygienic.’

How odd, I thought, that I did not find this off-putting.

‘I hope the confrontation with Munro didn’t disturb you,’ he went on, his mouth forming the words more clearly now. ‘It was unpleasant.’

‘No, I am fine, thank you, doctor. My father is doing what he was commissioned to do, nothing more.’

A stillness in him. Waiting, somehow. Then he decided to speak.

‘Did the Bengali man ever tell you what was on it?’

‘On what?’

‘The Howrah. The ship he has you searching for.’

I must have shrugged. ‘There were passengers, but otherwise…timber, I presume. He is a timber trader.’

‘You presume.’ His voice lost its charm, but not its certainty. ‘That boat wasn’t carrying timber, my dear. The whole idea was that anyone with an interest would assume it carried timber, and leave it be. It was carrying sterling: British crowns to be used in the establishment of the General Savings Bank in Hobart. Big, heavy silver coins. Thousands of them, piled in chests. A consignment so heavy that it served as the boat’s ballast.’

What? I scrambled for reasons he might be wrong. ‘Why would anyone accost this vessel, if as you say it was thought to be a timber trader?’

‘Someone must have found out.’

‘How would they know? How do you know?’

‘Because people talk. They can’t help themselves. People who drink, especially, are fed by rumour.’

I fell silent, unwilling to accept the idea that Srinivas had concealed something so important from us. The doctor seemed happy to talk, as if unaware of how profoundly he had shaken my understanding.

‘He is a clever man, your father. One can only admire his ability to’—he took my hands, one in each of his—‘to imagine the world he cannot see.’

‘Yes,’ I murmured. I felt his hands, the closeness of his face. It was all I could feel.

‘I see, in him, where you came by your steady nerves.’ His face in the yellow glow of his lantern: calm, sure. ‘He cannot hear us up here, you know.’

‘Who?’ I asked.

He saw my attempt at deflection for what it was. ‘Your father, my dear.’

‘My dear?’ I laughed. ‘My girl, my dear…’

He smiled that smile of his again, creasing his eyes slightly. ‘You can always get up and walk away.’