The Devil’s Acre

Caroline nodded. ‘He’s my sister’s husband, sir. She’ll be worried half to death.’

Martin hadn’t reacted to her appearance in the lodging house. This wasn’t so unusual. Her brother-in-law was prone to strangeness, his gaze icing over as he became sunk in his own private thoughts. That evening, however, he appeared to be barely conscious, swaying slightly where he sat as if drunk.

‘My name is Edward Lowry,’ the man said. ‘I am the Colonel’s London secretary.’ He spoke in a clear, polished voice, by the standards of the Colt factory at least – this secretary plainly had education, if not wealth or breeding.

‘Caroline Knox, sir,’ she replied, dropping a small curtsey.

Mr Lowry looked back at Martin. ‘The doctor says that Mr Rea here took several rather brutal kicks to the head, and remains seriously disorientated. He is set on returning to his home, though, as soon as possible. At once, in fact.’

‘Martin is a determined fellow, sir. Mulish by nature.’

‘The Colonel is upstairs, talking with Mr Quill. He has instructed me to honour Mr Rea’s wishes – to discover his address and put him in a cab. I was going to take him over to Moreton Street and flag one down.’

Caroline shook her head. ‘No cab will go where this cove lives, Mr Lowry. Let me ride with him. I’ll get the driver to drop us on Broad Sanctuary. I can get him back from there.’

‘Very well, Miss Knox.’ He smiled, rather pleasantly Caroline had to admit, meeting her eye for just a second longer than necessary; then he turned to the injured man on the bench and put on his hat.

Martin glanced up at them both, seeming to understand what they’d been discussing. His face looked wrong, lopsided and red, and scratched all over with angry cuts; the bandages had gathered his bushy black hair into a single unruly clump. He winced as if the dim lamp on the wall behind Caroline was painfully bright. ‘Let’s be off, then,’ he managed to croak.

The three of them tottered out into the street, Martin leaning heavily on Mr Lowry. They’d progressed about thirty halting paces along Tachbrook Street when there was movement somewhere behind them – rapid movement. Caroline felt a quiver of fear. Was it Martin’s mysterious assailants, come to finish the job, along with any who might be with him? But no; before she even had time to turn, she heard the muttering, the accents, and knew immediately who it was.

The Irishmen came from the direction of the factory. There was an odd, monkish detachment about them. They did not speak to or even look at Caroline and the secretary, closing around Martin like so many pallbearers and all but hoisting him from the pavement. Mumbling something, Amy’s name it sounded like, he barely noticed the change.

‘All right, men,’ announced Mr Lowry from his new position on the edge of this group, recognising the new arrivals as Colt workers and trying to take charge, ‘we’re moving him up to Moreton Street, just a few yards ahead. There I shall secure a cab, and instruct the driver to transport this poor fellow to his –’

Disregarding him entirely, the Irishmen started off in the opposite direction, back towards the factory. Caroline recognised one of them, a tall, bearded fellow named Jack Coffee, and called out to him. She’d met Jack on a couple of occasions when visiting the Devil’s Acre and had found him to be a mild, peaceable soul; a little slow-witted, perhaps, but friendly. Right then, though, he was in no mood to talk to her.

‘We’ll take him home, Caro,’ he replied quickly. ‘Don’t you be worrying none.’

‘I’ll come too.’

‘Come tomorrow. Our boy here needs t’ sleep.’

‘What of Amy and the children? I’ll –’

‘Leave ‘em be, will ye?’ spat another voice, higher and more nasal than Jack’s. She realised it was Pat Slattery’s. Half a head shorter than the rest, he was over at Martin’s other side. ‘Jesus. Don’t you have a life o’ your bleedin’ own?’

They picked up their pace, carrying their friend off at some speed. Caroline stood watching as they disappeared around a corner, heading in the direction of Westminster, smarting at Slattery’s harsh words. He knew who she was, although they’d never spoken before then. She guessed that he’d been given an unflattering report by Martin; he certainly didn’t seem to like her. Was he annoyed that she was also at Colt, perhaps, thinking that she’d interfere somehow in whatever they might be up to? She cursed herself for not returning his scorn in kind, and swore that she wouldn’t let him get away so easily in future.

‘It would seem that we are both surplus to requirements, Miss Knox,’ Mr Lowry said with a grin, taking a cigar from his pocket. He lit it, tossing the match in the gutter; then he turned towards her, considering something. ‘Would you have me walk you home, since I am already out here in my hat and coat? Whereabouts do you live?’

Caroline remembered the look they had exchanged up on the machine floor, and before that, out in the factory yard; and how both had been terminated. ‘Won’t Colonel Colt want you, sir?’

‘We have an appointment at eight,’ he answered, ‘which leaves me the better part of an hour. Besides, the Colonel instructed me to see a Colt employee to safety, and that is exactly what I would be doing. Pimlico has revealed itself to be a rather dangerous place of late, as you well know.’

Caroline found that she welcomed the thought of some company. Seeing her brother-in-law so reduced, and then being shooed away from him so curtly, had left her feeling a little odd; jarred, almost. She went over to Mr Lowry and took his arm, telling him that she had a room in Millbank, a short way past the Vauxhall Bridge Road. Together, they walked up to Moreton Street. He asked her how she’d come to be at the Colt factory.

‘Believe it or not, sir, it was down to those Irishmen back there,’ Caroline replied. ‘My sister told me that they’d found work at a new American pistol factory by the river, and that the Yankees were still hiring operatives for their machines. I was in urgent need, you see, having recently lost my position up in Islington.’ She paused. ‘I was a housemaid.’

‘I suspected as much,’ the secretary remarked, puffing on his cigar. ‘You have the diction of a good servant, Miss Knox, if I may say, and the bearing as well.’

Caroline glanced at him. ‘But not the temperament, Mr Lowry – or so they liked to tell me. When the family took a hard knock and half of us were made to go, I was the very first one they picked out of the line. My mistress wrote me a letter, but that was only so I’d leave without a fuss.’ She lifted her chin. ‘I’d had enough of service anyway, to tell the truth. I wanted a change, and Colonel Colt seemed to fit the bill nicely.’

They arrived at the Vauxhall Bridge Road. Bright and noisy after the stillness of Pimlico, it was blocked by the usual unmoving chain of evening traffic. Fog was growing in the damp air, creeping around buildings, lamp-posts and carriages like soft mould. Caroline and the secretary stepped from the pavement, slipping between the stationary vehicles and the snorting horses reined up before them. As they reached the opposite side, Mr Lowry asked her who she’d worked for in Islington. She gave him a brief account of the end of the Vincent household. He recalled the case clearly, it turned out; it had even informed his own decision to join the Colt Company.

‘Four decades of unstinting labour and that is the fate that befalls you. Everything stripped away in an instant. A sudden plunge into despairing destitution, with suicide the only possible release.’ He shook his head. ‘I wasn’t prepared to take such a chance with my life. Like you, Miss Knox, I resolved to move on – to apply myself to something with a sense of real certainty about it.’

Caroline considered the sheen of Mr Lowry’s top hat, the crisp whiteness of his collar, the cigar smoking in the corner of his mouth; and she thought, you ain’t quite like me, though, are you, sir?

The wall of Millbank Prison came into view between two low terraces. Steeped in noxious fog, the monstrous building beyond was like a distant black cliff, forbidding and unreachable.

Mr Lowry looked over at it. ‘You live next to the prison, miss?’ he asked, the smallest trace of disquiet in his voice.

‘A couple of streets past it,’ Caroline replied. ‘Sometimes, from my window, I can hear those locked up inside,’ she added mischievously, ‘ranting and raving, and calling for help. They’re kept completely apart, you know – alone in their cells for all but one single hour of the day. Drives some of the poor beggars clean out of their minds.’

‘Good God.’ The secretary took a long drag on his cigar.

She led him on towards the lane that held her lodgings. ‘You think our Colonel is a certain bet, then, Mr Lowry?’

He returned gladly to his previous subject. ‘As near as is possible, Miss Knox, I’d say. The Colonel’s wares are peerless, as is his method of production. There’s demand for repeating arms at present – a vast, international demand. We’ve all been given a singular chance to improve our lot.’

Caroline was sceptical. ‘You’ve been given a chance, Mr Lowry, that I don’t doubt – but I can’t see the Colonel doing very much more for the likes of me.’

‘You cannot know that, Miss Knox. If you prove yourself a steady worker, you will rise. That’s the Colonel’s policy. Other departments will open in the coming months – a packing room, for instance – that an intelligent woman such as yourself could easily be placed in charge of.’

She studied his smile as best she could in the gloomy lane. He was perfectly sincere. ‘Hark at you,’ she murmured, giving his arm a teasing tug, ‘Colonel Colt’s little organ-monkey, dancing away to his tune.’

Smiling still, Mr Lowry inclined his head. ‘A fair description, I suppose.’

They had arrived at the plain mid-terrace house in which Caroline rented her room. Half a dozen other young, unattached women also resided there, mostly shop-girls from the West End; the landlady, Mrs Patten, would be sitting in the back parlour as usual, keeping up her watch on the comings and goings of her tenants.

Caroline released Mr Lowry’s arm and went through the gate, rather sad that their conversation was about to end. Taking a walk with a handsome, well-dressed gent who held a clear liking for you would generally be pleasant, of course, but there was more here than that. His hopefulness, his absolute conviction that things would soon get better for them both, was heartening indeed; Caroline wasn’t sure that she believed any of it but it was good to hear. Missing the warmth of him at her side, she drew in her shawl and thanked him for escorting her home.

The secretary bowed. ‘It was my pleasure, Miss Knox. I can only hope that we will see each other again soon, around the pistol works. And please, do not allow the events of last night to upset you unduly. No lasting damage has been done. Mr Rea will be back in the engine room before you know it.’

Caroline hesitated, thinking of Amy and the children; she would go over to Crocodile Court later on, Pat Slattery be damned. ‘Will they try to find out who did it – and why?’

Mr Lowry took a last puff on his cigar and flicked the end into the road. ‘I can’t imagine that Colonel Colt will just let it pass.’

Caroline nodded, then bade him good night and walked up the path to her door. He was still standing at the gate when she closed it behind her.

5 (#ulink_7de3ae83-5042-50aa-917b-18b6e532427f)

‘What in blazes happened, Mr Quill?’ said Sam, leaning down towards the bandaged figure sprawled on the bed. ‘What goddamn sons of bitches dared to do this to you?’

The engineer shifted in the amber gaslight. One entire side of his round face was covered by a continental map of angry bruises. His right forearm had been splinted and bound across his chest, the old sailor’s tattoos mostly hidden beneath his dressings. ‘I counted ten – no, twelve of ‘em, Colonel,’ he wheezed through his swollen lips. ‘Sticks, they had – and great labourin’ boots…’

Walter Noone turned from Quill’s bedside. ‘The bottle’s done for this dumb bastard as much as any goddamn beating,’ he muttered, straightening his military coat. ‘He won’t be right for a couple of days, more’n likely.’