Lawless and The Devil of Euston Square (11 page)

Th’ unexplorèd worlds of commerce do I hold in thrall.

At their lattice opportunitous I glance,

I seize— Oh!—pluck the fruits, while others’ fructuous ignorance

Lets squandered prospects fall…

“Thank you,” I leapt in at a pause in the recital. I realised he was waiting for a comment on the poetry. “I… I shall look forward to studying it later.”

This seemed to satisfy him. “You’re a good egg, Sergeant. You really must come and dine at the club some night. Yes, I’d like that.” He clapped me on the shoulder again, like we were old chums, and bade me good day.

THE MODERN AGE

As I strode, dissatisfied, across the circle of desolate machines, I spotted the solitary workman. He was sipping a bottle of beer, sitting inside the hollow arm of a machine very much like the crane from that night at Euston Square. I went over to him.

“Still here?” he said. “Himself answered your questions, did he?”

“He read me poetry,” I said. This seemed to amuse the man, and I was emboldened to speak further. After all, I had already missed so many opportunities, and if he knew hydraulics as I knew clocks, it might shed light on the spout. “There’s one or two things you might help me with.”

“He don’t like me talking about company matters.”

“He said it was all right.”

“Did he now?” The man looked surprised. He peered out towards the office. My heart sank to see Coxhill gazing down upon his little kingdom, puffing contentedly at his pipe.

The man seemed reassured. He shook my hand and invited me into his makeshift room. “My name’s Pat, my home’s Cumberland, and all Scotsmen are my enemies,” he grinned. He offered me a swig of beer, and seemed delighted when I asked him to explain the workings of the machine.

“We pipe it down from the reservoir, mile and a half away. It’s a good three hundred feet up. That’s one hell of a weight of leverage driving the pistons in the cylinders.”

I barely comprehended his explanations, but I felt ten times more comfortable with Pat than with his master. “Many problems with the equipment?” I said.

“See this band, the hood on the driving rod here? That’s India rubber, only it’s shrunk too small for the socket, and we’re losing pressure.”

“Right. There must be lots of teething problems with newfangled equipment.”

He laughed. “Not so new, nor so fangled. You should see the new designs they’re making down the docks, boy.”

“Why, the machines you’re building are outdated, are they?”

He pursed his lips, glancing at Coxhill’s office. “We’re not so much building them, sir, as buying them.”

“Oh yes.” I frowned. “And that’s profitable, is it?”

“If you buy them broken, it is. This is an old Edward Elswick accumulator. Him in there buys ’em broke, I make ’em work and Hunty boy paints HECC on the side.”

“And they work?”

“More or less.”

“You’ve had incidents?”

“If you cut corners, there’s bound to be problems.”

I suspected Pat was understating the case. “Anyone hurt?”

He hesitated. “I’d best be getting back to work.”

“All right, all right.” I took a deep breath. “But speaking theoretically, if someone were hurt, would you have to pay compensation?”

“Theoretically, I wouldn’t know about all that. I only hear talk of all the money pouring in. Not that I see much of it out here.”

I smiled. “How long have you been with the company, Pat?”

“Two years. Glad of it, for all I moan.” He tried to settle himself to examining the piston, but the words kept tumbling out of him. “Not like the old days, you know. My parents worked two fields in Cumberland their whole lives. What was so wrong with them old times? Someone ran short, you all helped out. Me now, I been a weaver in Preston, canal man in Manchester, railwayman in Crewe, miner in Derby and a longshoreman down Greenwich.” He tugged at the perished rubber, and it came off in his hand. “You go where the money is, you learn your trade, work your fingers to the bone. Two minutes later, it goes arse over tit, and you’re out on your ear. Here I am in hydraulics. But I don’t put my heart into it. Not worth the sweat, just to get laid off when the next mania comes along.”

I was late for work. “Pat. There was a crane damaged at Euston last winter.”

He shot me a sideways glance. “That what this is all about?”

“Did you fix it?”

“It were a puzzle, that one, at first. Hats off to him, he knew his business. Must have been an expert on the old Elswick.”

“Who, Pat?”

“The fellow that bollocksed it, of course. He took some pains. Otherwise it wouldn’t have kept spouting so long, would it?”

“Wouldn’t it?”

“He had the aperture worked out that finely, see, to maximise the pressure. Drained half our reservoir. See, on top of the outlet pipe, he’d attached this–” He paused, holding in a chuckle. “Lovely idea, really. He’d attached a rose.”

“A rose?”

“You know, a garden rose.”

“I am familiar with the flower.”

“No, no. You city types. No knowledge of nothing. A garden rose is what you put on a watering can. Turn a jet of water into spray. A fountain, see. Must have looked comical, I imagine. Tell you one thing, though. I’d be surprised if it killed someone. Might have knocked you sideways – knocked you off of the crane, maybe – but there weren’t no blast. More like taking the lid off a pot. The reservoir water pumps in here, see, at the bottom. Through the pistons, generating the torque to work the crane pulleys. Then it’s channelled upwards, through this pipe. Your friend just removed the valve. Released it into the air. Couldn’t have bollocksed it better myself.”

There was a noise in the yard, the chaise pulling up again. I frowned. “It must have been dangerous, though, setting the thing off?”

“Oh, no. He weren’t even there when it went off. He’d attached a clockwork mechanism to release it.”

Clockwork, I nodded to myself.

“Flaw in the design, really,” he went on. “He knows his Elswick, that man. Knows it like the back of his hand.” His face clouded over. “Excuse me. I… There’s something needs finishing.”

I turned to find Hunt striding towards us pugnaciously. I raised a finger to my lips, passed a coin to Pat, and stood up to leave.

Hunt insisted on giving me a lift in their chaise. I was none too keen on accepting favours from Coxhill, but I would otherwise have been late for work. Hunt showed me the interior, replete with superfluous luxuries: brandy and sherry, napkins and neckerchiefs, telescopes, fans and flannels.

“We been to France in this, you know. And very comfortable the master found it.”

After this display, however, he made it plain that I was to ride up front with him. I thought at first this was simply because he did not take me for a gentleman. It soon became clear what he wanted.

“Nice chat, had you?”

“What’s that?”

“What business have you speaking with HECC employees?”

I recalled Wardle’s comment at the spout: “Give nothing away,” he’d said.

Hunt gave me a look and increased his grip on the reins, steering us through the traffic at a fearful lick.

I held on tight, eyes half closed, thinking over what I had just learnt. Pat had been in no doubt that the sabotage was both deliberate and careful. And Coxhill had arrived on the late train. Why should the spout have been planned to coincide with Coxhill’s arrival? Unless, as Wardle had suggested, it was some kind of message. The image swam before my eyes of the saboteur, swiftly fashioning cogs from the clock into a release mechanism to set off the spout. I thought too of Pat, migrating ever southwards as industries collapsed behind him. At least I had a trade to fall back on. Although, if Ganz was to be believed, clockmaking too would soon fall by the wayside beneath the march of progress. Perhaps, in joining the police, I’d done the right thing after all.

I decided to counter Hunt’s prying with questions of my own. “I hear there’s been a few problems with the engines.”

“None worth speaking of,” he growled.

“But there have been mishaps, besides the time at Euston?”

“Other monkey business? Nothing that springs to mind.”

“Does the company, to your knowledge, have enemies?”

His cheek twitched as he shook his head. “Nobody I know.”

“Has the company ever had to pay out compensation? Due to an accident, maybe?”

He whipped the horses and they sped up. “Ain’t been no accidents.”

“Mishaps, then. Like the one at Euston Square.”

Hunt kept his eyes on the road. We were scything across town at a speed that made me hold on to my hat. “Ain’t been mishaps either,” he said firmly, then added as an afterthought, “Officer.”

THE LIBRARIAN

I was late for work, and it was lunchtime before I could collar Darlington.

“Old man,” I said, “how would you go about checking the records of a particular company? You know, to see if they were trustworthy.”

“Investing your savings, eh?” he said brightly. He looked sheepish for a moment, then whispered, “I got a bit of railway scrip. Hasn’t brought in anything yet, but fingers crossed. Tell you what. I’ll grab you a saveloy from the sausageman, and you pop down to the Yard records office.”

The clerk in charge was a pie-faced buffoon with a cleft palate. At first he feigned that he understood not a word I said. I mentioned Wardle’s name, twice. Still he seemed to resent this appropriation of his time. He wanted forms signed in triplicate. “Besides,” he said, “what makes you think such reports exist? If we were to keep track of all the shenanigans of industry, I’d need an office the size of the British Museum.”

I turned tail and ran.

In those days, with nothing to hurry home for, I had the habit of wandering home by a different route each night to my garret off the Pentonville Road. The performance licensing laws had just been relaxed, and I noticed new theatres, music halls and gentlemen’s clubs opening all over, on the Strand, in Covent Garden, as far as Holborn. I observed Captain Fowkes’ Conservatory rising beside Hyde Park, ready for the next Exhibition; it was even bigger, they told me, than the Crystal Palace, which had long since been removed south of the river. They said you could see it on a clear day, but there weren’t many of those.

That night I chanced to stroll homewards via Museum Street. The British Museum was still open and I recalled hearing word of the public reading room there. I found the spanking new rotunda squeezed into the central courtyard. At the doorway I was stopped and asked for my pass. To acquire this precious item I would need from my employer a recommendation stating not only that I was to be trusted but also, as it was a “library of last resort”, what was my momentous purpose.

All the next day, I was nervous, working up the courage to ask Wardle. Fortunately, that very afternoon found him in expansive mood.

“I’ve a business meeting on the morrow, Watchman. Take the morning off, and I’ll see you after lunch.”

“Thank you. Sir, I was toying with a notion…”

“Spit it out, son.”

“I’d like to join the British Museum Library. Only you need a reference, from a respected member of the public.”

“Would a police inspector be sufficient?”

“I believe so, sir.”

“No slacking with the deskwork, though,” he said. He took the application form and signed it with a flourish. “You won’t solve crimes in there.”

“Are you in need of assistance?” The dark-haired librarian was trying valiantly not to laugh at me.

I looked up at her, tongue-tied. At first glance I had taken her dark hair as a sign of Mediterranean background, but closer inspection of the pale face framed by those dark locks revealed a face so quintessentially English that I forgot my manners and stared. I had been standing in pure amazement among the canyons of bookshelves. My first plan was to leaf smartly through the
Illustrated London News
. If I should spot anything of import, I would then turn to the
Times
for the day in question. In that labyrinth of books, however, I had not been able to locate the illustrated magazine. Now the old copies of the
Times
kept getting the better of me, and I was spending more time folding than reading. If only I had asked Pat for dates.

“I didn’t realise,” she said, a sparkle in her eyes, “that the police force was so forward-thinking as to employ mutes. How modern.”

“I am,” I assured her, “possessed of the power of speech.”

“How fortunate. Do tell me what I can help you with.”

“I wanted to start with the
Illustrated London News
for the last year.”

“I think what you have there is the
Times
.”

“I realise that. I was unable to locate the magazine.”

“The stack.”

“The stack?”

She pointed at her feet. “I’ll go and dig them out for you. All the best stuff is underground. Helps it mature. Nothing else while I’m at it?”