The Devil's Acre

by Matthew Plampin

  But there was no time; and besides, one of the Yankees would be sure to see her, Mr Alvord would be informed, and she’d be dismissed before you could say ‘main spring roller’. Caroline went back up to her machine and drilled hammers all through the grey, everlasting afternoon, fidgeting with agonised boredom. When the final bell eventually sounded she was the first down the stairs and out into the deepening darkness. She left by the pedestrian gate at the rear of the works, intending to learn what she could of Martin’s condition and then go to Amy. This gate led onto Bessborough Place, the shadowy, featureless lane that lined the factory block’s north-eastern side. From here it was only a short walk to the Americans’ lodging house on Tachbrook Street. A large corner residence at the street’s southern end, it had the grand, fresh-made look common to all of Mr Cubitt’s Pimlico; the Colonel clearly believed in ensuring the comfort of his senior staff. She could see a couple of them through the windows, lounging in a gas-lit sitting room, laughing over something they’d read in a newspaper.

  Caroline straightened her bonnet, screwed down her courage and knocked at the front door. It was opened by an elderly male servant who studied her with a knowing leer, no doubt assuming an unsavoury reason for her call. She was about to explain herself when she noticed two people sitting on a bench across the hall, directly opposite the doorway. One of them was Martin. He had a blanket over his shoulders and a wide, blood-spotted bandage wrapped around his brow. His ribs, too, were bound, as was his right wrist; in all, he looked more like a stricken soldier than an apprentice engineer.

  Pushing past the servant, Caroline started towards him. The other person on the bench rose to meet her, and she realised that it was the fellow from the machine floor – the smart young man with the coppery whiskers. He was holding his top hat in his hands, as if about to go out; his hair was thick and straight, combed back from his brow in a neat, dark diagonal.

  ‘You are acquainted with Mr Rea, miss?’ he inquired.

  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

  ‘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.’

  Sam stood back up, unable to disagree. He stalked across the room to the window. It gave a clear view of the Colt premises, slotted neatly between Bessborough Place and the rusting iron cylinders of the Pimlico gasworks, with Ponsonby Street running across the front. The machines had stopped for the day but lamps still twinkled at the windows, and barrows of coal were being wheeled in through the factory door from a barge moored over at the wharf, ready for the following morning. At last, after countless setbacks, it was starting to look like a decent operation – a viable prospect. But just as there was a chance of some real progress, this had to go and happen. Sam didn’t have the time for it, quite frankly, not when there was so much pressing business to attend to. A raw ache of vexation pulsed through him; it felt as if his forehead was about to burst open like a ripe boil.

  Noone was at his side, arms crossed, a trusted lieutenant ready to draw up a plan of action. ‘It was no robbery,’ he said. ‘Ben Quill ain’t the sort to have anything of value on him – leastways, nothing that’d warrant a working-over like this. Any thief worth his salt would see that.’

  ‘So what’s your theory, Mr Noone?’

  ‘Ben and his Irishman were targeted. Hunted down.’ Noone’s voice was insistent. Sam realised that despite his usual stony composure, the fellow was angry; fire-spitting furious, in fact. ‘This is a message, Colonel – these cocksuckers knew exactly who they were beating on.’

  Sam almost asked who might do such a thing, but found he could easily summon several suspects to mind. ‘I’m inclined to agree. We’ve been denied the one man who is vital to the factory’s continued operation. They just about got the engine going this morning without him, but any problems to be seen to or fine-tuning to be done and…well, to be blunt, Mr Noone, we’d be in a proper goddamn fix.’ Struck by a notion, he turned to address the engineer. ‘Were they Bulls, Mr Quill? Were your attackers Englishmen?’

  Quill attempted a nod, and tried to lift his unbandaged arm. ‘Aye, Colonel, so I believe. They knew I was an American, too, and cursed me
for it.’

  ‘Adams,’ Sam pronounced. ‘Has to be. He’s trying to trip us up.’

  ‘We must meet this, Colonel,’ said Noone. ‘It can’t go unanswered. You give the word and I’ll gather up some men – pound these motherfuckers flatter’n hammered shit.’

  Sam eyed the watchman carefully. This was where the trouble could start. One poorly chosen word and Walter Noone would be out breaking skulls on the streets of London, gratifying that well-known taste for inflicting pain. The Colt Company would be made to leave London in disgrace, and the nay-sayers back in Connecticut would be proved entirely correct. It was a crucial moment, in short, and a firm hand was required.

  ‘Don’t you be telling me what I should or should not do, Mr Noone,’ he snarled. ‘And keep your poundings to yourself. Such measures ain’t necessary just yet.’

  Noone remained impassive. He wasn’t best pleased, but he was still a soldier at heart and could take an order. ‘Then we must at least permit our Yankee boys to wear their own pieces when they’re outside the works. They must be allowed a fighting chance should they be attacked as well.’

  Sam shook his head, growing impatient now. ‘I’ve been making pistols for long enough now to know that if you let our men wear ‘em in the streets of London they’ll damn well get used. It surely don’t need to be pointed out to you that should a Colt Yankee gun down a half-dozen Bulls in their own capital city it’ll go very badly for us, regardless of the circumstances. I’ve been telling these people that the Colt revolver is a peacemaker, Mr Noone. I can’t be seen to be wrong on that.’

  The gun-maker rubbed his brow, trying to relieve the pressure beneath. It was useless; bourbon whiskey was required as a matter of urgency. He lowered his hand into his pocket, wrapping his fingers around the stiff screw of Old Red that lay within.

  ‘Stay alert,’ he instructed. ‘Patrol the lanes around the factory and this lodging house. If you see anyone skulking about, you chase ‘em off with my blessing – but hold your goddamn horses, d’you hear? There’ll be a better way to manage this than the spilling of blood.’