The sun had disappeared behind the city skyline, sinking Charing Cross in the cool grey of a late summer’s evening. There was a faint chill in the air, along with the usual smells of dust and manure. A great cheer sounded over at the base of Nelson’s Column, where a troupe of acrobats in multicoloured leotards were somersaulting above the heads of a growing audience. Edward marched Richards through the traffic, across the western edge of Trafalgar Square towards the main pediment of the National Gallery; shut for the day, its steps would offer some refuge from the crowds. Richards sat down heavily and started to lace up one of his boots.
Edward threw the press agent’s jacket and waistcoat onto the steps. ‘You cannot keep on goading Dennett in that manner, Richards,’ he said curtly. ‘He will start requesting your dismissal, and I wouldn’t put it past our Jamie to oblige him.’
Richards met this with a contemptuous snort and a couple of acerbic remarks about the sales agent’s parentage. The walk from Spring Gardens had clearly awakened a whole host of pains within him, though, and he was struggling to sustain his usual flippancy.
‘God Almighty, Lowry,’ he sighed, giving up on the boot and putting a hand over his face. ‘It’s all gone a bit too bloody far this time. Mabel Richards has shown herself to be a viper, my friend. A Goneril. A Medusa.’ He sighed again. ‘Why do we let these inexplicable females sink their hooks into us so deeply, eh?’
Edward blinked, his irritation struck out of him at once. His own thoughts had often strayed in this same direction over the past few weeks. In the wake of his ill-fated expedition into the Devil’s Acre, he’d resolved to give up Caroline Knox completely – to turn away from her for good. It had been proving astonishingly difficult.
There could be no doubt that she was involved in a scheme of some kind with Martin Rea and the other Irishmen. Rea was plainly a plotter embedded within the works for an unknown criminal purpose, most probably the theft of the Colonel’s pistols for distribution in London’s most insalubrious regions. Edward knew that it was his professional duty as an employee of the Colt Company to tell Walter Noone what he had discovered. He couldn’t do it, though; he couldn’t deliver Caroline to the watchman’s brutal justice, and the gaol term that would probably follow. He refused to believe that she would freely join the Irishmen in their nefarious schemes. She was being subjected to some kind of pressure by Rea and his cohorts, he was certain of it. He’d looked out for the two of them around the factory, trying to discover exactly what they were up to in the hope that he could somehow extricate her from the plan. Both seemed blameless, however – industrious and punctual.
On a couple of occasions, spotting Caroline out in the yard, Edward had almost rushed over to intercept her – to offer to help her escape the Irishmen in any way he could – but had stopped himself. She didn’t want anything more to do with him. That had been made very clear, and had to be respected. Caroline Knox must be driven from his mind. She does not care for me, he thought; very well then, I will care nothing for her in return. This is how it must be.
Such a pledge, Edward soon learnt, was a good deal easier to make than to uphold. He tried to attend to his work with redoubled diligence, but was dogged by a dismal aimlessness that sapped his concentration and his energy. Unanswered questions came back frequently to torment him; he grew quite sick with worry about what Miss Knox and her coconspirators might be poised to do. As he paced out endless circuits of the factory office, he could only repeat once again that he did not care for her. He did not.
‘I don’t know,’ he replied.
Richards studied him for a moment, seeming to conclude that the two of them carried a similar sorrow. ‘Come, Mr Lowry,’ he said, working an arm into his dirty jacket, ‘let’s find ourselves a bloody drink. I know a place not far from here.’
Rather to his surprise, Edward found that this proposal held a strong appeal, and five minutes later the Colt men were climbing a narrow wooden staircase just off St Martin’s Lane. It led up to a high-ceilinged room set out with small square tables, slim serving girls slipping between them. Plainly a coffee house by day, stronger drinks were now in circulation, and playing cards slapped down upon the tabletops. The patrons were almost exclusively male, drawn from the class that might own an inauspicious printing works, operate a modest photographic studio or pen features for a cheap newspaper. Proper hats and half-decent jackets were on display, but most were a good way past their best. Disappointment speckled the room like rust on an old, neglected blade; these were not men who’d attained what they wanted from life.
Their arrival prompted a stirring of nudges and sidelong glances. Edward realised that Richards was well known in there, and not entirely popular. Oblivious to this, the press agent selected a table by one of the four front windows – a dozen pieces of discoloured stained glass set in a lead frame, left slightly ajar to bleed away some of the tobacco smoke. Balking at spirits after his excesses of the previous night, Richards ordered them a bottle of claret. The smooth, berry-scented wine made Edward feel significantly better, and for perhaps the first time since the attack in the Devil’s Acre he was almost at ease. They began to talk of women in general terms, drinking steadily as they did so. Richards was soon holding forth on their unpredictability, their capriciousness, and the fundamental lack of reason or candour that lay beneath their thinking.
‘Surely,’ Edward interrupted after a few minutes, ‘you do not seriously apply this to all women?’
‘Every one, Mr Lowry,’ the press agent answered, emptying the last of the bottle into the secretary’s glass and then signalling for another. ‘Every blasted one. But Mabel Richards is first among them. She is their queen – the lying bitch before all lying bitches.’
The claret was rapidly restoring Richards’s self-possession, topping up both his inebriation and his mordancy. One of Edward’s fine Havana cigars smoking in his mouth, he made a slow survey of their fellow customers. Then, quite casually, he revealed that he suspected his much-maligned wife of having taken a lover.
Edward’s glass paused on its way to his lips.
‘There’s this cockney blackguard from the Imperial Gas Company, y’see,’ Richards went on, his voice louder now and unmistakably confrontational. ‘Five times now in the past fortnight I’ve returned from my labours to find him in my home. Five bloody times, Lowry! The scoundrel claims he’s testing pipes, but that’s piffle, ain’t it? Purest poppycock.’ He hit the table with his palm. ‘I ask you, how many blasted times do gas pipes need to be tested?’
‘I really couldn’t say.’
The secretary took a sip of wine. It now seemed thick and bitter; he set down his glass, his face growing hot. The press agent’s words were plainly directed at someone in that room. Richards was trying to stir up trouble. A nearby card game had come to a distinctly tense halt. Four men had been playing; three of them were now watching the fourth closely. Dressed in faded grey with a patchy brown beard, he’d laid his cards face down on the table and was looking at the fan of red rectangles with an expression of fierce attention.
‘Blasted cockneys,’ Richards continued, blowing out smoke, ‘they are so damned wily. They see an opening and they go for it, like rats diving into a tub of grain. They’d pimp out their wives for tuppence, wouldn’t they – sell their own children to the bloody butcher.’
And then the grey-clad card player was on his feet. More exasperated than angry, he addressed the press agent in a broad cockney accent. ‘What the devil is your meanin’, Mr Richards? This was over and done with, wasn’t it? Why go haggravatin’ the sitiwation?’
Richards sat back, smoking his cigar, ignoring the card player completely. ‘Show me an honest cockney, Lowry,’ he proclaimed, ‘and I’ll show you a dog that can walk on its hind legs and mimic the ways of man.’
Edward swore that he heard the press agent laugh as he was hauled from his chair. The room erupted with shouts, furniture scraping against the floorboards as people stood up to get a better view. The card playe
r shoved Richards’s lanky form against their table, knocking over bottle and glasses.
‘I’ll show you cockney honesty, cock,’ he spat, ‘don’t you bleedin’ worry!’
Leaving his seat, Edward found himself pressed against the stained glass window, all but dangling out above St Martin’s Lane. Richards weathered his opponent’s first couple of blows as if taking a beating was a terrible bore; then he struggled free and rolled off the table, stumbling to Edward and wrapping him in a long-limbed, clumsy embrace. Their spectators heaved with mirth, someone letting out a sharp wolf-whistle.
‘My apologies, old boy,’ Richards muttered, turning shakily towards the cockney card player.
Something was different. The weight that had been pulling at Edward’s shoulder all day, sending great pulsing aches down his left arm, was suddenly gone. He felt a half-second’s relief before he registered what had just happened. His Navy revolver was missing – pickpocketed by the press agent.
The three shots obliterated every other sound in the room and left only a stark silence behind them. A rush of gunpowder smoke spiralled away between the tables, adding to the turbid atmosphere. Those around the pistol-toting Richards were arranged like a petrified tableau; some even had grins still stuck on their faces. Edward could see no obvious signs that any of the press agent’s bullets had hit home, and for a moment he dared to hope that Richards had fired harmlessly into the ceiling or walls. But then, close to the floor, he noticed a rich streak of colour – a long crimson splash flicked out across a serving girl’s pale cotton slippers. It had come from the card player’s left leg. He’d been shot through the calf.
All at once this scene collapsed into noisy chaos. There was a massed scramble for the staircase leading down to the street; trays of glasses were dropped, and a table kicked over; a woman somewhere at the back of the room belted out a mighty, fog-horn scream. Richards’s victim fell back into the arms of his companions, his hat sliding off, gasping and grabbing out for support as the colour melted from his skin. They settled him on a chair as gently as they could. The wound was pumping out blood at a startling rate; it drenched his trouser-leg and trickled viscously over the worn boot at its base.
We have to go, Edward thought – this instant. He strode forward, seized the Navy from Richards’s uncertain grasp and started to pull him towards the exit. People parted fearfully before them, giving the gun as wide a berth as possible, jostling each other aside to get out of their way. The serving girl with the bloodied slippers had become trapped somehow at the top of the stairs, pushed up against the doorframe by a fleeing customer and now too scared to move. Fourteen years old at most, her thin, freckled face was ashen with fright. She’d clasped her hands before her chest in a desperate prayer; and as the Colt men approached she sobbed out a plea for mercy, hunching her shoulders and lowering her head, trying to make herself as small as possible.
This sight made Edward feel acutely ashamed. ‘We won’t hurt you, miss,’ he managed to say. ‘Please believe me. We are professional men – respectable men. This was an accident.’
She nodded, mumbling something, but her gaze did not leave the pistol in his hand; and as he stepped past her onto the staircase she flinched in terror, squeezing her eyes shut as if expecting execution.
The middle of St Martin’s Lane was clogged with bleating sheep. Lost on its way to a market somewhere, this flock was packed in tightly around the drays, cabs and carriages, aggravating horses and confounding the weary efforts of its shepherds to move it up towards Long Acre. This was good; it would prove a certain hindrance to any immediate attempts to pursue them. Still dragging Richards by the arm, the secretary forced a path through the crush of woolly backs, making for a shadowy alley that led away in the direction of Covent Garden.
Edward had been holding the Navy just inside the flap of his jacket. After about fifty yards they rounded a corner; he took the chance to stop, knock out the remaining charges and secure it properly beneath his clothes, shivering slightly at the trace of warmth that still lingered in the steel. The press agent had propped himself against a wall and was panting hard. A gas-lamp flickered to life in an upstairs window, bathing him in yellow light. There was a strange expression on his flushed, angular features – equal parts smirk and grimace.
Facing him, Edward found that he was almost too astonished to be angry. ‘What the devil was that, Richards?’ he hissed. ‘He might well die, you know, from such a wound! Why, if they’d caught us in there, we’d –’ He couldn’t finish the sentence. Everything would surely have been over for them both. ‘What were you thinking?’
Richards, caught in the grip of a coughing fit, could only shrug.
‘That was the cockney gas-man, I assume – the fellow you suspect of seducing your wife. Did you take us in there deliberately, looking for him, once you saw that I had the gun? Was it all planned?’
The press agent tried to laugh but couldn’t quite manage it. ‘It seemed a rational course,’ he protested weakly. ‘What more can I say?’
Despite his attempt at offhandedness, Richards was evidently shaken by what had just occurred. Edward’s claim to the serving girl had been correct – the shooting had been an accident, the error of an over-excited drunkard.
‘You didn’t actually mean to hit him, did you?’
Richards rubbed his nose on his sleeve, making a ragged, snuffling sound. He looked haggard and thoroughly out of sorts. ‘Dear Lord,’ he whispered, ‘I do believe I feel rather sick.’
Shouts echoed over from the direction of St Martin’s Lane. Edward put a hand on the press agent’s bony shoulder, easing him away from the wall and propelling him firmly down the alley.
‘Come,’ he said, ‘let’s get us to Holborn. You can stay with me tonight.’
Half an hour later Alfred Richards was fast asleep on the hearth of Edward’s parlour, wrapped in the secretary’s winter coat. Edward sat in the other room, on the edge of his bed. Holding the Navy, staring at it, he recalled the frantic movements of the wounded man’s hands as he toppled backwards; the panicked stampede towards the stairs; the streak of fresh blood on the serving girl’s shoes. Most vividly of all, though, he saw the abject fear on this young girl’s face – fear he had inspired. Edward believed that he was, at his core, a good man; yet to that girl, when wielding this pistol, he had appeared a thoroughly convincing killer.
This was a raw, mortifying memory. Looking over at the window, he considered going back out into Red Lion Square that very minute and dropping the gun down the nearest drain. Even as he thought of this, however, he knew that he could not do it. He had invested too much of himself in the Colt Company. Throwing away the Colonel’s gift would be a betrayal of his own ambition; a rejection, somehow, of the golden future he’d dreamed of so feverishly.
But neither could the weapon possibly go back in the bureau drawer, to be seen every time he reached for some ink or a sheet of writing paper. He took out his oldest shirt, wrapped it tightly around the revolver, and then pushed this awkward bundle as far under his bed as it would go.
4
‘A whitebait supper,’ said Martin, breaking a long silence. ‘That’s what’s needed.’
He fed his rolled-up cap between his hands, squinting out at the sun-scorched grass and the Sunday crowds that lounged across it. The Rea family sat close to the summit of the hill, about fifty yards from the Royal Observatory, in the deep shade of an oak. The village of Greenwich was arrayed before them, its thriving tea-rooms spilling over into the park. A small fair had been set up in front of the long white colonnades of the sailors’ asylum, with a coconut shy and a waxworks tent; music from a fiddle and a drum drifted in and out of earshot, smothered by the torpid, late summer air. Church bells were tolling, in Greenwich itself and all along the valley towards London, announcing the afternoon service; those in the park, however, dedicated solely to recreation, paid them no mind. Behind this scene wound the great river, littered with papery sails. Out here, past the factories and t
he sewer outlets and the dockyards, the water lost much of its corruption and began to approach its natural colour once again.
‘Aye,’ he declared, as if the decision was made. ‘Come, girl, that’ll sort us out. At the Trafalgar, down by the river – a plate of whitebait and a glass of ale.’
Martin looked around for his child. Katie was off investigating the trunk of the oak, supporting herself against the ridged bark. He said her name; she gaped back blankly for a second, and then fell into a sitting position. Amy, curled up on the ground, still had not stirred. Martin patted her haunch, feeling the hard jut of her hip-bone. Grief had denied his wife anything but the very lightest sleep for almost a week now. She was living in a state of exhausted, stupefied despair, unable to work or eat, and barely able to walk more than a couple of dozen steps. This excursion, taking them well away from the Devil’s Acre, had been intended to bring her some relief. But their third-class carriage had been brimming with little babies, it had seemed, every one of them screaming with lusty health, and the streets of Greenwich even more so; after a few minutes of this Amy had ground to a halt like a stubborn mule, leaving Martin to carry her, more or less, to this secluded corner of the park, their bawling daughter tucked under his other arm. Here she had collapsed into her current position, not moving or speaking for over an hour. It was good that she’d taken some rest at last, he told himself, but it was time for more – for sustenance, for life and human society. He patted her again.
Wiping the strands of dark, tear-soaked hair from her cheek, Amy shifted onto her back. ‘Martin,’ she said, her voice hoarse and edged with bitterness, ‘do you feel anything at all?’
He sighed. This once more. ‘How can you ask me that?’
‘I know how you Irish are. You’ve seen everything, ain’t you? Nothing else compares with what you’ve already lived through. No other loss is as painful. This is – is measly to you, ain’t it?’ She was starting to tremble. ‘Nothing very much?’
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