This didn’t impress Noone one bit. ‘You can talk whatever goddamn nonsense you like. The fact is you’ve stolen, you’ve cheated, and you’ve lured an innocent man, an unarmed man, to his death. I don’t care what your reasons are – that there is rank cowardice in my book.’
‘I ain’t no coward, ye Orange bastard,’ Slattery roared. ‘Don’t you be testing me now! Don’t you dare do it!’
Noone’s lip twitched. He said nothing.
Looks darted between Caroline, Amy and Martin. All three of them were thinking the same thing: this might be the moment to run for the side door. Martin took a small step towards his wife and child.
Noone noticed this at once and raised the pistol in his left hand, cocking it with his thumb. ‘You stay put,’ he said flatly. ‘Don’t think I ain’t worked out the part you played, Martin Rea. You’re the cocksucker that got Ben Quill to leave Pimlico in the middle of the goddamn night – to wander off into this stinking rookery. I knew right from the start that you was no goddamn good. Shame no fucker would heed me.’
Martin made no reply to this, but he continued to walk slowly towards his family, placing himself in front of them like a barricade. Caroline cast a sidelong glance at Noone. I shall throw myself upon him, she thought. Surely he wouldn’t be able to get one of those guns on me in time.
Before she could act, there was a scuffle of movement on the other side of the dairy. Slattery was rushing for something in one of the far stalls, a pile of tattered black dresses it looked like, taking advantage of the watchman’s distraction. A shot burst an instant later, pounding through the close air; Amy screamed, the sound strangely muted after the deafening bang. There was another shot. Slattery was firing at Noone. He still had one of the revolvers from the cellar. Powder-smoke billowed and eddied, tinting the air like ink in water.
Coldly calm, Noone levelled his right-hand pistol and loosed four rounds in a couple of seconds. His aim was good, even through the smoke. One of the Irishmen dropped to the floor, struck in the neck; the other staggered, groaning, against the rusting urns; two fist-sized holes were smashed into the stall where Slattery had taken cover.
‘Run!’ cried Caroline, moving back to the doorway. ‘Come on!’
Out came Amy, with Katie in her arms; Martin was but a few paces behind. Caroline pointed them towards the dust-yard. Several more shots sounded, from both Slattery and Noone, the muzzle-flashes projecting bright lines along the edge of the doorframe. Then Slattery threw himself through a window at the dairy’s end, leaping back to his feet, kicking apart the dust-yard fence and lunging up the heap on its other side.
And so they all took flight from Walter Noone. Amy stayed in the lead, her howling daughter on her shoulder, dashing for the gate; her husband lumbered after her, his injured arm flapping uselessly, urging her onwards. Caroline brought up the rear, her muscles straining, dreadfully aware of the mortal danger that gathered at her heels. The watchman would not relent, that much was certain. Their only hope was that he might choose to pursue Slattery rather than them.
She heard the empty thud of the bullet striking Martin’s back before the actual shot. He was panting heavily, saying ‘That way, girl, over there’ – but his voice was cut off abruptly, like a fiddle-string snipped with a pair of scissors. He collapsed face first into the dirt, not even lifting his good arm to break his fall.
Amy looked back in alarm. Seeing Martin lying there, she shrieked out his name and stumbled to the ground, letting go of Katie. On her hands and knees, she scrabbled to her husband’s side and tugged at his shoulder, whispering frantically into his unhearing ear. Caroline made for the stunned, crimson-faced child, yelling to her sister that they had to keep moving but knowing in her heart that it was useless. Martin was dead. They would not get away now.
Noone was climbing through the broken fence, his pistol still raised. His eyes were on Slattery, who was struggling over the dust-heap in the direction of the clearances, a silhouette, framed by the evening sky.
‘You stop right there!’ the watchman barked. ‘I ain’t done with you neither!’
Slattery did not respond so Noone shot at him. A line of blood flicked out from the Irishman’s thigh; cursing, clutching at the wound, he swivelled around to fire back, almost losing his footing as he emptied his last chamber into the yard.
An open hand seemed to clap hard against Caroline’s midriff, sending a ripple shivering through her clothes. Her body snapped taut, then relaxed; a trapdoor opened beneath her, and down she went.
9
The ragged denizens of the Acre, startled by the quick sequence of shots, scuttled for cover like lice suddenly exposed under a log. A street-corner drunk shouted that it was the Russians, a detachment of the Tsar’s finest who’d crept into London to mount a daring raid, and the air of panic increased. Edward, however, recognised the sound of a Colt Navy immediately. Moving from the path of a fleeing fruit-seller, he craned his neck, trying to find the source of the gunfire between the Acre’s rotten buildings. There were two more shots, and screams; and he saw one of the Irishmen, limping down the side of a black hillock only one street away, leaving a drift of pistol-smoke hanging behind him. Picking a winding alley that seemed to lead in the right direction, he broke into a run.
In the space of a single day the situation had grown mortally serious. Benjamin Quill, the Colonel’s blameless engineer, had been murdered. Edward had overheard enough of the conversation on the wharf to know that Walter Noone believed that Rea and his friends were responsible. He was certain that the watchman would now go after them at the very first opportunity, regardless of the Colonel’s view on the matter. Caroline would probably still be close to the Irish hideout, waiting for an opportunity to free her sister. Edward could easily imagine her becoming entangled in the bloody showdown that Noone was sure to initiate. She had to be reached somehow, and warned, but he had no idea where she was. The only course open to him was to follow Noone, do whatever he could – and pray that he was not too late.
Throughout the afternoon Edward had done his best to monitor Noone’s movements. This had proved something of a challenge. The Colonel was determined to report Mr Dickens’s visit as widely as he could, which meant a great stack of letters for the secretary to draft and pen. Deadened by worry, he’d barely considered the magnificent strangeness of having met Charles Dickens, shaken his hand and watched him perform in the Colt proving room; yet he was uncomfortably aware that the renowned author’s evident delight in the Colt six-shooter would now be harnessed to the Colonel’s cause. At the end of the day, by luck as much as vigilance, Edward had spotted Noone leaving the works by the Bessborough Place gate. He’d stuffed a couple of letters into his pocket, intending to tell anyone who asked that he was going to the post office, and started after him.
Keeping track of Noone as he went from Millbank to the Devil’s Acre became increasingly difficult. The watchman had been marching along at quite a pace, and seemed to be acting on some very specific directions. He’d taken several tight turns, cut through a mob that had gathered around a reeking oyster stall – and then he was gone. Edward had searched about frantically for a minute or two before coming to a dismayed halt. A few seconds later the first shots had rung out through the rookery.
The alley he’d chosen led him to a misty, litter-strewn street, all but cleared of people by the gunfire. A lone child was wandering on the pavement, a girl of perhaps two years old with light chestnut curls and a paper flower pinned to the front of her grey-blue smock. She was lost in distress; sobbing, calling for her mother, she ambled to the gutter and sat down unsteadily. Could this be Katie, Caroline’s sister’s child? He walked towards her, saying the name softly. There was movement on the edge of his sight, through an open gate. He glanced over at it and everything was upturned forever.
Caroline was on her back, dark blood spreading fast across the front of her plain dress. Her face was ashen but for a ripe black eye; she was working her arms against the ground, paddling
them in the dirt as if struggling to sit up. The bonnet had been knocked from her head, and her fair hair was clinging damply to her skin. He ran over, lifting her into his lap, cradling her shoulders. She gripped his hand and he found himself smiling, laughing almost, even as he was swamped with maddening helplessness.
What the devil was to happen now?
He looked around. They were in a dust-yard. Martin Rea lay a few feet away, clearly dead. A young woman who could only be Caroline’s sister was clinging to his body, her face buried in his clothes. The black hillock, the dust-heap, rose at the yard’s rear; and there was Colt’s watchman, scaling it with quick agility, a smoking Navy in each hand.
‘Noone!’ Edward shouted, his voice cracking. ‘Noone, what have you done?’
Noone turned, angling a pistol as if to shoot; seeing the secretary, he merely sneered a little, lowered the gun and carried on his way.
Caroline was attempting to speak, but gave up mid-word with an agonised gasp. There was a sharp trill somewhere past the dust-yard gate – the blast of a brass whistle. The police were coming, running over from the direction of the Abbey, alerted by the gunfire.
‘Caroline,’ Edward said gently, ‘we must leave. We must get you to a – a doctor. To a hospital.’ Where was the nearest one – Westminster, on Broad Sanctuary? Which side of the Acre were they on, even?
‘Katie,’ she managed to murmur. ‘Please, Edward…’
‘We won’t leave her. We’ll fetch her now.’
Edward eased Caroline to her feet, but they’d only walked a couple of steps before she went completely limp, losing all strength. As he lowered her to the ground again, he noticed that something heavy was dropping from her clothes and reached out to catch it. It was his revolver – Colonel Colt’s gift. She’d taken it from under his bed, he realised, and had been planning to use it to save her family. He wondered if she’d so much as drawn it from her shawl before Walter Noone had shot her down.
Her eyes were rolling back now, the blue irises disappearing behind her flickering eyelids. This was impossible; it simply couldn’t be real. How in God’s name had it come to this? Edward leaned in close, fitting himself around her as he had so many times before, begging her to look at him and talk to him; but her fingers were slipping from his, and very slowly her head dipped down to meet the earth.
Hob-nailed police boots were hammering on the street outside. A constable stamped through the gate, going straight to Martin Rea, pulling his widow from the body and demanding that she provide him with an explanation. She could only wail in response, clawing at his hands and throwing herself back on her lifeless husband. The child, Katie, still sat in the gutter, staring over at her parents, desperate to approach them but too scared to move. Edward tucked the Navy revolver inside his jacket. More police would be arriving at any moment. He would surely face arrest; and when Colt discovered what had happened, some charge or other would be drummed up and he would be sent to prison. He took a last look at Caroline – at her corn-coloured hair and the two neat moles upon her white cheek. He tried to breathe but the air wouldn’t enter his lungs. There was an ache in his chest as if his heart was being crushed, ground to paste beneath a rock. Wiping the hot tears from his face, he drew himself upright and walked out of the yard. He would do what she’d asked of him.
Shortly before dawn, Edward awoke fully clothed in the chair before his fireplace. He’d been dreaming with terrible vividness that Caroline’s death had itself been only a dream; that he’d woken beside her in the sheets that now lay cold at his feet, where they had lain together only the previous morning; that he’d told her of the dreadful scene in the dust-yard and she’d called him a silly fool, kissing his nose and wrapping her warm, soft arms around his neck. He’d smiled, kissing her in return, feeling a pure and joyful relief.
Sitting there in the grey light of early morning, he was forced to remember the truth. She was gone – killed by a Colt Navy in the Devil’s Acre. All happiness had been taken from him. He was quite alone.
A weak whimper from his bedchamber, however, reminded him that this was not so. Leaning forward in his chair, he peered through the open doorway. Katie Rea was in his bed, a tiny lump beneath the coverlet. She was in the grip of a nightmare, sleep giving the exhausted child no refuge from the ordeals of the previous day.
Edward rose, stretching his stiff back. They could not stay in Red Lion Square. Noone had seen him in that dust-yard. He had no doubt that the watchman knew where he lived – where he had been sheltering Caroline Knox – and would be coming to call before very long. Katie’s mother was certain to have been arrested and would face charges of some kind. If he was taken too, handed over to the police or worse, the child would enter the care of the parish. He well recalled Caroline’s horror at this prospect. They had to flee, both of them.
Ready money was needed. Edward had just over fifteen shillings in cash – not an enormous sum. A visit would have to be paid to the pawn shop. The clothes he’d bought for Caroline before Christmas, a soft green dress, a black shawl and some snowy petticoats, were arranged on a stand in the corner. They would be worth at least two or three pounds to the second-hand clothes dealers over on the Strand. Hanging there, they seemed to hold a faint shadow of the woman who had worn them; his head grew light as he went over to the stand, lifting the hem of the dress in his hand. He could see her in it, clear as life, patting a crease from the fabric as she sat in front of the fire. It was no use. How could he possibly sell these garments? They were hers. He turned sharply, searching the cramped parlour for something else.
And there it was, resting on the table by the window: the presentation Navy. Edward looked at the perfect sheen of the blue; the crisp octagonal lines of the barrel; the delicate, interweaving forms of the decorative engraving that twisted around the frame. Any reputable pawnbroker would give ten pounds for such a rare and magnificent thing. That would take them well away from London and keep them for some weeks, if spent judiciously. He put on his coat and hat, packing Caroline’s clothes into a carpet bag along with a couple of clean shirts and collars, laying the revolver carefully on the top. Then he scooped the slumbering infant from his bed and went out onto the stairs.
10
Sam hated policemen with a real passion. All they were good for, in his experience, was meddling and over-complication, and every man-jack of them was as bent as a goddamn coat-hook. Those he’d encountered in London were not a jot different from those back in the States. Indeed, the sheer mass of humanity over which they wielded such unreasonable power meant that their corruption tended to run deeper and blacker than that of their American counterparts, there being so many more opportunities to practise it.
The fellow sitting opposite him now – an Inspector Norris from the Westminster station – was a typical specimen, a pasty, overfed sort with an idler’s skinny limbs. There was a studied ease to his movements, and a sly self-satisfaction in his features, that suggested he was used to having his interests accommodated. Norris had set his sturdy top hat down on the carpet beside his chair, crossed his blue-clad arms and was looking around Sam’s Piccadilly apartment with an appreciative air. Next to him, standing at attention, was Walter Noone. On the watchman’s wrists was a pair of iron manacles, their greased hinges glinting in the gaslight. From outside in the corridor came some lewd, muffled laughter; the two constables posted there, brutes in uniform from Sam’s glimpse of them, were exchanging reminiscences of a recent jaunt in the Haymarket. The gun-maker cut himself a thick coin of Old Red and slotted it into his cheek. He had a feeling that this was going to cost him.
‘So this is normal procedure right here, is it, Inspector?’ Sam poured two glasses of bourbon. It was accepted without hesitation – a clear indication of what was to come. No righteous bleats about drinking on duty from Inspector Norris. ‘Pulling a man from his dinner? Barging your way into his home?’
In fact, Sam had returned to Piccadilly gladly, despite the nature of the summons. It had removed hi
m from a rather tedious dinner at the Garrick Club in Covent Garden, hosted (and dominated) by Mr Dickens. The famous author had invited him at the conclusion of the factory tour that afternoon, promising introductions to some important press-men. Yet instead of useful conversation the evening had been given over to endless speechifying and increasingly foolish recitations, culminating in Mr Dickens’s performance of what was plainly a regular parlour-trick of his – an unbroken leapfrog along a dozen-strong line of his companions. Sam had declined to participate.
‘There are four fresh bodies in the morgue at Westminster Hospital,’ the Inspector stated blandly. ‘Three vicious-looking Irishmen and a rather pretty girl. A domestic of some kind, I’d say.’ Norris sipped his whiskey, taking his time. ‘Rough hands, you see, from all the laundry.’
Sam knocked back his own drink. ‘What’s that to me?’
‘They were shot to death with your pistols, Colonel Colt. My men tell me that a great many bullets were loosed very close together. I don’t see how that can be anything but a repeating arm of some kind.’ Norris angled his shoulder to include the stoic Noone in their discussion. ‘And then there’s this gentleman here, nabbed not twenty yards from the scene of the crime – an American gentlemen, Colonel, in your employ. He’d thrown away the weapons themselves by that time, o’ course, but there was a plentiful quantity of powder on his fingers, and a few of your special-rolled cartridges in his pockets.’ The Inspector shrugged, taking another sip of whiskey. ‘We could make the case, if needs be.’
‘I never shot the girl,’ Noone said. ‘I only wanted those what had –’
Sam glowered at him. ‘Goddamn it, Mr Noone, you be quiet and let the Inspector and me see if we can’t come to an agreement on what happened here.’
He spelled it out clearly and carefully. The gun or guns in question were not Colts. He was a responsible arms manufacturer, and could account for each and every one of his weapons. There were other revolver makers in the city who were less rigorous, though – the Inspector might do well to direct his queries towards Mr Adams of Deane, Adams & Deane, whose workshop at London Bridge was open to whoever chose to stroll on in. As for Mr Noone there, the fellow was as dazzled by the majestic extent of London as any American. He’d developed a taste for wandering its limitless thoroughfares, often for hours on end; and this was what he’d been doing when he was apprehended by the Inspector’s men.
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