The Devil's Acre

by Matthew Plampin

  Edward went to see Simon Bannan as soon as he could, early in 1855. They met first thing in the morning, sitting down in the Honourable Member’s office with their coats on, shivering as they waited for the heat of his freshly lit fire to build. Bannan was not particularly pleased to see him. The memory of that inconclusive Select Committee hearing and the spiteful gossip that had followed it was still a sore one. Edward had expected this – he’d counted on it, in fact, as he knew it could be worked in his favour. Mr Bannan, plainly a rather vindictive man by nature, bore a grudge against Colonel Colt.

  He made his proposition, choosing his words carefully, but the gist was this: if Bannan would agree to employ him, he’d use certain facts that he’d learnt in the gun works at Bessborough Place to deal a heavy, even fatal blow to the Colt Company in London. Bannan’s position on the Board of Trade, he hinted, and access to the books of the Customs House, would make this all the easier. The Honourable Member was immediately interested. He wanted Colt brought low, and still had hopes of exposing a connection to Palmerston that would cause the Home Secretary discomfort. The chance that Edward might be able to achieve something towards these ends was well worth a junior post in his office.

  In the days after this meeting, at the start of Parliament’s January session, Lord Aberdeen’s administration finally collapsed under the weight of innumerable reports of Crimean misery and incompetence. Bannan was a vocal supporter of the motion for a full inquiry into the conduct of the war; and when it came to a division large numbers deserted the government, effectively bringing about its demise. Aberdeen’s tenure as Prime Minister was over, but whatever triumph the radicals might have felt at this was tempered by the knowledge that only one candidate was available to replace him: Lord Palmerston.

  For all his annoyance at this turn of events, Bannan also felt some grudging admiration. ‘Palmerston planned it all from the first, damn him – from the very first. He egged feeble Aberdeen on to war, knowing full well that he’d fumble it and drop us in something like our current mess. It’s a cunning, ruthless piece of work – there’s no one else the Queen can turn to now, despite her reservations, and the public are crying out for his appointment. They want a speedy end to this accursed war, and they think their beloved Pam is the fellow to supply it.’ He gave Edward a dry look. ‘Good news for your former employer, eh? His protector is in the top seat.’

  A change in government, however, especially during the confusion of a mismanaged war, meant interminable debates, unexplained delays and a marked lack of action, even as the popular press teemed with stories of British failure on the killing grounds before Sebastopol. Furthermore, the new administration’s tardiness in following up that first Army order gave the battered Robert Adams a chance to regroup. His company took on a new lead designer, the former soldier Lieutenant Frederick Beaumont, and the new Beaumont-Adams pistol was born – the best ever made, Adams claimed to the Board of Ordnance, rectifying faults in both the Colt and Adams models. Edward could easily imagine Colt’s frustration at all this. His factory, slick and streamlined under a new general manager, was said to be really belting along; the unsold weapons would be piling up in their thousands. He himself was back in Connecticut, far away from the Englishmen with whom he had feigned brotherhood on so many occasions. How could he not be tempted to make use of the covert system he’d painstakingly created?

  The moment came one still afternoon early that summer. Edward was examining a ledger in the Customs House. As he slid a finger down a neat column of entries, a sharp, familiar word snagged his eye like a thorn catching on a woollen sleeve; and there was the signal he’d been waiting for. The Colt Company of Bessborough Place, London, was applying for a licence to export raw Indian cotton to its office in Liège, Belgium. He opened another volume, flicking quickly through the pages; a cotton importer, one of those he’d identified for Colt shortly before leaving his employ, had supplied the Colonel with 145 bales a little over a week previously. This was it. He went to Bannan at once, and was heading for the telegraph office a minute later.

  2

  Sam strode into the factory, still dressed in his travelling clothes, gave a curt nod to an overseer and made for the staircase, with a chew of Old Red for each upward stride. As he ascended, he heard the hiss of chain and clang of hammer-heads in the forge; the high whine of drills and the searing scrape of lathes on the machine floor; the tapping of tools in the fitting room. The place was in fine fettle. This served only to increase his apprehension.

  He threw back the door of the office to find a half-dozen people already inside, drawn from the ranks of his senior mechanics and overseers. Lou Ballou was there, and the foreman, whose name Sam had forgotten completely; and Luther Sargent, the Colt man of long standing who’d been brought over from Hartford at the end of 1854 to serve as general manager. Sargent was a level-headed soul who knew Sam’s business inside out – the very definition of the steady hand upon the tiller. Tall with close-cropped hair and beard, he had an air of unflappable authority and stately competence, like the partner in a grand old bank. He knew how to dress too, unlike pretty much everyone else in Sam’s employ; that afternoon he was clad in a berry-blue suit that Sam would have readily bought for himself.

  Propped against the desk, halfway through some anecdote or other, was Alfred Richards, his cheeks rosy and his ruffed shirt dotted with what Sam hoped was a soup stain. His lean face lit up at the gun-maker’s entrance, and he burst into a short, spirited round of applause. ‘By the living jingo, Samuel Colt!’ he cried, leaping from the desk and prancing over to wring Sam’s hand between his. ‘We weren’t expecting you until tomorrow morning! You only arrived from Liverpool this afternoon, did you not?’

  Sam nodded, looking over the office; a leather divan had been brought up there, he noticed, and set by the wall. ‘Boat got in from New York just before dawn.’

  ‘You could not wait to hear the details, I expect,’ Richards continued sagely. ‘The news has hit the trade like a bombshell – a bloody bombshell. Nine thousand weapons! This is what we dreamed of, eh, in the halls of the Great Exhibition? As we stood before this fine factory here when it was but a blasted hulk?’

  Drawing back his top lip, Sam spat a bead of juice onto the floorboards. ‘It’s a good order, Alfie,’ he said.

  Richards stared at him as if this was the most absurd understatement he’d ever heard. ‘I’ll say it is! A good order – ha, yes indeed! It’s said that poor Bob Adams had to be helped to a bloody chair when he learnt of it, and has been flopping about like the tragic muse ever since!’ Laughing, he glanced at those around him, expecting them to join in. There were some chuckles; Sargent gave a silent half-smile, more at the press agent’s liquor-flushed exuberance than at what he was actually saying. ‘Your renown has never been higher, my friend,’ Richards went on. ‘Why, only the other day The Times – the bloody Times, that so delighted in trying to thwart you before Christmas – opined that had Cardigan’s Light Brigade been armed with Colts they would have carried that frightful day at Balaclava!’

  Sam made some response, his jaw working steadily, looking at Sargent. He’d known the fellow for more than eight years. The slight crook to his left eyebrow said that he was carrying something of real weight. Sam had made the journey to London to mount an inspection, to make sure that the Pimlico works was able to meet the staggering order that had so excited Richards. And it was staggering – that much was certainly true. Palmerston had come through at last. As always, no trace of the fellow’s involvement could be found anywhere, but there could be little doubt that he had played a critical role in directing the contract to the Colt Company. Sam had been pleased; a little annoyed still that they had been made to wait so long, left by this puffed-up John Bull politician to survive on mere scraps of custom, but pleased nonetheless. Then, waiting for him at the desk of Morely’s Hotel, had been the note from Sargent, telling him to come to the works at once – and to brace himself for grave news. The vague nature of this wa
rning had served as a pretty plain indication of what it pertained to.

  There was a short, awkward silence. ‘Forgive me, Sam,’ Richards exclaimed with another laugh, ‘but you don’t seem particularly glad! Why, you’re almost as damned phlegmatic as old Luther here. We should be celebrating, my friends! We should be back in that fine place in Piccadilly, that supper room, and –’

  ‘Leave us, Alfie,’ Sam interrupted, unable to take any more. ‘Just for a minute. The rest of you as well.’

  The Americans filed out at once. Richards lingered a second or two longer, looking probingly from proprietor to manager, trying to deduce what was going on; then he too walked into the corridor.

  Sam shut the door behind him. ‘Well, Luther?’

  ‘They got the cotton, Colonel,’ Sargent said simply.

  An iron brace seemed to clamp shut around Sam’s throat, blocking off his windpipe. He’d swallowed his Old Red. Putting a hand on his side, he bent over, gulping as hard as he could. The plug was shifting, but painfully and very, very slowly. Men die like this, he thought. Sargent was at his side, thumping his back with such vigour that he stuck out an arm to push the fellow away; and then the plug was clear, forced down inside him. Sam pulled fiercely at his collar, sending the ivory button pinging across the room, and reeled over to the desk. He leaned heavily against it, threw off his hat and drew in a few ragged, heaving breaths.

  ‘All of it?’ he croaked.

  Sargent nodded. ‘At Aix-la-Chapelle, en route to St Petersburg from the warehouse in Antwerp. A random customs search. Just damn bad luck.’

  Sam made some fevered calculations. ‘Lord Almighty, Luther, there was what, twenty-four in each bale? That’s damn near three and a half thousand arms!’ He coughed, feeling the lump of tobacco complete its journey into his guts. ‘And they’re proper lost, ain’t they? Contraband goods in a time of war, caught passing through a neutral country – the sons of bitches ain’t going to give ‘em back any time soon.’

  ‘There’s also the fine.’ Sargent paused. ‘Eighty thousand francs is what I hear.’

  A blistering torrent of energy coursed through Sam’s limbs. Grabbing hold of the chair behind the desk – a sturdy mahogany piece with an iron pivot on its base – he lifted it clean off the floor and hurled it at the circular window. The chair stove straight through glass and frame, landing in the cobbled yard below with the bang of something being shattered into its component parts. There were shouts of alarm, and footfalls in the corridor; Sargent opened the office door a few inches and told whoever was outside to remain where they were.

  ‘Eighty thousand!’ Sam yelled. ‘By thunder, Luther, that’s going to fuck us good!’ He paced back and forth, boots crunching over shards of the glass from the window, wiping a palm across his sweat-glazed forehead. ‘And then there’s the notoriety of the matter. If it gets out it’ll surely finish me in England – Christ, in Europe! My rivals would leap on it. You saw the delight with which the bastards went after me last December. Nothing would give them greater satisfaction than to get this in the newspapers and hound us from the country. No one would help me this time. My British allies would run a goddamn mile.’ He thought momentarily of Palmerston, of the lack of any kind of open link between them. The crafty old villain could deny all knowledge and leave Sam Colt to his fate.

  Sargent remained entirely calm. ‘I’ve done everything I can to keep your name out of it, Colonel. Sainthill, your man in Belgium, has been instructed to keep a low profile, and not make his interest in the seizure too plain. He tells me that for another ten thousand the officials involved can be convinced to keep the details quiet. They won’t disclose that it was Colts or even revolving pistols that they found.’

  Sam winced; yet more money. ‘Would that work, though? Ain’t it already too late?’

  His manager shrugged. ‘Nobody over here has heard a whisper about it yet, far as I can tell. They know what they’re doing, these Belgian customs men. This one pay-off might cap the whole affair. Worth considering, Colonel, in my view.’

  ‘Who did the packing? Men you can trust?’

  Sargent nodded. ‘All safe this end, I guarantee it.’ He sighed. ‘Like I said, it’s just some damn bad luck.’

  ‘What am I supposed to do, though, Luther, if these John Bull cocksuckers won’t buy in a timely fashion?’ Sam appealed to him. ‘Tell me that! What the hell can I do but take my guns to those that are actually interested in ‘em? I am an independent citizen of the United States of America. The British crown has no claim of loyalty over me. What do I care for their goddamn politics, or their wars?’

  ‘The Russians will be disappointed, Colonel, for certain.’

  Sam let out a bitter laugh, recalling long nights in Petersburg drinking vodka with moustachioed naval officers around the shipyards; and many dozens of hours spent trying to sleep under a fur coat in a rocking railway carriage with sheet-ice forming along its sides. This was what all that trouble had amounted to. ‘Well, they’re going to have to stay that way, ain’t they, for now at any rate. We can’t risk another hit like that. It’d sink us, Luther – take us to the bottom.’

  His energy ebbing, Sam went to the divan, the upholstery creaking as he sat down. He looked out through the hole in the circular window at the thick grey of English summer cloud, absently reaching for the screw of Old Red in his pocket and cutting a fresh plug. Almost three and a half thousand guns were gone – a complete and irreparable loss. He’d have to pay eighty thousand francs in fines, and at least another ten in bribes, to keep the Colt name out of the newspapers. There was no upside to be found here. The Colt Company might survive, but it would be brought to its knees. The major contract with the British Army would only be paid on delivery. Before then he’d need to find money for enormous quantities of raw materials – coal, wood and steel – and many months of wages. His credit on both sides of the Atlantic would be stretched to its absolute limit. The busy factory beneath him suddenly seemed a doomed and fragile thing, made only of bamboo poles and blotting paper, ready to be blown to the ground.

  Sam shook his head wearily as he folded up his clasp-knife. This London works had been an ill-advised project from the start, an unceasing parade of problems, delays and expense. The whole enterprise was the result of his one great flaw: his vaunting, over-reaching ambition. He’d extended too far, and attempted to establish himself in a foreign land that neither welcomed nor quite frankly deserved his endeavours. Sweeping change was called for here. This giant contract, now more burden than boon, would have to be honoured – which might take a little longer than usual, given the financial difficulties Sam had just acquired. Once this was done, though, and all nine thousand arms had been delivered, he would instruct Sargent to start winding down the works. Within a year the Colt Company’s London outpost would be closed for good.

  In the meantime he would direct his own attentions back to their rightful place. While over in America he’d heard a lot of saloon talk about the open strife in Kansas – clashes between slavers and free-staters which had quickly led to bloodshed. The two sides were bracing for further trouble, forming militias, mounting raids and arming themselves with all haste. The Colt Navy was sure to find a ready market among them both. Like many of his countrymen, Sam believed that President Pierce had lit a fire there that would spread to other states and burn for a generation. Considering this now, sitting in his London office, he felt a stirring of patriotism. If Europe was to break the Colt Company down, then the United States of America would sure as hell build it back up again.

  Sam lifted his hand, as if ordering Sargent to halt. ‘All right, Luther,’ he said, slipping the plug of Old Red inside his cheek. ‘I think I see a way out of this.’

  3

  ‘Saul Graves,’ said Graff, one black eyebrow raised, as he pushed open the door of the Ship and Turtle.

  Edward looked at his friend sceptically. ‘And that is to be your name from now on – how I should address you?’

  Saul nodde
d. ‘Indeed yes, if I am to succeed – which I will, Edward, most assuredly. It is a sad but necessary step, this land being what it is.’ He ran a hand before him in a shallow arc, tracing the letters of a banner or newspaper headline. ‘Saul Graves, Liberal Member for Hampstead. It has a pleasing sound to it, no?’

  The tavern’s high-ceilinged taproom was loud, crowded and misty with cigar smoke. Customers were still pouring in from nearby Green Park, where the fireworks had concluded only minutes previously; many of those around them were engaged in enthusiastic recollections of rockets, pearl streamers and tailed stars. This pyrotechnic display had been mounted, in part at least, to mark the rather inconclusive end to the Russian War. Neither side could rightfully be called the victor; the general sense was that the conflict had not been won or lost but simply stopped. Such was the disillusionment of the British public that nearly two months had been allowed to pass between the signing of the treaty in Paris and this celebration – from the March of 1856 to late May – so that it could be combined with the Queen’s birthday festivities in order to ensure both a decent turnout and a suitably jubilant atmosphere.

  Saul and Edward stood away from the main current of the tavern’s patrons, beside a panelled partition.

  ‘What does Bannan think of all this?’

  ‘What the deuce does it matter what he thinks?’ Graff retorted. ‘With the advent of Pam our radical friend has been booted out into the bloody wilderness. The time has come for us to beat our own path. Now that the wretched war is finally over there’s a chance for things to be done. A seat in the House is the first step. The next is an appointment to a ministry, and after that, who knows? It could lead to real power, my friend. Real progress.’