Lawless and the Devil of Euston Square

by William Sutton

  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?”

  “There is another—No, thank you.”

  “Why is it that men,” she said absently, “find it so problematical to ask for help?”

  “It’s… It’s police business, you see.”

  “Is it really?” she nodded conspiratorially. “You’d better let me show you to a desk.”

  She promptly reappeared with the magazines, and made me promise to ask if I required further assistance. Glancing through that pile of print took much longer that I had expected. I was blinking with weariness when I looked up to find her at my desk again.

  “I’m impressed,” she said, “that the police consider literacy an asset. Or are you just looking at the pictures?”

  I smiled grimly. “They should invent machines for doing this. I’m just looking for a couple of words.”

  “They’ll have such machines soon enough. Haven’t you seen Mr Babbage’s difference engine? It calculates sums all by itself. It was in the Royal Panopticon of Science.”

  “The royal what?”

  “Panopticon. In Leicester Square. It’s been converted into a music hall now, of course. The Alhambra, you know. So much for popular science.” She sighed, as if that were an elegant summation of the spirit of our age. “In a few years,” she went on, “my job will be done by automata. Yours too, no doubt. We’ll all be out of work.”

  “And free to do as we please?”

  “With no income. It’s difficult to enjoy a place like London without a bit of money in your pocket.”

  “That must be what I’ve been doing wrong.”

  “Why, do you not like it here?”

  I made a tight face and she laughed. A moment’s silence fell between us. “Right,” I said. “I’d better get down to some reading.”

  “You had indeed.” She paused. “Are you sure I can be of no help? The library’s quiet today. I might help finding those elusive words, if you tell me what they are.”

  “I can read on my own, thank you,” I said, which was ruder than I had intended.

  “As I said, I’m astonished that policemen can read at all. Is it a requirement? Only we don’t see many of you in here.”

  “How are you so sure who’s a policeman and who isn’t?”

  “I take quite an interest in the readers. It’s my job. We’ve got a revolutionary over there, you know. Set Europe alight in ’48.”

  I followed her gaze. A man with a thunderous beard was buried in his studies, clutching his head in his hands. He didn’t fit my image of a dangerous revolutionary. “Do the authorities know?”

  “Oh yes. They know all about him.”

  “Why don’t they do something? Have they evidence?”

  She disappeared for a moment behind her desk and reappeared brandishing a small cream-coloured book, and pointed to one of the author’s names embossed on the cover.

  “Marx?” I said. “Never heard of him.”

  “You will. He sits in row G every day, unless he’s at some rally.”

  “Is he the leader of a secret organisation?”

  “I suppose you could put it like that.”

  “How exactly did he set Europe alight?”

  She simply tapped the book. “Workers of the world unite,” she said. “You have nothing to lose but your chains.”

  I snorted. “Doesn’t sound so dangerous.”

  She glanced skywards in exasperation. “He ignited the imaginations of the dissatisfied and dissident throughout the continent.”

  “Do people take books so seriously,” I said, “as to start revolutions?”

  “You don’t like books, I take it? At least, you don’t think them important.”

  “Quite the contrary, but I don’t think that’s the type of book I would enjoy.”

  She laughed pleasantly. “Prefer the theatre, do you?”

  “I do like a good show.”

  She raised her brows. “I saw the Siamese Twins in the West End.”

  “Did you?”

  “It’s the Singing Mouse at Savile House next week. Come along, if you like.”

  “That’s very kind.” I hesitated. “I… I’m not sure when I can get away from work.”

  “Not your kind of show?

  “Not exactly.” I felt something of a fraud hinting that I had a taste for high drama. My frequenting of Edinburgh theatres had less to do with Shakespeare than with certain actresses I admired.

  She leaned forward and spoke in a low voice. “Won’t you tell me what you’re looking for, Sergeant? I’m quite an expert at solving mysteries.”

  “Thank God one of us is. Where did you acquire this expertise?”

  “Mr Wilkie Collins’ serial in All the Year Round—The Woman in White. Have you been following it? Oh, and this, of course.” She brought out another little book from behind the counter. Tales of Mystery and Imagination by Edgar Allan Poe. “You can learn a lot from Mr Poe.”

  “Really? I must purchase a copy.”

  “Would you like to borrow mine?”

  * * *

  Some notion of confidentiality kept me from accepting her offer and I struggled manfully on without assistance. As the time pushed towards midday, I decided I might be better off back in the office with a cup of tea. I went over to the librarian’s desk and placed the magazines in two piles in front of her.

  “I’ve finished with those,” I said. “I tell you what, I’ll just take these home and look through them tonight. I’ll bring them back tomorrow, if I may.”

  “Tell you what,” she mocked, pointing to a printed sheet at the side of the desk. “You certainly may not. Have you not read your Reader’s Agreement?”

  I frowned, casting my eye down the list of rules. The admissions clerk had impressed upon me the importance of reading this agreement before he would hand over my precious pass, valid for one month only, as a trial period. I had sworn, though, to kindle neither fire nor flame within the library’s bounds, and considered my own researches more pressing.

  “There is a reason they call this the Reading Room,” she went on, nostrils flaring. “If you want to borrow books, join Mudie’s Lending Library. They’ve just moved to New Oxford Street.”

  “You were going to lend me Mr Poe.”

  “Mr Poe belongs to me!” She looked at my pile of unread magazines and seemed to take pity on me. “Are you sure I can’t be of help?”

  I bit my lip. “I’m concerned, you see, about confidentiality—”

  “You misunderstand. Can I help you read the rules? If they take you as long as the illustrated magazines, you’ll be here all week.”

  At this, I laughed so loudly that the bearded revolutionary looked up and harrumphed. Soon I would have to be back at the Yard. I decided to take her into my confidence, at least partly. I explained that I was searching for newsworthy events in the world of hydraulics.

  She listened, her head tilted towards me. A mischievous smile played across her lips.

  I broke off my explanation. “What is it?”

  “Nothing at all.” She glanced down sheepishly. “Only it sounds like something from Mr Poe’
s book. I must confess, I think I have caught the detective fever.”

  * * *

  Her rate of reading put me to shame. When she noticed me glancing in amazement at her skimming through page after page, she shrugged it off. She explained briefly that she was studying for a degree at Bedford College. She narrowed her eyes as she told me this, expecting some quip about women and further education. In fact, I was envious, though I refrained from expressing it. When I had become apprenticed to my father, many school fellows had gone on to the law college and the medical school. I could not have made sense of such subjects, but one could now study languages other than the classics. One of my friends was studying English Literature, which seemed a grand excuse for four years of idling. What would he do all day, I wondered? Read novels?

  We had been working in near silence for half an hour, when she grew excited, flicking back and forth through several items before announcing her discovery. “I have something,” she announced. “An incident.”

  “Go on,” I said quickly.

  “November last year. Euston Square.”

  “Ah. This incident I already knew of.”

  She paid me no heed, recounting details in a rapturous whisper. “Strange,” she went on, her brows darkening. “Most of the papers speak of an impromptu fountain. They make it sound rather jolly. But this local rag is altogether darker. They say a hydraulic crane burst.”

  “I know—”

  “And a man died.” She glanced rapidly from one paper to another. “They’re most unforthcoming. No sign of an inquest. Is that suspicious, Sergeant?”

  I opened my mouth, but decided against explaining, for now, at least.

  Working backwards, we found little more. A theatre in Haymarket had proudly announced the installation of hydraulic curtains for their spring season. And, just ten days before the spout, there had been some kind of hydraulic burst down by the river, on the new embankment they were beginning to build. These reports were muted. There was no sense of danger, nor mention of which company was involved.