I nodded. “You’ve given up hope?”
He laughed. “Haven’t you?”
“Well, I may have.” I opened my palms. “But Miss Villiers is very persistent.”
* * *
Simpson’s final report on the body was equally unsatisfactory. Sent, after typical delay, it featured his typical bombast. Still, noting our threats, he was more conclusive than usual.
He could not rule out foul play, but the tubercular decay suggested the most likely cause of death. Advanced consumption often causes paroxysms; the disjointed shoulder might be evidence of this, or of an impact. Equally there was malnutrition, likely as not due to tuberculosis.
Amid the indiscriminate matter within the tarpaulin, Simpson was surprised to find minimal signs of discharge from the orifices. There were, however, soap traces soaked into the tarpaulin. This might suggest the body was deceased some time before being wrapped, and carefully cleaned at the last, as if for burial. Traces of arsenic lingered on the skin fragments, but no more than arsenical soap would leave. Close examination of these fragments suggested skin fair and freckled, the type that often uses the damnable stuff. Simpson hazarded that death took place in the winter, at sea: in sweaty port towns there are so many species to prey on a cadaver. If insects had got to it, there would be no trace of soft tissue left; but the tarpaulin was wrapped tight, and the body showed only signs of self-destruction (that is, a kind of fermentation, or digestion by its own bacteria).
Yet he had come up with a suggestion as to how long ago the man died. The basket was made of corn husks and armature of cane: an African doctor of his acquaintance recognised the materials. How lucky we were that he was a university man! By examining the growth of mould inside the basket, he declared the man dead at least four years, and more likely five.
Five years. We had searched through the Great Britain’s records only three. Wasted effort. How far back should we have gone? How can you excavate the past? Too late now. The fire at the docks saved us that trouble.
* * *
I showed Simpson’s report to Miss Villiers. “Consumption, most like. He died on board, was cleaned and wrapped for burial at sea.”
“But they were in haste.” She frowned. “Acting furtively. At night, perhaps. They wouldn’t know the lifeboat was hanging there.”
I could picture it. In the darkness, they roll the body over the edge and duck away, not knowing they have tumbled him into the lifeboat. “Simpson’s revised the date of the death.”
She rolled her eyes. “I’m to read more records, am I?”
I sighed. “How many immigrants have died trying to get here, to the promised land? Some poor soul died far from home. Does his name matter?”
“But this isn’t some lonely stowaway.” She wrinkled her nose in thought. “Somebody was with him. Cared for him. And then—”
“And then dumped him overboard, unreported. Anyway, no further researches possible.” I told her about the fire at the docks.
“Oh, but Antony Gibbs Shipping has everything copied in their office on Oxford Street.”
I smiled. “Nothing to be gained, I think. It’ll remain a mystery.”
Ruth didn’t like that at all. “Let me know if you change your mind. I can’t bear a mystery unsolved.”
DR FOULD’S ARSENICAL SOAP [ENGLISHWOMAN’S DOMESTIC MAGAZINE]
Dear Dr Fould,
I adore Fould’s Arsenical Soap, and shall be devoted to it till the day I die.
Respectable citizens must shine with morality from every pore. In my youth, I suffered diabolical disfigurements: blotches, blemishes, freckles, pimples and pustulance. To overcome these handicaps, I determined to eradicate dirt.
Oh, the trials I endured, with endless carbolics and caustics, each slogan more lurid than the next. My skin became as tough as the dragon’s hide, as leporous as Job’s. Until, at length, I discovered your patent soap. Ah, the aromatic joy. I pronounce Fould’s Arsenical Soap the only efficacious remedy.
Yours, forever indebted,
Mrs AH Brown and family,
New Malden
Warranted to give satisfaction or money refunded. Also available: Fould’s Arsenic Complexion Wafers, and Fould’s Medicated Complexion Soap.
Beware of imitators. 2s 6d per cake.
Not to be used with prussic acid.
LODESTAR COMETH [MOLLY]
WATCHMAN,
ROXY’S NO. 2, LODESTAR,
AN AFTERNOONIFIED COVE
WORTH WATCHING.
MOLLY
Dear Miss V,
Cometh the hour, cometh Mr Lodestar, of whom I have heard so much.
I was teaching above—the Norphans practising their caricatures—when I heard a fashionable fleet-wheeled phaeton rumbling up the driveway. In its wake rode Jem.
Through the broad art room windows, I viewed the vehicle sweep wildly round the rockery. With careless ease, the driver called the horses to stop square in front of the grand entrance, below my nose. Removing his hat, he wiped his brow languidly, and descended as if he owned the whole kingdom. He snapped his fingers. There was no arrogance in it, just efficiency: time of the essence; work to be done. Jem, appealingly disarrayed, leapt down to tend the horses, but the new arrival took all our interest.
“Who is this,” I said, “in the courtyard?”
The girls set their scrawls aside and crowded round, for they loved a distraction.
“Oh, that,” said Kitty. “That’ll be Lodestar.”
“Fa’s devilish right-hand man, you know.” Nico declined to look up from his composition. “Who steals all his blasted time from us.”
“And his interest and his affections,” said Peggy. “A deadly important fellow.”
I glanced at Peggy’s page and gave some spurious advice on delineation, so as not to appear too interested. “Lodestar,” I mused. “Strange name.”
“Strange chap,” said Nico. “African. Odd manners. Big opinion of himself.”
“And so he should have,” Peggy said. “He runs the company now.”
“Gadsbudlikins, Peg,” said Nico. “He does not. Fa runs the company.”
“And relies upon Nathan Lodestar to redeem all his gaffes.” Peggy’s eyes flashed. To rile Nico, she said to me, “He’ll doubtless run the whole show, soon enough. A job that should have been Wilfred’s, if he had a modicum of aptitude, or Nico’s.”
“I like that.” Nico held up his sketch: Peggy, in the form of a monkey.
Peggy beat her fists against his shoulder. “You vinomadified lickspittle.”
He took no notice, swiftly adding a setting to the image: the pneumatic railway connecting the house with the scientific glasshouses, down which, giving chase to the monkey, was Lodestar.
Peggy wailed. Ah, the joys of siblinghood.
* * *
“Birtle,” said Lodestar. “Good day.”
The children dragged me from our lessons to the landing on the stairs, where we cowered to witness the hurricane that was Lodestar’s arrival.
Birtle just opened the grand entrance in time. Lodestar tossed him his coat. He stretched, catlike, to shake off the journey. His dark brow lightened, flashing with mirth, to see Skirtle descend all aflutter from her housekeeper’s domain.
“O-ho, there, Skirtle, what fine health your complexion speaks of, as the spring days grow warmer.”
She looked flustered. “Sir.”
“Now, I am only passing through, like the camel through the eye of the needle. This evening I must away, as soon as I have talked to his Lordship. There is business to be done seeing off our wily competitors in the west, the vile Whitworths—” Upon pronouncing the name, he pretended to spit: the feigned impoliteness drew howls from Skirtle and a wry smile even from Birtle. “During these meagre hours, I propose that you twice feed me, as I tire of London fodder, that my shirts be sent down to me starched, for the Hounds Club laundress is a sluggard, and that Jem clean my phaeton and refresh the horses. They brought me swift from town, ski
pping that botheration with the branch line, and I would hence with the same pair.”
“Very well, sir.” Skirtle attempted a curtsey, quite unlike herself, as if the Great Eastern were to trying to dock in a canal lock. “Will you be visiting—” she lowered her voice, “—the glasshouses, sir?”
“Why, yes.” He smiled darkly. “Send lunch to me there, will you? I’ll be in my office, experimenting with this new material. Then to the slate quarry. We should be blasting by two. I know you hate the noise, Skirtle, but the stables must have roofs. What else?”
Birtle stepped forward. I’d rarely seen him and Skirtle in the same room; they go to lengths not to tread on each other’s domains. But the whirl of Lodestar’s arrival in his phaeton had set the household spinning.
“Sir?” said Birtle, as broad an offer as he could make.
Lodestar sized him up. The children bristled with excitement, and Kitty nudged me to watch closely. Lodestar pursed his lips, full and red. His waistcoat fell trim from broad shoulders. His dark locks are too long for a gentleman, but somehow fit this wild uncompromising chap, as if to suggest he plays fast with the rules of business, and his brooding gaze brooks no opposition to the march of progress. He leaned toward Birtle, thinking, and placed a finger on the butler’s midriff. It was a gesture outside decorum, somehow typical of Lodestar’s style. Yes, that’s it. Lodestar is outside decorum. A visitor from another realm, with alien manners and alien demands. Some might thus be criticised, but he is cherished for it. A natural zest oozes from him, lighting up our visages, as we scurry to do his bidding. “Have you the best paper? And the Indian ink? Good man.” The tiny tap that Lodestar gave Birtle’s midriff many would not have noticed; but I am a devotee of close-up magic, and I saw him palm the coin into his fingers and thence into Birtle’s waistcoat pocket. A considerable tip—though the tippee knew nothing about it. He would discover it later, and bless Lodestar’s liberality.
Lodestar is plainly pleased with Birtle, whom he has bewitched exactly as I have failed to. Birtle renders him special service, which he affords to no other household members, nor any of the visitors to Roxbury House. Nobody treats Birtle with such freedom; even Roxbury is reverential to the gloomy butler. Yet Lodestar’s mysterious magic needed no gasp from its audience; it just worked.
I decided I ought to be presented to this fellow, such an important cog in the Roxbury machine. I shooed the children away. (They looked on, egging me on through the banisters.) I descended, as if by happenstance, to the great hall. Birtle did not present me; Skirtle did not notice me. I was on the point of coughing for attention, when Lodestar sensed me behind.
He bestowed that dazzling smile upon me. “Why, look ahoy!”
I felt a peculiar quiver run through me.
“You are no chambermaid, nor housemaid, I warrant. But maid you are, and made to feel welcome, I hope.” He extended his hand, which I took, uncertainly, having never been introduced in my new station in life. This chicanery of etiquette I find harder than circumnavigating Hyde Park Corner on a highly strung pony dragging a dozen milk churns. With the barest effort, he raised my hand to his lips. “Enchanted, mademoiselle.”
Birtle, as if sprung from a spell, came to his senses. “Mademoiselle Molly, sir. I mean, Miss Molly, the children’s latest drawing mistress,” he said, as if I would not last the month. “May I present Mr Nathaniel Lodestar?”
Lodestar wafted him aside. “Nathan. Please call me Nathan. If we be members of the same household, I hate to stand on ceremony. Don’t you?”
I opened my mouth, thinking this one of those questions not requiring an answer, bit my lip, looked up at him—he was a foot and half taller than me, a dazzling animal, his shoulders twice as broad—and heard myself blurt out the following balderdash:
“Ceremonials, sir, whether funerals or matrimonials, are a frippery of society I’d rather see tossed in the sea, from Battersea to the Southern Sea. Mercy me.” I put my hand to my mouth. “My apology, I prithee, for my parlyaree spree.”
I blushed so bad it gave me cheekache.
Skirtle giggled.
Birtle looked away.
On the stairs, the Norphans Practickly held their breath. Nico stared thunderously, Peggy was amused, and Kitty mortified on my behalf.
Lodestar’s eyebrows rose, arching over his brown, brown eyes. He smiled. “I feel exactly the same, Miss Molly. Au revoir.” And he swept from the room, scattering Skirtle and Birtle in his wake.
Mid-afternoon, I heard the explosions in the slate quarry; beyond that, we heard and saw no more of him.
* * *
Lodestar flew in like a comet blazing its trail across an empty sky.
Lodestar’s appearance has lit a fuse. The busy world is ignited by forces far afield. The explosives that shape dockyards and shake mines must be prepared somewhere. Where better than England’s forgotten backwaters? We hear of Parliament placating the rest of the country: oh, we’re raising capital for the shires; ah, we’re powering the north, sending the fruits of Empire for the yokels to lavish their dreary hours upon, spinning, weaving, looming, those things that northern folk still know, while we southern swells are too modern for drudgery, so they do the work, which we invest with fashionable value.
Before Lodestar, I thought Roxbury House a haven of tranquillity, nestled in these wastelands of the north, far from the city’s bustle (which I considered real life). Henceforth I shall seek interconnections north and south, rich and poor, straight and circuitous.
BOOK II
REPORTS AND REPERCUSSIONS
Credulous Days
[Penny Satirical, a London gazette]
“Boom. Bang.”
Louis Napoleon III clicks his fingers and lo, there springs forth a dark figure, bounding across the roofs of London: Spring-Heeled Jacques.
“Danger. Beware. Fire!”
Will he spout fire over England’s defences? Eat our navy for breakfast? Neither Spring-Heeled Jacques, nor his master Louis, adhere to a plan. He is conjured up to disturb us, trouble our dreams, and drive us deranged—as he drove certain ladies of Barnes mad back in the credulous thirties.
“Bombs! Explosives! Run!”
Are you laughing? Those days of credulity have returned. We are to believe not that some roof-leaping monster has returned, but that the French are hatching gunpowder plots on every street corner. South London might as well be Lyon or Lourdes, it is so filled with Frenchies, foreigners, and folderol-frothers. Expel all émigrés. Throw them in the Thames, before these Frogs kiss our lovelorn princesses, else trouble will be spawned.
CONSTANT VIGILANCE: GUERNSEY [LAWLESS]
The trouble with the Guernsey explosion was that nobody could say exactly what had happened. Nobody saw it, nobody was hurt. Was it intended to kill passers-by? Was it aimed at Victor Hugo, novelist in exile from Napoleon’s Paris?
We could not discover for sure. Yet the information we gathered from that satchel under the sea wall changed everything.
Early evening, August 8, a boom was heard all over St Peter Port, principal town of the island of Guernsey. Some reported a flash, some a cracking sound. The sea wall was damaged by a strange blast below Hauteville, Hugo’s house. The news was wired direct to Scotland Yard.
I caught the late train to Portsmouth. Awaiting the ferry, I spent the early hours of the morning talking with Ellie, a barmaid at the Fortitude Tap. I asked her what sights were worth seeing in Portsmouth. She poured me a pint of Long’s Stout.
It was a one-sided conversation, though I was glad of the company. She told of her fourteen children. With the navy’s new ironclads being built up north, her husband’s hours at the dockyard were so reduced she had to support them all.
* * *
We docked at St Peter Port at lunchtime. Inspector De Nesle, chief of police, insisted on visiting a restaurant before he took me back to the station. He filled me in over a repast of garlic and shellfish, his report as copious as the French wine, and likewise accented.
Nobody was seen departing the scene. Nobody was injured. But something was found near the rubble. Under a jacket of deplorable condition—how activists cultivate this deadbeat image—lay an old satchel, full of documents.
What an array: letters, telegrams, maps, from the 1780s to a few weeks ago. Beyond belief, beyond our fears: orders, munitions, shipping military and mercantile, diagrams. One document bore dates for the coming year; other annotations ran to the end of the century. And all in French.
Having riffled through the papers, De Nesle had taken a decision. “I have invited Monsieur Hugo to be our police translator. The fee will be nominal, but I have assured him the gratitude of the British nation.”
* * *
Guernsey is a mess of contradictions. Many of the denizens are French, French-descended, and French-speaking. They love French food, French cheese, French wine.
On the other hand, so close to this warlike neighbour, they are xenophobes. They will demand that Westminster invade Normandy at the drop of a pin. This bomb was just such an occasion, and De Nesle hoped their parliament would kick up a stink about it.
“This is military information,” I said, “and you’ll show it to nobody.” I would take the papers back to the mainland. I excoriated him for the liberty of summoning Hugo. “In the current climate, given the papers’ nature, I’m astonished you’ve whispered a word to anyone. The Royal Commission on defence is reconvening this week. I may summon you in front of them, and see how you like that.”
“In our bailiwick, Monsieur Scotland, British bureaucracy feels far distant. Your convoluted cogs turn too slow. History has shown us we must be our own protection. Constant vigilance. This is our only safety.” De Nesle gave a continental snort. “Besides, I am answerable not to your parliament, but to my own, blast you au diable.”
Lawless and the House of Electricity Page 7