He laughed. “I am a terrible hoarder too.”
“I doubt that.” I frowned. “Do you mean those contraptions in the Pump House?”
“Wait till you see the dreadful accumulation of pistons and levers and tubes I have in the scientific quarter. Not to mention the electrical gadgets in my laboratory. Oh, give me a battery and a copper coil, and I shall squirrel it away. But then I should not be here if I did not store away the good things of life up here.” He tapped his head. “Nor should this house.”
He explained. He had visited these same crags as a child. He spent many an hour gazing at the Burnfoot Gorge, where I so loved to ramble. That established his lifelong devotion to energy and power, especially the untold powers of water. When he made his fortune, from hydraulic engines, he considered no other location for his lordly retreat. Today, this was the source of the invention that ever bubbled through the house.
“Anyway, forget Your Lordship. Call me Roxbury, why don’t you, or something along those lines.”
“Very well, Mr Roxy.” I never could resist eliding a syllable. “I must go about my lessons, or your children will stay savage and untaught.”
“Can’t have that.” He smiled. “I’m delighted you’re offering them so much.”
I sensed he did not mean my painting skills.
“I believe you have much to teach all of us, young lady. I’ve seen your skills at work.” By which he meant not just my drawing at the Select Committee, but the sleight of hand with which I demonstrated subterfuges to the court. “I give you permission to instruct my lot in whatsoever subjects you choose!” He touched me lightly on the arm, as if we were old friends. Then he walked off in a direction quite the opposite to where he had been headed.
Only as I turned to go up to my lessons did I sense eyes upon me.
There, in the shadows of the butler’s pantry, lurked Birtle, eyeing me as if I was a traitor.
REINTERPRETING MOLLY [LAWLESS]
Thus did Molly win free rein over the three Roxbury children. The Norphans Practickly were practically begging her to teach them more anyway, beyond their drawing lessons. Accepting that caricatures could not contain their mischief, Molly consented. By early August, they had developed a week-long roster of lessons:
—juggling
—puppetry
—prestidigitation
—ventriloquism
—slang, mainly argot and backslang, for conducting secret dialogues under the noses of straight people (Birtle, Skirtle and their father), requisite to any kind of secret society
—and twenty subjects improvised on the job, covering whatever Molly considered a reasonable addition to a young person’s education.
She entertained them royally. And this led to Molly dining at the earl’s table.
* * *
Miss Villiers and I loved the notion of our street urchin instilling her irrepressible verve into this aristocratic brood. Molly gave them more fun in those eight weeks than throughout the grind of their private (and expensive) education.
They conjugated parlyaree to the penny whistle. They learned the bite of satire, the shiver of gothic horror, the grandeur of tragedy. They imagined themselves Cleopatras, Boadiceas and Joan of Arcs, their kingdoms wrenched away and ruined. Molly was of old a devotee of theatre, museums and lectures, her memory cavernous and unpredictable.
* * *
Even Nico’s respect for Molly blossomed.
Picture Molly, at the window of the art room. The sun steals through the forest to cast dappled light on the wood panels. It gilds the page; it sets Molly’s chestnut hair aglow.
Picture, all the while, Nico sitting obstinately at the other end of the table, filling in puzzle pieces for as long as he could bear it. Then his sisters abandoned him. They asked for lessons; they loved their lessons, which Molly made more hilarious day by day.
No wonder he fell for her. (Molly was not even aware, but Ruth discerned it, between the lines.) A schoolboy crush. He had tired of playing up. He was vociferous as his sisters, but the snobbishness was gone.
* * *
Absorbed in my investigations, I never considered how draining her lessons must be. Molly was used to coming and going. She preferred to rely on her own wit. To have responsive pupils, with wit of their own, was satisfying, once they stopped playing up and became devoted to her, but it was exhausting.
Still, once the children left for school, Molly would be quite bereft. I must warn her about that. Having never been to school, she knew nothing of the approaching school term, which would whisk her charges summarily away.
DINING DOWN [RUTH]
My dear Sergeant, or (if I may?) Campbell,
Molly had not yet been promoted to the earl’s table, when I visited.
As a friend of the family, I am considered a lady; no question but that I would dine down, with the earl. The children were obliged to join us, which inhibited their fun, as Roxbury and I get on well (despite him having been friends with my father) and sit nattering idly. The moment the children finished dessert, they asked to be excused.
Last night, I accepted this as normal. When it happened again tonight, I asked why.
“Oh,” said Kitty, “but Miss Molly is upstairs, with our sketching pads, and puzzle.”
Roxbury smiled. “Why should you hurry to her?”
“Because, Fa,” said Nico, “she is so droll.”
“Enlivening,” said Kitty.
“Whereas you, Fa,” said Peggy, “are dull as Burnfoot ditchwater.”
“Should we summon your friend?” Roxbury looked amused. “Birtwell, bring the puzzle too. We shall have a night of it.”
“Is Molly’s style appropriate?” I hesitated. “For the table?”
Molly was summoned. Placed at the end of the table, Molly ogled our assembled company as if she’d been asked to dance naked in front of the empress of Japan. You know as well as I, Molly has met princes, actors and novelists, uncowed. She has given evidence to your parliamentary select committee; at inquests, indeed.
I attempted a rescue. “What games do you play upstairs?”
Molly searched for an apposite lie.
“Why,” said Peggy, “we extemporise limericks about members of the household.”
Molly winced.
“Molly, Molly, take the floor,” Nico said. “Do one of your ones about Fa.”
Kitty clapped. “No! About Birtwell.”
Molly failed to conceal her horror.
“Gentle, now,” said Roxbury. “You derail our guest’s energies.”
“Come, children,” I said. “Why don’t you begin? Show us how you’ve been taught.”
Before Molly could stop her pupils, Nico plunged in, eyeing his sisters. “When residing at Roxbury House—”
[Kitty] “One must creep round quiet as a mouse—”
[Peggy] “Sneaking tidbits from Skirtle, tiptoeing past Birtwell—”
“Whose stare tramps one down, like a louse.” [Molly, unable to help herself.]
Applause from Roxbury, applause from me, laughter all round. Then I noticed Molly’s pained face. She was looking to the doorway, where the butler—whatever his damnable name is— stood, quietly looking daggers at her.
* * *
My visit was a success. Molly’s friendship with the earl was cemented. I think it will grow, now that she is dining down. I imagine her having walks with him, and quiet evening chats.
I was desperate not to be too inquisitive—mustn’t give the game away—but I asked Roxbury if he would consider opening his house again, as in old times. The aristocratic houses of England endure an unending round of visitors each summer, but I checked the guest book, and Roxbury has curtailed such visits since his wife’s passing.
* * *
I have alerted Molly to oddities of the house she had not noticed. She’s been willing, yet circumspect. There are rooms unfound and corridors unexplored. She doesn’t know the way to the towers, or the furnace, nor has she investigated the sci
entists’ laboratories and electrical innovations. “What, Moll, have you no curiosity?”
“Curiosity I have aplenty, Miss V,” she said, “but it’s killed molls greater than I.”
Molly has no notions of how a house normally runs, but I have. I consider Birtle’s sullen conduct a dereliction of butlerdom, and Skirtle’s house management little better. Call me demanding, call me pampered and southern, but I cannot believe northern servants must be so obstructive.
These are subtleties beyond Molly’s ken. And all offer insights into the earl’s state of mind.
APPRAISALS [LAWLESS]
Miss Villiers’ report on her visit surprised me. On her return from the north, we shared a meal at the Rising Sun. She filled in the broad brushstrokes of her letter with colourful undertones. So much that I had taken for granted as true in Molly’s reports was, if not false, more complicated.
The earl was by no means idle; he was industrious—but working at what? Molly did not yet know, and Miss Villiers could not work it out.
The enigmatic Lodestar had become de facto manager running Roxbury Industries.
Birtle was not a useless butler, in Ruth’s demanding eyes, but tiresome, and Skirtle an adequate housekeeper, but no more. The children, to her ears, were nightmarish.
And Molly was unhappy.
* * *
Roxbury House, she concurred, was a place of magic. Miss Villiers’ descriptions enriched Molly’s labyrinthine palace.
The earl Miss Villiers found likeable. “Not at all the brusque man of business the press used to portray him as. He has no time for public affairs, for standing on ceremony; no wish to brag of business affairs, like most men. His mind is always soaring like a buzzard, seeking the idea scurrying far below to feed his brood.”
Miss Villiers wanted to know what I knew of this Lodestar.
“Nothing much. Why?”
“Worthy of notice, I’d think. If you’re concerned for Roxbury and his Industries, that’s where I’d start; it’s Lodestar that runs them. I barely saw the man.” She described how the staff deferred to him, and Roxbury signed off his suggestions, happy to leave the day-to-day running of the business in his hands. “Molly seemed taken with him, though.”
“Surely not; she’s devoted to Jem.” We had been enjoying the developing drama of Molly’s admiration of the stable boy. “And you? Did you find him so captivating?”
She strove to mask her aversion. I was relieved to see her distaste. Miss Villiers is younger than I am; I harboured a fear that some nimbler fellow would charm her away. “I wouldn’t wish to prejudice you. I’d prefer that you come to your own conclusion. Can you cook up a reason to meet with him?”
“What, here?” I laughed. “Come to London often, does he?”
“All the time. He’s all over the country. Newcastle, Portsmouth, Liverpool, Erith—”
I gave her an inquisitive look, my hand upon hers.
She shrugged it off. “Anywhere Roxbury Industries has business. Which is everywhere. Nothing untoward about it. He’s one of these empire-building engineers, extending their domain, checking, cajoling, pursuing payments, haranguing slowcoaches. The company lives in fear of him, Molly tells me. But they try to impress, which keeps the whole caboodle at top speed. You can see why the earl would love him.”
There was a reservation in her voice.
I poured fresh tea. I knew not to interrupt her in full flow.
She walked to the window. “The earl seems to love him like a son. More than he loves his own children. Them he barely seems to notice, and their mother gone. They are growing up wild. Skirtle mothered them when they were tots, but she hasn’t the will nor energy to control them now they’re filthy youths. Their schools evidently train them more in savagery than civilisation.”
“England’s public schools. When they say Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton—”
“They’re not talking of fair play and decency, no. Witness the backstabbing that enlivens the Tory party daily.”
I laughed. “Have we dumped Molly well and truly in it?”
“She went as a drawing mistress. She teaches them street arithmetic and bad manners. A street urchin schooling an earl’s brood makes me laugh. And she contrives to do it brilliantly, disguising her lessons. Mathematics she has turned into gambling. (She lets the boy win, else he would strop and stay an ignoramus.) They approach literature through comic poetry, which they compose daily to their amusement, extemporising at the expense of the household. In art, she hooked them through caricatures; they now depict the secrets of country life in Hogarthian triptychs. By this means, she digs out secrets the children know and should keep secret, of the household and neighbouring village: who hates whom, who has affairs, who is rumoured illegitimate, and worse. She is brilliant.”
“But she is unhappy, you say?”
Miss Villiers sighed. “She spends many lonely hours wandering.”
* * *
Molly had taken to exploring the grounds, in search of solitude, perhaps because so many doors of the house were shut to her. Indeed, Miss Villiers reported that the whole east wing was closed up, ever since the demise of Lady Elodie, the earl’s wife, of whom nobody ever spoke. Yet the renovation in the hall was her idea: to brighten guests’ first impression. When they found old paintings beneath the plaster, rather than paint over them, they decided to restore. They dated back to the old lady who lived there long before: Mad Wifey, she was known as. The tumbledown ruin was still known as Mad Wifey’s when Roxbury bought it in the forties and began converting it into Roxbury House. All that remained of Mad Wifey’s was the hall, with surrounding rooms and interstices; the rest of the wild gothic confection was Roxbury’s design.
I had imagined it an ancient manorial pile. So it looked, in the engravings. Yet Roxbury was as new a house as you might find in England, more appealing than Osborne House, more likeable than Blenheim Palace, more breathtaking than St Paul’s.
“Molly’s used to the city. She misses that aloneness. Noise and bustle, schemes and plots. There, she can be anonymous, snooping and watching over all. Here, simply to turn up in one corner of the house where she is not invited—quel faux pas. Birtwell spies on her, she says, waiting for a slip and thinking evil of her.” She sighed. “I’ve arranged that we go up again in a few weeks.”
“We?”
Miss Villiers’ plan was even better than that. She had put into Roxbury’s head the notion of a weekend visit, as of old. It was too soon, perhaps, to invite a sprinkling of artistic fellows, but she might return, with me at her side, if I dared.
LIES AND EXAGGERATIONS, PART THE SECOND [LAWLESS]
Why hadn’t Molly found out more?
Her investigations were full of verve, as I had hoped, and acumen and insight. But they were strangely incomplete. She had barely described the hive of activity that was the glasshouses. Bee house, butterfly house, entemologicon, arachnidarium. Scientists on two levels, outer and inner. Outer houses brightly lit, open to see, full of life and the fruits of activity; inner cloister a place of sequestered study, darkened, papery, and academic.
Why such striking gaps? Molly was our “eyes in the north”. She was surely curious about these secretive realms. I would have expected her to peek and peer, to report and surmise; but if she had, she neither reported on it, nor mentioned it on Ruth’s visit.
Only later, when she befriended Lodestar, did he himself induct her into the botanical and industrial mysteries, the chemicals, the botanicals, the herbs and homeopathics, the electrical experimentation.
DOG DAYS [LAWLESS]
In the heat of August, everybody left town; everybody who could afford to. There were no explosions, for that brief season. Jeffcoat and I sat down to fathom three things.
How immediate was the threat outlined in the Guernsey papers?
What could we learn from the blasts in Erith, Camden and Guernsey?
Could we anticipate future attacks? Could we not prevent them?
* * *
I set about harrying the Royal Commission. I co-opted the upper echelons of the military: they considered the Guernsey papers an urgent awakening.
I checked the progress of the defences recommended to the commission, so we could make their current shortcomings clear before Parliament voted on them again.
We asked ourselves who had the ability to design such bombs. If even O’Leary the Fenian was impressed, these activists must have specialised knowledge. They were not isolated cranks. Industrial workers? Researchers? We drew up a list of institutions and companies to visit.
We sketched out likely sites for attacks. Erith, on the Thames, was the gateway into London, Camden on the mainline train, Guernsey a staging post if the French ever invaded. Where next? Ports? Emblematic London sites? Somewhere to shock the nation.
I would visit learned institutions around London, Jeffcoat construction companies. We kept up our interviews; we harangued local forces to keep an ear out. We sought allies we could trust. We circulated the notion of constant vigilance. Notice anything odd? About a colleague or a project, about the development of materials or the use of equipment? Let us know. We peddled the motto “See, share, secure.”
This call for vigilance reached police forces all over. If they heard rumours, if they noted unruly gatherings, if criminals vanished from view or employed a new modus operandi, they should let us know.
The letters began arriving.
* * *
Miss Villiers hated an unsolved puzzle.
She could not forget the body on the SS Great Britain lifeboat. A fruitless quest, I told her. I was overwhelmed with the Guernsey paperwork; now letters poured in, full of dread warnings, which must be sifted through.
“Your Mr Lodestar is a bit of an optimist, isn’t he, Campbell?” It was a quiet moment at the Yard, and she had dug out the Great Britain file. She was astounded that the name Roxbury had been in the dead man’s pocket. “And Lodestar dismisses it as altogether ordinary?”
Lawless and the House of Electricity Page 9