Lawless and the House of Electricity

by William Sutton

  “As it is. Everybody’s heard of Roxbury.”

  “There’s a darker interpretation.”

  I set aside my work and gave her my attention.

  “You’re anxious about Roxbury’s capabilities to defend the nation. The papers are crowing about malign French influence. What if this fellow was sent to attack Roxbury? What if he slipped aboard in Cadiz, say, planning some mischief?”

  “To the ship?”

  “To Roxbury.”

  I put my hand to my mouth. “But he didn’t survive stowing away.”

  “He fell out with his accomplice, and they did for him. These anarchists are famously argumentative.”

  “And ill-nourished. And tubercular.”

  She ignored me. “He intended to find a Roxbury crane, and blow it up. Or the new guns for your Portsmouth forts. In order to discredit Roxbury Industries.”

  I nodded. “Possible.”

  “And his friends are still at work.” She grimaced. “Put that to your Mr Lodestar, and see if he’s so sanguine.”

  * * *

  Miss Villiers admitted that, since Simpson’s revised estimate of how long the man had been dead—four years, or five—she was paying occasional visits to Antony Gibbs Shipping. Having lost so much in the dockyard fire, they would not let her take records away. So she was spending odd afternoons working, little by little, through their SS Great Britain lists in search of the unfortunate man.

  Antony Gibbs’s office on Oxford Street was sandwiched between the Princess’s Theatre and a dingy alley, Adam and Eve Court. Not knowing what she was looking for, she was often distracted by music from the theatre. Through the summer evenings, the theatres struggled to lure audiences; gone was the spring mania for Mazeppa at the Astley with the American actress naked on horseback. They trumpeted moderate prices for Perseus and Andromeda, starring Mrs Ellen Ternan, frequently understudied (so the gossip went) for her visits to the coast at Mr Dickens’s expense.

  Then there was the fire.

  THE HOUNDS [LAWLESS]

  I took up the suggestion to enquire about Lodestar.

  I learned that he was liked. Admired. A capital fellow. An old-style member of the club—though no drinker. He paid his dues, bought his rounds, joked with the right people and avoided the wrong sorts, dressed nattily, spoke succinctly, listened much, and judged when the evening was headed downhill in time to escape the debauchery. He was revered for his trick shots at billiards, and a bosom pal of Julian Overend, a young banker currently doing rather well.

  * * *

  I happened to intercept young Overend as he left work, heading for the Hounds Club, on St Martin’s Lane. A highly strung fellow, he looked terrified when I said I was from Scotland Yard. I reassured him my intention was to protect his friend’s interests. I bought him a drink, and he calmed down. “I’m told you’re friendly with Lodestar.”

  “Terrific chappy.” Overend was enthused to the point of devotion. “Such a grasp of finance. Stocks, bonds.” Julian Overend was heir to the fortune of Overend and Gurney, the bank on everyone’s lips due to their fabulous interest rates. “Lodestar’s been a tremendous advocate for us. All over the country. The fellow gets around, don’t you know.”

  “So I hear.”

  “They think nothing of such distances where he grew up. Four days on a camel through the savannah. That’s just how it is there. Ten thousand acres his father had. Should have come to him, were it not for his father’s dissipation. Inheritance tied up.” Overend gabbled away, a sheen of sweat on his forehead. “And debts. Frightful debts.”

  Lodestar, he told me, was the son of Sir Chichester Lodestar, British consul to Mozambique and the Interior. Our Lodestar came to London when his father died, just a few years back, aiming to sort out the inheritance and return home. On discovering his fortune had been frittered away on his father’s vast debauches and dissolute investments, he had no alternative but to stay in London and make his own fortune. His father had friends enough back in the day. People helped him out. Who had sent him to Roxbury, Overend had no idea. He had some notion Lodestar Senior had been at Oxford with Roxbury. The two men went their different ways: Roxbury into engineering, transforming British industry; Lodestar Senior into the Foreign Service, one of their more difficult postings, outwith the Empire, where he established a vast estate in the African interior.

  There he imposed his stamp rigorously. As the years passed, he spent less and less time on governmental business. He acquired a reputation as one of the hard men of Africa, quashing tribal disputes with something of the iron fist.

  “They say Nathan is the spitting image of the old goat. But a harder worker you won’t find, nor a nicer chap. He’s in town tomorrow. Come and meet him at the club, why don’t you? Set you up with an offshore account while we’re at it, eh? All the smart money’s going there.” He gave me his card.

  I confess myself enchanted by his account of Lodestar. The wandering heir, arriving in the great city, surely dazzled by its vastness and variety, deprived of his dues and thrown back upon his own devices. Why not befriend bankers such as Overend? Why not make yourself well liked at gentlemen’s clubs? How else to get an introduction to a job as steady as Roxbury’s right-hand man? How better to make his way in Roxbury Industries? So much so that he was taking an engineering diploma, Roxbury’s endorsement releasing him from turgid requirements of essays and lectures. What better way to thrive than to be brilliant at his job? Perhaps his father had been a libertine—I should be wary of touching upon what must be a tender subject—but young Lodestar was clearly both likeable and industrious.

  * * *

  MAGNETIC MANAGER [LAWLESS]

  Lodestar met me in New Slaughter’s Coffee House, adjacent to the club on St Martin’s Lane. I had suggested a public house. He replied that he preferred a pot of Ethiopian than a jar of ale; the coffee in London was execrable, but New Slaughter’s at least roasted their own beans.

  I was early. I like to see my prey before they see me. Lodestar spotted me through the bow window. He swept in, his bright eyes fixing me, that broad brow fringed by his mop of jet-black hair. He had a vitality, unquenchable and winning. As he held out his hand to me, I felt as if I were reuniting with an old friend.

  * * *

  Lodestar held nothing back. Yes, his travels around the country were unpredictable and incessant. Roxbury Industries had more work than ever these last years. It was all he could do to keep it up. How Roxbury himself had it in the old days he could scarcely imagine.

  I was glad I had caught up with him. Lodestar put me at ease, establishing a bond between us, as of men of the world. He talked of how we were both called back and forth to deal with trifles others should have dealt with; and yet we must stay alert, ready for that one serious call, where our attentions were needed to solve a crisis or avert disaster. I was flattered that a man running one of the largest businesses in the country should consider my labours as demanding as his own. We all think our efforts unnoticed, I suppose, and our struggles greater than others’.

  I reminded him of our previous correspondence, concerning the body. I explained Miss Villiers’ theory that the dead man may have planned mischief against Roxbury.

  Lodestar shrugged. “But you never discovered who he was?”

  “No. My colleague was hunting through the shipping lists. But there was a fire at the docks.”

  “I heard mention of it.” He gave me a quizzical look. “Strange, how Londoners surround themselves with flammables. I have chemists developing safer materials. I’ll show you the new billiard balls I’ve produced.”

  “I’ve been forewarned. Don’t challenge me to a game.”

  He laughed. “Wood, gas, coal, paper. Fuels in the waiting.”

  “And we live on top of it all.” I shook my head. “As if we’re inviting disasters.”

  “In Africa, we have bushfires and accidents, but nowhere this density of population. I have seen violence, even on my father’s cosseted estates, but I h
ave never seen a place as vulnerable for apocalypse as London. Your Great Fires of London fascinated me as a child: in the fire of 1212, thousands died on London Bridge alone. Frightful. And expensive! In business, we try to foresee dangers. Prevention is cheap. You police must be moving that way. What a lot of bother would be saved if you could head off fires and explosions, eh?”

  I smiled to think of him as a child in the bushveldt, studying histories of faraway England. “But as I was saying, we’ve found further records at the shipping company offices.”

  “You determined fellows. Bravo!” He smiled and called for fresh coffee.

  I could not find it in me to decline, though my heart was already thumping and skipping. It was time for business. I asked him about Roxbury munitions works. Were they prepared for the demands of the Palmerston fortifications? And the brick factories? Was it within their capacity?

  “Are they going ahead?” His dark brows lifted in amusement. “They have been ceased long enough with legal delays and political whatnot. I had the impression the commission was minded to cancel the whole plan.”

  I was permitted to make discreet enquiries, without revealing official secrets; indeed, I was obliged to, on Ripon’s say-so. It would not do for the government to make a grand announcement giving the go-ahead to such vast expenditure, crucial to the nation’s safety, only for the private contractor to admit that they were not up to the job. That would advertise the nation’s lack of defences. “The commission met. The plan isn’t cancelled. You’ll hear officially within the next week. Will that be acceptable to Roxbury Industries?”

  “Acceptable?” He grinned, and poured more coffee, despite my protestations. “Oh yes, my friend, I’d say it’s acceptable.” Lodestar’s accent had that clipped African overlay to its upper-class English vowels, and behind it a wild energy that spoke of vast confidence, a confidence that would sweep away objections and make the impossible possible, make the unimaginable within reach, make the future present.

  * * *

  I was emboldened to ask him how he came to know Roxbury, for I was fascinated that he had so quickly risen in eminence.

  “Two sad tales,” he said, “and one happy one.”

  His old father in Africa had dwindled away. He was a difficult man, toughened by years of toil, but devoted to his homeland and proud to have established a British protectorate in the interior. As he died, he packed off his son to London to seek his fortune. He had not explained that said fortune would come not as inheritance, but through merit and work.

  Lodestar laughed to recall his own rude awakening. What his father had given him, however, was the introduction to Edward, Earl of Roxbury. Yes, they played rugby together at Oxford, when Roxbury was an ambitious engineering student, and Lodestar Senior a dissolute graduate, playing endless sports until his civil service posting came through.

  The second sad story: after the early debacles in the Crimea, Roxbury was called upon to help his country. He set aside commercial enterprises, which supplied hydraulics across the world, to consider guns. What advances the French had made since Waterloo. We had ignored them pig-headedly; even the Russian weaponry was better than ours. In two months, Roxbury had designed, developed and tested a breech-loading artillery gun. This reached the Crimea just in time to make a difference. The British forces across the world were poised to adopt them.

  In 1858, an unexpected reversal. A bomb at the Paris Opéra nearly killed Louis Napoleon III and Empress Eugénie. Policemen and passers-by died; hundreds were injured. Only by a whisker did the emperor and his wife escape. In the aftermath, the French unravelled the manufacture of the bomb. It had been finished by a Birmingham gun maker, who protested he knew nothing of its radical intention. But it had been tested in the north of England—where exactly was never proven.

  Suspicion fell upon both great industrial manufacturing companies of the north: Roxbury Industries, which dominated the east coast, and their rival in the west, Whitworth Enterprises of Manchester. Diplomatic relations between France and Britain became strained (our government toppled promoting the Conspiracy to Murder Bill).

  Whitworth pronounced that the technical achievements of the bomb—or its remnants—were beyond his company’s capabilities.

  Roxbury declined to investigate, absorbed in improvements in the British Navy’s ordnance. This rebounded badly upon him. The press suggested that Roxbury may have, if not sanctioned, at least winked at the plottings, knowing that mischief done to France could only profit his company, inextricably bound with British armaments. In a spiral of suspicion and adverse publicity, Roxbury was vilified, and so soon after being lionised for his inventions. To his astonishment, the new government saw fit to withdraw their contracts, claiming pressure from the electorate. The government even went back on his technical advances, reverting to Whitworth’s trusty old muzzle-loaders.

  Roxbury was left with contracts broken, research wasted, and military sales slashed. He was stung and scolded.

  He reacted in two ways. Reluctantly, he offered his commercial services around the globe. He soon found his wares in greater demand than ever, now that he looked beyond parochial Britain. The Brazilian army took him up; the Japanese bought warships; the Italians bought artillery; Union and Confederates armed themselves to the teeth with Roxbury guns—making that fruitless conflict more gruesome.

  Personally, he withdrew from public duties. He only appeared in the House of Lords on occasions of the utmost gravity (such as the Fairchild Commission, where Molly had encountered him). He withdrew from his civic commitments up north. He broke off his habitual contact with the managers of subsidiary companies. And, though he never gave up his research, he looked to appoint a manager for Roxbury Industries.

  Enter Lodestar.

  NORPHANS’ HIGH JINKS [LAWLESS/MOLLY]

  Between Miss Villiers’ visit and the sudden evanishment of the children passed several weeks. These proved quietly fruitful. Now Miss Villiers had galvanised her to get the measure of the scientific quarters, and the house’s secrets.

  Molly offered us glimpses of teaching the Norphans, the sport and the stramash. They sat in each other’s places; they spat in each other’s faces; they stole each other’s napkin rings; they sowed cress in each other’s bedsprings; they stole dessert; they denied stealing; they endured their punishments stoically.

  “Molly?” said Kitty one morning. “After this lesson, remind me to kill myself.”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “To kill myself. I’ve dedicated myself to anarchy and nihilism. Though, in consorting with the likes of Fa, I betray the cause.”

  Meanwhile, Peggy’s escape fund was not flourishing. Peggy was continually selling her worldly goods, to squirrel away funds for running away. Her ambition was to join a gold rush to Australia or South America; failing that, to become arch ruffian of a gang of thieves. She longed for her birthday, and possessions she might sell. She got little from her siblings, but the odd treasure from an aunt in Portland; though opportunities for commerce were limited among staff and residents of Roxbury. She constantly reckoned up her savings to the nearest farthing, converting the total into so many days on the run: a miraculous effort, as she was the worst at sums.

  Nico divided his time between correspondence with parliamentarians and posting mischievous signs around the house:

  VISITORS ARE REQUESTED TO REFRAIN

  FROM HOOTING AND TRUMPETING BETWEEN

  THE HOURS OF MIDNIGHT AND 6AM.

  When the “hide in a box” game lost its currency, the older two invented more games to torture Kitty:

  —Who can make the highest chalk mark on the wall? (Never Kitty.)

  —Who can steal Skirtle’s teacakes? (Never Kitty.)

  —Who will go nearest the Walled Garden without trepidation? (Kitty never got near. Quite why the Walled Garden was so trepidatious Molly could not get them to say.)

  —Who can hit the Frog Stone? (Kitty had at least a chance.)

  The Frog Stone was a gr
eat boulder mid-river, upstream from the Iron Bridge, at the confluence of the Burnfoot and River Dally. To please the children, in younger days, Roxbury had painted it with a frog face; they loved to throw stones from the bridge, the scoring complex, with premiums for hitting eyes, nose and mouth.

  VISITORS ARE POLITELY REQUESTED TO REFRAIN

  FROM DRINKING THE TURKISH BATH WATER

  DUE TO AN UNIDENTIFIED CORPSE IN THE GORGE.

  IF THEY MUST SLAKE THEIR THIRSTS, THEY WILL FIND

  THAT FOULD’S ARSENICAL SOAP ADDS FLAVOUR.

  They sketched self-portraits on envelopes and sent them to school friends. A few brave souls sent back a daguerreotype, only to have the Norphans caricature their looks cruelly by return post.

  In the evenings, they played fearsome parlour games, requiring feats of ingenuity. Molly’s favourite was “When I embark on Auntie Mildred’s ship”, in which each child added yet more poetic items to the list for embarkation on an imaginary voyage. Where Molly chose apples, cake and books, Kitty would demand “a prince to save my heart from woe” and Nico “a bottle of the widow” (which meant, of course, champagne).

  Molly shared with the Norphans a sense of unreality about her residency. Too perfect, it could not last. Kitty copied one of Molly’s lovely sketches to her best friend, a view from the house over the valley, with herself and Peggy outlined, like sylvan dryads playing some Arcadian ball game.

  “It’s so beautiful,” Kitty wrote. “I wish I was here.”

  I did not understand what Miss Villiers already intuited: that Molly was retelling her story in the guise of a romantic novel, precisely because she was not experiencing it so. Molly had lived always by her wits. To be the voice of authority jarred. She was used to bargaining over everything, always looking for the profit, the margin, even in her closest friendships. We are all parasites, she liked to say. To have livelihood and lodgings guaranteed confused her raison d’être.