On Nico’s bedroom door:
No ruminators allowed.
BOOK III
MOLLIFICATION
A Fuel in Waiting [The Globe]
Horror at the Princess’s Theatre on Oxford Street.
The ballerinas were thrilling the audience with their skill and beauty in the Friday pantomime performance. But joy turned to horror during their spectacular routine. A spark from the stage lights, it is believed, set fire to a dancer’s dress.
Anne Huntleigh was engulfed in flames, to the sound of explosions onstage and gasps off. Fellow dancer, Sarah Smithereen, rushed to help. As she tried to smother the stricken girl, her dress too went up in flames.
Theatre staff ushered the horrified audience out on to the street.
The stage manager courageously extinguished the dresses using his cloak, though the fire had spread to the scenery. The backstage properties were alight. The fire was already engulfing neighbouring offices, where innumerable paper files provided ample kindling. The theatre blaze was soon under control and extinguished. The offices, where some say the blaze originated, are burnt down entirely.
Our wooden auditoria are a fuel in the waiting. When the modern thirst for lighting effects collides with cheap flammable materials, who will guard us against fires? We shall be reporting on such disasters weekly. Our houses are worse, with straw mattresses and linen coverlets, twill curtains and woollen socks, hung up to dry over a flaming range. London’s housing is a disaster ready to happen. When will the authorities take up their mantle of responsibility? Who will regulate for our safety?
Huntleigh and Smithereen were taken to the Middlesex Hospital. Both are being treated for extensive burns. Huntleigh is badly scarred, but responding well.
Smithereen is unlikely to survive her ordeal.
MR SANDS IS IN THE BUILDING [LAWLESS]
When I heard that the Princess’s Theatre was ablaze, I had no reason to think of Miss Villiers. Only on my way there did I realise: she had slunk away from the Yard early; she might well have popped up to Oxford Street without telling me. I’d made it clear I thought her efforts wasted.
I arrived in time to comfort the wretched audience, for whom Perrault’s Riquet with the Tuft would be a nightmarish memory. They had thought the fire was part of the show. The ballerinas pirouetted so imaginatively, as the fire took hold. The stage and backstage of the theatre were still on fire. The theatre manager was beside himself. That everyone escaped was due to the staff’s efforts, crying out the theatrical code: “Mr Sands is in the building.”
The shipping office was all but burnt down. The theatre manager admitted the fire had started there, though he couldn’t fathom how it had burned through an adjoining wall, setting light to the theatre curtains, unnoticed by the audience dazzled with lights and deafened by drumming.
But was the office cleared of people?
I ran to the door with my heart in my mouth.
Ruth was there on the street. My heart leapt to see her. She was attending to people, calming them. I ran to her, ready to shout with relief, ready to snatch her in my arms.
“Do your duty, Campbell, whatever it might be.” She waved away my attentions. She was poised and beautiful, with black soot marks on her cheeks. She saw my concern and relief, and put her hand to her mouth, realising from my reaction what might have happened. She turned away to help others.
Both buildings were still thick with smoke.
The shipping fellow had ceased caring. I wanted to go in and gather evidence: where did the blaze start? How? The office manager shook his head, exhausted. Lamps on every desk. So many lamps. So much paper. It could have happened any day. And who would burn their offices on purpose?
I directed passers-by away from the incident. The theatre staff tended to the injured and shocked who remained. I overheard an audience member complaining about the smoke damaging their clothes; another bemoaned the shortage of taxis. We are vile creatures, and selfish, when we are frightened.
I found Miss Villiers again. She was searching, wild-eyed, for her bag. The panic she had contained in the crisis threatened to erupt from this trifle. But I found the bag, in the gutter, stuffed full of documents she had grabbed as the fire spread. She had come out to find the injured dancers, still screaming.
I have seen men dying, the aftermath of explosions and crashes, but Ruth’s horror was palpable as she described it to me. Poor women, beautiful lithe girls, dresses ablaze and all their years of training no use to them. They could climb vertical ropes, they could execute a pas de deux, they could juggle burning clubs; but they could not put out their tulle dresses. These damnable wooden theatres, illuminated with gas.
Lodestar was right: we surround ourselves with flammables. Was he also right about the police? Should we not just apprehend criminals but anticipate crimes? Woe to the force’s commissioner on that day. Already the detective shares with the popular novelist the obligation to imagine horrors. Not only must we expect the worst, we must tease out the dire possibilities of the menace that surrounds us. For shame, sir, if you do not curb your reading of yellow-covered novels, you may be a rapist. You, miss, with your mania for reading at night will set the house afire, incinerating not just your family but the whole street.
Sarah Smithereen never recovered; she died from her injuries a week later. Ruth—who was sure the blaze began in the offices—still talks about her elegant shape.
PUZZLES [LAWLESS]
Jeffcoat and I went over and over everything we knew about the explosions. Frustrating to make so little headway. We’d examined the minutiae of the blasts. We interviewed dozens of people in the vicinity of Erith, hundreds around Camden. I traipsed round London and Jeffcoat the whole country, questioning experts in explosives, but in vain.
With Guernsey, the dossier absorbed my attention at first. Now I turned to De Nesle’s reports. He sent us lists of visitors to the island for the week before the blast, gathering from ferry companies and hostelries. He had combed through them, he had interviewed tourists and immigrants, but to no avail.
“Typical,” said Jeffcoat, “that he rules out the possibility of a homegrown activist.”
“Still, there was that wire.” I screwed up my eyes. From my inspection of the blast site on Guernsey, I had learned little. The tides had washed away the debris, but I did find strands of copper, melted to the sea wall. “Suggests a common perpetrator.”
“And our one solid piece of evidence.” Jeffcoat took out the metallic shard from the Camden disaster: JO TWO CHE. This still had us flummoxed.
I copied out the letters on to a sheet of paper. We scribbled, rearranged, turned them upside down and back to front. Nothing.
NORPHANS’ DEPARTURE [MOLLY]
WATCHMAN,
CESSATION OF EMPLOYMENT IMMINENT, I FEAR.
CONSIDERING APPLYING TO WORK AS A MAID.
THOUGHTS? PLEASE PUT IN A GOOD WORD.
MOLLY
Dear Miss V,
The departure of the Norphans Practickly has come upon me as lightning from a blue sky. I knew nothing of school terms. I came downstairs this morning to find the kitchen in uproar and Skirtle at capacity. She was directing maids, stacking laundered clothes into piles by trunks with names stencilled on:
NICODEMUS L ROXBURY
MARGARET V ROXBURY
MARY CATHERINE E ROXBURY
And, strange to say, a further pile.
“Pray who, Mrs Skirtle,” I said, “is the mysterious fourth?”
“Out my way, young Moll. I’ve eight thousand chores, and you’ve none, so come on out of it.”
I examined a shirt atop the fourth pile, peeker that I am. I found a label sewn into the collar, the style in schools to prevent careless boys from losing shirts: WILFRED E ROXBURY.
“The eldest?” I said. “How has Wilfred clothes to be washed when he’s abroad?”
Skirtle barked an order into the kitchen, whence rose an herbaceous steam redolent of venison and bacon. Knives clattered. B
roth bubbled in vats. Sandwiches were wrapped in brown paper, and laid into hampers. “In such houses as this,” she said, smelling the piles, “damp cannot be kept off, neither with the new hentral seating, or whatever he calls it, nor God’s own sunshine. Clothes unworn must be washed again before wearing. The likes of you and I—” She gave me a glance. “I don’t mean to scorn you, Molly, rather to compliment your good sense— we would air them by wearing them out in the fresh air. Those who’ve grown up spoiled expect the world to revolve around ’em, as you may attest. The things they do in some houses: every fork named and washed separate; dinner approved with thermymometers; beds warmed with special irons. Not that the earl is that way. But, oh, he has spoiled his children.”
“I thought Wilfred was abroad with the army.”
“He is returned.” Skirtle sighed. “Back from India, worse luck, to complete his studies at the House, in Oxford.” She pronounced the word “studies” to suggest Wilfred’s studies were centred more on the public house and the bawdy house. “Whether he’ll deign to grace us with his educated Oxtabridgean presence, I don’t know. The little ’uns are up to high doh about it, you can imagine.”
As if on cue, Kitty popped her head round the door.
Skirtle snatched a feather duster to repel her.
Kitty ducked expertly. “Any sign?”
“Away out of it, and ready for your final supper.”
“Supper,” I said, “in the morning?”
“Aye, and they’ll be asleep by noon, in the coach.”
“Coach?” I began to feel unsettled. “Where do they go?”
“School, young Moll.”
I blinked. “Are they not well enough schooled here with me?”
“Pah.” She snorted. “Don’t be messing.”
“What, all three?”
“September brings Michaelmas term, everyone knows that. Don’t you remember your own schooling, dear?”
I managed not to laugh.
Skirtle realised, for all my joking, I was knocked back. She laid a hand on my shoulder. “Don’t be disconsolable, dear. You’ve done wonders enough with these reprehensibates. But away they must, to the corners of the kingdom, and avail themselves of the finest education money can buy.” With a roll of the eyes, she began doling out fresh tea towels to set the maids polishing the plates. “What they learn there I cannot say, for they return more ill-mannered every holiday; but that is the way of the world. The earl has not made his fortune fifty times over to let them rot at home, not when there are lessons in Latin and trigamonetary to be suffered in Eton, Cheltenham and High Dudgeon, or wherever it is Peggy is sent.”
The flagstones under my feet were falling away. “And they will return?”
“At Christmas, aye.”
“Christmas.” How many weeks off is that? On the balmy September morning, it seems an improbable dream. “It’s a long term for them.”
“Don’t fret from their point of view, now. There’s exeat weekends. October half-holiday.” Skirtle smiled. “Though our three are popular brats, and get invites round the seaside resorts.”
I made no answer. I was floating up into the eaves of the great hall.
“The earl must’ve spoken of your returning next holidays, an’t he?” She bustled past, directing the picnic baskets outside. “He’ll engage you again, for sure.”
I certainly did not know the earl well enough to guess his mind.
“I imagined your Miss Villiers has work lined up, has she not? All those letters of yours…”
I remained silent. I had known, I suppose. I knew this was imminent, but I had put it from my mind and ignored any mention of school.
“We’ll miss you, mind. You know I will.” She spotted a forgotten tray, laden with sandwiches, and hefted it up; I offered to take it. “Would you, pet? Out on the lawns. It’s usually too brisk this time of year, but the earl loves an outdoor feast, so he does. Birtle’s setting the tables. I’ll bring drinks now in a minute. They call it their last supper.”
BREAKFAST ON THE GRASS, PART THE FIRST [MOLLY]
The children were in high spirits. I found them smoothing picnic blankets and tarpaulin rugs before the house, beyond the point where the gravel gave way and the grass sloped down toward the rockery. It was the best view, but not the easiest place to eat.
They didn’t care. They wanted to eat up as much as possible of Roxbury House—to gorge themselves on home-cooked meats, venison from the spit, bacon on the range, home-churned cream with preserves made with fruits from the hothouse, laden on to Skirtle’s own scones, cooked at dawn, before the kitchens were busy.
Nico sat surveying the gorge, like a Roman emperor contemplating his kingdoms’ riches, with no thought for the slaves labouring to bring him such comforts. Peggy was totting up her pocket book: she never had enough to run away, but next month, next year. Kitty was chasing the luridly coloured butterflies. (I prefer London’s pallid moths.)
A peculiar screech from below. Nobody remarked upon it: one of Jem’s menagerie invalids. We were awaiting the earl’s arrival. It was rare for the children to see him outside dinner times; or rather, they saw him from afar, heading for the glasshouses, or Pump House, or reservoirs. His days he spent in the grounds, marshalling culverts and pipes and laying of cables; his evenings, in his laboratory. If, in his industrial prime, he poured the same energy into directing Roxbury Industries, he must have been a magician, popping up at dockyards, factories and grand openings, at parliamentary committees, at the Institute of Civil Engineers, at the Royal Society, to support the weapons and warships rolling off the production lines, exemplars of the latest techniques in design, engineering, and power, always power.
* * *
“Picnicking in September?” said the earl. He tucked his shirt-tails back into his work trousers, as he appeared from the rockery bushes. Skirtle would have sent him to change, but she was too aware that he might head for his dressing room and end up in his laboratory, and she wished the children to enjoy this rare time with him. “Remarkable.”
Nico cleared his throat. “Indeed, sir, fortunate climes. Auspicious for the school year.”
The earl looked at him in astonishment.
Nico hesitated. “Was that not what you meant, sir?”
“I meant,” said the earl, “that industrial emissions are raising the average temperatures.”
Nico laughed, pleased to hear his father joking. “Peggy, Kitty, you fiends, sit down.”
The girls were gallivanting atop the rockery, catching falling leaves. Kitty had her pockets stuffed with conkers. She insisted on garnishing everyone’s plates. “We will have a contest after,” she said, “and I shall be champion.”
“I shall be champion,” said Peggy.
Nico’s roar came simultaneous. “I shall be champion, you monkeys.”
The earl stared at the chattering children, amazed that such creatures could be related to him. The children fell silent, conscious that the high spirits of our lessons were ill suited for family occasions.
“We shall let Miss Molly be champion.” Peggy reached out and squeezed my hand. “If we must bid you farewell.”
I peered around, at this mention of departures. I looked to the earl. He neither confirmed nor denied it. I wanted to ask him, but it was always the wrong moment. We were barely finished our starters when Kitty stood up, waving.
BREAKFAST ON THE GRASS, PART THE SECOND [MOLLY]
“Someone is coming.” Kitty was bouncing on the gravel. “Someone is coming.”
Somehow, above the wind and the roar of the gorge, she could hear the clunk of wheels on the cattle grid at the Iron Bridge. Into view swept the fleet phaeton.
“My goodness,” said Skirtle. “If it isn’t our Wilfred.”
The vehicle whooshed past, a surly caped figure leaning out over the running board. Lodestar drew it to a stop up at the grand entrance. He leapt down from the driver’s seat, as Wilfred clambered, unsteadily, down from the cabin, brandishing a cheroot. Bi
rtle stepped forward, but Lodestar bade him stand at ease.
“I’ll not tarry, Birtle. Just dropping off some riffraff I bumped into at King’s Cross. Can’t have Her Majesty’s finest soldiery trudging up the Burnfoot like a common footpad.”
Wilfred loafed towards us, sneering, as if disgusted to have accepted anything from Lodestar. All in a flash, I saw it: Wilfred was the heir to Roxbury Industries and the estate. Yet there he was, gallivanting off to India then back to his studies. In waltzes this upstart Lodestar, from darkest Africa’s nether regions, takes up the slack left by the earl, and sets to the task with a will.
“Where there is a Wilf,” said the earl. He shook his eldest son’s hand manfully, then stepped aside to let the girls attach themselves to Wilfred’s sides like limpets.
The earl excused himself, asking Lodestar if they might have a word. Lodestar tossed down a bag on the steps. With an ironic glance at Wilfred, he saluted us broadly, helped the earl up, and drove off toward the glasshouses.
* * *
As soon as his father was gone, Wilfred slouched on the rug. “Nico, you old fox,” he said. He lit himself another cheroot from a silver case, oozing with wheedling satisfaction. “Slather some chicken liver on an oatcake for me, could you? I’m fresh in from Lahore and the Great Northern catering ain’t what it was.”
This set the celebrations off into a new frenzy. I kept my peace, while the family had exchanged quips and quibbles: who had not written, what angry words were left unrepented, how cruel to arrive on the instant they were departing when he knew they were eating their hearts out to see him.
Wilfred was staring at me as a magpie eyes a trinket. “Who is this firebrand in the shadows?”
“None of your cheek now, Mr Wilfred.” Skirtle wagged a finger; there was no real reproach in it, yet she seemed to have sway over him. She told him my name and my position.
He drew himself up, like the military man he is, to greet me properly.
Kitty rescued us from discomfort, distributing conkers and demanding the contest. Nico and Peggy kept the tone light-hearted, challenging Wilfred to duels. Their brother tried to enter into the jollity. He volunteered to pierce the toughest chestnuts for battle. We spent a half hour laughing and cracking each other on the knuckles.
Lawless and the House of Electricity Page 11