Lawless and the House of Electricity

by William Sutton

  The poor rushed forth, screaming for deliverance, helpless children dragged at their heels. Crowds ran this way and that, as flames enwrapped the vessel. The ensuing sound deafened the ear, making the earth reel. From the black hull burst a hideous inferno, illuminating the heavens. Yards, masts and rigging were hurled across the shoreline, the hull smashed into a thousand pieces.

  As the smoke cleared, lurid light illumined the burning mass floating downriver with the ebb. Praise is due to the Queen Bee for propitiously rescuing the crew so opportunely.

  The damage in Castle St is irreparable. Further description of local property follows on inside pages. But take care: Mr Owens’ plate glass is shattered; Mr Archer’s instruments are broken; Messrs Allison and Macfie’s wine and spirits are spilt.

  THE GLITTERING GUEST BOOK [RUTH]

  Dearest Campbell,

  I have stayed on at Roxbury, nominally to plan with Molly a schedule for attacking her art commission. I have, of course, an eye on wider concerns. I have divined the link between Molly’s taciturnity and Wilfred’s black eye; I had suspected the worst.

  “Don’t stay,” I told her. We were back at our puzzling, for one cannot leave the world uncompleted. “Don’t stay, if you don’t want to.”

  “He’s gone. I ain’t afraid.”

  I tutted. “‘I’m not afraid,’ you should say.”

  “I shouldn’t.”

  “You’re never afraid. That’s the trouble. A modicum of fear can prevent unwarranted attentions.” I blinked, thinking aloud. “I suppose that’s what Campbell— Sergeant Lawless—is trying to do for the nation.”

  “I’m staying.” Molly sniffed. “I’ll take care with what attentions I attract, thank you very much. Old Roxy’s minded to show me how things work round here. Once I’m into the menagerie and that, I’ll tell what’s up and what’s down and what’s back-to-front. Bend the scientists’ ears for whispers of the latest contraptions.”

  “Paint them.” I clapped her hands.

  “The scientists?”

  “The contraptions. Batteries. Generators. The turbine and waterwheel. It’ll give you an insight on how they work. I’ll suggest it to the earl before I—”

  “Before you what?” said Roxbury. He was peeking amiably around the door. “Really, ladies, it is the most extraordinary autumn day. You must come and take the view with me.”

  * * *

  Fifteen minutes later, we were seated by the Shepherd’s Refuge, atop the hill that rises, craggy and wild, over Roxbury House. Behind us, Thimbleton Reservoir, once a bog, today a sparkling lake providing water for house and glasshouses. To our left, forested slopes overhang the house. In front, the dam and sluice. Below, the tumbling falls of Burnfoot Gorge descend past the Pump House toward the Frog Stone and the Iron Bridge. Beyond, the sweep of the valley.

  “One of England’s finer views.” I sighed. “I shall be sorry to leave.”

  “Don’t,” said Roxbury. “You brighten up the house immeasurably.”

  “I shall endeavour,” said Molly, “not to take that as an insult to the incumbents.”

  “I must go.” I laughed. “My affianced fellow cannot do without my organisational help, not to mention chivvying him along about a certain wedding.”

  “A wedding, of course.” Roxbury glanced at Moll. “Where will you hold it?”

  “If only you knew someone,” Moll said, “someone with a house, servants and that.”

  “Someone well-disposed to you,” Roxbury said, “and your husband-to-be.”

  “With space for guests,” Molly continued. “And rooms for dining and dancing and prancing and stargazing.”

  “Flower gardens.” Roxbury gazed across the mountains. “Lawns. All that romantic bosh. Even one of those secret chapels from Reformation times.”

  “A priest-hole?” I’ve read of hapless priests hiding from Elizabeth’s torturers.

  “No longer quite a priest-hole,” said Roxbury, “since our renovations. I had it extended into a small chapel.”

  I laughed. “Hidden within the house?”

  He nodded, pleased with his subterfuge.

  Molly noted this calmly, eyes fixed on a distant hill.

  I concentrated on the same lofty peak. “And yet, what a shame if I knew someone like that, and somewhere, just as you have described; but—objection one—it was a million miles from civilisation and the devil of a job for normal southern folk to get to; objection two, Your Honour—they never, ever, ever received visitors.”

  Roxbury was indignant. “I’m receiving now.”

  “Never received normal visitors.”

  “Pah.” Roxbury gave me a look. “We do.”

  “Do not,” said Molly.

  “We’ve had the Emperor of Japan,” Roxbury said.

  “Unlikely,” said Molly.

  I nodded approvingly, to stir up his indignance. “And the Sultan of Turkey.”

  “Anywise,” said Molly, “how do you know that?”

  “Yes.” Roxbury frowned. “How do you know that?”

  “Guest book.” I shrugged. “Haven’t you peeked, Molly? First thing I do when visiting a grand house. Nose through the glittering guest book. Molly, you’re uncommonly good at squeezing tales out of servants, cooks and gardeners, but I’m disappointed in your reading habits.”

  Molly bit her lip. “But I understood, Roxy, that your parties were a thing of the past.”

  “Not at all,” said Roxbury.

  We looked at him.

  “Never any stated intention, at least.” His brow furrowed. “I suppose you’re right. We’ve not entertained in recent years, not on the same scale.”

  “You’ve not entertained at all in recent years,” I said gently.

  Moll chimed in. “Apart from your scientists.”

  Roxbury’s jaw worked soundlessly for a moment. He gestured down at the glasshouses. “Along with the odd apothecary. A sportsman or two. Some clever medics. Yes. I can see it looks a bit rum.”

  “It’s no criticism, sir.” I hesitated. “My Aunt Lexie has told me of the lavish parties you were known for. Back in the days—” Back in the days when your wife ran the household, I could have added, but the notion was there in the air.

  “Nobody would wish,” said Molly, “to force you out of your seclusion.”

  “Seclusion? No, no,” said he. “I’m caught up, you see, with these late developments, and I… Botanists, too. Herbalists and… Yes, I do see what you mean, now that you say it.”

  We looked down the valley together. In the distance, the church bell tolled the half hour.

  Roxbury stood. He walked to the edge of the crag, above the falls, where the river had cut through the rock. I asked myself, was I afraid for him? For his state of mind? It was as if the loss of his wife could sweep over him, at any moment, like a tide, and he was powerless to prevent it. Reason enough to steer clear of the wrangle of parliamentary duties, business cares, city life and entertaining. How trivial it must all seem; and yet he wears no mark of mourning, as the children did. There he stood, upright and noble, assailed by emotion, as if their gentle gibes had made the tide flood anew.

  At the sluicegate, the water swelled. As if set off by my ruminations, the gates within the weir, holding back the waters of Thimbleton Reservoir, opened, tugged by invisible cables. Roxbury waved us to come and watch, delight on his face. The water whooshed, swooning with unstoppable force through the exit unexpectedly offered. Below, by the Pump House, the great waterwheel clanked, wheezed, and began to turn, turn, turning ever quicker as the rivulet channelled from the falls pushed it into easy implacable motion.

  * * *

  “I first came here as a child, you know. Come, come, I’ll show you.”

  The water had distracted the earl from his sad reverie. He watched it, enchanted. The merry plummet of the Burnfoot made a music so different from the engines and machines and the things you might expect an industrialist to care for. He bade us follow down the steep path, pointing out t
he channels that guided the rivulets into pipes, harnessing streams of water into scientific service.

  “I was so delighted with the water, the fresh air, the bright grass, mosses clinging to rocks, the beauty of it all. These merry streams, performing their nimble leaps and tumbles, capering over the jagging rocks. I was fishing— poaching, I suppose—when I had the revelation. Down there, by the millhouse, lounging idly, I needed no energy, for the river was doing all the work without need for efforts on my part. I admired the old waterwheel: some fellow, long ago, watching the back-breaking labour of milling, had listened to the tumbling falls, thinking, ‘If only I could exploit this power galloping away.’ Any device that saves labour, from the quarry to the kitchen, gains quick renown, without need for advertising, such is man’s garrulity and his sloth. Yet what a paltry part of the river’s force we harness with such waterwheels. How great would be the force of these falls in their entirety.”

  Halfway down, by the Pump House, Roxbury ignored various of his inventions that stood about, levers and dials and cranking wheels, and led us to the piston driven so inexorably by the waterwheel.

  “This was the germ of my hydraulic inventions. They made me famous, and rich. I’ve dallied with ships and guns. And I shall experiment with electricity until my dying day: already this turbine charges batteries which will power contraptions not yet dreamt of. But there is no doubt, my friends, that my first love was water. Still today, I have water on the brain.”

  I shall depart in the morning. My mind is buzzing. I regret I’ve not seen this secret chapel he mentioned. We might genuinely consider marrying here. For Molly, who loves nothing better than lairs and boltholes, I hope it is the beginning of the trail into the secrets of Roxbury House.

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  ADVISORIES AND DENUNCIATIONS [LETTERS TO SCOTLAND YARD]

  Dear sergeants of Scotland Yard,

  I read in the Mercury you are seeking the culprit for the Florence Veigh outrage. With reluctance, I must draw to your attention the families living two doors down from me.

  They are French speakers, or somesuch, with upwards of twenty people in one tenement room. As proof of their criminal involvement, I noted, on the day in question, much to-ing and fro-ing from the house. If you interview the household, and neighbours, I am confident you will find the plotters. We live within sight of the Mersey.

  I am a patriot, dismayed to see those welcomed to our land repay us with such venom.

  James O’Dowd, Birkenhead

  Dear Sergeant Jeffcoat,

  I have to inform on my shipmate from the Florence Veigh, though it rankles with seafaring loyalties: a strange fellow, that is, I didn’t know him before, but I saw him go in the captain’s cabin, all shifty like, where a steward’s assistant had no business to be, with a bag of a fair size, and that was as we left the dock, only half an hour before we reached Monks Ferry, when the whole thing went off like a volcano, and I have not told him I am writing to you, but, him being of no fixed abode, I shall bring him for a drink to the White Horse by Liverpool dock this evening, late enough, and you can find me, as the publican knows me, and I will gesture to him, but you will surely know him by his beret.

  Seth Salzman

  Merchant seaman of Liverpool and

  friend to this nation

  DENIAL, DENIAL, DENIAL [LAWLESS]

  Jeffcoat arrived late with news: news that had delayed his departure from London.

  He and I did not spend long in Liverpool. Nobody was killed, by a miracle. But to connect this to previous blasts was hopeless: all the evidence was incinerated, the ship burnt to a cinder and mostly sunk. We interviewed the captain and the steward, but the crew were dispersed and some had already taken other ships, eager to get back to sea.

  We spread the word of our campaign of vigilance, though so far it had brought us nowhere. Apart from Jeffcoat’s news.

  * * *

  He and Ruth had been asking around London prisons and prosecutors, seeking previous arrests for attempted or suspected outrages akin to our enquiries. Ruth spotted a case against a certain Jacques the Painter, three months since, in Holloway.

  Jacques the Painter. Did it ring a bell? She recognised it from some damnable Penny Satirical article. But whence had they got it?

  Ruth uncovered the link, abstruse but convincing, by historical researches. Jack the Painter was the alias of the spy who reconnoitred for the French when they planned to invade Portsmouth in 1779. This could not be a coincidence.

  With Ripon’s sanction, they went straight to Holloway Prison to interview him. Jacques the Painter, as he still insisted his name was, simply laughed and refused to speak anything but French. Jeffcoat knew some French, but he didn’t wish to miss a detail that could be used in evidence. He called Ruth inside and instructed her as to what to say. Jeffcoat reported to me the relish with which she delivered his threats, in her most vehement français.

  Jacques declared himself innocent. He was being held illegally. The French ambassador would negotiate his release.

  “Innocent?” Jeffcoat said. “Sitting at the pub on Westminster Bridge Road with a bag of gunpowder? That’s poor proof of innocence. What was your intention?”

  He was taking a cognac. That was his intention.

  “With a bag of gunpowder?”

  That was his own business.

  “Murderous material, brought within sight of the Houses of Parliament, contravenes the Conspiracy to Murder Act.”

  “What a shame,” Jacques said, “your parliament declined to pass the Conspiracy to Murder Act.”

  This was true: it remains only a misdemeanour. “So you admit murderous intent?”

  “I admit nothing of the sort.”

  That was Jacques the Painter, cool as a langoustine. Jeffcoat suggested that he would be waiting a long time for his ambassador to get him released. They left him to stew.

  ENVIOUS TIME: WHITWORTH LIKEWISE [LAWLESS]

  Denials, discoveries, suspicions.

  “What’s it to do with me?” Joseph P Whitworth did not get up from his desk, did not shake our hand, did not offer to help our enquiries, did not even put down his pen. “That’s defamatory, that is.”

  “Defamatory, sir?” Jeffcoat laughed. “That’s rich, coming from the man who put about the rumour that those Orsini bombs were tested on his rival’s estates.”

  Whitworth didn’t look up, but his compressed lips went white.

  “Sir,” I said. “I’m sorry, but at the Camden train disaster, we retrieved a piece of metal imprinted with your insignia—”

  “My insignia?”

  “Your company’s, sir.”

  “Circumstantial. I’m not having it.” He pointed his pen at Jeffcoat, as I had been so conciliatory. A blob of ink squirted on to his desk. “Who’ve you said this to?”

  “To Scotland Yard’s commissioner, sir,” said Jeffcoat. “And to the Home Office.”

  Whitworth finally looked up. “If it’s in the papers, I’ll sue your blasted behinds.”

  “Mr Whitworth, sir.” I stepped in front of Jeffcoat, before his temper got to the boil. “Nobody’s accusing you of anything. Nobody’s defaming your company.”

  He stopped jabbing his pen at us, and regarded me sourly.

  I went on. “All we’re saying is that you have many, many men with mechanical knowledge, explosives knowledge, some of whom may have connections with foreign governments, may have been bribed, or turned politically; and if you could see your way to helping our enquiries, for example, giving access to records and letting us question—”

  “You’re wasting my time. You wasted my time, back in ’58, and you’re wan
ting to waste it again.”

  Silence.

  “We are pursuing several enquiries—” I began.

  “The bloody fire on the bloody Mersey?” He grew red-faced. “You flipping London lunatics. You’re mad as hops, you lot. Liverpool, Manchester. Manchester, Liverpool. Not the same, you know. ‘Ooh, it’s up north. Ooh, it’s so chilly.’ Just because we’re northern.”

  I refrained from out-northerning Whitworth, but he had lost my sympathy.

  “Can you not get your heads around it?” He banged his desk. “Liverpool in’t owt to do with me—”

  “You sell machinery in Liverpool.” Jeffcoat clenched his teeth.

  “A lot of machinery, Mr Whitworth,” I said. “Do you not?”

  “I sell machinery in Nantucket, and I sell machinery in Nanking. I don’t see you blaming me for bombs there, eh? Eh? I don’t see the bloody Yanks or the blasted Chinks come knocking, saying, ‘Ooh, Mr Whitworth, your machinery’s been found at an explosion,’ do I? Do I?”

  Deadlock.

  “You’re barking up the wrong bush, Sergeant Whatsyername. You’re barking in the wilderness. And that were nowt to do with me, by the way, those bombs in Paris. That was proven, that was established.”

  “I’m confident, sir,” I said, “that it will be established equally quickly in this case, if only we get a little cooperation on both sides.”

  Silence, again.

  Clunk. Jeffcoat set down on the desk, clumsily, the shard of metal with the telltale lettering. “You might like to establish that, while we’re at it.”

  Whitworth’s face screwed up, as if at a dreadful stink. “Get out,” he said. “Get out!”

  We stood our ground.

  “Bloody well get your backsides out of here and don’t come back while I’m here,” he said, brandishing it like Jupiter’s thunderbolt, “unless you want this rammed up—” Just as we were on the point of fleeing for safety, a tremendous change came over him. He picked up the shard and weighed it in his hand. “Oh, now.” He stopped shaking the shard and drew it close, a look of wonder spreading over his features. “You know what this is? This, this is off my first machine. I made this imprint myself, I did. Oh, I’ll put this in my museum of artefacts. Where did you say you found it?”