“New power, eh?” She looked at him with fresh eyes. “You, Roxy, sound like a magus of old.”
ADVICE FROM A FENIAN: OUTRAGE FAILED [LAWLESS]
“It’s a setup. Whitworth? Hardly.” The Irish republican, O’Leary, spoke calmly, though he seemed weary of answering for crimes he’d nothing to do with. “An obvious ploy. I know it. You know it. Whitworth knows it. Someone buys up his old stock, bashes it around, sticks the insignia on their infernal contraption, and boom. Literally boom. You jump for joy. Press latches on to it. Whitworth’s up in arms. His contractors get the shakes. Someone else cashes in. Though why you come knocking at my door, I can’t imagine.” He sniffed. “By the way, if you’ve told the papers we did it, we’ll sue yous.”
Jeffcoat and I had left Manchester disgruntled. Whitworth’s rebuttal chastened us. No mincing of words. It was a slur and a slight, he was convinced of it.
We talked back and forth with O’Leary. “Let’s say it is the French. Why would they collaborate in slurring Whitworth?”
“Damage Whitworth, damage Roxbury for that matter, you damage the country. What better way to soften you up for invasion, if that’s a threat as real as you make out?”
* * *
Word had got out about the Guernsey papers. How could it not? With the millions to be lavished on the Palmerston forts, the brick factories at full capacity, the experts in damming and pumping and sea defences. It didn’t take a genius to blow the whistle on it.
On the train south, with our Merseyside prisoner handcuffed between us, we read horrible news in the paper. Violence in South London against French families. They’d lived there for years, indeed fled from persecution at home. Now they’d been shouted at, followed home, their windows broken.
This was the kind of nation we lived in, and Jeffcoat and I were making it worse. Indeed, if the bombs continued, this would only be the beginning of John Bull’s comeback. All due to our report of Frenchy complots and Froggy conniving.
We decided to rein in our message of vigilance, and give out a different story. “See, share, secure” was all very well, but it had driven people monomaniacal. Misdirect the public, that was the ticket, misdirect them for their own good.
* * *
“Not in our interest, though.” O’Leary had come in without complaint when we called him. He was used to the Fenians being to blame. “Why on earth would we be after blowing up Liverpool, and killing our own, now? Idiocy. No point in it. Mess with Liverpool’s trade? Might as well ask us to stop breathing. Would I shoot my Uncle Michael in the foot? Sure, there’s more Kerry butter comes through Liverpool than is eaten in all Ireland.”
“You might do it,” said Jeffcoat, “to unsettle the nation.”
O’Leary sighed. “These folk, whoever they are, they’re just after scaring people witless. Where’s the use of it, though? They’ll forget soon enough. No coherence to the plan. Not our style. Not at all.”
“Fear.” Jeffcoat crossed his arms on the desk. “That’s what you fellows like.”
“You fellows! I like that. As if we’re all the same.” O’Leary shook his head. “The brotherhood wants society reorganised, not thrown into chaos. We’re patriots. Which is more than you can say for the eejit cowards who’ve done this to Liverpool. Makes my blood boil.”
“Patriots? You lot?” Jeffcoat said. “Killing Londoners left, right and centre?”
“And you English never killed an Irishman, did you now? Nor steal our land and livelihood? Let two million die or go to the devil across the seas?”
Jeffcoat had no answer for the Irishman. He walked away.
O’Leary was calm; these were words well considered. “We’re patriotic enough to demand our own country back.”
“These bombers may be patriots and all.” I enjoyed their puzzlement: it broke the tension. “But French patriots.”
O’Leary looked at me, then at Jeffcoat. “That’s really the talk now, is it? I thought it just rumour and whisperings. Since when have the French the spunk to be bombing ships?”
“Why?” I sat forward. “Would you not credit their explosive abilities?”
“Pah.” O’Leary wiped his nose. “Listen, if you’ve no beef with my lot, I’ll—”
“Don’t be going yet,” I said. “We’d value your opinion.”
“You’re joking me.” He looked at me through narrowed eyes.
I was sincere. Who better to advise us on clandestine subterfuges than a secret bomber himself? We asked O’Leary all the questions we’d been asking the two Jacques; but he had answers for us. How one would go about preparing a bomb. Whom would one ask? Where would one test it?
“Simple enough. Anyone can make an explosive. Anyone with a grain of chemistry and a particle of metalwork. The trouble is knowing when it will explode. There’s many an activist blown himself to smithereens since ’48 and Comrade Marx’s insurrections. There’s your mining companies, who overstep their knowledge and balls up their blasting.”
Here was O’Leary’s genius. We should go and ask the men who did this all the time. Men who blasted cuttings for railways, who built harbours and bridges and causeways and embankments. Somewhere between the chief engineer and the lowly navvy lay the knowledge that informed “safe” explosions. In this climate, though, the merest enquiry about making or purchasing explosives, for use outside their company, ought to arouse suspicion, especially if one were not local. If we asked the companies around the country who specialised in developing explosives, someone would talk.
“My guess, now, you’ve your disaffected workers, underpaid, over-abused. Likely enough they’ll have taken a notion to make a killing and revenge themselves on the powers-that-be, selling a few blasters to the highest bidder. Even if the paymaster be the mortal enemies of the crown. Why would they give a fig?”
“Where would you start to look,” I said, “if you were looking?”
He laughed. “Now I couldn’t possibly say, could I, and give away such people?”
“You won’t be betraying a soul. You’re no friend to the French, nor to the people who did this. Eejits, you called them, unsettling us just when we need stability.”
“True enough.” He grinned brilliantly, shaking his head in wonder. “If you’d told me I’d be after giving detective hints to my old foes, Jeffcoat and Lawless, I’d have said you were addle-brained.”
He took a piece of paper and began to write.
RIDICULOUS [LAWLESS]
“Blimming ridiculous!” Bertie put his feet up on my desk and sipped his scotch. “Louis? Louis invading England? You’ve got to be joshing me.”
It is not often that the heir to the throne pays a call on Scotland Yard (aside from the odd divorce investigation). I had admitted Prince Albert Edward of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, known to friends as Bertie, despite the fact Jeffcoat and I were working on the case.
Cases rather. Threats and outrages surfacing around the country: a Yorkshire coal mine explosion (natural causes); collapse of Gloucestershire bridges (flooded). Every little disaster was attributed to French extremists subverting the nation’s structures to bring down the government.
Bertie made light of these investigations. “Oh, yes, I can see Louis ordering deathly blasts in Huddersfield. Oh, what pleasure that will give him. Rubbing his hands to think of the impact on the navy. Ridiculous. The only invasion Louis is interested in is the dessert trolley at Claridge’s. Do you know how that man loves an English apple crumble, with Devonshire cream? Do you? Treacle sponge he adores. Are we worth invading for that?”
“With due respect, sir, Napoleon’s sweet tooth doesn’t preclude militaristic intentions.”
“With due respect, Watchman, when people say ‘with due respect’ they are about to show one not one whit of respect.” Bertie tousled his hair. “Watchman, you know as well as I that Louis holds old England in high esteem.”
“High enough to covet it?”
“Damn and blast, they’ve converted you to their warmongering.” He w
as sitting in front of my desk. Jeffcoat and I were thus obliged to stand, of course.
I looked uncomfortably at the papers strewn across the desk: our latest notions. O’Leary’s suggestion that the bombers would have received payments from this shadowy Diderot. Some he might pay face-to-face, as with Mersey Jacques; but in this modern age, he was equally likely to pay straight into their banks. To find suspects, therefore, we contacted all the banks: they must identify transfers between French and English accounts, with political groups or engineering companies of especial interest.
I started surreptitiously stacking the papers.
“Oh, for goodness’ sake, Watchman, there’s no need to hide things from me. I may be a tittle-tattle where private affairs are concerned, but in matters of national interest, I’m surer than EM Grace fielding at point. Safe as the Bank of England vaults.”
“How safe are they, sir,” I said, “in the current climate?”
“Come along.” He opened his palms wide. “My mother may think me an idiot and keep the parliamentary papers from me. You know I am competent and wish to stay apprised of national concerns. How else will I be fit to be king, one day?” He sighed; his mother showed no signs of kicking the bucket. “I’ve read the commission’s report. I’ve read your deputation. I won’t criticise your words: you’re doing your duty, in reporting the attacks. But I’d say you’ve exceeded your duty in ascribing them to the Frenchies.”
I glanced at Jeffcoat. Mention of the Guernsey papers was made in several documents on my desk. If Bertie did not already know of them, well, as he was a friend to Louis Napoleon, we mustn’t—
“I know all about your blasted Guernsey papers, don’t worry. And bloody Victor Hugo prejudicing you against Louis. Hugo’s bitter, of course. Louis didn’t like Les Misérables. Truth be told, Hugo could go back to Paris any day. It suits his novelist’s egotism to be in exile. And what success he’s had here, far from the distractions of Paris. Hard to get a page scribbled in Paris, eh?” He winked. “I can’t promise you there are no French involved. Renegades in the ranks. Who knows? They’ve always accepted recruits from anywhere on the globe. But the idea that it is Louis’ plot to invade…”
Jeffcoat bit his lip. He took a file marked A French Gibraltar. He opened up the maps we had found among the Guernsey papers. We showed Bertie the landing plans, the arrows arcing from the Normandy coast to the myriad coves of Sussex and Hampshire; the arrows overland of the force’s route into Portsmouth, swarming over their paltry Hilsea Lines.
“Even if it’s not the French, sir.” Jeffcoat tapped at the page. “Look into the future. Some other power: Russians. Prussians. Turks.”
“Americans,” I chimed in.
Jeffcoat blew out. “Arabs.”
“Japanese. Nothing is impossible,” I said in earnest. “These defences will not be wasted.”
Jeffcoat took up my cause, for which I was grateful, as I knew he seriously doubted it. “Portsmouth Harbour has served the empire for centuries, and it can for centuries more. Should it ever be taken, this ring of forts we’re constructing will rain down such a thunderstorm of shells as to destroy the place. Any foreign army stealing our navy, annihilated.”
Bertie grinned. “And Portsmouth with it?”
“Dockyard.” Jeffcoat nodded. “Old town. Gosport.”
“No great loss.” Bertie sighed. “Though Dickens keeps his tart down that way. I’ll warn him—”
“No,” I said. “Sir!”
“Only joshing.” Bertie put his finger to his lips. “Your secrets are safe with me. Ta for the snifter. Believe me about old Louis, though. Take the heat off the French. My mother’s such a Kraut-lover. We don’t want beastly European wars again, do we, just because Bismarck and these metal-helmeted foreigners tread on each other’s toes.”
Off he went. Bertie clearly thought he alone could defuse European tensions. The Schleswig-Holstein cock-up had swelled his political ideas. I’d never expected him to show an interest in diplomacy, much less an aptitude for it.
I turned to Jeffcoat. “He does know Louis Napoleon.”
“And would screwy Louis mention his plan to annex our navy over cigars?” Jeffcoat tucked the papers safely in the drawer, and locked it. “If only we knew what the emperor really thought.”
My eyes widened. “If we knew someone who really had his ear. Pillow talk.”
Jeffcoat looked at me. We were both thinking of London’s most famous courtesan, Catherine Walters, or Anonyma, currently residing in Paris, and a damned good friend of mine. We said it simultaneously: “Skittles.”
ENQUIRIES AND VIGILANCE [LAWLESS]
We were floundering, interviews to no avail, interrogations rebuffed.
Jacques the First was on remand in Holloway Prison. Jeffcoat kept popping up, taking Ruth to try and loosen his tongue. She dressed inconspicuously, enjoying the cut-and-thrust intrigue.
Jacques I admitted nothing. Ruth told him we knew what he was planning. He said he’d be delighted if she would tell him. She told him he had no hope of clemency in the current climate: he might be shipped to Ireland (where Conspiracy to Murder was treasonous); or hanged here. If he gave evidence against his paymaster, we would secure a pardon.
Jacques I laughed like a hyena.
Jeffcoat asked him what amused him so.
His answer was rapid and poorly articulated, but Ruth thought he said something like: “If you only knew who it was, you would laugh as much.”
* * *
I paid a visit to Portsmouth, to ensure the dockyard authorities remained vigilant. Bombs in London, bombs in Liverpool; how long before they were targeted? Vigilance, vigilance.
The dock master had heard tell of Jack the Painter of old. He gave me a cheery tour of the fateful rope house that survived that fire. It was immense, a place of industry and cooperation, the longest building I’ve ever seen. He took me up the lookout tower to show me the forts popping up in the middle of the Solent. The day I visited was bright and crisp; in the storms of winter, I could imagine few places grimmer. Would the day ever come when their guns would be used in anger? I pictured the flash of artillery, the booms delayed, erupting from all directions, terror as the shells pounded their target. Such a concentration of skill and technology centuries old, yet one day of mayhem from our forts would eradicate it all.
I decided I deserved a drink before departing. Ellie at the Fortitude Tap had news. Her husband had won a prize: hardest worker on his shift. I peered at her swelling belly. Oh, that too: she was expecting a fifteenth. She made me laugh.
* * *
I stopped in at Petersfield on the way north to share an exquisitely awkward dinner with Ruth and her dreaded Aunt Lexie.
Ruth had insisted I visit, as Aunt Lexie was something of an expert on Lady Elodie Loth. It was interesting; it was fascinating; Lexie knew things that Molly had never mentioned, of Lady Elodie’s choral talents, her patronage of photographers, and her struggles to have degrees for women recognised by the university. I was glad, too, to reconfirm with Ruth’s family my status as her betrothed, and to discuss our wedding, whenever it might come.
The uncomfortable thing was that I had once been rather fonder of Alexandra—that is, Aunt Lexie—than I should have been, and Ruth knew nothing about it.
We contrived not to be alone together, Alexandra and I. When Ruth excused herself, after dinner, we were left sitting together, looking at each other, without saying a word. Her face was pale and beautiful, her hair tied neatly up, but I recalled seeing it, many times, lustrous and splayed upon a pillow.
By the time Ruth came back, Alexandra had begun to cry.
She had the perfect reason, quick to her lips. “I’m so happy, you see, Ruth, that you’ve found such a terrific fellow.”
PAINE’S CELERY COMPOUND
Dear Sir,
May I report my accepting treatment, with scepticism, by means of Paine’s Celery Compound? After years of digestive discomfort, I only accepted this latest quack cure to
keep my wife from strangling me.
May I report, with surprise, my immediate improvement?
May I report, with joy, my successful treatment? I am cured, my digestion is second to none, my wife’s relief from my complaints is assured, and my fear of strangulation reduced.
My thanks to the mysterious Mr Paine.
Yours, no longer pained,
Arthur Quint, Esq, Camberley, Berks
THE MENAGERIE, PART THE FIRST [MOLLY]
WATCHMAN,
INNER SANCTUM GAINED, MORE OR LESS.
PUMP ROOM VIEWED: ELECTRICAL WORKINGS.
GLASSHOUSE DETAILS TO FOLLOW.
MOLLY
Dear Miss V,
Roxy has introduced me to the keepers in the menagerie. Warned away from the scientists by Birtle, I had avoided it till now, though I heard the birdsong from my room. I’d been through Roxy’s list of animals with Miss Ruth, planning the order, from simple to trickier. We found the list odd in comparison with the Regent’s Park Zoological Gardens, which I’ve known since a babe. It’s no triumphal display of domination; rather a remedial house for medical advances.
Parrots, parakeets, macaws, lovebirds.
Exotic spider house, with their own keeper, adept at poisons and, thus, antidotes.
Sickly-looking eels, with a KEEP AWAY notice.
Beehives, providing lavender honey for the breakfast table, to complement the summer fruit preserves.
Monkey house.
Larger mammals: zebra, capybara, Highland cow, ibex (or was it ilex?) and llama, which is a spindly Peruvian sheep, more or less.
Amphibians and lizards: salamander, gecko, chameleon, and dragon (they are surely jigging my rig, as this is make-believe).
Roxy showed me these wonders without a trace of his normal melancholic reserve. He is an energetic soul driver, canting his gospel of research through these glasshouse laboratories, Pump House, tower laboratory in the house, and in his thoughts, constantly in his thoughts. Whenever he inspects Lodestar’s plans for bigger coal mines and steelworks and gas holders, he is thinking of the power that will sweep away these antiquated forces, the power he would wish to be remembered for, beyond steam and combustion and hydraulics: electricity.
Lawless and the House of Electricity Page 18