Lawless and the House of Electricity

by William Sutton

  When his tale became strange like this, the earl would often recollect himself and clam up. It might be days before I got him to bring his thousand-and-one nights closer up to date. With the children away and winter approaching, the earl seemed ready to articulate a lifetime of thoughts. I was a willing listener. For I knew, from Revelations of a Lady Detective, that the pattern I sought lay hidden in such narrative threads, if only I could discern it.

  “Around the house, I have cables which summon Birtle and Skirtle from their lairs, Jem to the station, and the horses to be saddled. These nerves of the household alert the sinews to action, bringing to life this remarkable body, with its rugged facade, and mysterious processes in its innards. Once they were cables, pulling flags and bells. Today, they are wires, transmitting charge, like the telegraph, working buzzers, dials and the annunciator Birtle so despises. What are nerves anyway? Galvani showed us they are electrical wires, jolting his dismembered frogs’ legs as if still embodied. Such magic can electricity work, young Molly. What are thoughts? What memories? Mustn’t they be patterns firing inside the brain, electric messages ignited by sound and light and feeling? And if these patterns become stuck? How, through memory and desire, do we relight them? We do not know, any more than we can predict when thunderclouds will discharge to the receptive earth.”

  * * *

  Roxbury’s electrical demonstrations caught the public imagination. His explications, spiced with self-deprecating wit, charmed audiences popular and scientific. He was elected to the Royal Society at the age of thirty-three.

  His hydraulic experiments landed him a position with an industrial giant. With their capital, he developed his Roxbury machines, hydraulic cranes that sold two in the first year, twenty the second and two hundred the third. Every dockside in the world nowadays boasts several. His accumulator used a tower of water instead of a reservoir to generate force; for what is so implacable as water?

  He met Miss Elodie Loth at the opera in 1842, the daughter of a brick magnate. She was entranced with the scenery: gothic towers, crags, and waterfalls. She loved the wild romance of the scene; he the hydraulic potential.

  They struck a deal soon enough. A handsomer couple there never was. She was as brilliant as he. She studied, and wrote, and knew the artists of London, as well as scientists. He grew busier, establishing Roxbury Industries. They absorbed the Loth Brickworks when her father died. She campaigned for women’s rights; it was thanks to her that women’s education was promoted through Bedford College.

  She had a son, and another, and the two girls. It pained her to be so often absent, but such was the style of grand families. They entertained in London, working their socks off, attending events to further their work. But the summer season turned Roxbury into a house as great as the mansions of the south. He was knighted in the Crimean War for rescuing the sorry British ordnance. He had never given warfare a moment’s thought; to him it was an engineering problem. Just as he revelled in calculating the pounds per square inch a reservoir exerts on a crane, so he relished maximising the force of gunpowder propelling a mortar.

  After the war, the report damned political vacillations and military incompetence; but it shone in its praise of Roxbury Industries. He was ennobled with an earldom.

  Then the Orsini affair—where the earl’s retelling of his tale became broken. Scandal and shame beset him. The French were enraged; the British parliament apologised— they were, after all, our allies now—and all government contracts with Roxbury Industries were rescinded.

  Roxbury was shocked. Friends were sympathetic. No manager can keep an eye on every worker, and one renegade does not subvert a whole company. Nor was the sympathy for Louis Napoleon III strong. Yet the newspapers harped on about immigrants and cheap labour and how profitable industries must be accountable for deaths they caused, however improbably or unknowingly. (Deaths in the Crimea caused by Roxbury’s shells they never complained about.) Roxbury withdrew. He and his wife spent time back here, at Roxbury House. Despite the furore, all was well with the world, the way he told it. For they fell in love all over again. Revelling in the free time, they explored the woods and hills, enjoying the glories of the natural world, and getting to know their children.

  Indeed, Lady Elodie expressed the regret that they should have spent more care on their children’s upbringing. But Wilfred went off the rails, got into fights, failed exams and infuriated teachers. The army scholarship was the only way to get him into Oxford; that required a tour of duty to India to quell the natives’ disquiet, and thence to China.

  She found herself wishing they could begin again. Do it all differently. And—

  And that is where the earl lost his thread. He spoke no more. By that stage, it was time for the exeat party. By the bye, I have been seeking the secret chapel.

  TOWARD THE SECRET CHAPEL [MOLLY]

  It is always wise to be on friendly terms with housekeepers. Finding Skirtle in the lower drawing room, I seized my chance. “Skirtle, show me the secret chapel, won’t you?”

  Her eyes lingered involuntarily upon the bookcases. “A nosy ninny like you’ll have no trouble finding it for yourself.”

  She looked over my shoulder. Nobody else was about. She closed the door quietly: the revelation was imminent. “It’s from the times of the Romish persuasion, you know. When the earl bought the old ruin, Mad Wifey’s, it was tiny, barely a room, but intact. In building this house, the earl decided to make something of it. It’s the centre of the house, hidden, where all his systems are conjunctivised: buzzers, wires, heat pipes and all. He extended the shabby hideaway and redecorated it into a lovely little chapel, right between the two wings of the house.” She gave me a look. “If you do find it, lass, don’t let anyone see you go in. Or come out. We’ve a fair turnover of staff. Many of the servants know nothing of it. Us who are in the know, through long service, like to keep it to ourselves.”

  I smiled at this advice. “How will I be sure nobody is outside the door?”

  “You’ll see.” She raised a finger aloft. “Ask the angels in heaven.”

  “If you don’t want me to find it, Skirtle, why don’t you lock it?”

  “Oh, no, we’d never lock it.” She was insistent. “The earl wouldn’t want that.”

  I took from her answer the sense that, though she couldn’t bring herself to admit it, part of her wanted me to find it.

  * * *

  I sat about, sketching, while she finished her tasks, thinking she might give the game away. But these tasks became extended, and before I knew it lunch was called and I had done nothing to the purpose.

  I gave up for the day. That evening, late, I returned to the drawing room. The bookcase beckoned. Beneath a silvered glass mirror sat shelf after shelf of historical fictions. But, as for a way to get in, there was no secret door.

  BAZ AND BERTIE [LAWLESS]

  WATCHMAN

  MARLBORO HSE.

  PRONTO.

  BAZ ENRAGED.

  BERTIE

  At least he signed it Bertie. If he were really angry, he would have signed off Albert Edward of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, Prince of Wales, Earl of Chester et cetera, et cetera, and blast the profligate telegraphy rates if the Privy Purse was paying.

  I’d left Ruth to confirm guests and arrangements for our weekend at Roxbury House, to rendezvous with Kitty and Peggy’s leave-out weekends. She discussed suggestions with the earl. Molly would benefit from artistic advice, so they persuaded Edward Lear, poet and ornithological painter, to come. The photographer mathematician from Oxford would rendezvous with him at Crewe. Two of the more scandalous pre-Raphaelite painters had accepted the invitation, but Lear warned us not to count on them: Saturday mornings found these fellows in no state to travel after their Friday night debauches. Besides, one was bedding the other’s wife. Ah, for the life of an artist.

  * * *

  “Watchman!” Bertie barely looked up from his billiards shot. “Hadn’t expected you to be prompt, you recalcitrant Scot. The th
ing is—” He effected some ricochet and pointed at Bazalgette smugly. He proceeded to stalk around the table as if the balls were grouse on a shoot. “Thing is, Baz here would like a word about your follies. They’re causing bother, only he’s too polite to meddle in government business.”

  Sir Joseph Bazalgette, chief engineer of the London Metropolitan Board of Works, sighed. I knew him slightly, as we’d both had occasion to employ the same urchin gangs, for work undercover and work underground, while he was tirelessly reforming London’s least glamorous network, its sewerage. He knew as well as I Bertie’s tendency to melodramatise. Now that the prince was taking an interest in parliamentary affairs, there was no denying the justice of the causes he had espoused. For this, I respected him. He was spoilt, privileged, lazy, self-indulgent, hypocritical, adulterous and cocky; but he cared. He also felt himself a Londoner, in a way his parents never had. He might gallivant on country estates in every county of the four kingdoms, in the louchest European nightspots, but he was not blind to common suffering.

  Cholera had decimated London over and over since it arrived from the orient in the thirties. Tens of thousands died of it. My mother in Edinburgh died of it. Bertie’s father died of something similar: typhus or typhoid fever, or some other strain the doctors invented on his deathbed. So he was sympathetic to Bazalgette’s cause: clean London, eradicate disease. When people realise that cholera is a preventable disease, Dickens wrote, you will see a shake in this kingdom worse than Samson pulling down the Temple. With this threat, and Disraeli’s nose offended by the Thames, Parliament finally acceded to Bazalgette’s requests a few years back. Money was granted. He was rebuilding the sewers, and finally the shadow of cholera was receding. Bazalgette had worked swiftly and decisively, his massive new sewers intercepting sewers to north and south of the river, with the country’s best bricks given to this imperial cause.

  Builders complained; but Parliament had spoken. Bazalgette got the bricks he wanted.

  Until the Palmerston fortifications. Besides the sea defences, the ring of land forts around Portsmouth required tens of thousands of bricks each. In bygone days, bricks were made locally, using whatever local clay fired near the construction. Since the advent of trains, mass manufacture elsewhere was cheap and outperformed local bricks. Bazalgette spent an age finding waterproof bricks, which came from Portland in Dorset. Rub the brick of any Portsmouth house and it wears away, nothing more than caked sand. Rub the bricks of Fort Widley, Fort Nelson, or Fort Southwick and you will hurt your finger. Bazalgette begged extra funding to buy these superior bricks, so his sewers might serve the city for a century.

  The forts mid-Solent were being built using techniques pioneered by Bazalgette on the Thames embankments. Of course, they wanted those same waterproof bricks. The parliamentary committee on cholera had secured them for the sewers. The Royal Commission had now stolen them for the forts. Given the choice between its citizens’ health and blowing the hell out of Jean Le Frog, we chose war.

  After three rubbers of billiards, I had somehow agreed to Bazalgette’s plea: that I go and negotiate with the Solent fort engineers. Why a policeman, not an architect or engineer? Precisely because, as a policeman, I was outside the circles of engineer, contractor, builder. Nobody could accuse me of distorting evidence or taking bribes.

  “Blimey.” I took a shot, poorly. “Were such accusations afoot?”

  Bazalgette sighed. He took out an article claiming he was in league with brick manufacturers, extorting government funds for their mutual profit:

  We are told we shall die horribly, unless a billion bricks are conjured out of thin air, at the nation’s expense. All this to counteract a nebulous bacterium, which chiefly threatens the feckless unemployed. They invent public works at astronomical cost, throwing London into confusion for no reason but the amusement of our “friends” across the Channel.

  I read it, open-mouthed. That shameful rag, the Satirical, peddling lies at a penny a copy, its front page luring the reader with hints of scandals, salacious actresses’ anecdotes, and politicians’ waistlines insulted.

  Bertie patted Bazalgette’s shoulder and turned to crack the brandy. Early in the day, but we clinked a toast.

  “I’m tempted to give up the sewerage.” Bazalgette looked maudlin. “They did the same to Roxbury over those stupid bombs. I’ll move to Buenos Aires. They appreciate engineers.”

  “Nonsense,” said Bertie. “Nonsense.”

  “You know Roxbury, of course?” I asked Bazalgette. “What do you make of him?”

  “Brilliant.” Bazalgette sipped his cognac. “Monomaniacal. Haven’t seen him in an age.”

  “Baz hasn’t time to waste chatting, Watchman,” Bertie said, “nor bargaining with military contractors. Pop down to Portsmouth, be a good chap. Look at their plans. On my royal request, demand they revaluate their brick usage. Baz has it all worked out.”

  “No doubt both projects are viable,” said Bazalgette, “with a bit of sense.”

  “Solve the delays. Profit everyone. Get the job done.” Bertie beamed to think of his admirable intervention. “We all win.”

  Neither did I have the time. Jeffcoat was moving Jacques the First from Holloway to Clerkenwell Prisons. We hoped for a confession. Then we’d act swiftly to catch these monsters. I said nothing of all that. “I’ll do it, sir,” I said, “as a favour to you.”

  “I’ll owe you in spades, Watchman—” He broke off to stare: his man intruded suddenly, bowing in apology. “What is it, you damnable whig?”

  “The sergeant will wish to know at once.”

  Bertie said, “What, dash it all?”

  “Clerkenwell Prison.” Where I dropped Jeffcoat not an hour ago, along with Ruth. “A bomb, sir. A fearful bomb.”

  BOOK V

  INTO THE SECRET CHAPEL

  Lives lost in shameful attack

  [Kensington Globe, 1 November 1864]

  Two explosions threw London into panic yesterday, East End and West End equally.

  At Clerkenwell Prison, despite police surveillance during transfer of prisoners, a blast around three o’clock breached the wall. Windows were shattered to a radius of two miles, as far as Threadneedle Street. Confusion reigned.

  The second explosion, almost immediate, threw Whitehall into consternation. The Scotland Yard inspectors had set a watch to the north-east side of the Yard, by the Criminal Investigation Department, considered a likely spot for Fenians or other activists. Two policemen were stationed outside the urinal, two reserve men within. Yet here the explosion originated.

  The front of the building was blown out, up to the second floor. The constable on duty was severely injured. The broad frontage of the Rising Sun public house was wrecked. Two carriages were waiting: one was destroyed, the driver taken to hospital; the other had a wheel wrenched off and fell sideways. As the driver was blown off his box, the flying masonry would surely have killed him had not the coach by chance intervened.

  The din was heard as far as Battersea Park, with the noise and the screams of those hurt dismal as they ran.

  * * *

  Detectives have been engaged to watch all the capital’s penitentiaries in recent months. At Clerkenwell, several roughs—of the class representing Fenianism—were seen loitering in a pub on the prison’s outskirts. Since a political prisoner was to be moved, attention was paid to these suspicious bystanders. The governor, informed of their presence, warned against moving the prisoner. The police resorted to a subterfuge: they gave out false information. A police entourage escorted him in a full hour before the time published.

  Realising their stratagem stymied, the ruffians emerged from the pub, brandishing cues. They hurled billiard balls at a costermonger’s barrow that was propped against the prison wall. The barrow tipped to reveal a barrel, doubtless stashed long in advance of the detectives’ surveillance. The police sprang after them, but somehow a strange detonation lit the fuse. The ruffians decamped, just before the barrel full of gunpowder exploded.<
br />
  A slice of the prison wall went down. The warders, not demoralised, strove to prevent escapes. Indignation raged, as it was learned how many lives were sacrificed. At least eight people were killed, and many inoffensive persons injured, including a tiny girl.

  There was method in these murders, for the second blast followed within minutes, preventing the dispatch of officers from Scotland Yard to the first.

  The explosions’ perpetrators are uncertain. The Globe has ascertained from policing sources that leading Fenians have been recently questioned. If the republicans have struck again, they will not go unpunished. This may be the weight that tips public sympathy against independence for Ireland.

  “You ain’t patriots,” called a local, as the ruffians dispersed. Most evaded the police, who were thrown in confusion by the blast.

  More would have been killed if the prisoners were in the exercise yard, as they should normally be at that hour, though men were working in the yard, it is rumoured, on gallows for the political prisoners, a construction obliterated in the blast.

  ESCAPE WITH OUR LIVES [LAWLESS]

  Jeffcoat was injured. His leg. How my heart pounded. How our plans had imploded.

  “Nothing serious,” Jeffcoat grunted. Typical of him to pass it off; it looked nasty enough. He snorted, looking back at the destruction. “They want me to go to the infirmary.”

  “And Ruth?” I looked at him imploringly.

  He looked back at me and gestured that he knew nothing.

  * * *

  Terrorism works. That’s the secret no government can admit. It puts a cause into the headlines; it forces negotiations. This sparked hysteria across the capital. It was felt from Wapping to Rickmansworth; they said twenty babies in the womb were killed by the blast. Wild talk quickly spread, but a new scapegoat to blame: that attacks were planned across the city by the Fenians freed in the attack; despite all our vigilance, they were out for revenge.