She meanwhile kept an eye on bonds, which surprised me, for she despised them as a form of gambling, disapproving because it fanned the ruinous dream of unearned success. Its legitimisation, in the Stock Exchange, Ruth considered the lowest achievement of the civilised world. The City of London, renowned throughout the free world, she reviled.
Ruth had tried to explain her concerns to me. It was not until she presented the whole theory, alongside letters from Overend and Gurney (refusing to be drawn on certain payments and investment), that I gave it credence.
* * *
An explosion.
Local businesses suffer. The damaged property is a minor issue. People avoid the area. Despite the manifold fact that there is never an attack in the same place twice, people avoid it, because they have short memories.
Businesses fold. The bank presses for repayment of loans. Properties are repossessed.
Investors snap up low-priced shops and flats. Prices recover. Instant profit. (Their bank, by the way, also does nicely. It pays inflated dividends on their bonds, attracting waves of people to bank with them.)
Who are these profiteers? The bank declines to divulge, citing age-old confidentiality, a central tenet of the City’s eminence.
* * *
The register of property was a labyrinthine archive, but Ruth’s labours found a handful of names investing in several of the areas where explosions had taken place. These men were all members—why did this not surprise me?—of one particular London club. It was a club I have visited, and taken coffee next door to, though policemen are not generally welcomed. Besides being Lodestar’s club, it was popular with bankers, such as Overend, and journalists, such as Hemyng.
Ruth tapped at the table. “Nothing to prove forethought.”
“Nothing to suggest they’ve conspired to commit crimes,” I said.
“They may just be opportunists, acting on an after-dinner whim. But if you could only persuade a Frenchman in custody to admit that he was paid not by his own government, but by local swells, then our Spring-Heeled Jacques I, II and III begin to look suspicious.”
I sighed. “We kept it out of the papers: London Jacques is dead. Mersey Jacques—he was a fool from the start.”
“And Jacques the First?”
“Escaped.” I cast my eyes down.
Ruth sat back, dismayed. “Get a wanted poster out. We need him.”
A good idea. I reached for her hand. “Brilliant work, my love. But you’re such an honest soul. How did you come up with this most twisted of theories?”
She took out a recent edition of the Penny Satirical. “I didn’t. Some witty johnny dashed it off for a joke—only it isn’t so funny now.”
I jabbed at the by-line: “Harkaway? That’s Collins’s bloody Etonian friend. I’ve seen him, drinking with Lodestar.” I clicked my fingers. “Bracebridge Hemyng.”
“How do you know?”
“I know how he signs his bills, when he doesn’t want to pay them.” I checked my watch. “I also know where he’s drinking right now.”
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TO LOVE [MOLLY]
It was just before I read Lady Elodie’s diary that I chanced to be walking back with Roxy from the glasshouses one day. He was weary, but with an excitable air.
“Whom have you been drawing today?”
“Monkey,” I said. “I tell a lie. Orang-utan.”
Our companionable style encompassed many registers, but it seemed that my answer provoked unease. He went to speak, a couple of times, but hesitated. We wound our passing way up the hill by a different route every day. Today we were at the copse of witch hazels. These, I had learned, were planted by Lady Elodie, and reminded the earl of her.
“She was not an easy woman to love, all the time,” he volunteered out of the blue. He looked down to the gorge, as if into the past. “Yet our marriage was a revelation.”
I was electrified to hear him speak of her at last. We walked by a circuitous path, he stopping occasionally to tidy the edging of the grass, I to pick sloes.
“Her grace, her poise,” he said, “her voice all tumbled me into a passion for her. And anyone spending time with her couldn’t help but be fascinated by her thoughts. The world she envisioned, she wanted now: a world where men do not withdraw to drawing rooms, nor clubs, nor night houses; where women ride bicycles, wear trousers, become ambassadors, spies, veterinarians, train drivers, engineers and prime ministers. Why not? If we may be queens or chimney sweeps, she would say, are we not qualified for every level of labour in between?” He smiled, as we turned upward, and glanced at the turret.
“Women may be librarians, after all.” I’d intended to let his thoughts flow as far as they might flow, but I thought of you, Miss V, and could not stay silent. “Accountants, artists. Put those talents together. Why could we not be architects too?”
He frowned indulgently. “To build anything, one must get dirty hands and muddy boots. Travel in inclement conditions. Speak with navvies.”
“Heaven forfend. You will not let me be a vet or a surgeon for the same reasons?”
“Let us not, young lady, proceed to the conclusion of those thoughts.” He smiled. “She always delved into these revolutionary realms, in conversation with my friends.”
I grinned. “Who doubtless took it as wild fantasies.”
“Some were sympathetic, some amused. Others condescending. A few outraged. One of my hearty school chums told me I’d best watch out or they’d take her off to Bedlam.”
I looked at him: it was not a joke.
“She would not be restrained; she went at her beliefs full-tilt. I could not tell her to restrain her imagination. What could I do?”
“She inspired many,” I said. “Our friend Miss Villiers venerates her.”
He nodded, pleased. “What I could do was move here. Far from the city, and the hundred-mouthed rumour that breeds malice there. In the country, one can express ideas as mad as a coot over dessert and one is merely eccentric. The same opinions loosed over dinner at Manor House would set these new secret policemen on your trail. Ah, Elodie, my wild-hearted rebel.”
He caught his breath and leaned for a moment against a rock.
We were closing in on the house, but I wanted our talk to go on and on. It was as if I had been seeking Lady Elodie, parched for word of her. Now that he was offering a fulsome draught, I would drink as long and deep as I could.
“But she kept up her London life?” I said.
“We both did. Our children suffered from our absence. But this place became our rock, to return and gather strength. This stopped us from overwork, driving ourselves to distraction.” He sighed as we gained the crest in front of the house. “This place holds a fondness for me. Since childhood holidays with my parents. Revelatory moments, as a convalescent student. Finally, buying the old ruin and building it up. I wasn’t sure how Elodie would take the transition; but I was a fool. A robust soul, she. The day after we arrived, I could not find her at dinner time. My heart fluttered with a panic. Not that she was unstable, but you could not be sure of her moods, hour by hour, sentence by sentence.”
He led me across the gravel, through the carriage arch. Inside the gardener’s porch, we sat down and stretched out our legs.
“I need not have worried. She was weeding. Weeding the Walled Garden.”
Where their boy was buried, but not she. How I wanted to ask about her, to go up and see this woman so striking; but he was in a reverie of memory that I could not disturb.
“She fell in love with the wild flowers. She planted the flowering herbs and the succulents, exploiting the soils and the rocky slope. She planned the orchard and the greenhouses, the vegetables, and these trees that have thriven so gloriously. A landscape that you artists enjoy capturing.” He paused. “And then, all that nonsense.”
The Paris bombs. “If it is difficult to speak of—”
“On the contrary.” He tugged off his boots. “It is easy to speak of the vicissitudes of government. Public opinion! No sooner was I a pariah—reviled then forgotten—than I was begged back for sake of queen and country. The marvellous thing was,” he said, fixing me with a delightful smile, “I think it cured us. Cured us of that fixation with the busy world; freed us to return and seek that simple life we promised ourselves when first married.”
Reinvigorated, he beckoned me with a mischievous glance to sneak through the kitchen with him; we were always peckish coming back from work, and if we ordered something through Skirtle, it caused faff. Whereas if we just snuck in and divided a pie between us…
He watched the larder door. I grabbed the pie—game pie, top-notch—and we retreated together. One of the undercooks, at the sink, gave us a friendly nod. He did not see Roxy slyly grab a knife, nor me a saucer. We were away, into the lift, up toward his tower workshop.
Skirtle, of course, happened to be coming out of her pantry as we rose into view. We smiled at her.
“What is it?” she said. “What mischief are yous up to now?”
Roxy blinked, with the innocent eyes of guilt. “Nothing, dear Skirtle.”
She narrowed her gaze. Our spoils were hidden behind our backs. There was no way she could know what we had taken.
“That game pie,” she said, “was meant for your lunch tomorrow.”
We brought our thievings out into the open. “I shall go without tomorrow,” said Roxbury, with a stoical sniff, “for we must have it now.”
“Away with you.” Skirtle advanced with her duster, as we vanished from view above her.
She was not really angry. She told me later how delighted she was to see him at his old antics, like when he and her ladyship were working on the gardens. She couldn’t remember how long it was since he had the appetite and the devilment to be stealing from the pantry. As far as Skirtle was concerned, I brought out the best in the old earl and she was grateful to me.
* * *
Up in his laboratory, he set down the pie on the saucer and sliced it into quarters. Typical engineer. As we nibbled, crumbs tumbling, I took the risk of reminding him of his train of thought. “And your wife too returned here with pleasure?”
“She recovered the bloom of her youth. She exerted herself. Managed the household with reckless decorum. Skirtle and she were in cahoots over everything. Birtle came over from her father’s house. He always looked on her with paternal indulgence: this was nothing like the peaceful retirement he planned for himself. She handled everything charmingly—visits, workmen, children— renovating the old buildings, the wild inheritance of the grounds. To plan the glasshouses we got Paxton, the Crystal Palace man. The millhouse I resurrected as a Pump House, providing hydraulic power for the house and electricity for the scientific quarter. How modern her thinking, yet such a natural country lass, the finest lady for these old valley estates. But then…”
We finished the pie.
He noticed the crumbs we had spread over the desk, strewn across papers and formulae and calculations. He fought the urge to sweep the desk clear, of crumbs and papers and pens and instruments. He shook his head, barely perceptibly. On his lips were muttered words: “I must, I must,” he repeated, like a child memorising his homework.
“But then, sir, she became—?”
“Do you find this sunlight melancholic, Molly?” he remarked, as if he were making small talk at Ascot races. “I find it melancholic. Don’t mistake me. I love the hazy afternoons when the chill invigorates you to be done with work and retreat to the warmth. But I miss the long evenings of summer.” He wiped his brow. “That golden time, shadows stretching on the lawn, when eternity greets you with a glass of good wine on the verandah. And the stars, so late, near to midnight in these climes, so bright, away from the city.”
Outside the clouds swept aside the last of the light. The rain started up upon the trees in the gorge. Soon it would sweep over the house, to pound against the windows all through the night.
Roxy squinted out at the clouds, as if they were guests arrived too early.
“She was with child, sir,” I prompted, as gently as I could.
“Ah.” He looked surprised. “You know about all that.”
“I found her library, sir, behind the chapel. I bullied Birtle into telling some secrets. Not all, I think.”
“Not all,” he echoed. “Well, she was with child, it’s true, and then… she was no longer.”
No longer—with child? Or she was no longer?
“Dear sweet boy,” he said, barely audible. “She got her way, as in everything. She became with child. She grew happier and happier, with each passing week, and weak, and ill, and round like a ball.” He leaned heavily on the arm of his chair, attempting to rise. “It is so strange to speak of it all.”
I moved to help but he waved me away.
Gathering himself, he stood and leaned against the window frame. His mouth opened and closed. I poured him a drink of water, then on second thoughts poured a whisky too. He spoke now to himself, as if transported back to the past, to his wife’s bedside. “Dear sweet boy. I held your tiny hand between my thumb and forefinger. Knuckles, perfect, a work of art. Little mouth, such shallow breaths; so short a time, she could not bear it. Such blossomed hopes, so early withered.” He looked around at me, as if surprised to find me there.
I handed him the drink, which he took and drank down, as a man returning from the desert. “Sir,” I said. “You do not have to speak of this.”
“No, Molly, I must talk of it, or I am doomed.” He breathed in. “Or we are doomed.”
OLD BOYS’ NETWORK [LAWLESS]
“Bracebridge Hemyng, old chap,” I said. “Thought you’d be down at the rugger.”
The young journalist was slouching around in a rather louche public house, attached to his favourite brothel. Looking up, he answered in all seriousness. “I’m devastated not to be there, old chap. But the leg, you see?”
I did see. His leg was in plaster. “Rugger accident?”
“Not bloody likely. Here, you going to buy me a drink or what?”
I laughed and called for refreshment. Hemyng was an ebullient soul. Brilliant writer, I was told, but unreliable. “It wasn’t someone taking revenge for your revelations, was it?” I tossed on to the table the issue of the Penny Satirical Ruth had given me, in time for a slovenly barmaid to plonk two tumblers of brandy on it.
Hemyng looked rattled.
“What’s wrong, old chap?” I said. There was something about his Etonian style that I couldn’t help imitating. “You look like someone’s got you by the tallywags.”
“Not at all.” He took up his glass and sank it, dragging his tone back to jollity with an effort. One thing about these public schoolboys, they know how to hide their feelings, and when to. “Silly article. Upset the old guard. Exposing a bygone ruse for a cheap laugh.”
“Oh.” I rubbed my chin. “That’s you Eton fellows all over. No sooner have I caught on than you’ve lost me again.”
“Nonsense,” he said. But my flattery had piqued him. “How do you mean?”
“I’d just begun to believe your conspiracy in earnest. Now you’re saying it was just for a laugh. I don’t know. Sounded awfully convincing.”
“The best satire has that kernel of credibility.” He st
udied his glass.
I called for another brandy. “Tell me everything, or I’ll roast your limbs in hellfire.”
My ever so subtle mention of the club’s name frightened him; I put on my scariest visage, but he was more scared of someone else. His broken leg, I was fairly sure, was a reminder not to blab.
“I couldn’t possibly.”
I checked that nobody was watching our dark corner, then grabbed the young layabout by the throat.
“What I mean to say is—” He tugged uselessly at my hands. “Look, let me go. I’ll tell you, if you won’t let on.”
He rubbed at his throat as I released him from my grasp, and reached for his drink like a dying man reaching for courage. “Overheard a few chaps discussing the old Spring-Heeled scam. How it might be effected in the modern world. Take advantage of Johnny foreigner and our continual immigration whinges. That’s all.”
I grabbed his pint from him. “Names?”
He made a face. “Not a clue, old man.”
I looked at him severely: the rogue was lying. “If there’s one more bombing, you shall have blood on your hands, young man. I thought you were for reform and the breaking of the aristocracy’s games with capital.”
I thrust my brandy in front of him, spilling most of it over his suede coat, and walked away, ignoring his whingeing.
9.23 CLUB [LAWLESS]
My circle of drinking chums formerly met every week. Age was diminishing our abilities, however: Henry Mayhew had an unspecified injury to his back, and was neither allowed to play badminton nor to spend a sixpence on drink; Dickens was in semi-disgrace, having lied to his wife about his mistress; but Collins, well, Wilkie Collins could still be relied upon.
“The only thing I have heard about the Hellfire Club,” he said, sipping porter through his prodigious beard, “is that members are forbidden to speak of it.”
“Does that mean,” I bega., “Hold on. Are you…? If you were—”
“I couldn’t possibly say.” Collins clinked his glass against mine. “Follow the logic. Ask until you’re blue in the face: nobody will breathe a word. If, however, you went on the assumption that it exists and profits thusly, you ought to seek those who profited.”
Lawless and the House of Electricity Page 26