Lawless and the House of Electricity

by William Sutton

  Nerve stimulation therapy offers hope of treatment for those whose seizures are not controlled with medication. How treatment varies from one person to another is still a point of research, but the doctor hopes to treat paralysis arising from both from hysterical causes and from diseases of the spine, corpus striatum and brain hemispheres.

  INTERCEPTED [MOLLY]

  Miss V,

  Knowing my postbag no longer safe, I am encoding this whole missive.

  This afternoon, I heard him intercept a Frenchman at the door.

  I was already shaken to think how I had misjudged Lodestar, though you warned me off him, I know, I know. I consider myself a reasonable judge of character. It’s an imperative of business in London to hope for the best of people, but expect the worst. This visit has changed my estimation of Lodestar: from magnetic man of business to cocksure flash gent, shining his eyes to attract you toward his dark continent, where ships were wrecked upriver.

  All this you must pass on to Watchman, but with careful forethought, I pray. Our continual question was the solidity of Roxbury. The earl’s mysteries I have fathomed.

  But in Roxbury Industries, Lodestar runs the show, and runs it as he ran his father’s estate in Africa, with impunity. Never a doubt in his decisions, nor hesitation in stealing ideas. This brings confidence in his decisions, and a desire to please him; it has brought out the best from Jem to the scientists to mighty Birtle.

  Lodestar has, however, no compunction in punishing. Ask of his transgressions—intemperate outbursts— to gain a rounded picture of this fellow so embroiled with our Roxburys. Jem says he almost killed a stable boy for giving him the wrong horses for the phaeton; except they weren’t the wrong horses; Lodestar just drove them so recklessly. Blaming others for our faults is not a trait I admire (though essential for bankers and politicians). It is one thing to sack employees for misdeeds; it is another to terrorise them. Another still to presume on the innocence of maids. But he is a peacock, ever seeking admiration, which speaks of pride. Flash gents are always vulnerable, in my experience: to overconfidence, to seduction, to blackmail.

  This morning, I felt the threat of his insolence; I resent his intrusion upon our correspondence. When I escaped, I decided: I must be smart, and slippery, in order to exact my revenge. I pined for him those many weeks. Did my heart turn so quickly? I saw that something in his eyes and recoiled. My addled senses recovered their girlish wits.

  * * *

  It was pure luck I overheard his rendezvous. I’d gone to the secret chapel to ponder my plan, when I heard a fracas at the front door. I peered out through the angel glass.

  Lodestar was giving some fellow a roasting. “You don’t saunter up to a house like this and ring the doorbell. Get in.” He threw him into the lower drawing room, and cornered him behind the door like a fugitive. “Don’t let anybody see you.”

  By God, he was a fugitive. They spoke a potpourri of French and English: “Flee prison”, “lucky to live”, “once more”, “Shepherd’s Refuge…” That was all I could make out. It was enough. Lodestar bundled him out the side entrance.

  I emerged, tentatively, and went straight to my sketchbook. Enclosed, my sketch of the Frenchman. Though of Watchman’s investigations I know little, a Frenchman discussing escape seems worthy of mention: perhaps they will recognise him.

  I hope this encoding does not hamper you. I shall ask Jem to post this for me when he goes to see his sweetheart, Dotty. Lodestar cannot have bought off the whole post office.

  BOOK VIII

  TO BRING HER BACK

  A DREAM [LAWLESS]

  I met with Edward Lear, at Ruth’s behest, because he not only knew Lodestar Senior, but had met the young Nathaniel Chichester Lodestar long years ago.

  Lear was about to set off for the Mediterranean. “I’m surprised how active this young Lodestar is. Can it really be Chesty? He was such a sickly boy. Angelic but pale.”

  “Pale?” I was astonished. “I’d say our Lodestar has a touch of the tar brush.”

  Lear frowned. “Then your Miss Villiers is right.”

  The one thing we knew about our Nathan Lodestar was that his name was not Nathan Lodestar.

  * * *

  The night before the final rendezvous, I had dreadful dreams.

  Ellie’s pub was pounded by bombs, from all around the city. Out of the pub, one by one, ran her fourteen children, each trying to extinguish the blazing clothes of the one in front. I knew them all: Molly, Kitty and Peggy and Nico, Jeffcoat and Ripon and Lodestar, Jacques I, II and III, Skirtle and Birtle and Roxbury. The cobbles were strewn with wires, crisscrossed, and melting. I was too slow: too late to roll it into the rope house and save the empire.

  Last of all, out came Ellie, pregnant, except that she wasn’t Ellie. She was Lady Elodie, come alive just to see her whole brood burning up in the conflagration.

  “It’s my home,” she said. She poured me a pint of Long’s Southsea Stout, with a look of reproach. She turned back to the Fortitude Tap, adorned with Roxbury’s turrets, ablaze with thunderous clouds. The last I saw, her maternity dress fell to the ground, burnt to a cinder.

  ELECTRICAL ECCENTRICALS

  [PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI, 1844]

  Those attending Edward Roxbury’s public display of his electrical experiments may expect more than entertainment, more than edification.

  Those afflicted by torpidity will sit on Leyden jars attached to Roxbury’s hydro-electric machinery. A series of shocks will excite the liver to resume its proper duties.

  The immense powers of this wondrous machine shall proceed to solidify nitrogen gas and albumen into animal fibre. Mr Roxbury will thus make beefsteaks out of cheap glue and birds’ eggs, cook them to the audience’s taste, and telegram your review directly to the moon.

  INFILTRATION [MOLLY]

  Miss V,

  I have missed a few days. Our plans are advancing.

  Roxy and I have brought the latest equipment up from the menagerie by pneumatic package. We are trying it daily, increasing the voltaic faradisation under Roxy’s expertise, positioned according to his doctor friend’s guidelines. You may think me wishful, but I believe the patient is beginning to show signs of responding.

  Bertie himself? You are a marvel. That you hope to make my plan real is beyond marvellous.

  * * *

  I am on the point of uncovering the secrets you sent me here to discover, and not where we expected to find them. Don’t tell Watchman. No, do tell him to be on guard, but don’t tell him how I’ve got the information. I’m not proud of my methods; but more, I don’t wish him to doubt my loyalty. I think you will understand. I dearly hope so.

  The morning after my last letter, I was in the menagerie painting the Patagonian hare. Lodestar passed by with no comment, but only a dirty look. I sauntered along to his office. He took this as flirtation. I knew he would.

  It was a grand office, with leather sofas and a billiard table.

  “Fancy a game?” I challenged him. It took little to persuade him I was spoony-eyed over him. Soon enough, we were on first-name terms again.

  * * *

  Between paintings, I’ve toddled along to his office, bringing him fruits and sweetmeats.

  He has thrown caution to the wind. Such are the pitfalls of arrogance, for he believes me devoted to him. In these cavalier moments, he has shared secret details, of Roxbury Industries, of the scientific quarter, and his personal investments on the side.

  He sent me to leave provisions outside the Shepherd’s Refuge daily. We said nothing of it; I did not see the French fugitive, but he will likely be there to apprehend, when you come.

  Lodestar was fiddling continually with the telegraphic buzzers. They please and frustrate him in equal measure. The magic of it enthrals him; but, like a spoilt child, he has not the discipline to fathom the principles of circuitry.

  He was always busy with explosive tests in the quarry. I can but guess of their purpose. Yet I could always persuade
him to relax by playing billiards. There was a trick shot he swindled me with. He balanced three balls against the bottom cushion in a triangle: one atop two. He demanded I bet with him.

  “Do you think I can hit that top one with the cue ball? Do you? Do you?”

  I laid down my money.

  He knocked the cue ball lightly, with no effort to make it leap into midair, as was surely required. It rebounded gently off the bottom cushion, returning towards the balls. At the moment it was to hit the lower balls—losing the bet—he leaned back and gave the table a deliberate kick.

  The lower two balls parted, like the Red Sea.

  The upper one fell, just in time for the cue ball to hit its mark.

  “Amazing,” I said, “what a man may do with his cue, when wielded with ingenuity.”

  * * *

  Today I found the baize scorched right down the middle of the table. He wasn’t amused.

  “What happened?” I laughed. “Mixed your cue ball with your detonator?”

  “Something like that.” He stomped off to take out his anger on the scientists.

  I took the chance to rootle around in his desk. I found his work diary. He has recorded his meetings over the last months. My, he does get around. He’s visited all the big cities and ports, which I know from maps—many appointments also marked with women’s names.

  * * *

  Besides my efforts with Lodestar, I have been absorbed in Lady Elodie’s diaries.

  Birtle and Skirtle have been particularly absent from the house. Not because of Bertie’s putative visit: we haven’t mentioned that to them. No, they are preparing up in the east wing, or the invalid’s lair, as I now think of it. The lady’s turret. Now I know the sorry tale, I am helping wherever I can.

  NO MAN’S LAND [LAWLESS]

  The fog was thick when I reached the Portsmouth docks. The brackish tide stifled the aroma of biscuits and breweries. A foghorn sounded, so close I nearly jumped out of my skin: the ferry, no doubt, invisible, though it was yards from shore. My feet were chilled in my boots as I arrived at the Fortitude Tap, but it was unaccountably shut.

  Dark waters swirled beneath the jetty: the buildings set round the harbour floated like islands. I had been chasing around the country, while Ruth made arrangements with Molly, and I felt unsure of my footing. I pulled my jacket tight around me, as the sunlight struggled to find its way through.

  How carefully I must play my hand today. Lodestar did not know that I knew him for an impostor. While he did not, I was no threat.

  But I suspected him of greater crimes. I had been duped, I was sure, about the source of the blasts: Skittles and Hemyng had assured me of that. But this was not the time to wring my hands over it. How deeply Lodestar was involved, I could not be sure. To find out, I must win his trust. I must flatter him, hint at colluding, even profiting from his wiles, thus tempting him to confide. Showing that I knew his secret might earn his respect, might bring danger.

  Brilliant sunlight lifted my gaze, sweeping across the harbour. A shout resounded: a fellow turned at the dockyard gate, bound for the other end of the empire, to see his full-bosomed lass bid him goodbye from an alley, where they had made the most of their farewell. The wooden railings steamed in the pale morning. The gentry of the town appeared, all at once, to take the sea air. They strolled along the front, perambulators and parasols, as if it were summer: a hardy lot, these coast people. A lady dandled her child in her arms. I gazed on them enviously. Might that be Ruth and me, in a year or two? Strange kind of world to bring children into: a world I have made less safe with my warmongering, when I thought to make it safer.

  “Ho, there, my friend.” Lodestar saluted me from the tugboat, as it drew in. “Not a bad day for visiting imaginary islands, eh?”

  The pilot glared at the skies. Clouds were amassing, flecked with orange streaks, across the waters. The sea was restive, as if monsters crouched beneath, waiting to eat us. I observed the boat uneasily, still lost in my thoughts.

  Lodestar reached out a hand. “Ready to view our miracle forts, Lawless?”

  “Thank you.” I meant it, as I gripped his hand, but my mind was swirling. This man, so engaging and magnetic: has he not duped me from the first? I know he has, because he is not Nathan Lodestar. Does that discredit all his charms?

  The pilot gesticulated towards the cloud banks, insistent. True enough, though the sea glittered out by the sand spits—our destination—the next swathe of mist was already descending over the Isle of Wight.

  Lodestar lost his patience. He rounded on the fellow, snarling in an undertone.

  The pilot was unhappy to have his command usurped.

  Lodestar grasped him by the coat. “If you’re refusing to pilot us, I can take the wheel myself.” He lifted him up as if to dangle him off the side.

  The pilot made a swift concession.

  “Good.” Lodestar set him down, back at the wheel, all grace and charm again, now he had got his way.

  * * *

  I was thrilled and scared by turns as we pulled clear of the harbourmouth. The buildings receded, the noises of the town fell away. Yet the sea jumbled sounds from near and far: the waves, shouts from the pebbles, foghorns of distant cargo ships.

  The sun blazed on the bulwarks of the first fort, Spitbank.

  What an outlandish venture. Men, small as ants, busied themselves on the scaffolding that rose, glinting, out of the sparkling waves: like a house in a dream. Daring sailboats flitted around it, white canvas swelling in the wind. Beyond, the low inclines of the island were indistinguishable amid rafts of mist and cloud.

  Our destination, No Man’s Land Fort, remained a ghostly outline.

  * * *

  My view of the case was about as clear. Bertie may not have convinced me of Louis Napoleon’s good intentions, but Skittles had. The French would love to see us squander our budget on these absurd forts: never to be attacked, obsolete within the decade. That her fellow in the Sûreté puzzled over our invasion panic was more convincing than any number of denials.

  If not the French, who? Who else would gain? Hemyng’s theory, of dastardly profiteering, seemed a satirical exaggeration. Would a clubful of toffs incite murder for the sake of an investment wheeze? The risk was not commensurate with the gain. If caught, it was incitement to violence. It was treason. They might be chancers, but they were no fools.

  Ruth’s latest research showed how many of Lodestar’s chums in the Hounds, besides dabbling in property, were investing in Roxbury Industries—but that proved nothing. Roxbury’s stock was higher than ever, under Lodestar’s guidance.

  * * *

  Lodestar clapped me on the back. Inspecting my pasty expression, he called out above the wind. “Don’t you like our glamorous form of transport?”

  I attempted a laugh. “Not quite the SS Great Britain.”

  “Quite a trip,” he said, “for a colonial boy.”

  I bit my lip. I must conclude Bazalgette’s business, and get back to dry land, before I confronted him as an impostor.

  “There’s something about you,” said Lodestar, “something not very English. Your colleague, now, what’s his name?”

  “Jeffcoat?” I had never introduced him to Jeffcoat.

  “That’s the fellow. You’re leagues ahead of him.”

  As Lodestar inspected me for assent, a bank of cloud as dense as I had ever seen blocked out the sun. We were drawing near No Man’s Land Fort, pulling into the shadow of the incipient walls. The air went chill.

  Yet his words flattered me, for I never like to be taken for English. “And you?” I said. “Do you consider yourself an Englishman?”

  “I am a colonial child of England. The fecund empire, eh? My allegiance is fiercer than any dull Londoner.”

  Toot! A vast horn nearly made me jump from the deck. The fog had pulled over the Solent, tucking it under a thick blanket. Out of it loomed the huge outline of the ferry, right beside us, like a grand hotel threatening to topple on to us. The pilo
t’s expression showed what he thought of the whole outing.

  “You’ve got a certain something, Sergeant.” Lodestar patted my shoulder, as if he were romancing me. “Remember me, if ever you’re looking for a job in the wider world, beyond your sleuthing.”

  * * *

  His attentions intensified as we landed at No Man’s Land Fort, and continued till the end of our meeting. I was magnetically attracted to him, but I could not work him out: all I knew was that I must stick close by him.

  “How amazing that you have risen so fast.” I flattered him in turn, as we entered the gun bays. “Never mind letters of introduction and friends of your father. To come all that way, and no inheritance.”

  He grinned. “How nice that you’ve taken an interest.” The thought that I’d enquired about his finances didn’t rattle him at all.

  Roxbury’s monumental artillery gun was already installed. I examined it in awe. The greatest beneficiaries of our war panic, it struck me, were of course the gunmakers. When the government seesawed between Whitworth and Roxbury, trusting the loyalty of one but design of the other, both sets of shareholders profited.

  The crux of our meeting came soon enough. Their engineer stated his determination not to budge.

  I put forward Bazalgette’s point of view, with figures to support it.

  Lodestar had given me to understand that he would be sympathetic. Not at all. “Your fool politicians have delayed our work, over and again. They should be ashamed,” he sneered. “My boys could have finished this in the spring. Because of their prevarications, we’re working in this.” He meant the fog. Minute by minute, it crept closer, threatening to envelop the whole fort. “They’ll have blood on their hands. Remind me, why on earth would we want to help your fellow Bazalgette?”

  I smiled. I had misjudged his tricksy business groundwork. But I was willing to deploy my own firepower, keeping the heavy artillery in reserve. “Because you ought to, Mr Lodestar, as a good upstanding Briton.”