The Devil's Acre (31 page)

Soon afterwards, he’d prepared a bed for her before the fire, the most comfortable spot in the apartment by his reckoning, and made to retire. She’d stepped forward, though, halting him, thanking him again for what he had done for her and taking his hands in hers. A sense of sweet inevitability settled upon them; they suddenly stumbled into an embrace, knocking aside a footstool and a pile of periodicals. For some minutes they stood very still, trembling again even though the coal fire was now hissing away steadily. Booted footsteps thudded up and down the staircase outside. Then her lips were tingling against his neck, softly tracing a line from his collar to his ear. He ran a hand down her spine to the small of her back; one of her thighs, smooth and supple, slipped between his. Their kiss felt long deferred, granted to them at last as everything grew so perilously strange, and it held all of their fear and yearning and hunger for solace. He did not reach his bedroom that night, and had not reached it since.

Early the next morning, they had shared their stories. He’d related the ordeal of the garrotting, which no longer seemed quite so serious. In turn, he’d learnt how she’d been drawn into the Irishmen’s scheme and made to disregard him – and had been incredulous at how closely it matched his imaginings. The plot to kill Lord John was alarming, but it had surely been foiled; the conspirators were scattered and their access to the factory shut off. Despite his ardour, he’d
only half-believed her account of the guns in the cellar. It was simply too unlikely. Privately, he theorised that they were in fact leftover weapons from the American works, brought to London at the start of the year. This would explain the missing Tower of London proof marks. As to their massive numbers, Caroline had last been down there in pitch darkness. She could easily have been mistaken.

It was difficult, however, to care very much about any of it. Every evening upon his return from the factory she was there, in his rooms, waiting; she would rise into his arms and kiss him; they would fall back down together on her makeshift bed and often stay there until morning, remembering to eat only when it was almost time for him to leave once more. He felt altered, as if he’d been opened up, liberated somehow; it was a sensation of such intoxicating freedom that he thought it might part him permanently from his senses. Yet despite all this, one worry was always present, huddled in a dark recess of his mind, tempering his joy just a little. And now, with this first solid piece of information on Amy’s whereabouts, it had to be addressed.

Edward led her into the empty doorway of Coutts’s Bank. ‘Caroline, what is going to happen should you discover her?’

She turned her head away; she knew what he was asking. ‘I have to find out if she’s all right. I have to.’

‘You mean that you’ll convince her to leave town with you. That you will both go as soon as it can be arranged.’

‘We ain’t safe in London while that Yankee’s here. You know that. Noone won’t give up on us.’

He frowned, thinking how soon his modest savings could be withdrawn from his bank. ‘Then I shall come with you.’

She looked back at him doubtfully. ‘Edward –’

‘Caroline, I would leave this instant if you asked it of me. I would go anywhere.’
I love you,
he thought,
more than anything else in the world.

‘You are a city creature,’ she said, smiling tenderly, laying a gloved hand against his cheek, ‘and don’t you try to say otherwise. London is your place.’

Edward protested this passionately, desperately, knowing as he did so that he would never be able to convince her.
There was a terrible buoyancy to their exchange, as if it was all some sort of joke that no amount of earnestness on his part could convince her to take seriously. She leaned in to kiss him, to hush him it felt like, bringing her face from shadow into the weak gaslight – and at once he saw her meaning. Perfect as it was, this could not last.

The first sure sign that something was afoot came in the form of visits from the military. During the January of 1854 the Colonel conducted a veritable brigade of soldiers and sailors around his works. Their colourful uniforms became a common sight, threading their way through the lathes and drop-hammers and filing across the yard. Among them were some real high-ups; Lord Hardinge, commander-in-chief of the entire army, came to call one frozen Wednesday morning and chewed on a breakfast muffin as he studied the machines. Colt was entirely comfortable before these men, adopting a ringmaster’s swagger, holding forth on the many stunning victories won in Texas and Mexico by the armies that had carried his guns and the general indispensability of the six-shooter to any modern military force. His guests were led through every department, shown pistol parts at each stage of manufacture and invited to fire off the finished article in the proving room. All were deeply impressed, directing their aides to take copious notes and subjecting the Colonel to some close questioning. He took this in good grace, by his standards at least, and anyone ranking above major was presented with a pair of engraved London-made Navys before they left.

On the surface of it, the reason for this rush of interest was obvious. Three days into the New Year, Admiral Dundas had been ordered to send a fleet into the Black Sea from Constantinople. Lord Palmerston, unsurprisingly, seemed to bear central responsibility for this development. Shortly after Edward’s meeting with Bannan and Graff, the Home Secretary had suddenly resigned from his post. The explanation given was a fundamental disagreement over Lord John’s latest reform proposals – but the widespread assumption was that it had been prompted by frustration over
continued government inaction after the clash at Sinope. It did not last for much more than a week. After some frantic back-room appeasement, Palmerston was back in office; and a few days later Dundas had dispatched his warships to face down the Russian Navy.

Edward had received a note from Saul the next morning. ‘Typically dramatic move from Pam,’ it had read. ‘He knows full well that Aberdeen would come to a total smash with him as an outsider – as a potential rival and agitator. So our conniving Home Secretary has forced a foreign policy decision! Our ships are on the front line in the Turkish war – peace is no longer possible! And a very happy New Year to you, my friend!!!’

Faced with the definite prospect of Britain at war, and with his factory being lauded in the most influential circles, Colonel Colt grew yet more hard-nosed in his protection of his interests. He’d been away over Christmas, God only knew where, and had returned to find discontent among his American staff. A delegation of about a dozen men, led by Gage Stickney, was demanding higher wages – a representative share, they said, of what the Colonel was producing. Edward had not been able to understand this demand. He’d seen the sales figures and the stock-room tally – the Colonel’s wages were more than fair. Colt had been enraged by this piece of mutiny, as he’d termed it, but had appeared to consent, asking for ten days to calculate a fresh deal. Stickney, poor chump that he was, had agreed; and as soon as he’d left the room the Colonel instructed Edward to wire Connecticut for replacements, to set sail for London by the next Atlantic steamer. He then waited out the ten days, allowing the new workers to get as close as possible, before dismissing Stickney and all who’d stood with him.

It was a cold-blooded stratagem, in both conception and execution. Not only had these Yankees been cut loose from their jobs and cast out of their lodgings, they were also thousands of miles from home. But the Colonel had no pity for them whatsoever. All he would give his former employees was the address of the American consul in Liverpool, saying
that this official would loan them the money for their passage if they didn’t have it. There had been a fair bit of cursing and shouting, and the watchman had been called to see them off. The replacements from Hartford had arrived a few days later.

Among this party had been a new assistant for Mr Quill, an apprentice mechanic to take the place of Martin Rea. Lou Ballou had lapsed from his gastric upset into a deeper malady and was seldom seen about the works; Quill needed another pair of hands to keep the engine running smoothly. If he was glad of the help, though, he did not show it. Two months on, he was still in a state of wounded disbelief at Rea’s treachery. His habitual good cheer entirely gone, he shuffled around the engine room like a man who had just seen a close relation put to death. Edward considered approaching him, consoling him, perhaps telling him what he knew about the details of Rea’s plot; but he suspected that this might actually make matters worse and so kept his distance.

Besides, the secretary had his own burden to bear. Caroline’s search for her sister continued. The sighting before Christmas had failed to yield results as yet, but she refused to be discouraged. Returning home to Red Lion Square, or arriving at any of the places they’d agreed to meet, became a daily trial for Edward. Each time he was convinced that she would not be there – that she’d have located her sister and be on a train rushing through the countryside, away from him forever. Her company brought him peace for an hour or two, and sometimes longer, as the prospect of disaster was delayed once again. But in the early dawn, while she lay sleeping by his side, the creeping ache of uncertainty would return.

It occurred to him that if Colonel Colt were to be bankrupted, if he left England and took Walter Noone with him, then she’d be safe. She wouldn’t have to flee London. He’d never become a Colt manager, of course, but what the devil did that matter now? They would be together. With every bellicose development in the East, however, with every triumphant factory tour given to an army commander, the Colonel’s future in Britain seemed more and more secure.
The situation Colt had been hoping for ever since he’d first decided to open a manufactory in Europe was coming to pass. He wasn’t going anywhere.

Edward was brooding over this up in the factory office one afternoon when an unexpected visitor, a civilian, was shown in. He’d presented himself at the Bessborough Place gate and asked to see the Colonel. It was immediately obvious that this caller was American. Dressed in an approximation of Colt’s own vivid style, he was a slight, vigorous-looking man of about fifty with a wry grin fixed permanently upon his face. The secretary rose from his chair and introduced himself, explaining that the Colonel was over in the proving room addressing a problem with a batch of ready-made cartridges. The visitor merely nodded in response, saying nothing, sauntering around the office with absolute self-assurance. He settled himself in front of the circular window, letting out a long sigh of contentment as he gazed over at the Thames. Edward was considering sitting down again and perhaps making a start on the day’s correspondence when there was a thumping, creaking commotion out in the hallway, as if the factory block was being torn down from the inside.

‘Here he comes,’ chuckled the man by the window. ‘Here’s ol’ Sam.’

The office door cracked open, whipping back against its frame, and the Colonel sprang through. At the sight of each other, the two burst into wild laughter, lunging forward into a back-slapping embrace.

‘Why, Tommy boy,’ Colt cried, ‘when the hell did you get here?’ Releasing his friend, he strode around the desk, elbowing Edward aside so that he could take a whiskey bottle and two short glasses from one of the lower drawers.

‘’Bout three hours ago,’ Tommy replied. ‘I came straight over. Quite an empire you’ve built for yourself, Samuel – even down to your little John Bull butler here.’

Colt laughed again, none too pleasantly, and ordered Edward from the room. The secretary made to retrieve the correspondence, so that he could work on it elsewhere, only to be shooed away. ‘You can go. You’re done for the day, Mr Lowry.’

‘But Colonel, it’s only four o’clock, and we have to –’

An impatient finger was pointed at the door. ‘Just
go,
damn it!’

Edward walked from the factory into the winter dusk, smarting with humiliation. Somehow, despite his continued professionalism, Colt seemed to sense the change brought about in him by Caroline’s plight – the change in his feelings towards the Colt Company – and was growing ever cooler towards him as a result. For a while, Edward had been worried that he actually suspected something. There had been that conversation in the carriage, just before the meeting with Lord Palmerston, when he’d brushed terrifyingly close to the truth; but it had never been pursued, convincing Edward that it had been simple chance, or perceptiveness even, rather than prior knowledge. Indeed, since the New Year and the escalation of business, Colt had shown little interest in his secretary at all.

Richards was over in the staff reading room, a dingy nook that was tucked around the back of the blueing department and shared its scorched, fishy smell. He was seated at a rectangular table in the centre of the room, working his way through a pile of newspapers and trade publications by the light of an old oil lamp, squinting through the smoke that curled from his crooked cigar.

‘Our Mr Adams won’t give in easily,’ he remarked as Edward entered, jotting down a note on a piece of paper. ‘The blighter’s rumoured to be readying for another run at the Board of Ordnance. He wants to beat us to the government’s business, Lowry! The old battle is waging once again, and I must take up my pen to retaliate.’

Edward sat opposite him, listening to this without interest. ‘The Colonel has discharged me for the day, Richards,’ he said. ‘He has a visitor – a confidential visitor, it would seem.’

Richards lay down the newspaper and stretched back in his chair. ‘Ah yes, Mr Hart Seymour.’

‘You know of him.’ Edward was not surprised.

The press agent angled his head and expelled a small exclamation point of smoke. ‘My dear chap, Thomas Hart
Seymour is one of Sam Colt’s tightest allies. They made a deal a few years back that became positively famous in certain circles. Sam’s ready cash helped Hart Seymour to the governorship of Connecticut – and in return, mere days after taking office, he gave Colonel Colt his rank.’