The Devil's Acre (41 page)

A change in government, however, especially during the confusion of a mismanaged war, meant interminable debates, unexplained delays and a marked lack of action, even as the popular press teemed with stories of British failure on the killing grounds before Sebastopol. Furthermore, the new administration’s tardiness in following up that first Army order gave the battered Robert Adams a chance to regroup. His company took on a new lead designer, the former soldier Lieutenant Frederick Beaumont, and the new Beaumont-Adams pistol was born – the best ever made, Adams claimed to the Board of Ordnance, rectifying faults in both the Colt and Adams models. Edward could easily imagine Colt’s frustration at all this. His factory, slick and streamlined under a new general manager, was said to be really belting along; the unsold weapons would be piling up in their thousands. He himself was back in Connecticut, far away from the Englishmen with whom he had feigned brotherhood on so many occasions. How could he not be tempted to make use of the covert system he’d painstakingly created?

The moment came one still afternoon early that summer. Edward was examining a ledger in the Customs House. As he slid a finger down a neat column of entries, a sharp, familiar word snagged his eye like a thorn catching on a woollen sleeve; and there was the signal he’d been waiting for. The Colt Company of Bessborough Place, London, was applying for a licence to export raw Indian cotton to its office in Liège, Belgium. He opened another volume, flicking quickly through the pages; a cotton importer, one of those he’d identified for
Colt shortly before leaving his employ, had supplied the Colonel with 145 bales a little over a week previously. This was it. He went to Bannan at once, and was heading for the telegraph office a minute later.

Sam strode into the factory, still dressed in his travelling clothes, gave a curt nod to an overseer and made for the staircase, with a chew of Old Red for each upward stride. As he ascended, he heard the hiss of chain and clang of hammer-heads in the forge; the high whine of drills and the searing scrape of lathes on the machine floor; the tapping of tools in the fitting room. The place was in fine fettle. This served only to increase his apprehension.

He threw back the door of the office to find a half-dozen people already inside, drawn from the ranks of his senior mechanics and overseers. Lou Ballou was there, and the foreman, whose name Sam had forgotten completely; and Luther Sargent, the Colt man of long standing who’d been brought over from Hartford at the end of 1854 to serve as general manager. Sargent was a level-headed soul who knew Sam’s business inside out – the very definition of the steady hand upon the tiller. Tall with close-cropped hair and beard, he had an air of unflappable authority and stately competence, like the partner in a grand old bank. He knew how to dress too, unlike pretty much everyone else in Sam’s employ; that afternoon he was clad in a berry-blue suit that Sam would have readily bought for himself.

Propped against the desk, halfway through some anecdote or other, was Alfred Richards, his cheeks rosy and his ruffed shirt dotted with what Sam hoped was a soup stain. His lean face lit up at the gun-maker’s entrance, and he burst
into a short, spirited round of applause. ‘By the living jingo, Samuel Colt!’ he cried, leaping from the desk and prancing over to wring Sam’s hand between his. ‘We weren’t expecting you until tomorrow morning! You only arrived from Liverpool this afternoon, did you not?’

Sam nodded, looking over the office; a leather divan had been brought up there, he noticed, and set by the wall. ‘Boat got in from New York just before dawn.’

‘You could not wait to hear the details, I expect,’ Richards continued sagely. ‘The news has hit the trade like a bombshell – a bloody
bombshell.
Nine thousand weapons! This is what we dreamed of, eh, in the halls of the Great Exhibition? As we stood before this fine factory here when it was but a blasted hulk?’

Drawing back his top lip, Sam spat a bead of juice onto the floorboards. ‘It’s a good order, Alfie,’ he said.

Richards stared at him as if this was the most absurd understatement he’d ever heard. ‘I’ll say it is! A
good order
– ha, yes indeed! It’s said that poor Bob Adams had to be helped to a bloody chair when he learnt of it, and has been flopping about like the tragic muse ever since!’ Laughing, he glanced at those around him, expecting them to join in. There were some chuckles; Sargent gave a silent half-smile, more at the press agent’s liquor-flushed exuberance than at what he was actually saying. ‘Your renown has never been higher, my friend,’ Richards went on. ‘Why, only the other day
The Times
– the bloody
Times,
that so delighted in trying to thwart you before Christmas – opined that had Cardigan’s Light Brigade been armed with Colts they would have carried that frightful day at Balaclava!’

Sam made some response, his jaw working steadily, looking at Sargent. He’d known the fellow for more than eight years. The slight crook to his left eyebrow said that he was carrying something of real weight. Sam had made the journey to London to mount an inspection, to make sure that the Pimlico works was able to meet the staggering order that had so excited Richards. And it was staggering – that much was certainly true. Palmerston had come through at last. As always, no trace of the fellow’s involvement could be found anywhere, but
there could be little doubt that he had played a critical role in directing the contract to the Colt Company. Sam had been pleased; a little annoyed still that they had been made to wait so long, left by this puffed-up John Bull politician to survive on mere scraps of custom, but pleased nonetheless. Then, waiting for him at the desk of Morely’s Hotel, had been the note from Sargent, telling him to come to the works at once – and to brace himself for grave news. The vague nature of this warning had served as a pretty plain indication of what it pertained to.

There was a short, awkward silence. ‘Forgive me, Sam,’ Richards exclaimed with another laugh, ‘but you don’t seem particularly glad! Why, you’re almost as damned phlegmatic as old Luther here. We should be
celebrating,
my friends! We should be back in that fine place in Piccadilly, that supper room, and –’

‘Leave us, Alfie,’ Sam interrupted, unable to take any more. ‘Just for a minute. The rest of you as well.’

The Americans filed out at once. Richards lingered a second or two longer, looking probingly from proprietor to manager, trying to deduce what was going on; then he too walked into the corridor.

Sam shut the door behind him. ‘Well, Luther?’

‘They got the cotton, Colonel,’ Sargent said simply.

An iron brace seemed to clamp shut around Sam’s throat, blocking off his windpipe. He’d swallowed his Old Red. Putting a hand on his side, he bent over, gulping as hard as he could. The plug was shifting, but painfully and very, very slowly.
Men die like this,
he thought. Sargent was at his side, thumping his back with such vigour that he stuck out an arm to push the fellow away; and then the plug was clear, forced down inside him. Sam pulled fiercely at his collar, sending the ivory button pinging across the room, and reeled over to the desk. He leaned heavily against it, threw off his hat and drew in a few ragged, heaving breaths.

‘All of it?’ he croaked.

Sargent nodded. ‘At Aix-la-Chapelle, en route to St Petersburg from the warehouse in Antwerp. A random customs search. Just damn bad luck.’

Sam made some fevered calculations. ‘Lord Almighty, Luther, there was what, twenty-four in each bale? That’s damn near three and a half thousand arms!’ He coughed, feeling the lump of tobacco complete its journey into his guts. ‘And they’re proper lost, ain’t they? Contraband goods in a time of war, caught passing through a neutral country – the sons of bitches ain’t going to give ‘em back any time soon.’

‘There’s also the fine.’ Sargent paused. ‘Eighty thousand francs is what I hear.’

A blistering torrent of energy coursed through Sam’s limbs. Grabbing hold of the chair behind the desk – a sturdy mahogany piece with an iron pivot on its base – he lifted it clean off the floor and hurled it at the circular window. The chair stove straight through glass and frame, landing in the cobbled yard below with the bang of something being shattered into its component parts. There were shouts of alarm, and footfalls in the corridor; Sargent opened the office door a few inches and told whoever was outside to remain where they were.

‘Eighty thousand!’
Sam yelled. ‘By thunder, Luther, that’s going to fuck us good!’ He paced back and forth, boots crunching over shards of the glass from the window, wiping a palm across his sweat-glazed forehead. ‘And then there’s the notoriety of the matter. If it gets out it’ll surely finish me in England – Christ, in Europe! My rivals would leap on it. You saw the delight with which the bastards went after me last December. Nothing would give them greater satisfaction than to get this in the newspapers and hound us from the country. No one would help me this time. My British allies would run a goddamn mile.’ He thought momentarily of Palmerston, of the lack of any kind of open link between them. The crafty old villain could deny all knowledge and leave Sam Colt to his fate.

Sargent remained entirely calm. ‘I’ve done everything I can to keep your name out of it, Colonel. Sainthill, your man in Belgium, has been instructed to keep a low profile, and not make his interest in the seizure too plain. He tells me that for another ten thousand the officials involved
can be convinced to keep the details quiet. They won’t disclose that it was Colts or even revolving pistols that they found.’

Sam winced; yet more money. ‘Would that work, though? Ain’t it already too late?’

His manager shrugged. ‘Nobody over here has heard a whisper about it yet, far as I can tell. They know what they’re doing, these Belgian customs men. This one pay-off might cap the whole affair. Worth considering, Colonel, in my view.’

‘Who did the packing? Men you can trust?’

Sargent nodded. ‘All safe this end, I guarantee it.’ He sighed. ‘Like I said, it’s just some damn bad luck.’

‘What am I supposed to do, though, Luther, if these John Bull cocksuckers won’t buy in a timely fashion?’ Sam appealed to him. ‘Tell me that! What the hell can I do but take my guns to those that are actually interested in ‘em? I am an independent citizen of the United States of America. The British crown has no claim of loyalty over me. What do I care for their goddamn politics, or their wars?’

‘The Russians will be disappointed, Colonel, for certain.’

Sam let out a bitter laugh, recalling long nights in Petersburg drinking vodka with moustachioed naval officers around the shipyards; and many dozens of hours spent trying to sleep under a fur coat in a rocking railway carriage with sheet-ice forming along its sides. This was what all that trouble had amounted to. ‘Well, they’re going to have to stay that way, ain’t they, for now at any rate. We can’t risk another hit like that. It’d sink us, Luther – take us to the bottom.’

His energy ebbing, Sam went to the divan, the upholstery creaking as he sat down. He looked out through the hole in the circular window at the thick grey of English summer cloud, absently reaching for the screw of Old Red in his pocket and cutting a fresh plug. Almost three and a half thousand guns were gone – a complete and irreparable loss. He’d have to pay eighty thousand francs
in fines, and at least another ten in bribes, to keep the Colt name out of the newspapers. There was no upside to be found here. The Colt Company might survive, but it would be brought to its knees. The major contract with the British Army would only be paid on delivery. Before then he’d need to find money for enormous quantities of raw materials – coal, wood and steel – and many months of wages. His credit on both sides of the Atlantic would be stretched to its absolute limit. The busy factory beneath him suddenly seemed a doomed and fragile thing, made only of bamboo poles and blotting paper, ready to be blown to the ground.

Sam shook his head wearily as he folded up his clasp-knife. This London works had been an ill-advised project from the start, an unceasing parade of problems, delays and expense. The whole enterprise was the result of his one great flaw: his vaunting, over-reaching ambition. He’d extended too far, and attempted to establish himself in a foreign land that neither welcomed nor quite frankly deserved his endeavours. Sweeping change was called for here. This giant contract, now more burden than boon, would have to be honoured – which might take a little longer than usual, given the financial difficulties Sam had just acquired. Once this was done, though, and all nine thousand arms had been delivered, he would instruct Sargent to start winding down the works. Within a year the Colt Company’s London outpost would be closed for good.

In the meantime he would direct his own attentions back to their rightful place. While over in America he’d heard a lot of saloon talk about the open strife in Kansas – clashes between slavers and free-staters which had quickly led to bloodshed. The two sides were bracing for further trouble, forming militias, mounting raids and arming themselves with all haste. The Colt Navy was sure to find a ready market among them both. Like many of his countrymen, Sam believed that President Pierce had lit a fire there that would spread to other states and burn for a generation. Considering this now, sitting in his London office, he felt a stirring of
patriotism. If Europe was to break the Colt Company down, then the United States of America would sure as hell build it back up again.

Sam lifted his hand, as if ordering Sargent to halt. ‘All right, Luther,’ he said, slipping the plug of Old Red inside his cheek. ‘I think I see a way out of this.’

‘Saul Graves,’ said Graff, one black eyebrow raised, as he pushed open the door of the Ship and Turtle.

Edward looked at his friend sceptically. ‘And that is to be your name from now on – how I should address you?’

Saul nodded. ‘Indeed yes, if I am to succeed – which I will, Edward, most assuredly. It is a sad but necessary step, this land being what it is.’ He ran a hand before him in a shallow arc, tracing the letters of a banner or newspaper headline.
‘Saul Graves, Liberal Member for Hampstead.
It has a pleasing sound to it, no?’

The tavern’s high-ceilinged taproom was loud, crowded and misty with cigar smoke. Customers were still pouring in from nearby Green Park, where the fireworks had concluded only minutes previously; many of those around them were engaged in enthusiastic recollections of rockets, pearl streamers and tailed stars. This pyrotechnic display had been mounted, in part at least, to mark the rather inconclusive end to the Russian War. Neither side could rightfully be called the victor; the general sense was that the conflict had not been won or lost but simply stopped. Such was the disillusionment of the British public that nearly two months had been allowed to pass between the signing of the treaty in Paris and this celebration – from the March of 1856 to late May – so that it could be combined with the Queen’s birthday festivities in order to ensure both a decent turnout and a suitably jubilant atmosphere.

Saul and Edward stood away from the main current of the tavern’s patrons, beside a panelled partition.

‘What does Bannan think of all this?’

‘What the deuce does it matter what he thinks?’ Graff retorted. ‘With the advent of Pam our radical friend has been booted out into the bloody wilderness. The time has come for us to beat our own path. Now that the wretched war is finally over there’s a chance for things to be done. A seat in the House is the first step. The next is an appointment to a ministry, and after that, who knows? It could lead to real power, my friend. Real progress.’

Saul looked towards the bar – towards the gleaming row of ale-pumps, the phalanx of bottles up on shelves, the team of barmen and pot-boys attempting to field many dozens of simultaneous orders – as if gazing off into his own glorious future. Then, suddenly, he grabbed hold of Edward’s arm.

‘You must run too. I’m sure we can find you a winnable seat before another election is called, and drum up the necessary support. Think of it, Edward! Us two, in bloody government! Imagine what we could accomplish!’

Edward’s laughter ceased when he realised that Saul was entirely in earnest. Never had he seen his friend so animated; and although he suspected that the pint of whiskey they’d shared in the park might bear a measure of responsibility for this, he could also tell that there was genuine conviction beneath it all.

Graff released him. ‘Give it some thought. You have the brains for it, the nerve, and the stamina as well. I shall endeavour to obtain us some refreshment, and will expect an answer upon my return.’

He began to work his way to the bar, soon vanishing among the hats clustered along it. Edward fumbled in his pockets, looking for a cigar, oddly flattered despite himself. What Graff proposed was absurd – wasn’t it? Surely a man needed money, important friends and a whole raft of other advantages to aspire to political office. Yet his mind started to turn it over nonetheless. After eighteen months with Bannan he was not without connections. It would be an
extremely difficult and lengthy process, that much was certain; but perhaps there might just be a way.

A sharp pain in his side brought Edward’s reflections to a halt. Someone had dug a knuckle between two of his ribs, as if trying to shove him aside. He twisted around to make a complaint – and was confronted with the equine features of Alfred Richards, fixing him with a savage glare. Before he could speak, Richards prodded him again.

‘So it is over,’ he spat.
‘Pleased,
are you?’

Edward lifted his arm to ward off any further jabs, taken aback by the intensity of the press agent’s loathing. ‘What is this, Richards? What the devil d’you mean?’

The man glowered, saying nothing.

‘If you refer to the war, then yes, I suppose I –’

‘Colonel Colt is shutting up the London works,’ broke in Richards contemptuously. ‘He’s making Hartford his sole site of manufacture. There’s this infernal peace, of course. Guns are furthest from the government’s mind, all of a sudden. The trade is flat as a bloody…a bloody…’

His thoughts seemed to wander off. Edward saw that he was deep in one of his liquor-filled troughs; he’d grown a thin, unhealthy-looking beard, his lower lip was split and he had a large scuff in the fabric of his hat. After a few seconds he returned to the present, poking an accusatory finger at Edward’s chest.

‘But we were finished long before that, oh yes indeed! That great loss last summer was the mortal blow – since then, we’ve just been bleeding away in the gutter. And you were behind it, weren’t you, you damned turncoat? Leaving us to go to Bannan? Telling him all the secrets you’d learnt about Sam’s business? Sam never said it – Christ, he never so much as spoke your damn name after you’d gone – but
I knew,
you blackguard. I bloody well knew.’

Edward wasn’t about to deny it. ‘He was smuggling guns to Russia, Richards,’ he said. ‘He was trying to supply revolvers to our enemy.’

For a moment he could see Cousin Arthur, sitting motion-lessly among the begonias in the garden of Aunt Ruth’s cottage in Wandsworth. He’d been shot through the upper
arm during the second assault on Sebastopol the previous September. The wound had become infected, leaving the surgeons at Scutari no option but to amputate the limb. His mother, so frail and enervated throughout the Russian campaign, was overjoyed to have him back alive, invalided out of the Army. The young veteran, however, was utterly disconsolate, reduced to a wasted, embittered husk.

Richards barely paused to take this in before waving it away. ‘And what of it? Of course he was! They will get the things sooner or later – so they might as well get them from Sam Colt!’

‘You cannot honestly believe that.’

The press agent’s red eyes widened. ‘Why, Mr Lowry, he’s in bloody Russia right now! He travelled to St Petersburg the very instant that peace was declared. There was some surplus stock in the end, y’see, despite your treachery. He’s shifting his peacemakers to the very chaps that were having the things shot at them not six months ago. The Russians love him, it seems, and he can operate without fear of what Bob Adams or Clarence Paget or your dear chum Simon bloody Bannan might make of it. And once all the guns are gone – which they will be, in a damned trice – he’s vowed to go home for good.’ Richards took a needy swig from a small brown bottle. ‘He’s getting married, or so he says.’

Edward began to shake his head. He remembered the last, desperate breaths that Caroline had drawn down on the floor of that Westminster dust-yard; the pressure with which she’d squeezed his hand, and its devastating release. ‘I had to do it, Richards,’ he said. ‘It had to be done.’

Richards wasn’t listening. ‘A truly singular fellow was among us,’ he fumed, a fleck of foaming spittle flying from his spilt lip, ‘and you and your sanctimonious kind chased him off. And don’t you be thinking for a second that you defeated him, Lowry. You defeated only
us,
you wretched ass – you and me and every other Englishman turned out of his works!’

With some relief, Edward heard Saul Graff call his name. His friend was struggling back across the tavern with two
dark jugs of porter in his hands. Behind him someone climbed up onto the bar and proposed a birthday toast to the Queen. This met with a mighty cheer, and Saul was lost from view as several hundred glasses were raised aloft, their contents sloshing out over hats and coat-cuffs. Edward felt another vicious dig to his ribs; but when he looked back around, ready now to retaliate, Alfred Richards was already pushing his way towards the street.

The cab slowed to join the queue moving through the toll on Vauxhall Bridge. Almost anxiously, Edward peered out of a window at the mouth of the defunct pistol works. The buildings were devoid of life. No smoke came from the chimneys; the windows were the colour of day-old puddles. Up on the roof of the factory block the enormous whitewashed letters of the Colonel’s slogan were starting to show through the pitch that had been daubed over them, like a spectral reassertion of his departed authority.

It was a dreary mid-November afternoon. Fog lingered along the quays and hung in sallow drifts around the factory gates. Some manner of market appeared to be underway in the yard. Serious-looking gentlemen were stalking to and fro like crows, examining the pieces of Colt machinery that had been arranged for their inspection. Edward knew that this would be the last stage in the close-down of the works: the sale of the machines not deemed worth the cost of transportation back to America. Even the dead engine, the factory’s stilled heart, had been torn from its cradle and dragged out into the cold.

The cab advanced a couple of places in the queue, revealing more of the yard. There against the wall of the warehouse was a rectangle of searing yellow so bright and strong that it cut through the day’s dullness like the beam from a lighthouse. Realising that it was the Colt carriage. Edward sat upright and pulled away from the window, fully expecting to see that familiar, broad-chested form, dressed in its wide-brimmed hat and fur-lined Yankee coat, striding around its side. But no, the vehicle had merely been parked out there to be sold, like everything else. Colonel Colt was very many
miles from Pimlico. He cleared his throat, feeling a little foolish.

There was a giggle beside him. Katie was mimicking his alarmed, straight-backed posture. She was dressed in a new bonnet and mantle, both deep blue, bought for her that morning. As she’d moved from infancy to early childhood, the angles of her face slowly gaining more definition, her resemblance to her aunt had grown ever clearer. Her hair had become the same tone of light hazel; her smile contained the same unlikely mixture of affection, wilfulness and wicked mockery. A neat mole had even appeared high upon her left cheek. This likeness would sometimes cause Edward’s grief to be suddenly revived, yet it brought with it a strange sweetness. To be reminded of Caroline by one so very much alive, at the outset of her years, gave him greater consolation than he would have imagined possible.

‘Look over there,’ he said, pointing at the yard as the cab started to move again, passing through the toll-gate and onto the bridge. ‘What a smart carriage that is!’

The little girl, flattened her hands against the window pane. ‘It is yellow, Mr Lowry.’

‘Yes, Katie,’ Edward agreed with a wise nod, ‘it certainly is.’

‘I rather prefer blue,’ she declared, switching her attention to the barges crawling along the foggy river, their lanterns flashing in the murk.

They carried on through the corroded crust of factories and workshops that lined the southern bank, past the bare treetops of the boarded-up pleasure gardens and the handful of dejected-looking sheep that had been put out to graze upon the Oval. The cab turned right onto the Brixton Road. Outside the window now were the neat divisions of well-tended suburban gardens, with rows of identical houses standing at their ends – a grey parade broken only by the coaching inn, half-rustic in character, that served as the terminus for the Westminster and St James omnibus route. Heaps of decaying leaves were scattered across every common and clogged every drain. All the people they saw seemed to be hurrying home, coats and mantles buttoned up against the bone-chilling fog. It
was only a quarter past three o’clock yet darkness already seemed to be drawing in.

After some minutes on the same straight avenue the cab swung into a lane with elm trees on one side and a tall wall on the other.

‘We’re almost there, I think,’ Edward said.

Katie had been providing them with a chattering commentary throughout the journey, identifying particularly large horses or pretty bonnets; now, though, she fell completely silent, gazing down at her boots. A few moments later their vehicle stopped before an arched gateway, an ugly and enormous thing; the gate it contained was like that of an ancient stronghold, its massy planks studded with pyramidal nailheads. Edward glanced at his mother. Sitting in the far corner of the cab, her hands folded in her lap, she was regarding Katie with concern. Together, they had done their best to prepare the child, but could not know how successful they had been. She was simply too young to understand fully what was about to happen.

‘I will stay here, Edward,’ she murmured. ‘This is for you to do alone. I will come if I am needed.’

Edward climbed from the cab, lifting out the little girl and setting her upon the pavement, away from the mud of the lane. An ordinary crowd about a dozen strong had gathered for the release, all dressed in drab working clothes. Most had come on foot, although a single tradesman’s cart had drawn up a little further down the road. Theirs was the only carriage, and a few curious stares were thrown their way. They were not the sort usually encountered waiting outside prison gates.

Somewhere in the depths of the prison a clock started to chime half past three. A small door opened in the gate and women started to emerge, all dressed in claret-brown gowns with grey shawls and bonnets. There was little jubilation among them as they regained their liberty; they looked to Edward like survivors picking their way from a wrecked train, dazed yet relieved, stumbling into the arms of friends and relatives. He glimpsed what appeared to be a familiar profile, careworn and pale with exhaustion but still so similar
to Caroline’s that it paralysed him completely. It was her sister – Katie’s mother, Amy Rea. She soon spotted Edward standing there, frozen in place in his top hat and frock-coat, able only to blink back at her. Knowing who he must be, she started towards him; and as she left the crowd she saw the child hiding nervously behind his leg.

Amy cried out her daughter’s name, her voice filled with longing and joy and a clear trace of apprehension. She made to run over, but came to an uncertain halt in the middle of the lane.