Читать книгу The Devil’s Acre - Matthew Plampin - Страница 10

Crocodile Court lay near the middle of St Anne’s Street, squarely within the Devil’s Acre, and it was filled with rowdy conversation. Almost every window in the close lane was open, with lamps and candles set upon their ledges, like the boxes in a shabby theatre where the curtain would never rise. Roughly-dressed women, the majority of them Irish, leaned out in twos and threes, gossiping and quarrelling with each other. As Caroline entered she overheard talk of the evening’s arrests, a mysterious murder over on Tothill Street, the rising price of milk – anything that came into the women’s heads, in short, and all at the same time. Bottles were being passed from window to window, and even lobbed across to the opposite side. The Court had once been home to the wealthy, back in the age of powdered wigs and sedan chairs, but had long since been given over to the very poorest. Hundreds now lived in residences designed for a single family – residences that were on the brink of collapse. Beams bent and cracked like dry rushes, and plaster dropped from walls in huge chalky sheets. Caroline could never look upon the parliament of Crocodile Court without imagining these ancient piles suddenly overbalancing due to the great weight on their sills, and toppling forward into the lane with an almighty, screaming crash.

She was a visitor to the Devil’s Acre, marked out by her clean face, neat straw bonnet and new boots, and had been pursued by a throng of ragged children from the moment she’d crossed Peter Street. Fending them off, picking her way through the darkness, past the stinking puddles, mounds of rotten vegetables and decaying house-fronts, she’d cursed Martin Rea for bringing her Amy to this godforsaken place. It nearly broke her heart to think that this was where Katie, her little niece, was taking her first steps.

As she started along the Court, very glad to be nearing her destination, a great scornful shout went up. Heart thumping, she looked around, thinking for an instant that she must have provoked this somehow; but no, a drunken, filthy husband had staggered in behind her, returning home after a debauch. The women showered him with hoots and bitter catcalls. He waved a dismissive arm in their direction before vanishing through a sagging brick archway.

About half of Crocodile Court’s paving stones had been prised up and stolen, creating an irregular chequered pattern and making it impassable for all but the lightest of carts. Caroline hopped from slab to slab, past the rusting water-pump and the rag-and-bone shop, heading resolutely for Amy’s building. A game of rummy was underway on the steps, with much swearing and spitting. She took a breath and pushed straight through its middle, slipping quickly through the door.

The stairwell was heavy with snoring, belching, coughing bodies. People were everywhere, overflowing from the rooms onto corridors and landings. Of all ages, they sprawled semi-clothed across the floorboards, lost to liquor; perched upon the stairs, taking their meagre suppers; or huddled quietly in corners, trying to sleep. This was the result of the Victoria Street clearances, which had begun again in earnest, leaving many hundreds without homes. Caroline could not help but kick a few of them as she passed, clutching at the rickety banister. Most did not even have the energy to curse her.

The numbers had thinned a little by the time she reached the third floor. She went to a door at the end of the corridor and knocked three times. Someone came to the other side. Caroline said her name, a bolt slid back and she walked forward into a dell of flowers. Crocuses, lilies, tulips and carnations were gathered into loose bunches, and laid out in baskets and bowls. Their colours were all but lost in the dimness of the room, and there was no perfume beside those of the dyes and inks; but these clean, chemical odours were a definite improvement on those mingling in the musty corridor outside. Caroline shut the door behind her.

Amy was already back in her seat by the fire, a large silk rose in her hands. She was stitching wire-trimmed petals to its cardboard stem by the meagre light of the few coals that smouldered in the grate. The lines on her face deepened as she squinted down at the flower, pushing dark strands of hair behind her ears, searching for the right place to poke in her needle. She looked thin and desperately old for a woman of only four-and-twenty. It seemed to Caroline that her sister, once so strong and clever, was being worn away before her very sight; that life in the Devil’s Acre was killing her by degrees.

On the rug between them, rolling around in the weak firelight, lay Katie. The child was trying to rise onto her knees, plump legs wobbling as they took her weight. Hearing the door close, she looked up, mouth open; and seeing her aunt standing there, she cried out with pure delight, lost her balance and tumbled back down onto her side. Caroline felt a sudden rush of love; a tear, a bloody tear for Christ’s sake, pricked at the corner of her eye. She swooped in on the giggling infant, taking her up into her arms and spinning her around.

‘Why hello, my precious darling,’ she said. ‘And how are you tonight?’

Amy gave them both a quick smile but did not stop working. Caroline knew that she had four hundred flowers to deliver to her current employer, a milliner on Bond Street, first thing in the morning. Failure to meet this deadline would certainly mean the loss of the business, and the five shillings it brought in every week. Amy would not let this happen if she could possibly prevent it. Caroline sniffed the top of Katie’s head; the girl’s skin was sour, her chestnut curls clammy with grease. Once again, Amy had been too busy to bathe her. She glanced over at the cot in the corner that held Michael’s tiny form. He was quiet, at least, unlike the three or four other babies who wailed away nearby, somewhere along the corridor. Whether this was a good or a bad sign she dared not consider.

Sitting cross-legged on the floor, Caroline took a small paper parcel from her apron and unfolded it on her knee, revealing half of a slightly wilted ham sandwich. Katie grabbed out for it, gobbling down a mouthful with such hungry haste that Caroline feared she might choke. There had plainly not been much food around that day either. She looked at the grey marble fireplace, a remnant from one of the cramped room’s previous, more prosperous lives. The wide central slab bore a relief of a pheasant, spreading its wings as if taking flight from a hunter’s hound; an old crack in the stone, black with dirt, ran through the middle of the bird’s outstretched neck.

‘So I’ve joined the gun factory,’ she announced brightly. ‘Mrs Vincent’s letter of recommendation did the trick, like you said it would. And it’s decent enough work, I s’pose – one and six a day, which ain’t half bad. Better than what I was getting before.’

Amy said nothing; her brow creased as she pulled a needle through the rose. Something was troubling her. Caroline took the sandwich back from Katie and tore off a small piece, placing it carefully in the child’s outstretched fingers.

‘It’s a pleasant thing to be out of service, I must say,’ she continued, ‘and in a new part of town. I’m grateful for you passing on word of this to me, Amy. I mean it. After Mr Vincent done what he done, ending himself in the public road, we all thought we’d be in the workhouse for sure before the month’s close. Blind panic, there was, down in the servants’ parlour.’

Caroline had witnessed her former master’s demise – prompted by a shocking loss on the money markets, or so it was rumoured. Early one cold Wednesday morning at the start of March she’d been on her knees scrubbing the front steps, cursing the butler who’d given her the job, welcoming the warmth of the water on her freezing fingers as she rinsed the brush in the bucket. Mr Vincent had stepped over her, dressed for the City but lacking his coat and hat. The Times was in his hand, held limply by the spine, spilling out pages as he wandered to the gate. Reaching the street, he’d stood on the edge of the pavement, peering back and forth, craning his neck as if searching for a cab. A huge coal wagon had passed by, heading up towards Highgate. Mr Vincent had walked out alongside it, crouched down in the muddy thoroughfare and placed his head beneath one of its rear wheels. It had run on over him without so much as a bump, squashing his skull flat; Caroline’s first reaction, watching incredulously from her soapy step, had been to let out a yelp of manic laughter.

Amy’s needle halted. ‘I am glad you have found a position, Caro,’ she said quietly.

Caroline fed another piece of sandwich to Katie. ‘I saw your Martin, in a tavern near the works. He was drinking with this Yankee engineer. Quill was his name.’

Amy set down her rose. ‘He’s mentioned Mr Quill to me.’

‘A harmless old cove, that one. Likes to talk. Loves his Colonel, this Colt fellow. And he’s really taken a shine to Mart. I’m told that he’s looking to train him up – turn him into a proper engineer.’

This was surely good news, but Amy made no reaction to it. She looked at her daughter for a moment, and then stared blankly into the fire.

‘There were other paddies there as well,’ Caroline went on. ‘Roscommoners like Mart. Friends of his, from the looks of things. Those I work with said that they’re employed in the forging shop, and keep mostly to themselves. One is making a name for himself, though, as a regular hard customer – Pat Slattery, he’s called. Word is that he’ll serve out any Englishman who dares look his way.’

Amy sighed sharply, her head dipping forward.

‘D’you know him?’ Caroline asked.

Her sister rubbed at her eyes with a bony, needle-scarred knuckle. ‘He was a porter with Mart and Jack in Covent Garden,’ she replied, ‘but they’re old pals. From Ireland. There’s a whole group. I – I was hoping that Mart had broken with them, by moving to Colt and all, but I had me doubts.’ Amy hesitated. ‘It’s just that Pat Slattery is – is – he’s –’ Merely saying the name made her slip on her words and lose her way. She was frightened.

‘D’you think they’re up to something? Planning mischief – or thievery?’

Amy shook her head. ‘No. No. Martin wouldn’t. He’s a good man, Caro. He’s never been nothing but kind to Michael and Katie and me.’

Caroline scowled, made immediately impatient by this unconditional loyalty. ‘Oh Amy, for Christ’s sake, listen to yourself! Where is he right now, if he’s such a saint? It’s the dead of night, you’re alone with your babies in this wretched place with no coal and no food even, and where is your precious Martin? Out drinking up his wages, that’s where, propping up some bar with the legion of the bloody useless!’

Katie caught the heat in her aunt’s voice and gazed at her questioningly. The girl’s almond-shaped eyes – the same eyes as Caroline and Amy – were open wide, her lower lip starting to tremble. Caroline made a shushing noise, bounced Katie up and down rather briskly, and then gave her another piece of the sandwich.

Amy, too, grew annoyed. ‘He is gentle,’ she said. ‘Not once has he so much as raised his hand to any of us. And he is true – do you have any notion of how rare that is, Caro?’

Caroline rolled her eyes; her sister would often resort to this tactic. ‘How could I possibly, Amy, unmarried as I am?’

This sarcasm was ignored. ‘Neither does he pay any notice to the many spiteful things that are said out in the Court. They call him a traitor to Ireland, to his people, as he is bound to an Englishwoman with half-English issue. And he does not pay them any notice at all.’ Her pale cheeks were colouring, and her voice becoming yet more insistent. ‘He is my husband, Caro.’

‘Only in the eyes of Rome,’ Caroline retorted. Her blood was up now. ‘Where was it you was betrothed? A chapel in an old potter’s shed on Orchard Street, weren’t it, by some crack-brained boggler of a priest? You ain’t no Catholic, Amy. Your union with Martin Rea is founded on a flaming lie.’

Amy didn’t respond. She fell quite silent, in fact, reaching over to pick at her artificial rose. Caroline itched with shame. Yet again, she’d gone a step too far; she’d said things she hadn’t meant, regretting them even as they passed through her lips. She didn’t, in truth, give two farthings for religion of any kind, yet here she was coming on like some doorstep Evangelical raging against Papist heresy. This was often the way between the sisters these days: an almost accidental battle, with the victor plunged into miserable remorse the second it was concluded.

‘I’ll bet you’re right, anyway,’ Caroline said at last, as if making a concession, attempting to mask her guilt with breezy cheerfulness. ‘Lord, you couldn’t steal from the bloomin’ Yankees even if you were stupid enough to try. They’re far too careful. I ain’t so much as seen a complete pistol in all the time I been there.’ She cast a look around the tiny, dirty room. ‘We stand to turn a decent penny off this Colonel Colt, Amy – your Mart in particular, what with this Mr Quill looking out for him. You’ll be leaving the Devil’s Acre, I should think, before this year’s out. I’ve found lodgings just along the river, in Millbank, in a new terrace next to a lumber yard. You could do very nicely over there.’

Katie had finished the sandwich but wanted more. Whimpering, she tugged at the front of Caroline’s apron. When nothing else was produced, the whimper grew into a low, continuous moan, the infant’s smooth little berry of a face crumpling with distress.

Amy stood, wrapping a thin shawl around her shoulders. ‘This is our home, Caroline,’ she said coldly. ‘We ain’t going nowhere.’ Then she crossed the room and took back her child.

London dirt coated the window beside Caroline’s drilling machine like a sheet of cheap brown paper. She had to lean up close to the pane to see anything much through it at all. Her ears had not misled her; down in the courtyard were the thirty or so men employed in the forging shop. Released to take their dinner, they were wandering towards the river, over to the row of costermongers and victual-sellers that had set up on the near side of Ponsonby Street to snag custom from the new Colt factory. All had removed their caps in the April sunshine and were smoking hungrily after their morning’s labour. After passing through the tall factory gates, most simply selected a stall, made their purchases and walked back into the yard, eating as they went. A small number lingered, however, taking time to choose or trying to haggle down the price.

There was an angry, affronted shout from the direction of a boiler-cart selling steamed potatoes. Caroline squinted, looking closer. A dark, fierce-looking man, quite short and thin but utterly fearless, was cursing loudly in a strong Irish accent, making an energetic complaint to the stallholder. It was Pat Slattery, the fellow she’d seen with Martin and Mr Quill in the Eagle – whose name alone had caused her sister such alarm. A handful of others, his Roscommon boys, rushed to his side, raising their voices along with his. Martin’s stooped, broad-shouldered form was not among them. Caroline supposed that he must be off somewhere doing the bidding of the chief engineer.

Slattery and his friends started rocking the cart back and forth, and a dull clang rang out as one of them struck the boiler with his fist. The rest promptly followed suit, and soon the squat iron tank was under a prolonged, noisy attack. The stallholder did not try to weather this battering for long, driving his dented boiler-cart off towards Vauxhall Bridge in a hail of oaths and stones, whipping his braying mule for all he was worth. The Irishmen patted each other’s backs, nodding with the curt satisfaction of a job well done. They paid visits to a couple of the surrounding stalls – which served them quickly, waving away payment – and then came back through the factory gates, joking with each other as they settled against a wall to eat. These were creatures from the Devil’s Acre, Caroline thought; that was their natural place. What could possibly have lured them out to this Yankee’s factory in Pimlico? It wasn’t just the daily wage, that was for certain. Amy was wrong – something was going on here.

Nancy, the girl across from Caroline, cleared her throat pointedly. This could only mean that Mr Alvord, their overseer, was approaching. Abruptly, Caroline turned from the window and reapplied herself to her labours. The drilling machine was about the size of a household mangle, but far more intricate and weighty in construction. Everything centred on the pistol part held in its middle by an elaborate clamp. This particular part was called the hammer, but to Caroline it looked more like a small twig or a wishbone. It was certainly hard to imagine this delicate piece of steel fitting into anything as deadly as a gun; hang it on a length of chain, she’d thought when first she saw it, and it would make a pretty pendant. Two different-sized holes had been run through the hammer presently fixed in the machine, which meant that there was one more left to do. The rotating head suspended before her held three drill-bits. At that moment, however, she couldn’t for the life of her remember which bit to use.

Compared with other factories that Caroline had seen – a few mills and potteries, glimpsed from the street – the machine floor of the Colt works was almost disturbingly quiet. The labour done there largely involved making adjustments, aligning clamps and so on; the machines were actually engaged for a few seconds only, and would emit no more than a high, rasping whine. There was the slapping of the belts, and the constant background hum of the brass driving cylinder overhead, but for much of the time the floor was swaddled in a schoolroom hush. The sound of men’s boots coming up behind her was thus clearly audible, and she stiffened at it; there were at least five pairs of them. Chancing a backwards glance, twisting momentarily atop her stool, she saw that the chubby, bland-faced Mr Alvord was surrounded by numerous others, more than she had time to count. They were all following an imposing bearded fellow, thick-set and tall, who looked like he knew his way around a gaming room – Colonel Colt, her employer.

Frowning in concentration, knowing that she must make a convincing display for the Colonel’s sake, Caroline turned the drill-head to the left. It slid around easily, with a heavy, well-greased clunk. She leaned over to pull the lever that would connect her machine to the spinning cylinder ahead.

‘Mr Alvord,’ said a deep Yankee voice at her shoulder, ‘if I’m not mistaken, this girl is just about to sink a second bolt-cam hole through that there hammer.’

This voice, of course, belonged to Colt. Caroline cursed her luck. Alvord was at her side the very next instant, smelling of bad teeth and root ginger, disengaging the belt, rotating the drill-head, apologising profusely for her stupidity. She looked around, thinking to assume her best servant’s manner and assure the Colonel that it wouldn’t ever happen again.

A small, hard eye was scrutinising her from beneath the brim of a strange Yankee hat. ‘That hammer is the most vital part of a Colt pistol, young miss,’ the Colonel said, not entirely unkindly. ‘It’s what marks us out from our main rivals in this city. You be sure to learn how to drill it properly.’ He swivelled on his heel so that he faced the overseer. ‘And Mr Alvord, p’raps you might like to deliver your lesson again. Although it is true that even the most slow-witted of humans can be trained in the operation of my machines, the rate of success does depend a little on the quality of the goddamn instruction.’ With this, the gun-maker strode away in the direction of the jiggers and the lock-frames – the heavier devices that shaped the central parts of the revolver.

Alvord, enraged and humiliated, pointed to the drill-head. ‘Start at position one, turning anticlockwise.’ He indicated each bit in turn. ‘That’s the hammer spring; the bolt cam; the main spring roller. If you don’t have it by the end of the day we’ll be replacing you in the morning, understand?’

Caroline nodded, repeating the names of the drill-bits. Alvord had already left, though, starting after Colonel Colt. She became aware that one of the Colonel’s followers had become detached from the train, and was lingering by her machine. Hands on the drill-head, she aimed a sly sidelong look in his direction. There stood a young man in an English frock-coat and top hat, a junior office type of the sort you saw perched up on the roofs of omnibuses bound for the City, smoking their cigars and surveying the streets below as if they were the rightful owners of all London. She supposed that this particular fellow was part of Colonel Colt’s English establishment. He had a cool quality about him, though, a watchfulness, that held an undeniable appeal. He was studying her closely. Pausing in her work, she put a hand on her hip and met his gaze, thinking to embarrass any ignoble intention that might be lurking in his mind.

Caroline recognised him – the straight, short nose and smooth brow, the neat, coppery whiskers, the faint quizzical cast to his lips. It was the gentleman she’d seen in the yard on that first morning, a fortnight previously. He tipped his hat to her and went after Colt.

‘The Colonel’s starting to fret,’ whispered Nancy knowingly. ‘That’s what it’s all about. Word is that he’s looking to show the factory off as soon as he can, to the Army and some government toffs most likely. But now, just as he’s got the engine running nicely at last, his chief engineer goes and gets hisself knocked senseless.’

Caroline met this rather absently. ‘What are you on about, Nance?’

Keen to be the bearer of gossip, Nancy leaned in closer, poking her flat, snub-nosed face between the raised parts of her machine. ‘The beatings, Caro – ain’t you heard? Mr Quill the Yankee engineer and his paddy assistant. Got served out something proper last night in Pimlico, up on one of Mr Cubitt’s sites near Warwick Square.’

The smart young man left Caroline’s mind at once. ‘What?’

Nancy was well pleased by this response. Nothing gave this sturdy factory veteran more satisfaction than to adopt the guise of the wise old hand with privileged information to share. ‘They’ll be all right, best anyone can tell,’ she said casually. ‘In a week or so, anyway. The Colonel’s got ‘em laid up in the Yankees’ lodging house over on Tachbrook Street. Brought in a doctor and everything. No one knows who done it. There’s stories aplenty, o’ course.’

This was why Martin hadn’t been down in the yard with Slattery. He was lying all bashed up in a Pimlico lodging house. Amy would be going mad with worry. Would he have thought to get word to her? Would he have been able to? Helplessly, Caroline looked around the long, dingy machine room; at the Colonel’s greasy metal contraptions, their operators hunched over them as if they were being slowly devoured; at the complex cat’s-cradle of machine-belts, flapping and tensing with the shifting of the levers. It was only late morning. There was no chance of her being able to get away before seven. When she’d been taken on, the foreman had stressed that any unexplained absence from your machine during factory hours would see you slung straight out the gate.

Caroline tried to return her attention to the drill-head, but she couldn’t stop thinking of Martin – of what had befallen him and Mr Quill after she’d spoken with them in the Eagle. Why would anyone attack them like that?

She could only come up with one possible answer. It had to be something to do with Pat Slattery.

All fifty of Colt’s female operatives were employed in the same region of the works, on the lighter machines, and they took their dinner together. They sat by the water trough in the centre of the yard, chattering and laughing as they ate. Caroline stayed apart from them, having no wish to listen to their excited speculation about the beatings. She’d bought a white onion and a piece of cheese, but frustration and worry had taken away her appetite completely. Pacing the factory’s boundary, she peered out through the railings, along the wide river in the direction of Westminster.

The bell rang, summoning them inside. It occurred to Caroline that she could just walk into the forging shop right then, confront Slattery and demand that he reveal everything he knew, for the sake of Martin’s wife and children. This was a tempting notion indeed. Crossing the yard to the sliding factory door, preparing to file in behind the other women, she imagined herself simply doing it: turning away from the staircase, weaving between the drop-hammers, approaching the Irishman as he stoked his fire and saying her piece with righteous, unchallengeable anger.

But there was no time; and besides, one of the Yankees would be sure to see her, Mr Alvord would be informed, and she’d be dismissed before you could say ‘main spring roller’. Caroline went back up to her machine and drilled hammers all through the grey, everlasting afternoon, fidgeting with agonised boredom. When the final bell eventually sounded she was the first down the stairs and out into the deepening darkness. She left by the pedestrian gate at the rear of the works, intending to learn what she could of Martin’s condition and then go to Amy. This gate led onto Bessborough Place, the shadowy, featureless lane that lined the factory block’s north-eastern side. From here it was only a short walk to the Americans’ lodging house on Tachbrook Street. A large corner residence at the street’s southern end, it had the grand, fresh-made look common to all of Mr Cubitt’s Pimlico; the Colonel clearly believed in ensuring the comfort of his senior staff. She could see a couple of them through the windows, lounging in a gas-lit sitting room, laughing over something they’d read in a newspaper.

Caroline straightened her bonnet, screwed down her courage and knocked at the front door. It was opened by an elderly male servant who studied her with a knowing leer, no doubt assuming an unsavoury reason for her call. She was about to explain herself when she noticed two people sitting on a bench across the hall, directly opposite the doorway. One of them was Martin. He had a blanket over his shoulders and a wide, blood-spotted bandage wrapped around his brow. His ribs, too, were bound, as was his right wrist; in all, he looked more like a stricken soldier than an apprentice engineer.

Pushing past the servant, Caroline started towards him. The other person on the bench rose to meet her, and she realised that it was the fellow from the machine floor – the smart young man with the coppery whiskers. He was holding his top hat in his hands, as if about to go out; his hair was thick and straight, combed back from his brow in a neat, dark diagonal.

‘You are acquainted with Mr Rea, miss?’ he inquired.

Caroline nodded. ‘He’s my sister’s husband, sir. She’ll be worried half to death.’

Martin hadn’t reacted to her appearance in the lodging house. This wasn’t so unusual. Her brother-in-law was prone to strangeness, his gaze icing over as he became sunk in his own private thoughts. That evening, however, he appeared to be barely conscious, swaying slightly where he sat as if drunk.

‘My name is Edward Lowry,’ the man said. ‘I am the Colonel’s London secretary.’ He spoke in a clear, polished voice, by the standards of the Colt factory at least – this secretary plainly had education, if not wealth or breeding.

‘Caroline Knox, sir,’ she replied, dropping a small curtsey.

Mr Lowry looked back at Martin. ‘The doctor says that Mr Rea here took several rather brutal kicks to the head, and remains seriously disorientated. He is set on returning to his home, though, as soon as possible. At once, in fact.’

‘Martin is a determined fellow, sir. Mulish by nature.’

‘The Colonel is upstairs, talking with Mr Quill. He has instructed me to honour Mr Rea’s wishes – to discover his address and put him in a cab. I was going to take him over to Moreton Street and flag one down.’

Caroline shook her head. ‘No cab will go where this cove lives, Mr Lowry. Let me ride with him. I’ll get the driver to drop us on Broad Sanctuary. I can get him back from there.’

‘Very well, Miss Knox.’ He smiled, rather pleasantly Caroline had to admit, meeting her eye for just a second longer than necessary; then he turned to the injured man on the bench and put on his hat.

Martin glanced up at them both, seeming to understand what they’d been discussing. His face looked wrong, lopsided and red, and scratched all over with angry cuts; the bandages had gathered his bushy black hair into a single unruly clump. He winced as if the dim lamp on the wall behind Caroline was painfully bright. ‘Let’s be off, then,’ he managed to croak.

The three of them tottered out into the street, Martin leaning heavily on Mr Lowry. They’d progressed about thirty halting paces along Tachbrook Street when there was movement somewhere behind them – rapid movement. Caroline felt a quiver of fear. Was it Martin’s mysterious assailants, come to finish the job, along with any who might be with him? But no; before she even had time to turn, she heard the muttering, the accents, and knew immediately who it was.

The Irishmen came from the direction of the factory. There was an odd, monkish detachment about them. They did not speak to or even look at Caroline and the secretary, closing around Martin like so many pallbearers and all but hoisting him from the pavement. Mumbling something, Amy’s name it sounded like, he barely noticed the change.

‘All right, men,’ announced Mr Lowry from his new position on the edge of this group, recognising the new arrivals as Colt workers and trying to take charge, ‘we’re moving him up to Moreton Street, just a few yards ahead. There I shall secure a cab, and instruct the driver to transport this poor fellow to his –’

Disregarding him entirely, the Irishmen started off in the opposite direction, back towards the factory. Caroline recognised one of them, a tall, bearded fellow named Jack Coffee, and called out to him. She’d met Jack on a couple of occasions when visiting the Devil’s Acre and had found him to be a mild, peaceable soul; a little slow-witted, perhaps, but friendly. Right then, though, he was in no mood to talk to her.

‘We’ll take him home, Caro,’ he replied quickly. ‘Don’t you be worrying none.’

‘I’ll come too.’

‘Come tomorrow. Our boy here needs t’ sleep.’

‘What of Amy and the children? I’ll –’

‘Leave ‘em be, will ye?’ spat another voice, higher and more nasal than Jack’s. She realised it was Pat Slattery’s. Half a head shorter than the rest, he was over at Martin’s other side. ‘Jesus. Don’t you have a life o’ your bleedin’ own?’

They picked up their pace, carrying their friend off at some speed. Caroline stood watching as they disappeared around a corner, heading in the direction of Westminster, smarting at Slattery’s harsh words. He knew who she was, although they’d never spoken before then. She guessed that he’d been given an unflattering report by Martin; he certainly didn’t seem to like her. Was he annoyed that she was also at Colt, perhaps, thinking that she’d interfere somehow in whatever they might be up to? She cursed herself for not returning his scorn in kind, and swore that she wouldn’t let him get away so easily in future.

‘It would seem that we are both surplus to requirements, Miss Knox,’ Mr Lowry said with a grin, taking a cigar from his pocket. He lit it, tossing the match in the gutter; then he turned towards her, considering something. ‘Would you have me walk you home, since I am already out here in my hat and coat? Whereabouts do you live?’

Caroline remembered the look they had exchanged up on the machine floor, and before that, out in the factory yard; and how both had been terminated. ‘Won’t Colonel Colt want you, sir?’

‘We have an appointment at eight,’ he answered, ‘which leaves me the better part of an hour. Besides, the Colonel instructed me to see a Colt employee to safety, and that is exactly what I would be doing. Pimlico has revealed itself to be a rather dangerous place of late, as you well know.’

Caroline found that she welcomed the thought of some company. Seeing her brother-in-law so reduced, and then being shooed away from him so curtly, had left her feeling a little odd; jarred, almost. She went over to Mr Lowry and took his arm, telling him that she had a room in Millbank, a short way past the Vauxhall Bridge Road. Together, they walked up to Moreton Street. He asked her how she’d come to be at the Colt factory.

‘Believe it or not, sir, it was down to those Irishmen back there,’ Caroline replied. ‘My sister told me that they’d found work at a new American pistol factory by the river, and that the Yankees were still hiring operatives for their machines. I was in urgent need, you see, having recently lost my position up in Islington.’ She paused. ‘I was a housemaid.’

‘I suspected as much,’ the secretary remarked, puffing on his cigar. ‘You have the diction of a good servant, Miss Knox, if I may say, and the bearing as well.’

Caroline glanced at him. ‘But not the temperament, Mr Lowry – or so they liked to tell me. When the family took a hard knock and half of us were made to go, I was the very first one they picked out of the line. My mistress wrote me a letter, but that was only so I’d leave without a fuss.’ She lifted her chin. ‘I’d had enough of service anyway, to tell the truth. I wanted a change, and Colonel Colt seemed to fit the bill nicely.’

They arrived at the Vauxhall Bridge Road. Bright and noisy after the stillness of Pimlico, it was blocked by the usual unmoving chain of evening traffic. Fog was growing in the damp air, creeping around buildings, lamp-posts and carriages like soft mould. Caroline and the secretary stepped from the pavement, slipping between the stationary vehicles and the snorting horses reined up before them. As they reached the opposite side, Mr Lowry asked her who she’d worked for in Islington. She gave him a brief account of the end of the Vincent household. He recalled the case clearly, it turned out; it had even informed his own decision to join the Colt Company.

‘Four decades of unstinting labour and that is the fate that befalls you. Everything stripped away in an instant. A sudden plunge into despairing destitution, with suicide the only possible release.’ He shook his head. ‘I wasn’t prepared to take such a chance with my life. Like you, Miss Knox, I resolved to move on – to apply myself to something with a sense of real certainty about it.’

Caroline considered the sheen of Mr Lowry’s top hat, the crisp whiteness of his collar, the cigar smoking in the corner of his mouth; and she thought, you ain’t quite like me, though, are you, sir?

The wall of Millbank Prison came into view between two low terraces. Steeped in noxious fog, the monstrous building beyond was like a distant black cliff, forbidding and unreachable.

Mr Lowry looked over at it. ‘You live next to the prison, miss?’ he asked, the smallest trace of disquiet in his voice.

‘A couple of streets past it,’ Caroline replied. ‘Sometimes, from my window, I can hear those locked up inside,’ she added mischievously, ‘ranting and raving, and calling for help. They’re kept completely apart, you know – alone in their cells for all but one single hour of the day. Drives some of the poor beggars clean out of their minds.’

‘Good God.’ The secretary took a long drag on his cigar.

She led him on towards the lane that held her lodgings. ‘You think our Colonel is a certain bet, then, Mr Lowry?’

He returned gladly to his previous subject. ‘As near as is possible, Miss Knox, I’d say. The Colonel’s wares are peerless, as is his method of production. There’s demand for repeating arms at present – a vast, international demand. We’ve all been given a singular chance to improve our lot.’

Caroline was sceptical. ‘You’ve been given a chance, Mr Lowry, that I don’t doubt – but I can’t see the Colonel doing very much more for the likes of me.’

‘You cannot know that, Miss Knox. If you prove yourself a steady worker, you will rise. That’s the Colonel’s policy. Other departments will open in the coming months – a packing room, for instance – that an intelligent woman such as yourself could easily be placed in charge of.’

She studied his smile as best she could in the gloomy lane. He was perfectly sincere. ‘Hark at you,’ she murmured, giving his arm a teasing tug, ‘Colonel Colt’s little organ-monkey, dancing away to his tune.’

Smiling still, Mr Lowry inclined his head. ‘A fair description, I suppose.’

They had arrived at the plain mid-terrace house in which Caroline rented her room. Half a dozen other young, unattached women also resided there, mostly shop-girls from the West End; the landlady, Mrs Patten, would be sitting in the back parlour as usual, keeping up her watch on the comings and goings of her tenants.

Caroline released Mr Lowry’s arm and went through the gate, rather sad that their conversation was about to end. Taking a walk with a handsome, well-dressed gent who held a clear liking for you would generally be pleasant, of course, but there was more here than that. His hopefulness, his absolute conviction that things would soon get better for them both, was heartening indeed; Caroline wasn’t sure that she believed any of it but it was good to hear. Missing the warmth of him at her side, she drew in her shawl and thanked him for escorting her home.

The secretary bowed. ‘It was my pleasure, Miss Knox. I can only hope that we will see each other again soon, around the pistol works. And please, do not allow the events of last night to upset you unduly. No lasting damage has been done. Mr Rea will be back in the engine room before you know it.’

Caroline hesitated, thinking of Amy and the children; she would go over to Crocodile Court later on, Pat Slattery be damned. ‘Will they try to find out who did it – and why?’

Mr Lowry took a last puff on his cigar and flicked the end into the road. ‘I can’t imagine that Colonel Colt will just let it pass.’

Caroline nodded, then bade him good night and walked up the path to her door. He was still standing at the gate when she closed it behind her.