The Devil’s Acre. Matthew Plampin
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for himself a couple of nights before, while out celebrating his appointment with his friends; he’d declared it nothing less than a blasted certainty, in fact, standing up on a tavern stool, liquor spilling from his raised glass and running down inside his sleeve. The secretary looked over at his employer. Colt was staring out of the window at the elegant townhouses of St James Square, oblivious to their exchange.
‘I have my professional goals, Mr Richards, of course,’ he replied, ‘but my only concern at present is to serve the Colonel’s interests to the best of my abilities.’ He cleared his throat. ‘I have long been a sincere admirer of both the Colonel’s inventions and the dedicated manner in which he conducts his business.’
One of Richards’s eyebrows rose by a caustic quarter-inch. ‘And how did you come to hear of the position? It was not widely advertised.’
‘Through an interested friend,’ Edward answered lightly, ‘that’s all. No mystery there, Mr Richards.’
The secretary thought of Saul Graff, the fellow who’d passed on the tip to him. Graff was like a voracious, information-seeking weed, his tendrils forever breaking out across fresh territories; God alone knew how he’d found out about this particular vacancy, but his timing had been faultless. He was owed a slap-up dinner at the very least – although he doubtlessly had his own reasons for wanting Edward Lowry placed with Colt.
‘An interested friend. How very deuced fortunate for you, Mr Lowry.’ Richards held the bottle up to the window, trying to ascertain how much spirit was left inside. ‘Sam tells me that you know a thing or two about the buying and selling of steel.’
‘I do, at a clerical level at any rate. I was in the City – the trading house of Carver & Weight’s, to be exact.’
This jerked the Colonel from his reverie. ‘Goddamn City men!’ he snapped. ‘Scoundrelly rogues, the lot of ‘em. I do believe that I’ve saved you from a truly ignominious existence there, Mr Lowry.’ He gave his secretary a grave, forbidding look. ‘A life lived among stocks and shares, generating money for its own sake alone – why, you’d better blow out your brains at once and manure some honest man’s ground with your carcass than hang your ambition on so low a peg. You get hold of some steel for me, boy, and we’ll damn well do something with it, not just sell it on for a few measly dollars of profit.’
It gladdened Edward to hear this. While at Carver & Weight’s he’d grown tired of the abstractions of the trading floor and had felt a growing hunger for what he came to think of as real business, where manufacturers innovated and improved, and communicated directly with their customers – where things were accomplished beyond speculation and self-enrichment. He was fast reaching the conclusion that Colonel Colt, with his masterful inventions and determination to win the custom not only of men but of entire nations, was the best employer he could have wished for.
The gun-maker cut himself a fresh wad of tobacco, effectively closing the topic of his secretary’s regrettable early life and moving them on to other matters. He’d resolved to send off a letter to Ned Dickerson, his patent lawyer in America, concerning Robert Adams, and began to dictate in an oddly direct style, delivering his words as if Dickerson was seated before him – telling him angrily that the ‘John Bull diddler’ would not make another cent from his goddamn forgeries, not if there was a single earthy thing that they could do about it. As he took all this down, Edward got the sense that the campaign against Adams had already been a long and bitter one, with no resolution in sight. Alfred Richards, meanwhile, devoted his attentions to what remained of the bottle.
Some minutes passed, Colt’s language becoming bafflingly technical as he detailed the precise matters of engineering that the lawyer was to direct his attention towards; then he stopped speaking mid-sentence. Edward looked up to discover that they were on Regent Street; a long row of shining, plate-glass shop windows offered disjointed reflections of their mustard-coloured vehicle as it swept around the majestic, stuccoed arc of the Quadrant. After only a few moments they turned again, heading off towards Savile Row. Colonel Colt was putting on his hat, preparing to disembark; and seconds later the carriage drew up before the frontage of one of London’s very smartest tailors.
‘New waistcoats,’ said Colt by way of explanation. ‘I’m out in society a good deal in the coming weeks, and thought it a prudent investment. You two gentlemen remain here. I shan’t be very long.’
The press agent’s grey eyes followed the Colonel all the way to the tailor’s counter. Edward watched him closely, certain that battle was about to begin. It was only when Colt’s arms were outstretched and a tape-measure was being run across his back that Richards finally spoke.
‘So how large exactly,’ he asked, ‘were the perimeters of the explosion?’
This was not what Edward had been expecting. He begged Richards’s pardon, pleading ignorance of any such blast.
The press agent responded with a small, whinnying laugh. ‘Why, Mr Lowry, I refer of course to the explosion of our beloved master when Paget first mentioned the name of Robert Adams!’
Somewhat patronisingly, Richards revealed that throughout the Colonel’s previous sojourn in London at the time of the Great Exhibition in 1851, when he had made an initial, more modest attempt to establish a European outpost, Clarence Paget had been an energetic partisan for the cause of their chief English rival. He had (they suspected) encouraged opposition to Colt at every level within the British Government, rigged various official tests and leaked negative reports on the American’s weapons to the press.
‘Since returning, the good Colonel has not so much as mentioned Adams revolvers before today; but after an unplanned meeting with Paget he’s sending vehement missives on the subject straight back to his legal mastiff in America. It don’t take a detective genius to piece it together, Mr Lowry.’
Edward put away the unfinished letter. ‘The subject was raised, certainly.’
‘And what, pray, was said?’
Realising that Richards would learn about the incident sooner or later anyway, Edward related what had happened up in Paget’s office as neutrally as he could manage.
The press secretary was heaving with mirth long before he’d finished. ‘Well, Mr Lowry,’ he wheezed at the tale’s conclusion, ‘that’s our Colonel, right there. His defence of his interests is quite unflagging. You’d better get used to such forcible tactics, old chum, if you are to stand at his side.’ Richards wiped his eyes; something in his manner told Edward that a card was about to be played. ‘The Colt family has an impulsive streak in it so broad that it borders on madness. I’m sure you’ll know to what I am alluding.’
And there it was, a veritable classic: the dark secret, casually touched upon to unnerve the callow recruit, to fill him with doubt and prompt a confused re-evaluation of his position. Edward found that he was smiling at this unsubtle piece of manipulation. ‘Mr Richards, I assure you that I do not.’
Richards feigned surprise. ‘You mean that you haven’t heard of John Colt, the axe-murderer of New York?’
The smile slipped a little. ‘I – I beg your pardon?’
Richards dug a bent cigar end out of a coat pocket and made a great show of getting it alight. ‘Killed a fellow with a hatchet back in forty-two, in Manhattanville,’ he said as he struggled with a match. ‘There was a disagreement over money, apparently. They were in business together, you understand – and as you’ve seen already, a Colt will really go the distance when business is involved. Victim’s name was Adams, coincidentally enough.’
‘Good Lord.’
‘And that’s not all. Dearest brother John went on to chop the body up, if you can imagine such a thing. The mad blighter then stuffed the parts into a packing-case and sent it by steamer to New Orleans.’ Richards sucked on the cigar, quickly filling the carriage with smoke. ‘But the case started to pong halfway down the Mississippi. It was an unusually hot summer, I’m told, and the killer had scrimped somewhat on the salt. The gruesome contents of the