The Devil’s Acre. Matthew Plampin

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      ‘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?

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