Lawless and The Devil of Euston Square (18 page)

As Charlie excused himself from the table I frowned. “Off home now, are you?

“You’re joking.” He smiled. “Game’s barely started.”

“You go out and play another game?”

“The same game, and tomorrow and the next day, like as not.”

“And I thought golf was tiresome.” I stretched. Now I understood why Wardle had said I could stay all day. “One last thing, Charlie. Among your reforms, and strikes and organising, you haven’t come across a chap called Skelton, have you?”

“Skelton?” Charlie looked at me. “No, don’t know anyone by that name. Excuse us, I’m needed out on the field.”

As the players muddled out, I popped my head up through the trap door into the clock turret.

Ganz was there, muttering to himself. He gestured at the three faces of the clock. The hands were still there, but not much more. “I’ll murder ’em. Little hooligans.”

“Taken the main movement, have they?”

“The main movement?” He scowled. “They’ve took the escapement and the motion work as well. Bandits. You slave your life away, designing and crafting, then some little Visigoth purloins it to pass off as his own.”

He was so livid, he would not be spoken to. I could have told him that I recognised the handiwork, from that night at Euston Square.

I resolved to tell Wardle a little fib, that Charlie had asked after him in kindly fashion. After all, Wardle had been looking at the sporting pages; he must have known his son was in town. But he never asked about it.

“I tell you what, Cameron, old man.”

I could not recall telling Coxhill my Christian name, but I decided against correcting his mistake. He had piqued my curiosity with his promise of information.

I had passed a lazy afternoon, trying to make sense of the game. Half of the players lounged in the clubhouse, lazy as pigs, while the other half ran around after the ball like headless chickens. The sun shone down. To while away the time, I had reluctantly accepted Coxhill’s offer of an ale or two from the clubhouse bar; as soon as the drink was bought, though, he was apt to disappear off with a new acquaintance, leaving me to my thoughts.

As the match drew to its mysterious close, I found myself accepting his offer of a lift into town, against my better judgement. Hunt regarded me with veiled hostility as his master led me up to the luxurious carriage. I admit, I took a perverse pleasure in riding within while he sat up front in the dust and heat.

“You and I are going out on the town. I won’t brook a refusal. I simply must show you the ropes. Bright young thing like you. Hardly seen life at all, I’ll wager.”

I smiled uneasily, but he was obdurate. We simply must and we simply would go out. It was irregular, all right, I told myself, but he was in such garrulous mood, who could tell what I might learn?

“Have you been to the Evans? Thought not. You simply must try the devilled kidneys. We’ll take in the show! Bertie and I have the use of a private box, y’know.”

“Must cost a pretty penny.”

“Everything has its price, my friend. Most useful for entertaining, though. You can imagine. There’s a late spot too, I know you’ll enjoy. Don’t fret. I’ve a jacket here to lend you. Fit well enough. Hunty boy! Straight to the club!”

I think that I have never heard a man so talkative say so little of substance. Yet he had friends aplenty. He was greeted with striking joviality at his club, where he lent me a jacket and tie and we changed rapidly. At Covent Garden, as we descended into the vast, dimly lit music hall, peopled with the most flavoursome crowd, a steady stream of nods and hulloahs assailed us.

“Now, Cameron,” he said, rubbing his hands together. “Let us secure some refreshments.”

An important looking man hurried over and mumbled to him apologetically.

“Dash it all, is the box taken?” He peered up into the darkness in annoyance. “Table by the wall, then. Less likely to have our pockets picked, what?”

As I strove to cast off my reserve, Coxhill summoned to our table a stream of tidbits and delicacies such as I had never seen. I would have felt even less comfortable in my uniform, but I have never liked wearing borrowed robes. His jacket was of undeniably fine tweed, but it was too short in the sleeve, and made my arms seem like a baboon’s. He had enjoined me to leave my things at the club, but I preferred to keep them with me, fearful of finding myself stranded in Piccadilly Circus at five in the morning.

Despite my protestations, he made clear I was not to put my hand in my pocket. So I tucked guiltily into a seemingly endless round of chops, kidneys and every type of potato, while he pointed out to me some personalities in the audience: Thackeray, the
Punch
Brotherhood, and Wilkie Collins, the author so admired by Miss Villiers. As he accepted some snuff from the waiter, I decided it was time to engage him on more serious matters.

“Mr Coxhill, you mentioned some information–”

“Not over dinner, old man.” His eyes widened. “Come along. Enjoy yourself.”

I held back a sigh. I must proceed patiently, I told myself, be more canny. “You were telling me about the hazards of modern business.”

“Insure to the hilt,” he said, sniffing up the powder, like some anteater from the Cape. “Father considered insurance a gamble, though. Did I mention my father? He taught at Heidelberg University, you know. That’s how we know the royals.”

I glanced at him in dismay. “And insurance–”

“He didn’t hold with it, you see. I’m not averse to the odd flutter myself. Nor is a certain prince of the realm I happen to know. I’ll tell you a story. Just last week, I was trouncing the young rascal at billiards in Marlborough House. We had a tidy sum wagered on it. I fluff a shot, and Bertie pipes up, all excited: Roxy, Roxy, you are too drunk, he says, too drunk. Tum Tum, says I, anticipating my triumph, I may be too drunk, but you are too fat. He tells the valet to prepare my luggage and only goes and chucks me out. Worst of all, he claims that the debt’s invalidated. Invalidated! The cheek of the boy, I ask you.”

“How interesting,” I managed. There was a surfeit of royal tittle-tattle in the papers, and I had little appetite for more. “But insurance–”

“The lowest sort of gamble, father called it. Wouldn’t wash today, you know. It’s a dead man who doesn’t insure himself for his life, as it were.” He nudged me in the stomach, and gave a sort of a sideways grin. “I suppose it is gambling, of a sort. But we all like a little flutter, don’t we, old man?”

“The machine at Euston,” I said casually. “It was insured, was it?”

“Oh, yes. Dashed hard to get the blighters to pay up. Ah, the show, at last. Hush up a little now.”

I held my tongue, frustrated, as the curtain rose on a stage veiled in gauze, or rather the mists of the past. A man in a dressing-gown, standing for turn-of-the-century costume, clutched a pile of swaddling clothes, while painted signposts were carried across the stage as he travelled widely, amassing a fortune. Then a demon sprite skipped up, murthered our traveller most foully, and stole his fortune. The gauze was snatched away, and the actor removed his historical dressing gown to characterise the swaddling clothes grown to a man.

This offspring likewise travels the world, past those same signposts, in his thirst for revenge. He finds the demon sprite on an egg-box throne, lording it up over a tribe of dancing girls. Our man becomes his trusted courtier, meanwhile becoming enamoured of a strapping Amazon wench. The sprite, hitherto indifferent to these women so proximate and fetching, promptly weds the wench himself. Whereat resinous flashes play in the wings, and a cannon ball is rolled around.

In this terrible storm, our dejected hero sees in a green limelight the dressing gown that was his father, which plays out for him his unjust fate. The stage becomes luminous with blue fire. The egg-box throne falls, discovering the stolen riches. At a chord from a solitary violin, the sprite doubles up and our man runs him through. He weds the wench, who seemed well worth the effort, and the dancing girls erupt in a hymeneal dance, with high kicks, drawing the stoutest applause.

“Some port, there, my man!” Coxhill turned to me, his eyes gleeful. “Capital, don’t you think?”

“Yes. Yes, of course. You were telling me, though,” I hesitated, “about that crane at Euston.”

“Hard to get them to pay at the best of times. Worse when there seems something rotten in it.”

“That’s right,” I said, trying not to sound too eager. “You thought someone was trying to damage confidence in your company.”

“Did I?” He bit into a quail’s leg. Oil ran down his chin. “I don’t recall.”

“Do you have enemies, that you know of?”

“Glory be, old chap, one can hardly start a concern of this magnitude without ruffling a few feathers.”

I spluttered on my port. The image of the dead man from the spout flashed before me. And he spoke of ruffled feathers. I looked at him more closely. “Does anyone spring to mind?”

“One hopes not,” he said, playing down the idea with a carefree smile. “One hopes not.”

I thought of the mysterious repair man. “Mr Coxhill – Roxton. I do urge you to think. Could there be someone, within your own ranks even, who holds a grievance against you?”

“I understood it was activists. What have the bloody Fenians against me?”

“Your man, Pat, said the saboteur had a knowledge of the machines.”

“Pat? Don’t mind old Pat. He’s on his last legs.”

Like your engines, I thought. “You haven’t had any trouble with claims? Compensation for injuries, I mean.”

“The odd chancer, yes. Nothing worth speaking of. As I said, it goes with the territory.” He laughed and drank down his glass. “There was one old comedian who tried it on. Put on a limp, claimed it was our fault.”

“Did you pay him off?”

“No, no. Hunty-boy sends ’em packing. Good-o! Here’s the song and dance girls. Have a cigar, old man.”

The tragic actor now metamorphosed into the Great Mackay, the
lion comique
, bestriding the second half’s miscellany of skits and songs like a colossus. I found myself giggling even at the most third-rate of the performers, only to realise that Mackay was standing idly upstage brandishing a rubber chicken. When he turned to singing, we laughed at “The Dandy Dogs-Meat Man” and “Threading My Grandmother’s Needle”; tapped our feet to “Dainty Miss Skittles” and “The Woman in White Waltz”; and wept to hear “The Soldier’s Tear” and “Sweet Betsy Ogle”.

There was even a skit on the skeleton thefts, which might have galled me but for the wine with which Coxhill kept plying me, and the metamorphosis of the Amazon wench into Mackay’s society wife. She was a gorgeous thing indeed, with a cascade of blonde hair and a bosom that would have sunk the SS
Great Britain
.

“Ha ha!” roared Coxhill. “Our Scotchman is of flesh and blood after all. My, we shall have some entertainment tonight.”

There was a deal of horseplay in the audience behind us, and ideas exchanged in the most colourful language. By the end of the show, I was somewhat the worse for wear. Coxhill whisked me back into the chaise and within moments we were descending a stone stairway to a smoky cellar.

“Where are we?” I said in alarm.

“Gambling hell, old chap,” he announced. “My favourite one. The odds ain’t too tight, you know, and the extras cheap too.”

Wide-eyed, I stared around at a cross-section of debauchees more louche than I imagined in a den of vice in Naples. Coarse faces leant heavily over small baize tables, while the more refined puffed amicably at extravagant hookahs.

“Don’t fret,” said Coxhill with that sideways grin. “You look quite the greenhorn.”

“I fear I’ve had a drop too much, Roxton. I’d like to go home, if you wouldn’t mind.”

“Don’t be a bloody ass, old man. Sit down and enjoy yourself. The club’s next door, near as damn it. You can catch forty winks there, if need be.”

Sure enough, I did begin to relax. Coxhill found us a spot under a vaulted arch, and I squeezed in, reclining deep into the Moorish cushions, while he sat up at a gaming table. I did not join in, too befuddled to follow. By the time Coxhill passed me a pipe, I was ready to enter into the spirit. The smoke soaked into my head, and I observed the assembly with mounting amusement.

“Tell you what,” he said. “Time to call on Madame Lorraine and her Academy.”

He spoke to a waiter, and ten minutes later an older lady, eyes dark with make-up, came and kissed us on both cheeks. Coxhill bantered with her in a low voice, and she soon vanished away, giving me a broad smile and a pinch on the cheek. He cashed in his chips with the waiter and sat back heavily. “Now, old man. I wanted to tell you.”

“The information!” I laughed. “Good God, I’d quite forgotten.” It struck me that all Coxhill’s posing and posturing was just an attempt to match up to the world, to match up to a father doubtless every bit as domineering as mine. I giggled to think that behind that unprepossessing beard was a young man barely older than myself. Indeed, I had begun to find everything amusing, and was quite unprepared for the grave tone he adopted.

“I’d like to give you some shares in the company, old man. What do you say?”

I looked at him as if I had been hit square on the head. Even in my cups, I was cautious with money. “Roxton, you lunatic. A policeman’s income is–”