Matthew Plampin - The Devil’s Acre

The move towards the pistol could only be described as a clamour. Marchant made it first, luckily for him, grabbing the Navy from the case and holding it in the air, shouting for order as he did so. Colt looked on with grave satisfaction, loudly imparting the address of his London sales office and some of his current prices.

Edward stood fixed to the spot, his feather-light guts fluttering around inside him. He brought the Navy down, breathing hard. He’d passed the Colonel’s unexpected test. Firing the revolver – reaching out across such a distance and delivering a series of impossibly swift, piercing blows – had been a truly astonishing experience, filling him with an excitement so pure it was almost not to be trusted. The sense of destructive strength as he’d worked through those six shots was dizzying, invigorating; yet also numbing somehow, laced with blackness, utterly devoid of reason. Edward found that he wanted both to set the pistol down for good and reload it immediately for another try.

‘Nice work, Mr Lowry,’ Colt said with an approving nod. ‘Orders’ll be the certain result of this little display, from both Marchant and a few of his wealthier regulars. Not worth much in the grand scheme, but it keeps people talking.’ He took a last slug from the crystal decanter and then dropped it carelessly on the floor. ‘Come, we must be off. We have to unearth that sottish stick-insect Alfie Richards from wherever he’s buried himself and start putting together a show for Mr Kossuth. Right this minute.’

Edward looked at the weapon in his hand. A thin line of smoke still twisted from the cylinder. Dazed and a little disappointed, he started towards the crowd at the bench, intending to give it to Mr Marchant.

Colt stopped him. ‘I want you to keep that there pistol, Mr Lowry.’

‘Pardon me, Colonel?’

‘I want you to keep it, I said. Hang it on the wall, take it to ranges, show it off to your sweethearts.’ The gun-maker slapped his shoulder again. ‘Consider it a gift.’

‘Lawrence Street is his name. He’s in the Commons – a Whig, I should think. D’you know him at all, Saul? Chilly little cove with white-blond whiskers – wears eye-glasses.’

Saul Graff did not answer for almost a minute. He sucked on the cigar Edward had given him, absently pushing a last morsel of devilled kidney around his plate with his fork; then he cast a look around the low brick cavern in which they sat. The Cider Cellars on Maiden Lane, chosen largely for its proximity to the Hungerford Bridge Pier and the steamer to Pimlico, was occupied by the usual early evening crowd, an eclectic assortment of literary, governmental and legal types. It was formidably noisy, a close, smoky basement in which the drinkers and diners were packed together like figs in a drum. Their table was in one of the cellar’s furthermost corners, tucked away in a small alcove beneath a candle-blackened archway. Edward leaned back against the wall behind him, feeling the thudding, grinding vibrations of the early evening traffic up on the Strand.

‘This is exactly what I imagined might occur in that factory,’ Saul said at last, grinding the cigar out in a pool of congealing gravy. ‘Manoeuvring. Offers of interested friendship. Back-room deals. And I should have guessed that it would come from the likes of Street. What a blasted idiot I am!’

Edward sipped his sherry. ‘So you do know of him.’

Saul loosened his necktie, sitting back in his chair. A rather thin, large-eyed creature, dressed as always in a dark costume a little like an undertaker’s, he had a dense black moustache and a light manner that he used to hide the deeper analytical workings of his mind. ‘I do, Edward, yes. Of course I do. He’s a whip on the Liberal side, and something of a tin-pot Machiavelli. Should Lawrence Street come knocking upon your door, there’s a fair chance it’ll be to do with an intrigue of some kind. They say that his first loyalty is to Lord Palmerston – who in turn places great value in Street’s endeavours.’ He gave Edward a meaningful look. ‘Your Colonel has caught an interesting eye there, and no mistake.’

So there it was: the link with Lajos Kossuth. The famously brazen Lord Palmerston had been the Hungarian’s most prominent supporter during his previous visit to England, even going so far as to invite Kossuth to Broadlands, his country seat. This was done in open defiance of the Queen’s wishes, leading her to seek his dismissal as Foreign Secretary; only fear of public outcry at the removal of an enduringly popular minister had prevented this. Two governments had fallen since then – events in which Palmerston had not been uninvolved – and he was presently Home Secretary in the coalition cabinet of the Earl of Aberdeen. It was rumoured, however, that he took little interest in his duties there, occupying himself instead with plotting and the careful undermining of his rivals – thus making his current ministry as weak, compromised and ineffectual as every other part of Aberdeen’s administration.

‘Are you implying that Street is courting Colonel Colt on Lord Palmerston’s orders, Saul?’

Graff smiled slyly, knitting his eyebrows into dark diagonals. ‘Perhaps. Involvement with an arms manufacturer would be well outside Pam’s official jurisdiction as Home Secretary – but then, he’s not exactly known for respecting such boundaries. Still sticks his nose into the affairs of Clarendon’s Foreign Office without any hesitation whatsoever, from what I hear. The old dog’s far more concerned with the goings-on there than in his own department. They say he’s making a proper nuisance of himself over this unfortunate business between Russia and Turkey – insisting that our navy intervene and so forth. It’s hard to see quite what his angle would be in this affair, though…’ Saul became lost in strategic musings, poking at the softened wax around the rim of their candle with his forefinger.

Edward finished his drink. He did not have much longer. ‘What might your man make of it all?’

Snapped from his meditations, Saul blinked; then he laughed. ‘The Honourable Mr Bannan is a committed radical, my friend. He has dedicated his political life to securing the vote for the many thousands of our working men presently denied their rightful voice in the Commons. Our noble Home Secretary is an implacable and very powerful enemy to this particular cause. Mr Bannan therefore welcomes any information I can bring him that may pertain to Lord Palmerston’s latest piece of scheming. And this – Lawrence Street seeming to make introductions for the Yankee gun-maker Samuel Colt – will certainly get his attention.’ He pushed away his plate. ‘You have my thanks, Edward. I wasn’t sure, in truth, if you would be prepared to talk with me about matters such as these. It was never my intention that you should become my eyes in the Colt factory, or anything of that nature.’

Edward smiled thinly at this flagrant falsehood. ‘I’ve told you this, Saul, because I’m seeking an explanation myself. I’m coming to learn that Colonel Colt explains his actions only up to a point. If I’m to get on in his firm then I feel that I should at least be able to make an informed guess about the rest.’

Saul laughed again. ‘My word, how well you’re taking to this new world of yours! Such ambition, such initiative! You, old friend, are a natural man of business.’ He raised his glass in an amiable salute. ‘I am happy to oblige, and look forward to any future exchanges of information – mutually beneficial and entirely innocent, of course – that we two might make.’ After drinking down the remainder of his sherry, Saul hesitated, leaned in a little closer and asked, ‘What of the women?’

Edward rolled his eyes. The question did not surprise him. In contradiction to his rather cerebral appearance, Graff had always been a keen and active admirer of the fairer sex. Back when both men had been junior clerks at Carver & Weight’s, before Saul left for his current career as a parliamentary aide, Edward would regularly be recruited for pursuits over great stretches of London, after a group of dressmakers or governesses or even gay women who’d caught his friend’s undiscriminating, ever-vigilant eye.