Lawless and The Devil of Euston Square (3 page)

The clock swung some feet above me, sloshed hither and thither by the streams of water. Gingerly, I climbed a couple of rungs, praying that the sodden wood wouldn’t give way. My left boot slipped. I clutched on for grim death, ignoring the shouts from below. I held my breath, climbed two more rungs, then wound my arms and legs through the crane’s framework to hold myself firm.

I reached out to pull the clock’s timber frame towards me. A precarious prospect, but it was lighter than I expected, and I easily drew it close. I strained to read the clockmaker’s name, inscribed in minuscule print on the casing. I had it all but deciphered – Allnutt & Gatz of Clerkenwell, or maybe Allnutt & Franz – when the timber frame jolted.

I looked down in alarm. I had better hurry, before Hunt did something foolish. I gently rotated the framework to examine the back of the clock. I felt in my cape pocket and breathed a little prayer of relief. Watchmaker habits die hard. I had with me the screwdriver-cum-wrench that I used for odd jobs and on-the-spot repairs. Father considered this a slovenly approach. Each timepiece, he said, requires the implement most apt for the job. But this was no time for niceties. I hooked my arm through the clock’s packing frame, and tugged it closer still. I was surprised to see that the water seemed to be coursing right through it. A station clock that could not withstand the elements made no more sense than a house without a roof. My curiosity was piqued. The back panel was just accessible between the timbers. I set myself to undo the corner screws of the panel, anticipating that familiar reverie of puzzling at cogs and querying springs until the parts should connect and the clock’s secrets be mine. The casing I saw was beautifully effected. Yet how slackly the screws were driven in. Father had a point: to inspect such a clock’s workings, by rights, a man should require a full set of tools. This panel was too easily shifted. Indeed, there were already scratches around the screw holes. Strange, on a brand new clock.

I swung the panel round to lay bare the clock’s innards and gasped in surprise. The mechanism had been removed. The pendulum was there, dangling from the barrel that was affixed to the great wheel, as you would expect. But the rest of the wheelwork was nowhere to be seen.

Could it simply never have been installed? Unthinkable. Granted, they would have to put the clock in place before lowering the pendulum and setting it in motion. But to wait until it was perched thirty yards aloft before installing the rest? That would be not just awkward, but downright stupid. Stupid too to leave it hanging in mid-air, with the platform right there beside it. Why not pull it to safety onto the scaffolding? Or into its rightful place, crowning the colonnade?

I stared at what was left of the workings. The key to the mystery lay before me, if only I could fathom its intricate augury. I determined to note every detail. It might have been by chance or design that the clock showed twenty to two, but there was nothing to propel the hands. The frame had been neatly opened, and the most delicate parts of the gearing mechanism – pinions, spindles and motion work – were gone. Judging from the scratches on the casing, the mechanisms had been extracted in some haste. Coxhill might well complain that his hydraulics had been tampered with, but the clock had seen equal mischief.

The pulley above me creaked. The spout sputtered momentarily, and the fountain began to die away: a blessed relief in my precarious post, though I was already soaked. Cheers arose from the crowd as the dying spray blew out over their heads.

Then the pulley jerked again. I drew back instinctively, wrenching my arm out of the clock’s packing frame. With a chafing rasp, it began to drop. My reverie broke, and I clutched myself to the crane. Hunt had managed to shut off the water supply, but the brakes on the cables were hydraulic. In turning off the water, he had released the winch as well.

The clock fell away from me, ever so slowly at first. My first thought was, would I be held responsible? There was no way I could have held on to it, all by myself. More likely it would have dragged me to my death below.

I opened my mouth to call out, but it was too late. The world seemed to fall silent.

The clock gained speed as it fell, tumbling down onto the body of the crane. When it hit the ground, I turned my face away. Not from any danger. More a kind of shame at the destruction of a beautiful thing.

The crash echoed over the mob, rebounding off the grand hotels across the square like a great explosion. I looked down to see the merrymakers shrink back, as shards of glass scattered wide, glimmering in the dim light; a second sound reached me, of the pieces splintering, like the fizzing of a frantic Roman candle.

The mob redoubled their whooping. Within moments, children darted out from the crowd to claim their spoils. By the time I descended, there would be damn all evidence of the clock left. Everyone applauded one last time, as if it were the finale to a fine show of fireworks.

THE NIGHT PORTER

The porter wore a beard as tangled as if he were fresh off a whaler from the Southern Seas. “On my watch,” he moaned. “A body, on my watch.”

“A body?” I stared at the bundle of blankets piled in the corner. Wardle had not said the man was dead. I considered for a discreditable moment taking a blanket for myself, for I was soaked to the skin and shivering.

“One half instant I close my eyes, and there she blows. There she blows! Poor cove’s blowed himself clean apart, so he has.”

“Calm yourself, man. Tell me all that has happened since you came on duty.”

“This repair man, it was, see. Early evening, he turned up. Weren’t expecting him none, but he was that pleasant–”

“From the hydraulic company, was he?”

“Nobody never tells me nothing.” He screwed up his brows. “Anywise, the fellow went about his business in exemplatory fashion. Full of wit and the argot, he was. Spoke Thieves’ Latin and costermonger’s Aye-talian. We had a time, we did. He was highly sympathetical, not like most, that don’t see the hard road I travel on.”

These effusions seemed a trifle excessive. There was an aroma in the air which made me suspicious. I spotted a bottle beneath the man’s chair. Sterner enquiries revealed that it was a gift of poteen furnished by this same repair man. They had shared a toast, or two, to Queen and country. In fact, when pressed, the porter had no clear recollection of the repair man at his work at all. It was not even clear what the man was meant to be repairing.

“Was it the crane he was fixing, or the clock?”

“The clock?” A haunted look came into his eye. “I’ve kept watch over that accursed piece this sixmonth. Ticking, tocking. Tocking, ticking. Drive a man mad.”

“Here?” If he were telling the truth – and I doubted he had the wit to lie – then his phantom repair man must have whisked the clock away, removed the mechanism and then winched what was left on high. I glanced around the rotten little shed. “Why in God’s name did they keep the clock here?”

“Should have gone up long since, but for the lock-out, see. Glad to be rid of it.”

“The lock-out?”

“That’s right. George Potter and his Most Worshipful Association of Master Carpenters. A nine-hour day he wants, and woe betide them as flaunt him.”

“You mean the masons’ strike?”

“What stone you been hiding under? He’s took out all the guilds, since them nine stonemasons fell from the scaffold up the Westminster Palace Hotel.”

I thought of my escapade up the crane and shuddered. “Do you see the masons’ hand in this?”

“Bain’t got the foggiest, me.” He gave a theatrical shrug. “Like as not it’s the Imperial after the Independent again.”

“The what?”

“Gas Wars, I mean to say.”

“Ah yes.” The gas companies were in the habit of blowing up each other’s pipes in territorial disputes. There had been an explosion at the Imperial Gas Works, down by King’s Cross, not two weeks previous. “You blame the gas men, do you?”

“Did I say that?” He stared wide-eyed. “I’s just mentioning, sir. No more, no less. You won’t hear no rash alligators from this particular quarter.”

“Nothing would surprise me,” I murmured, “after the drop you’ve taken.”

“Oh, sir. Have mercy,” he blinked. “I never touches it, me, in the normal run of things, not on duty at least, I don’t. I’s dutiful to the extreme case. Only, this evening–”

The door flew open and in barged Hunt, huffing and puffing as if to blow down the station. “Bloody gauges and levers. I’ll string them up, I will.” His trousers glittered with glass, but he was not chastened in the slightest. He turned on the porter. “Here, is it you that’s let some monkey tamper with our machine?”

The porter seemed to fear him terribly. “I got a wife, sir, and children–”

“Shut up.” Hunt prowled back and forth across the tiny space. “Blithering fool. This the coward that blew himself up, is it?”

“A body, on my watch!” He hid his face in his hands.

“Got what he deserved. Undermining our business. Let’s have a look-see.” Before I could object, Hunt pulled away the heap of blankets.

A musty odour arose from the body. All manner of charges I had drawn up in the bleak hours of night duty, but I had not seen anyone killed. The last corpse I had viewed so close was my mother’s, when I was a child.

The dead man was middle-aged, perhaps older. His face was stone grey, with dark blotches that looked like bruises, though they might have been dirt. His clothes were clean but shabby. Was this really the orchestrator of tonight’s entertainment? He didn’t look like a militant radical, nor a master thief.

Hunt stared at the body and turned quite pale. It seemed strange that I, the novice, should be unperturbed by the corpse, while this beast fresh from a Crimean battlefield stood mesmerised.

Although there was no doubt that the man had breathed his last, I felt obliged somehow to confirm it. I said a quick prayer, then bent over him. My stomach lurched to feel his neck so chill and hard. I felt ashamed to think I had been exulting in the mystery of that night with him lying there cold and dead.

Yet where were the signs of his death? There were no traces of blood; his limbs seemed regular and in good order. His clothes were sopping wet and his features rigid. But his hair looked clean, and his mouth was serene and smiling. I was particularly struck by that smile.

Was he an unskilled labourer, who botched his attempt to work the crane, after dampening the porter’s vigilance? Had he meddled with the clock and fallen, blasted by the water burst? Could it have been a booby trap?

At the sound of Wardle’s voice outside, I went smartly to the door. Coxhill was with him, talking earnestly to two men with notebooks.

“Compensation?” Coxhill was saying. “Pshaw! It should be we that receive compensation. Litigious bloody society we live in. It was the end of ancient Athens and it’ll be the end of us.”

“Ah, Watchman,” said Wardle. He looked past me into the hut, then manoeuvred so as to block the newsmen’s view.

“Sir,” I said quietly, “the man’s dead, sir.”

“Is he, now?” The inspector glanced back at Coxhill, eyes narrowed, but he was fully occupied giving the papers something to write about.

“Inspector,” said one of the newsmen, “can you spare us a moment?”

Wardle turned back to me brusquely. “And the clock?”

“Yes, sir. Somebody’s been tampering–”

“Gunpowder? Explosives?”

“No, sir, but somebody’s taken–”

“Enough.”

“But, sir,” I insisted, desperate to show off my discovery. “Half the clock’s been–”

“I said, that’s all for now, son.” He looked past me; Hunt was still staring at the body. “Don’t be giving nothing away. Not till we know who we can trust.”

“Inspector?” whined one of the newsmen.

Wardle jabbed a finger up at my lapels. “Written report, on my desk, Friday.”

I hesitated. “My superintendent, sir–”

“Which station?”

“Brunswick Square, sir.”

“I’ll have a word.”

“Thank you, sir.” I blinked at my good fortune, to be included so firmly in the enquiry. “Should I take the body somewhere, sir?”

He looked surprised. “What’s that?”

“For post-mortem, or something of the sort?”

“Why not?” he said, nodding to himself. “Mr Coxhill, step inside, would you?”

“Inspector?” The reporter raised his pencil in anticipation. “Jack Scholes, local rag. I understand someone is injured?”

“Blown himself up, has he?” said Coxhill, pushing past me. “Damned fool.”

Wardle eyed him cannily. “Watchman, take that body down yon college mortuary. Ask for Simpson, he’s our man nights.” He lowered his voice. “I want to know how he died. And when. Exactly when. Don’t take half-cock answers, mind. I’ll have another word with the toff and his guard dog.” He turned to confront the newsmen, gritting his teeth as he shut the door behind him.

“Dash it all, I can hardly bear to look.” Coxhill was blathering away to himself. “Blighter’s family are bound to try it on. It’s too beastly.”

I watched him closely. “Am I to understand that this is your own repair man, Mr Coxhill?”

“Repair man? Our machines don’t need repairs. No, no.” He tugged at his beard. “Not one of ours, is he, Hunt? Hunt! I say, do buck up.”