The Kingdom of Bones

by Stephen Gallagher

  The day would surely come when the Purple Diamond tour would have to end, if only because there would be no one left in England who had not seen it. When the end arrived, it was hard to say what might happen; whether Whitlock would pay out money for another play and raise a new company out of the old, or return to good old Shakespeare (but not his Romeo again, please God, not his Romeo), or buy himself that cottage down in Kent to see out his time in some more sedate manner.

  One way or another, there would be upheaval. With any luck, Caspar would go his own way. And that, Sayers felt, would be the time to broach the subject of offering his personal service to Louise. Anything sooner would not be appropriate.

  He’d spent another fitful hour or two lying in his bed and staring at the moonlight through the curtains, until finally sleep had taken pity and claimed him.

  His was one of the attic rooms, three flights up with a part-sloping ceiling and a hook on the roof beam to hang his shaving mirror. His window was really a skylight. Between the washstand and his cabin trunk there was little room to spare.

  He threw back the covers and sat on the side of the bed. He put his face in his hands and tried to massage it into something that might resemble a man awake. As he was doing this, there was a discreet tap at his door.

  Very discreet. Almost womanly.

  Panic began to stir in Tom Sayers’ breast. Whatever this was, he was unprepared. He slept in his underwear, and his underwear was a testament to the longevity of unbleached wool and his skills with a darning needle.

  “Yes?” he said.

  It was a man’s voice that answered. “Mister Sayers?” But it was not a voice that he recognized.

  “Who is it?” he said, reaching for the trousers that he’d hung by their braces on the end of his bed.

  Instead of a reply, his door burst open. Two policemen were across the room and onto him before he could respond. They seized his arms and held him fast while another, this one with a sergeant’s stripes, came in close behind them with handcuffs at the ready. They hauled him to his feet; and when he began to struggle, they turned him and ran him back to pin him against the wall. The impact drove the breath from his body and gave them a few moments of dominance.

  Last into the room came a dark-eyed man of around thirty. He glanced around as the handcuffs were being placed over Sayers’ wrists and screwed down, the uniformed men containing his struggles and ignoring his protests.

  “Watch those hands,” the younger man warned. “He was a prizefighter, once.”

  Clearly, the situation was of this man’s making. Not in a uniform himself, he commanded those who were. Sayers managed a look at him over the sergeant’s shoulder. “Sir!” he said. “This is outrageous!”

  The plainclothesman did not respond immediately. When the sergeant was done with the cuffs, he said, “Search his possessions.” Only then did he stand before Sayers and weigh him up from one end to the other, before looking him in the eye.

  “You dare speak to me of outrage?” he said calmly. “Please do not test me so, Mister Sayers. I have a certain pride in my professional restraint. I would not wish to lose that over someone like you.”

  Sayers doubled his fists and thrust the handcuffs in the air. “Explain yourself,” he said, “and then explain this!”

  “I am Detective Inspector Sebastian Becker,” the plainclothesman said. “And you know why I am here. Pretend ignorance if that is your only defense. It will not save you from the hangman’s rope.”

  “Sir…” said the sergeant, and all turned to look. Becker’s threat of the hangman had only served to bewilder Sayers even more. He felt like an actor who’d walked through the wrong stage door into the midst of another company’s drama. As he craned to see what new disclosure was to be sprung upon him, he became aware that there were more policemen on the landing outside his room.

  With some difficulty, the sergeant had opened up his cabin trunk. As always, it stood on its end, so that it could be opened as a traveling wardrobe. One side contained shallow drawers and compartments. The other was a hanging space for suits of clothes and linen. These had been torn from their hangers and lay crammed into the bottom of the trunk, while the space set aside for them was filled with something else.

  In a private exhibition of curiosities in London, Sayers had once been shown an anatomical model in wax; it was of a woman, cut from clavicle to pubis, her belly a removable lid that revealed the gestating fetus within. Perfectly formed, but imperfectly understood, the unborn was depicted as a tightly packed homunculus of adult proportions.

  It was in similar manner that the slaughtered body of fifteen-year-old Arthur Steffens had been folded and crushed, upside down, into the confines of Tom Sayers’ trunk.

  Sebastian Becker crouched by the inverted cadaver and looked it all over with care. He touched nothing until he came to the head and then, with great delicacy and some distaste, he knelt and reached in and teased something from the boy’s partly open jaws. It was a piece of paper, screwed up into a ball and stuffed into the young man’s mouth. The body had been dead for long enough to grow rigid, and Becker took some time to extract the paper without tearing it.

  Sayers felt his legs giving way. The policemen holding him on either side sensed him going, and pulled him back to his feet. His mind had turned blank. He was so distressed at this discovery of the young boy’s situation that, for a moment, he had ceased to question his own.

  Becker opened up the crumpled sheet and smoothed it out. Still down on one knee, he laid the unfolded paper on the floor and contemplated it for some time.

  Then he said, “The last time I saw this, it was in the hand of Superintendent Turner-Smith.” He looked up.

  Sayers could offer him nothing.

  “Don’t play the innocent, Sayers,” the detective said, rising. “Clive Turner-Smith is the name of the man you murdered last night. That would have been just before you came back here and did for his informant.” He looked to the men holding Sayers. “Get him dressed,” he said. “And nobody touch the boy. I’ll call for the police surgeon.”

  They let Sayers struggle into his trousers and boots. They refused to take off the handcuffs and so his shirt, coat, and waistcoat had to be slung over his shoulders. In this humiliating state of disarray, he was bundled from his room and out onto the landing. He attempted at least to tuck his shirttails into his trousers, but was only able to make half a job of it.

  The building was full of policemen. He couldn’t count them. He could see more outside, through the windows. It wasn’t difficult to imagine an entire hostile army of them, with Sayers himself at the center of their inward-facing circle. As they marched him down the stairs, men on each landing held the other guests back and obliged them to stay in their rooms. Once Sayers had gone by the guests were allowed out, and on each level they gathered at the balustrades to look down the stairwell and watch him go.

  Down in the hallway stood Edmund Whitlock. For once the old tragedian was stricken by genuine emotion; his eyes were watery and red, and his hand trembled as he folded and refolded a handkerchief to dab them with.

  As they went by him Becker said, “Thank you for your cooperation, Mister Whitlock.”

  Whitlock seemed not to hear the detective. He was looking past him, and at Sayers.

  “Oh, Tom,” he said, helplessly. “What have you done? I feel only a great sadness for you.”

  “I have done nothing,” Sayers began to protest, but a shove in his back propelled him onward.

  Out on the street, the police were holding back a crowd. A horse-drawn Black Maria van awaited him. Windowless, its panels riveted and strong, its rear door open and ready.

  Sayers looked back toward the lodging house. It was a tall, narrow building, with steps up to the front door and railings to the pavement. There, in the sitting-room window, stood Louise Porter. Her face was a pale mask of disbelief. Behind Louise stood James Caspar.

  As Sayers watched, Caspar placed a solicitous hand on Louise’
s shoulder and leaned in to murmur something in her ear. It seemed to Sayers that, despite the distance and the window glass between them, Caspar was making the gesture as much for Sayers to see as for Louise’s comfort.

  His escort took his hesitation for rebellion. Seizing him by the arms, they ran him up the steps at the back of the wagon and propelled him inside before slamming and padlocking the door.

  THIRTEEN

  The wagon measured about eight feet by six. There were two plain benches, one down either side; after the first lurch into motion he sat with his feet braced wide against the bench opposite, as the handcuffs made it difficult for him to steady himself any other way.

  He could barely see. The only light came from vents in the roof and a single barred window in the door, through which he could hear boys following in the street and shouting something he couldn’t make out. As the wagon bounced along, Sayers desperately tried to make some sense of the past half hour. He could not.

  There was no doubting that his situation was dire. He’d begun by thinking that there had been some terrible misunderstanding that would be cleared up by a closer investigation, but that clearly would not do. No misunderstanding could explain the death of Arthur Steffens or the presence of his remains in Sayers’ room; no simple human error could have placed him there. This was an act of deliberate and double malice, both in the murder and in the directing of blame for it.

  Sayers had last seen Arthur in life at the playhouse. He was not lodging at Mrs. Mack’s, but with the stage crew over the pub in Cross Lane. He must have been killed and his body carried up to the attic room sometime between the end of the night’s performance and Sayers’ return from his small-hours walk. Which suggested to Sayers that only someone inside the lodging house would have been positioned and able to take the opportunity.

  All of his instincts pointed him to James Caspar. Unfortunately, no evidence did. Caspar’s dissolute habits and their shared antipathy were proof of nothing; Sayers could speak of them and hope that the police might be moved to uncover some damning new information, but such effort on their part was unlikely. They were in no doubt that they had their man.

  He heard the driver calling to the horses, and felt the wagon slow. The bone shaking grew more intense as it went into a turn, and Sayers had to brace himself harder or be thrown onto his side. To be shackled in handcuffs was a greater torment than he could ever have imagined. The physical discomfort was bearable, but because of their restriction he fought a constant urge to panic.

  The wagon came to a halt. Nothing happened for a while, and nobody came to speak to him. He went to the door and, looking out through the bars, saw that he was in a police yard with a high brick wall around it. An ostler was leading horses across open ground while, over at the yard’s far side, the gates by which they’d entered were being closed by an elderly watchman. The watchman had lost a limb, but moved with speed and skill on his remaining leg and a wooden crutch.

  Sayers settled again, and after a while they came for him. He heard the padlock being removed, and then one of the uniformed men looked in through the bars, in case the prisoner should decide to come out fighting.

  Six of them were waiting for him in the yard. Big, experienced-looking men, and their sergeant the biggest of them all. They had truncheons at the ready, and for a moment Sayers thought that he was to be driven with a beating toward the police station’s jail entrance. But they formed a group around him and he was pushed, prodded, and generally herded toward the grim redbrick building overlooking the yard.

  During the next hour, he was given a prisoner’s examination and photographed. The handcuffs were removed and he was finally able to button his shirt and put on his waistcoat. He moved wherever he was sent, stood where he was told to stand. He resisted any urge to argue or rebel, knowing that neither would go well for him. He needed to maintain his composure until given the opportunity to speak. Any protest before then would be wasted indignation.

  At no point was he left alone or unsupervised. Finally, he was walked into a room where Sebastian Becker and two much older, more senior-looking men were waiting. Both were high-collared and bearded and had small, hard-button eyes. The big sergeant from the yard stood just inside the door, and a shorthand clerk sat ready to take down anything that Sayers might say. The room had bare walls of painted brick and a cellar-style window that was too high to reach, and too small to escape through if anyone ever did.

  There was a chair, and he was allowed to sit. Sayers was told of the charges against him, and at last had the opportunity to provide an account of himself.

  After giving his birth date and such other details of his life that he could be sure of, he started to speak in the knowledge that whatever he said now would be an important record for the days ahead. Forthright or evasive, self-possessed or sniveling, here would be set down his character as the world would know it.

  “I was a prizefighter and professional sportsman for seven years,” he said. “I was in training at Chesham for a bout with Charles Wainwright, and I was attacked and struck on the arm with an iron bar. It was an attempt to influence the result, I’m certain of that. But they did their work too well and I was unable to fight at all. I’d borrowed one thousand pounds from the Marquis of Reddesley in advance of the match, and it had to be repaid.

  “I wrote a boxing sketch and got up a small company to play it around the halls. As a fighter I had a certain popularity, and I repaid the debt. But people’s memories fade very quickly, and so I turned my hand to management. I’ve managed for several companies since. Whitlock’s for the past two years.”

  The two senior men continued to sit without expression throughout, while Sebastian Becker listened closely. He seemed to be searching for some particular meaning or enlightenment that he did not, could not, find.

  He said, “I don’t understand you, Sayers.” The story he seemed to understand well enough; it was the man he could not fathom.

  “There is much here that I do not understand, Inspector Becker.”

  “Is it some form of a blood lust? Something you could no longer satisfy in the ring and so you had to turn it onto the rest of us instead? I’ve seen murder for gain. For revenge. Out of rage or for passion. But never before have I seen such cruel and unusual murder for sheer love of its horror.”

  “I’ve harmed no one.”

  “You blinded a man in the ring once.”

  “I fought by the rules. The man knew the risks.”

  “What am I looking at, Sayers? Are you an aberration? Or are you something terrible and new?”

  “You are looking at an innocent man, Inspector Becker.”

  “Don’t you realize that only cooperation can help you now? You’ll still hang, of course. Nothing can change that. But there’s more than one path to the gallows.”

  “You speak of hanging. You found a boy in my room that I neither harmed nor placed there, and you speak of crimes against people that I do not know nor have even met. At no time did I ever hear the name of Clive Turner-Smith until I had it from your lips.”

  “You arranged to meet him in the saloon of the public house by the theater during the second act of last night’s performance. Your note was still in his pocket when you speared him with his own blade.”

  “I put my hand to no note. And at no time did I ever leave the theater.”

  “The saloon bar was a matter of yards from the stage door. No one saw you backstage in that time.”

  “I went to look at the play from the back of the auditorium.”

  “Where everyone’s attention was on the players. How very convenient.”

  “Ask Lily Haynes. She works behind the bar. She saw me. She spoke to me.”

  “Not in the second half of the evening, she didn’t. Admit it, Sayers. Stop lying. Behave like a man and not the base thing you have descended to. You’ve left a trail of blood that matches your company’s dates exactly. Did you think that by targeting paupers and unfortunates in different places you might e
scape notice for your crimes? A fifteen-year-old boy saw through you. And the evidence he provided will damn you.”

  Saying this, he picked up the page of pasted newsprint that he’d taken from the body in the lodging house, and thrust it out for Sayers to see. Suddenly, instinct and reason moved a step closer together.

  “Caspar,” Sayers breathed.

  “Mister Caspar was onstage throughout the evening. He has seven hundred and fifty ticket-holding witnesses. How many could have spoken for you? One. Whom you strangled and stuffed into a box with your second-best suit.”

  “In God’s name, Becker, don’t close your mind to me or a terrible injustice will be done!”

  “Don’t quote the name of God at me, Sayers. If God exists, you serve a different master. I take it you will not confess.” He rose to his feet. The clerk stopped writing, and began to pack away his notebook and writing kit. One of the two senior men muttered something inaudible to the inspector, and then he and his colleague left the room.

  Sebastian Becker came around to stand in front of Sayers. He crouched a little and looked into the prizefighter’s eyes, as if in search of something.

  “Help me, Sayers,” he said. “It cannot change your fate, but help me to understand. Lily Haynes would believe no ill of you. Clearly, she is wrong. But how can a man who inspires such loyalty in his friends be capable of such deeds as yours? How can a fiend be in any way human, Sayers? Or a human being truly a fiend?”

  “You’d have me explain what I do not know,” Sayers said. “I tell you once more, I am innocent of these deeds. Call back your clerk, and I’ll tell you again.”

  Sebastian Becker straightened up and said, “You have killed an officer of the law. That means he was a brother to every man here. But we are not beasts as you are, Sayers. You will face the ultimate penalty, but there will be no rough handling. The true test of justice comes in moments like these.”