The Kingdom of Bones

by Stephen Gallagher

  “His crimes are not yours.”

  “But I despair.”

  “Why?”

  Caspar moved across the room to the chair that faced her own. As he lowered himself to sit on the edge of it, he said, “Because all is tainted by his base and perverted passions. What must you think when you look upon me now?”

  Louise considered his words, and then chose her own with the greatest of care.

  “That there are passions and appetites which are neither loathsome nor unnatural,” she said. “But which celebrate God and the way that he meant us to be.”

  He gazed at her with a kind of growing wonder, as if she had shone an unexpected light into his personal darkness.

  “I wish I could believe it,” he said.

  She grew bold.

  “I wish I could persuade you,” she said.

  And at that, Caspar somehow managed to give her a fair impression of a man who might be open to persuasion.

  Later that evening, high up in the ironwork under one of the town’s many railway bridges, Sayers found himself a spot to settle where no one could steal up on him, nor any bobby’s lantern seek him out. He could look out through the spans and girders across the rooftops of the city: its gaslit streets, its distant chimneys, the caul of smoke that covered its sky and forever blotted out the stars. He huddled there in a coat that stank of the beerhouse he’d stolen it from, and he tried to set aside all inclination to bewilderment or self-pity and address his thinking to the greater problems that faced him.

  He was satisfied that nothing in his hand was broken. As far as he could tell, the pain in his arm did not represent a new injury but a reawakening of the old. As such, it ought to fade.

  But what to do with himself? Where to go? He’d no friend in this town other than Lily Haynes, and he had no intention of blighting her new life with his problems. He knew that he ought to leave, make a run for London, perhaps, but for one good reason could not bring himself to go.

  He feared for Louise. There was a madman in the troupe, and she was close within his orbit. Sayers had no doubt that it was James Caspar who should now be in shackles, not he. The man killed paupers for sport and gratification. It was obvious that young Arthur had spotted the series of fatal coincidences during the months that he’d spent combing local newspapers for notices, while at the same time enduring Caspar’s unremitting and casual abuse. Passing the information to the police had been his revenge. Alas, the act had rebounded upon him.

  Becker had spoken of a note, sent backstage by Clive Turner-Smith. It had supposedly been returned to its sender with an inscription from Sayers—the inscription that had led the superintendent to his end. Sayers had seen no such note. Which meant that another had intercepted and responded to it in his name.

  Could Caspar’s grip on the boss be such that Whitlock had chosen to hand the policeman’s note to his Leading Male Juvenile instead of his acting manager? There could only be one reason for making such a choice—Whitlock must have guessed the significance of Turner-Smith’s arrival. Which meant that he must already have been aware of James Caspar’s crimes. Thinking back to that tearful display in the lodging-house hallway, Sayers was inclined to think that he had underestimated his employer. Perhaps the man was a greater actor than could be imagined by anyone who only saw him perform upon the stage.

  It would not have been impossible for Caspar to keep the appointment in Sayers’ place. He was offstage for most of the second act of The Purple Diamond, apart from one appearance as a mysterious hooded figure outside a window. This was always an occasion for screams from the audience, and cheers when the mystery was explained—but because his face was never seen at that point, almost anyone might have doubled for him. He could easily have left the theater for twenty minutes and returned to pick up his cue. And then later, back at Mrs. Mack’s, he’d need only to choose his moment to hide the slaughtered callboy in Sayers’ room.

  The bridge began to shake. Up above, a mighty engine passed over. First came its thunder, filling the archway, and then an aftermath of clouds and cinder sparks falling outside like fairy rain. To the damp and soot of the archway it added a familiar smell, of coal and steam and long journeys and places to be, of schedules and order and purpose. Only a few yards above him was the life he had now lost.

  Somewhere beyond his sight, the town hall clock was chiming. The second-house performance of The Purple Diamond would shortly be under way. Sayers leaned his head back against the stonework and closed his eyes.

  He’d tried to approach the lodging house, but had managed to get no closer than the corner of the street. From there he’d seen that the police had left a man outside, and so he’d turned up his collar and walked on without stopping. It was the same on Liverpool Street; constables were all around the theater and when the matinee performance was over, cabs arrived to take the women home.

  Somehow he had to warn her. She would not want to listen, but he had to make himself understood.

  After all, he was, even in his supposed disgrace and enforced exile, the most dedicated of her devoted servants.

  Although the matinee had been a strange and muted affair, by the evening word of that morning’s events had spread all over town. By seven, the house was packed and the atmosphere was electric. Clearly, the Purple Diamond company had become a major and morbid attraction.

  During the opening turn, Gulliford hovered backstage in his Billy Danson makeup and seemed agitated and almost too distressed to go on. The resident stage manager all but had to give him a shove to propel him out of the wings when the band launched into his walking-on music, but he steeled himself and conjured the nerve, and then off he went.

  He would later say that once he was out there, it was as if he’d been handed complete power over some gigantic thousand-headed entity; that he had never known an audience like it, or exercised such control from the stage. The same act that he’d done for twenty years, that had drawn polite applause in Whitehaven and with which he’d “died on his arse” in Glasgow, went over like bread to the starving. They were hungry, they were ready, and they would grab and shake and devour whatever he cared to throw at them.

  “Better have your mop ready, Charlie,” he said to the SM as he came off after his comic song to a storm of applause. “They’re wetting the seats.” And then he skipped back on and took another call, more like a big-name headliner than a second-spot man.

  The mood stayed up throughout the entire first half of the bill, and when the curtain rose on the opening scene of The Purple Diamond, the noisiest of welcomes was followed by the most tense of silences as all strained to follow every nuance and development in the unfolding story…although it would have to be said that this was a drama in which the nuances were very few, and very far between.

  But while it may not have been great art, it was damned good carpentry. Primed by the day’s news, the night’s audience had perhaps come along anticipating a drama of shock and sensation rather than intrigue and mystery. If they did, it was of no matter, because they took to the play’s actual narrative with no less enthusiasm.

  Whitlock was at his bombastic best. In the climactic scene, although nominally addressing the stepfather as played by the First Heavy, he turned to the audience and cried out, “Let everyone in this house bear witness! Every man, woman, and child down to the smallest babe in arms! This boy is, indeed, your long-lost son, and a finer man to bear your name you could not wish for!”

  And the First Heavy replied, “Yes! I knew it not, but know it now.”

  James Caspar, as the falsely accused, was standing upstage with Louise Porter’s Mary D’Alroy. Now the First Heavy turned to him, saying, “Speak, my boy, and say what would repair the wrong I have done you.”

  “I ask for nothing, sir,” Caspar replied, “save this; the hand of your stepdaughter, to exchange my newfound liberty for a sweeter bondage, and to make my happiness complete.”

  “I cannot speak for her,” said the First Heavy, which allowed Whitlock
to take the reins again.

  “Then let her speak for herself!” he cried in a voice that sent a thrill through the audience and a rattle through the chandeliers. “What say you, Mary? Do you find him true?”

  The house seemed to hold its collective breath as Louise turned to Caspar. It was as if the personal happiness of each and every ticket holder would depend on her next words.

  Caspar gripped her arms and held her, gazing imploringly at her. This was a new and unexpected piece of business, but it seemed so natural and truthful that she was neither surprised nor thrown by it.

  “With all my heart,” she said, and the house exploded.

  For a while it was impossible to continue. They roared, they stamped, they cheered, and they whistled. Never had the company known a reception like it. Those onstage had to hold the tableau for a minute or more. Louise gazed steadily into Caspar’s eyes, her breathing shallow and excited, her heart pounding. It continued to pound through Whitlock’s closing speech and on until the moment when, standing in the wings and awaiting her call to sing, she became aware of a presence and realized that James Caspar was standing close behind her.

  When he whispered close to her ear, his breath fanned her neck and stirred the odd wisp of hair.

  She shivered, deliciously, as he said in a low voice, “Now I can see that there are passions and appetites that are neither loathsome nor unnatural. But which celebrate God and the way that he meant us to be.”

  When she turned to look at him, it was to find that he had faded back into the shadows.

  When Louise sang her song, it was as if a mist of tears hung in the air above the stalls. Even the uniformed policemen at the back of the house were dabbing at their eyes. Halfway through it she found herself thinking about young Arthur Steffens, taken from the lodging house to the mortuary, and her voice almost gave way. The women had not been allowed to see his body.

  When she returned backstage to join the others, most of the company were moving around as if they’d been deafened by a blast. After the morning’s sobering events, the last thing they’d expected to experience was this heightened sense of communal passion. It was as if the atmosphere throughout the theater, both before and behind the curtain, was a potent combination of elation and terror; in the midst of death, they were in life’s most vibrant grip.

  The theater had been constructed less than ten years before, but its backstage facilities resembled those of a much older building. Two shows a night, six nights a week, plus matinees and benefits, were bound to pile on the wear and tear. If the management were to spend any money, they’d be sure to put their cash into places where its effects would be seen.

  Someone had taken the screen from Louise’s tiny dressing room, so the house carpenter had rigged a corner curtain for her to change behind. Stepping out of her Mary D’Alroy dress, a rugged piece of working costume that would pass for a fine lady’s garment to anyone standing farther than ten feet away, she heard the door to the corridor open and close. A shadow crossed the curtain, cast by the oil lamp that stood over by the dressing-table mirror.

  She said, “Mrs. Wrigglesworth? I think I felt some stitches go. It was under the left arm, during the swoon.” She held the dress out through the curtain, and it was taken from her.

  “Is there anything from the stage door tonight?” she said as she released the corset and then dropped the first of two petticoats that gave the dress its shape.

  There was no response, and so she said, “Mrs. Wrigglesworth?” and put her head out from behind the curtain.

  James Caspar stood there. Still in his stage clothes, he was alone in the tiny room and no more than three or four feet away from her. His hands were out in front of him and her heavy stage dress lay across them, like something drowned and brought to shore.

  “Mister Caspar!” she said. And then, “James!”

  Caspar’s face was somber.

  “Send me away,” he said.

  “I certainly should.”

  “Then send me away.”

  “I shall.”

  Neither of them moved.

  She said, “Mrs. Wrigglesworth will be coming in here at any moment.”

  “I suspect not,” Caspar said. “I believe that she is presently stitching Mister Whitlock into his rather tightly fitting lucky silk jacket. He says he wishes to feel at his best when negotiating with the management.”

  Nothing separated them other than the flimsy curtain she held in her hand, and the chemise that hung from her shoulders. Which in itself was almost nothing; it was cut straight for a décolleté effect and hung from two thin straps. She felt all but naked before him.

  “Well?” he said.

  “Well,” she replied.

  She realized that she did not want to send him away; she did not actually have to send him away; and nothing, other than custom and convention and the disapproval of the world, actually obliged her to send him away.

  Her only thought was of the embarrassment she’d feel if others in the company were to know of this impropriety. And there was God, of course…but had they not dealt with him already?

  “This has been…,” she said, searching for words that might be equal to her feelings, and failing to find them, “a very unusual day.”

  He turned and, carefully, laid her empty Mary D’Alroy dress over the back of the nearby chair. Originally tailored for the role of Ernestine in Loan of a Lover, it had been acquired from the Theatre Royal as part of the Bilston stock and altered to fit.

  “And an evening like no other,” he said. “What say you, Mary? Do you find me true?”

  “Mister Caspar!” she protested. But by now her heart was pounding as it had on the stage.

  “Then send me away.”

  On any other day, and under any other circumstances, Louise would have conducted herself in the manner expected of her sex; where young men were wild, it fell to young women to be their governors and leaders in decorum.

  But this had been no ordinary day. It had been a day charged with an awareness of life’s brevity, and the immediacy of its potential end. A day with a simple lesson: that all is fleeting, and whatever is not seized with boldness, whether rightly or wrongly, is soon gone.

  She drew the curtain aside and stepped out.

  “Secure the door,” she whispered, “and do not speak again.”

  SEVENTEEN

  Louise was completely lacking in experience, but not entirely without understanding. Three summers spent with cousins on a country farm had given her plenty to muse upon when it came to the ways of nature. Observation had helped her with many of the questions that an education in classical art might raise, but then stop just short of answering. All those nymphs and shepherds surely had something in mind when they were coming away, but it fell to the barnyard to provide some suggestion as to exactly what it was.

  The surprise lay not in her own uncertainty, but in Caspar’s. Where she expected him to be bold, he was hesitant. Where she’d assumed he’d be experienced, he seemed innocent. He clearly was not quite the man of the world that she’d assumed him to be.

  Far from this being a disappointment, she could imagine nothing that might have endeared him to her more.

  It was a hasty coupling, but an effective one. She was almost dismayed by her eagerness for it to succeed.

  Afterward, on the floor of the dressing room by the dim light of the oil lamp, tangled in the folds of the curtain that they’d pulled down from the rail to serve them for a hasty bed, she stared up at the shadows on the ceiling and thought, So now I am fallen. The thought amused her so much that she convulsed in a moment of silent laughter. Were she genuinely fallen, she would surely know it in her heart; and her heart was telling her no such thing.

  “What?” said Caspar from beside her, breaking their silence for the first time.

  “I was thinking that I am a fallen woman,” she repeated aloud, and fought the urge to giggle again, as it would not do to be heard from outside.

  “Forgiv
e me,” he said, and started to rise.

  “No!” she said, sitting up quickly and reaching for him. “You misunderstand.”

  “I do understand,” he said, adjusting his clothing. “I cannot stay. Let us speak of this in earnest, tomorrow.”

  He listened at the door for a moment before unfastening it and slipping out, opening it no wider than was necessary.

  Louise was left, half out of her chemise and alone, entangled in a makeshift coverlet on a dressing-room floor, her stage costume scattered around her and her going-home clothes hung up on the back of the door.

  Her euphoria lasted awhile, but in solitude it began to fade. What was the hour? The theater emptied quickly when the night’s work was over, and she could no longer hear sounds from the corridor outside. She got to her feet, and began picking up the various items to gather them together.

  She lacked organization. Bending to pick up one thing, she felt something else slip from her arms. But she could not leave the room in disarray, however late it was. Tomorrow was Sunday and another traveling day, although at the end of tonight’s performance a rumor had gone around of a return engagement.

  Perhaps that was the reason for Whitlock’s best-suit meeting with the theater’s management. He was dressing to play the Man of Business, and probably meant to negotiate an improvement in the terms. This was a task that, under more normal circumstances, would have fallen to Tom Sayers.

  Louise was uncertain how she would feel about extending the run. It seemed uncomfortably close to profiting from a tragedy. But the company had a living to make, and so did she; without her income, she would have no form of support at all. Her father had died leaving her mother with neither money nor property, but with significant debts. Mrs. Porter, once used to presiding over a household of her own, had chosen kitchen work in a vicarage over the poorhouse. Louise had elected to pursue a life on the stage rather than to follow her into service.

  Her mother’s greatest concern for her had been over the moral quality of the world she had chosen. As if no maidservant had ever been seduced below stairs, or no cleric ever strayed!