The Kingdom of Bones (12 page)

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

L
ouise 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.

“Forgive 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!

And, besides, she’d found that actors loved the Church; they seemed to look upon it as a related branch of their art.

The house was silent as she made her way down to the stage door. She’d dressed in haste and bundled her costume items into the theatrical hamper, ready to be transported. Someone had been around and turned out all the gas, so she carried the oil lamp from her dressing room to light her way. She was beginning to fear that she might have been locked in, but the stage doorkeeper was waiting for her.

She said, “Has Mister Caspar left?”

“Ages ago,” the doorkeeper said. “Ah’ve been waitin’ to lock up.”

“I’m sorry,” Louise said. “I lost all track of time.”

The doorkeeper said nothing and his expression, mostly hidden behind an enormous mustache that turned a youngish man’s face into an ancient’s, gave very little away. But she was convinced that he must have guessed her secret, and she tried not to blush while avoiding his eyes. She handed over the oil lamp and stepped out into the alleyway beside the theater, and the doorkeeper stopped to snuff out the various remaining lights before following her with his enormous bunch of keys.

It had been raining. The stone flags of the alleyway were slick and shiny, reflecting the lit windows of the public house next door. There was a big crowd in there, making a lot of noise—most of them had probably moved over from the theater when the play had ended. Someone had told her that the landlord had closed off the saloon bar and was charging a penny for people to enter and look at the murder scene.

She could see a policeman in a rain cape standing at the end of the passageway, and behind him a hansom cab waiting to take her back to her lodgings.

She thanked the policeman for his patience, and made some excuse about having to look for a lost bracelet. He said it was of no matter. He sent off a couple of passersby who’d lingered to stare, and lent her his arm to climb up into the cab.

The construction of the hansom was such that the driver’s position was above and behind her. She called up to him, “Forgive me, driver, but I can’t recall the exact address. It’s Mrs. Mack’s. Do you know it?”

He did not speak, but for a reply cracked his whip across the horse and set the carriage into unexpected motion. She was taken by surprise and fell back roughly in her seat; although the seat was padded and buttoned, the breath was driven from her for a moment.

She supposed she must have annoyed him by keeping him waiting for so long. But this really would not do. They were barreling along as if the ground under their ironbound wheels were a compact sandy beach, not the cobblestones and tram rails of an industrial town. She was shaken back and forth and had to hang onto one of the side straps; she genuinely feared that the next rut, jolt, or bang into a kerbstone might throw her out of the cab altogether.

“Driver!” she called over her shoulder. “Driver, what are you doing? Slow down, please!” But if the driver heard her, he did not respond.

As they tore down the length of Liverpool Street, she began to get the impression that they were only speeding because the driver did not have complete control of the reins. She could hear him calling to the animal, to no great effect.

They did not slow for the next crossroads and barely managed the turn as they cut across before a late tram; she could hear the angry ringing of its bell as they left it behind, plunging on into darker and less-populous streets.

Needless to say, this was not the way to Mrs. Mack’s. They were heading into an area of tall, dark factory buildings and railway viaducts. A train thundered over as they thundered beneath, and in the shadows of a brick archway where a single streetlamp burned, the driver finally managed to bring his horse under control and rein it to a halt.

Louise wanted to jump from the cab before it could set off again, but could not turn her intentions into action; she stayed frozen in her seat and clinging to the strap, while the carriage shifted and rocked as the driver tied off the reins and climbed down from his post.

He was coming to speak to her. A fine time to show concern for her welfare! She might have been shaken to death already, or flung out on some corner.

The cab rocked again as the driver put his weight onto the step and drew himself up to look in on her.

“Louise,” he said, and he reached up and pulled down the coachman’s muffler that had been wrapped to cover the lower half of his face. “It’s me. Don’t be afraid. Everything you’ve heard is untrue.”

She stared in horror. By the light of that single lamp, he stood revealed. Tom Sayers.

She’d supposed him long gone in his escape but here he was, an immediate presence with nothing to protect her from him.

“Stay away from me,” she tried to say, but he climbed up into the cab to join her on the seat. She pushed herself back across it, as far as she could go until the armrest stopped her.

Not even seeming to notice how she shrank from him, he kept on moving in closer to her and said, “Caspar is debauched, Louise. He is the author of all those crimes of which I am accused, and the engineer of my entrapment. He’s not some errant angel that you can save and subdue. He is a beast among men.”

“I want to go back,” she said.

“Have you ever known me to break a promise, Louise? Or known me to go back on my word? Or tell a lie when the truth was inconvenient? Think hard now, it’s important.”

His manner was so intense that she hardly dared offer an answer.

“Never,” he said. “Isn’t that right?”

She nodded, too eagerly.

“So, listen to me now. I will walk with you into any police station in the land, if you will let me get you away from that man and if you promise me that you will not return to him.”

“I beg of you, Tom,” she managed then. “Please let me go.”

“Have you heard nothing of what I’ve been saying?”

“Yes,” she said.

“And you believe me?”

She tried to answer, and to say whatever he might want to hear. But it was too late. He could already see that she did not.

“Then what, Louise?” he said. “I’ve shown you the truth. What more do I have to say?”

“Tom,” she said. “The whole world knows what you did. Can’t you see that I’m afraid of you?”

This was clearly not a possibility that had occurred to the former prizefighter. For the first time, he seemed to see this situation through her eyes. It was as if he had not been able to imagine that she might ever believe him guilty.

Until now.

His face showed his dismay. He drew back, raising his hands to show that he meant her no harm.

“I understand,” he said. “I had thought that you might…” But he did not pursue this.

Instead, he said, “Louise, whatever you may think of me now, promise me for the friendship we once had. Will you at least stay away from him?”

“How can I promise that?” she said. “I love him.”

He was about to say something else, and stopped. It was as if her words had settled before exploding, changing his world instantly and for all time. Whatever else he had been preparing to say, it would count for nothing now.

He turned his head aside. He looked at his hands. He rubbed distractedly at his brow for a moment, then he seemed to remember where he was and started to climb out of the cab. Louise slid down a little—she had been so tense and fear-stricken that she’d pressed herself against the side of the carriage and had risen several inches in her seat.

She felt sick and weak. It was late and she would have to walk alone in darkness to find some kind of safety, but that would be as nothing compared to what she might otherwise have been forced to endure. She tried to summon the strength to climb out of the cab but knew that she dared not move until Sayers had gone; she could hear him out there, pacing up and down and raving aloud to himself in the echo of the viaduct archway, words that she could not make out but which confirmed him to be the madman suggested by his deeds.

All she could be sure of was a cry of “No,” anguished at first, repeated with defiance, and then repeated again with determination as the carriage rocked on its wheels once more; she realized then that her chance had come and gone before she’d known it and that Sayers was now climbing back up to the driver’s position. She wondered if there might still be time for a rash leap for safety, but even as she began to move the whip cracked over the horse again. Like Pegasus, he took off. It was all Louise could do to grab hold of the strap and hang on.

For a moment she entertained the faint hope that she had somehow touched Sayers’ heart, and that he was taking her back to light and life and the safety of the lodging house.

But as they galloped on into deeper and deeper darkness, leaving even the factories and the gasworks behind them, she knew that her hopes were unfounded.

At the public counter in the police station that served the Knott Mill district of Manchester, an aggrieved cabbie was giving his details to the night sergeant and watching as the officer painstakingly wrote them down in the station’s incident book. The sergeant had a neat hand, but a slow one. But then again, the nights could be very long. There was rarely anything to hurry for.

“Anything else taken?” the sergeant said.

“What’s left to take?” the cabbie said. “’E got me cab and me ’orse and me ’at and me scarf.”

“What did he look like?”

“I dunno.”

“You saw him, didn’t you?”

“But how do you say? Ordinary.” With this, the cabbie pointed to his cheekbone. “Wi’ a big bruise just ’ere.”

For some reason, that seemed to make the sergeant take notice.

“
Did
he?” he said.

“’E did.”

“Stay there,” the sergeant said, and disappeared into the back.

The cabbie leaned his elbow on the counter and looked around. Behind him was a wooden bench, and on the wooden bench sat an assorted group of low-living characters who seemed to be assembled there for no obvious purpose. None were clean, and most were missing teeth. Two appeared to have been in a fight, perhaps even with each other. All sat in silence. None seemed bright enough to be bored.

The sergeant reappeared with a well-read copy of the late edition of the
Manchester Evening News,
which he slapped onto the counter in front of the cabbie. It was opened and folded to show the account of the arrest for murder and sensational escape of former prizefighter Tom Sayers, lately of Edmund Whitlock’s touring theatrical troupe. The three-columned story was accompanied by an engraving of Sayers in his boxing days, stripped to the waist, fists raised, hair slicked down, standing with all his weight resting on his back foot. The cabbie looked at the picture and then looked at the headline across the columns beside it.