off the hands that would support him. He raised a finger, as if he’d just been struck by a brilliant idea that he was about to express.
But then, instead of coming out with it, he looked and saw the open compartment door. He went toward it like a falling oak. As he disappeared from sight, the door was slid from within and the blinds pulled with a speed that seemed impossible.
Louise moved to the closed door, head bent and listening, hand raised to knock.
“Mister Caspar?” she said. A sound came from the other side of the door; more than coughing, not quite vomiting. The Silent Man and his wife exchanged a glance and started to back away.
Louise turned to Sayers as he reached her.
“I don’t know what to do for him,” she said helplessly.
Sayers said, “Come away, Louise. Please.”
From inside the compartment, Caspar’s audible exertions grew more major.
“But what if he needs a doctor?” Louise said.
“I do think that’s unlikely.”
Something caught her eye as she glanced down. Sayers looked and saw something pooling under the door. It was a widening fan of red. It was thick and moving slowly.
Sayers hardly knew what to say.
But he did not need to say a thing for Louise’s eyes turned upward in her head and she fell against him in a dead faint. She turned as she fell, and her feet kicked up into the air; before he knew it, he was holding her in both arms as if to carry her to safety.
He was too shocked to move. Her body was utterly relaxed and pressed against his, almost the full length of it; her weight in his arms, her head against his shoulder, the warm scent of her hair up close to his face. It was like the first time he had danced with a woman, only more so; the same overwhelming sense of forbidden physical contact, the same heady feeling of time slowing down. And the fact that his first dance had been with one of his aunts left him totally unprepared for this.
“Bring her in here!” Whitlock’s voice rang down the corridor. Sayers looked over his shoulder and saw the boss in the doorway to his own compartment, beckoning. He turned around with extra care, swaying with the motion of the train. One of Louise’s shoes dropped, and he had to leave it where it fell. Moving sideways, holding tight to the weight and warmth of her, he shuffled along.
“Mrs. Wrigglesworth!” Whitlock called again, and as Sayers carried Louise into the compartment the sewing woman appeared behind him.
“Fetch smelling salts,” Whitlock said to her, and she quickly vanished again.
Gussie was removed to his basket and Miss Porter was lowered onto the seat. The sewing woman patted Louise’s hand while Whitlock waved the bottle of ammonia salts under her nose. Sayers stood back, feeling awkward and embarrassed but not as unhappy as he might. The sense of Louise so entirely in his arms would take a long time to fade.
“Easy, child,” Whitlock said as the ammonia brought her to her senses with a start. “All is well.”
Louise blinked dazedly. Whitlock moved back as she pushed herself to sit upright. “I don’t understand,” she said.
“Young Mister Caspar has rather disgraced himself.”
“Is he not dying?”
“By morning, I’ve no doubt he’ll think it preferable to the head that he’ll have.”
“What about the blood?”
“Blood?”
“Under the door.”
“Ah. Sayers?” Whitlock looked up at his acting manager.
“Cheap red wine and ruby port,” Sayers suggested tersely. He was in no mood to offer excuses for Caspar. Let Louise see the man as he really was.
Whitlock said, “Let us pursue this indelicate line no further. I have to ask for your understanding.” He looked around to include Tom Sayers and the sewing woman. “All of you,” he said. “This is not something of which I often speak. I knew Caspar’s father. I’ll go into no details, but they had been separated for some time. Caspar was a wild child and all but a lost soul then. His father had taken on the work of reclaiming him for God, but died with it barely begun. I swore to him that I would continue the work until its end. I pledged my own soul to the task.” At this point, he looked pointedly at Sayers. “Do not judge Caspar too harshly,” he said. “One day you will see the good in him, as I do. There has been much to overcome. There is yet some distance to go.”
“That is a very noble story, Mister Whitlock,” Louise said, and Sayers felt his heart sink a little.
Whitlock acknowledged her compliment with a slight and graceful nod. Sayers, tight-faced, was disinclined to believe a single word of it. He knew Whitlock’s technique too well, and was least persuaded when the old tragedian seemed at his most sincere. But he said nothing.
A few minutes later, Louise was well enough to return to her own berth. Sayers would have stayed to present his argument to Whitlock, but a warning look told him that Whitlock would not have it. At least not here, and not now.
Sayers stepped out of Whitlock’s compartment and closed the door behind him. It was, perhaps, inevitable that Louise would believe only the best of someone. Had Caspar been a worthier man, Sayers’ gloom would have been more profound; as it was, he had to have faith that she would see the wastrel’s true nature before too long, and reach the appropriate conclusion. By much the same token, Sayers hoped to have his own qualities understood.
A woman would choose the steadfast man in the end. It was always so upon the stage.
The corridor was empty now. The sewing woman had retrieved Louise’s fallen shoe. Everyone else in the company had retired.
Except for one figure, down at the far end.
The Mute Woman was there on her hands and knees outside Caspar’s compartment. She had several rags and a bucket of water, and she was cleaning up the stain from the floor.
She looked up, and her eyes met Sayers’ own. Her expression did not change. She swayed a little with the movement of the train. Her face remained blank.
And as Sayers turned to make his way to the berth that he was to share with the Low Comedian, the Mute Woman lowered her head and carried on with her task.
SEVEN
The next morning, about an hour before noon, a group of men passed through the gates of the cattle yard. Three were in police uniforms, and two were not. They were led by Superintendent Turner-Smith, a formidable figure with a broad white mustache, a war wound, and a walking stick. Despite his impediment, the others had to hasten to keep up with him.
The group crossed the marshaling area to reach the slaughterhouse. There was a bellowing from the nearby pens, and a foul country smell in the air. The business of the cattle market had been under way since first light, but after the last arrivals the stones of the yard had been swept and most of the dung moved outside the walls. Turner-Smith spied an approaching figure and altered his course in order that the two of them should meet.
The approaching figure was a man of less than thirty, brown-haired and black-suited. He’d a broad forehead and serious eyes, as brown as any Spanish girl’s.
“Well then, Becker,” Turner-Smith said. “What do you have for me?”
Sebastian Becker, the youngest inspector in the city police’s Detective Department, fell into step beside his superior and pointed the way.
“It’s the head slaughterman we need to speak to, sir,” Becker said. “He’s waiting for us upstairs.”
“They use stairs?” Turner-Smith said. “Who’d have imagined such talented animals?”
“There’s a ramp, sir. Or I could have the evidence brought down. They slaughter the animals on one floor and butcher them on another.”
“I think I can manage the ascent. We may be in a knacker’s yard, Sebastian, but I’m not quite ready to turn myself in for cats’ meat yet.”
