The Kingdom of Bones

Turner-Smith considered the pages for a moment longer. Then with the aid of his stick, he rose to his feet.

“I shall act upon this,” he said. “Where is the company now?”

Sebastian had already made inquiry of the Lyric’s management, and had confirmed the information by telegraph.

“In Lancashire,” he said. “At the Prince of Wales Theatre in Salford.”

“I’ll spare you Salford,” Turner-Smith said with a smile, “and I shall pursue this myself. But do not worry. I’ll ensure you get full credit for your insight here.”

“I do not doubt it. Take care up there, sir.”

Turner-Smith raised his walking stick and, holding it horizontally between them, gave it a twist and pulled so that the shaft separated into two halves. The action revealed part of the sword blade that lay hidden within it.

“Have no fears for me,” Turner-Smith said. “I know Liverpool Street of old.”

TEN

The Prince of Wales Theatre ran a variety bill, and The Purple Diamond had been brought in to provide the second half of it. The first part of the program included Felix’s troupe of Siberian Wolf Hounds, Nelly Farrell, the Glittering Star of Erin, Medley the Mimic, and “musical wonders” The Avolo Boys. They were short of a second-spot comedian, so Gulliford had seized the chance to resurrect his old act and the baggy suit he performed it in. To his dismay, the suit was no longer quite so baggy as it once had been. But he went over well at the first matinee, so the management engaged him to double up his jobs for the rest of the run.

Friday night brought the best house of the week. Doors opened at six and the entertainment began at six- thirty. There was little for Sayers to do once the play was settled into a new venue, but he would always stand ready to give a correcting hand to any problem that might arise. Sometimes, when everything was running smoothly backstage, he would go around to the rear of the auditorium and watch the show for a while.

As Bram Stoker had so astutely remembered, Sayers had been a performer once. When injury had cut short his sporting career, he had taken to the stage in a sketch dramatizing the events surrounding his most famous bout. Although he was hardly a born actor, he was at least up to the challenge of representing his own history. He’d been a popular fighter, and now found enough success on the Halls to square his debts and discover a new living.

Having managed his own troupe, he now managed others. While he sometimes felt a pang of envy for those to whom the limelight seemed a natural home, he knew that his dramatic talent had already been exploited to its limit.

Sayers stood at the back of the house and watched as Nelly Farrell sang of how one black sheep shall never spoil the flock. She was a strong-featured, short-haired, can-belto performer of Irish comic songs, and Louise Porter’s opposite in almost every way.

He listened to a couple of her verses, and then turned and wandered through into the bar where a smaller crowd, drinks in hand, watched the stage through the auditorium pillars.

Sayers felt restless this evening. He often did, when everything was in order and there was little left to occupy him. Without the usual mass of practical detail to engage his thoughts, they tended to turn inward and there, they found uncomfortable issues to fasten upon.

Like, this present occupation of his—how long would it last? Old boxers seemed to fall into two classes: those who’d succeeded and sank their prize money into some enterprise like a small hotel or a beerhouse, and those eternal contenders who stayed too long in the ring, looking forward to success that never came.

As far as Sayers could see, he’d fit into neither category. Nor into any other that he could imagine.

“Tom?” he heard, and turned his head. A woman had called his name from behind the bar counter and was looking at him. Her face was instantly familiar, but for a moment he struggled to place it exactly.

“Lily?” he said, moving over to the counter. “Lily Collins?”

“Lily Haynes, now,” she said, and held up a hand to show him a well-worn wedding band that looked as if it had passed through a generation or two, if not a pawnshop or three. “How are you, Tom?”

“Lucky old Albert,” Tom said. “I’m doing fine.”

Lily Collins. It had been five or six years since he’d last seen her. They both leaned on the bar so that they could converse without too much disturbance of those facing the stage. And then whenever the bar crowd joined in a chorus, they had to pause because it became too difficult to be heard.

Lily had toured with Sayers’ first company, playing in A Fight to the Finish as Hester Chambers, the jilted country-girl sweetheart of Tom’s opponent. She’d entered the theater as a dancer, and back then she’d been slight and slim and could pass for a girl of seventeen despite her dozen or more years in the profession. Albert Haynes was a tumbler in a three-man act, and whenever their engagements coincided, it was obvious to everyone that they were a destined pair. She’d grown more matronly since then. But her eyes still held their sparkle.

“So you’re off the road now?” Tom said.

“Albert got the flu,” she said. “It left him deaf in one ear. He could never balance proper after that. He’s all right in himself. But he used to stand on one hand, and now I have to watch him on the stairs.”

After a pause for a roaring chorus, she told him of how they’d married and put their savings into a pub on Langworthy Road. Albert ran it, and Lily brought in some extra money by working here three nights a week.

“Come and see us,” she said. “Any time. Don’t worry if we’re busy. We’ll always make time for you, Tom.”

“I will.”

“Don’t just say it.”

“I truly will.”

She was looking at him strangely. Not so much at him, as into him. Sayers had always found Lily Collins to be one of those women of intuitive honesty, with an uncanny sense of it in others. They make valued friends. But a woman who can always spot when a man’s deceiving himself makes for a discomforting companion.

“How are you really, Tom?” she said. “Are you happy? Tell me you are.”

He laid aside all pretense.

“I believe,” he said, “that in time I will be.”

“Well,” Lily said, raising her voice to compete with the final chorus from the Glittering Star of Erin, “That’s probably all any of us can ask for. Knowing what will make you happy and feeling you’re on the way to it. Everything else is memories.”

The end of Nelly Farrell’s act brought a surge of customers to the bar, and with quick good-byes and equally quick promises Lily had to abandon Sayers and return to her work.

When Medley the Mimic came bouncing on and started with his imitations, Sayers slipped out to the foyer and made his way backstage. By the time he got there, Medley was off again and the Avolo Boys were out trying to repair the damage.

“Bloody Salford ’eathens,” cursed Medley as he pushed his way past Sayers, raw egg dripping from his jacket. “If it don’t sing or fall on its arse, they don’t want to know.”

Sayers checked to see that the Purple Diamond stage crew would be ready for an early call, and then made his way back to the green room to give the same warning to the cast.

Most were ready anyway. As he might have guessed, the only one not present was James Caspar.

The dressing rooms were at the side of the building, with high windows overlooking the alley that divided the theater from the public house next door. Sayers climbed the stairs, almost hoping not to find Caspar there. If he wasn’t, then Whitlock would either have to cancel the performance or send on a substitute, book in hand. It would be a disaster for the company and the most serious professional lapse imaginable; yet there was something in Sayers that weighed one night’s pain against Caspar’s permanent departure.

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.

Sayers did not believe one word of it. There had to be some more credible explanation for the hold that Caspar had on the boss. Whatever it was, Sayers would welcome any reason that might cause the “task” to be abandoned.