The Kingdom of Bones

Reaching the top of the dressing-room stairs, he hesitated. The door to Caspar’s room was open, and the man was not alone. Sayers could see him reflected in the dressing-room mirror. It was a cheap, old glass and Caspar’s image was like that in a dirty window. He was in costume, but his stiff collar was sprung open. Sayers heard him snap his fingers and say, in an imperious manner, “Stud.”

“Yes, sir.” It was the voice of Arthur, the callboy. Sayers’ view was momentarily blocked as Arthur moved across with a stud to fasten the collar.

He heard Caspar say, “Where’s my press book?”

“Still working on it, sir,” Arthur said. The business with the collar seemed to be a struggle.

After a few moments Caspar said, “You’re a slow little weasel, aren’t you?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Slow of hand, slow of wits. I think I’ll ask Edmund to dismiss you. Would you like that?”

“No, sir.”

“‘No, sir,’” Caspar mimicked. “Get out.”

“Yes, sir.”

Arthur came out of the dressing room like a boy with a reprieve from the dentist’s chair, and almost ran into Sayers at the top of the stairs. Sayers must have seemed to appear out of nowhere because Arthur leaped back, startled like a buck at a gunshot.

“Beginners, please, Arthur,” Sayers said.

“Yes, Mister Sayers,” the boy said, and looked faintly stricken at the thought of having to turn around and go back into the presence he’d just escaped.

“Be on with you,” Sayers said. “I’ll give Mister Caspar the call.”

“There’s no need,” said James Caspar from the dressing-room doorway. Arthur shot off down the stairs. Caspar primped his wing collar, tugged down his white waistcoat, and shot his cuffs. He looked as sharp as a barber’s razor.

“It seems that your services are hardly required at all, Mister Sayers,” he said, and moved forward. Sayers had to step aside to let him by.

A dozen rejoinders occurred to him as he followed Caspar down toward the stage, but the moment to use any of them had already passed.

The Prince of Wales had its own pit orchestra, so the company’s musical director foreswore the piano and picked up the baton for their overture and effects. The Purple Diamond overture was a bespoke piece for the play and had not a lick of original music in it, being a mishmash of classic themes and familiar tunes. And a very successful mishmash it was; not a note in it that wasn’t tried and tested and free of all copyright fees. It tweaked the mood of every audience. If you like this kind of thing, it seemed to say, then here comes the kind of thing you’ll like.

For each member of the acting company, it was an unconscious metronome guiding them to their places and preparing their minds for the performance. Hearing it backstage, they drifted to their entrances like theater ghosts. The curtain would rise on the Low Comedian as the butler, who had a belowstairs monologue to set up the story. Then on came Louise, and the lovers’ plot would be got under way. Whitlock would enter then, as the detective in disguise. He usually got a vocal greeting from the audience, but on this run Sayers had sensed the boss’s irritation that his reception was matched by the one given to the Low Comedian at the play’s beginning, the reason being that they recognized him from his first-half turn as baggy-trousered comedian Billy Danson. But the boss could see that it was to the benefit of the play’s overall effect, so he’d made no changes.

As Louise stood in the wings and waited for her cue, James Caspar seemed to float out of the darkness to appear behind her. She did not see his approach; rather, she suddenly sensed his presence. It startled her. Caspar’s first cue was a good ten minutes away, and he was to enter from the opposite side of the stage.

He leaned close, so that he might speak and not be heard from beyond the wings.

“I’m sorry if I surprised you,” he said. His breath brushed her ear. Louise felt the hairs on the back of her neck rise.

“Mister Caspar,” she whispered back. “There is nothing to apologize for.”

“I wanted to ask you something.”

“Oh?”

“Your song tonight. Would you sing it for me?”

She did not know how to respond. He seemed to sense her confusion, and did not press for a reply.

By the time that she had gathered herself, Caspar had turned away and faded back into the shadows.

In the bar at the back of the auditorium, Police Superintendent Clive Turner-Smith stood among a group of strangers and watched the curtain rise on The Purple Diamond. He’d arrived at the theater too late to see the Low Comedian’s first-half spot, so he was mystified by the cheers that greeted the sight of a butler in an apron, busy polishing the silverware in a country-house kitchen. Having little interest in the play itself, he scanned the audience. Common folk all, out for nothing more than a good evening’s entertainment. One or two types he’d be inclined to keep an eye on, had this been his own patch.

As the butler launched off into one of those Oh mercy me, talking-to-myself but really talking to the audience monologues, Turner-Smith became aware of a touch at his sleeve. He looked and saw that a shaven-headed, skull-faced man had appeared by his side and was holding out the same note that he’d sent backstage some ten minutes earlier. It had been opened, and a return message had been scribbled on it.

Turner-Smith took it, read the scribble, and then folded the note and tucked it into an inside pocket.

He said, “I’ll be waiting in the saloon bar next door. Tell no one else about this. Do you understand?”

The man remained silent, but inclined his head in assent.

Turner-Smith left the auditorium and crossed the foyer, emerging onto the street by the theater box office. He’d arrived in Manchester little more than an hour earlier. He’d told no one of his arrival, but immediately took a cab across the river and into Salford. He’d made the same journey twenty years before when, as a provost marshal, he’d been in pursuit of a deserter who’d killed a sergeant in barracks and run for home. He could remember a four- roomed terraced house full of children and having to face down the deserter’s mother, a woman more formidable than many a man in his regiment. She’d denied seeing her son when, in truth, he was hiding in the privy in a neighbor’s backyard. The boy had fled as Turner-Smith’s men began to search, and drowned himself later that afternoon. The river Irwell divided the borough from the city; a drowning would bring out the two sets of police with boat hooks, one squad of men on each bank, ready to shove the body toward the opposite shore for their neighbor force to deal with.

Liverpool Street was a wide thoroughfare, with broad stone pavements and tram rails set into the cobbles. Ahead of him, a girl of around eleven was pushing along an old pram loaded with firewood. More children could be seen outside the commercial hotel next door. They sat on the steps, they sat on the kerbstones with their feet in the road. Younger ones played in the care of their older siblings, all waiting for parents who were spending the evening in the public bar.

Turner-Smith bypassed the public bar for the more respectable saloon, where the drink came from another side of the same counter, but the extra penny bought a better class of room with upholstered seating, mahogany paneling, and waiter service. He settled alone in a three-sided booth, ordered a glass of Madeira wine, and paid for it when it came.

He said to the waiter, “I shall be joined by a gentleman, name of Sayers. He’ll be coming over from the playhouse. Make sure he can find me when he gets here, will you?”

The waiter dipped his head and went away. Turner-Smith laid his stick across the seats beside him, stretched out his bad leg, and settled back to wait. Behind him in the next booth was a party of commercial travelers; he eavesdropped on their conversation for a while, but soon felt his attention start to wander.

Children of the poor. They were everywhere. He’d been met by a crowd of them begging outside the railway station, and seen them scatter at the approach of a special constable. It was as if the growth of cities was like a gaseous reaction; for a certain volume of prosperity, an even greater volume of poverty was produced. The result was great public works and proud civic buildings and range upon range of desperate hovels, all standing as one under the same dirty sky.

After a while, he took out his watch and checked it. Sayers had undertaken to meet him during the play’s second act. He’d addressed his note to the owner of the Purple Diamond company, but it was this Sayers who’d responded. More than half an hour had passed since then.