ornate frame, towered some magnificent Renaissance painting that he could barely see. Before this shone a cross; in gold or brass, from here it was impossible to tell. He stared at it almost in defiance; refusing to pray, refusing even to admit the possibility of prayer.
So why was he here?
Last night’s news had shaken him. Turner-Smith not just dead, but murdered. Sebastian’s insides churned like a bag of snakes when he tried to come to terms with it. He should have been the one to pursue the information. Then Turner-Smith would be alive. But then Sebastian might well have suffered his superior’s fate in his place. Unless, by conducting himself differently, he reached a different outcome.
But perhaps his mentor had died because he had made some discovery that would prove vital to the investigation. In which case, his achievement and his sacrifice were bound together. For Sebastian to have replaced him and survived would be to negate both. While to make the same discovery and die in his place…well, in considering that one, Sebastian found proof that he did not have the makings of a saint.
There would be a funeral. A police funeral, with full honors. The streets of the town would be taken over for the procession, and people would turn out because all those black-plumed horses and men in uniform would be something to see. But Sebastian could never picture a funeral without thinking of the white coffin of his sister, small enough for one undertaker’s man to carry in his arms.
He’d been a few days short of his ninth birthday, and death had meant little to him then. Grief, though…that had been everywhere he turned, terrifying and oppressive. The house draped in black, the downstairs rooms crowded with somber people. He hardly dared speak. Even the appearance of his living self seemed to be taken as an affront, and so he kept out of his mother’s way as much as possible.
He’d dared to wonder if, given time, this turn of events might mean that he’d receive a fuller share of her affections. But as his ninth birthday came and went without notice, and the birthday after that, each overshadowed by the grimmer anniversary that preceded it, he grew to realize that not only was his dead sibling still loved, but loved more than he.
Why had his mother felt the need to write that letter to Turner-Smith? Did it indicate a concern that she’d never otherwise let him see? The experience of a lifetime suggested not. It was merely her way to place her mark on his affairs. She’d always responded to any of his plans or proposals by pointing out their potential for failure. She considered herself entitled to her opinion.
“Praying’s a skill like any other, Sebastian,” said a voice behind him. Sebastian looked back and saw Father Alexander, parish priest for the past eighteen years, in the aisle and moving toward him. He must have been elsewhere in the church, and had come in through one of the side doors. “I can’t say I’ve seen you practice it much, lately.”
Sebastian said, “Turner-Smith was murdered last night.”
“Turner-Smith?”
“My superintendent.”
“God have mercy on his soul. How did it happen?”
“The circumstances are unclear. I am to go there with what I know, and if there is an arrest to be made, I shall make it. If there is a God, may he guide my hand.”
The priest’s eyebrows went up in surprise. “
Sebastian rose to his feet.
“Another time, Father,” he said.
TWELVE
Although it stood on a street in where there were a number of lodging houses, Mrs. Mack put up no board or sign, nor did she advertise. A theatrical landlady had no use for business from the public, who might expect to keep normal people’s hours. Theatricals and other stage people came home late at night, and many would sleep until midmorning. They’d expect supper at some unsocial time and then an hour or two of society after that. Their talk was of a world known only to their profession. And even now, in the minds of many theirs was not a respectable life.
Constantly on the move, they made few friends in the places they visited. Their only unguarded contact was with each other. Stage folk were like one great, fluid family, and in that family it was often the theatrical landlady who took the mother’s role: offering shelter and a welcome, keeping a special lookout for the young, and demanding moral standards from all who came under their roof. The most roaring reprobate of the saloon-bar lock-in would be as meek as a good son in his landlady’s presence.
Mrs. Mack was one of the legends. There was a Mr. Mack, but there is not much to be said about him.
It was after ten on the Saturday morning when Tom Sayers woke. He was usually one of life’s early risers, but the previous night he had been unable to sleep. Borrowing a latchkey from the kitchen, he had taken himself out for a moonlit walk. He was not a man who feared assault at any hour, and by then it was so late that even coshers and mashers would have crawled off to bed. He got as far as the wide river that divided the two boroughs—slow- moving, sparkling, dirty and dark as oil. He had walked with his mind in disorder, and returned with it feeling no more settled.
Lily’s words still rang in his mind. She seemed to be saying that there was no such thing as happiness, per se. It was more a matter of working out what will make you happy, and knowing you’re on your way to it. Always believing that it’s the destination, when in fact it’s the journey.
So, where was he going? Most men of his age had begun to establish themselves in one way or another. Wives, children, some steady form of income. But not Tom Sayers. Sayers performed all the functions of a businessman but he lived the life of a gypsy, always on the move, accumulating little. He had some savings and paid rent on a small house in Brixton that was his home for their London dates, but nothing of any more substance than that.
He’d begun to consider the idea that he might get himself off the road, perhaps set himself up as a personal manager to a select list of clients, dealing exclusively with their affairs. He could picture himself with a small office in Covent Garden, framed playbills in the waiting room and a clerk for the correspondence. One or two performers outside the company had expressed a wish that he might take on such a role, on occasions when he’d helped them out with some personal difficulty. However, when he allowed himself to imagine what form such a new life might take, there was only one client who ever featured in the scene with any consistency.
Louise. At times like this, he ached at the very thought of her. In his mind, he would relive the moment when she’d fallen into his arms. He’d take those few seconds of confusion and tease them out into an entire marriage of their souls that was timeless, graceful, and slow. James Caspar made no appearance in this world of his imagination. Sayers had cut him from the script.
The day would surely come when the
One way or another, there would be upheaval. With any luck, Caspar would go his own way. And that, Sayers felt, would be the time to broach the subject of offering his personal service to Louise. Anything sooner would not be appropriate.
He’d spent another fitful hour or two lying in his bed and staring at the moonlight through the curtains, until finally sleep had taken pity and claimed him.
His was one of the attic rooms, three flights up with a part-sloping ceiling and a hook on the roof beam to hang his shaving mirror. His window was really a skylight. Between the washstand and his cabin trunk there was little room to spare.
He threw back the covers and sat on the side of the bed. He put his face in his hands and tried to massage it into something that might resemble a man awake. As he was doing this, there was a discreet tap at his door.
Very discreet. Almost womanly.
Panic began to stir in Tom Sayers’ breast. Whatever this was, he was unprepared. He slept in his underwear,
