surface again. He stopped about an inch short of it.
And still the suction drew him down.
He started to fight. Not in an ordered way, but as a child in a panic might, frantically and without any thought-out purpose. The dead breath came out of him in a bubbling stream. It was a simple enough matter to get his arms out of the sleeves, but the harder he tried, the worse he seemed to make it. Without ever meaning to, he gulped in a lungful of water. The reflex of spluttering it out only caused him to draw in more. He realized with dismay that not only was he going to drown, but that his body was an eager participant in the process. His will no longer mattered.
Then something got a handful of his hair and yanked him upward. His body was racked with coughing, and he couldn’t see.
“I can’t hold you,” Sayers said. “Grab hold of something.”
Sebastian could not answer, nor could he free his hands. He shook his head. Which, under the circumstances, was a mistake.
“God Almighty,” Sayers swore, and released his grasp. Sebastian started to submerge again but it was only for as long as it took for Sayers to switch his grip to the detective’s shirt collar.
“Don’t just thrash around,” Sayers told him. “Think. Use your right hand to pull off the left sleeve.”
It was simple enough when someone said it. Not so simple to do. Sebastian felt around with fingers numbed by cold, and plucked at material he couldn’t take hold of. Even when he got it, it wouldn’t come. But Sayers was pulling him upward, and between that and the suction from below he suddenly felt his arms come out of the sleeves and found himself floating free.
Sayers was grasping his collar with one hand and holding on to the flimsy handrail with the other, leaning right out over the water in a dangerous way. Moving in a crouch along the narrow plank, he guided Sebastian to the canalside as if steering a log.
There was a short iron ladder fixed to the timber on the back of the gate. Sebastian had not even the strength to grasp its rungs. Sayers hung him on it, and he clung there.
Sayers leaned down to him and said, “I know what you think you see. You think I am running from the gallows. Well, you are right. I am. But that is not because I am guilty. I am not a guilty man, Inspector Becker. And somehow I swear I will convince you of it.”
Sebastian had not the power even to attempt a reply.
He went, then. Sebastian learned later that he’d knocked on the door of the lockkeeper’s house in passing, and told the keeper of a man in distress in his lock basin. The keeper had hauled Sebastian out with a boat hook, and given him an earful of abuse for his foolhardiness.
By then, Tom Sayers was nowhere to be seen.
SIXTEEN
Mrs. Mack did not provide an early evening meal, but would cook the guests’ own food if they brought it to her kitchen. At around five, she would lay on an afternoon tea in the dining room, consisting of bread and butter with the occasional slice of seedcake. Basic fare though it was, it was usually appreciated by a profession for whom there could be few things to recommend a job more than the inclusion of a practical pork pie in the third act.
Today, however, appetites were at a low. It would be hard to say which had shocked the company more—the violent death of their callboy, or Tom Sayers’ arrest for the deed. There had been some talk of canceling the matinee performance, but Whitlock would not hear of it. The show went on; all the cast performed efficiently but as if in a daze, and quietly returned to the lodging house afterward. Only Edmund Whitlock and James Caspar were to be found in the dining room at ten minutes after five o’clock. Whitlock was feeding pieces of seedcake to Gussie, and Caspar was pacing the carpet.
It could be an oppressive room, with its heavy lace curtains and dark furniture and Mrs. Mack’s collection of hideous ornaments in every available nook and on every imaginable surface. Enlivened by company and conversation, it would be transformed. But for the moment, the only sounds were the tick of the pendulum clock and the spitty working of the little dog’s jaws as one tidbit followed another.
Caspar stopped, and watched the spectacle for a while.
Then he said, “They eat dogs in China.”
Whitlock broke another piece off the seedcake and held it up between thumb and forefinger. The little dog froze, watching it intently, and then snapped it out of the air as Whitlock pitched it within reach.
The actor-manager’s moods had darkened considerably over the past few months. Everyone had noticed it, but no one knew the reason why. Except perhaps for Gulliford the Low Comedian, who reckoned he knew a sick man when he saw one.
“Contain yourself, James,” Whitlock said now.
“For how long? They can’t hang him if they don’t catch him.”
“We’ll be back in London in less than three weeks. If you don’t manage to conserve your appetites until then, you’ll as good as exonerate him.”
Caspar drew a chair out from under the table and sat. He placed an elbow onto Mrs. Mack’s best lace tablecloth and rested his chin on his hand.
After staring at the dog’s performance for a moment longer, he said, “I could join in the search.”
“No.”
“Well, I’ve got to do
“I really don’t believe so, James,” Whitlock said. “Don’t be such a child.”
Caspar made a face that could only be described as a smirk, and sat back in his chair.
“Miss Porter doesn’t think me a child,” he said.
“You have a child’s want of education,” Whitlock said with weary patience, his attention still on the dog as it throttled down the last of the cake. “A talent for darkness has brought you this far. But the deeper meaning of it all escapes you still.”
Caspar leaped back onto his feet in irritation. “Why is it,” he said, “that when I complain of anything, I always get a lecture?”
“Then stop complaining. And find yourself something useful to do.”
“How can I?” Caspar said. “You’ve just forbidden me the pursuit of any satisfaction.”
Dusting the crumbs from his hands, Whitlock looked up at Caspar and laid out his meaning.
“Learn subtlety, James,” he said. “It is perfectly possible to destroy something innocent, yet leave no public mark.”
The best daylight in the house was to be had in the sitting room, at the front of the building overlooking the street. This was the room where Mrs. Mack kept her piano polished and her damask cushions plumped—her showpiece room, with grand curtains gathered back like a theater of Varieties and enough memorabilia to stock a museum. There were framed prints on the walls and china figurines along the mantelpiece. A doily on every table, and a vase or statuette on every doily.
In a high-backed chair by the window sat Louise Porter, studying a playbook. More affected by the day’s events than almost anyone else in the company, she sought distraction in her craft.
She was distressed to think of the time that she’d spent in Tom Sayers’ presence, never suspecting any part of the true nature of her “devoted servant.” Those constant small services, the innocent-sounding banter…all now took on a new and sinister aspect. Little had she known of how closely she’d been consorting with danger. The very thought of it now was enough to turn her skin to gooseflesh.
Sayers was a monster, and she’d been an object of his attentions. She’d allowed this—encouraged him, even, in her innocent way. And to what terrible end might it have led her, had his crimes not been discovered in time? The convincing way in which he’d dissembled showed him to be a better actor than any in the troupe.
And yet it was a strange kind of distress. It quickened her pulse, but it did not make her timid. Far from making her fearful, it seemed to increase her confident sense of her own existence. Yesterday, she’d known little of the world; today, she felt able to take on whatever else it might offer.
And some better acting parts would be a nice beginning.
She often felt at a disadvantage when she heard the conversations of the other players, offhandedly referring
