The Kingdom of Bones

“Stay away from me,” she tried to say, but he climbed up into the cab to join her on the seat. She pushed herself back across it, as far as she could go until the armrest stopped her.

Not even seeming to notice how she shrank from him, he kept on moving in closer to her and said, “Caspar is debauched, Louise. He is the author of all those crimes of which I am accused, and the engineer of my entrapment. He’s not some errant angel that you can save and subdue. He is a beast among men.”

“I want to go back,” she said.

“Have you ever known me to break a promise, Louise? Or known me to go back on my word? Or tell a lie when the truth was inconvenient? Think hard now, it’s important.”

His manner was so intense that she hardly dared offer an answer.

“Never,” he said. “Isn’t that right?”

She nodded, too eagerly.

“So, listen to me now. I will walk with you into any police station in the land, if you will let me get you away from that man and if you promise me that you will not return to him.”

“I beg of you, Tom,” she managed then. “Please let me go.”

“Have you heard nothing of what I’ve been saying?”

“Yes,” she said.

“And you believe me?”

She tried to answer, and to say whatever he might want to hear. But it was too late. He could already see that she did not.

“Then what, Louise?” he said. “I’ve shown you the truth. What more do I have to say?”

“Tom,” she said. “The whole world knows what you did. Can’t you see that I’m afraid of you?”

This was clearly not a possibility that had occurred to the former prizefighter. For the first time, he seemed to see this situation through her eyes. It was as if he had not been able to imagine that she might ever believe him guilty.

Until now.

His face showed his dismay. He drew back, raising his hands to show that he meant her no harm.

“I understand,” he said. “I had thought that you might…” But he did not pursue this.

Instead, he said, “Louise, whatever you may think of me now, promise me for the friendship we once had. Will you at least stay away from him?”

“How can I promise that?” she said. “I love him.”

He was about to say something else, and stopped. It was as if her words had settled before exploding, changing his world instantly and for all time. Whatever else he had been preparing to say, it would count for nothing now.

He turned his head aside. He looked at his hands. He rubbed distractedly at his brow for a moment, then he seemed to remember where he was and started to climb out of the cab. Louise slid down a little—she had been so tense and fear-stricken that she’d pressed herself against the side of the carriage and had risen several inches in her seat.

She felt sick and weak. It was late and she would have to walk alone in darkness to find some kind of safety, but that would be as nothing compared to what she might otherwise have been forced to endure. She tried to summon the strength to climb out of the cab but knew that she dared not move until Sayers had gone; she could hear him out there, pacing up and down and raving aloud to himself in the echo of the viaduct archway, words that she could not make out but which confirmed him to be the madman suggested by his deeds.

All she could be sure of was a cry of “No,” anguished at first, repeated with defiance, and then repeated again with determination as the carriage rocked on its wheels once more; she realized then that her chance had come and gone before she’d known it and that Sayers was now climbing back up to the driver’s position. She wondered if there might still be time for a rash leap for safety, but even as she began to move the whip cracked over the horse again. Like Pegasus, he took off. It was all Louise could do to grab hold of the strap and hang on.

For a moment she entertained the faint hope that she had somehow touched Sayers’ heart, and that he was taking her back to light and life and the safety of the lodging house.

But as they galloped on into deeper and deeper darkness, leaving even the factories and the gasworks behind them, she knew that her hopes were unfounded.

At the public counter in the police station that served the Knott Mill district of Manchester, an aggrieved cabbie was giving his details to the night sergeant and watching as the officer painstakingly wrote them down in the station’s incident book. The sergeant had a neat hand, but a slow one. But then again, the nights could be very long. There was rarely anything to hurry for.

“Anything else taken?” the sergeant said.

“What’s left to take?” the cabbie said. “’E got me cab and me ’orse and me ’at and me scarf.”

“What did he look like?”

“I dunno.”

“You saw him, didn’t you?”

“But how do you say? Ordinary.” With this, the cabbie pointed to his cheekbone. “Wi’ a big bruise just ’ere.”

For some reason, that seemed to make the sergeant take notice.

“Did he?” he said.

“’E did.”

“Stay there,” the sergeant said, and disappeared into the back.

The cabbie leaned his elbow on the counter and looked around. Behind him was a wooden bench, and on the wooden bench sat an assorted group of low-living characters who seemed to be assembled there for no obvious purpose. None were clean, and most were missing teeth. Two appeared to have been in a fight, perhaps even with each other. All sat in silence. None seemed bright enough to be bored.

The sergeant reappeared with a well-read copy of the late edition of the Manchester Evening News, which he slapped onto the counter in front of the cabbie. It was opened and folded to show the account of the arrest for murder and sensational escape of former prizefighter Tom Sayers, lately of Edmund Whitlock’s touring theatrical troupe. The three-columned story was accompanied by an engraving of Sayers in his boxing days, stripped to the waist, fists raised, hair slicked down, standing with all his weight resting on his back foot. The cabbie looked at the picture and then looked at the headline across the columns beside it.

“Blimey,” he said.

“Follow me,” said the sergeant, beckoning him around the counter.

EIGHTEEN

Sebastian was woken early by an urgent knocking elsewhere in the house, followed by the sound of voices in the street just under his window. When he climbed out of his unfamiliar bed and looked down through the curtains, he had a partial view of two uniformed men on the doorstep in conversation with his host. Letting the curtain fall, he reached for his trousers and quickly stepped into them.

Within a minute or two, he was on his way downstairs, dressed as well as any man whose tailor is a pawnbroker. He was in the house of Thomas Bertorelli, an officer of the Detective Department upon whom he’d been billeted. The Bertorellis were between lodgers, and happy to have a contribution to their rent. Their second bed was lumpy, its covers heavy, the room oppressive; Mrs. Bertorelli was very young, and a terrible cook. Sebastian had felt very much at home.

Bertorelli looked back as Sebastian descended the stairs. The house was too small to have a hallway. The stairs came down the middle of the building between the front and back rooms, their width creating a short passageway between the two. The Bertorellis’ front door opened directly onto the street outside.

Bertorelli waited until Sebastian was close enough for him to speak in a lowered voice.

He said, “One of the actresses didn’t return to the lodgings last night. It seems that Sayers picked her up in a stolen cab.”

“What about our man at the theater?”

“He failed to recognize him.”