The Kingdom of Bones

steamfitter to check on employee dishonesty. He’d been discovered and beaten, and had walked off the job and never returned. It must have been quite a beating to discourage him so; by his clothes, he was roughly the same size and build as Tom Sayers.

“These are fine, Mister Oakes,” Sebastian said. He felt a little guilty. Oakes was going out of his way to please, and although Sebastian had promised to put in a good word about his work to the dreaded Mr. Bearce, he’d so far done nothing of the kind.

“I canvassed all the hotels as you asked.” This was not quite the momentous task for the bookkeeper that it might have appeared. Most of the big hotels in the middle of town had telephones now. “There was a Mrs. Louise Caspar staying at the Walton, but she checked out almost two weeks ago.”

Sebastian raised an eyebrow. The Walton on Broad Street was one of the city’s highest-class hotels. Its outer appearance was that of a grand Bavarian palace. On the inside, the foyer alone was like the vault of a Renaissance prince. For the rest of it, he could only guess. Given his income, Sebastian was never likely to see any farther than the foyer.

He said, “Could they tell you where she went from there?”

“They’d love to know,” Oakes said, and went on to explain that she’d left with her bill unpaid and no clue as to where they might find her. He’d talked to the doorman, the bell-hopper, and the housekeeping staff who’d serviced the room.

“Well done, Mister Oakes,” Sebastian said.

“Thank you, sir.”

“You’re quite the detective.”

“Now you’re mocking me, sir,” Oakes said. “But I’ll let it pass.”

THIRTY-ONE

Bram Stoker sat at a strange desk in an unfamiliar office at London’s Theatre Royal in Drury Lane, writing up the latest set of accounts for Irving’s Dante. Although the Lyceum company was gone and Irving’s tenancy at the Wellington Street theater was no more, Stoker had stayed on as one of the few remaining members of the actor’s personal staff.

He could hear the sound of someone approaching down the corridor. A few moments later, Belmore, the assistant to Irving’s long-serving stage manager, reached in and tapped on the open door to get Stoker’s attention. When Stoker acknowledged him, Belmore came into the room and laid a small envelope on the desk.

“Beg pardon, Mister Stoker,” he said. “Addressed to you and delivered by hand.”

Stoker picked up the envelope. It was, indeed, addressed to him by name. He pinched it between his forefinger and thumb, as if assaying it for density and value.

“Another request for house seats, at a guess,” he said. “Strange how people can be so generous with their praise for the guv’nor while balking at the cost of a ticket.”

“Yes, sir.”

Belmore went off, and Stoker opened the envelope and took out the note inside. It was not a request for free seats. Nor was it an appeal for him to approach Irving to make some public appearance—a common request, whose authors usually presumed that the actor would gratefully bear all expense and inconvenience for the honor of being asked. Instead of either, it was a note from Samuel Liddell Mathers.

Stoker hadn’t seen Mathers in years. They’d met seldom after that night in the basement of the Horniman Museum with Tom Sayers, and not at all recently. He knew that the would-be mystic had landed a fulltime job as assistant librarian at the museum, but he’d argued with the management and the job hadn’t lasted. The last Stoker had heard of him, he was living in Paris. He’d added the name MacGregor to his own and had been seen bicycling through the French capital in full Highland regalia.

The request was for a few minutes of Stoker’s time, at his own convenience. A boy would be waiting to take back his reply. Stoker quickly wrote a response across the bottom of the note, placed it into the neatly slit envelope, and had it taken down to the street.

When he was done with the figures, he locked his notebook away and reached for his hat. He needed to speak to the manager of the Criterion about the arrangements for that evening’s Dante supper. It was an expense that he’d advised against, but Irving had insisted on it. Despite a mixed critical reception, Dante had to be made to succeed.

As usual, Stoker chose to walk rather than take the tram. From Drury Lane he cut through the Covent Garden market, so busy at dawn’s first light, so dead by midafternoon. The gutters were strewn with spoiled fruit and leaves, and a small number of costers threw empty crates around. As Stoker walked down the curving lane of Long Acre past the furniture makers and coach builders that lined it, he reflected that making a success out of Dante would be no easy task. It was an enormous enterprise, with fifty players and more than a hundred nonspeaking spirits to people the circles of hell. It was also a mediocre play in thirteen interminable scenes. It was carried entirely by spectacle and what remained of Irving’s drawing power; but here in the capital, even that power was no longer as great as it once had been.

When Irving had been knighted, some eight years before, the honor had seemed to confer some measure of permanence on that gilded age. In retrospect, it had actually marked the summit from which a descent would soon follow. A disastrous fire had consumed two decades’ worth of scenery and properties in the railway arches at Southwark, wiping out the company’s repertoire of productions and all the future income that would have flowed from them. Uninsured and in debt, Irving had signed control of the Lyceum over to a business syndicate. He was tiring. His health was beginning to fail. And yet, instead of being able to rest on his achievements, he now had to work to survive.

In Piccadilly, amid the white pillars and gilded mirrors of the Criterion’s airy Byzantine dining rooms, Stoker went over the evening’s arrangements with the restaurant manager. A few minor questions arose, and he was able to answer them all. When their business was done, Stoker took out his pocket watch and checked on the time. Then he thanked the manager and left the spacious grill room, descending a short flight of steps to emerge into Piccadilly Circus.

In the middle of the Circus stood the Shaftesbury Memorial, an ornate bronze fountain topped with a winged figure of Christian Charity. On the steps of its dais, with traffic all around him, Samuel Liddell Mathers waited.

He had not yet seen Stoker, and did not know from which direction he’d be approaching. This was as Stoker had intended. He wanted a moment in which to take a look at Mathers and assess the state of him.

He was, Stoker noted with some relief, dressed more or less normally. Too warmly for the weather, perhaps, in a thick coat that looked as heavy as a Persian carpet—and which might even have been cut from one, looking at it again—but nothing too embarrassing to be seen with.

He raised a hand to draw Mathers’ attention, and having caught his eye he waited as the other man crossed through traffic to join him. They exchanged greetings, and then together they began to walk down Coventry Street in the direction of Leicester Square.

Stoker said, “How is Mina?” On closer inspection, Mathers’ coat was almost threadbare. Mathers himself was quite gaunt inside it.

“She is well,” Mathers said. “As am I.”

“I have followed your progress.”

“Then when you saw my note, you probably thought that I had come to visit London to ask you for money or patronage. Let me assure you that I have not.”

“That’s just as well,” Stoker said. “The great days are gone, Mathers. The Lyceum company is no more. It pains me to say it, but the guv’nor is a lion at bay.”

“If only you’d agreed to join us in those early years,” Mathers said. “Then, who knows. The outcome might have been different for both of us.”

But Stoker was having none of that. “You mean that together we could have magicked away misfortune?” he said. “Be serious, man. I had no inclination to involve myself with the members of any order. Let alone one whose life is a constant squabble over what to call themselves and how to organize. If it’s not money and it’s no other form of support, then what do you need?”

Mathers looked down at the pavement. “Crowley has betrayed me,” he said darkly.

“That’s exactly the kind of behavior I mean,” Stoker said. Alick Crowley, or “Aleister” as he now styled