The Kingdom of Bones

TWENTY-SEVEN

When Elisabeth Becker came down early on Monday morning to set breakfast for the family, she was not expecting to find a visitor already at the table. Especially not one who looked like a convict on the run. He sat like one, too, head down with his arm around the plate as if someone might try to reach in and steal his food. He was wearing the pants and waistcoat of a checked suit that looked as if it had once been loud, but had faded to a sludge color as it lost most of its shape.

She stopped in the doorway. He must have heard her breath catch in surprise, because he looked up at her. He’d just shoveled in a good half a pound of pancakes and corn syrup, and he struggled to swallow so he could speak.

“Please,” she said, raising a hand. “Please continue. Don’t trouble yourself.” Then she backed off into their little hallway. She was still moving backward when she bumped into her husband.

She was about to say something, but Sebastian signaled for her to hold it for a moment and then moved her farther down the hallway. She could still see the visitor from here, but they could speak with more privacy.

“Sebastian,” she said, “who is that man?”

The man at the table had grown self-conscious. He tried to carry on as before, but clearly knew that he was being discussed. He’d straightened in his seat and taken his elbows off the table, as if conscious of the need to make a good impression.

Sebastian said, “His name’s Tom Sayers.”

“Has he been here all night?”

“I let him sleep on the divan.”

“Why?”

“He has nowhere of his own.”

It wasn’t exactly the answer she was looking for. She glanced back at the man again. He shifted uncomfortably on his chair.

“He’s the man from the boxing tent,” she said.

“So he is,” Sebastian said, which brought him a stern look.

“Sebastian,” she said, in a voice with a definite edge of warning to it.

“He’s someone I knew in England,” Sebastian said. “We’ve unfinished business. From the old days.”

“He looks like a criminal. Is he?”

“Things aren’t always how they look.”

They went back into the kitchen, and Sayers got to his feet. Sebastian introduced them. Elisabeth told Sayers that he was welcome in their house and then urged him to sit down again and continue.

When Sayers had finished his pancakes he tried to wash the pan, but Elisabeth took it from him. She sent the ex-fighter and her husband out into the garden, where they could sit and talk while the rest of the family breakfasted.

It was more of a brick-paved yard than a true garden, but it supported a couple of flower beds and a Carolina allspice bush right next to the door. They had a water pump and a bird table, and Elisabeth would have planted a cherry tree as well if she’d been able to squeeze one in.

“You have a nice home,” Sayers said.

“Thank you,” Sebastian said. “It’s a little beyond our means, but I do my best to hang onto it.”

Sayers sat on a wrought-iron bench and Sebastian on a chair that he’d brought from the dining room. They continued the conversation that they’d had to suspend the night before.

Sayers had already told Sebastian of how he’d run straight from the theater to the Marylebone apartments that evening, but either he’d reached them too late or Louise and the two servants had never returned there. He’d waited on the street for hours, keeping watch on the building. After a while, he could hear Whitlock’s lapdog begin to bark. He did not know what had happened to it after that night.

“So Whitlock cheated on his bargain in the end,” Sebastian said. “Where his soul is now, we cannot know.”

“Pursuing Louise was like chasing a wraith,” Sayers said. “She changed her name. I imagine she changed her appearance. In Yarmouth, I heard that she had fled to the Continent. The trail went cold for a while after I tracked her to these shores, but in every new town or city I search for signs of her presence. Every now and again I learn something more. I joined that dog-and-pony boxing show because I heard she had come to the East. She is here somewhere. I know it.”

“Still chasing her after all these years? There’s a thin line between devotion and obsession, Sayers. You can easily cross it.”

“You’re probably right. But on that night at the Egyptian Hall, I saw how she’d changed. Her time spent with Whitlock had driven her illusions away. She now understood that she’d no reason to fear or despise me. But instead, she’d begun to despise herself.”

“And in consequence she abandoned all that was proper, and chose a life of moral decay. Haven’t your inquiries confirmed as much? She considers herself lost.”

“She can believe it, but that does not make it true. What I saw was a woman worth saving. She could forgive me, but she would not forgive herself. Tell me, Inspector. Is that the sign of a bankrupt soul?”

“Call me Sebastian,” his host said. “Or Becker, if you must. I am an inspector no longer.”

“I believe that she’s only held to her choice by the life she now leads and the company she keeps. Whitlock’s servants may try to teach her the ways of the damned. But it’s my belief that her nature will temper the excesses of the fiend they would guide her to become.”

“Nature can be beaten,” Sebastian said. “I once had to deal with a man who’d drowned himself. He put stones in his pockets, to make sure that his will to die would prevail over his instinct to survive. If she’s determined to see herself damned, there’s nothing you can do that will stop her.”

“I’ll have to find her to know,” Sayers said.

Sebastian went on to recount his own experiences in the aftermath of that momentous evening at the Egyptian Hall. He’d made the profound error of telling his story in full to the Metropolitan Police, without even thinking of how it might be received. In retrospect, he should have censored himself. They listened attentively at first, as officers to an equal. Then they began exchanging glances. Then they moved to another room to discuss what they had heard.

His account was deemed unsatisfactory. None of the well-heeled witnesses ever came forward. The watchman who’d admitted the audience confirmed that they’d existed, but said that their printed invitations had carried no names. When Sebastian was finally allowed to return home, he was suspended from duty and required to appear before a tribunal.

In the days before the tribunal, Sebastian went back to church. He did not pray, but spent several hours discussing myths and miracles with Father Alexander.

Father Alexander could teach others that Christ had risen, while declining to argue whether an intelligent person should allow that a rotten corpse might reverse its decay, heal its injuries, and clamber to its feet. For the priest, God was not hiding in the impossible tricks, but was to be found somewhere in the act of accepting them.

That was of little help to Sebastian. A readiness to believe in wonders might make the believer holy, but it didn’t make the wonders true.

The tribunal had recommended his dismissal from the force, the reason to be recorded in the remarks column of the police register as “want of sobriety and contradicting himself in his evidence.” Becker’s new superintendent had persuaded the chief constable to amend this to read, “…in consequence of his health.” The original wording would have kept him out of a job in this, his second life. The character of a Pinkerton operative had to be above reproach, with only those of strict moral principles and good habits being permitted to enter the service.

The time came for Sebastian to leave for the office. Sayers went to thank his hostess. He was awkward, she was gracious, and her sister and the boy sat in embarrassed silence while this rough-hewn stranger took up space in their familiar little room.

Then he joined Sebastian and they walked from the house to the streetcar, and rode it into town. The day was warm, and its windows were lowered to let a breeze pass through the carriage as they moved. Sayers sat with his elbow over the ledge and mused, “A Pinkerton man.”

“It’s like being a policeman,” Sebastian said. “Except that people respect you and you make a living.”

“If I walked into your office and asked you to find Louise for me, could you do it?”

“Could you afford us?”

That seemed unlikely. Sayers was patently not prosperous, and the years had not been kind. Steady drinking and regular poundings in the boxing booths had affected his bearing. Sebastian had not actually seen him take any drink during the few hours that they’d spent in each other’s company, but the need would probably catch up with him soon.

Sayers said, “I’ve tracked her up and down this country. She knows I’m looking for her. Once I came this close.” He held up one hand with his thumb and forefinger held barely apart.

Sebastian said, “Do you know how she lives?”

“Performing, singing…in Pittsburgh, she gave dancing lessons. She’s a widow when it suits her. She has an eye on society. I think she’d like to settle in one place. But there’s always some reason for her to move on.”

The streetcar reached Sebastian’s regular stop, and they squeezed their way out through all the standing passengers to disembark.

“Sayers,” Sebastian said when they were on the sidewalk and heading toward the Pinkerton offices, “I’m grateful for the answers to questions that have been haunting me for more than a decade. But this life you still lead is the life I left behind. I’ve no wish to return to it.”

“With such a wife and such a home,” Sayers said, “I’d be astonished to hear otherwise. All you have is all that I envy.”

“Then understand. I’ll see what I can find in the office files. Be our guest for a day or two, and we’ll get a few good meals down you, see if we can put a spring in your step and a shine on your shoes. If you need money…”

“I’ll take no money from you,” Sayers said. “But I’ll be grateful for your hospitality. And if anything in the Pinkerton files can bring me closer to Louise, then I’ll be on my way and you’ll hear nothing more of me. Will I need to pay your employers for the information? That could be a problem.”

“I’m an assistant supervisor. I’m expected to pursue new business. Not everything turns into a paying case. That’s expected, as long as it’s all within reason.”

The building’s war-veteran janitor had brought a chair out onto the sidewalk, pretending to look out for a delivery while he was really just taking the air. He’d seen the slaughter at Antietam, they said. Now he just watched the living go by.

“If anyone should ask you, you’re a client,” Sebastian told Sayers, and led the way into the entrance hall.