The Kingdom of Bones (21 page)

THIRTY

F
or the rest of the afternoon, Sayers walked around town while Sebastian Becker returned to the office to look up some names and send out a few messages. Some of the theaters on Eighth Street were running a continuous program of variety acts and Sayers considered passing an hour or two in the cheap seats, but he hadn’t the heart or the energy to lay down his money at the box office. He already felt that he’d seen enough comic singers, tap dancers, and unsteady acrobats in his life to last him until the end of it.

And besides, his thoughts would not settle. He was looking for Louise in every woman who passed him on the sidewalk. He ended up sitting on a bench in Rittenhouse Square among all the nannies and their baby carriages, until he became aware that a mounted policeman was eyeing him while circling the gardens a little more often than seemed necessary.

He went home with Becker at the end of the day, and that evening he dined with the family. Elisabeth Becker asked him about his life with the carnival, and his time on the stage before it. She spoke to be polite, but he was quickly able to convince her that he was not the brute he might have appeared, and that the brawl at Willow Grove had not been typical of the booths. He did, however, confess that fairground contests were perhaps not as equal as they might be made to seem; often the challenger would be given eight-ounce gloves to fight with, while the house fighter was able to punch harder with gloves of half the weight.

“How fascinating,” she said, seeming to be genuinely captivated by this piece of showman’s tradecraft.

“Yes, ma’am,” said Sayers. “As you see, it’s not just a sport, it’s a science.”

“So if you ever get to meet Thomas Edison, Elisabeth,” Sebastian said drily, “he’ll whip you in a straight fight, no problem.”

Once it was clear that Sebastian had not introduced some belligerent animal into the household, the atmosphere eased. Elisabeth’s sister, Frances, said almost nothing to Sayers, but stared wide-eyed at him all evening as if storing up something she was ready to blurt out. Robert also stared, but at the table. He’d been forbidden to read his latest dime novel at mealtimes but remained inseparable from it. If it wasn’t in one hand or the other, it was tucked under his arm until he had a hand free again.

Sayers spotted its title and said, “Did you know that Buffalo Bill once took his Wild West show to England?”

It was as if he’d snapped his fingers to bring the boy out of a trance; Robert’s attention went from the table to the dinner guest, with no distraction in between.

“Twice,” the boy said, the first word that he’d spoken all evening. “Once in Eighteen Ninety Three, and again in Eighteen Ninety Seven when he met the queen. He goes again this year.”

“This year? Well, there I was thinking I’d tell you something you didn’t know, and now you’ve told me something
I
didn’t know.” Sayers held out his hand. “Shake this. Go on, it’s not a trick.” The boy stared at the outstretched hand, and then awkwardly took it and gave it a single shake, as if tugging on a bellpull.

“Now,” Sayers said as the boy let go, “you can tell all your friends that you shook the very same hand that shook the hand of William F. Cody.”

Awe followed. It was a private awe, that Robert kept all to himself; nonetheless, it was heartening to see.

Later in the evening, Sayers kept out of the way while some intense family discussion went on between Sebastian and Elisabeth. It continued for an hour or more. When Sebastian returned to the sitting room alone, he gave Sayers a nod.

Sayers said in a low voice, “What have you told them?”

“That there are two Irish brothers out gunning for me, and that your presence in the house for a few days will bring us an extra measure of security.”

“That sounds reasonable.”

“Because it happens to be true.” Sebastian glanced toward the door, as if there was a risk that Elisabeth might come through it before he’d finished speaking. “It’s also true that the brothers were arrested on the Boston train on Saturday. I saw the bulletin when I went back to the office. But they’ll serve me for an excuse.”

Sayers slept on the divan again that night.

The next morning, Elisabeth told him, “Mister Sayers, I apologize for your discomfort. I have made up my sister’s room for you to use during the rest of your stay here. Frances will move in with Robert.”

“I don’t know what to say,” he said.

“She gave it up willingly. I daresay there’ll be more lace and ribbon around than you’re used to, but I think you’ll be comfortable.”

“Thank you.”

“Don’t just thank me,” she said, suddenly turning so serious that Sayers found himself reacting as if she’d unexpectedly shown him a glimpse of a knife. She glanced in the direction they both knew her husband to be, and said, “If anything happens to him, I’ll hold you responsible. You don’t really think I believe that this is all about two Irish boys? I don’t know what’s going on between the two of you. But if anything happens to cause him harm, may the Lord help you.”

It was probably the Buffalo Bill dime novel handshake that had ensured Sayers’ extended welcome. The Beckers worried about their son, there was no doubting that. Robert’s intelligence was undeniable, his emotions profound; but he rarely showed one or expressed the other, and so was misunderstood by almost everyone outside of the family.

There was a new doctor at Friends’ Asylum up in Oxford Township, some five miles to the north of Philadelphia. He’d been recommended to them as a reputable specialist in emotional disturbance. Elisabeth had waited over a month for an appointment to see him, and it fell that afternoon.

Sebastian took them to the station. Less than half an hour after the family had departed, a two-horse wagon drew up in the alley outside the Becker house. It was a carnival wagon, but the elaborate decoration on its side panels had so faded that the paint was almost indistinguishable from the dust that covered it. The team was driven by a boy of about fifteen years old. Beside him sat a much older man, wiry and with a walrus mustache that gave him a look of permanent melancholy. He had a telegram in his hand, against which he’d been checking the street names as they passed.

The boy kept hold of the reins and the man climbed down as Sayers went out to meet them. Sebastian had gone to the station to see his family onto the train, while Sayers had stayed behind to sit on the front stoop and wait for his possessions to arrive.

The man was named Axel Hansen, and he and his brother owned the boxing booth. His brother was the barker. The boy at the reins of the wagon was his grandson.

Together, Axel Hansen and Tom Sayers lifted the steamer trunk from the rear of the wagon and carried it to the house, and then returned for the suitcase. With the Willow Grove engagement cut short and no others lined up, the brothers had tried to find another pitch elsewhere in the city. That hadn’t worked out, and so the show was moving on.

When they’d managed all the baggage and set it down by the stoop, Axel Hansen said, “Well, Tom, it’s been a time, and no mistake.”

“It has,” agreed Tom.

Axel reached deep into the leg pocket of his voluminous trousers and brought out a bottle of Green River whiskey, unopened and with its seal intact. Holding it up, he said, “I do believe you forgot to pack this before you left us.”

“You know I didn’t forget it, Axel,” Sayers said. “And I appreciate the thought behind the gift. But hard liquor’s not the best thing to have in front of me right now. Why don’t you and the boys open it tonight and raise a glass to me?”

Axel’s watery blue eyes studied him. Some blue eyes are cold, and make their owner seem hard. With Axel’s, it was always as if he was on the verge of tears.

He said, “You cleanin’ up?”

“I think I might.”

Unoffended, Axel returned the bottle to its hiding place and said, “Then God bless you, Tom, and all who travel with you. I hope the day comes when you find who you’re lookin’ for.”

The two men embraced there in the middle of the sidewalk, and then Axel returned to his wagon.

“Always a place for you,” he called down from the seat.

“I know it,” Sayers replied, and raised his hand in farewell as the wagon set off to rejoin the rest of the show on its way out of town. When they’d turned the corner, Sayers went and sat on his trunk to await the family’s return.

The doctor had spent no more than ten minutes with Robert, and had then turned him over to his assistants for tests and observations that would take up the rest of the afternoon. Elisabeth wouldn’t leave him, so she and Frances stayed while Sebastian returned.

When he arrived back from the hospital, the sight of Sayers and his luggage by the doorstep made him feel like a mean-spirited host. But Sayers was a stranger to his family and hardly less of a stranger to Sebastian himself, and it had hardly seemed proper to give him the run of the house.

He unlocked the front door, and they carried the trunk inside and up the stairs into Frances’ room, which had been emptied of her more personal possessions to make it into guest quarters.

“We’ve a woman who collects the washing twice a week,” Sebastian told him. “If there’s anything you need to get clean, here’s your chance.”

“I may have been living in wagons and sleeping in my underwear,” Sayers said, “but one of the many things I’ve learned along the way is how to wash through a shirt.”

Sebastian watched as he opened up the trunk and, in the space of a couple of minutes, set out the few items that would make a corner of any place his own. A hairbrush, a few souvenirs, a picture for the mirror—the picture was a theatrical
carte de visite
from the
Purple Diamond
company.

“I take it that you don’t have another suit to wear?” he said.

“This one’s my best,” Sayers told him, and a look inside the trunk was proof he did not lie.

Sebastian said, “Don’t take offense at this, Sayers, but if you’re going to chase Louise through high society we need to make you a little more respectable.”

Sayers said, “First things first. I need a bathhouse and a barber.” He looked at his battered hands. “In my experience, the first step toward looking human is to start feeling like it.”

There was a barber within two blocks’ walk, and a public bathhouse just a couple of streetcar stops away. Sebastian began to offer Sayers money, but Sayers stopped him. He had a stash of bills in a secret pocket of the trunk. His emergency fund.

So Sebastian sent him on his way, waited ten minutes or so, and then went upstairs and performed a thorough search of the fighter’s trunk and suitcase, taking care to note how everything lay and to replace all as he found it.

In the trunk were two stolen Bibles that Sayers had been using to keep newspaper cuttings from all over the country, slipping them between the pages to keep them flat. All of the San Francisco cuttings could be found in Ecclesiastes. The first book of Kings told the story of a cold trail that he’d followed all the way up to Washington State. In the book of Job was a list of all the soup kitchens in Denver.

He would not throw in his lot with Sayers, but he would offer such support as would send him on his way with a goal to pursue. The prizefighter’s reappearance in his life had awakened all of the detective’s turbulent feelings over scenes he’d once witnessed. A rational man by inclination, he’d seen his world upturned by the seemingly supernatural. He wanted his world to make sense again. And if there was a slim chance that the search for truth might turn up some final proof of the occult…well, no man was an atheist except for want of a more convincing alternative.

But an old painting in a museum basement proved nothing. One thing he had learned from the church was that the credulous would co-opt anything to support a belief.

Edmund Whitlock had been mortal. Louise Porter was no more than human. All else, Sebastian concluded, was human psychology, preserved for the ages in tales of wonder.

In the Acts of the Apostles, Sebastian found two yellowing slips of folded newsprint, each with a marginal note that identified their source as the
Norwich Mercury
of 1891.

MYSTERIOUS DISAPPEARANCE OF A CHILD
Taken from the Rows
Man and Woman Sought

The first clipping told of a child’s disappearance in the British coastal town of Great Yarmouth, and of the search that had followed. Eight-year-old Eliza Sewell, a resident of one of the narrow medieval alleys known as the Rows, had been sent on an errand by her mother. Her four-year-old sister was in her charge. The bottle shop was no more than ten minutes’ walk away, but she’d neither arrived there nor returned home. The abandoned younger child had walked into a neighbor’s house, where she said nothing of what had happened. She played with the neighbor’s children and no one raised the alarm until midevening, when the oldest boy took her back to her own home.

Each Row was a close-knit community. Neighbors could, quite literally, lean out of their windows and touch each others’ houses. There was a large turnout of volunteers to join in the search. All that the four-year-old could say was that Eliza had been spoken to by a woman, and had gone off with her. In another part of town, a signwriter had seen a brown-haired child walking toward the docks with a similar-sounding woman and a man. He described the woman as looking like a witch, with layer upon layer of ragged clothes. The man was thin-faced with a shaven head.

The search concentrated around the docks, and the worst was feared. Several shaven-headed sailors were dragged out of public houses, and a Swede who spoke no English was thrown onto the cobbles and beaten.

LITTLE ELIZA FOUND SAFE AND WELL
Discovered in Marketplace by the Night Watch
Mystery of the “Weeping Lady”

The second news clipping picked up the story a couple of days on. Eliza had been found by the late-night police patrol. She was wandering in the town’s deserted marketplace at two o’clock in the morning. By this time, she’d become “Little Eliza” in print and in the public’s imagination, and her fate was the subject of speculation in every backyard and taproom. The reporter’s language was oblique, but Sebastian’s reading of it was that she’d been found barefoot and without clothing.