Sayers had been swinging the chair from side to side. He stopped.
“Don’t tell me,” he said. “He led a double life.”
“He liked the vaudeville. The chorus girls best of all.”
“Louise Porter is no chorus girl,” the prizefighter said.
“I use the term loosely.”
“As does everyone.”
“I mean young actresses of any kind. He’d take a box at Keith’s theater or the old Trocadero and send notes to the stage door. Once in a while, he’d get lucky.”
“Louise has a particular method,” Sayers said. “I’ve seen it develop over the years. She arrives in a new city, sometimes with a letter of introduction to someone in society. That gets her an invitation to one salon or another, where she sings and recites and always causes a stir among the men. She might hire a hall to give a reading, but never a theater. She keeps the title of an actress, but she is never part of any cast or company. She dare not be.”
Sebastian held the card up, as if it might offer the proof of something.
“This man’s wife was on the committee of the Philomusian Club,” he said.
“What’s that?”
“It’s a women’s club. Arts, music, poetry. For all we know, some of their events could even have been hosted at his mansion.”
Sayers thought about that one. It did, indeed, seem to put a different light on matters.
He said, “Is there anything there to say how he died?”
Sebastian had to go deeper into the file for an answer. He read for a while and then, with his eyes still on the paper, said, “Our police contacts say they found needles in his body. A dozen of them. All in a cluster. Pushed in where no needle ought to go. All else might decay, but the needles did not. The family were never told.”
Sayers asked to see the paper. Sebastian checked for anyone passing the room before he handed it over, but no one was there. Bearce wouldn’t like it if he saw an outsider reading a confidential file, potential client or not.
Sayers read for a while and then said, “I believe this may be evidence of her work.”
“Her work?”
“I have learned so much about my own sex in these past fourteen years, Becker. There are men who hold that they worship innocence while they seek to consume it like dogs. And there are upright, respectable citizens whose secret dream is of pain and humiliation at the hands of another. Of a mistress, or a lover. To undergo such is an almost unbearable ecstasy for them. Most stay well within the safety of the dream. Some would go to its limit. And at that limit, there is always the possibility of something going wrong.”
“These are the men she seeks out?”
“She does not need to seek them out. Whatever signal they are looking for, they seem to find. They pursue her. Most of what I know came from the case of a man in San Francisco. He had survived her attentions, but was left damaged. His consent to what had happened meant nothing in law. There was a scandal. After that, she had to stop using her own name.”
“Good God,” said Sebastian, who until this moment was certain that he’d pretty much seen everything there was to see of human nature.
Sayers said, “Don’t you see what she’s doing, Sebastian? She’s fulfilling the letter of the Wanderer’s contract without being entirely true to its spirit. She dispenses suffering, all right, but only to those who actively seek it. If a death occurs, it’s more by their misadventure than by her intent.”
“A nice distinction,” Sebastian said drily. “As I’m sure the widows would agree.”
Alongside the post office building stood the square-towered headquarters of the Philadelphia Record. They waited in the foyer as Sebastian had a message sent upstairs, and within a few minutes one of the regular staff came down, greeted him as an old friend, and led them through to the archive rooms.
Here, recent copies of the newspaper were piled flat on shelves. Older editions could be consulted in huge bound volumes that needed a rolling ladder to get them down and specially built lecterns to hold them open.
They were interested in those issues that covered the weeks before the dead man’s disappearance. Sebastian wasn’t entirely sure of what they were searching for, but Sayers seemed to have more of an idea.
“Here’s one,” Sebastian suggested, and read aloud from the classifieds. “Miss M. S. Lyons. Private instruction in all the latest and most fashionable dances. Classes taught out of town. Private lessons any hour.”
Sayers glanced up from his own pages. “A dance instructor?” he said. He didn’t seem persuaded.
“You said she tried something like it before,” Sebastian suggested.
“I don’t think so,” Sayers said. “I’m in the society pages, here…” He ran his finger down an entire column in a second or two. Sebastian realized that he wasn’t so much reading it as taking in the text as a block of print and extracting from it such detail as he needed. Was that how actors got their lines so quickly? Not so much learning the words as absorbing the sense of a piece, and then re-creating the words from it?
Sayers’ finger stopped on the page.
“Here she is,” he said excitedly.
Sebastian moved to his side, and both read together. It was a small announcement in the society column for a literary lunch to be held at the Rathskeller Café and Ladies Dining Room in the Betz Building on Broad Street. The guest speaker was to be the noted actress and récitateuse…
“Mrs. Louise Caspar,” Sebastian read aloud. “That must be a cruel twist of the knife for you. I’m sorry, Sayers.”
“Ignore it,” Sayers said. “I can.”
There were only two photographs accompanying the society columns, and neither was of Louise.
Sebastian reread the piece and said, “I see no actual mention of the Philomusian Club.”
“The name places her in town. That’s good enough for me. And look at the date. The trail is fresh.”
They looked through more issues, but found no further reference. As they were leaving the Record building, Sebastian said, “We need better information. There are other newspapers.”
“Never mind newspapers,” Sayers said. “Find me a dozen rich women with time on their hands. Find me the clubs and the literary societies. The lecture circuit and the private library. Those are the fields where she beats for her game.”
They stopped at the Automat for coffee and sandwiches. It was early for lunch, and the office crowds hadn’t built up yet. Despite the morning’s excitements, or perhaps because of them, Sayers appeared to have a healthy appetite. His color was better than the day before, his eyes brighter. The cuts about his head were beginning to heal…although for the moment he continued to have the look of a barroom brawler, taken out of his element and tossed into the daylight.
Sebastian said, “Say you find her. What then?”
Sayers was oddly silent.
Sebastian said, “I don’t believe you’ve never thought about it.”
“I have thought about it,” Sayers said. “I have written the scene in my head a thousand times. But until I face the moment itself…I have no idea what will happen.”
Rather than return to the Pinkerton office, where conversations might be overheard and questions raised, they stood outside Wanamaker’s and pretended to study the window displays.
Sebastian decided to be bold.
“You drink, Sayers.”
The prizefighter took this without embarrassment or any show of defensiveness. “I have been known to,” he conceded.
“It will not help you from here.”
Sayers gave a wry smile. He said, “It is very hard for a man to deny something whose companionship has sped the passage of the harshest of days.”
“Nevertheless. If you’re staying in my house, it won’t do to be three days without a shave and have gin on your breath.”
“I can easily get a shave,” Sayers said.
THIRTY
For the rest of the afternoon, Sayers walked around town whi
le 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.
“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.”
The Kingdom of Bones Page 20
