The Kingdom of Bones

by Stephen Gallagher

  She knew that she was not their most cooperative student. She knew where this journey would lead. And if the outlook seemed bleak…well, what had she asked for?

  She looked around. The sitting room had been tidied. It had that too-straight, untouched look. She went over to the writing table and tried the drawers, which she found unlocked. In them she found personal papers, unpaid bills, and some letters of no interest. There were a few items torn from newspapers and magazines, most of them making some reference to Patenotre’s home county in Louisiana. She found a few loose coins, but no real cash or anything of value.

  She didn’t trouble to leave things as she’d found them. In fact, she went to the couch and punched a couple of the cushions, just to make them look sat-upon. At that point there came two taps on the wall, spaced a second apart.

  Louise crossed the room in silence and spun into the bedroom, closing the door behind her. It had no lock, but it had a thumb latch that she slid across. Then she waited and listened. After less than a minute, she heard the door to the sitting room open and close. Then the sounds of drawers being pushed all the way shut, of cushions being picked up and slapped into shape.

  When the bedroom doorknob was turned and the door rattled against the latch, Louise took a step back. She was not nervous.

  She heard the maid on the other side of the door call out, “Mister Patenotre? Do you want me to make your bed up, sir?”

  Louise pretended to yawn, making a sound that could have come from anyone—man, woman, even an animal—and which could have been intended to mean anything at all.

  In the same raised voice, the maid said, “I’m sorry if I’ve disturbed you, sir,” and went. Louise heard the outer door close a few moments later.

  She looked at the bed. It was still made up from the day before. Jules Patenotre hadn’t returned to his rooms last night, nor would he ever again. But it would suit her best if he didn’t disappear just yet. She threw back the covers, mussed the sheets, and put a dent in the pillow, giving the bed a slept-in look. Then she searched the bedroom.

  Shoes. How many pairs of shoes did a man need? Behind them in the bottom of the closet she thought at first that she’d struck lucky, because she found a locked box about the size of a gun case. Louise didn’t have the Silent Man’s skills, but she went and got the letter knife from the sitting room, and forced the lock.

  The resemblance to a gun case was no coincidence. The box contained two guns. It also contained a collection of obscene postcards and a small number of books. She took out one of these and read the title: A Treatise on the Use of Flogging in Medicine and Venery. It was one of an edition of three hundred from a publisher with no address other than “Paris.”

  She left the box’s contents as she’d found them. The damage to the lid wasn’t obvious. The rooms had yielded nothing of use, but she wasn’t done with Jules Patenotre yet. Before leaving, she took one last look around. She’d have the Silent Man or his wife come in and untidy them every day for a week or two. It would blur over any apparent link between her own arrival and her patron’s disappearance. It wouldn’t matter that his room key stayed behind the front desk, as long as the clerks didn’t keep a record.

  She went back down to the lobby.

  “The manager promised me a strongbox?” she said to the clerk on duty.

  “Right here for you, ma’am,” he said, and reached under the desk to bring out a ledger. “If I can get a specimen signature in our security book.”

  “How does this work?”

  “I’ll walk you through it.”

  She signed as Mary D’Alroy, and then he led her to the small room just off the lobby where the wall of strongboxes was to be found. He showed her how two keys were used to open the door to her personal safe.

  “This one you keep,” he explained, showing her the key on the smaller tag. “It fits your box and no other. This second key is the hotel’s master key. You need both keys to open any box.”

  With that, he left her alone. As soon as he’d gone, she dug into her clutch bag and took out the key that she’d found in the pocket of Jules Patenotre’s coat. She tried it in each of the strongbox doors in turn, until she found the one that it matched. Then she took the hotel’s master key out of her own safe’s door and used it to open the second lock.

  She drew out Patenotre’s long tray and lifted the metal lid. This was more like it. There was a substantial amount of money, both in paper and gold coin. Her reaction was not of greed or of pleasure, but of relief. She transferred it all across to her own box. There was another key, a big one, with nothing to say what it was for. She took that. There were some pieces of jewelry, but she left these behind. Such things could be identified. The risk of that exceeded any value they might have—which, in all honesty, looked as if it wouldn’t be much. She was no expert, but to her eye these were sentimental pieces, not heirlooms.

  There were also some papers, legal documents—probably the last remaining records of a now-extinguished line. She was going to leave those as well, but she gave them a glance first in case there was anything involving stocks or shares. Without her close-work glasses, she had to strain a little. What she saw prompted her to stuff all the papers into her clutch bag for a closer reading later on.

  She’d been in the room for about five minutes. Long enough. She slid both boxes back into the wall, closed the heavy doors on them, locked both sets of locks, and then took the hotel’s master key back to the desk.

  “Very ingenious system you have,” she told the clerk as she handed in the master.

  “We like to think it’s pretty well foolproof,” he said. “Good day to you, ma’am.”

  She read his name off his badge.

  “And to you, Charles,” she said, and went back up to her suite.

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  It was one hell of a gentlemen’s club, that was for sure. Housed in a mansion built in the Victorian Italianate style, it stood behind fancy iron railings in the middle of the downtown area on East Franklin. The entire building was at the disposal of its members, who included a large number of Richmond’s prominent and powerful. The rules governing membership were complex, subtle, and mostly unwritten.

  Membership was for men only. Decent women of the town were known to turn their faces from the building as they passed it on their way home from church; to do otherwise was considered unladylike. The club was not spoken of, and it was generally understood that whatever happened within its walls, stayed within its walls. This was a place for the boys to be boys. The boys included bankers, factory owners, military men, and a significant number of the city’s idler rich.

  In a set of tails borrowed from the Bijou’s costume store by arrangement with a fellow boarder, Tom Sayers pushed his way through the iron gates. He’d been advised to play up his English accent, so they’d think he was a gentleman, and to remember to take his hat off, lest they should spot that he wasn’t.

  Flaming torches lit the portico from brackets on either side of the entranceway. A black footman stood ready to open the door but hesitated, not recognizing Sayers as a regular member. But Sayers had taken advice for this moment, also.

  “I’m a guest of the judge,” he said.

  It seemed that he’d been provided with a good choice of patron. “Justice Crutchfield?” the doorman said with an undercurrent of apprehension that bordered on alarm, and he all but jumped to admit him. Sayers could only hope that the footman would say nothing should the justice actually appear that evening.

  He stepped into a marble-floored hallway with a staircase that swept around and up to a second-floor gallery and a dome of painted glass above. Another footman took his hat.

  And where now? He couldn’t appear to hesitate. Sayers chose the nearest set of doors, and found himself in a large, airy, and empty room the size of a gymnasium. It would have served equally well for dancing or banqueting.

  A further set of doors took him into the dining rooms; these were spare and masculine, with hard wo
oden chairs and plain white linen tablecloths. The billiard room had five tables and electric lighting, and was entered through a curtained archway. Four of the tables were in use. He stood and watched one of the games for a while. Nobody addressed him or acknowledged him.

  Finally, he reached the barroom, which proved to be the liveliest part of the club.

  It was a dark room with a big fireplace, full of cigar smoke and well-dressed males. Some lounged on sofas but most stood in groups, each group back-to-back with two or three others, all having the loud conversations of men who are agreed that they’re absolutely right about everything. Above the fireplace was the club’s coat of arms, a wooden crest of shields, spears, and helmets with an incongruous clock face in the middle of it.

  The air was thick and the room unpleasantly warm. Rather than stay in the doorway attracting attention, Sayers threaded a way through the crowd. Without meaning to, he jogged the arm of a big man addressing a small crowd of listeners. The man’s fist had a drink in it, and some of the drink spilled. He looked around.

  “Watch where you’re going, sir,” he snapped.

  “Forgive me,” Sayers said, but the stranger was not prepared to let it go so easily.

  “I should think so!” he said. “Conduct yourself better, or get out of my sight. I don’t care whose guest you are.”

  He was bullet-headed and barrel-chested, in off-white planter’s clothes and with a waxed mustache. Before Sayers could speak again, a stranger had interposed himself between them.

  “I witnessed the incident, such as it was, Mister Burwell,” the stranger said. “I can tell you that no offense was intended or offered.”

  He drew Sayers away.

  “Thank you, but you don’t have to frog-march me,” Sayers said as soon as they’d moved out of earshot. “I can see it when a man’s spoiling for an argument.”

  “And I can spot when a man’s ready to rise to one,” the stranger said. “Calvin Quinn, at your service. I don’t believe I’ve seen you here before?” Quinn was a spare-looking man of about his own age, and in a rather better suit.

  Sayers gave his own name and added, “Just got into town a couple of days ago.”

  “Well,” Quinn said, “if there’s anyone you want an introduction to, just let me know. I’ve had dealings with most people here. I’m a lawyer. What line of business are you in?”

  Sayers thought it best to mention no profession. He’d held down a range of jobs since the age of eleven. Bricklayer’s boy, boxer, actor, theatrical business manager, warehouseman, fruit picker, road digger, carnival hand…none of them likely to win him much respect in a place like this.

  So he just said, “I had a windfall. That’s what I’m living on right now.”

  “Ah,” Calvin Quinn said, and his interest seemed to increase. “So, what do you make of us?”

  “I can’t say I’ve been here long enough to form an opinion,” Sayers said, glancing back as the noise level behind him continued to rise. The man who’d tried to provoke him was now trying to get a rise out of a young, good-looking man with a broad forehead and sideburns.

  “Well,” Quinn said, “don’t form one based on the likes of him. That’s Henry Burwell. He’s angry, he’s rich, and he was born unpleasant. It’s not a healthy brew.”

  At the sight of that ruddy, aggressive countenance thrusting itself into the face of the younger man, Sayers was reminded of a belligerent Turkish wrestler he’d once had to share a trailer with. On a winter’s morning, the strongman would strip to the waist and break the ice on one of the water butts, roaring loudly enough to wake up the whole camp as he splashed his bared skin with gallons of frozen slush. He would drink heavily, and when he got drunk he always wanted to arm-wrestle somebody. There seemed to be something about men of such build and temperament: the older they grew, the more hardened they became, and the more determined to seek out any opportunity to prove it in pointless competition.

  Sayers said, “What’s he angry at?”

  Quinn could only shrug. “Who knows? We don’t choose our natures. Any stranger is game to him. He spots an unfamiliar face and off he goes.”

  “Someone ought to stop him.”

  “Stop him? People contrive to get their worst enemies in here and then wait for the fireworks. You did well not to fall for it. So, what brings you to Richmond? Are you looking to invest some of that windfall money? I’ve got all the connections you could ask for, if you do.”

  So that was it. Quinn probably moved in on every stranger as a possible business prospect. Such contact was, after all, a main purpose of circles such as these.

  “I’m looking for someone,” Sayers said, and reached inside his borrowed coat. He brought out Louise’s picture. “She came down from Philadelphia a few weeks ago. Might you have seen her?”

  Quinn took the photograph and studied it politely. He seemed to grow quiet.

  “It’s an old picture,” Sayers said. “She may have changed.”

  The lawyer handed it back. “I fear not,” he said. “An actress?”

  “On the British stage. In another life.”

  “I don’t recognize the name.”

  “The name could be different now.”

  “How very mysterious.”

  It was then that the altercation behind Sayers grew so loud that the entire room began to fall silent and was turning to listen. “You seem to think you can insult your betters with impunity,” the bellicose Henry Burwell was all but shouting.

  “I insulted no one,” the young man protested, raising his voice in response. “I never met a man so set on being offended.”

  “We shall settle this,” Henry Burwell said, and gave the younger man a shove that sent him staggering back into his companions. It was a move that determined the only course that this confrontation could take.

  “You seek a lesson?” the young man said, regaining his balance with the help of his friends. “You will have one.”

  It was as if someone had fired off a signal. The doors to the adjoining ballroom were flung open, and the entire club began to decamp from the bar. Sayers was carried by a human tide. He’d lost sight of his conversation partner by the time he’d reached the door.

  There was something unsettling about the speed with which preparations fell into place. A rope was produced and run around a series of hooks, one on the inside corner of each of the ballroom’s four wooden pillars. The crowd fell into shape around the ring that this formed. Burwell’s seconds took his coat from him and had his sleeves rolled up before the young man and his friends had even taken in what was going on. Eager helpers propelled them toward one of the newly created corners, with everyone shouting advice.

  One of the young man’s friends called out, “Who’s got the gloves?”

  “Gloves?” Henry Burwell shouted back. “Only women fight with gloves!”

  And a man somewhere close to Sayers’ ear could be heard to say, “This has got to be the absolute best thing since the opera house did the naked nigger wrestling.”

  Sayers glanced around. Some of the clubmen were grinning while others were expressing disapproval, even though they were doing nothing that might interfere with the object of their annoyance. He’d seen this phenomenon before: those who decried a thing, while ensuring they missed none of it. Indeed, they’d seek it out in all its forms so that they might disapprove of it more thoroughly.

  He eyed the young man in the makeshift ring, who was now down to his vest and shirtsleeves and was handing his watch and chain to a friend for safekeeping. He was narrow-hipped and wide-shouldered, with a nice taper to his form; he might well give the local brute a few surprises and make him think twice about issuing such challenges in the future.

  And if he did not…well, who was Sayers to pass judgment? This hardly differed from the way he had made his living for at least five of the past dozen years. The goaded challenger, the unequal contest, the knockout blow. The only real dissimilarity was that Sayers had taken no pleasure from his victor
ies.

  He’d just taken the money, at the end of every day.

  “I’d say you had a narrow escape,” Sebastian Becker said from right beside him.

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  As he spoke the words, Sebastian took a firm grip on Sayers’ upper arm and held him fast. Sayers looked at him in astonishment.

  “Sebastian?” he said. “What are you doing here?”

  “Don’t Sebastian me,” the onetime policeman said. “You thief under my roof.”

  “I stole nothing from you!”

  “You’d have ruined my good name if I’d let your crime stand,” Sebastian said, his voice rising to compete with the racket all around them. “And I’ve damn near ruined my own family with what it’s taken to cover for you. I’ll have back what you took, and I’ll have it right now.”

  With that, he turned Sayers around and started to shove him through the crowd toward the doors.

  In among all the gentlemen, Sebastian was aware that he stood out in his travel-creased suit and his dusty shoes. He’d barely slept in two days and was sustained on a fuel of strong black coffee and indignation. He’d spent the past twelve hours canvassing every midtown lodging house in the public register, until he found the one where Tom Sayers’ description was recognized. A fellow guest had directed him here. When the club’s servants had tried to deny him entry, the sheer force of his response had been even more persuasive than any threat that he’d made.

  He’d walked in just as everyone had been moving from the bar into the ballroom. He’d spotted Sayers almost immediately, and pushed his way through to his side.

  Sayers said, “Wait, Sebastian. Please.”