The Kingdom of Bones

T
hey were driving sheep through the middle of town again. The office window was open and Sebastian Becker could hear them from his desk. All through the afternoon Oakes, the bookkeeper, had been finding reasons to look down into the street. Now he had another.

Sebastian laid down his pen and tilted back his chair. His eyes hurt. He yawned and stretched and pressed the heels of his palms into them and wondered, not for the first time, whether he needed to be checked out for eyeglasses.

Then he realized what he was doing, and cut the yawn short as best he could.

He said, “Are you expecting someone, Mister Oakes?”

Oakes looked back into the office. “Only the boy with the bag from New York,” he said.

“The boy’s been and gone,” Sebastian said. “There was nothing that can’t wait until Monday.”

Oakes hesitated for a moment and then moved out of the slanting sunlight and away from the window. There were at least half a dozen other desks in the room, none occupied, but all of them piled high with paperwork. One chair had a waistcoat slung over the back of it. Another, a gun belt.

As Sebastian lifted his pen again, Oakes gathered together some ledgers and moved them from one place to another. The sheep were almost out of earshot now, their eerie half-human cries pursued by the impatient clanging of an obstructed streetcar. Oakes began to straighten chairs. Despite Sebastian’s permission, he seemed reluctant to leave.

“Mister Oakes…” Sebastian prompted him.

Oakes said, “Mister Bearce has said he’s unhappy with my work.”

“We’ll find some way to change his mind,” Sebastian said. “On Monday. Go home, Mister Oakes.”

“If you’re certain…” Oakes said, fishing for further reassurance. But Sebastian just looked at him, so he went.

Alone now and with one less distraction, Sebastian tried to return his attention to the words on the page. Despite having left the room, Oakes was still somewhere in the suite of offices. Sebastian could hear him moving around, bothering someone else, finding a few last things to do…almost as if the building might absorb his dedication, and then whisper of it to the absent Mr. Bearce.

The General Business letter was a report on the ongoing work of the agency. Compiled every two weeks and sent to George Bangs in New York City, it covered all the investigations that were under way and any new business that might have come in. Bangs would draw together information from all the agency offices and then deliver his summary to the Pinkerton brothers.

Sebastian had been an assistant superintendent for just over a month. The paperwork called for skills he could muster but didn’t enjoy using. It was a warm Saturday afternoon, and he and most of Philadelphia were in a weekend mood. There was also the distraction of the telegraph message that he’d tucked under the corner of his blotter. Personal to him, it caught his eye every now and again.

When the letter was finished, he dropped the handwritten pages into the out-tray for the stenographers and reached for his coat from the back of his chair. He was stiff from sitting, and his eyes ached from the sustained concentration.

Sebastian Becker was a man in his early forties. He had not yet gone to seed, and some thought him handsome—his wife, for one. When he looked in a mirror, what he mostly saw was the face of his father coming through. That, and some of the traces of old pain. Intending no offense to his late father, he didn’t see handsome at all.

He folded the telegraph message and slipped it into his pocket. Then he opened his desk drawer, took out a double-action Bulldog police revolver, and checked and spun its chambers before stowing it inside his jacket.

“Is there a problem, Mister Becker?”

He turned around. Oakes was watching him from the doorway, pulling on his own coat as he stood there.

“No problem, Mister Oakes,” Sebastian said. He closed the window and then followed Oakes out of the office.

As they descended the building’s stairway together, Oakes said, “Any plans for the Sunday, sir?”

“I promised to take the Mrs. and her sister out to Willow Grove,” Sebastian said. “She’s heard that Sousa’s conducting in the park.”

“Hardly the music for ladies, I wouldn’t have thought.”

“Mrs. Becker can be an unusual woman.”

The night janitor was waiting by the metal gates. He’d closed up the building and was letting the last few people out in ones and twos. He was a veteran, and never spoke. It was said that cannon fire had made him simple.

Out on Chestnut Street and raising his voice as the metal slid, Oakes said, “Will you take the boy?”

And Becker said, “I rather think we will.”

A streetcar ride and a ten-minute walk took Sebastian home. Home was in a narrow, tree-lined alley just off a pleasant square, a neatly pointed brick row house with shutters on its windows and a small garden to the rear. Before he let himself in, he checked around to see if anyone was observing. A nag was pulling a brewery wagon across the end of the alley, and that was about all.

It was a quiet neighborhood, and strangers would stand out. Come eight o’clock, you’d hear the banging of the shutters, and by nine, all would be dark. But that was the life he’d been looking for.

They’d lived here a month. The rent was a stretch even on a superintendent’s pay, but it was worth it for him to know that his family was secure. When they’d made the move after the rise in his fortunes, he’d had no idea how good the timing of it was. Their old Lehigh Avenue apartment had been right in the heart of the Irish quarter, and in the light of that morning’s news it would have been no safe place to remain.

As he closed the door behind him, his wife’s sister was crossing the hallway with an armful of cut flowers from the garden.

“Good evening, Sebastian,” she said.

“Hello, Frances,” he said. Before he’d finished speaking, the ceiling above their heads began to shiver with the lowest bass notes of a scale from a tenor tuba.

Becker had called his wife an unusual woman. In most respects she was not. She was slight, dark-eyed, pale and freckled and elegantly pretty—all attractive features, but none of them in any way startling or radical. What
was
uncommon was to find such a woman spending at least twenty minutes of each day in practice on a four-valve euphonium, entirely for her own enjoyment.

He followed the sound up the stairs to the sitting room at the back of the house. When he pushed open the door, there she was. She’d set up her chair and music stand by the window. Against the late sun, not just the brass of the instrument but the entirety of her shone like gold. The floor vibrated like a deck and the very air shook when the low notes sounded. Their son was at her feet, propped on his elbows, oblivious to everything but the magazine he was looking at.

Movement caught her eye, and she saw him. Without missing a beat, she raised her eyebrows in a greeting. Sebastian managed a smile, and wondered at the patience of their new neighbors. They’d discussed the possibility of occasional disturbance with them, of course. Both neighbors had thanked them for their thoughtfulness and insisted that they would not mind. But after a certain amount of
Lohengrin,
anyone could start to regret being quite so agreeable.

Robert was scrambling to his feet, his dime novel forgotten. He’d seen his father. He came running toward Sebastian and, avoiding his offered embrace, punched him in the leg as hard as he could before slithering by and away. Sebastian could hear Frances calling after him as he scuttled down the stairs.

Elisabeth lowered her euphonium and laid it down with care, before crossing the room to her husband.

“What’s the matter with him?” Sebastian said.

“He’d convinced himself you were going to be early,” Elisabeth said. “That’s all.”

“I never said I would.”

“I know.”

She rose on tiptoe to give Sebastian a kiss of greeting, steadying herself with a hand against his chest. He sensed her sudden tension as she became aware of the Bulldog revolver under his coat, even though her outward attitude showed no change.

“What’s wrong?” she said, dropping back to her usual height.

“Nothing’s wrong.”

“I thought English policemen didn’t like to carry guns.”

“I’m no longer a policeman, and this isn’t England.”

“Is someone looking for you?”

He thought about showing her the telegraph message, and decided against it.

“Stop worrying,” he said. “It’s only a precaution.”

“Against what? Can we still go out?”

From most of the women he’d ever known, such a question would have been thrown down as a challenge or with a pout. But not from his wife.

“We can still go out,” he said.