The Opening Night Murder (27 page)

“Oh, that won’t be necessary. Just let me know where they are, and we can go speak to them. No need to send them all into a tizzy by abducting anyone. We should be civilized about it, I think.”

“As you wish, Mistress Suze. I expect we can be civilized even when they might not be.”

“We’ll see how it all turns out, Louis.”

S
HE
didn’t have long to worry about Arturo. Three days later, after two more performances with sellout crowds, the feeling during rehearsal that afternoon was of pleasant confidence in a full house. The company had come to expect it, and even Horatio’s wounded pride was muted in the wake of the public
attention given to his new troupe. And the money. Money had a way of healing many sorts of wounds, and was especially effective on wounded pride.

His fine mood soured again when his instructions to the players were interrupted by thunderous banging at the entrance doors. He turned and glowered at the noise, saying nothing. Everyone else in the theatre stopped to listen and watch, for they all knew it was the sound made by men with intent to enter whether invited or not. Someone was looking for someone to arrest. Suzanne’s heart leapt to her throat, and she had to suppress the urge to flee. Running away would help nothing. Instead she strode across the pit to the entrance and ordered the huge doors to be opened before the men outside did damage to them. Two men of the Globe Players complied and lifted the bolt.

In swarmed soldiers in dark red coats and wielding pikes, some with arquebuses. At their head strode Constable Pepper, and Suzanne’s alarm edged toward panic that he’d been given charge of so many heavily armed king’s men. He was only a local official and shouldn’t have command over any part of the army, but there they were, obeying his orders as if he were Lord and Commander. She hitched a little, resisting the urge to run away from him, then forced herself to address the pompous little man, who gazed about at the place as if he owned it.

“What is meant by this?” She bluffed as smoothly as her talent as an actress would allow. “I thought your investigation of my theatre was finished.” Not true, but she thought it sounded strong and she meant to discourage further disturbances. “The king shall know of this.”

“Indeed he shall,” said Pepper with a knowing air. Now she
wondered what had already been said to the king, and by whom. Her bluff wobbled, but she held her chin up.

“We’re rehearsing, if you please. We have a performance in two hours and haven’t time to spend on interruptions.”

Pepper’s eyes narrowed at her, then he said to the men behind him, “Take her.”

Two men with pikes stepped forward to grab her by the arms. Her composure crumbled and she resisted, tried to yank free, but they held her and she realized a struggle would only make things worse. She then relented and stood as calmly as she could, but trembling, and addressed Pepper with all her dignity and half her voice. “How dare you!”

“By the king’s authority, I place you, Suzanne Thorn—”

“I did it!” Piers’s voice cut through the commotion as he called out over the heads of those clustered around his mother.

Suzanne turned to see her son approach through the players, who parted before him, astonished. He shouted and waved a fist. “Arrest me! I killed William Wainwright!”

“Piers! No!”

He ignored her, and kept his eyes on Pepper. They were alive with his habitual anger, and his nostrils flared with heavy breaths. His cheeks flushed dark red, and his clenched fists seemed ready to strike out at whatever might challenge him.

Pepper peered at him. “You?”

“I killed William Wainwright. I took a crossbow from the green room, found him in the gallery, and shot him.”

“No, Piers! You did no such thing!”

But the light in Pepper’s eyes told them all he liked the idea of being able to arrest a man rather than a woman for the murder. He gestured to the soldiers to release Suzanne, then said to Piers, “Why did you shoot him?”

“I’ve always hated him. He deserted my mother in a time of need. He used her when it suited him, and was never particularly good to her in any case. I’ve always wanted him dead, so I killed him when I saw a chance. It’s exactly that simple.”

“That’s not true!” Suzanne felt the world distort, and suddenly it seemed she was shouting across a great distance to her son. “No, Piers! Don’t do this!” Then she burst into tears as the soldiers shoved her aside and grabbed Piers by his arms.

As the soldiers hustled him away, he looked back at her, and she saw for a moment the little boy he had once been, afraid and hoping for his mother to help him. Then he shut his eyes. When they opened, he was once again the grown man who would sacrifice himself for his mother. He went peacefully with Pepper and the king’s men.

Suzanne screamed and Horatio caught her as she collapsed, sobbing.

Louis, Christian, and Horatio helped her into the green room, away from the others. Rehearsal resumed for the rest of the troupe, for there was nothing for it but to continue with that afternoon’s performance. Loss of revenue was one thing, but turning away a full house of patrons eager for a show and a look at the murder scene was a prospect more risky than dealing with a platoon of redcoats. Outside the green room voices rang out here and there as performers readied themselves. Suzanne sat on a stool and leaned against the face paint table behind her.

To Horatio she said, “Not Piers. Anyone but Piers.” The image of her son in a dank cell rose and choked her so she couldn’t take breath. She clutched the front of her shirt in both fists and bent nearly double in her chair. Liza put an arm around her shoulders, and so did Christian. Horatio stood to the side, silent and wide-eyed. Silent Horatio was even more
frightening than angry Horatio, for the rarity and strangeness of it. Suzanne’s sobs came harder. “We’ve got to do something, Horatio.”

“Perhaps the earl will have him out soon.”

That hope washed over Suzanne, cool and fresh, for it was a reasonable one. It was something to cling to, a rock in a flood. She blinked and stared at the floor as she realized it. “Yes. Daniel will help. Now that there’s something for him to take to the king, he can help. Surely he will.” But though Suzanne was able to straighten and breathe again, hands still shaking, a small, cold terror remained that Daniel might not want to help his son.

Horatio dispatched Christian at a run to Whitehall with a message, but two hours later the boy returned without Daniel. Suzanne received Christian in her quarters, where he reported, sweating from his exertions and wide-eyed with apprehension. She grasped his shoulders and made him look at her. “Did you see Throckmorton?”

Christian nodded, then looked at the floor.

“What did he say?”

“He said naught.”

Suzanne blinked and let go of the boy’s shoulders. “Nothing at all? Tell me from the beginning.”

Christian stared straight down at his feet and fidgeted. “I was allowed into the palace, and admitted to the earl’s quarters. His page at first claimed Throckmorton wasn’t present, but upon pressing my mission was an emergency, the earl came from the inner rooms to speak to me.” He shrugged, a little apologetic. “I was a bit loud, and I suppose he’d heard me, well, shouting.”

“And you told him what happened?”

Christian nodded. “I said Master Piers had been arrested.”

“And what did he reply?”

“Nothing, as I told you.” The boy’s voice took an edge of impatience, and he looked at the floor, then glanced sideways at her to gauge her reaction to it. When she showed no reaction to read, he continued in a more subordinate tone, “He only sat in a chair and stared at me for a spell. Soon I began to wonder whether he’d forgotten I was there, though his eyes looked right at me. I dared not speak until spoken to, and he weren’t speaking to me at all. Then finally he dismissed me.”

“Dismissed you? With no explanation? No answer for me?”

“None, mistress. He only said, ‘You may go.’ Just like that. And then he rose from his chair, retreated to his inner rooms, and left me there for his page to show me the door.”

Suzanne sat, for her legs quite failed her and her knees buckled. Daniel wasn’t going to help. She’d been left alone once more to fend for herself. Tears rose, and she choked them back, for crying never solved anything. She’d done enough of it to know. So she took deep breaths and struggled to clear her mind. No Daniel, and no Piers to help her through this. Horatio was sweet and she knew he supported her with all his heart like an uncle, but he was unsuited to the task of freeing Piers from gaol, and especially he hadn’t the power to save him from the gallows.

Oh, the gallows! Once more panic gripped her hard and there was no breath to be had. Her fists pressed to her chest, and she leaned forward so her forehead almost touched her knees. Oh, the gallows! For several minutes she sat there, unable to speak or move.

Horatio said softly, “Fear not, my niece. Piers has his mother to protect him.”

Through the panic, Suzanne heard this, and it touched something deep within her. Piers had her to protect him, just
as he always had as a child. She sat up and found her breath, and her head began to clear. Piers would be all right, for she would make sure of it. It was up to her now to save her son.

“Horatio, do you know where Piers was when William was shot?”

The big man shrugged. “I cannot say. I was behind the entrance door, awaiting my cue. I saw nothing, not even the falling man.”

She turned to the boy. “Christian, was he in the green room when the crossbow was stolen?”

Christian shook his head, certain of his answer. “No, not at all. Master Piers never goes into the green room, mistress. He’s not a trouper, and there’s precious little enough room in there for them as are supposed to be in there during a performance, what with all the guests there always is. Folks who want to be backstage but never onstage; he never cared for them. Had he gone in there for any reason, it would have been an oddity noticed by all. There weren’t no Master Piers in the green room at all that night, not any night, not for any reason.”

Suzanne would have thought the same thing. Piers could not have taken the crossbow. Without that crossbow, it was impossible for him to have killed William. The thing to do now was to go to Constable Pepper in the morning and make him understand the truth of it.

The office of the constable in Southwark was a tidy little building on a more or less quiet side street near the bridge but not on the bank. The office itself was so quiet and stuffy, its atmosphere sludge-like, Suzanne wondered what might ever get done there. She thought it likely not much did. It smelled of old wood, dust, and cheap ink, and the floors appeared to have gone a long time since they’d been scrubbed.

A clerk sat at a writing desk, absorbed in recording numbers,
with a stack of notes at his elbow and a pot of ink just under his nose, which pointed straight down as he bent over the ledger like an ice-laden tree. A half-eaten loaf stuffed with meat sat at his other elbow, and as Suzanne watched he took a slow, massive bite from it. His manner was lethargic, and it took a moment for him to even realize someone had walked into the room. Plainly it was a struggle for him to focus, and he peered at her for a moment before lowering his glasses and addressing her, his cheek still full of bread and beef from his last bite. “May I help you, mistress?”

“I wish to speak to the constable, please.”

The clerk’s glance at an inner door that was ajar told her Pepper was in, but he turned back and said in a voice muffled by food, “I’m afraid that’s not possible.”

“Are you saying he’s not in, or he’s in and not available?”

The young man had to think about that, and Suzanne waited patiently for a reply she knew would be a lie. Finally he swallowed enough to be intelligible and said, “Not in, mistress.”

“Please don’t lie to me. If he’s in but not available, simply say so.”

It was with relief that the clerk said, “Oh, then. Not available.” He returned his attention to his work, as if that settled the matter and she was now to leave him in peace.

And so she did. Without further discussion, she marched through the inner door and found the constable sitting behind a desk, in the company of two other men who lounged in chairs and held fine, clear glasses filled with dark brownish-purple liquid that appeared to be brandy. A bottle with a label in French stood on the desk between them, and it held only an inch or two of the stuff. From the flushed cheeks all around, Suzanne guessed these good fellows well met had been at it the better part of the morning.

“Good morning, constable,” she said brightly, as if she’d been invited in.

He peered up at her, apparently unable to focus well. It took a moment for him to recognize her in a dress, but when he did he replied appropriately. “Mistress Thornton. What a surprise.”

“I can’t imagine why you should think it surprising. You have my son in custody; I am, in fact, tardy in responding to this outrage.”

Pepper set his glass on the desk before him, glanced at his companions, and said, “Your son has confessed to a heinous murder. Your outrage will be of no help to you or him, and I’m told there will be no help from your friend Throckmorton, either.”

Suzanne’s cheeks warmed. She wanted desperately to know what Pepper could have learned about her and Daniel, and what had been said that made Pepper think Daniel wouldn’t help her. But she ignored Pepper and continued, “Piers did not murder William.”

“And what makes you say that, other than that you don’t wish to see your son hang?”

“Constable Pepper, nothing about his confession meets with what we know to be true. He was nowhere near the stage right gallery when William was shot. He could not have been the one to have taken the crossbow that night, for it was stolen from a room he never enters and nobody in the room at that time saw him.”

“So you say. Am I to believe the word of the mother of a murderer? If every mother who came forward to exonerate her son told the truth, Newgate Prison would be empty and I would be out of a job.” That brought a chuckle from the two other men with their brandies.