The Opening Night Murder (3 page)

I
t seemed an eternity while the rest of the procession passed by and the throngs moved like sludge along the narrow London streets. At nearly sunset, long after she’d expected to be home, Thomas and Samuel set her down before the entrance to the town house William kept for her not far from where the bridge met the south bank of the Thames. She paid them according to distance, and a good thing, since she wouldn’t have had the cash to pay them for the hours they’d spent delivering her. They gave sour looks to the coins she handed them, but pocketed them without actual comment. She would need their sedan chair again another day soon, and they were always happy for a steady fare and a light load. They picked up the empty chair and moved off into the light traffic in streets cleared of people who had gone home to tell of their exciting day.

Suzanne lifted her skirts above the eternal street muck, and
wiped her iron pattens on the filthy scraper by the door as best she could. She wore them to keep her shoes clean, and they did an adequate job of that, but there was no way to keep the much-crusted pattens from tracking dirt and sewage into the house. A wicker mat before the door took a bit more of the muck, then she carried her shopping parcel inside and up the narrow stairs to her apartments on the first floor above the street level.

Still her mind tumbled with thoughts of Daniel, with pleasant memories of their time together and the terrible ones of the war that had separated them. It seemed so long ago, when there was more money, better company…altogether more and better of nearly everything. And there had been Daniel before the war. For two years they’d had stolen moments and secret meetings, so much the sweeter for being forbidden. At the time she’d been certain their love was like no other, that when he kissed her they lit up the sky, that when people looked at them they could see they were the truest lovers in creation. She knew when she became pregnant she was the first ever to feel the way she did about her baby.

Then Daniel left. He knew about Piers, but never saw him. The day she’d told him she was pregnant was also the day he’d fled with Charles I. And that was the last she’d seen of him.

Or heard from him. While he was still in England there had been letters, but he hadn’t contacted her in any way since leaving for the Continent. She had assumed it was because he no longer wanted to hear from her. After all, he was married. Why would he want a mistress across the channel? Why would any man want a mistress he couldn’t sleep with? He was able to forget both her and Piers.

Now, as she entered her house, she held in her mind the
look on his face when he’d recognized her in the crowd. What had he been thinking? Perhaps she would never know. After so many years, he surely would have no interest in her. He’d had little enough interest the night he’d left her.

Her girl Sheila greeted her at the entry upstairs, took her cloak and vizard, then bent to help her off with the pattens.

The maid was an Irish girl, about fifteen years old but spunky and assertive for her years, and she spoke rapidly and nearly unintelligibly under her breath as she worked the straps on Suzanne’s footwear. “Himself arrived hours ago, you know, and he’s fit to be tied.” She set each patten on a piece of oilcloth by the door until they could be cleaned.

“Thank you for the warning, Sheila.”

“He’s been at me the whole time. I vow if you’d been a moment longer I might have done away with him so as not to have to listen to him anymore.”

“I applaud your self-control, Sheila.” Suzanne was too distracted to care much about William or his eternal pique. Her mind couldn’t let go of Daniel, and she spoke to Sheila without much mind attached to it.

Daniel was older now, of course, nearing forty. Graying some, and a mite worse for wear after these past years of poverty. In the parade he’d worn a new suit provided by Parliament, but even from where she’d sat she’d seen in his face the stresses of those years, written there as if by pen and ink. She could see he’d changed, and now she was curious whether it were for better or worse.

William could wait; she wearied of his shrill, self-centered insistence that her world should not merely turn on him, but consist entirely of him. In the bedchamber she took a moment at her hand mirror to be certain she’d not become too frayed
and worn during her afternoon out, then once Sheila had replaced a pin or two, Suzanne drew a deep, refreshing breath and made her entrance to the ’tiring room.

There William awaited her, perched on a chair with a book in his hand. He sat with knees together, elbows clamped to his sides, both feet firmly planted. When she entered he looked up, and he gently folded the book closed and set it on a nearby table. His delicate, oval face was that of a much younger man, for his visage had an immaturity that made him seem eternally a child. His frame was lanky and thin almost to the point of emaciation. Hugging him was like embracing a scarecrow. All bones and angles. And he had the strength of one with little meat on his bones. As a lover he was barely noticeable. To Suzanne, that added to his value as a patron, for there was less of him to annoy her, both of mind and body.

“Good evening, William. I do hope you haven’t been waiting long. There was terrible traffic on my return from the Exchange, and nothing moved for hours. I assure you I’m exhausted from my attempts to return in a timely manner.” She looked off in the direction Sheila had gone. “By the aroma from the kitchen, I’ll wager Sheila will have supper soon. I’ve missed dinner, and breakfast is a dim memory; personally I’m ravenous. I expect you will stay and have some roast with me.” He always did. He viewed her meals as food he’d paid for and he was entitled to. She paused and waited for him to rise and come to kiss her as he always did, like planting a flag on territory. But today he didn’t. He rose, but only faced her with his hands clasped at his waist, and spoke in his habitual prim tone, rather like an old lady in church.

“Where have you been?” His balding head stood out in beads of perspiration, in spite of the temperate weather. His
rather long neck stuck out the top of his plain white collar, and his Adam’s apple took a bob like a fishing float as he swallowed.

“I was at the Exchange, in search of a new tablecloth to replace the one ruined with an entire bottle of wine spilled on it two days ago. On the way back my chair was hemmed in by the crowds greeting the king. Had I gotten out to walk, I would not have returned any sooner than I did.” Not that she would have considered walking in any case, but she mentioned it to head off what she knew would be his next question if she didn’t.

And so his next question was of something else. “You ruined a tablecloth?” His annoyed tone suggested she should have been less clumsy, but she ignored him. It was habitual.

“To be sure, I’m less distressed over the cloth than I am about the waste of a fine bottle of French wine. The inexpensive cloth is far more easily replaced on the unimpressive stipend you provide.”

William’s chin came up, his back straightened, and he pulled his elbows in, as if someone had just shoved a rod up his rear end. In theory he was of the Puritan bent, and wound as tightly as a hangman’s noose. Often when he was annoyed, he worked himself into such a trembling paroxysm, she thought he might snap and explode all over everything in a shower of tiny parts. He said, “You might have saved yourself the cost of even the cloth; you’ll soon need the money.”

Her eyes narrowed. His voice carried a darkness of dire warning. Not uncommon for him, but she’d learned to take heed when he became too negative. She dreaded the answer to her next question. “Why do you say that?”

“I must leave England immediately.”

Not such a terrible thing, but she could see this wasn’t the entire story and probed further. “Whatever for? Have you business on the Continent?” More to the point, why would that affect her income? She patiently waited for him to explain the connection, and her heart thudded in her throat. The knuckles of her tightly clamped hands went to white, although her carefully arranged face revealed nothing. Money was an issue she took most seriously.

Impatience tinged his voice. “Even you can’t be so stupid. Even you should know what it means to me that the king has returned.”

“I expect it means a great many things to many people. What, specifically, does the king’s return have to do with my stipend? Why can’t you simply arrange to have it paid while you’re away?” For a moment she had a bright, shining hope of an extended time when she would receive his money without enduring his presence, but she knew the world was never that accommodating. She was never that lucky, and now she waited for his explanation as she began to resign herself to the reality she would soon be on her own.

“You know I’m a follower of the Reformed theology.”

She nodded. He was a Puritan. And more vocal about it than even the average hardheaded Protestant. Having been raised a moderate Anglican, she often felt herself in a cross fire between the rabid reformers and stubborn traditionalists of every stripe, whether Puritan, Presbyterian, or Catholic, and had little patience with anyone for whom religion was worth going to war. She was no theologian, and even she could see that bloodshed and hatred were not what Christianity was about. But, as always, she held her tongue and only waited for him to proceed.

An edge of increasing impatience came to his voice. “I did business with our Lord Protector, Oliver Cromwell.”

She nodded again. He was always on about his connection to Cromwell, tenuous as it was. William sold fabric, and often sold it to the Lord Protector’s household. Cromwell himself more than likely would have been hard put to place the name “William Wainwright” unless prompted with the word “cloth.”

Impatience rose further, as if she were expected to gasp with realization of his meaning and had failed him. “I can’t believe you don’t see the truth.”

“Please pardon my stupidity, my dear William. Perhaps if you explained to me your meaning.” She sat and gestured to the chair he’d just risen from for him to sit again.

He declined the offer, but said in a voice tight with distress, his hands gripping each other even more firmly than before, “I must flee. Surely you realize that. Now that the king has come to London, I must run for my life to the Continent.”

Suzanne nearly laughed, but she kept it to herself and mustered a concerned gaze. “Why? Have there been threats?”

He shrugged, as if embarrassed to admit the truth. “None specific. But you know how these things always happen. Unwary men are often caught out, then find themselves carted away to Tyburn without the first notion as to why or how. I might not have warning until the moment the king’s men come to get me.”

Suzanne would have thought he was joking, except she’d never known him to have any sort of sense of humor. “You believe the king intends to chase down everyone who did business with Cromwell? That would surely empty London.”

“Not everyone, but surely some.” The assumption being that he was among the elite to cause concern for the monarch. Suzanne had always known William to be a self-important
prig, but this boggled even her for its arrogance. She stifled a laugh, but just barely.

“And you think you’ll worry him enough to order your arrest? You think you’ve given sufficient cause?”

William puffed out his chest, offended. “If you knew aught of the world, woman, you would understand that a dissolute monarch won’t need cause at all to send good men to the gallows.”

Suzanne had no reply to that, for it was true as far as it went. What was less true was that William would ever attract the attention of the crown, for any reason, let alone cause Charles enough concern to send him to the gallows. Or, for that matter, that William was a good man. She gazed at him and hoped her expression was of a kindness she couldn’t feel.

Sheila appeared at the open doorway and said softly and with proper respect for William’s benefit, “Mistress, supper is ready if either of you would care for it.”

Suzanne nodded. “Yes. We’ll be in directly.”

The girl disappeared.

“Come, William. Let us eat, and discuss this.” She rose and held out a conciliatory hand, a little like placating a growling dog.

“No. I must go now. I’ll have the clothing I left here.” With that he hurried from the room and into the bedchamber. Alarmed, Suzanne followed.

“Oh, be sensible, William. You can’t just leave.”

He pulled a satchel from under the bed, then went to the armoire and took some shirts and drawers from it to stuff into the bag. “I must. Surely you see I can’t stay.”

“Then arrange with your money changer—”

“I said, Suzanne, I’m leaving. All my wealth must come
with me.” And all his clothing, and one of her shifts as well, as he shoved things indiscriminately into the bag. She wanted to reach over and tug the shift away, but refrained for fear of setting him off irretrievably. She continued her attempt to persuade him to leave money.

“How will your wife live, then?”

“She’ll accompany me.”

Of course. Suzanne’s heart clenched as she saw what lay ahead for her. She truly was being abandoned. The worst of it was that his flight was unnecessary. William’s perception of his relationship with Cromwell was more fantasy than fact, and the king would never bother with anyone so insignificant, even were he aware. “Please, William, you’re being hasty. There’s no need to throw your life away.”