The Opening Night Murder (32 page)

Then she saw it. The missing crossbow.

Like seeing William’s face in the shrubbery of St. James Park, when she’d been looking but not seeing, then suddenly saw, Suzanne saw the crossbow lodged behind a downspout. She caught her breath, though she didn’t really feel surprised. It was excitement and hope that made her heart pound. With great care not to hurry and perhaps become clumsy, she crab-walked down to the heavens’ roof and rolled over onto her belly to slide as close to the eave as she could get.

The bow was hung up on the downspout where it joined the gutter and curved back under the overhang. It pointed upward, but she could barely reach it. Her fingers touched the bow, but she couldn’t quite get them around it. She scooted farther, put more weight on the gutter, and it sagged dangerously. She held her breath as she stretched as far as she could and hooked the tip of her middle finger over the bow. The gutter sagged and bounced with each movement. With intense
care she tugged on the bow. At first it didn’t come, but she insisted and it began to move. After each movement, she reseated her grip and pulled again, and soon she had two fingers around the bow. Then three. Then it was close enough for her thumb to join them, and she pulled hard. The weapon came free and she scooted back onto the eave before the gutter could break under the extra weight.

She looked over at the broken gutter and figured she knew how it had given way. She sat up and held the crossbow in her lap as she considered what she knew.

The crossbow had been stolen at about the same time William had been seen in the green room, where it was also last seen. Someone else could have stolen the bow and followed him out, but no names had been put forth as possibilities. It was reasonable to consider that William himself may have taken it.

William did not fall from the stage gallery, but from the roof, as evidenced by the splatters of blood and the location of the crossbow. That was why whoever had taken the bow to the roof could do so without alarming anyone in the gallery. The gallery had been empty.

The only thing visible from that part of the roof was the bench where Daniel and Charles had been sitting at the time.

The crossbow was not wielded by a second person, who would have removed it from the scene in his flight after killing William, rather than stopping to wedge it in an inaccessible spot. Far easier to simply drop it onto the roof and escape.

This crossbow was certainly the one missing from the theatre properties. She recognized it from rehearsals. And there was no bolt; she figured the one Christian had put in it had killed William. The angle of the stock where it had lodged in the crook of the gutter told her that any bolt that happened
to be in it would have shot upward and in the direction of the broken gutter over the stage right gallery. She figured she knew exactly what had happened the night William Wainwright died. And why.

As quickly as she could without toppling over the edge as William had, Suzanne carried the crossbow into the storage room, down the ladder, and down the stairs, calling for Horatio. “Look! Horatio! I’ve found—”

“Suzanne!” The big man was also looking for her, and she heard him call from her quarters at the bottom of the stairwell. He climbed up to meet her at the stage-level landing, distressed, with Louis, Christian, and Liza behind him. “Suzanne! Come! Christian has brought terrible news! Oh woe!”

Suzanne, coming down the stairs, met them all near the green room. She tried to show them all the crossbow, excited to have solved the mystery, but they ignored it in their urgency that she hear their news. Horatio continued, in a voice quavering with grief. Great, streaming tears made their way down his face. He took her by the shoulders, his fingers digging hard into her flesh. “Suzanne, Christian has brought news from the Goat and Boar. The magistrate has convicted Piers and the crown means to hang him!”

S
uzanne and Horatio went directly to talk to Constable Pepper, to beg him to consider the new evidence, but found the building locked and nobody about who might know where Pepper lived. Panic rose.

Horatio said, “We must wait until the morning to speak to him.”

“According to Christian, Piers is set for execution at noon tomorrow.” Saying it out loud made it real, and she had to clap her hand over her mouth to stifle a sob. “Why so quickly? Why so soon?”

“It was the way the schedule fell at the Old Bailey. And the hanging days are all set. He was one of twenty tried today. He tried to send a message to you, but was unable.”

“Piers must withdraw his confession.”

“Yesterday that might have been useful, but he’s been convicted and sentenced.”

“Nevertheless, ’tis his best hope, and ’tis the only thing that can be done before morning.”

She thought Horatio might be right, so they set out for Newgate in hopes of talking to Piers. She hired a carriage and took Horatio with her across the river.

Suzanne had never been to Newgate Prison, and until now had avoided even looking at its walls from the outside. All her adult life the place had stood like a monument to death and grief, a place where friends went in and were never seen again. Or if they returned, they came back changed. They walked the streets again, but with dull eyes that saw nothing, or too-alert ones that tried to see everything but couldn’t. If one spent enough time in Newgate, skin and hair grayed, lesions grew, hair thinned, and any happy sensibility was quite leached away. No prison was like a mansion in the country, but Newgate had a reputation that made even those who were never likely to go there fall silent or speak of something else.

But Suzanne had to see her son immediately, and couldn’t care what might happen to her in that place. The carriage deposited Suzanne and Horatio before the forbidding stone structure that stood several stories high and so wide as to dominate the street. Hundreds of years before, it had been no larger than the gatehouse that had given it a name, and now was an enormous, ghastly monument to misery. She and Horatio went through the entrance to the keeper’s house. She hoped to appear as if they belonged there, but not too much. Deep down she harbored a fear that once inside she would not be let out.

There they found two men on guard. They wore the king’s livery, but not very well. The taller one wore breeches slightly less filthy than the shorter one’s, but neither was particularly presentable. Pikes leaned against a nearby wall, and the two
were playing dice at a wooden table near them. Each man wore a large ring of keys hung at the waist, the keys dangling from the hip and nearly touching the stone floor. They both looked up at the entrance of their visitors and stood in unison, neither in any particular rush.

“What do you want?” said the shorter one. They were both startled enough to suggest they weren’t accustomed to unannounced visitors this late at night. Little wonder, since most people avoided the place if they could.

Horatio did the talking, the better for the guards to take their request seriously. Suzanne stood, silent, hoping her expression was as neutral as she thought. He said, “We wish to see a prisoner.”

“You’ll need permission from a magistrate or constable, or someone higher up.”

“We have no paper from such a person.” He drew a gold pound coin from his purse and showed it to the guard. “Regretfully, we have only this.”

The guard looked at the coin and sighed, as if about to decline. He said, “I’m sorry, but you can see there’s two of us here. I couldn’t let my associate go without.”

Horatio grimaced and felt at his nearly empty purse. “I’ve only this one, I’m afraid.”

“Then you’ll not be seeing the prisoner today, I’m afraid.”

“If you could see your way to—”

“I’ve got another, Horatio,” said Suzanne. She reached through the slits in her skirt and petticoat, into the pocket beneath, and withdrew a single gold pound. She had several there, but was careful not to let them clink. She handed one to Horatio, who passed the two coins to the short guard, who then passed one of them to his tall associate.

They pocketed their enormous bribes, and the short one
said as he fingered the huge key ring dangling from his belt and turned to lead the way, “Very well, then. Which prisoner is it you wish to see?”

“Piers Thornton.”

Both the guards burst forth with guffaws. The short one looked back at Suzanne and said, “He’s set to hang. And soon, I think.” He looked to the tall guard, who nodded in concurrence. “Next hanging day’s tomorrow, if I’ve got it straight.”

“We’ve got to see him immediately. It’s terribly important.”

“Important enough for you to hand over the other coins you’ve got under your skirt, mistress?”

Suzanne pressed her lips together. Could he smell them? With a bit of reluctance, she reached under her skirt for the other two coins she’d brought with her. Four pounds. A raging fortune, but she would have paid twice that to see her son that day.

The guards were right pleased with themselves to have extorted half a year’s wages so easily from this pathetic woman. The short one chortled and grinned, nearly drooling at his good fortune. “Right this way, if you please, mistress.” He handed over the tall guard’s share to him.

Suzanne said, “Horatio, please wait for me here.”

He went wide-eyed, shocked she would consider entering the prison without him by her side. “My niece! I cannot allow you to place yourself in jeopardy and leave me behind!”

“Horatio, it’s for my protection that I ask you to stay. If I don’t return in a timely manner, you’re to find out why and engineer my release.”

He thought about that, then nodded. “As you wish, cousin. I’ll await you here and come for you if you don’t return by dawn.”

The short guard then picked up his pike and led the way into a passage and up some stairs.

The prison was old and stank of filth. Stench of rotting wood, rotting food, excrement, and standing water choked her as she was led into the bowels of the dank stone structure. Off in the distance a man screamed, a high, thin wail. The sort of despair that wishes for death and expects it, but not soon enough.

They came out on a gallery lined with thick wooden doors bound in iron. The spacing between them suggested cells. Then through another passage, and they were in a large quadrangle littered with loitering men. The prisoners lounged about, talking in low voices, playing cards or dice, and monitoring the passage of the visitors from the corners of their eyes. They were shadows within shadows, the only light provided by two torches in wall sconces. Guards stood by with truncheons, ready to keep order. At the other side of the large room, the escort guided Suzanne and Horatio into another passage. It came out to a small enclosure from which only three doors opened.

“This here’s where we keep the condemned,” said the short guard. Suzanne’s stomach turned, and she felt light-headed. There were other distant shouts and carryings-on in the areas that held debtors and ordinary felons, but here, deep inside where resided the most dangerous prisoners, the cells were quiet with terror of the gallows. Everyone here was either accused or convicted of a capital crime, and nearly all of them would hang soon.

Another man in filthy livery sat on a three-legged stool at the end of the enclosure. He stood at sight of the escort. “What’s the occasion?”

The short guard said, “We’ve a special request for visitation. This here’s a friend dear to the king, who has allowed as she should see Master Thornton today.”

“She got a release from the crown?”

“Don’t need one.” The short guard spoke as dismissively as any baron. “’Twas the king gave permission, and he sent no paper. I’d run back and request one for you, but besides being a waste of my time, ’twould be an annoyance to his majesty. I don’t expect you want to be the one to explain to him why he should be bothered with this twice in one evening.”

The guard of the condemned shrugged and rose from his seat. “No skin off my nose if the sod’s got visitors. Just so long as he’s still in his cell when they come to get him tomorrow, that’s all I’m charged with.” He sifted through the several keys at his waist, chose one, and unlocked the door at his elbow. “Here you go, mistress. Enjoy yourself. I’ll be a-waiting for you when you’re through here and wish an escort back to the keeper’s house.”

She nodded and entered the cell, her heart pounding.

The corridor had been lit by torches, but inside the cell was only one candle, stuck to a table by its own melted tallow. Beside the table stood a chair, where Piers sat just inside the tiny circle of light, leaning against the back of it with his arms crossed over his chest. Suzanne’s heart clenched when she saw his face swollen with bruises and his lip split so badly she could see a tooth. His arms were crossed because one had been injured and he was holding it up with the other. Blood stained his shirt to his elbow. When he saw his guest was his mother, his face went slack with surprise. He leapt to his feet and came to hug her. “Mother!” He flinched from the pain in his arm. “What are you doing here? You shouldn’t be in this place.”

She held him tight and fought the tears that burned behind her eyes. The terror of what would happen to him made her
shake, and it was all she could do not to collapse into a quivering pile on the floor. “Piers, what did they do to you?”