The Scottish Play Murder (24 page)

“I told you, I was asleep on the ship.” De Vries plainly wasn’t going to admit to a crime that would keep him in lockup once his alibi for Larchford’s murder had been verified. Suzanne could see he knew he was in for a rough afternoon, for beads of sweat stood out on his forehead. He could tell Pepper intended to keep him there on whatever charge he could justify, and would get a confession by whatever means he had at hand. “You’ve got to believe me.” His voice took on a note of pleading.

“On the contrary, Chauncey. I am not
required
to believe anything you say. So tell me, where were you last night?”

“God’s honest truth, Constable. I was on the ship, just a-minding my own business. That’s all I can tell you.” His fists clenched around the chains of his shackles, and he pulled steadily against the bolt in the table.

“I can see this is going to be difficult.” Pepper turned to address the soldier directly behind him. “Fetch me the thumbikins, young man.”

De Vries whimpered, but said nothing, his eyes on the soldier.

The soldier went to comply. De Vries watched him go and became quite agitated. He squirmed in his seat. “No, please. Please believe me. I didn’t do nothing to that there lady. I didn’t hurt nobody. Please trust me, I didn’t do nothing.”

Suzanne’s stomach churned with anger and disgust. Only hours before this man had wagged his cock at her and told her he would shoot her through the head if she didn’t do what he wanted. Now he was begging to be trusted.

The soldier returned with a set of thumbscrews. The device was innocuous enough in appearance. A simple bar with three holes, and another bar with three bolts that went through the holes. A single nut on the middle bolt brought the two bars tight together. The tightening was done with a wrench that had a T handle. A far cry from the great, monstrous medieval engines that could take up half the room, and some thought more civilized. Somewhat in the way beheading by the Scottish Maiden was thought to be more merciful than the gallows.

At sight of the instrument, De Vries drew his hands as close to himself as he could get them, and tucked his thumbs into his fists. “No!”

“Hold him,” said Pepper. The two nearest soldiers each took a hand and pried the pirate’s thumbs from his fists. The shackle chains rattled on the table as the three struggled. Pepper unscrewed the nut on the thumbikins to make the gap between the bars wide enough to fit De Vries’s thumbs through. Then with the wrench he screwed it down tightly enough to keep him from wriggling free of it, but not so tight as to cause serious pain. But by the prisoner’s face Suzanne could see it hurt already.

“Where were you last night?”

“On the ship.”

Pepper turned the nut once. De Vries’s face crumpled in pain. “Again, I ask you. Where were you last night?”

“On the ship.”

Once more Pepper turned the nut. The prisoner let out a cry, and threw Suzanne an evil look. She returned it with anger to match. He would regret attacking her, and that regret would come before he was even tried.

Pepper said, with strained patience, for by now he was surely longing for his brandy and wished to return to his office, “Tell me what you did last night. We know what happened; we only require you to admit it. Come clean, and perhaps it will go easily on you.” It was not exactly a lie, for the torture would stop if he admitted what he’d done. Anything that went easily after that would be extra and beyond the scope of Pepper’s promise.

“I did naught last night. I drank some rum and slept on the ship. I never did nobody no harm.”

Two more turns of the screw, and De Vries emitted a high squeal. He struggled with the soldiers who held him down. Tears began to run down his cheeks. “I don’t know what you’re talking about! I didn’t do nothing!”

Pepper turned the nut once more and there was a crack. The prisoner screamed and wept over his broken thumb. “No! Please stop! Please stop!”

“Tell us.”

“I attacked her! Take them off! Please, take them off!”

“How did you attack her? How did you get into her room?”

“I stayed after the play. Hid in the bog below the galleries until it were safe to come out.” Suzanne’s mouth dropped open at the patience it must have taken to sit in a stinking latrine below ground level, from sunset till nearly dawn. But then he said, “I fell asleep, and when I woke up everyone had gone or gone to bed. That’s when I came out. Please,
please
take this off!”

Pepper ignored his plea. “Then what?”

“I sneaked through the place and found the mistress’s quarters. She keeps her door unlocked; it were easy enough to go in and tie up her maid with the kitchen twine she kept.” He stared at his broken thumb, which had turned purple, and his entire hand was swelling horribly. He continued, talking fast now since he knew the quicker he confessed the sooner the thumbscrew would come off. “I went into her bedroom, and stared at her until the staring woke her up. Then I told her not to make a sound or I’d fire my gun.”

“You said you’d blow her head off.”

“Aye, I did that.”

“Then what?”

“I pulled out my willie and waved it at her. Then she panicked—”

“She dodged away from you and you fired your gun at her.”

“Aye. She got away and started screaming.” In spite of the pain in his voice, it took on an edge of
how dare she
.

“Calling for help.”

“Aye. Please take this thing off my thumbs!”

“Then what?”

“I ran.

“You drew your dagger.”

“Aye, then I ran. Her friends chased me from the theatre, and I made my escape in the dark street. And that is all.” He held out his thumbs in the vise, and finally Pepper loosened the nut with its wrench. Once the device had been removed, De Vries wept over his thumbs. Surely he knew he was a dead man. Pepper now had a confession from him and testimony from Suzanne. Once he was convicted Suzanne could have Daniel convince the king that executing De Vries would make a good example to the populace and there would be no pardon. The crown wouldn’t have to prove he’d been a pirate, and it was irrelevant that he’d not murdered Larchford. De Vries was as good as dead, regardless of anything else he’d done.

Pepper gestured to the guards that they should take the prisoner to a cell for the night, and one of them released the shackles from the table and floor. As they hauled De Vries to his feet to take him from the room, he looked over at Suzanne, who calmly returned his gaze.

Today she felt as hard and unfeeling, cold and calculating, as Lady Macbeth herself.

Pepper addressed Suzanne. “Most women shrink from torture as a means of obtaining information or confession. They claim it doesn’t work.”

“It doesn’t work. Information obtained by torture is ever unreliable. De Vries would have said anything to have made you loosen those thumbscrews. It just happens that he was guilty and had something true to say which would accomplish that. He didn’t make up a story because he didn’t have to.”

“So the end justifies the means?”

“Nonsense. The end had nothing to do with it. That he will be executed is nothing more than icing on the cake. This interrogation and his broken thumb are an end in itself. He fully deserved what just happened to him, for what he did to me.”

“For that does he deserve execution?”

“For that he deserves a broken thumb. As for the execution, he’s a pirate, guilty of treason. What he
deserves
is to be hung and gutted. What he will get will be a merciful hanging.”

Pepper stood and shook his head, amused. “Women. I would never turn my back on one.”

Suzanne stood. “How very wise.” She led the way from the room. Pepper could laugh all he wanted. For the first time in her life, she felt justice had been done her.

*

T
HE
New Globe Players next performed the Scottish play the following afternoon. The audience was thin today, for the weather was quite icy, and though snow wasn’t currently falling the air had a bite that kept those with better places to go from coming here. A few braziers standing here and there helped take the edge from the cold, and the actors didn’t suffer as much as they might have in their costumes. The three weird sisters threw on some extra layers of wool and fur, and added some steps and cackling to their dance for the sake of warming themselves.

Afterward in the green room, Suzanne saw Arturo, Big Willie, and Tucker speaking in low tones near a rack hung with costumes. When they saw her watching, though she couldn’t hear them, all talk ceased and each went on his way in different directions.
Strange
. Like moths from an opened cupboard, they fluttered off. She sat at the paint table to begin removing her makeup.

Ramsay came to sit next to her, and took a clean rag and a bottle of oil to clean his face. It was a long, messy process to get the dark markings off one’s face, but to leave the paint on would cause eruptions and rashes that were far more bothersome than oil and rags. As he wiped, he said to Suzanne, “Good show today.”

She agreed, and continued to clean her own face.

The green room door opened, and in came Daniel and Piers, along with a third man Suzanne didn’t know. “Ramsay,” said Piers. “We’ve someone here who would like to meet you.”

Ramsay stood, a gracious smile on his face, and took a linen towel to wipe his hands. Suzanne stood as well, for she could guess who the third man was, and wanted to hear this conversation. Plainly this was a friend of Daniel’s, richly dressed and with the long-boned look of royal or nearly royal breeding. She concluded it was Robert, the Scot who had brought the story from Edinburgh about Diarmid Gordon.

“Diarmid Ramsay,” said Daniel as he gestured to the actor, “here is Robert Stewart of Edinburgh. I have reason to believe you’ve met.”

Robert held out a hand to shake, and Ramsay took it with a smile. “Yes, I do recognize you,” said Robert. Suzanne’s heart froze. “I saw you when last I was in the north.”

A puzzled look came over Ramsay’s face, but he said nothing and waited for more information.

Robert’s smile was blithe and genuine as he continued in explanation. “You were on the stage last year. It was one of those little plays based on
Hamlet
, as I recall. The little scenes that were allowed at the time. You played the ghost, did you not?”

Now Ramsay was smiling again as he finally understood the context of Robert’s statement. “Aye, I did, and a good memory you have. Thank you for noticing.”

Suzanne looked over at Daniel and gave him a tiny frown. He returned a wry smile and a slight shrug. So Ramsay wasn’t the Diarmid who had called himself Gordon. What he’d said about being an actor in Edinburgh was true. Suzanne wasn’t terribly surprised, but on a deeper level she was relieved. Faith in a man was hard to come by for her, and now there was no doubt for her to worry over.

Now she, Piers, and Daniel listened to Robert Stewart gush on about Ramsay’s acting talent. Ramsay received the praise with as much grace as was his habit, which meant he held himself proud, chin up, and with a wide, self-satisfied smile. Of course his performance had been brilliant, for he was Diarmid Ramsay of Edinburgh and no man could doubt his talent. He thanked Robert for his many complimentary comments, and bowed as he would acknowledge mass applause after a fine performance. Then Robert left with Daniel and Piers, off to spend the evening at the Goat and Boar. Daniel had heard there was Scottish whisky available in that tavern, and he intended to drink his share of it.

Suzanne sat at the table to resume cleaning her face. Ramsay watched her for a moment, then sat next to her again. After a long silence he said, “I know you thought I was that fellow passing himself off as a nobleman.”

“Why do you think that?”

“I know the story. I heard about the pretender when I was still in Scotland. He got away with quite a lot of treasure, both in jewels and in the charms of noblemen’s wives. When you began questioning me about the Gordons, I realized you’d heard the story as well, and had somehow cast me in the role of the villain. You lit up so brightly when I lied about being a descendant of George Gordon, I—”

“You lied?”

“Och, aye. I’ve no more Gordon blood in me than that of an elephant. I only said I did in order to see how you would react.”

“So none of what you said was true?”

“Of course, some of it was true. As you heard from Master Stewart, I did perform on the stage in Edinburgh—under sanction from the authorities, I would add. But my dear mother is alive and well, and still living on her family’s lands in Moray. Though ’tis true my father died before the war. I went to seek my fortune in Edinburgh not because I was forced off my ancestral lands, but because I was selfish and arrogant, and did not care to till soil all my life. My older brothers were capable enough to manage my mother’s inheritance, and so I left to seek a less rural life.”

“Which is what brought you to London.”

“Aye. You’re not as silly a woman as you appeared a moment ago.”

“Pardon me for having trusted you to tell me the truth.”

“You assumed without cause that I was a chamberer and a thief. You thought that bit of rubbish in my pocket was a ruby necklace. I deserved some fun from that.”

“The necklace isn’t real?”

“Of course, it’s real. It’s real glass and real brass. And not terribly impressive for all that. Were you to look closely, you’d see the color is uneven in some bits, and one of them has a bubble you can see without help. It cost me but a thruppence, and all I need to send a woman into a tizzy is to give a glimpse of it.”

“You show it to a great many women, then?”

“Aye, and most times it works like a faerie charm. You’re the first woman who’s ever seen it who did not want to climb me like a pole at the prospect of having it. I even let you handle it, but it never moved you. You never suspected it was false, and yet you still did not invite me to your bed. That was when I knew what a treasure you are. I knew then you were worth pursuing.”

She considered him for a moment. Plainly he thought he was complimenting her, but she felt insulted nonetheless. “You tested me?”