A Midsummer Eve's Nightmare (13 page)

“Oh, the greenshow’s starting.” Elizabeth stopped, a handful of half-sorted cutlery in front of her. “I’d forgotten all about the play tonight.” She shrugged. “Well, that’s all right.”

Tori plunked a pot into the cupboard. “What do you mean, ‘that’s all right’? You can’t be thinking of missing
Measure for Measure
!”

“I’m certainly not thinking of leaving you alone.”

“What nonsense!” Tori’s intensity reddened her cheeks. “That play has been sold out for at least a month. People stand in line for returned tickets. You can’t miss it. And there’s nothing you can do here. I’ll lock the door if you insist, then just get on with my cleaning up.”

Elizabeth was torn. She did want to see the play. But she couldn’t leave her sister alone. What if the villain came back? What if there was news about Erin, and it was bad? “I don’t suppose we could get police protection for you. Don’t you have any friends in the company who could come over for the evening?”

Victoria started to protest again when Elizabeth felt a soft, warm body brush against her leg. “Thompkins?” She picked up the cat.

“Here, pussy, pussy,” his owner called from outside.

“In here, Mrs. Martin,” Elizabeth called.

The landlady, carrying golden-striped Tigger in the capacious pocket of her flowered, over-all apron, waddled through the door. “There you are Tommy-kins, naughty pussy.” She took him from Elizabeth. “He seems to like it better here than in his own home.”

That gave Elizabeth an idea. “Mrs. Martin, my husband and I wanted to go to the play tonight, but Tori’s had a nasty shock.” She indicated the still-messy room. “I hate to leave her alone. Do you suppose you could stay here for the evening? And Tigger and Thompkins, too, of course.’”

Already at home with the idea, Mrs. Martin crossed to the overstuffed chair. “As long as the television’s working we’ll be happy to stay. Tigger wouldn’t want to miss the ‘Mr. Ed’ reruns.”

Richard set the little black-and-white TV back up on its stand and adjusted it. Since Mrs. Martin liked the old shows, she wouldn’t even miss her color set.

Tori unearthed a blanket and sweatshirt from under the pile of clothes in her bedroom and even grabbed a season’s program. She thrust them at Elizabeth and practically shoved her out the door with assurances that she would be fine. “That is, I’ll be fine if the police let Gregg go in time to be in the play. If they try holding him on something stupid,
they
won’t be fine when I get through with them.”

“Tori, I’m amazed. I’ve never seen you like this. I didn’t even know you had a temper.”

Tori looked away.

Elizabeth grabbed her shoulder and turned her around to face her. “Victoria Rose Allerton, what are you not telling me?”

Victoria bit her lip and jutted out her chin—a defiant stance Elizabeth hadn’t seen since her sister was sixteen.

“What are you hiding? It’s Gregg, isn’t it?”

Tori looked at her for a full five beats with rebellion blazing in her dark eyes, then she crumpled into Elizabeth’s arms. “Yes, it’s Gregg. Of course, it is. I told you I love him.”

“Yes. And . . . ?”

“And we’re going to be married. We are. Because I know how wonderful he is. No matter what you or the police say.”

Elizabeth frowned. “And what do the police say?” She gave her sister a little shake. “Come on. Tell me. What do you know?”

“I know everything. He hasn’t hidden anything from me. He made a mistake. Well, two really. Marrying that dreadful Ellen was the first. But he can be forgiven. After all, we all need forgiveness.”

“Victoria. . .” Elizabeth’s tone carried a threat of dire consequences.

Tori hiccupped, then tossed her head and squared her shoulders. Her defiance was back. “He has a police record.”

MEASURE FOR MEASURE

“Let your reason serve

To make the truth appear where it seems hid.”

- Isabella

Chapter 17

IT WAS JUST AS well that the Greenshow was over by the time they arrived because Elisabeth wanted nothing but to sink into her seat and think about Tori’s astounding revelation. To this point Elizabeth’s objections to Gregg had all been theoretical: one failed marriage could lead to another, his unstable lifestyle could indicate an unstable person, his lack of a core belief system could make him untrustworthy. . . all indicators that she wasn’t ready to trust her sister’s future into his hands until she knew more.

But the idea of finding fault with this intelligent, kind-seeming man on concrete grounds was bewildering. She had been too shocked even to ask Tori for details. What had he done? It had to be something more than traffic violations. Surely a white collar crime. Cheat on his income tax? She couldn’t imagine anything that seemed the least bit likely. And now that she was about to be presented with evidence that she had been right to doubt, she realized how much she wanted to be proven wrong.

Richard sat quietly beside her throughout her reverie. At last she looked up and gave him a weak smile. Poor Richard, it was their honeymoon, and she had practically forgotten he was there. But then she saw that he had been occupied, too. He pointed to the article about the director of tonight’s play in the program Tori had thrust at them on their way out the door.

Elizabeth read. Trevor Stevens, this year director of both
Othello
and
Measure for Measure.
His third summer coming to the Oregon Shakespearean Festival from the University of Texas. Before returning to the field of drama, for which he had prepared with a Masters of Fine Arts degree from Yale, he spent three years doing public relations for a major construction company in Dallas. . .

Elizabeth looked at Richard, wide-eyed. Could that be Wooton Construction? Could Trevor Stevens still be working behind the scenes for Erin’s father? They had never considered the possibility of any connection between the director and the disaster that occurred during
Othello
. Now Elizabeth considered it. Certainly Trevor would have had access to every place anything had happened.

What about Erin’s pills? She glanced again at the program. He was married with three children. Could he have been having an affair with Sally? Could she have been blackmailing him? Elizabeth hated to think about such things. And it was all futile, anyway. Pure conjecture.

Richard must have seen her confusion, because he reached over and took her hand.

She smiled. One of the things she loved most about Richard was the way he always seemed to know what she was thinking, what she needed. She rested her head on his shoulder and tried to form a cogent thought. But nothing came.

Nothing coherent, just swirls of dark images. They were surrounded by deceptions, evasions and lies. The more she knew about the people around them the more motives she could imagine for murder and mayhem. But which were grounded in fact and which the product of imagination and theatrical sleight-of-hand?

She looked at Richard and he squeezed her hand.

Elizabeth smiled. A real smile. Here was firm ground. Richard. Their relationship. Their shared faith. That was what she had tried so hard to tell Tori. That was what she wanted for her sister. She mustn’t let go of it herself.

Elizabeth took a deep breath, determined to relax and enjoy Shakespeare’s great exploration of the theme of justice versus mercy and grace. And it worked. She was soon carried deep into the affairs of seventeenth century Vienna as its too-lenient Duke left his throne in the charge of his fanatically strict cousin Angelo. As events unraveled, however, the more she saw, or imagined, parallels to the situation they were caught up in real life.

When Claudio was torn from the arms of his pregnant Juliet and condemned to death on a charge of technical fornication because they had kept their marriage secret in order not to forfeit Juliet’s dowry, Elizabeth lost much of the sense of the next scene wondering what secrets those around her were keeping. A secret marriage? She hadn’t considered that. Could Sally have been married? Could she have been blackmailing someone whose secret marriage she had discovered? Could. . .

Elizabeth’s imagination was spurred by the fact that Sally had been cast in the role of Juliet. It was now played by Janice who had been Viola the night before, but Elizabeth kept seeing Sally in the role.

“Our doubts are traitors, And make us lose the good we oft might win by fearing to attempt,” Lucio’s famous words, urging Isabella, radiantly pure in her white nun’s habit, to plead for her brother’s life, brought Elizabeth back to the play. And just in time, too. For now came Elbow’s scene. Elizabeth had been so preoccupied with other questions she hadn’t worried over whether or not Gregg would be there for his part. He was, but it took her a minute to recognize him under the comically overdone finery of the Duke’s inept constable.

The reassuring sight of Gregg released from the police and the farcical tangle of his character’s malapropisms combined to help her relax in laughter as Elbow ranted on about the “two notorious benefactors” he was bringing charges against.

There followed a maze of misconstructed dialogue and a mayhem of action as Elbow chased the others around the stage, jumping over furniture, creating delightful chaos and further misunderstandings. He swung across the stage on a rope hanging from the Duke’s banner to grab one of the accused by the throat. “Prove this, thou wicked Hannibal, or I’ll have mine action of battery on thee.”

Perhaps it was because the frantic action of the argument had been such great fun, but it seemed to Elizabeth that the rest of the scene lacked pacing. At least, Elbow seemed to. He had swallowed the end of the last line and never seemed to regain his stride. But never mind, it had been wonderful comic relief, and the story swept on to one of Elizabeth’s favorite scenes in all of Shakespeare. She had once played Isabella in a classroom production of the play, and she now repeated the lines in her head as Isabella pleaded for the life of her brother before the obstinate Angelo.

I have a brother is condemn’d to die;

I do beseech you, let it be his fault,

And not my brother. . .

No ceremony that to great ones ‘longs,

Not the king’s crown nor the deputed sword,

The marshal’s truncheon nor the judge’s robe,

Become them with one half so good a grace

As mercy does. . .

Why, all the souls that were forfeit once;

And he that might the vantage best have took

Found out the remedy.

How would you be if He, which is the top of judgment, should

But judge you as you are? O, think on that;

And mercy then will breathe within your lips.

Like man new made.

Now Elizabeth was wholly back in Vienna, crying and beseeching with Isabella for her brother, hating the injustice of Angelo’s harsh judgments—the two-faced injustice of a man who could attempt to seduce a nun as ransom for her brother’s life, and who himself had abandoned his affianced wife. Only when she joined Isabella in imploring “O you blessed ministers above, Keep me in patience; and with ripen’d time, unfold the evil which is here wrapt up in countenance!” Did she turn the words to her own situation to wonder what evil around her was being tolerated. Or was she the Angelo, judging too harshly? But the swift unfolding of events in front of them gave her no time to come to any conclusions.

Mariana, in a complete turnabout of events, now pleading for the life of her husband Angelo, asked Isabella to join her in kneeling before the Duke. “Isabel, Sweet Isabel, do yet but kneel by me; Hold up your hands, say nothing; I’ll speak all. They say, best men are moulded out of faults; And, for the most, become much more the better For being a little bad: so may my husband. O Isabel, will you not lend a knee?”

No matter how many times she saw the play, Elizabeth could not help holding her breath at this point. “He dies for Claudio’s death,” the Duke declared. Could Isabella, thinking her beloved brother dead by Angelo’s decree now plead for Angelo’s life?

Could she, Elizabeth asked herself, if her own loved one had been so harmed, then show the mercy she had pled for so eloquently from another? Tears came to her eyes as Isabella knelt by Mariana. “Most bounteous sir, Look, if it please you, on this man condemn’d, As if my brother liv’d. . .”

And in her joy of the beauty of the speech, Elizabeth thought again on Mariana’s words:
best men are moulded out of faults; And, for the most, become much more the better For being a little bad
. . .. Would Gregg prove such a one? Would he become a better man for his faults, whatever they were? For her sister’s sake she longed for it to be so.

Then onstage the joyous ending, the reward of mercy appeared in the entrance of Juliet and Claudio, who had been spared by the provost. “Thou’rt condemn’d;” the Duke decreed. “But, for those earthly faults, I quit them all, And pray thee take this mercy to provide For better times to come.”

As she applauded with the audience Elizabeth knew that, however hard it would be for her to do so, just as the Duke had exemplified mercy over strict justice, she must be prepared to show grace in her estimation of the man that it seemed would soon be her brother-in-law.

Unless the law proved indisputable betrayal of her trust.

Chapter 18

ELIZABETH BARELY WAITED UNTIL the house lights came on before she was folding up the blanket Richard had spread over their knees. “Hurry. I want to see how Tori is. Do you think they’ve found Erin yet?”

They hurried from the theatre enclosure just a step ahead of most of the crowd. “Wouldn’t it be quicker to go down that alley?” Elizabeth pointed to a curving lane between some small shops. Richard nodded, and they turned down the dark path.

They had gone only a few yards when a shadowy form stepped out in front of them. Startled, Elizabeth screamed. Her heart pounded in her throat. What a stupid thing to do— coming down a dark alley. Why didn’t she think?

“What’s the matter?” The strange figure sounded as alarmed as she was.