The Opening Night Murder (30 page)

T
he following morning, Suzanne dressed for a trip to Whitehall, to take her knowledge of the king’s theatre visit to Daniel and see his reaction. Never mind that he’d asked her to stay away from the palace. It was risky, but this was important. This might just be the poke needed to get him to take more interest in his son’s plight. The next thing, if it came to that, would be to confront the king himself, if possible, and ask what he’d seen that night. If she couldn’t storm the prison, she might storm the palace and get results.

But just as Sheila was buckling on the pattens for her, there was a knock at her door and Horatio burst in without waiting for summons. “Suzanne, my niece, I have dire news for thee.”

Oh dear. Horatio was speaking in thee-thou. His news would be dire indeed.

“Come in, Horatio.” Once Sheila was finished with the pattens, Suzanne received her vizard and was ready to leave for the palace. “Would you care to accompany me to Whitehall
today? The king isn’t expecting us, but we can’t let that get in our way.” Her words were far more insouciant than she felt.

Horatio shook his head and seemed quite agitated. His usual placidity rippled like a pond too full of hungry fish. “No, my niece. And you have other work to do as well. The mummer troupe has been found. Louis tells me he has heard from an acquaintance, whose mistress’s other lover has knowledge of that very troupe giving performances on the outskirts of the city. We should go speak to them, and today, lest they slip away once more.”

Suzanne’s heart raced. This was good news. “Truly? Is Louis certain of this?”

Louis bounded from the stairwell and through the open door of the quarters, and it was apparent he’d been listening in. “I am, Mistress Suzanne. May I come along with you and Horatio? May I please?”

Horatio nodded, with a sly grin that was not the usual for him, looking like the cat who swallowed the canary. “Those mummers are ours, my niece.”

Suzanne said to Louis, “I suppose you may.” Then she wondered if perhaps this wasn’t such a good idea after all. “What will we ask when we get there? Should we march up to them and say, ‘Do tell, kind sir, did you, perchance, happen to murder William Wainwright?’ ”

Horatio replied, “Certainly we will not, for he certainly did not. William was shot with a crossbow, not cut with a dagger. And if Arturo were inclined to kill Wainwright he would have done it when he had the chance to do it easily and with justification. He wouldn’t have waited to do it in cold blood with an unfamiliar weapon. But we will go speak to him because perhaps there is something to be learned by asking questions of the man who engaged in the fight. And if not, then sending
Pepper after them might distract him for a spell and give us time to pursue another avenue.”

Suzanne shook her head and waved away the thought. “Pepper is far too lazy for that. He’s got Piers and needs no other suspect. He’d never bother to question anyone else, even were the entire troupe to march into his office and offer all they know.”

“Then, my dear, it would behoove us to gather the information for him and use whatever we find to best advantage, yes?”

Suzanne considered that for a moment, then nodded. “We should go. Let us hurry.” She drew the hood of her cloak over her coif and led the way out the door.

So, rather than have Thomas and Samuel carry her alone to Whitehall, she hired a coach to take herself, Horatio, and Louis far out on White Chapel Street. The drive took an hour. From Maid Lane and across the river, they passed through teeming London streets filled with carriages jockeying in traffic, pedestrians wandering this way and that, vendors hawking prepared foods and all sorts of durable wares.

Then northeast along White Chapel Street where the abutting buildings gave way to less crowded ones before it all fell away to open countryside. Cattle and sheep outnumbered people in these precincts. Suzanne wondered how a troupe of performers could survive this far away from London. Surely she was lucky to have found them before they moved on too far.

Somewhere past Mile End, in a field off the road they found a makeshift stage, and Louis’s knee began to bounce with excitement. His neck craned to see out the window, no doubt looking for Arturo’s young daughter he’d found so sweet and nonforeign. Horatio directed the driver to follow a new track of trampled grass across to the mummers’ camp. Brightly
colored streamers flew and flapped from poles at the corners of the stage, and the camp tents clustered behind it were bright blue-and-yellow stripe, faded with age and use, but quite visible against the surrounding green. Some figures among the tents could be seen as they approached, but when the coach arrived at the stage, every living soul had disappeared like a mist before a slight breeze. By the time the driver reined the horses to a halt, there was no one about.

The festive colors of the tents, flags, and pennants now seemed strange, lonely as they were and appearing deserted. The flags beckoned to nobody, and nobody enjoyed the loud colors meant to attract attention.

It was not yet noon. A whiff of the food being prepared for sale to the audience drifted from the tents. Suzanne took a deep breath. Meat pies, she discerned from the scent of grease, onions, and pastry. This early there were no crowds of audience, and the ones who had been in rehearsal on the stage a moment ago were nowhere in evidence. She couldn’t remember any names but Arturo’s. As she descended from the coach, she looked around. Nothing moved except the streamers. They waved in the gentle breeze, slowly like seaweed in the tide.

“Hello?”

No sound or movement came from the tents.

Suzanne walked toward the cluster behind the stage. “Hello?”

Still no sound. The camp was still.

“Tell me, is Arturo about?” She called out, for her voice to carry to all the tents. A brown, shaggy mongrel dog came from behind one of them to stare at her, but he made no sound and only watched her with a slowly wagging tail as she proceeded through the camp.

More silence. This was beginning to irritate Suzanne. She
halted, folded her hands in front of her, and called out, “It’s quite all right. I only wish to ask him some questions, then we’ll be on our way.” She looked at Horatio, whose neck was reddening with annoyance, and soon the flush would reach his face.

He also called out, his deep, carrying voice expressing both authority and threat, “My niece would speak to Arturo, and you all know she nearly always gets what she wants.”

Suzanne wished with all her heart that were true. She smiled and added, “Please. I’ll wait here until you decide.”

Suzanne and Horatio waited. And waited. Somewhere in the distance a sheep bleated. Suzanne waited some more, and eventually the sheep bleated again. Amusing itself, she imagined. She wondered whether the mummers would all simply wait in the tents until she gave up and went home, but knew they all knew her well enough to understand it would be an absurdly long wait.

Eventually Arturo appeared at the tent flap and stood quite still in the shadow as he looked out to see if she was still there. His disappointment at seeing her was apparent even at this distance. He withdrew for a moment, disappeared inside the tent, then came out to face her, clearly unhappy at having to do so but struggling to put a good face on it.

“Good morrow, mistress.” His voice was carefully modulated to express pleasant cheer and respect for a superior, neither of which he likely felt at that moment, and he bowed to her as if she were royalty. Or at least as if she were nobility, far above her true station. Suzanne sensed a bit of sarcasm, but ignored it in hopes of learning something helpful.

“Good morrow, Arturo.” She nodded pleasantly to him, then drew back her cloak hood so he could see she meant no harm or subterfuge.

Louis stepped forward, his neck craning to see what he could find among the tents. The girl was nowhere in sight.

The mummer was an extremely small, spare fellow, wiry and thin to the point of emaciation, but tough and strong despite it. He had the ideal body for a tumbler, and he was a master, still able to leap, flip, and bend himself into a knot at an age when most men sought a warm fire and soft chair to ease their aching bones. Of Italian extraction, he bore a long, hooked nose that, with his thinness, gave him the profile of a scythe. He wore only tights and a tight-fitting shirt with no sleeves and no collar. Beneath those leggings he was bound with a cloth, and the sheen of sweat on him was further evidence he’d been in rehearsal that morning.

His black eyes gazed at her with a deep perception that pegged him as one whose life depended on knowing all that went on around him and understanding all it meant to him. Catching Arturo unawares was never likely. He said, eyeing her like a crow waiting to pounce on a fresh carcass, “What can I do for you this afternoon, Mistress Suzanne?”

Louis moved closer to the tents, letting go of any pretense he was there for any reason but to see Arturo’s daughter. Arturo said to him, “She’s in the cook’s tent, Louis. Go to her before you burst apart. She will be happy to see you.”

Louis needed no further permission and bolted for the tent from which the odors of cooking food wafted.

As Suzanne watched him go, she said, “I wonder, Arturo, why you and your family took leave of us so suddenly the other day. Have we offended you somehow?”

The reply was immediate and practiced, the better to masquerade as truth. “Greener pastures, mistress.” His tone suggested that was the long and the short of it, and enquiring
further would be fruitless. Which might very well be the case, but Suzanne wasn’t going to take his word for that.

She gave a glance about the area. This far away from the center of London, traffic was slow. All that could be seen from this spot were orchards and fields where cattle and sheep grazed. “Pastures, indeed, my friend. And green…maybe so. However, I think they can’t be nearly as lucrative as Southwark, where your audience was much larger than it could possibly be here. Unless, of course, the sheep are paying admission.” She paused to let that sink in, and Arturo did not reply. She added, “I wish you would be truthful with me.”

Now that they understood each other, that there could be no pretense of belief the mummers’ departure had been anything but flight from authorities, Arturo shrugged and said, “If not greener, mistress, then safer.”

“To be sure, I can’t find blame in keeping out of arm’s reach of the constabulary.”

“Then you answer your own question and you needn’t bother us on the subject.” He bowed to her again and turned as if to retreat to his tent. “If that is all, mis—”

“If we could speak of just one matter?”

Arturo paused, considered for a moment, then faced her. “Very well, mistress. I’ve no reason to think you’d wish us harm.”

Suzanne nodded. “Indeed not, Arturo. I would always want you to feel our doors are open to you whenever you might deem it safe to return. You and your family are crowd pleasers, and as such are always welcome in my theatre. Furthermore, I expect to do whatever I might to make it safe for you to return.”

A gratifying light of trust came into the tumbler’s eyes, and he seemed to relax some. Tension eased in his shoulders,
and he faced her straight on. He said, “What would you ask, mistress?”

“I hear tell of an altercation between yourself and William Wainwright shortly before his untimely death.”

Arturo went stiff and alert once more. He only nodded in reply.

Suzanne continued, “You saw him after the night he came to my quarters.”

“Yes, I did. I helped him to the exit.”

“He threatened me before.”

Arturo’s eyes went wide with genuine surprise, and he quite lost his restraint. “He threatened you? The snake! He
threatened
you?” His olive complexion reddened and his bushy black eyebrows gathered in a knot. “How did he threaten you?”

“With a knife. I took it away from him.”

A single finger jabbed the air as Arturo spoke, and Suzanne had to remind herself he was angry at William and not her. He fairly shouted, “Had I known it, I would have slit his throat on sight of him!” The finger made a line across his own throat in a slitting gesture. “The man would never have left the theatre that night! I swear I would have murdered him when I had the chance!”

“But you didn’t.”

“I now wish I had. I wish I had cut him with this here knife.” He produced a dagger from his belt, an ordinary knife for eating and everyday utility. The handle was roughly carved by someone with little skill in it, though Arturo was deft enough in handling the thing. He twirled it in his fingers, then slipped it back into his belt. “I didn’t kill him when he returned, nor did I kill him when I saw him in the green room the day he died.”

That struck Suzanne speechless, and she blinked. “The
green room?” she finally was able to say. “You saw him in the green room that night?”

“I did indeed. ’Twas during the performance I caught sight of him, and surprised I was in it, for I thought I’d let him know he wasn’t welcome around that theatre. To see him again so soon after warning him off…well, it angered me, it did. ’Twas in the green room he appeared. All brassy and arrogant, coming in where he wasn’t welcome and didn’t belong. Acting as if he owned the place and didn’t have a care in the world for what I’d told him earlier.”