The Opening Night Murder (36 page)

“And Wainwright’s intended victim? You’ve neglected to mention a name in your letter.”

“The king.”

That made Pepper’s eyebrows go up. “Indeed? The king himself was in the theatre that night?”

“He was. He sat in one of those seats that night, and so would understand who the intended victim was. I saw no need to set it down in writing.”

Pepper gave a slow, sage nod. “I expect if it came out that Wainwright intended to assassinate Charles, even had Wainwright been murdered, it would be unpopular to have hung the murderer. It would at least make us all appear silly. Wouldn’t want that bandied about, for a certainty. One wouldn’t wish for
the commons to ever be confused about the king’s position on the subject of regicide.”

“I’m certain of that. And the fact remains that William wasn’t murdered at all. Further, the king has you to thank for your skilled—and timely—work, as it says so lavishly in this letter.”

Pepper thought about that for a moment. She could see wheels and gears clanking behind his eyes.

“I pray you,” she continued, “my son is set to be hung very shortly.” She looked toward the window, and the angle of light through it made her heart skip and flop in her chest. “We must hurry to stop the hangman, or Piers will die. And you will look most foolish when the king reads this letter if my son does die.”

Finally Pepper took out a piece of paper from a desk drawer and laid it on his blotter. He chose a quill from a stack in that same drawer, then uncorked the bottle of ink that sat atop his desk and began to write. Suzanne and Horatio waited in silence. Pepper signed the page with a flourish and blotted the ink. He blew on it a couple of times, made one last press of the blotter, and folded the page into a small packet. He held out his hand for Suzanne’s letter as he offered her his.

“Here is the order to release your son; take it to Newgate and he will be remanded to your care until his pardon can be obtained. I’ll make certain your message is delivered to the king with proper haste.”

Eagerly Suzanne took the order and handed over her missive. Pepper said, “It’s been a pleasure doing business with you, madam.”

“And you, constable.” She said it over her shoulder as she
ran from the room. Horatio stuffed the crossbow back into the sack and followed.

Suzanne and Horatio waved down a carriage and offered the driver an excessive tip for all speed. The coach bounced over cobbles and careened around corners nearly on two wheels in its race to the prison. Suzanne kept her head out the window the entire way, as if she could speed the horses by looking where they should go.

On arrival at the prison, she was out of the carrige before it had quite stopped. She reached the door of the keeper’s house at a dead run, leaving Horatio to pay the driver. There she waved Pepper’s letter at the guards and informed them she was there to stop an execution.

The short one commented that the crowd gathered around the gibbet would be disappointed. Conversationally, the tall one said he thought the execution had already taken place.

Suzanne’s heart nearly stopped. “That’s not possible.”

“I’m telling you,” said the tall one. “There’s nothing and nobody to save. The thing is done. The transport cart must be well gone by now.”

“Take me to his cell. He must still be there. For the love of Jesus Christ, take me there now!”

“Very well, then.” The short one picked up his pike and showed her the way. She remembered it quite well. The guard moved so slowly, more than once she passed him up and he had to trot to keep up with her. At the corridor containing Piers’s cell, she found the door to it wide open and the cell empty. An uneaten breakfast sat on the table next to a guttering candle. She wavered, turned a circle, looking for the way he must have gone. The guard proceeded past her, through the doors, and out to a yard. She followed. Bright noon sunlight blinded her, and for a moment she saw nothing but white.

When her vision had cleared, she found the guard responsible for the condemned prisoners loitering as if reluctant to return to his post.

“Where is the cart?” Suzanne asked, breathless.

He turned around and looked to the street behind him. Suzanne followed his glance and found clusters of spectators watching a rickety wooden cart move off down Hart Row Street toward Snow Hill. The crowd had let the cart move past them, and now they were gathering behind to follow it along its route toward the Tyburn Gallows several miles to the west. Five men and one woman stood in the cart with the hangman, staring out across the crowd. One of them was Piers, wearing exactly the look of terror Suzanne had imagined in her worst moments.

She screamed and burst into tears. At a run, she waved the paper from Constable Pepper and shouted for the cart to halt. But the cheering and jeering from the onlookers drowned her out. She pressed her way between them, shoving and carrying her skirts in one fist.

Struggling through the crowd, she continued to shout, “Stop! Stop the cart!” Those around her shoved back, but she insisted and pressed her way through them, the letter raised above them in her other fist.

Finally she reached the cart and clutched the side of it as she thrust the paper into the face of the startled hangman. Guards on horseback came to remove her, but she clung with the desperation that Piers should live. Amidst hoots and boos from the crowd expecting to see the condemned die, the hangman halted his cart to have a look at the paper.

“You must remand my son to me. ’Tis an order from the constable.”

It seemed to take forever for the hangman to read the
letter—longer than it had taken Pepper to write it. But finally he folded it to slip it into his pocket, and he borrowed a knife to cut the rope tying Piers’s wrists. Suzanne’s son then leapt over the side of the cart to hug his mother, and he burst into tears.

P
IERS
had been home for several days when Daniel appeared at the theatre on business. Suzanne and her son were at breakfast, anticipating an ordinary day, both of them grateful for the ordinariness of it, when there was a knock at the outer door of the quarters. It was early yet, and nobody else was awake, so the two of them fell silent, alert to whom it might be at this hour. Sheila went to answer the knock. They heard her let someone in.

Daniel’s voice came. “Is the mistress in?” Suzanne and Piers each looked to the other, neither sure why Daniel would have come unbidden.

Sheila replied, “She is, my lord. Please come in and have a seat whilst I tell her you’re here.” She hurried into the kitchen. “Mistress, Himself is here.”

“You let him in?”

Sheila gave a half-curtsey of apology. “With all due respect, mistress, I could hardly have done aught but that. He’s an earl, after all. Send him on his way if you’ve a mind, but I’m ill-equipped for rudeness toward the peerage.”

“Very well, Sheila. Perhaps you’re well enough equipped to clear the breakfast dishes, then?”

“Aye, mistress. Immediately.” Sheila began cleaning up while Suzanne rose and straightened her clothing to be presentable to the earl before she would find a convenient reason to leave. Then she said to Piers, “Are you coming?”

He made a sour face. “I think Sheila needs me to supervise the clearing of the table.”

“Well, that shouldn’t take terribly long, then you’ll have enough time to speak to your father before I send him away.”

“Unlikely, I’d say.”

Suzanne considered that, then allowed as he might be right in not wanting to talk to Daniel, but he should consider it. So she went to the other room by herself. “Good morning,” she greeted Daniel.

“Good day, Suzanne.”

“Mistress Thornton, if you please.”

Daniel’s face fell, then he recovered his dignity, smiled, and nodded. “Mistress Thornton, as you wish.”

“What can I do for you this morning, your lordship?”

He seemed at a loss and uncertain, for the first time ever since she’d known him. Suzanne thought it possible he had come to make an apology he now saw would not be well received. He said, “I came to have a look at the theatre. I’m told there’s been damage to it, and I wish to know the extent of it so I can assess the cost.”

“The damage was minimal, my lord. Only a section of rain gutter and some boards on the stage will need to be replaced. The cost can be borne by our receipts, so there will be no need for more capital from you. My son is capable of handling that business himself. It’s really not anything at all.” Her voice took on an edge to suggest she knew that was not the real reason he’d come all the way across London to see her.

He removed his hat, but she did not summon Sheila to take it. He held it by the rim in both hands. “I hope you and Piers are well today.”

“As well as can be expected.”

“Is his arm recovering?”

She wondered how he’d heard about Piers’s injury, and gathered that Daniel might have been asking after him among the players or at the prison when he’d paid for Piers’s accommodations. Some of her anger abated, and she gave him a long, gentle, assessing look. Daniel had once been the love of her life. He was no longer, but there was no denying he’d been a very important part of her life at one time. He still was, in other ways. She sighed and offered him a seat on the sofa.

He sat, and she sat in a chair opposite. “Piers is recovering as only a young man can. Physically, he’ll be quite well in a few weeks.”

“That’s good to hear.”

“Emotionally, however, he may never again be himself.”

“I had no choice, Suzanne.”

“You had a choice. You chose your wife and your political power.”

“Without that, I am nothing.”

“Daniel, without Piers I am nothing. I am and have nothing without my son. You have told me you couldn’t know me because I had no room for you. That Piers took up too much of my life for you to be part of my life. Now I’m telling you that to know me at all is to know my son. I cannot be one person to you and another to everyone else. And I’m appalled you would think any mother could do that.

“You think you are separable from your responsibility as a father, and in that you are wrong. You think that your duty to Piers only starts once your own place in the world is secure, and in that you are also wrong.”

Daniel opened his mouth to speak, but she continued. “
Furthermore
, I would point out to you that when you went to York with Charles’s father, you left not only us, but also you left
your wife behind. You chose king and country over everyone who was ever family to you. It was your choice.”

“It’s a man’s duty to fight for what he thinks is right.”

“Only a fool would accept that excuse. It was your choice to go where you thought you might gain political power. Power and glory, all for yourself. It was never about duty, it was about self-aggrandizement.”

Color rose to his cheeks and he fidgeted in his seat. “You speak carelessly for someone whose livelihood depends on a theatre I own. I could very well evict you and sell the property away.”

“If you evict me and my troupe, then where would you and your wife go to see plays and have the best seats in the house?” The sudden sharpness of his gaze told her Anne had mentioned her visit, and that he realized she had not gone to his house to invite him to see a play. “Besides, you won’t, for that would only demonstrate my point. If you wish to prove me wrong, you’ll keep our arrangement.”

Daniel’s gaze moved from her face to focus on something behind her, and she turned to see Piers standing in the kitchen doorway. Nobody spoke for a moment, then Piers said, “Good morning, your lordship.”

Daniel stood, and gave a nodding bow. “Pleasant good morning to you, Piers. How fare you today?”

“Well enough, and good of you to ask.”

“I came to enquire whether you and your mother needed anything.”

“Only to be left alone, if you please.”

Daniel pressed his lips together at the harsh words.

Suzanne said, “Piers, if I may be blunt for a moment…” Piers attended to her, with a slight nod of permission. “I
believe the earl is sincere in his regret, and in his wish for all to be well between us.”

“That would be convenient for him.”

Daniel spoke up for himself. “You say that as if it’s not possible I could be sincere.”

“You’ve never shown us anything but self-interest. I have no reason to think you’ve changed. Easy enough at this point to say you have.”

“What do you want from me?”

“Nothing. Nothing whatsoever. I’ve gotten on well enough without you; I think I can continue to do so.”

Daniel stood silent for a long moment, thinking, gazing at his son. The son gazed back. Finally he said, “Very well, Master Thornton. Continue to manage this theatre as well as you have so far, and all will be well between us as far as I’m concerned. Is that fair enough?”

“Eminently fair. Though I would wish that you might treat my mother with equal respect.”

“Of course.” Daniel gave Suzanne a graceful, nodding bow.

“Then there’s nothing more to discuss.” Piers glanced at the door as if his words weren’t sufficient hint that Daniel should leave.

Daniel chose to accept that hint, set his hat back on his head, and said, “I’ll take my leave now. I bid you both a good day, until we meet again.” Then he took Suzanne’s hand before she could reasonably keep it from him, and he kissed the back of it in the Continental manner. Another slight bow to Piers, and he made his graceful exit.

Suzanne and Piers watched him go. She hoped that in time things between her son and his father would eventually right themselves.

Through the tiny window in the kitchen that looked on the cellarage came the sound of Horatio and some other players vocalizing, warming up for the day’s rehearsals and performance. Suzanne’s life and the theatre beckoned.