Surprised, she turned to look him in the face. “A woman my age? More appropriate? And how is it that you know so much about what I should do or not do?”
“I am your guardian.”
“My legal guardian, and a figurehead without any real significance.”
He sat up straighter to make himself taller and as imposing as he could. “I beg your pardon, but—”
“Very well, I mean only that I’m an adult, I’m not senile, and I am competent enough to have taken care of you by myself for nearly twenty years without the slightest help from your father, my father, or any other man. I believe I’ve proven myself and earned some autonomy.”
“My only concern is for your safety.”
A sigh of exasperation escaped her, and she rolled her eyes. “So many, so concerned for my safety! I wonder where you all were when you and I were starving and on the streets. I find that men are ever more concerned about women when money and the control of it are involved. When I was penniless there was nobody to have a care whether I lived or died.”
“I cared. I would have done anything for you.” It was his injured little boy tone, and suddenly she felt terrible for what she’d said.
“I apologize, Piers. But you know those were very difficult times. I rather think I deserve to maintain my independence, at least where the small things are concerned. Where I go and to whom I speak should be my own choices, especially considering how well you have benefitted from those choices in the past. More than likely you wouldn’t be here talking to me, had I not stepped outside the bounds of propriety from time to time when you were a boy.”
He gave a small nod of agreement. He said, “You should know Ramsay asked me to talk to you.”
She chuckled. “Dear Diarmid. Not Daniel, then?”
Piers seemed puzzled she should even bring him up. “Of course not. Old Throckmorton only ever cares what happens to you when Ramsay is involved. It’s as if he can smell it, and he appears out of nowhere only to thwart your suitor.”
The word “suitor” gave her a chuckle, for she felt herself so beyond such proprieties it was similar to calling her a “lady” or referring to a mule as a thoroughbred. “I haven’t seen Daniel in days, though Ramsay has accompanied me everywhere.”
“And that is why I think you should desist in your investigation.”
“Because I’m spending too much time with Diarmid?”
“Because the activity is dangerous. Ramsay accompanies you everywhere for fear you will be harmed.”
“And it is terribly sweet of him. The fact that I allow him to do it should speak to my sensibility concerning my own safety. I’m not so foolish that I would keep him from protecting me. Truth be told, I rather enjoy having a fuss made over me. ’Tis such a rare thing for me, ’tis something of a novelty. He amuses me, and I have to smile every time I see him waiting for me when I leave the theatre. I have to wonder why he doesn’t have anything better to do.”
“He does. A great many things, and his income is suffering for not being able to attend to his usual business.”
“He’s not in any of our plays at the moment.”
“But you know he has business concerns, importing from and exporting to Scotland.”
“Smuggling.”
“He’s no patents, and no right to do business of any sort, so in order to make a living that doesn’t require being cast in one of our plays, which you know is not dependable money, he must occasionally slip beneath notice of the crown. We all do it when necessary, don’t we?”
Suzanne realized in the past she’d broken the law enough times in various ways that she could have no argument against that. And so she said nothing.
After a long silence, Piers said, “Very well, then. If I may have your promise to never take any unnecessary risks, I’ll permit you to continue with this investigation.”
She turned to give him a long, stern stare, until he corrected himself. “That is, I’ll stop annoying you about it if I can be certain you’re safe.”
“I can promise you I won’t be any more careless with my life than I have to be.”
Piers uttered a grunt of dry amusement, then thanked her and excused himself to leave the gallery. Suzanne’s thoughts returned to the investigation, Lord Paul, and the Goat and Boar. She needed to organize in her mind the known facts.
She tried to remember exactly how she’d known the boy was not a girl. As she remembered it, he had been physically wrong. His hands were the large-knuckled ones of an adolescent boy, not the small, delicate fingers of a girl so gently brought up as he’d seemed to be. As he actually had been, it turned out. Though all tarts were forward, for it was how they were defined and how they made their living, he had seemed more relaxed in it than a real girl should have been. A girl—even an extraordinarily forward one—would have been taught some restraint that a boy would not. Again, Lord Paul had been more like a highly polished gentleman than a truly female street whore.
So far, she knew that Paul’s family thought him a liability. Any family that produced a known sodomite would suffer in reputation, and it was plain the Duke of Cawthorne had established for himself a highly moral reputation particularly difficult to sustain. In Suzanne’s experience, the more pristine the moral standing, the more likely the downfall in a world where social standing was maintained by vigilant self-interest. Only the poorest priest living at a distance from any seat of power and temptation could claim true purity of spirit. Only a man living outside of any society could avoid the appearance of impropriety in all things. Cawthorne, a duke living among peers who had questionable motivation in most things, had perched himself on an exceptionally high pedestal no man could hope to maintain.
So when his son showed signs of becoming a sodomite, he had been forced to send the boy to the country and out of the way of the duke’s political life. Since Lord Paul was the younger son and his older brother would inherit the title, it was possible his true nature might then have remained secret from the peerage for the duration of his life. Unluckily for them all, the coachman had seen an opportunity to make money from the family’s misfortune. He abducted Paul at a moment when there was nobody to know he’d gone missing. Then, whatever had happened to him during that first week with Higgins, the boy had ended up in a dress, working as a whore servicing men who were not sodomites. The Goat and Boar was not known as a gathering place for that sort, and so she wondered what had brought Paul there. Had Higgins thought of expanding his territory? Would that have even been wise? She guessed not, since one of those clients had murdered the boy. Perhaps it was an experiment in commerce gone awry?
She considered who the murderer might have been, and how he would have discovered Lord Paul was not a girl. Many men at the Goat and Boar that night had been taken in by the ruse. She herself had been one of the few to see it, and it wasn’t until she’d mentioned it to Daniel that he’d known. It was reported by Big Willie that Young Dent had put his arm around Paul, but Dent had not ever shown any awareness that the girl in the blue dress had not been a girl. He hadn’t remembered the blue dress until he was asked about a girl.
Then she remembered Warren. According to Willie, Warren the flute player had also had his arm around Paul sometime during the evening. Now she wished she’d asked more detailed questions about what had happened there, and made a mental note to have a chat with Warren as soon as possible.
So now she saw her collection of facts contained a blank area between Willie’s and Higgins’s testimonies of Paul at the Goat and Boar, and the next morning when the body had been found floating in the river. She knew by the excessive stabbing and the severed appendage the murderer had been very angry. Out of control. It had taken an extremely powerful ire to do that to anyone, whether dead or alive, adult or child, boy or girl. The murder had not been casual, for money or for sport. The thing had certainly been done by someone offended, and the most likely reason for that offense
was that Paul had sold himself as a girl. The severed willie told her that, like a big sign in dripping, red paint. In her gut Suzanne felt the dress alone would not have produced that sort of anger. It had to have been a customer—or potential customer—who had found out Paul’s secret too late. Someone who may have put a hand up that dress and found himself embarrassed.
Suddenly Warren began to take on the character of a suspect. Her heart clenched, for he and Willie were both friends of hers and it horrified her to think that he could have committed such a horrible deed.
She considered other people she should interview. She needed to know whether there was someone at the Goat and Boar that night who had been a customer to Lord Paul before, and she hoped to find one, lest her friends become the most likely possibility for the murderer.
A realization formed in her mind, and when it came clear it pushed aside everything else. Her assumption was that someone had murdered the boy for being embarrassed at being approached by a sodomite. That sort of man would take pride in what he’d done, to have ridden the world of such a creature. He would have considered it God’s work, and more than likely would not have thought the murder a crime. He would have been proud of his action and let his friends know what he’d done.
But so far nobody was claiming credit for the deed. Suzanne frowned as this tiny fact settled into the clump of information she was considering. Though the motive was assumed to be disgust for sodomites and moral outrage, there was no hint of rumor that anyone was bragging about it. It was a small thing, and might mean nothing at the end of the day, but it annoyed her.
The play was ending, and in her reverie she’d missed the final two acts in their entirety. She looked across at the stage gallery where the musicians sat, and saw Warren with his flute. Good. He was the very man she needed to talk to just then. She rose from her bench and made her way through the departing audience toward the ’tiring house.
She caught up to him in the green room, just before he would have left to spend the evening at the Goat and Boar. “Warren, may I have a chat with you for just a moment?”
Of course he nodded eagerly, for he depended on the money he had regularly from her, playing for performances. “At yer service, mistress.”
“This way, then.” He followed her through the ’tiring house and out to the first gallery, which was now empty of audience. She and Warren sat on the steps at stage right, in the open where they could talk without being overheard by anyone unseen. This wasn’t a conversation for those who might lurk around corners or listen through connecting windows and doors inside the theatre structure. She said, “Warren, you may be aware I’m investigating a murder.”
“Aye, mistress. It seems you’re always asking around about this, that, and the other.” Another man might have sounded critical of her behavior, but Warren spoke as if he thought it a very good thing that Suzanne was nosier than most.
“I’m told you were one of the last men to see the victim alive.”
A shadow fell over his fat, round face and he resembled a jack-o’-lantern, with wide eyes and a turned-down mouth. “Who told you that, if I may ask?”
“Our friend, Big Willie. He says you had an arm around the tart wearing a blue dress decorated with lace that night.”
“Which night?”
“Nearly a week ago. You and Willie were playing for tips at the Goat and Boar, yes? You’ll remember the public house was particularly crowded that night. One could hardly move.”
Warren nodded. “Right lively crowd it was, as well. Willie and me was cramped for space. I went home a good several pounds heavier than when I got there. Made me nervous to walk around with that much cash a-jingling in my purse.”
“You left before Willie did. For what reason?”
Warren shrugged. “No reason. I only felt like leaving. I’d made enough money for the evening, and wanted to go home.”
He had nobody to go home to, and so Suzanne doubted his story, especially in the light of what Willie had told her two nights ago. “I’m told you had occasion to have your arm around the victim before you left.”
“The boy in the blue dress.”
“You know he was a boy, then.”
“Everyone knows the body floating in the river was a boy in a blue dress. Everyone knows that’s the murder Pepper gave you to look into.”
Of course. All of Southwark knew by now. But she continued her questioning. “By his account, you were one of the last to see the boy alive.”
That alarmed him so he became quite agitated and his jowls quivered. “Oh no, there must have been plenty to have groped him after me. That boy went straight from me to someone else as soon as I learnt he weren’t no girl.”
“So you knew about that before he was killed.”
“Of course, I knew. I goosed him like I does all the tarts in that place, and when I found his pocket were filled with jewels, I rigged in my arm real quick-like and left him alone. Went back to playing my own flute, and never mind his.”
“What did you see after that?”
“Naught. I saw nothing at all. I swear it on my life.”
“Oh, come, Warren. I know you far better than that. In fact, there are few men who wouldn’t have watched him closely for the rest of the evening just for the amusement of seeing others make the same mistake you did. How many men did you see him with who did not feel under his dress? Particularly those who went outside with him?”
Warren blushed a deep red, giving him even more of a pumpkin look about him. “I swear, Suze.”
“Warren . . . I’m your friend. I need you to tell me.”
She let him think on that for a moment, then he sighed and said, “All right, then. There was a number of them. As a tart, that boy had a talent, he did.”
“And who was the last one you saw with that talented tart?”
“Dunno his name. Never seen him before.”
“What did he look like?”
Warren shrugged. “Dunno, maybe big. Big shoulders. He stood out a bit in that place, dressed all in old clothes but looking like they weren’t his. Rather like he’d stole ’em off a clothesline or such. Like they didn’t fit so well as they should.”
“What did he do that you saw? How did he act?”
“Well, when I saw him was when the little tart went up to him and offered himself. All batting his eyelashes and tapping certain spots with his fan then hiding behind it.”
“And what did the bigger man do?”
“Nothing that I saw. No reaction at all. Which I thought was a mite strange. Most of the men there liked being all made over by the pretty girl, but this here fellow, he was a block of stone, he was.”
Suzanne was excited by this development. “Did he seem angry? Did he look as if he were threatening the boy?”
Warren shook his head. “It was like he’d expected it. Like he knew all along the girl was a boy and needn’t have a feel of it.”
“And he didn’t mind?”
“I wouldn’t say that. They argued some. The tart put up a good face, still trying to seduce him. Then I suppose they came to terms, for then the big man took him by the arm and escorted him from the Goat and Boar.”
“They both left the public room?”
“Yes.”
“And did you see the boy after that?”
“No. I left myself, soon after.”
Suzanne gave him a stern, questioning look.
He held up his palms. “Honest. I left once the show was over. I could see when they left they wasn’t coming back.”
“How did you know that?”
Warren shrugged. “I dunno. I could just tell. This were a special customer, one who knew that tart. Besides, I was getting bored by it all. I stopped caring what sex he was, and watching everyone in the place get themselves serviced by a boy wasn’t so interesting anymore. ’Twere funny once or
twice, but three times, four times, five times . . . it just was boring.”
“The man you saw; how did he move? Graceful? Clumsy?”
“The average, I’d say. He seemed muscular, and deft enough with his weight—graceful on his feet—but no more graceful than the average.”
That didn’t sound at all like Higgins, especially with the way this man was dressed. Higgins had been described as exceptionally graceful and fashionable. She guessed every stitch he owned would fit him perfectly. “And you’re certain you don’t know the name of the man who took the boy from the room?”
Warren shook his head. “Haven’t the foggiest idea.”
That was a severe disappointment. Suzanne slumped in momentary defeat.
“Is that all you wanted to know, Suze?”
She thought a moment, then nodded. There seemed nothing else he could give that would be useful. Then she remembered and laid a hand on his arm to keep him in his seat. “Warren, did you see Dent put his arm around the boy?”
Warren laughed. “Sure I did. I nearly busted out with screaming laughter, I did.”
“Did he seem to guess the truth?”
“No. Not Dent. After a moment he let go and then went on about his business.”
“I see. Then thank you, Warren. Do let me know if you hear anything about the boy or that customer of his.”
“Will do, Suze.” With that, Warren tucked his flute case under his arm and left the theatre.
Suzanne went to find Ramsay. She needed to talk to Higgins again.
Chapter Sixteen
It was still quite early in the evening when she and Ramsay arrived at the house in Haymarket. Suzanne repeated the special knock she’d heard on her first visit here, and the door was answered by the same fellow who had opened it the last time. But tonight he wore men’s clothing and his head was bare of wig. He hadn’t yet shaved, and so his face bore a dark shadow that covered enough of his throat to look like a creeping mold on a drain pipe. His eyes appeared somewhat the worse for wear from too much drinking, or whatever else he might have imbibed the night before. Or the weeks before. Red rimmed his lids, dark bags hung under them, and his skin was pale and waxy looking. When he saw both Suzanne and Ramsay at the door, his jaw dropped in surprise and dismay.
The Twelfth Night Murder Page 21