The next afternoon the play opened and William slipped from everyone’s mind. The audience crowded into the theatre to fill up benches, until even the pit was packed with milling bodies. The luxury of sitting for the price the duke’s new theatre charged for standing drew everyone in walking distance, and the neighborhood was overrun with people who loved a good play.
If the excitement among the audience was palpable, the mood in the ’tiring house was near hysteria. Joking and stifled laughter fed the energy until the littlest of the boys ran from the green room to vomit in a fire bucket. Laughter followed him and shamed him, though many had done the same thing once or twice in their careers and nobody was entirely immune to excitement. For most of them the thrill was what they lived for. The boy returned to the green room with a red face, patted on the shoulders by his elders.
In her quarters, Suzanne readied herself to watch the play, eager to see her new theatre through the eyes of its audience. Through the cellarage window in the kitchen she could hear the voices of gathering spectators grow from scattered conversations to a low collective murmur to a roar of thousands trying to be heard amongst themselves. As she painted her lips she toyed with the idea of lurking in the pit to listen in on conversations, but decided she would enjoy the afternoon more if she went upstairs to sit with the musicians in a gallery over the stage. There she would be able to chat with Big Willie, Warren, and that Scottish fellow, and they would be as fine an entertainment as the play itself. She hurried with her beauty marks, eager to be finished and take her place in the audience.
The door from the stairwell opened, and she heard someone enter. She turned as Piers made his way through her rooms to her bedchamber. Though the day was cheerful and sunny, Piers’s visage was not so. He glowered as he planked himself down on the foot of her bed, wrapped an arm around its post, and leaned his face against it. He was in a sulking mood, and Suzanne steeled herself for a bit of childish pique. For the most part Piers behaved as an adult, fully his eighteen years, but sometimes he slipped back into childhood, requiring to be nudged toward maturity again.
He said, “I would have thought Daniel might have been here tonight.”
“I, on the other hand, would not have thought it.” She examined her hair in the small hand mirror she’d wheedled out of William several years before. “And what makes you think he’s not here?”
“I haven’t seen him.”
“You mean he hasn’t come backstage.”
“Surely you would agree that he should present himself on opening night. I think it’s an insult to you that he hasn’t.”
“You mean he should have come backstage to wish me well?”
“Precisely. He should be here with gifts. Flowers and jewelry. But I see naught. He’s insulted you.”
“And by extension, he’s insulted you.”
Piers straightened his posture and shrugged. “That isn’t the point.”
“Oh, but it is. He’s your father, and he should treat you better than he does.”
“I have no father.”
“You do, and I think he cares more for you than you think.”
“He does not. He cares only about himself and his money. If he had any thought for us—for you, he would be here right now, wishing you luck in your venture.”
“It’s his venture as well, so wishing me luck would be a bit self-serving, don’t you think?”
He thought that over for a moment, then reiterated, “He should be here.” Piers said that as if it settled the entire question.
“Well,” Suzanne said as she waved dry the glue on her star-shaped beauty marks, “We must remember that his help has enabled us to eat every day, which wouldn’t be the case now that William has deserted us. If you wish to be angry with someone, William is a marvelous candidate. You should feel free on that account.”
Piers grunted, unhappy with the entire situation. “William. If he returns, I think I should kill him.”
“Don’t say that. Never say that, even about William. He is mad, and can’t be held responsible for his delusions. You should pity him, not hate him.”
“But he’s dangerous. Someone should gut him, I think.” Piers thought about it a moment, then muttered half to himself, “Slit his throat.” He thought some more. “Hang and quarter—”
“That will do, young man. Now go make certain the cash box is well attended by someone more trustworthy than the mummers’ troupe. It’s like setting a weasel to guard the hens’ nests.” Piers hesitated, so she waved him on. “Go. Before someone absconds with the proceeds and we’ve nothing to show Daniel for our first night.”
Piers reluctantly rose from the bed and scuffed his boots in insolence all the way out the door. Suzanne made one more check of her coif, then set the mirror on her dressing table and left her quarters.
As the time drew close, Suzanne climbed the steps at the rear of the ’tiring house to watch the performance from the gallery directly above the stage, where the musicians sat. As she found a stool and settled in at the front, Big Willie, Warren, and the Scot played an old-fashioned tune that might have been played in this theatre during Elizabethan times. Suzanne’s fancy toyed with the thought that Shakespeare himself might have listened to this very tune from this very gallery half a century ago. She looked around, and the idea made her smile. It was a fine, sunny day, and especially warm even for this time of year. Afternoon light bathed the stage, and there was no fear of a sudden rain from the pale-blue sky overhead.
In the third tier gallery over the theatre entrance directly across from the stage, she spotted several rather well-dressed men making their way to a vacant bench, and she thought one of them resembled Daniel. She hoped it was him. She would have liked to tell Piers his father had come after all. It was hard to say whether it was him, and the others with him—one very tall and one very short—she didn’t recognize at all. They might have been former Cavaliers and were probably older men, though they dressed rather plainly and the tall one wore no wig. Beneath the plain green cloak were brown doublet and white collar. On the other hand, the wigless one wore an uncommonly large feather in his hat, more appropriate for a parade than for theatre in Southwark.
The men settled into seats, chatting among themselves. They appeared to be enjoying their outing, and Daniel—Suzanne decided it was him—did quite a bit of the talking himself. She peered at the others to see who they might be, but they were too far away and their hats made strong shade over their faces in the bright afternoon sunlight. Suzanne let it go and focused her attention on the stage below as performers entered from upstage.
That afternoon’s performance began with a short commedia play, the one involving the cuckolded husband. The mummers had today’s audience laughing well and quickly, and in a few minutes they left the stage with the entire audience of nearly four thousand people in a good mood. To Suzanne, this was the wonderful thing about the theatre: to have that many gathered together in one place and everyone having a good time. One could do that in a public house with alcohol, cards, and women, but a pub could host only a fraction of the souls a theatre could. A day at the theatre was like a party so enormous only the king might rival it as a host.
She looked across at Daniel and saw his smile flash. Yes, making people laugh could be a good way to live.
The play began, and Matthew lit up the stage as King Henry, young and eager to prove himself to the world as a ruler to be reckoned with. The audience was as caught up as she. They shouted advice to Henry, and in response Matthew invented bawdy asides in spite of the directive to keep to Shakespeare’s own words. Suzanne supposed so long as the asides were not political or slanderous they might go unnoticed. In any case, she hoped nobody in the house tonight was likely to go running to the king, tattling.
Then the battle of Agincourt. The French king and his dukes in desperation. The murder of the boys in the luggage. The horror of that cowardly act. Suzanne was caught up in the story as if she hadn’t seen the play a dozen times before. Eve
n as she gasped along with Henry and his dukes, she thought what a fine time she was having. For a moment she thanked William for leaving her and forcing her to find something so worthwhile to do with her life.
A scream lifted from the audience, and she thought how wonderfully involved everyone was. Then something thudded on the stage below like a sack of rags or flour. More screaming and confusion moved the audience, some surging forward and others falling back. Suzanne leaned over the banister for a better look, and saw a man lying on the stage, writhing and grasping at a crossbow bolt stuck in his neck. One brave boy ran forward to yank out the bolt, and a gout of blood poured over the stage. The pool spread quickly, and though two actors tried to stanch the flow with their hands, it was hopeless. The fallen man weakened and stopped struggling, finally going limp in the arms of those who tried to help him. The play had come to a halt.
Suzanne leapt to her feet and ran down the rear stairs to the stage. All the actors in the troupe were there, those not in the scene having emerged from the ’tiring house to see, gathered around the body, while those in the pit attempted to climb onto the stage for a look. The audience was abuzz, and some shouted advice to those on the stage as if it were all part of the performance. Suzanne shoved men aside and attempted to take charge, but all she could manage was to enter the circle to see. There, she cried out in shock.
The dead man was William.
He lay on her stage in a pool of blood, killed by a crossbow. His ragged clothing was turning red, his shirt soaking up the draining blood. The red stain slowly crept along the white fabric, and more of it enlarged the pool on the stage boards as it ran downstage.
She said to the boy standing by with the crossbow bolt still in his hand, “Go fetch the constable. Tell him we’ve found William Wainwright, but the crown is unlikely to have much information from him.”
Chapter Twelve
By the time the constable came the next morning, most of the nearly four thousand people who had witnessed the murder had gone home. Suzanne supposed there would be no information forthcoming from anyone in the audience who might have chanced to be looking up when William was shot. Certainly nobody was likely to step forward for questioning. In her experience the appointed authorities could never be trusted and had no respect for the rabble they monitored. Everyone in Southwark was raised to understand that too much involvement with those who had the power to arrest was never a good idea. So the audience had scattered, and none but the performers would ever admit to having been there that night.
Performers scattered as well. The mummer troupe had packed up and disappeared during the night, and the constable’s tardy appearance gave them plenty of lead in their flight. Only the Globe Players were on hand that morning, readying for rehearsal, and there was much speculation about who of the nonresident actors would show up that day.
When he finally arrived to ask questions, Constable Samuel Pepper appeared as by magic, standing on the stage and staring down at the bloodstain. He was a short, rotund man, rocking back and forth heel-to-toe in absentminded habit. His breeches were too long for fashion and too short for warmth, and his leggings were tight at the calf and sagged at the ankle. They bunched into his shoes as if tucked there hastily to hide excess length. The faded brown velvet jacket had bare spots at elbow and collar, and he wore an old-fashioned plain black hat that had not been meant to be worn over the constable’s new wig and so was too small. It teetered atop the mass of gray hair and swayed with each rocking movement heel-to-toe, heel-to-toe.
The deceased was gone, William having been carried off to his wife for burial. There wasn’t much left to see here.
Nobody had noticed Pepper entering the theatre, though when Suzanne caught sight of him as she happened to be walking through the pit, she saw that the large front entrance doors were slightly ajar. She wondered whether the battering that bolt had taken from the soldiers had caused it to come loose, or if someone had let in the constable, then wandered away without telling anyone there were visitors. In any case, if the bolt was broken, she’d want Piers to attend to it.
Pepper, of course, was familiar to Suzanne from her days as a prostitute, when she and her friends had often had bad scrapes with the authorities over one thing and another. But she’d spent the past decade avoiding him and had been mostly successful during the years she’d been with William. He had never paid her much attention even then, and now she reckoned he was unlikely to remember her. She knew him as not terribly trustworthy, and his laziness was legendary, evidenced by his late arrival to the scene of a murder.
“Good morrow, constable.” She shielded her eyes from the sun as she looked up at him on the stage.
He started as if he’d been unaware of her presence until that moment. “Oh. Hello. Mistress…?” He peered at her, with no light of recognition in his eyes, plainly expecting her to introduce herself. Good, he didn’t remember her.
She came to the side of the stage and climbed the steps. As she approached him she adjusted her silk jacket. “Suzanne Thornton. My son manages this establishment.”
He eyed her breeches. “Then your husband is…”
“A figment of the imagination, I’m afraid.” She’d never been apologetic for not having a husband, for apology never got her anywhere.
He nodded. “I see. Is your son about, then?”
“I’m afraid he is meeting with a business partner across the river.” Piers was at Whitehall, discussing the previous night’s excitement with Daniel. Suzanne had wanted to go with him, but stayed behind in compliance with Daniel’s decree she not show herself at the palace. Pepper’s visit suggested it had been a wise choice for her to stay, but she still wished to be with them in Daniel’s quarters.
Pepper turned to gaze down at the bloodstain again. “You were here last night, then?”
“I saw the entire thing.”
He heaved a sigh of satisfaction. “Ah, then, I expect my job here is finished and I can return to my office without delay. If you saw the whole thing, you might tell me who shot the bolt.” He said it with a smile, so she understood it was a joke, but underlying the joke was perhaps a wish she could have saved him a bit of trouble after all by revealing the culprit herself.
She didn’t think him very funny at all, but she chuckled just to make certain he understood the humor was nothing more than that and she had no idea who the murderer was. But then a puzzled look crossed his face and she realized he hadn’t been joking at all. He’d seriously thought she knew the name of the murderer and could tell him whom to arrest. He was too lazy to investigate. “Alas,” she said, “I never saw the bolt or where it came from. We were all attending to the players on the stage, you see, which of course is what one does during a play. I doubt anyone on the premises could tell where the murderer stood when he fired.”
“There were several on the stage with crossbows, I expect. The play was Henry V, yes? You staged a battle last night and the players were armed.”
“Some were. Four or five, I think; that’s how many crossbows we own. But nobody goes onstage with his weapon cocked. It’s far too dangerous; the trigger mechanism too easily could unlatch and send the bolt God knows where.”
“Which might have been the case last night. The weapons are all functional, yes?”
“Except that, as I said, we never allow them to be cocked. Nobody onstage had a cocked crossbow.”
“You’re certain of that?”
The despairing feeling grew that Pepper was looking for a quick solution to the crime so he could go home. If the thing were found to be an accident, there was no murderer to catch and no more work to be done on this case. William might have been a thoughtless lover and a dangerous madman, but surely even he didn’t deserve for his murderer to go free. She lowered her chin and gazed straight into his face. “Yes, I’m certain. Nobody wants to risk the accidental death of a fellow player, and besides, it takes great time and effort to cock a crossbow; it never happens inadvertently. That’s why longbows, which
are easily and quickly drawn, were so loved by Edward Longshanks, whose armies darkened the skies with arrows all over the kingdom. William surely was murdered, by someone who intentionally shot him with an intentionally cocked crossbow.”
Pepper threw her a cross look, then put a hand to his chin, thinking. Suzanne waited patiently for his next question, wondering which way he would leap in his logic. He said, “May I speak to the actors who carried bows onto the stage?”
“Certainly.” She looked upstage and saw several faces peeking from the doors there. “Matthew! Have the five who carried crossbows last night come for a chat with the constable.”
Matthew ducked away, and a moment later several others came forward from the doors, quickly enough that they must have all been listening from behind. Five men who had populated the stage the day before as soldiers in King Henry’s army at Agincourt made their way downstage toward Constable Pepper and Suzanne.
While four of them came on with a straightforward gaze at Constable Pepper, the one boy in the group, whose name was Christian, looked as if he wished he were anywhere but there. He hung back and had to be urged to join the others on the stage before the constable. His gaze never left the boards at his feet. Suzanne watched him, and wondered whether they’d found their culprit. She’d never seen anyone look so guilty. But why on earth would Christian have shot William? As far as she knew, Christian had never laid eyes on him.
Constable Pepper asked the actors as a group, “You each had a crossbow onstage?”
The four men nodded. Christian said nothing, and never indicated he heard the question. Suzanne saw this, but also saw that Pepper didn’t seem to take note of him at all. As if his youth made him beneath notice. Pepper’s next question seemed to ignore the lad and he addressed the men. “Did any of you have any quarrel with William Wainwright?”
The Opening Night Murder Page 17