The Scottish Play Murder (10 page)

“Don’t be silly. There’s no blood on your shoes, and besides, you have no reason to want Angus dead. I think the man who killed Angus also killed the Spaniard. There is a connection between them. Angus was at the table with Ramsay and the pirate the night the Spaniard was murdered.”

“So was Ramsay there, too. I’m telling you, it was him. It’s time to make queries of him.”

Suzanne had to admit he had a point, though she wished he weren’t so eager for it. The footprints told an entirely different story.

Daniel continued, “That is, if he would tell the truth should we ask.”

“We? Are you offering to interview him yourself?”

“He would no sooner tell me the truth than he would yourself.”

“I have no reason to believe he would lie to me.”

Daniel laughed. “Unless, of course, he’s guilty. And except for the rumors from Edinburgh which indicate he might very well be guilty of other crimes.”

Suzanne declined to answer, for she was still curious about the ruby necklace Ramsay carried around with him, and didn’t want to discuss any of that with Daniel. She stood to open the window that looked out over the cellarage beneath the stage. “Diarmid! Oh, Diarmid!” she called out to be heard from the stage above. “Will someone send Ramsay down to my quarters immediately, please!”

A distant reply of “Right!” came from atop the stage. It sounded like Matthew. Suzanne shut the window and she and Daniel waited. Shortly there was a knock on the sitting room door. Suzanne bade him enter.

In came Ramsay, dressed for rehearsal, which would begin soon. Today they were to work through scenes from
Macbeth
together, and it would be her first time onstage in years. “Aye, mistress?”

Daniel said, “Show us your shoes, my man.” He gestured to the shoes, but even before Ramsay lifted each foot for them, Suzanne could see these could not possibly have been the ones that had made bloody prints on Angus’s floor. As she’d anticipated, these were brogues of deer hide, the sole was soft leather and of one piece without a raised heel, and each shoe was tied low at the ankle with a short lace. A print made with such a shoe would have looked nearly like a bare foot.

Suzanne said to Daniel, “Do you see now what I mean?”

His face had a sour look and he was forced to concede she had a point, which he did with a single grunt.

“See what?” Ramsay frowned in deep puzzlement.

“Nothing. Nothing at all. You may go now.”

Daniel said, before Ramsay could turn to leave, “Say, good man, I’m curious and I think you might enlighten me. Did you perhaps happen to knife that poor Spanish pirate outside the Goat and Boar the other evening?”

Without so much as a flicker of surprise, just as a skilled actor keeps in character when a scene goes awry, he said, “No, my lord, I’m afraid I did not.”

“I see.”

“Will that be all, my lord? I must go clean my knife, for it’s been overused of late.”

Suzanne covered a snicker with one hand.

Daniel waved him off. “Yes, you may go.”

Suzanne added to Ramsay, “Tell Horatio I’ll be upstairs momentarily.”

Ramsay nodded and hesitated, though not as puzzled as he’d been, then left and closed the door behind him.

Suzanne said drily, “That was graceless. I suppose you thought you’d catch him flat-footed and he would blurt a full confession in the face of your clever ploy. Now you’ll know nothing at all from him because you’ve put him on notice he’s under suspicion.”

Daniel crossed his legs in stubbornness and said, “I still think he’s involved somehow.”

Suzanne rose from her seat. “If he is, apparently at this point he’s the only one left alive who knows it.”

“I should have him arrested. The jailer will have the truth out of him quick enough, I vow.”

“Only if he’s guilty. Otherwise you’ll have gibberish good only for making the questioning stop. Torture only ever works on those who have something the torturer wants to hear, and sometimes even then it’s still gibberish.”

“He’s guilty, I’m certain of it.”

“Regardless, Daniel, for the moment he’s our Macbeth. And I am needed on the stage. Come and watch if you like, while you await your carriage.” With that, she left Daniel sitting on the sofa and went upstairs to work.

O
n her way to the stage, Big Willie accosted her in the backstage area just inside the stage entrance doors. In rags and carrying a staff as Second Witch, he reached out of a dark corner near a hanging of costumes and grabbed her arm. “Suzanne!”

She jumped and sidestepped before she could realize it was not an actual witch lurking in the shadows. Then she lay a palm against her chest to still her racing heart. “Willie! You startled me!”

He was wide-eyed and obviously distressed. “Tell me it ain’t true, Suze!”

“What?”

“Tell me Angus ain’t dead. Please say it ain’t so!”

Her heart sank. “How did you find out?”

Willie’s worn face crumpled with grief. “No! It can’t be! Not Angus!” He backed away and spun as if to run away, then turned again in another direction, then stepped sideways and back like a little boy struggling to decide which way to flee. But there was nowhere to go to escape the truth.

“How did you find out, Willie?”

The little fiddler was weeping now. “Not Angus! Not him! Oh! I heered it from Tucker. He told me he’d heered Angus had been murdered. He said it had been a knifing. I didn’t believe him. I couldn’t believe him. He said you could tell me.” Willie broke down, sobbing, one hand over his mouth and the other arm tight about his waist. Tears streamed down his cheeks and over his hand. Slowly his knees buckled until he knelt on the floor. As he continued to sob, he rocked back and forth.

Tears stung Suzanne’s eyes. She wanted to hug him, but wasn’t certain she should. Instead she rested a hand on his shoulder. “Oh, Willie. I wish I could say otherwise.”

He looked up at her, eyes glistening and red. “How?” His mouth trembled and his hand hovered over it with wet fingers.

“It was a knifing. Someone stabbed him.”

“Did he suffer?”

She hesitated to answer, for though there had been little evidence of a struggle in that room, death for Angus couldn’t have been instant. There had to have been minutes in which he’d suffered before he died. She replied, “Not very much, I think.” Some men stabbed to death took weeks to die of infection, so in a sense Angus hadn’t suffered, relatively speaking.

That seemed to calm Willie somewhat. “Oh, good.” Then he began sobbing again, deep, wracking gulps of tears that bent him nearly in half.

Suzanne reached down to keep him from going all the way to lie on the floor. “Come, Willie. Come downstairs for a while.” She urged him to stand, then picked up his witch’s staff from the floor and handed it to him. “Come with me.” She took him by the arm and guided him down the spiral stairs to her apartment. Inside, Daniel was readying himself to leave. She called, “Sheila!”

The maid poked her head in from the kitchen.

“Sheila, give Willie a cup of ale or wine, if you would. Perhaps something to eat as well. Let him rest on the sofa in here until he has recovered himself and feels well enough to join us in rehearsal.”

“Aye, mistress.”

Daniel said, “I’ll see you upstairs.” She supposed that meant he intended to watch the rehearsal. She stayed long enough to see Willie settled onto the sofa, then excused herself to rehearsal. It took a minute or two to recover herself before stepping out onto the stage, and she was certain her nose was still red when she did.

Ramsay and Horatio, together at center stage, awaited Suzanne as she entered the stage from the ’tiring house through the upstage doors. Ramsay gave her a pointed look and a slight frown. She took it to mean he wondered whether she was all right. She shook her head to indicate it was nothing important, dabbed at her nose with a handkerchief she kept in her sleeve, then took a deep breath to face the task at hand. No weeping for Angus until later.

Others had already begun rehearsing scenes elsewhere in the theatre, and most of them had performed their parts before. Ramsay professed to have played his role in the past, and it was only Suzanne who was new to hers. In fact, though she’d seen it performed many times, she’d never played any role in this play. And it had been so very long since she’d acted in any play, her pulse pounded in her throat that she might make a fool of herself today.

Horatio’s eyes were closed as he stood at center stage, and he held in his fist the small wooden cross hung about his neck by a silver chain. His lips moved in prayer for a moment, then he crossed himself, opened his eyes, and addressed Suzanne as he gestured to her. “Come! Come, my niece. Our time allotted is not endless.” Suzanne hurried to join the others.

“Now.” Horatio drew himself to full and considerable height and indicated directions with his long arms and gesticulating fingers. His wig was a bit aslant, ever skewed, for his utter baldness beneath it. “In the previous scene all will exeunt that direction.” He indicated the steps there. Suzanne looked in that direction, and found Daniel watching from the ground floor gallery at stage right. She quickly returned her attention to Horatio’s directing.

“You will be with them.” Horatio turned and pointed with both hands toward the upstage doors. “You, Ramsay, then make your entrance there. During your speech the lesser actors will make their crossings hither and yon with their platters, trays, and jugs, and you will move through them as if they were not there, coming closer and closer to downstage and the groundlings.”

Ramsay said, “They love that.”

“They do, don’t they?” Suzanne said. “I think it’s why they stand so close to the stage, so they can feel part of the play.”

Horatio raised his voice some to regain the focus among them. “Be that as it may, once you’re past center stage here, the crossings of the lesser actors will cease and you will be alone on the stage. You must time your cross to arrive at the very edge of the stage precisely at the line
‘First, as I am his kinsman . . .’
Do you see what I mean?”

Ramsay nodded. “Of course.” He moved to the spot Horatio had indicated, mimed a plaid hanging over one arm—ironic that he wasn’t at that moment wearing his own—drew himself to full height, and projected to the third gallery,
“First, as I am his kinsman and his subject, strong both against the deed; then, as his host, who should against his murderer shut the door.”

“Right, right,” said Horatio. “Stay there until ‘
Vaulting ambition, which o’erleaps itself and falls on the other
,’ when Lady Macbeth enters again from stage right.”

Suzanne moved toward the stage right steps, and there turned to face Ramsay, who said his next line to address her,
“How now! What news?”

“Right,” said Horatio. “Move toward her, and she toward you.” He crossed his arms over each other to indicate the directions each should go.

Suzanne and Ramsay walked toward each other, slowly at first like magnets attracted to each other across a table, and came together in a heat of passionate excitement. Ramsay took her hands in his large, warm ones. Strong. Suzanne understood the key to her character was the sexual power Lady Macbeth held over her husband, and the surge of lust she conjured for this moment nearly made her laugh like a young girl. She looked into Ramsay’s hungry eyes, and for a moment lost herself in them. Then she did laugh. Ramsay’s mouth twitched to smile, then he managed to subdue it and resume his distressed Macbeth.

The lines that followed, though seemingly ordinary on the surface as the two laid out their plan for the audience, were now charged with tension. Ramsay’s Macbeth wanted to back out of killing the king, and Suzanne’s Lady Macbeth urged him to stay strong. She hinted she wouldn’t love him if he shrank away from the deed. He insisted he would be more of a man if he did not do murder. She chided him and suggested she was braver than he. They did not move from that spot on the stage. At that moment, the look in Ramsay’s eyes was utterly convincing. He was not capable of murder, she was sure of it. Then he brought up the possibility of failure.

She replied,
“We fail! But screw your courage to the sticking-place, and we’ll not fail.”
And Macbeth acquiesced. He agreed to kill the king. But still, though Ramsay came around as Macbeth, Suzanne was sure he could never in reality kill anyone. Surely not.

Daniel’s coachman appeared at the theatre entrance, and looked around for his master. When he spotted the earl, he started toward him, but was halted by a raised hand from Daniel. Then Daniel waved him off, and the coachman left again the way he’d come without a word. Daniel continued to watch the rehearsal with a black frown on his face.

Other scenes with other actors were blocked. At noon there was a short break for dinner, then another two hours or so of rehearsal. An hour before that afternoon’s performance was to begin, the company had a short break for the sake of preparing themselves for the paying audience. Daniel had left the theatre at dinnertime, without bidding Suzanne good-bye. She thought it petulant of him. He seemed more annoyed each day, but Suzanne found herself not terribly concerned over it. There had once been a time when her entire life turned on him, but that had been a very long time ago.

As Horatio and the others moved on to their next task, Ramsay approached Suzanne and gave a courtly bow, flourishing with a mimed hat and plume. He straightened and said with an enormous grin, “A fine performance, Mistress Thornton.”

“Thank you, and the same to you.” She curtsied as theatrically.

“Will you be retiring to your quarters, or are you off to the Goat and Boar for refreshment?” Neither of them had roles in the play that afternoon, and so both were free.

She looked around, as if to find a hint of what she had next to do. But of course the theatre was empty, and would be for the next half hour. “I hadn’t thought about it, really.” The morning’s events were beginning to catch up with her, and she felt her knees start to go weak. The emotions she’d suppressed since finding Angus began to surface. A fine trembling made her clumsy, and she had to watch carefully where her feet were going. She descended the stage right steps to the pit, though she should have gone upstage to the ’tiring house and retreated to her quarters. Ramsay followed her.

“Would you care to see a play of the Duke’s Men? This week they’re performing one by that French fellow, Molière. I hear he’s taken some of the old dell’arte stories and written them out fully. And quite artfully, they say. They also say the performances of the Duke’s Men are side-splitting. And with the set pieces and backdrops, I’m told ’tis a treat for the eye.”

“Oh, I couldn’t possibly.” She’d been curious about the new playhouse and the new style of plays brought over from France, but was hesitant, lest she like them better than the ones produced by The New Globe Players. Certainly the Duke’s Men received more support from the duke than The New Globe Players did from Daniel, and so it could hardly be avoided that the new plays would be a treat to the eye. So much so, she was afraid her own company would suffer by comparison. “I’d rather focus my attention on my own troupe, I think.” And just at that moment she thought she might vomit. She wished she could run to her bedchamber, lock the door, then hide under her blankets and weep. But that would only bring pounding on the door and queries after her health, and that would be no help at all.

“Oh, I see,” said Ramsay.

Suzanne realized her walking had taken her to the pit, and the only place for her to go now and not appear to be wandering was through the large doors to the street. That would hardly do, so she stepped up into the ground floor gallery and sat on a bench there, pretending to have intended that all along. The day was cold and misty, and now she truly wished she’d retreated to her quarters. Perhaps she should simply rise and go there now? It seemed like a good idea, but it also seemed rude. For a moment she considered the number of times she’d done the wrong thing by not wanting to do the rude thing, and wondered whether it was such a terrible thing to be less than perfectly polite, as she frequently was.

In any case, Ramsay sat next to her, but not so close as to make her uncomfortable. She liked that he seemed to respect her in ways Daniel did not. He said, “I have a sense you might like to ask me some questions.” His smile was charming as ever, and his eyes crinkled at the corners. It had been ever so long since a man had smiled at her that way. It made her feel young again, and calmed her nerves somewhat.

She took a deep breath and asked, “Are you saying you would like to
answer
some questions?”

“
Mo banacharaid
, I wish for you to know me as trustworthy. So ask me more about my shoes. You appear terribly interested in my shoes.” He held one out, as if examining it for hints to its importance.

“You needn’t worry. Your shoes have exonerated you, much to Daniel’s chagrin.”

Ramsay smiled. “I have good shoes, then. I shall brush them and clean them well tonight, I think, for they deserve it. And what deed was I suspected of that I needed exoneration? I ask out of curiosity, for I trust you when you tell me I needn’t worry.”

Suzanne thought for a moment, unsure of how much to tell Ramsay, for she didn’t know how much he already knew.

Loud, cackling voices rose from inside the ’tiring house, and three figures burst forth from the upstage doors, dancing, laughing, and chanting, in costume with their ragged skirts, shawls, and witches’ staffs of gnarled wood. Suzanne noted all three weird sisters were at play again tonight, and apparently Big Willie had pulled himself together in his grief. They cavorted down the stage in character, in the odd sort of way they’d had of late.
“Double, double, toil and trouble!”
Over and over, erupting in maniacal laughter in between, and an occasional “Hail!” “Hail!” “Hail!” Sisters Two and Three reached the end of the apron downstage and leapt from it into the pit then danced away.