The Scottish Play Murder (6 page)

“Surely you’ve enjoyed the intimate company of some of your good friends from time to time.” He looked around at the men at the table, all of whom shook their heads somewhat ruefully. Ramsay reacted with exaggerated shock. “You don’t say! None of you? Horatio, then?”

Suzanne wagged her head in reluctant admission, and took another sip of ale. “Horatio was a client once or twice many years ago when we first met. But never since.”

“Lucky sod. Had I discovered you before you changed professions, I would have given you gold and jewels for an evening of your time and attention.” With that he reached into a pocket in his doublet and discreetly showed her the end of a necklace that appeared to be of rubies set in gold. Rubies large enough to please a duchess or countess. Then he dropped it back into the pocket as if he’d never touched it.

Suzanne stared, agape, then looked around at the others, who laughed at the joke and didn’t seem to have noticed the astonishingly rich piece in Ramsay’s possession. She realized she was the only one who had seen it. She also realized Ramsay did not need the paltry wages offered by The New Globe Players.

Suzanne covered her look of astonishment by taking a long draught from her cup, emptying it with her head thrown back. As if out of nowhere, Young Dent appeared at her side to fill it again, and had with him a bottle of wine and a tankard for Ramsay. Then he disappeared again to attend to other guests.

The Scot said to her, beneath the further chatter of others at the table and unheard by them, “You’re a treasure and should be treated as such.”

“And likewise kept in your pocket?”

He grinned. “You should be kept safe. Secure and warm. ’Tis plain nobody has ever kept you safe from harm. That is a shame that should be rectified.”

A place deep inside her felt dug into, like an oyster gouged from its shell. She wondered how he knew that about her. “I am currently in good hands, friend Ramsay. Mine own.”

“There are bigger and stronger hands, to be sure. Throckmorton doesnae deserve you.”

“Throckmorton does not have me.”

He shrugged and didn’t argue that point. “I’d like to show you better.”

Suzanne had no reply for that, and wasn’t certain whether or not she was glad she’d already heard so much about him. Nor could she guess whether any of it was true.

*

T
HE
rumors circulating about Ramsay didn’t sit well with Suzanne. Rumors that went unaddressed always grew out of control, and more often solidified into accepted truth, and perception was everything. If enough people believed something false, then fact became irrelevant. The troupe could have a liability on their hands in Ramsay. All the talk about the murder of the Spanish pirate made Suzanne think someone should investigate that murder and at least determine who did
not
do the crime. Namely Ramsay. Since the constable was paid to investigate, she thought it was only right he turn a hand to that job.

So in the morning she hired her favorite chair, carried by two strong young men named Thomas and Samuel, and requested they take her to Constable Pepper’s office. It would be a little like walking into the lion’s den, where the constable might rush to an arrest on a whim or strictly for annoyance value, and it made her glad that Thomas and Samuel were available that morning. They were large, strong men and they liked her, many times functioning as bodyguards. Today when they set the chair down in the street outside Pepper’s office, she handed the carriers each an extra penny and asked them to listen at the door for her call. It was understood they should break in if they felt it necessary.

Constable Samuel Pepper was a lazy, roly-poly man with poor grooming habits and more concern for creature comforts than social responsibility. Or even personal responsibility, for that. To be sure, laziness, slovenliness, and irresponsibility didn’t set him so very much apart from other men—or even other constables. But he was far and away the laziest man Suzanne knew. That morning when she talked her way in past his clerk, she found him exactly where she expected he would be, lounging behind the desk in his office with a bottle of brandy uncorked on a shelf behind him and the room whiffy with alcohol. A small glass with a remnant of brandy in the bottom sat off to his right on the desk. Two armchairs stood to the side, both empty because his drinking companions had not arrived. It was yet early, so he was fairly sober and alert, relatively speaking for him. His eye was steady on her, and they were both quite red around their watery blue irises.

“Good morning, Constable,” she said as she removed her fine leather gloves to fold them into her left hand. Today she wore a dress, the better to avoid setting the constable against her too much for indeterminate gender. He was the sort who liked things ordinary and obvious, so that he didn’t need to think too hard about them. Surely he would much more appreciate a low feminine neckline and a narrow waist, even if his chances of touching either were absolutely nil.

He leaned back in his chair and narrowed his eyes at her as if unable to see her quite clearly. That was probably the case, and she could see that he was also having trouble remembering her, though he’d last seen her but a month before. But then recognition lit his eyes. “Ah. Mistress Thornton. What brings you here?” A glance past her at the doorway told her he was expecting someone else any minute, probably his friends. She knew he was in the habit of drinking with them of a morning, and a perverse urge to delay him in that came and went. As much fun as it might be to watch him panic, she had better things to do with her time than to engage Pepper in unnecessary small talk while his friends waited for him to become available.

“I feel you should be alerted to a murder that has taken place.” Her tone was somewhat casual, as if she’d just dropped by for a chat and this had occurred to her but a moment ago.

“Another relative in need of rescue?”

A tart reply rose to her lips, but she held the inside of her lower lip between her teeth and did not say it. Piers had nearly been hung last summer, and to argue the question of Pepper’s reluctant role in his rescue would accomplish nothing. “I’m only here as a responsible citizen in hopes of justice for the poor sailor who was killed.”

He heaved his unwieldy bulk forward and leaned his elbows on his desk, then rested his chin on his clasped hands. His moist, red lips pursed and thrust out when he spoke—and sometimes when he didn’t—and his jaw didn’t move, for he seemed unwilling to make the effort to hold up his head enough to clear his hands. “Yes, I’m aware of the incident. A Spanish sailor who came too close to an English knife outside the Goat and Boar. I’m surprised there was even any talk about that death.”

“Why shouldn’t there be?”

“’Twas only a Spaniard. And a pirate, I believe. Hardly worth the effort of investigating.”

“’Tis your job.”

“My job is what I deem it should be. Were I to hunt down every criminal in Southwark, the streets would be emptied and silent. And who, then, would go to see your plays?”

“Not everyone in Southwark is a murderer, Constable Pepper. However, we are each and every one of us a potential murder victim. Particularly if this sort of crime is allowed to go uninvestigated and unpunished.”

“I daresay there are some of us who do not pick fights in dark alleys in the middle of the night, and who are quite safe from wandering murderers.”

“You’re saying it is the Spaniard’s own fault he is dead?”

“Certainly he was in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

“You can’t know that. You haven’t asked even one question of those who may have heard something about the man. For instance, I have it on good authority he was involved in an altercation at the Goat and Boar the night before. Were you to ask questions in that place, you might find someone who knows something about why the Spaniard was killed. That might lead you to the killer.” She leaned forward and said in an intense, low voice, “You might even find an eyewitness who could testify at trial.” She nodded to affirm her words, and straightened again.

Pepper sat back in his chair, looking terribly amused. “My dear Mistress Thornton, surely you can’t believe that. You know very well that, were I to walk into the Goat and Boar, the place would fall dead silent in an instant. And it would stay that way until the moment I walked out, no matter whom I might address in the meantime. Only then would it burst forth in a low roar of chatter, not about the dead Spaniard, but about me. Not a soul would speak to me, nor would they to anyone they thought might speak to me. I could ask questions until I was blue in the face, and the answer would ever be silence. Further, Mistress Thornton, the same would be true of any other man who took this office, for the people of Southwark fear authority. When the light of truth and justice shines on them, they scurry like rats into their garbage-filled holes.”

Anger rose and turned Suzanne’s cheeks hot crimson. “I’m sure that if you asked the right questions, couched in the right terms—”

“I would hear nothing but silence. If a pin dropped it would sound as a clang. If I sat, all nearby would move away. Run away if they could. Most would leave the public house entirely. And I would be left with nothing. Looking for witnesses would be a complete waste of my time. Unless you think I should resort to arrest and torture of innocent witnesses for the sake of gleaning information . . .” His eyebrows raised as he let that hang in the air for a moment. Then he reached back to a bookshelf behind him where sat the opened bottle of brandy, and he poured some into the glass on his desk. He drank it at one gulp, then sat back again to regard her with his fingers laced across his stomach.

“Perhaps if you sent an agent of some kind? Someone who could ask the necessary questions?”

“Are you volunteering, then?”

Suzanne had been thinking about the young clerk in the outer office, but realized that if the boy set foot in the Goat and Boar he would be at the mercy of a roomful of expert liars and might come away missing his purse, and never mind gaining any truth. She said, “Have you nobody you could send?”

“I don’t care to associate with the rabble found in such places, and know nobody who might have even a sliver of a chance at success. Except, of course, yourself, who are one of them as I could never be.”

Nearly all of Southwark was populated with that sort of rabble. Even Suzanne was astonished that the man entrusted with enforcing the law had no way of talking to the people who might tell him what was going on. Other constables, in areas where lived honest and responsible citizens who were pleased to volunteer themselves as witnesses and apprehenders of criminals, could get by as passive receivers of facts, but here in Southwark the populace was not nearly so honor bound. But she replied, “Count your blessings your office isn’t in Whitefriars.”

“Nonsense. Were I in Whitefriars there would be no expectations of me, and even you wouldn’t be here to harass me to do the impossible.”

Suzanne had to allow as that was true, since that district was nearly a law unto itself, with no influence at all from law-abiding folk.

Pepper shifted in his seat, and looked up at her with a considering gaze. She returned it, wondering what he was thinking. In the silence, she could almost hear machinery clanking inside his head. Huge gears that moved slowly, but once they got going they moved steadily. Finally he leaned forward again and said, “Mistress Thornton, I think I may have an idea that will make both of us happy.”

Her eyes narrowed. “Go on, Constable.” She could certainly guess what he was about to say, and held hope she was wrong.

“You appear ever frustrated with how crime is addressed in this district. You can’t seem to accept the limitations of my office.”

“Crime is not addressed in this district, and that is my frustration.”

“So you see my point.”

She was certain she didn’t, but knew he would never understand why, so she declined to reply.

He continued. “In other areas of London, a shout of ‘thief!’ will bring on a chase by ordinary passersby that results in the arrest of a culprit. Here in Southwark it only empties the street and leaves the victim alone in his distress.”

“Sometimes. As I have mentioned, Southwark doesn’t compare to Whitefriars, where honest men dare not even go.”

“Most times, I assure you, the rats scurry in Southwark. So, Mistress Thornton, I propose a plan to you. If you are so desirous of arrests and investigations, then let you do them yourself.”

“Me? Go looking for criminals? I’m a woman.”

“Why not you? You’re a woman who knows everyone in Southwark and yet are connected to the palace in ways I am not. You’ve shown a talent for deduction. Your conclusions regarding the death of William Wainwright last month were spot-on. Your observations were acute, and your logic flawless. Furthermore, your energy in pressing the matter was nearly intolerable.”

Never mind that she’d at first thought William’s accidental death a murder and had been quite wrong. But he had a point. She had solved the thing without any help from Pepper. “I doubt I could do that again. The death last month happened at the theatre; the facts of it were right under my nose. And I was highly motivated to prove my son had not killed William.”

Pepper shrugged and sat back. “Then don’t do it again, as you please. It matters not to me whether the Spaniard’s murderer is ever found. Southwark is better off without foreign rubbish dirtying our streets; I would as soon search down the killer to reward him as to prosecute him.” He reached for his bottle once more, saying, “Unless there’s something else you wish to address, I’m sure you know where the door is and can find your way out.” He poured himself some more brandy, and sipped on it, now ignoring her as if she’d already left.

Suzanne didn’t move. She stood there, thinking. The way he’d put it, the idea intrigued her. Could she find the killer herself? Would men talk to her who wouldn’t talk to Pepper? Maybe they would. She’d lived in Southwark since before Piers was born, and knew nearly everyone in it on one level or another. They all knew her, at the very least for her new prominence as the woman who had saved and restored the Globe Theatre. She could do it.