The Scottish Play Murder (A Restoration Mystery)

by Rutherford, Anne

  The drive through London went more quickly than it would have later in the day. The early hour and the cold made for less crowded streets, so when Ramsay urged the driver to make haste, they heard a crack of the whip and the carriage surged onward. Suzanne watched the huddled buildings of London hurry past.

  Soon they approached St. James’s Park, with Ramsay leaning his head out the window to catch an early glimpse of it. When they came within sight, he sat back with a satisfied “Ah” and a big grin.

  “What?” asked Suzanne.

  “You’ll see. ’Tis just as I’d hoped.” The carriage rolled onward.

  Suzanne peered out the window, wondering what he meant, but when the carriage plunged through the entrance and onto the park pathway, she understood. They were the first to use the park that morning, and all around them lay a blanket of pristine, unmarked snow. The sight took Suzanne’s breath quite away. In all her years as a Londoner, she’d never once seen clean, untouched snow. For her the stuff had always been dirty, rutted, trampled mush, an inconvenience that made life in general even more difficult than it already was. Today the carriage cut its own path through the smooth, pure white expanse that rolled among the trees and shrubs. The rising sun cast long, blue shadows, and threw golden rays that caught sparkly bits across a meadow of diamonds. Suzanne leaned across Ramsay’s lap for a better view to the front of the carriage. Not one wheel rut nor footprint could be seen in the entire park. Ramsay knocked on the carriage ceiling with his fist and ordered the driver to slow to a walk.

  “Oh, it’s beautiful! Now I know why you woke me so early.”

  “If you know when to be where, you can have the world to yourself even more so than the wealthy and powerful. All it takes is to want what others do not.”

  At that moment Suzanne agreed heartily, and the young girl still lurking deep in her heart thought him wise beyond imagining.

  He ordered the driver to stop, and the carriage came to a halt. Except for the track they’d made behind them, they were completely surrounded by a lawn of white. White bits decorated the branches of trees, and well-trimmed shrubs wore lacy caps of white. The silence was only broken by the snorting of horses and the crunch of boots outside as the driver went to the back of the carriage for blankets to put over the horses while they stood. There were no buildings or people to be seen from this spot, only trees and sky. Suzanne sat back down in her seat and pulled the bearskin robe higher onto her shoulders.

  “Are you cold?” Ramsay put his arm around her.

  “Not really. This is very cozy.” But she didn’t move away from him. Ramsay reached for the basket at their feet. He removed the linen cloth from it and laid it across the bench seat on the opposite side of the carriage. From the basket he drew a bottle of dark French wine, two glasses, and a quilted bag that produced a package wrapped in paper tied with twine. Grease spots on the paper told Suzanne there was food inside. From the savory smell of beef, garlic, and pepper, Suzanne thought it would be beef pies. Ramsay took the glasses in one hand and poured with the other, then handed one of the glasses to her.

  She sipped. It was delicious, and she knew it must be expensive. Ramsay had surely spent quite a lot of money on this outing.

  Then he laid the linen cloth across their laps over the bearskin, and produced the pies from their wrapper. Four of them, plump with meat and gravy. Suzanne bit into one, and thought she’d gone to heaven. They were still warm, having made the trip inside the heavy, quilted bag. “Oh, these are wonderful! You didn’t buy these on the street, I’m certain.”

  “You’ve guessed correctly. I’m acquainted with a woman who cooks for a wealthy merchant who has recently built a house in Pall Mall.”

  “A merchant? In Pall Mall?”

  “He’s extremely wealthy. And so I asked a favor of my friend and she provided me with these.”

  “Does her employer know she uses his kitchen for the benefit of her friends?”

  Ramsay grunted. “No, but neither did he pay for the beef. I brought it to her, and she made it into pies for me. The fire was already there, and the employer will never miss a bit of flour and shortening.”

  Suzanne made a humming noise and took another bite, not really minding that Ramsay had not paid for the pie crusts. Plainly this was another of those things that one less wealthy could enjoy if one was willing to look for the opportunity.

  For a while they sat and talked. She told him about how she had come to restore the Globe Theatre after the man who had been keeping her had fled at the restoration of the king a year and a half before. They talked of plays they liked or didn’t like, and told stories to each other of odd things that had happened to them onstage. She found a commonality with Ramsay. They were both actors, and both understood what drew people to that profession. Most actors were born to it, and those folks had few other options in life. But Suzanne and Ramsay had both chosen the theatre, for reasons that were hard to explain to anyone who had never been onstage. They could speak of these things to each other without having to explain the unexplainable.

  Meanwhile, the sun rose in a crystal clear blue sky, and the white snow all around glistened and threw light to every corner of the carriage interior.

  She said, “Tell me, if I admit to you that I’m enjoying this immensely, and further let you know that you have risen very much in my estimation because of it, would that make me one of those tarts who would ‘climb you like a pole’?”

  Anyone else might have been irritated at her remark, but all Ramsay did was laugh. “If you did suddenly offer yourself to me, I might take it as a consolation prize and not be all that displeased. But I am not noticing you flinging your legs wide at the moment. So I’ll enjoy the knowledge that I’ve risen in your estimation, and hope I will eventually rise enough for you to offer yourself to me in soul as well as body. As I understand it I’ve a bit of a wait, for you must relinquish hold on Piers’s father first.”

  “I have no understanding with Daniel.”

  “And that is the evil of it. You don’t understand where you stand with him, and vice versa. Neither of you knows what you want, nor what you should want. You’ve nae understanding of each other. And there is the fact that he is married and cannot give you the one thing I can give you, and that is a lifelong promise.”

  “And what would you promise for my lifetime?”

  “To always have your best interests at heart. To be there to protect you when strange, evil men break into your room and threaten you with a gun and a cock.”

  “Only you would wave your cock at me.”

  He emitted a low groan of longing, then said almost apologetically, “Aye. I would enjoy that very much. But I promise you would as well.”

  “More promises.” She sipped her wine again, and thought she might enjoy a lifetime with a man who knew how to choose a bottle of wine.

  Ramsay chuckled. “I swear it on my mother’s grave.”

  “Your mother who is alive and kicking in Moray?”

  Now he laughed out loud. “Aye. My mother, who is the liveliest, most determined and resourceful woman I know, other than yourself.” He grinned at her for a moment, then leaned down to touch his lips to hers. She let him, but hoped it would be only a light touch.

  And it was.

  That afternoon, after Ramsay had returned her to the theatre, Suzanne felt restless as she watched the mummers rehearse a bit of tumbling that would precede performances the following week. Arturo and his sons, brothers, and nephews dashed and dove, rolled and leapt in agile patterns nearly too quick for the eye to follow. Suzanne loved to watch them, and admired how agile Arturo was for a man his age. Small and wiry, he seemed to hold together far better than a larger man such as Horatio. Poor Horatio’s lumbering gait was degenerating to a hobble these days.

  Thinking too hard about the astonishingly pleasant morning she’d had, and a little bored with the prospects for the afternoon, she decided to take a walk across the bridge to the Royal Exchange. Some shops would be close
d for the cold weather, but those that were open would be happy to see her and she might find a bargain for it.

  The Royal Exchange stood between Cornhill and Threadneedle Streets, not terribly far from the bridge. Not an onerous walking distance, and though the cold bit her nose, Suzanne was in a pleasant enough mood today to not mind. On arrival at the southern entrance in Cornhill she made her way through the throng of women selling apples and oranges, and some selling themselves. Suzanne herself had done the same many years before, and out of habit glanced at faces to know whether she could find anyone she once knew. Thankfully she did not. That profession demanded youth if not necessarily beauty, so most of the women she’d known in those years were either dead or had found husbands. She walked up the steps and went through the arched entrance. Inside the great courtyard surrounded by shop stalls stacked four stories high, the air was still cold but not nearly so cold as in the street.

  The shops were busier than expected today, bustling with the brave souls who didn’t mind the sudden snow that morning, but not nearly as busy as they would have been in more accommodating weather. The scent of cooking food wafted here and there, and she realized it had been hours since Ramsay’s wonderful meat pies. She would want to stop for something to eat before she went home, and her nose tested the air as she considered the possibilities.

  Life for her having improved a great deal in the years since she’d sold her body on the steps of the Exchange, she now enjoyed wandering through the shops to see what new things had found their way to London.

  In recent years discoveries from the New World had become more easily obtained here, and now she found many strange foods such as potatoes and maize and lumps of chocolate, as well as tobacco in several forms. Those things were all terribly expensive, and she was too recently pinching pennies to countenance spending so much cash on food she might not like. She did like chocolate, but it was a rare treat for her and not on the shopping list this week.

  There was a merchant selling pets who had come since she was there last. He had cages of puppies, some so tiny they looked like nothing more than a handful of fur, yapping for attention. Some birds chirped and chattered in cages, one of them a wildly colored creature the like she’d never seen before. She stopped to gawk at it.

  “They calls that a parrot, missus.” A man she took for a shopkeeper stepped toward her from a cluster of patrons.

  “A parrot? Yes, I’ve heard of those. I’ve never seen one, though.” It was mostly blue, with a bright red head and dark wings. The colors were so lively in a dingy gray London winter, the creature was a treat to the eye.

  “They talks, you know. And they live for a hundred years.”

  “A hundred? You don’t say!” She couldn’t imagine having a pet that would certainly outlive her. She waved good-bye to the bird, and it reached for a finger with its crusty-looking and very sharp bill. She dodged its bite, pulling her fingers back into her fist, and moved along.

  Her favorite shop in this Exchange was the bookseller on the second floor. As a child she had been taught to read, but barely, and her education had been haphazard, delineated by her mother’s free time and her father’s whim of the moment. Only her brothers had been purposefully educated and their lives filled with tutors and books. They’d existed in a world that hadn’t included her, and though she and her sisters had lived in the same house they’d never concerned the men in the family except on the occasions the girls had crossed the line of disobedience. Father and her brothers had discussed things amongst themselves she couldn’t comprehend, and if she asked about them she’d usually received a blank stare and then gone ignored. Throughout her childhood she’d been left to the conversation of her mother and sisters, and though it was a pleasant enough engagement, it hardly had entertained her imagination.

  During her years as a prostitute there had been no money for books, for at the time it was all she could do to keep herself and Piers fed and clothed, and a roof over their heads. In the years as a mistress during the interregnum there still hadn’t been any money for things of which William had disapproved, and most books other than the Bible were at the top of that rather long list. This past year was the first time in her life she’d even thought of buying books for recreational reading.

  She’d always enjoyed browsing the volumes in this shop. For her the heady smell of leather, paper, and binding glue was the sort of pleasure most women took in flowers. Though she did also love a sweet rose, she especially loved the feel of the binding and the look of the print in an artfully bound book. In her entire life she’d only bought one new, a volume of Homer’s plays, and that had been but three months ago and cheaply bound in the bargain. The thrill of cutting those pages herself and knowing she was the first to read them had been exquisite.

  Now she touched a beautifully bound copy of a recent translation of Aristotle, and thought of the things her family had thought she didn’t need to know. She’d seen her brothers’ books—of history, philosophy, mathematics, the natural world—and wondered what was in them. Now she wondered what was in this one. She opened the cover to check the price, then closed it again. Ten shillings. Ten shillings would pay two months’ wages for Sheila. She returned the book to its stack on the table. Perhaps one day she would have that much to spend on a book, but not today.

  “Why don’t you buy it?” The voice was Daniel’s, and Suzanne felt a surge of pleasure in spite of herself as she turned to see him standing behind her.

  “How long have you been there?”

  “I was over at the milliner’s, ordering a new hat”—he nodded in the direction of the shop—“across the way, and I saw you coming up the stairs. I walked over just in time to see you put back this book you so obviously fancy.”

  She shrugged. “I’ve got no business reading Aristotle. I probably wouldn’t understand it in any case, no matter how beautiful the book.”

  He picked it up and turned it over in his hands. “It is a right comely specimen. I have an older translation, which is not nearly so pretty. And the thing was bought by my wife in any case. She’s the one who owns the library and other household furnishings. Having returned from France so recently, hardly anything there truly belongs to me.” He said it as if the fact didn’t bother him, but Suzanne knew better. His wife and her brother had not made him terribly welcome when he’d returned with the king last year, and by Daniel’s account the brother had only allowed him into his household because the wife had insisted. Now Daniel and Anne had their own home in Pall Mall, built just months ago.

  Suzanne sidestepped that issue rather than discuss Daniel’s choice to return to his childless wife. She said, “Anne reads Aristotle?”

  “She reads anything she can lay hands on.” He said it as if it were a good thing for a woman to spend all her time with her nose in a book, and that surprised Suzanne. She’d thought he was like most men, who considered intellectually curious women to be unholy aberration. “She puts me to shame for intellectual discourse. I’m a swordsman and have spent most of my life a King’s Cavalier with no patience for too much thinking, and have had little use for books; she devours them and spends the evenings rattling on with her brother over this, that, and the other. It’s all quite tedious for me, and I would gnaw off a foot to get away from them once they’ve begun with the chitchat.”

  “So you wouldn’t care for the company of a woman who’d read the writings of Aristotle?”

  “Nonsense. I enjoy my wife’s company. It’s her brother I can’t tolerate. I would ban him from the house, but Anne is rather attached to him and insists we must be hospitable, regardless of what sort of ass he acts.” Suzanne knew exactly what Daniel meant. She’d had a brief look at James some months ago, and also thought him an ass. Daniel continued, “He’s not the slightest glimmer of imagination and picks everything he hears into tiny shreds until it’s unrecognizable.”

  That amused Suzanne, and she chuckled. “I’ve heard some things are greater than the sum of their parts, and when
they’re dismantled for examination they become diminished.”

  Daniel smiled, with a look in his eye that suggested he was seeing her afresh. “Quite.” He gazed thoughtfully into her face for a long moment, then added, “I really think you ought to buy this book.”

  She shook her head ruefully, glanced around the small room stacked with books she could not afford, and sighed. Time to move on before her heart broke for not having the money to buy them all. She said, “I wonder what new fabrics they have in next door today.”

  She moved that direction, expecting Daniel to follow her, but he said, “I think I’ll stay here and browse.”

  That disappointed her. She thought of remaining there with him, but decided she had not come to the Exchange that day to follow him around and browse only what interested him. “Very well.” There wasn’t much else to say. She wasn’t going to beg him to accompany her.

  She went to the next shop, where bolts of fabric stood in stacks and enormous rolls of it on rods stood against the back wall, two or three deep. This was another of her favorite places, for it was an ever-changing panorama of color and texture and she never knew what hidden treasure she might find there. Shiny brocades, deep velvets, linens so light and airy they felt like gossamer. Every so often she would find a dusty, unloved bolt she saw would clean up into something beautiful and unusual, and she would buy a piece of it for next to nothing. She was in a mood for a treasure hunt today.

  Several minutes later her heart lifted to see Daniel approach. She requested some lace under her hand at the moment, and waited while the shop merchant cut it for her and wrapped it in paper. “Finished browsing?” she said to Daniel.

  “Nothing new to find, I’m afraid.”

  “Terrible shame.”

  “I say, the smell of meat roasting on the ground floor is making me dizzy with hunger. Would you care to join me for some dinner? I’ve found there can be had the Dutch belegde broodje here.”