The Opening Night Murder Read online

  Table of Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Declaration of Dramatic License

  About the Author

  “Anne Rutherford brings the world of Restoration England to vivid life, from the teeming streets to the halls of the royal palace. Her heroine, Suzanne Thornton, has always done what she must to survive in a cruel world where women count for little, and now she must solve a murder to save the one person in the world she truly loves.”

  —Victoria Thompson, national bestselling author of

  Murder on Fifth Avenue

  “I read this book in one sitting, captivated by Rutherford’s vivid depiction of actors and aristocrats, political intrigue, and her strong, resourceful heroine. The world of Restoration London and its theaters leaps off the page in this impressive novel.”

  —Carol K. Carr, national bestselling author of

  India Black and the Widow of Windsor

  PRAISE FOR ANNE RUTHERFORD

  WRITING AS JULIANNE LEE

  A Question of Guilt

  “An interesting historical fiction novel…An intriguing saga.”

  —Genre Book Review

  “Lee’s excellently researched novel is written in a fluid, engaging style and is full of intrigue, cover-ups, and plots. Her investigation of this historical mystery provides a vivid theory of what might have happened between Mary Stuart and Henry Darnley and will keep readers turning the pages.”

  —Historical Novels Review

  “Julianne Lee’s A Question of Guilt is a sprawling tale of treason, justice, and the secrets people keep. It is very much rooted in historical facts and…the writing style is flawless.”

  —Romance Reader at Heart

  Her Mother’s Daughter

  “An epic tale of passion, intrigue, tragedy, betrayal, and treachery all combined into a story too powerful for history to contain. With creative weaving, Julianne Lee has combined true characters with possible dialogue and intent that ring true to the story and time period. For any fan of historical entertainment, Her Mother’s Daughter is a definite must-read book.”

  —Night Owl Reviews

  “For the many readers who like to focus on the Tudor era, this is a read that must be added to your library, both for its original storytelling and the unique approach the author utilizes to tell this compelling story of Mary Tudor.”

  —Burton Book Review

  “Her Mother’s Daughter seamlessly displays the often overlooked woman behind Queen ‘Bloody’ Mary. Julianne Lee handles a typically despised character so beautifully that the reader develops unexpected sympathy for a queen who clawed her way out of the depths of disrespect only to find more loneliness and desperation…Lee’s engaging novel submerges the reader into local and worldwide political intrigue to fully depict the world in which Mary lived…[A] wonderfully written book.”

  —Romance Junkies

  “Lee presents an unbiased portrait of Mary Tudor, and for readers eager to find out what happened following the death of Henry VIII, this novel is highly satisfying.”

  —RT Book Reviews

  The

  Opening Night

  Murder

  ANNE RUTHERFORD

  THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA

  Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario M4P 2Y3, Canada (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.) • Penguin Books Ltd., 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England • Penguin Ireland, 25 St. Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd.) • Penguin Group (Australia), 707 Collins Street, Melbourne, Victoria 3008, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty. Ltd.) • Penguin Books India Pvt. Ltd., 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi—110 017, India • Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, Auckland 0632, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd.) • Penguin Books, Rosebank Office Park, 181 Jan Smuts Avenue, Parktown North 2193, South Africa • Penguin China, B7 Jaiming Center, 27 East Third Ring Road North, Chaoyang District, Beijing 100020, China

  Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  This book is an original publication of The Berkley Publishing Group.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  Copyright © 2012 by Julianne Lee.

  Cover design by Jason Gill.

  Interior text design by Tiffany Estreicher.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  BERKLEY® PRIME CRIME and the PRIME CRIME logo are registered trademarks of

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  PUBLISHING HISTORY

  Berkley Prime Crime trade paperback edition / January 2013

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Rutherford, Anne.

  The opening night murder / Anne Rutherford.—Berkley Prime Crime trade paperback ed.

  p. cm.

  ISBN: 978-1-101-61891-2

  1. Theater—England—London—Fiction. 2. Murder—Investigation—Fiction. 3. London (England)—History—17th century—Fiction. 4. Great Britain—History—Restoration, 1660–1688—Fiction. 5. Mystery fiction. 6. Historical fiction. I. Title.

  PS3618.U778O64 2013

  813’.6—dc23

  2012035842

  PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  ALWAYS LEARNING PEARSON

  Prologue

  The opening night audience crowded into the renovated Globe Theatre to fill up benches, until even the pit was packed with milling bodies. The excitement of the reopening, and the utterly reasonable price of the seats, brought nearly everyone within walking distance. The roar of voices was nearly overwhelming; it seemed all of Southwark was in attendance.

  The mood in the ’tiring house behind the stage was equally vibrant. The energy of the cast grew. Actors fidgeted, some prayed, one talked incessantly until the rest wanted to boot him out the door. One of the less experienced boys had to run from the green room to vomit. The cast laughed, though they all had done the same thing at one time or another in the past.

  In her quarters backstage Suzanne Thornton readied herself to see the play, eager to see her new theatre through the eyes of its audience. The noise was a roar of thousands trying to be heard among themselves. As she painted her lips she toyed with the idea of lurking among the groundlings 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 st
age. They were a lively crew and would be as fine an entertainment as the play itself. She hurried with her beauty marks, eager to be finished and take her place as a spectator, and her fingers challenged her to keep them from trembling.

  Her son, Piers, came to visit for a moment, complained of his father, then left. She made one more check of her coif, then set the mirror on her dressing table and left her quarters.

  As the hour of three 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 their flautist friend played an old-fashioned tune that might have been performed in this theatre during Elizabethan times. Suzanne’s wistful 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 at the theatre The Bard had built, and the idea made her smile. Today 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.

  That day’s performance began with a short commedia play, involving a cuckolded husband. The mummers had the audience laughing well and quickly, and in a few minutes they left the stage with the entire crowd 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 accomplish it in a public house with alcohol, cards, and women, but a pub could host only a fraction of the souls a theatre could.

  The play began. Matthew lit up the stage as King Henry V. Such a talent the troupe had in him! The air snapped and sparkled with the energy of all the actors. Henry and his advisors. Henry condemning spies. Henry in France, urging his dear friends unto the breach once more. In her mind’s eye Suzanne could see the wall crumble and the actors surge through it, shouting fealty to England and King Henry. She watched the king move among his men incognito, listening to them, hearing how they really felt about him and about their mission in France. Matthew made her believe the story, painting a picture of history so clear she thought she could know how it really had been hundreds of years ago.

  The audience was as caught up as she. From the pit they shouted advice to Henry, and in response Matthew invented bawdy asides ad-libitum in spite of the king’s directive to keep to Shakespeare’s own words. Suzanne 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, and Matthew’s rage was palpable. Suzanne was caught up in the story as if she hadn’t seen the play a dozen times before. Even as she gasped along with Henry and his dukes, she thought what a fine time she was having.

  A scream lifted from the audience, and she thought how wonderfully involved everyone was. That voice seemed filled with real horror. Then something dropped to the stage and thudded on the boards below. More screaming and confusion moved the audience, some surging forward and others falling back. Suzanne leaned over the banister to look and saw a man lying on the stage, writhing and grasping at a crossbow bolt stuck in his neck. A 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. Round and round the tight spiral, all the way to the stage level of the ’tiring house, then she burst through an upstage entrance door to the stage. All the actors in the troupe were there, those not in the scene having emerged from the green room to see, gathered around the body while those in the pit attempted to climb onto the stage for a look. Some of the actors tried to hold them back while gawking themselves at the terrifying scene onstage. The audience was abuzz, and some shouted advice to those on the stage. Others wept. Many began to make their way to the exit in a hurry. Suzanne shoved men aside and attempted to take charge, but all she could manage was to enter the circle to see. The dead man lay on her stage in a pool of blood, killed by a crossbow. His ragged clothing was soaking up the blood. The red stain slowly crept along the white fabric, and it ran down the stage boards toward the pit.

  She said to the boy standing by with the bloodied crossbow bolt still in his hand, “Go fetch the constable.”

  Chapter One

  May 1660

  Suzanne Thornton was in no hurry today. She was never in any hurry, for hurry attracted attention and she’d learned early in life that invisibility was a skill that often came useful. One only ever made a fuss when it was absolutely necessary, and then, rather like drawing a weapon, one always made sure to make enough of a fuss to make it count.

  Today her talent for calm came in handy and she could make a leisurely pace through London without annoyance, for today traffic choked the streets everywhere within the city walls. She should have known better than to have ventured out for shopping. The king had returned to England and was arriving in London today. The entire city was in paroxysms of festivity. Everyone who wasn’t ecstatic was pretending it for the sake of keeping their heads, their freedom, and their money. Puritans and Presbyterians had gone silent for the moment, and all of London expected things to return to normal. The king was on his throne, God was in His heaven, and all would be right with the world. Perhaps.

  In any case, Suzanne was making her way home from the Exchange in a sedan chair, and the two men carrying it kept setting her down to await room to proceed. They were both large, muscular men, but even they didn’t care to hold up the chair and Suzanne when traffic was this still.

  “Thomas. Samuel.” She leaned out to address them as they set the chair down on the street. When she saw they’d slipped from under their yokes again, she realized they weren’t getting anywhere. “Circle ’round toward the…” Cannon shot roared, followed by trumpets nearby. Excited talk among the surrounding onlookers rose to a pitch and quite drowned out any attempt to speak. The king’s procession must be passing close. Suzanne craned her neck to see, but there was nothing yet in sight. “Around toward the river, good fellows, if you please.”

  “Begging your pardon, mistress, but we’re well hemmed in here. There’s naught for it until the press clears.”

  Suzanne made a little noise of disappointment and sat back in her chair. “Very well.” Well enough to be sanguine about things she couldn’t control, but she hoped this wouldn’t take terribly long. William was sure to call on her today, and it never went well with him if she wasn’t waiting for him on arrival. Even more she regretted her decision to go to the Exchange today.

  William was suspicious by nature, ever ready to leap to an unfounded conclusion if she wasn’t where she was supposed to be at all times. His Puritan guilt over his own behavior convinced him that everyone else was equally guilty. After all, if one of God’s chosen was weak-willed and susceptible to temptation, then how could anyone else be strong enough to resist? To him, everyone he saw was a sinner, stained with sin and as vile at heart as himself. To Suzanne, it was all too tedious. Keeping company with William was almost sure to cause one to lose faith in people. Sometimes, ironically, it even wore on one’s faith in God.

  Also, he made it plain he thought her no longer acceptably young and pretty. At her age his already scant patience with her was thinning as fast as his hair, and his prickly temper grew nearly intolerable. Lately he behaved as if her lost youth and fading beauty were an imposition on him for which she must pay. As if her maturity were a diminished value of goods. He’d become terribly critical of her, as if he would shave off bits of her pride as compensation for his loss, as if she were a silver penny and he would have as much out of her as he could get.

  Some
times she wondered whether it might have been worth the effort to find a husband rather than a keeper, considering the little freedom William allowed her and all the effort she put into making him happy and paying her support. He was often quite impossible, and seemed to think she should be grateful for whatever attention he deigned to bestow. Like most men, who always assumed the entire world revolved around themselves and their male parts, he never suspected it was only his money for which she was grateful, and his attention she could take or leave. After all, he was certainly no spring chicken himself, nor Prince Charming, and was an utter bore and not even all that wealthy in the bargain. She thought life would improve immeasurably if he left her alone and simply sent the money by messenger. Her son would soon be of an age and position to be of assistance to her financially, and with any luck she wouldn’t have to put up with William and his kind much longer.

  She gazed out the window of her chair and made herself relax, for there was nothing she could do about her situation. She might as well settle into her cushion and watch the parade that, by the noise of trumpets and cheering upstreet, was about to pass by. This might be amusing, at least for the moment.

  Idly she wondered what this new king was like and whether any of the rumors were true. She’d heard he was handsome and intelligent, and of an agreeable nature. That his years on the Continent, living by the charity of others, had taught him compassion, which had been lacking in many who had held the throne before him, including his immediate predecessor, the Lord Protector Oliver Cromwell. She remembered well her life under Charles I, when she was a child and people went about their lives and knew what was sin and what was not. She thought this second Charles would have to be better than that Cromwell fellow, just for not being a bloody, stiff-necked Puritan. Life under Cromwell had been joyless even for those with money, who ordinarily did whatever they pleased. And Suzanne had always had little enough of both money and pleasure. Perhaps the new king would be more like his father. All of London cheered the return of the king, and at that moment it seemed every Londoner was on that very street, shouting at full voice.