Desperate Acts by Don Gutteridge Page A

meeting of the
Shakespeare Club, he would beard this fellow in the alley and put a
stop to all this nonsense.
    “Come on, love. Let’s go back to Baldwin
House. You can listen to me recite the lines I’ve chosen from A
Midsummer Night’s Dream. ”
    “Auditioning for Bottom, are we?”
    Brodie grinned. Oh, how he adored this
miraculous creature.
    ***
    Late on Tuesday evening next, way up on Lot Street,
if there had been any respectable persons abroad at that
less-than-respectable hour, they would have noticed a well-dressed
gentleman moving uncertainly along the rutted path that served as a
sidewalk. He kept peering about him, in part to see whether or not
he was being observed and in part to seek out some signpost that
had so far eluded him. The collar of his cloak was pulled up over
his face and wrapped succinctly about his overly generous body.
Despite the tentativeness of his progress, his steps were quick and
short, as if he were hobbled or wearing boots too small for his
feet. At last he arrived at two barren hawthorn trees, between
which, if you knew what you were looking for, a shadowy path could
be seen winding away into the dense bush on the north side of the
street. Behind the bush, and decently hidden from sober eyes, lay
the notorious Irishtown – home to penniless squatters, tawdry
brothels, and a dozen gambling and opium dens.
    The portly gentleman stepped onto the path
and let the shadows swallow him. Still, the full moon managed to
spill some of its excess light here and there along the path,
enough to prevent the gentleman from bumping into a tree-trunk or
stumbling on a fallen limb. He kept glancing to the left as he
went, and some moments later was rewarded: there, a few paces from
the path in a pool of moonlight, sat an abandoned tombstone, its
epitaph washed away and its winged angel disfigured by thoughtless
urchins. Bending low and inching his way over to it, he reached
into his cloak and drew out a paper-parcel, tied with string. He
laid it carefully behind the tombstone, stared at the darkness
beyond it for several seconds, then backed out to the path and
trotted off towards Lot Street.
    Fully ten minutes later, a second figure
slipped out of the brush near the tombstone, picked up the parcel,
pocketed it, and retreated – not to the well-worn path but farther
into the shadows, where anonymity ruled.
    ***
    Three of the Shakespeare regulars – Phineas Burke,
Ezra Michaels and Dr. Pogue – informed the chairman that they were
not up to the challenge of actually rendering the Bard’s iambic
pentameter in the flesh, so to speak. However, they evinced
enthusiastic support for the project, and promised both to spread
the word among their acquaintances about any upcoming performance
at Oakwood Manor and to assist in any material way that didn’t
include public exposure. Hence it was that Sir Peregrine was able
to announce shortly after eight o’clock that the unalterable order
of events could be altered. The first half-hour would be devoted to
a brisk discussion of love and comedy in The Dream (as Sir
Peregrine called it with a familiarity that intimated he had been a
bosom friend of the playwright himself). Then the members would
move to the lounge area for fifteen minutes of regulated
refreshment, cigars and social chit chat. The three reluctant
thespians would then leave for home, while the remaining members
returned to the long table for the main event: a discussion of
which excerpts from “The Dream” ought to be dramatized and by
whom.
    Brodie had arrived with Horace Fullarton, and
entered as usual through the tavern. He had noticed as they walked
over to the familiar stairwell that there was no sign of Etta. He
nodded to Gillian Budge, who gave him a tight smile before turning
back to her husband at the bar and hissing something at him that
brought a flush to his face. At the far end of the taproom Brodie
saw Nestor Peck lugging a cask of ale up the steps from the cellar
– with only