The Opening Night Murder by Anne Rutherford Page B

in the spring sunshine. The stage, which protruded into the pit from the far side of the circled galleries, appeared intact, though Suzanne thought the rotted wood must be a danger to any actor treading it. The entire place smelled of rot. Twenty years of neglect had taken its toll.
    She loved this place. Ever since her two years with Horatio’s acting troupe she’d been fascinated with it, drawn to it as if it knew her and knew she belonged to it. She’d imagined what it might be like to act on a real stage, to play to the galleries, to an audience of thousands. She imagined how magnificent it would be to have the proper amount of room to really perform what Shakespeare had intended, in the theatre he’d built.
    Shakespeare himself had worked here. He’d trod those very boards near the end of his life. In rehearsal he’d observed his actors from this very pit, and in performance had waited in the ’tiring area for the pleasing sound of applause or the annoying chatter and catcalls that signaled a bored audience.
    Now Suzanne looked over the array of galleries, arranged in a circle and towering three stories high. The heavens covering the upstage area still betrayed a hint of blue and white cloud, though the paint was quite faded, dirty, and molded in spots. Moss grew on the roof, and great, rounded ridges of gray fungus were devouring some of the rain gutters along the heavens.
    An enormous sigh took her. She wished to have been born in a different time, when theatre had been not merely allowed, but nurtured. When Shakespeare was still alive and working his magic on the stage. If wishes were horses…
    One more sigh, and she ducked back out to continue on her walk. Far enough away from the Globe Theatre, she consoled herself with knowing that even had she lived during Shakespeare’s time, she would never have been allowed onstage.
    D ANIEL didn’t contact Suzanne again, for a chat or anything else. During the days a wistful daydream distracted her, of what it might be like to have a tumble with him once more, for he was the only one she’d ever really wanted in that way. She reminisced of the days when lying with a man was something other than a chore, and with him it had been a soaring joy. But his silence told her he didn’t remember her in the same way she did him, that the curiosity he’d shown on his return to England had been nothing more, and mild at that. Herdaydream stayed a fantasy. Proof enough that her days as a kept mistress were over, she supposed, and it was probably just as well.
    Piers contacted the coal merchant friend of Farthingworth, but waited and heard nothing. Suzanne wasn’t sure whether it was better to not hear and hope, or to hear and have a rejection. To not hear at all could mean Piers was being ignored, and that was the worst. The days passed into summer, and still no word. Gradually hope faded.
    Now that William was gone and forgotten, Suzanne was free to frequent the Goat and Boar as she pleased, just as she had when living in the brothel. On one hand it was a return to bad times, when she had never known if she would eat that day or whether she might be arrested for one thing or another. On the other hand, it was a return to the world and friends she’d seen infrequently in recent years. Being a mistress hidden away by a guilt-ridden hypocrite, in an England that at the time had been in paroxysms of pretending mistresses didn’t exist, had been a lonely existence. Nowadays it was a pleasure to socialize with people she understood. A circle of old friends convened there of an evening once the sun was down and street traffic had waned. She was pleased to spend her time listening to their woes in order to ignore her own. She would nurse a cup of ale to laugh or gripe as the moment demanded, and her fears went away for a time.
    One night she was sharing a jug of wine with some of them when she looked up to see Daniel at the door. He looked across the room, searching, and when his