The Scottish Play Murder by Anne Rutherford Page A

necklace was not as stunning as she’d thought at first. Her imagination had produced a heavy chain and pendulous settings bearing many large rubies, but in reality the piece turned out to be a small string of smallish red stones set in gold that was finely wrought filigree but not particularly heavy with metal. Worth a fortune, but a much smaller one than she’d at first imagined.
    “You could sell it and be comfortable for the rest of your life. You don’t need this engagement with the Players.” She turned it over in her fingers.
    “All the more reason for you to trust in my sincerity, wouldn’t you say?”
    Suzanne, ever reluctant to trust anyone, wondered whether that was the very reason he’d shown her the necklace. She handed it back and he returned it to his pocket.
    Through the high, small window that let air in from beneath the stage came voices of actors returning from their dinner break, and thuds of shoes on the stage boards above. They were Arturo, Big Willie, and Tucker, in character. Since yesterday they’d been in the habit of going about ordinary business using high, witchy voices and moving like crazed, interlinked women. Suzanne had taken it as an actor’s exercise in characterization and improvisation, the better to present a strong character and smooth interaction onstage, but at the moment the words she heard seemed extraordinary.
    “Double, double, we’re in trouble,” said one who sounded like First Witch, Arturo. “The future wears us to the nubble.”
    Second Witch Willie said, “Indeed, indeed, sister. A devil lurks among us we must needs purge. Should we dally, ’twill surely be our end.”
    Third Witch Tucker cried, “Another body! Another body! Another body!”
    “Hail!”
    “Hail!”
    “Hail!”
    Suzanne expected a surge of belly laughs from the three, but they fell into an eerie silence that made her go pale. Then suddenly there was high, screeching, manic laughter, then the sound of scampering feet on the stage as they hurried into the ’tiring house above.
    She said to Ramsay, “I’ll take your statement under advisement.” Then she returned to her dinner without committing herself to a courtship she couldn’t trust.

Chapter Six

    I t wasn’t until the next afternoon before the evening performance that Suzanne finally caught up with Arturo to ask detailed questions. The questioning before had come from idle curiosity, and now her curiosity had a purpose.
    “Tell me, Arturo, who else was in the Goat and Boar with you that evening?” She pulled up a stool to sit next to him at the makeup table in the green room, and folded her hands between her knees. There was no use trying to hide her interest in what he might say, and she leaned forward a bit in eagerness to hear his reply, and at a volume level that might not carry to the others in the room who filled it with their own pre-performance chatter.
    Arturo wasn’t nearly so eager to talk about the murder of the Spaniard as she was, and his reply was somewhat distracted. “So,” he said as he cleaned his face in preparation to paint it, “you’ve decided, then, that Ramsay should be taken to Newgate?”
    “No, I’m asking you who else witnessed the fight between Ramsay and the Spaniard.”
    Arturo stopped wiping his face and looked over at her. She sat still, her demeanor entirely neutral. He said, “You don’t take my word for what happened?”
    “It would never occur to me you might not tell me the truth. After all, you need my good will far too much to be caught in a lie, and furthermore I have no reason to believe you have anything to hide regarding this. My interest is in searching down other witnesses who might be able to answer questions you couldn’t. Such as, what was the gist of the argument between Ramsay and the Spaniard? Where did the Spaniard come from? Was he truly a pirate? How long had he been in London? Why was he in London? Where would he have gone, had he been alive to leave