The Twelfth Night Murder (A Restoration Mystery, Band 3) - Softcover

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Author’s Note

The Twelfth Night Murder is the fifteenth historical novel I’ve written for publication. Ordinarily I would never take liberties with history, since I have immense respect for the truth. However, in this series I found it inconvenient that Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre was torn down by Cromwell’s anti-cultural administration a number of years before I needed it. I am as annoyed by that as the people of London at the time must have been. But unlike them I am working inside a fictional world of my own design. By definition, many of the things in this book are untrue. Among those things is the presence of Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre. I needed a theatre, and it was just as well to have a fictional one. Such a small thing, and I’m sure I’ve made actual errors of greater consequence than this. So please forgive me my deliberate anachronism, and any other minor flaws I may have perpetrated more accidentally.

Over the years I’ve thanked folks who have helped me in my research and my efforts in publication. Today I would like to give a nod to my readers, who are the reason I continue to write. You’ve been such an appreciative audience, and I’ve been so neglectful in acknowledging you. Thank you all for your attention. I hope you will enjoy this, the third in the Restoration Mysteries.

For news of future books in this series, sign up for the free History Geek newsletter at julianneardianlee.com/historygeek/newslettersignup.html.

Anne Rutherford
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Chapter One

In the dressing room after the day’s performance at the Globe Theatre, Suzanne Thornton sat before the paint table, and sagged happily, exhausted but exhilarated. A dozen or so candles lit the room with a lively, warm flicker. The Players around her chattered and laughed, in high spirits after a show that had been well received by their audience. In spite of the January cold, with the promise of snow in the air—or perhaps because of it—The New Globe Players’ presentation of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night brought much applause and laughter of the kind that made the performers want to join in. Sometimes it was difficult to keep a straight face in the comedies, and that was Suzanne’s great weakness onstage, for in the past she had never had much to smile about and these days she was sorely tempted to laugh whenever she could.

Nevertheless, it was a joy to have returned to the stage. After a lifetime of struggling to escape the predatory notice of those more powerful than herself, and at her age when there were few opportunities to attract benevolent attention from anyone, appreciative audiences were a delight. Life was finally looking up.

She picked up the troupe’s newly purchased mirror from the table and propped it against a ceramic mug filled with paintbrushes standing on end. The mirror was small, but was all she could afford for The New Globe Players just then, and far nicer than the large, ragged shard they’d all been using up to last week. At the moment, Matthew had the old mirror, a big piece of broken, silvered glass, with patches of the silvering missing from the back and its sharp edges filed down and covered in melted wax. It sat propped against a small wooden box of lead powder, all of which smelled sharply of sheep fat and oil, with an underlying earthiness of talc. To Suzanne it was a smell uniquely theatrical. It smelled of home.

Matthew sat opposite Suzanne, removing white lead paint from his face with linseed oil and speaking to Liza, the girl who was their Viola these days, in cheerful, self-congratulatory terms. Besides playing the central character in Twelfth Night, Liza was the girl at the center of Matthew’s affections, and just then he sounded a bit condescending in his assessment of her performance that afternoon. He seemed disparaging of women acting on the stage, telling her she had done well that day, for a woman.

“Nonsense,” Suzanne said in a light, don’t be silly tone as she wiped oil over the blacking around her eyes until she looked much as she often had in her youth after having been beaten by her father. “She was absolutely perfect. No man could have played that role better than our woman.”

From across the room, Louis chimed in. “Kynaston could have. He’s far prettier than Liza, and his voice carries into the rafters. The man’s a genius.”

Suzanne shook her head. “He’s a sodomite, and should have been born a woman.”

“He’s not prettier,” said Liza in a defensive, slightly horrified voice. “He’s a skinny, soft boy whose balls never dropped, and the only reason anybody thinks he can play women is that they’ve never seen a real one onstage before.”

“He’s an artist,” Louis continued. “I saw him once. In The Maid’s Tragedy, last year.” His voice took on a note of admiration Suzanne thought a little strange. She’d often heard people talk of Ned Kynaston that way. She’d also seen him on the stage, and knew he possessed a beauty so androgynous that it seemed the whole of London wanted to bed him, men and women. She herself confessed to a slight attraction, though her preference was very much for hard-edged, mature masculinity and not so very much for Kynaston’s bee-stung lips and doe eyes. He really did seem an innocent, prepubescent boy, though he was in his early twenties and by all accounts was not so very particular where he slept.

She said, “The fellow is exceedingly fair, and decidedly undecided in his sex. But that doesn’t make him a woman, or even a facsimile to portray us on the stage. At best he paints a picture of us in broad strokes so that the male audience can comprehend in unsubtle ways. In short, young fellows, he simplifies so those such as you might comprehend womanhood on an elementary level, which is, after all, your capacity.”

Louis and Matthew fell silent and gazed at her for a moment, Louis with a puzzled crease between his eyes and Matthew’s eyes narrowed in search of a suitably witty retort. He didn’t find one. Liza snickered to herself with a breathy, hee-hee sound.

Matthew opened his mouth to respond, but was interrupted when one of their young boy actors, who went by Christian, blew into the room at top speed, skidded to a stop just inside the door, and said in a near-shout, “Mistress Thornton!” He swayed where he stood at the end of his slide. “You’ve a visitor!”

There were always visitors after a show. Everyone in the audience who thought they might have a chance at going backstage to socialize with the actors came after the show or before it. Horatio, who directed the plays and often acted in them, was ever struggling to keep the green room and dressing room from filling wall to wall with those who wished to be actors but hadn’t the talent or discipline for it. Some sought sexual liaison with the performers, and others simply wished to bask in reflected glory and tell of it later to their friends. Since the Globe Theatre was not the most fashionable playhouse in London, the quality of their visitors was never high, and Horatio’s effort was mostly aimed at keeping out those who would steal costumes and properties. She asked, “Who is it?”

He shook his head. “Dunno, mistress. She’s a queer old woman, I vow. Dressed a bit strange, like she was fresh from the countryside but . . . I dunno. Strange.”

Suzanne was tired. It was time for supper, and she could smell it being prepared by her maid downstairs. Having spent the...