Free The Twelfth Night Murder by Anne Rutherford

tossed a frown in Daniel’s direction, and was ignored.
    Suzanne shrugged. “It’s not a question of intelligence. It’s that I find myself thinking of one when I should be thinking of the other.”
    Daniel sipped his whisky, then said, “I can’t imagine why you feel obligated to that lazy lump of lard and need to solve his cases for him.” His look was still sour, and his voice took on an edge of true disgust at the constable.
    Piers’s eyes narrowed and he supported the sentiment. “I agree. If you leave off one task, it should be the investigation. Let the honorable Constable Pepper do his own bloody work.”
    “I daresay he’s not up to the task himself. If I don’t do it, nobody will. Or even can.”
    “How is it your responsibility to solve the murder of a boy nobody even knows?” Daniel’s attitude toward the child who had deceived him seemed a little harsh, and that made Suzanne all the more eager to take on the investigation.
    Ramsay remarked, “Surely somebody knew him.”
    Suzanne said in response to Daniel, “’Tisn’t a responsibility. But Pepper has made it clear he would treat all the members of our troupe with utmost respect, should our paths cross for any reason in future.”
    “He should do that in any case, given my own interest in the Globe, and the king’s interest in theatre in general.” Daniel had provided the cash needed to buy and restore the neglected building last year. “Pepper should treat you all as if I were standing at your backs.”
    “Truly, Daniel, we shouldn’t overestimate the new status of our actors, even though the king enjoys the plays and the company of the most beautiful of the actresses. Most people don’t hold us in high regard. Besides, you know in any situation there are gray areas. There are so many ways to dissemble or deliberately misunderstand. He could do quite a lot of evil, had he a mind to, and by the time you had something to say about it the damage would be done. Better to do this thing and avoid trouble at the outset. Besides, I want to do it. I feel rather sorry for the poor boy; he was such a pretty child, and so full of life. Now all that’s gone, and a beautiful soul has been taken from the earth.”
    “You don’t know anything about his soul.”
    “He made me smile. Even for those few moments he stood by this table, he brightened the room.” She graced Daniel with such a sunny smile it warmed herself, and added, “So I believe we will recast my roles so I can focus my energies on finding his killer.”
    *   *   *
    A LTHOUGH more and more women were taking roles onstage these days, and some women had been doing so incognito for years, it was still technically illegal for women to act on the stage. The law yet insisted that women not be allowed to perform in public, and an experienced actress was hard to find, so Horatio hired a man to fill Suzanne’s shoes for the time being. Daniel insisted the king would soon decree women should be allowed onstage, but Charles hadn’t yet done so and Suzanne preferred to be circumspect about the two women in the troupe who pretended to be men playing women. It often struck Suzanne that in
Twelfth Night
Liza essentially was a woman pretending to be a man playing a woman pretending to be a man. It made her dizzy enough to laugh.
    In any case, though actresses had a natural advantage in portraying women, truly skilled ones were rare for lack of experience. There weren’t enough women on the stage in London to fill all the female roles in all the playhouses, and so there were still men who played women. Besides, The New Globe Players needed someone who could step into some roles without rehearsal to speak of.
    The one hired the next day to replace Suzanne was a veteran actor who never played men, and who had worked for The New Globe Players before, most notably as the nurse in
Romeo and Juliet
last fall. Even offstage, dressed as a man, he had an unmistakably effeminate air about him. Suzanne