The Opening Night Murder Read Online Free PDF Page B

door. Suzanne looked toward the dining room door, and Sheila came with a folded message in hand.
    “Not creditors already, I hope,” said Piers.
    “There are no creditors, thank God, other than the landlord. William never believed in having things that weren’t paid for. Usury is a sin, you know.
Neither a borrower nor a lender be
, he would say, as if Shakespeare wrote the Bible.”
    “You mean he didn’t?”
    That made Suzanne smile, and Piers’s boyish dimples showed in a grin. She’d so missed him these past years of his apprenticeship. It had been far too long between visits.
    She took the message, dismissed Sheila, and her fingers began to tremble, for she recognized the hand on the front. Her name, exactly as Daniel used to write it when she was but a girl younger than Piers. She hadn’t seen him or his handwriting in nearly a decade, but she remembered it well.
    She broke the seal at the back. Slowly she unfolded the stiff, heavy paper. There was but one sentence on the page. “I must see you today at the stairs.”
    She folded the paper quickly, hoping Piers wouldn’t see it,but he didn’t need to read it and instead saw the look on her face.
    “Why so pale, Mother? What’s wrong?”
    She thought for a long moment, considering a lie, but hated to tell it to Piers. Instead she said, “Piers, your father has returned.”
    Piers only grunted and picked up a piece of fat to gnaw. “I assumed that. He left with Charles; it stands to reason he would return with him if he were still alive. I can’t say as I’m particularly pleased he is.”
    Suzanne hadn’t considered the possibility of Daniel’s return until she’d seen him in the procession yesterday. “He wishes to see me today.”
    “Not me?”
    “I imagine his thought is to learn my mind first, then ask about you.”
    “Perhaps. Perhaps not. Then again, it may be his only wish is to have something more from you.”
    “Piers!”
    He only shrugged and looked away. She wanted to tell him that Daniel loved him, but she couldn’t know whether it were true, and in fact she rather doubted it. He’d never met his son, and had never shown any interest in doing so. First the war, then nine years on the Continent. Not one letter from him since leaving England. And now a note from him so soon after his return. It seemed odd. A dim hope rose. “I must go see him.”
    “You must retain your dignity.” Piers’s voice was hard and angry, and his young voice cracked with the stress.
    “I’m afraid any dignity I ever had was whipped out of me by my father twenty and thirty years ago. And William certainlynever had any respect to spare for me, or anyone but himself, for that matter.” The familiar clenching tightened in her chest.
    “He respects St. Paul, I think. Truth be told, I think he would bugger St. Paul if he had the chance.”
    Suzanne struggled to suppress a grin, and she drew a deep breath to clear her thinking.
    Piers leaned toward her, one elbow on the table, his voice a low growl. “Then allow me to win back some respect for the both of us. Let me go to work and earn our keep. I wish to support you, and never mind the king’s man my father.”
    She laid a hand on his arm and said gently, “You will, son. But just now I need to learn what he wants and hope he wants to lend some support. Even for the interim.”
    Piers only grunted again, neither approving nor disapproving, but at least he didn’t pull his arm away.
    Suzanne returned to her breakfast, and her mind turned to work through the problem of what to wear to the old meeting place on Bank Side.

Chapter Four

    S uzanne’s choice for the day was an elderly dove-gray dress with lace at the sleeves and a bodice that was so old as to be nearly Elizabethan. It was something she’d bought second- or thirdhand during her search for a patron to better herself, testimony to fashion before Cromwell. The costumes she’d worn as a prostitute and an actress had all been cheap, and of