An Ensuing Evil and Others by Peter Tremayne Page A

hour later they stood on the stage of the Globe with the players gathered in somber attitude about them. Burbage had recovered his shock of the previous day and was now more annoyed at the loss of revenue to his theater by the delays. “How now, Master Constable, what now? Two of our good actors are done to death and you have named no culprit.”
    Master Topcliff smiled and gestured to his deputy. “My deputy will name the assailant.”
    Drew stepped forward. “Your comedy says it all,” Drew began with a smile, holding up the play script. “Herein, the Count of Rousillon rejects a woman. She is passionate to have him. She pursues him, first disguised as a man.”
    There was a muttering.
    “The story of the play is no secret,” pointed out Burbage.
    “None at all. However, we have Bertrando, who actually plays Rousillon, in the same situation. He is a man of several affairs, our Bertrando. Worse, he has rejected a most passionate woman, like Helena in the story. Bertrando is married and likes to keep his marriage a secret, is that not so, Mistress Eldred?”
    Hester Eldred conceded it among the expressions of surprise from the company.
    “So one of his lovers,” continued Hardy Drew, “that passionate woman, likes him not for his philandering life. Having been rejected, like Helena in the play, she pursues him. However, unlike the play, she does not seek merely to win him back, but her intention is to punish him. She stabs him and ends his life.”
    “Are you telling us that a woman killed Bertrando?” gasped Burbage. “But Fulke saw a man enter the dressing room.”
    “Fulke described a man of short stature. He was positive it was a man. Unfortunately, we”—he glanced at his superior—”decided to allow Fulke to act as bait by pretending he knew more than he did. Thus lured out, the assailant murdered Fulke before we had time to protect him. Luckily Fulke was not dead. He survived long enough to identify his assailant….”
    He turned to Hester Eldred. She read her fate in his eyes, leaped up with a curse, and ran from the stage.
    Master Topcliff raised a hand in signal, and a burly member of the guard appeared at the door and seized her.
    A babble broke out from the company.
    Burbage raised his voice, crying for quiet.
    Nelly Porter moved forward. “I thought you were going to accuse me. I was Bertrando s lover, and thanks to him, my child died. I had more reason to hate and kill him than she did.”
    Hardy Drew smiled softly. “I did give you a passing thought,” he admitted.
    “Then why—?”
    “Did I discount you? When we arrived, Hester was on stage in a dress. Now her part, as I read the play, calls for her, as Helena, to appear in men’s clothes. Yet she clearly told us that she had arrived at the theater with her lover, left him to change while she went to change herself. Presumably from her own clothes she would change into that of her part as a man. But Will Painter said that he saw her arrive with Bertrand, in men’s clothes ready for her scene. She told me that she had left Bertrando and went to change into the clothes for her scene. When we came to the theater, she was in a dress and had been so from the time of the rehearsal. She had, therefore, killed her husband while in the male clothing, changed into a dress, and joined you all on stage.”
    “But her motive? If she was passionately in love with Bertrando, why would she kill him?”
    “The motive is as old as the Earth. Love to hatred turned. For Bertrando was just as much a ladies’ man during his marriage as ever he had been. Hester as his wife could not abide his philandering. Few women could. She did not want to share him with others. I could feel sympathy for her had she killed in hot blood. But she planned the scene and brought her victim to the theater to stage it. She also killed Fulke when she thought that he had recognized her—”
    “Who knows,” intervened Master Topcliff, “maybe he had recognized her.