Marc found himself trembling. It was actually going to happen. And that knowledge immediately gave him the strength he knew he would need to face the morrow.
THIRTEEN
When Mrs. Standish and Maisie ceased fussing over him, Marc retired to his former room and opened the package of scripts that Mrs. Thedford had given him to study. All three of his scene-sequences were with Mrs. Thedford, which simplified any rehearsal required, and left the rest of the cast and their contributions more or less intact. First up were the two excerpts from Macbeth wherein Lady Macbeth tries to drive her waffling mate towards the assassination of King Duncan, followed by the murder scene and its aftermath. These scenes had not been rehearsed yesterday but were obviously ones that Mrs. Thedford and Merriwether had performed often. Next up was a series of excerpts from Antony and Cleopatra, cleverly selected, edited, and sequenced to trace the tempestuous affair from its inception to final farewells, concluding with Cleopatra’s suicide at stage-centre. Lastly, there was the closet-scene in Hamlet where Hamlet beards and upbraids his mother.
Marc was puzzled by this selection because Merriwether was famous for his role as King Claudius, not the younger Hamlet, usually played by Beasley. Hamlet’s role here had been clearly assigned to Marc, but as far as he could tell from the program notes scribbled hastily by Mrs. Thedford, in the other scenes from the play surrounding this one, Beasley would take his customary role and Armstrong would do Claudius. Besides being an unusual and potentially confusing arrangement, it seemed to Marc to be exceedingly risky since, as Hamlet, he would be beardless and made up to look like the young man he actually was. The odds of someone in the audience recognizing him or guessing that this Hamlet was not the forty-five-year-old Merriwether were surely increased. But he had little choice. His morning would be taken up with interviewing Thea about the laudanum, writing a report for Sir Francis, and talking to Rick before handing it in. So he sat himself down and began to commit the Bard’s iambics to memory.
At ten o’clock the next morning, with his report sketched out and under his arm, Marc slipped past Ogden Frank into the empty taproom. He opened the door to the theatre, startled Wilkie awake, and asked him to bring Thea Clarkson down to the hotel dining-room. Moments later, Thea, Wilkie, and Cobb arrived simultaneously. Wilkie scuttled back to his sentry post. Marc mouthed the word laudanum at Cobb, who shook his head slowly. Marc then turned to Thea, who looked very nervous, wondering no doubt what new calamity was about to strike. He got right to the point. “We have discovered, Miss Clarkson, that you purchased a quantity of laudanum from Ezra Michaels’s shop on King Street last Saturday afternoon.”
Thea went white, then red. She stared at the table and said nothing.
“As you know, Tessa Guildersleeve and Ensign Hilliard were drugged with laudanum. The empty bottle, which is unquestionably the one you purchased, was found in the hall upstairs near Tessa’s room. We know you couldn’t have committed the murder yourself, but as the supplier of the drug, you must be considered-”
“I had nothing to do with that!” she cried. “Nothing! Why are you doing this to me?” She laid her head in her arms and wept wearily.
“All we need to know,” Marc said soothingly, “is whether you have any plausible explanation for why you purchased laudanum last Saturday.”
Thea’s tears slowed and stopped. Summoning her strength, she raised her head and faced her tormentors. “I bought the laudanum in order to kill myself.”
“I don’t understand,” Marc said lamely.
“I’m carrying Jason’s child, and the bastard refused to marry me. He wasn’t even man enough to admit it was his.” Her voice was thin, but very cold.
“But you couldn’t go through with it.”
“I would’ve,” she said. “But when I got back here, I found I’d lost the stuff somewhere. You can believe me or not. I don’t give a damn anymore.”
“Oh, I believe you,” Marc said. Cobb could only look at him in astonishment.
when Thea had been put into the solicitous care of Madge Frank, where she was to remain for the time being, Cobb lit up his pipe and said to Marc, “You sure she didn’t just happen to drop that loud-numb near somebody who didn’t like Merriwether any more’n her?”
“What I think is that Thea Clarkson is much more likely to harm herself than anyone else. What we know for certain, though, is that we still have a vial of laudanum unaccounted for.”
“She could’ve dropped it anywheres between here an’ Michaels’s place.”
Marc sighed. “And there’s still no way to link it to Merriwether himself. By the by, did you and Mrs. Cobb enjoy the performance last night?”
“Yes, we did, though I kept thinkin’ I was gonna fall outta that apple-box an’ land on somebody I oughtn’t to! But them Yankees can sure sing an’ dance! I figured Missus Cobb’s foot-tappin’ would wake the dead at Lundy’s Lane!”
“Well, I want you up there again this evening, and Dora, too, if she so wishes. I want you as my eyes and ears in the theatre proper. I’ll assign Wilkie to watch the dressing-room area.”
“Even if we manage to fool the traitors inta believin’ you’re Merriwether, how’re you gonna know where an’ when they’ll get a message to you about a round-a-view?”
“That’s the Achilles’ heel of my plan, I’m afraid. But the rebels or whoever they are know the guns are here in Toronto, and they believe for now that Merriwether is alive and waiting for the second message: they’ll deliver it all right. I’ve just got to be alert enough to recognize it when it comes.”
“You gonna take that report up to the governor?”
“Yes, but I’m going to see Rick first. There has to be some detail he’s forgotten: I’ve got to try and help him recall it.”
“I better come with ya.”
They slipped out the back entrance to Frank’s quarters into the alley there.
“You don’t haveta come to supper, ya know,” Cobb said. “You got more’n enough on yer plate as it is.”
“I wouldn’t miss it for the world.”
Set back from King Street among the autumn vermilion and gold of maple trees and with its cozy gables, its homely chimney-pots and rambling verandahs, Government House looked more like the estate of a country squire dozing in the Dorset sun than it did the seat of power and nerve-centre of a troubled British colony. The duty-corporal recognized Marc and led him and Cobb into the foyer.
“Where are they keeping Hilliard?” Marc asked.
“In the old pantry at the back, sir,” the corporal replied, then added in a lower voice, “but it ain’t locked.”
“Good. Cobb, would you mind waiting here with the corporal? When I’m finished with Rick, I’d like you to accompany me when I present this report to the governor. Your corroboration will be helpful.”
“I c’n manage the ‘helpful’ part,” Cobb said, and the corporal smiled.
It was now about eleven o’clock. Before leaving the theatre, Marc had gone upstairs with Cobb and reviewed with each of the actors a written summary of the testimony they had made to him during the interviews on Tuesday morning. He then had each sign the document, with Cobb as witness. Marc knew he wasn’t a surrogate justice of the peace, but he needed the semblance of notarized legality if he were to lay out for Sir Francis the apparent scenario of the murder and then point out the anomalies, such as they were. (Thea had been resting and so was excused, but since Cobb had been present during both interviews with her, Marc was not concerned.) He had hoped to have linked Merriwether to the laudanum, but that was now a lost cause. Though the villain most likely had found or purloined it from his distraught mistress, there was no proof of this. Marc realized also that, distracted as he was by the gun-running business and the deteriorating situation in Quebec, Sir Francis would not give Rick Hilliard’s case his usual close attention. Rick would simply have to help himself.