A Rather Remarkable Homecoming (18 page)

In neat, faded but legible columns it listed every payment made to the actors during their stay here. Rapidly I scanned the names of each actor, until I came to the one that I’d been seeking:
Willim Shakspere, being also of the name Rudd Marchman
. After that was a list of his wages for a period of about three months, similar to the wages of the other actors. Then, suddenly, Willim’s wages ceased, even though the other players continued to perform for the rest of the year.

I heard footsteps echoing across the ancient floors, and I froze for a moment until they veered away from me and continued down a corridor. But I could tell that a guard was making the rounds. Quickly I whipped out my phone and photographed the pertinent pages of the book.

I snapped and snapped, then softly shut the ledger and slipped it back in its place on the shelf. It happened all in one smooth motion, right up to ducking back under the velvet rope and slipping across the main library to other rooms, so that I could get away from the guard, whose footsteps warned that he was now marching toward me.

From the corridor windows I could see that my group had assembled on the lawn to admire the gardens as the tour came to an end. I caught up with them while they were pussyfooting through the magnolias and camellias. The guide was just informing everyone about the gift shop, and the tea room where we could purchase refreshments. The group applauded the guide, who nodded and said goodbye to each one of us now as we shuffled past.

When I sidled by her, she seemed faintly puzzled, as if she couldn’t quite remember me going from room to room, but I just beamed at her and then headed with all good speed for the parking lot with others from the group.

I climbed back on my bicycle and pedaled out to the road that would take me back to the cottage. But as I cycled past verdant meadows, I spotted a strange figure ducking in and out from behind trees. It could have been any member of the earl’s staff, perhaps a gardener, yet something in the man’s appearance seemed so out of time, simply too leisurely for this world.

He continued moving through the fields and trees, his motions more like that of a cautious deer than a human out for a stroll. Some instinct of mine made me dismount my bicycle and push it off the road, into a shrubby, grassy area, so that I could hide behind a hedge and get a closer look at the man as he emerged from the shadows and into the dappled sunlight.

He was clad in a dusty-green hiking outfit, a jacket and matching pants with a funny brown hat on his head; and his pants were tucked into a pair of knee-high brown boots. The hair that stuck out from beneath his floppy-brimmed hat was reddish brown in color, and he had a growth of matching stubble on his chin.

I continued to follow him on foot. We were very near the dividing line between the earl’s land and Grandmother Beryl’s property, and when we reached the end of the earl’s estate, the man stopped.

A pair of large, very old-fashioned binoculars hung around his neck, dangling on his chest, and he now raised them to his eyes to peer into Grandmother Beryl’s front yard.

I followed his gaze to see what he was so intent upon. But suddenly, he lowered his binoculars and made a peculiar grimace. A second later he raised his hands and cupped his mouth, emitting a strange sound, like a whistle through his teeth, “
OO-eee-ooo-ee-whooo!
”

It was a plaintive kind of warble, and I wondered if he was signalling someone or was just plain bonkers. But a second later, I heard the exact same cry come from a bird that was now flickering through that tree. “
OO-eee-ooo-ee-whooo!
”

“Good God,” I thought. “I’m tailing a bird-watcher.” And something in the man’s luxurious manner clicked for me. “Why, I bet that’s the earl!” I whispered to myself, as if I, too, had stumbled upon a rare species. I was willing to bet that he came from a long line of naturalists and bird aficionados.

I huddled out of his view, watching him as he tromped along the border, not quite crossing it, but gazing raptly at his bird. Then he sat upon a rock, and pulled out a small, leather-covered notebook, in which he seemed to be sketching or jotting something down. He continued doing so, until his bird eventually flew away.

Then the earl rose, put his book back in his breast pocket, and went tromping back into the trees, sounding just like a deer crashing through the underbrush, until at last he vanished from my sight.

I pushed my bicycle back on the road, but paused to quickly e-mail Jeremy:
Bagged some info on Earl’s Players, especially one Willim Shakspere! Seems he was using an alias while he was in Cornwall. The other name he used was Rudd Marchman
.
Maybe W.S. was on the lam from the law? Perhaps those stories about deer-poaching were true? See if you can find out any arrests, lawsuits et cetera involving someone named Rudd Marchman. Photos attached. P.S. I think I just spotted said earl in the woods. He is one strange bird.

Jeremy must have had his mobile phone in his hand and therefore received my message right away; for within minutes he shot back with a response:
OK, will investigate the Bard’s alias. But please, dear wife, do stay out of the earl’s woods and wherever else you were when you dug this info up. I have a feeling it’s not exactly public record, is it?

Well, honestly. Could anyone really expect me to abandon the scent I’d just picked up? I had to find out what it was that the budding Bard was hiding from, or trying to keep secret.

What had Shakespeare done to make it necessary for him to disappear for all those years which historians, even today, can’t account for?

M
y next clue came to me in a truly unexpected way. Simon had previously asked me to arrange for his things to be taken out of storage, and sent to him at the Actors’ Home at the Priory. Nora, the nurse, telephoned to let me know that they had arrived, and she said it would be a good idea for someone Simon knew to help him sort them. So I had already agreed to come to the Priory that day.

“He’s adjusting really well,” Nora told me when I arrived. “He loves coming down to the main hall to watch our actors rehearse for the Shakespeare fête.”

I came upon Simon where he was sitting in his wheelchair on the patio, with his face raised to the sun just like a sunflower. He already had better color in his cheeks now, and his eyes were bright and alert; and when he saw me he clapped his hands with pleasure.

“Darling Penny!” he said. “I didn’t expect you to visit so soon. Hasn’t the weather been kind to us?” I gave him a light kiss on the forehead and he gestured for me to take a seat on one of the iron lawn chairs nearby.

“Isn’t Nora a gem?” he continued. “She’s engaged to be married, you know. But her young man—he’s a fisherman—is struggling like so many in Port St. Francis, and they do so want a little house of their own to raise a family. She’s been showing me the estate ads, and I can’t believe what it costs to buy even a little biscuit box to live in out here!”

“She says you’re helping Trevor rehearse the performers,” I said as I sat down.

“Yes, there are some lovely young acting students but they are nervous as cats,” Simon said.

“Oh, I thought the older actors from the home were doing the show,” I said, confused.

Simon’s eyes twinkled. “Well, darling, we can’t have the whole programme done by geezers like me,” he said forthrightly. “Half of them can’t remember their lines, and the other half will be up past their bedtime.
Someone
more youthful is going to have to guide them on and off stage. As for our audience—you and Jeremy
are
coming, aren’t you?”

“Oh, yes, I bought those tickets ages ago,” I said.

Simon wagged a finger at me. “It’s not enough just to pay for the tickets,” he admonished. “We need the bums in the seats, if you’ll pardon my French. We want the theatre so jam-packed that the press will
have
to write it all up. Fingers crossed that the old theatre doesn’t collapse on the crowd in the middle of Juliet’s balcony scene.”

“We’ll be there,” I promised. I went over the list of his possessions that had arrived, and he told me to donate some of them to the Legacy Society’s thrift shop. The rest would be sent to his room.

“And now, Penny dear, tell me all about your latest case. Did you and Jeremy find out whether Shakespeare slept in Beryl’s bedroom?” Simon said waggishly.

I swore him to secrecy before updating him about the alias I’d discovered. “If I could just figure out what happened to Will out here,” I said, “maybe I’d have a breakthrough. In the first place, why did Shakespeare leave his work in London
and
his family in Stratford for all those years?”

Simon listened attentively, then cocked his head thoughtfully. “Well, let’s see. A man hits the road when the creditors are after him. Or, when the law is after him. Or, he’s chasing another girl. Or, he’s already chased a girl, and her father and brothers are chasing
him
with a shotgun. At least, that’s how it works in the theatre.”

“I’ve been all through the local records,” I said gloomily. “Nothing to indicate why he came here and joined The Earl’s Players. I’ve found out that it was during a year when the plague was so terrible in London that its theatres were shut down, so actors had to go on tour in the provinces to perform . . . or else starve. Maybe he left London simply because of that. And it’s possible he couldn’t find a gig in Stratford, either.”

“Ah, yes, we thespians always get thrown out of work at the most inconvenient times,” Simon observed. “So let’s assume that he came to Cornwall in search of employment, and joined up with the household players at the earl’s.”

“Then why did he leave his nice job here so abruptly?” I said, perplexed. “The players went on performing a great deal longer than Will.”

“You know more about this sleuthing game than me, Penny dear, but has it ever occurred to you that we are right at this moment sitting on top of a possible source of information?” Simon inquired.

I gave him a baffled look, and he continued, “We are in an old Priory, darling. And Trevor told me that the basement is stuffed to the gills with ancient church records. Baptisms, marriages, funerals, the works. It may be a long shot, but—”

I jumped up and threw my arms around him, and Simon, looking pleased, calmly told me which staircase to take down to the basement. Trevor was in London for the day, which was just as well. I was fairly certain he’d allow me total access to all these boxes and boxes of documents. Right?

My research took the better part of the day, during which I inhaled the dust of more centuries than I’d care to count. But just as I was going cross-eyed, I finally found a familiar name among the records of summer marriages. It was written in such an archaic scrawl that I had to study it closely for a long time before I could piece it together.

And basically what it told me was that a fellow called Rudd Marchman had married a local girl on the very date that the earl’s wages to him had ceased. Furthermore, a month later, his Cornish wife brought her newly-born child to be baptized, naming Rudd Marchman as the father.

“That could be it!” I mused. “He got a girl pregnant and was forced to marry her—which would have made him a bigamist, since as William Shakespeare he was already married to Anne Hathaway! So he used a fake name here in Cornwall, but then deserted the girl and returned to his life in London. What a bounder!”

Well, that’s the trouble with history. Snoop too deeply in it, and nobody looks very good. So if you don’t want your heroes tarnished, well . . .

Still, I couldn’t wait to tell Jeremy my theory. But I discovered that he had already e-mailed me to say he was on his way back to Port St. Francis, and his message was a bit cryptic:
Research ended. Coming to Cornwall. Meet me at cottage for debriefing.

W
ell, I didn’t imagine it. There was definitely something ground-breaking afoot, and from the look on Jeremy’s face when he walked into the cottage and set down his suitcase, I knew it wasn’t going to be good.

“He was hanged,” Jeremy announced without ceremony.

“Who was hanged?” I asked in disbelief.

“Your Rudd Marchman, that’s who,” Jeremy said, sitting down wearily at the kitchen table as I handed him a glass of iced tea.

“
What
are you talking about?” I cried. “How could he be hanged? He had to go on for years and years and write all those wonderful plays.”

“Well, William Shakespeare may have gone on to write those plays,” Jeremy said decisively, “but Rudd Marchman most definitely did not. He was hanged in September of 1592.”

I sank into the chair opposite him, while Jeremy reeled off the fruits of his laborious research.

“Rudd Marchman was a con man and a scoundrel, and frankly it’s amazing that he lived as long as he did,” Jeremy informed me. “He may have crossed paths with the Bard at some point, because Rudd was an actor for a time—loosely speaking. He also tried his hand at playwriting—and his handwriting is an absolute match for that manuscript fragment that got Trevor so excited. I stopped by the University of London to check it out with a handwriting expert and another Shakespeare professor.”

I absorbed this blow slowly, as if my mind couldn’t catch up.

“Anyway,” Jeremy continued, “at Rudd Marchman’s trial, it came out that he was a bit of an imposter—posing as a nobleman to attract the ladies, or pretending to be a great actor when he went into a pub, just to cadge a pint of beer. He made up fake awards he’d gotten, just to pad his résumé to get acting jobs. So it’s not that Shakespeare went to Cornwall under the alias of Rudd Marchman. Quite the opposite. The truth is that Rudd Marchman went around the country using the alias of Shakespeare or, to be more precise, ‘Willim Shakspere’.”

I digested this, then demanded, “But what was he hanged for?”