A Midsummer Eve's Nightmare Read online

  Erin attempted a smile. “The doctor thought I was raving when I suggested it. He thinks I just forgot to take my pills. But I didn’t. You know I never forget.” She looked at Tori. “Somebody must have switched them or something.”

  “Pills? You mean those vitamins you take?”

  “Well, yes, they’re all natural stuff, but I have this deficiency. If I don’t take potassium chloride I get symptoms like a heart attack. Like I just had.”

  “So they gave you some here?”

  Erin indicated the drip bottle attached to her arm. “Yes. Like I said, I’ll be fine. But that’s not the point.” Her voice rose and she attempted to raise her head off the pillow. “Look, you’ll see. I took my pills. Look on the shelf in the kitchen, next to the big bottle of calcium. You’ll see them—white capsules. Bottle about half full.” She dropped her head back, exhausted, gasping for breath.

  “I don’t understand.” Tori shook her head.

  “I took them like always; I’ve thought and thought about this. Those pills couldn’t have had potassium chloride in them. Somebody did something to them.” Her voice rasped weakly, her eyes grew wide with alarm. “I know they did. Someone is trying to kill me.”

  Why would they do that? Elizabeth wanted to ask. But before she could break the stunned silence in the room, the door swished open behind them. “How did you get in here?” the starched voice of a nurse demanded. All three visitors took a step backward.

  “I have brought you one visitor, Miss Renton. He says he’s the closest thing you have to family here.”

  European skier was Elizabeth’s first thought as she looked at the man standing behind the nurse holding an armful of white flowers. Elizabeth tallied up his cobalt blue eyes in a tanned face, his wavy brown, sun-streaked hair and twill sports jacked tailored to show off his day-on-the-slopes physique. “Dirk,” Erin said.

  The Adonis moved toward Erin’s bed while the nurse stood, hands on hips, staring at the others as they retreated.

  Richard laughed when they were in the hall. “That’s what you call a strong-eyed dog.”

  “What?” Elisabeth asked.

  “In New Zealand. They breed dogs that can herd sheep just by staring them down.”

  But their chuckles faded when Elizabeth asked, “What about those pills, Tori?”

  “Oh, I’m sure she took them. She’s religious about her vitamins.”

  “Then we’d better check it out.” Richard ushered them to the car.

  A few minutes later the three of them stood by the kitchen counter and stared at the capsules Tori dumped into her hand, holding the bottle with a cloth at Elizabeth’s direction. “I don’t know, they look the same to me.”

  “I’ll take them to the police. They can have they analyzed. And check the bottle for fingerprints.” Richard slipped the bottle into a plastic baggie.

  Richard had secured the pills just in time. Victoria gave a startled cry and flung out her hands in a gesture that would have landed the entire bottle in the sink. “I forgot! Erin’s understudy. Sally’s at least two inches shorter. I have to adjust the costumes.” The door banged behind her as she left at a run.

  Elizabeth sighed and turned to the one cushioned chair in the living room.

  “Don’t worry, my love.” Richard picked up her hand and kissed it. “Erin’ll be all right.”

  “I know. It isn’t that. It was when you mentioned the police. I don’t want to get involved in another intrigue. I mean, the mystery weekend thing was all right—in the end it was wonderful because it got us together. But now we are together, I just want to enjoy us. After all, this is our honeymoon.”

  Richard pulled her to her feet and into his arms. “I hope you don’t think I’ve forgotten that fact. What you need, Mrs. Spenser, is a nice country French dinner and an evening with the Bard to make you forget your troubles.”

  “What I need, Mr. Spenser, is a kiss.”

  OTHELLO

  When devils will the blackest sins put on,

  They do suggest at first with heavenly shows.

  Iago

  Chapter 3

  THE COQ AU VIN with tiny pearl onions, carrots and potatoes, was followed by tender butter lettuce leaves dressed in a light garlic oil and vinegar, then Pears Hélène, and finally thin wedges of camembert cheese. Elizabeth leaned back in her chair as a Mozart air floated around her. “Mmmm, if I’d known this was what honeymooning was all about I wouldn’t have turned you down so many times.”

  Richard reached across the table and squeezed her hand. “It’s part of what it’s about, anyway.” His smile gave a promise of things to come.

  They sat for a moment just grinning at each other while Elizabeth’s heart pounded in her throat. Then Richard stood. “Come on. The Bard calls.”

  Hand-in-hand they walked past tiny shops of handmade toys, imported china and antiques, then turned in to Lithia Park, running green and natural for more than a hundred acres up the gentle hill from which Ashland Creek tumbled through the center of the wooded grounds. Children’s laughter rang from the playground and other couples strolled or sat reading and talking under the trees. Elizabeth and Richard turned toward the left where the back of the four-story Elizabethan Theatre stood in its half-timbered elegance. Although it would still be full daylight for more than an hour yet, gaslight-type lamps glowed along the stairway leading up the steep incline to the theatre.

  Elizabethan-costumed ushers welcomed them as soon as they entered the ivy-covered walls encircling the seating area of the outdoor theatre, and the music of a sprightly Renaissance dance called them to the open area behind the seats where costumed dancers cavorted with the fluttering ribbons of a maypole to the accompaniment of recorder, crumhorn and viole de gamba.

  “Would you like a chess pie, sir?” A serving wench with a tray of tarts around her neck smiled at Richard.

  He cocked an eyebrow questioningly at Elizabeth, but she shook her head, too full to be tempted.

  The dancers finished with a neatly wound pole and scampered off to the applause of their many watchers. Then a young man in hose and doublet stepped forward and sang to the accompaniment of a small harp, “A dark and pretty maiden has my heart. . .” Richard’s arm tightened around Elizabeth, and she laid her head against him. In contrast to the tortures the maiden in the song led her lover through, Elizabeth knew there was nothing she wanted more than to make Richard happy.

  When the song ended they found their seats in the vast open-air arena, down front center. They were just seated when a fanfare sounded and a bright yellow flag made its way up the pole above the heavens of the stage, signifying, as such a pennant had since the time of Shakespeare, that a play was to be performed that night. The actor who had raised the flag stuck his head out of the tiny upper window and doffed his hat to the applause of the audience.

  Richard looked at the multilevel Elizabethan theatre. “Is it the Globe?”

  Elizabeth shook her head. “The Fortune, circa 1600. The enclosure,” she indicated the walls defining the arena, hung with yellow shields listing the plays performed every year since the festival began in 1935, “is the foundation of the old Chautaque dome.”

  Richard made an appreciative sound and looked around him as Elizabeth continued. “William Jennings Bryant, Mark Twain, everyone who lectured on the old Chautaque circuit spoke here.”

  “Ah, yes, but none more eloquently than our Shakespeare.”

  A few minutes later the somber beating of a drum followed by the solemn tolling of a bell announced the beginning of Othello. From the first moment Elizabeth was swept fully into the world unfolding before her on the stage. Trevor Stevens was a director who believed in lavish use of spectacle, and he did not disappoint. From each side they came, dressed in stark black and white, the corteges of mourners. One bearing the body of a woman, the other of a man. The sorrowing processions passed in silence, the drumbeat and bell toll punctuated only occasionally by a sob or a wail. And then they were gone. Leaving the stage
in total blackness.

  With a change of mood as abrupt as a turn on a roller coaster, the lights blazed on a sumptuous feast in the Venetian palace of Desdemona’s father. Richly clad servants ran hither and yon bearing torches, platters of food, and golden urns of wine. Jesters jumped and frolicked to spirited music while, in an exposition that was the director’s own, Othello was entertained by Senator Brabantio while the maidenly Desdemona looked on with rapt attention.

  Elizabeth couldn’t believe the elegant, dark-skinned Moor who held everyone in fascination with his stories of valor was the blond, understated man she had met a few hours earlier at her sister’s apartment. The fragile Desdemona, in a gown of gold as pale as her long, blonde hair, could easily have been the Erin she knew was still in the hospital. Elizabeth commented as such to Richard, then the magic of the theatre reclaimed her.

  After stealing from her father’s home, Desdemona arrived at Cypress in the midst of one of those howling storms that always signaled approaching doom to an Elizabethan audience. Flags whipped furiously from the ramparts as sheets of plastic waves lashed the set downstage, and a fanfare of trumpets blasted above the storm. All the time, in the background, the evil Iago wove his plot, showing how lies can play upon a simple man.

  Then with another swift mood change, the stage erupted in a jubilant revelry as the soldiers and citizens of Cyprus celebrated the dual glad events: the destruction of the Turkish fleet by the storm and the joy of General Othello’s nuptials. While the population reveled on the stage below, Desdemona and Othello embraced in their tapestry-hung, candlelit bower above. “O, my lord, if I were now to die, would to be most happy.” From a Venetian glass beaker Othello filled two crystal goblets with a rich amber liquid. Desdemona drank hers in salute to her marriage lord, but Othello was distracted by the soft light flickering on the net of woven gold holding Desdemona’s hair. He gently pulled it off, releasing a cascade of pale locks. In concert with the stage lovers, Elizabeth linked her arm in Richard’s and laid her head against his shoulder.

  As in Shakespeare’s day, the play was performed without intermission, and all too soon the network of twisted lies, woven to make everything look like something it wasn’t by Iago’s sinister machinations, moved to its inevitable end as Elizabeth’s mind cried with Othello, “The pity of it, Iago. Oh, the pity of it.” Elizabeth ached to have it all explained to Othello before the inevitable tragedy. She longed somehow to change what couldn’t be changed.

  Desdemona, in a white, floating garment reminiscent of an angel’s robe, was kneeling at her prayers in a single shaft of light when Othello entered their chamber. Then the light diffused. Shadows streaked across the stage to the accompaniment of slow drumbeats and a low chant as Desdemona removed the ropes of pearls from her hair and began brushing it, preparing for bed.

  The drumbeats intensified. Desdemona lay on the white satin sheets, her hair fanned across the pillows, and Othello moved with measured tread from his shadowed corner.

  The chant rose, as if it would pull the viewers into the scene. Wisps of mist blew across the stage from the open window. In one violent gesture Othello ripped the satin bed curtain from top to bottom. The drum and chanters silenced.

  “Put out the light.” He snuffed the candle.

  Desdemona awoke.

  “Have you pray’d tonight, Desdemona? I would not kill thy unprepared spirit.”

  “Talk you of killing?”

  “I do.” Othello grasped a white satin pillow in his powerful black hands.

  “Then heaven have mercy on me.” Desdemona crossed herself.

  The wind howled, fluttering the long white window draperies and streaking the candle flames. In a torment of anger and pity, jealousy and love, Othello pushed the smooth, pale pillow over Desdemona’s face and held it there, crying, “It is too late.”

  Now the chant rose again, at first almost imperceptible, then higher and higher until it engulfed the emotion of the scene as Othello, horrorstricken at his own deed, raised the limp body of Desdemona and held her outstretched to the audience. “O Desdemona! Dead, Desdemona! Dead! O!”

  He laid her lifeless body on the stage and drew his dagger. One last kiss of his beloved’s still lips. He plunged the dagger into his own breast.

  The bell tolling death, the drum marking the cortege cadence, attendants placed the bodies on biers, and the stark mourning processions that had opened the play brought it to a close.

  The audience sat, gripped with the tragedy, until the last toll of the bell faded. Then they broke into thunderous applause. But Elizabeth didn’t applaud. She gripped Richard’s arm with both hands, too horrified to speak the words.

  At last they came. “Desdemona. I’ve seen death before. She wasn’t acting.”

  Chapter 4

  RICHARD GRABBED ELIZABETH’S HAND and, holding her close behind him, made for a small door down left of the stage that provided easy access to backstage for crew members. They had almost fought their way through the exiting audience when a piercing scream came from the wings. Not wasting time groping around the dimly lit, cluttered backstage, Richard led straight across the stage to the exit Desdemona’s cortege had taken.

  The bier lay on the floor where its bearers had dropped it. And Desdemona lay just as she had been placed there. Grey, not breathing.

  The actress who had played Desdemona’s nurse Emilia stood over her screaming and sobbing. Actors and stage crew milled around in confusion, looking at the still form on the bier, then recoiling in horror.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Did she faint?”

  “Emilia, what’s—”

  “She’s not—”

  Then more screams and cries.

  In the background a voice of authority barked, “Somebody call an ambulance!” Trevor Stevens, still wearing his director’s headset pushed his way through the melee.

  “It’s too late for an ambulance,” Emilia insisted. “She’s not breathing. I’m calling the police.” She turned sharply and cannoned into Gregg striding in from the far side of the stage where he had made his curtain call exit. He had pulled off his black wig and his blond hair stood out incongruously above the dark greasepaint. “What’s all the noise about?”

  Emilia gave a sharp cry and hit at him with her fists. “You did it! You killed her.”

  “What are you talking about? Stop screaming, woman. Who’s—” He pushed Emilia aside and started forward.

  He came to an abrupt stop, the prostrate form of Desdemona at his feet. “Oh, my God.” He sank to his knees and took the white hand in his. “Sally. Sally!” He would have said her name again, but his voice caught on a sob. “This isn’t possible.”

  Just then Tori rushed in from the costume shop in the basement. “Dead? She can’t be!” Tori fell to her knees beside Gregg, her arms around him. “What happened?”

  Gregg shook his head. “I don’t know. I can’t have killed her. I did the scene just like I’ve done it dozens of times. I couldn’t. . .” He held his hands out and looked at them as if they were covered in blood. “I couldn’t. . .” He dropped his head into his hands. “No.”

  The initial hysteria gradually gave way to a shocked silence as the sight of Gregg’s grief brought home the reality of the situation to the company. By the time the ambulance and police arrived, the actors and technicians were standing in small groups, talking in hushed tones or sitting in stunned silence.

  The medical people went right to the still form on the bier. The uniformed officer spoke quietly to Trevor Stevens. “All right, boys and girls,” the bald, bearded director’s authoritative voice called them to attention. “We don’t know what’s happened here. There’s no need to jump to any unfounded conclusions. But due to the unusual circumstances Sergeant Carson thinks it wise to call in a detective task force. So—” He looked at his watch. “Sorry about this, but we’re going to need you all to stick around a bit until they get here.”

  His announcement was met with groans. “Eve
ryone go on down to the green room. Ingrid—” he turned to the stage manager, “see what you can do about organizing some coffee for everybody.”

  Muttering their complaints, the company began to move slowly toward the backstage exits. Gregg rose unsteadily to his feet and started to follow. “Gregg.” The actor stopped at Trevor’s voice. “I think you can help us here.” He looked at Richard and Elizabeth standing next to Tori. “Who are you?” he asked.

  Just then Sergeant Carson returned from making his call. “MADIU will be here soon. We’ll try not to keep you too late.”

  “Who?” Stevens asked.

  “Um, sorry. Major Assault Death Investigation Unit. Awful mouthful, isn’t it? Fancy name for a couple of detectives, a photographer and a medical examiner. They’ll be here as soon as they can, but they aren’t normally on duty at this time of night.” He looked around as if he had misplaced something. “I need to secure the area, but I don’t have any crime scene tape.”

  “We don’t even know that it is a crime scene,” Trevor Stevens reminded him.

  “No, that’s right. But still. . .” He looked down at his feet as if he might be trampling footprints left by a killer. Then he turned to Richard. “Who did you say you are?”

  “I didn’t say yet,” Richard said, then explained their presence there.

  “Hm. Might be helpful to have an account from the audience. You better stick around, too.”

  It was just as well their presence was mandated by authority, because Elizabeth had no intention of leaving her sister. And Tori would not leave Gregg.

  Sergeant Carson took a notebook out of his pocket and turned to interview Gregg. “I believe you’re the accused?”

  “Really, Sergeant, that’s much too strong. She was hysterical. There’s no reason to assume—” Trevor jumped to Gregg’s defense. But before the interview could go any further a tall, sandy-haired man that looked like he had donned his jeans and a polo shirt hastily and a stocky black man in a plaid sport shirt and slacks entered the back of the theatre.