Desperate Acts

Chapter Four

FOUR

Brodie and Horace Fullarton dropped Etta off at her house on Sherbourne Street. She had said nothing to them during the entire cab-ride from The Sailor's Arms at the other end of town. Brodie put this uncharacteristic silence down to her reticence to reveal the details of the insult directed at her in the taproom. As she, her mother, and her brother Jasper lived next door to the Edwards, Etta had met Brodie a number of times in Briar Cottage, and was normally a greater chatterbox than Jasper's lady-love, Charlene. Moreover, Brodie had caught her more than once casting a furtive glance his way. But tonight she mumbled a "thank you" and vanished up the walk.

"She'll get over it," Brodie said. "She's young." That she was not more than a year or so younger than he, did not enter into his calculations.

"Does anybody know the name of the fellow who accosted her?" Fullarton said, ever solicitous of those in distress.

"Not really, though I'm pretty sure the villain had been drinking in there on other occasions."

Fullarton asked the cabbie to drive them farther up Sherbourne Street to Harlem Place, where Brodie lived. He himself lived downtown on George Street. The night-air was chilly - after all, it was past mid-October - and doubly so after the simmering brightness of an Indian summer afternoon and a spectacular sunset. They drew their lapels up over their scarves and spoke without turning their heads.

"I've been meaning to ask you, sir, how a recent arrival like Peregrine Shuttleworth managed to revive the Shakespeare Club?" Brodie said as they bumped along the rutted roadway in the moon-washed dark. "I'd heard it was pretty well dead."

"Please, Brodie. Outside the bank, I insist you call me Horace."

"As you wish, sir."

Fullarton laughed, something he rarely did, though the lines around his mouth and eyes suggested he had done so often in his younger and happier days - before Bernice's illness and the realization that they would have a childless marriage. "Well, Mister Langford, I must accept some of the blame myself."

"I am not surprised."

"Thank you for that, but my role was really more of a prompter than a director or leading man. You see, when the Shuttleworths arrived in the summer, Sir Peregrine came to our bank to do business."

"Yes, I do remember seeing him there."

"In the course of our conversation he mentioned that he was setting out to complete the construction of Oakwood Manor, and he invited me for dinner that evening. I almost never go out, as you know - I don't like to leave Bernice alone too much - but her sister was staying with us for a few weeks, so I said yes. After the meal, he toured me about the half-finished wing and outlined the changes he was contemplating for the main section. I made a few comments here and there, and suddenly Sir Peregrine decided that I had an eye for architectural design. He insisted I return and continue our discussion of his plans. Well, the upshot was that I must have gone out there nine or ten times over the course of a month."

"So you met Lady Madeleine and her family?"

"Yes. Mrs. Wade and all six of her children, though the baronet rationed their appearances."

"During which time the subject of Shakespeare arose?"

"Indeed it did. Both the baronet and his lady are mad about plays and play-acting. As he hinted tonight, his ballroom was designed to be converted into an amateur playhouse at an instant's notice. So, naturally, I told him about the on-again, off-again Shakespeare Club here in town."

"And the rest is history."

"Something like that."

"Have you been out to Oakwood Manor since, to see the finished product?"