The Malevolent Comedy Read online

  ‘Let’s make them laugh until their sides are fit to burst,’ he said.

  The Malevolent Comedy secured a firm and immediate hold over the spectators. From a simple plot, Saul Hibbert had built up a complex series of comic effects. Lord Loveless, a wealthy nobleman, was looking for a wife who would marry him for love and not for his money. To that end, he enlisted the aid of Mistress Malevole, a white witch whose potions could achieve magical results. Loveless required her to make three separate women – unattainable beauties until now – swallow a potion that would make them fall instantly in love with him. By courting all three, Lord Loveless could decide which he would take as a wife.

  What he did not know was that Mistress Malevole had a malevolent streak that made her give the three women the wrong potion. Secretly in love with Lord Loveless herself, she was not prepared to yield him up to another. One of her rivals was turned into a cat, another believed she was an owl and the third capered around the stage like a monkey. Barnaby Gill complicated matters even more with his clowning, stealing some of his mistress’s other potions to slip into the wine cups of the men.

  Edmund Hoode, a stately steward, conceived a passion for his master that led to all kinds of comic friction. Francis Quilter, in the guise of the ancient Martin Oldman, regressed into childhood and became a gibbering infant. Sir Bernard Graball, the rapacious knight played by Owen Elias, took a sip of his wine and became so afraid of women that the very sight of them threw him into a panic. Antidotes that were administered to counter the effects of the potions only made things worse. At one point, everyone in the play thought that they were in love with the Clown. Ironically, the person who most wanted affection was denied it and Lawrence Firethorn revelled in his misery with hilarious consequences. Reviewing the possibilities, he turned on the grinning Mistress Malevole.

  ‘Am I to marry a cat and spend nine lives, chasing mice and fornicating with black fur? Is that what you offer me? Or would you rather have me wed an owl and pass my nights upon a cold bough, letting my manhood wilt untouched beneath my feathers? My other choice is this moonstruck monkey. How can I mate with such a creature when I cannot even catch her? And what sort of progeny would I father on these zanies? Cats, owls and monkeys! Two of each, bearing my loveless name, going forth into the world to multiply like so many dumb animals, issuing from Noah’s ark. A pox on these freaks of nature! Give me a woman I can love as a woman, and be loved in return by her. Is that too much to ask?’

  Mistress Malevole assured him that she would answer his plea, only to create further confusion with another round of potions. In the leading female role, Richard Honeydew, the youngest of the apprentices, showed a delight in merry mischief that earned Mistress Malevole the complete sympathy of the audience. They rejoiced in the endless potions and the multiple changes of character. It was only in the last act that Loveless himself was prevailed upon to drink one of the concoctions himself. Seeing the havoc they had wreaked on others, he insisted that his servant tasted it first and he beckoned Hal Bridger forward.

  His moment had arrived. Trembling nervously and with a throat that had suddenly turned into a parched desert, Bridger summoned up all his strength to say the one line that he had been given. He watched Mistress Malevole mix the potion then pour it into a cup. When it was offered to him, he forced a smile.

  ‘I will take anything from your fair hand,’ he said, bravely.

  Accepting the cup, he drank deeply. Bridger was supposed to sway for a few moments before falling gently to the floor. Instead, he let out a cry of agony, flung away the cup and grasped at his stomach with both hands. When he keeled over, he went into a violent paroxysm, arching and kicking with such uncontrollable force that he knocked over the table, spilling its contents across the stage. The audience roared with mirth, thinking it was part of the play that had been carefully rehearsed.

  Nicholas Bracewell was not fooled. Watching with dismay from behind the scenes, he knew that Hal Bridger was in real pain. No compassion was shown by the throng. The greater his convulsions, the more the spectators laughed. When he kicked over a chair and sent it cart-wheeling from the stage, there was a round of applause for him. But the hapless servant was no longer acting a part.

  He was, literally, dying before their eyes.

  Chapter Three

  Bemused by the frantic display in front of them, the actors were quite uncertain what to do. They stood in a circle around Hal Bridger and watched him writhe dramatically on the boards to the misplaced amusement of the roaring onlookers. Lord Loveless’s servant then twisted upward in torment one more time before lapsing into immobility. It was Nicholas Bracewell who reacted first. Realising that the play could founder if it lost its impetus, he set his prompt copy aside and stepped onstage, nodding deferentially to Lord Loveless as if he were another of his retinue. With great gentleness, he scooped up the body and carried it quickly into the tiring-house. Lawrence Firethorn showed his presence of mind by turning the incident into a jest.

  ‘Is that what your potion does, Mistress Malevole?’ he asked. ‘I’ll have none of it or there’s not a piece of furniture in my house will be safe from my flailing limbs?’

  The rest of the cast followed where he led, using all their skills to disguise the fact that they had been deeply disturbed by what had just happened. With a combination of witty dialogue, vivid gestures and the comic business carefully devised in rehearsal, they took the play at breakneck speed into its closing scenes. No more magic potions were needed. Restored to normality, the three beautiful women sought the same rich husband, but each was rejected in turn by Lord Loveless because they were only interested in his wealth. It was the scheming Mistress Malevole – renouncing her malevolence – who emerged as his true love and he disclosed his own secret passion for her. The happy couple were promptly married by a priest, and Barnaby Gill, as the effervescent Clown, brought festivities to a close with an hilarious jig. Cheers, whistles and loud applause reverberated around the inn yard.

  Westfield’s Men had a resounding success on their hands.

  Nicholas Bracewell took no pleasure from the ovation. All that concerned him was the fate of the youth who lay on the table in the tiring-house. Though he tried to revive Hal Bridger, he knew that his efforts were in vain. What the audience had found so diverting were, in fact, the death throes of a young and innocuous assistant stagekeeper, making his very first – and last – appearance before the public. Nicholas was shocked and saddened. He used a cloak to cover Bridger’s face and hide it from the actors who were staring with ghoulish fascination at the contorted features. George Dart was appalled.

  ‘Hal is dead?’ he gasped.

  ‘I fear so,’ said Nicholas. ‘The poor lad was poisoned.’

  ‘Poisoned?’

  ‘I could smell it on his lips.’

  ‘God forgive me!’ exclaimed Dart. ‘I prepared that potion.’

  ‘You were not to blame, George.’

  ‘And I let Hal drink it in my place. I should have played that servant.’ He began to quake. ‘In giving the part to Hal, I killed him!’

  Dart was inconsolable. Weeping copiously, he retired to a corner of the room with his head in his hands. At that moment, Firethorn led the company offstage. Actors who had acknowledged the applause with broad smiles now gathered around the corpse with a mixture of sorrow and bewilderment. Lord Loveless gazed down at the body.

  ‘What on earth happened, Nick?’ he demanded.

  ‘Hal’s drink was poisoned.’

  ‘Send for a doctor at once.’

  ‘He’s beyond the reach of medicine,’ said Nicholas.

  There was a collective sigh of despair. Rising above it was a piercing cry of horror from Richard Honeydew, who pushed forward to stand beside the table and pulled back the cloak from Bridger’s face. The apprentice was no longer the guileful Mistress Malevole but a frightened boy with blood on his hands.

  ‘This is my doing!’ he said, aghast.

  ‘No,’ said Nichola
s.

  ‘But I gave him that drink.’

  ‘You were not to know that it was poisoned, Dick.’

  ‘I murdered Hal Bridger.’

  The acclaim in the yard reached a new pitch of hysteria and Firethorn responded at once, calling his actors to order so that he could take them back onstage to harvest the applause. Fixed smiles returned to their faces but grief burnt away inside them. Stunned by the gruesome death of the servant, Mistress Malevole had difficulty in standing and Lord Loveless had to wrap an arm around her shoulder to prevent her from tumbling over. Spectators clapped and shouted until their palms were sore and their throats hoarse.

  Nicholas Bracewell, meanwhile, remained in the tiring-house. His only companions were the distraught George Dart and the body of Hal Bridger. Closing his eyes, he sent up a silent prayer for the soul of the deceased. When he lifted his lids again, he saw the head of Alexander Marwood peering around the door at the corpse on the table. There was a note of grim satisfaction in the landlord’s voice.

  ‘I told you that this play would bring trouble,’ he said, baring his blackened teeth. ‘You should have changed the title.’

  There was so much for the book holder to do that the next half an hour passed in a blur. Nicholas had to send for constables, report the murder and set an official investigation in motion. He also had to calm George Dart, reassure the tearful Richard Honeydew, keep the irate Lawrence Firethorn at bay and supervise the storing of costumes and properties. The first thing that he did was to slip onstage to retrieve the poisoned cup that had been tossed aside by Hal Bridger, sniffing it as he did so and noting the pungent odour. The potions that were given throughout the play were contained in a series of phials, filled with nothing more harmful than red wine, heavily diluted with water. Nicholas took charge of them all so that he could examine each one at leisure. As soon as the audience began to disperse, he was able to order the dismantling of the scenery and the stage.

  After such an exultant performance, the tiring-house was usually a Bedlam of revelry and congratulation. There was no hint of celebration this time. Hushed by the death of Hal Bridger, the actors moved around in bruised silence, all too aware of the fact that the poison might have been given to one of them instead. In meeting his grisly end, the youth had saved someone else from the identical fate. It was only when the body was removed that most of the company felt able to talk. They drifted away to the taproom in a sombre mood.

  Lawrence Firethorn stayed behind to consult his book holder.

  ‘How could this happen, Nick?’ he wondered.

  ‘Someone put poison into one of the phials.’

  ‘Then why was nobody struck down during this morning’s rehearsal? We drank the same liquid then as this afternoon.’

  ‘No,’ said Nicholas, thinking it through. ‘After the rehearsal, I told George Dart to refill the phials and watched him as he did so. They were set out on the table so that Mistress Malevole could use them during the performance. Before that happened,’ he concluded, ‘one of the potions was poisoned. Some knave must have sneaked in here.’

  ‘Why? Did he have reason to hate Hal Bridger?’

  ‘He had no idea that he would be the victim because he could not possibly know which of the potions Hal would drink. It could just as easily have been Owen, Frank or Edmund who took the fatal dose.’

  ‘Or even me!’ said Firethorn in alarm.

  ‘The obvious intent was to commit a murder that would interrupt the play and bring it to an untimely end.’

  ‘Villainy!’

  ‘We were fortunate,’ Nicholas pointed out. ‘That particular potion was not used until late in the play, and our actors were sufficiently alert to cope with the situation. Thanks to your example, the play was saved.’

  ‘At what great cost, though! I’d rather lose a dozen plays than sacrifice the life of one member of my company. The Malevolent Comedy has been fringed with tragedy. It makes me sick to my stomach, Nick.’

  ‘I’ll find the man behind all this,’ vowed the other.

  ‘At least, you’ll know where to start looking.’

  ‘Will I?’

  ‘Of course,’ said Firethorn with growing fury. ‘Go to the Curtain. I’ll wager all I own that it was Giles Randolph who hired this killer.’

  ‘I doubt that,’ said Nicholas.

  ‘Naked envy is at work here. He heard about our new play.’

  ‘That would not make him stoop to murder. The best weapon that Banbury’s Men have is their own success. That hurts us most.’

  ‘I still believe that Randolph is behind all this somehow.’

  ‘And I’m just as certain that neither he nor his company is involved in any way. If they wanted to inflict real harm on Westfield’s Men,’ Nicholas pointed out, ‘they would strike directly at you and bring us to our knees. Why use a poison that might only lead to the death – as it did, in this case – of a mere hired man? I mean no disrespect to Hal,’ he added, quietly. ‘A willing lad and a pleasure to work beside. I’ll miss him sorely. But we’d all miss Lawrence Firethorn much more.’

  Firethorn pondered. ‘Perhaps my wager was a little hasty,’ he said.

  ‘You stand to lose everything you have.’

  ‘Margery would skin me alive if that happened. Let me retract at once. But, if it was not one of Giles Randolph’s minions,’ he went on, scratching his beard, ‘then who, in God’s name, was it?’

  ‘Who and why?’ said Nicholas. ‘I think that motive is important here. The person we want most probably has a grudge against the company, against Master Hibbert or against the Queen’s Head itself.’

  ‘If we talk of grudges against the Queen’s Head, then add me to the list of suspects. I have a thousand grudges against that miserable reptile of a landlord. Come, Nick,’ urged Firethorn, ‘I saw you put those phials aside. Give me the one that contained the poison and I’ll push it down Marwood’s throat until he chokes on it.’

  ‘What purpose would that serve?’

  ‘My satisfaction.’

  ‘We search for a more dangerous enemy than our landlord,’ said Nicholas, briskly. ‘I’ll take the phial, and the cup into which the liquid was poured, to Doctor Mordrake. One sniff of either will tell him what poison was used. That must be our starting point.’

  ‘What of Hal Bridger?’

  ‘When the body is examined, they’ll reach the same conclusion.’

  ‘Then why not apply to the coroner?’

  ‘Because he will only decide the cause of death,’ said Nicholas. ‘Doctor Mordrake does business with every apothecary in the city. He’ll know where that poison can be readily bought. I’ll try to trace its origin. Before that, alas,’ he went on, shaking his head, ‘there’s a prior duty that calls.’

  ‘A prior duty?’

  ‘Hal’s family must be informed of his death.’

  ‘I’ll send them a letter,’ suggested Firethorn, anxious to evade the responsibility of delivering the bad tidings in person. ‘Fetch me pen and paper. I’ll write it now.’

  ‘They deserve better than a few choice words scribbled down,’ said Nicholas with reproach. ‘I’ll take on the office. His parents will want a full account of what happened.’

  ‘Thank you, Nick. You knew the lad better than me.’ He nodded in the direction of the taproom. ‘Will you take a cup of wine before you go?’

  ‘No, I’ll clear up here then slip quietly away.’

  ‘So be it.’ Firethorn stepped forward to embrace him warmly. ‘We are indebted to you once again, dear heart. Had you not made that entrance and carried the body away, we would all have faltered. You came to our rescue.’

  ‘Too late for Hal Bridger, alas.’

  Firethorn nodded then left the tiring-house. Nicholas put all the phials on the table and sniffed each one until he found the offending bottle. It went into the pocket where he had concealed the cup from which the potion had been drunk. He was still tidying things away when Saul Hibbert came swaggering into the room.
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br />   ‘What?’ he asked. ‘Are my actors all fled?’

  ‘You’ll find them in the taproom,’ replied Nicholas.

  ‘Then I’ll buy them their beer. They brought my play to life this afternoon and made me famous. A hundred people must have fought to shake my hand. I have only now been able to shake off my admirers.’

  ‘The congratulations were deserved, Master Hibbert.’

  ‘I’ll share the kind words with Lawrence and the others. Most of them, anyway,’ he said, curling a lip, ‘for there’s one idiot who’ll get no praise from me. That wretched servant to Lord Loveless did his best to ruin my work by pretending to have the falling sickness. I’ll make him fall in earnest when I catch up with him. What was the fool doing?’

  ‘Dying from poison.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Hal Bridger was not acting out there,’ said Nicholas. ‘What you saw was a foul murder. The poison that he drank killed him within a matter of minutes. Officers took details of the crime and the body has been now removed. You’ll not be laying a finger on the lad.’

  ‘Can this be so?’ said Hibbert in amazement. ‘You believe that there was deliberate murder?’

  ‘We kept the truth of it from the audience.’

  ‘Thank heaven that you did, or my play would have been ruined!’

  ‘Can you not spare a sigh of regret for the victim?’

  ‘I am the real victim here,’ said Hibbert, angrily. ‘Someone set out to halt my work when it was at the very zenith of its power. I would’ve have been robbed of my triumph.’

  ‘Hal Bridger was robbed of his life,’ Nicholas reminded him.

  ‘I care nothing for that. How can you compare the death of a stripling to the violation of my art? You heard that acclaim out there. The Malevolent Comedy has made me the talk of London.’

  ‘Is that all that matters to you?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Then it’s high time you learnt to feel some compassion,’ said Nicholas, squaring up to him. ‘Because of your play, a blameless lad lost his life in front of a baying audience. He stepped onto that stage to serve you and your ambition. You might at least show thanks.’