Peter Tremayne - An Ensuing Evil and Others

“You were arguing with him.”

“I do not deny it.”

“About this play?”

“About his inability to play his role. He had the wrong approach to the part, which rightfully should be mine. He had the audacity to criticize my part as the Dauphin, and thus we fell to argument. A pox on the man! May he linger a long time in the debtors’ jail. He deserves it for leading the innkeeper’s daughter on a merry dance with his assumed airs and graces. She, being a simple, country girl, was beguiled by him. There is no fun in debauching the innocent.”

Master Drew raised an eyebrow. “Debauching? In what way did he lead Master Penhallow’s daughter on?”

“Why, in his pretense to be an English gentleman with money and fortune. He gave the poor Penhallow girl some of his worthless jewels and spoke of marriage to her. The man is but a jack-in-the pulpit, a pretender.”

The constable considered this thoughtfully. “You say that Keehan promised to marry the Penhallow girl?”

“Aye, and make her a rich and great lady,” agreed Cavendish.

“He gave her paste jewels?”

“Poor girl, she would not know the like from real. I think she had set her heart on being the mistress of some great estate which only existed in Keehan’s imagination. He gambles the pittance that Master Burbage pays us and visits so many whorehouses that I doubt if he has not picked up the pox, which will cook his goose the sooner. I have never known a man who had such an excess of love for his own self. I rebuked him for it. By the rood! He had the audacity to recourse to a line from this very play of ours, Henry V…”

The young man struck a pose.

“ ‘Self love, my liege, is not so vile a sin as self-neglecting.’ One thing may be said of Master Keehan, he never neglected himself.”

“This Master Whelton Keehan does not sound the most attractive of company,” agreed the constable.

“I doubt not that this view is shared by the father of the Penhallow girl. I never saw a man so lost for words when he espied Master Keehan treading the boards last night and realized that Keehan was none other than his gentleman lodger.”

“What?” Master Drew could not stay his surprise. “Do you mean to tell me that Master Pentecost Penhallow knew that his lodger was a player and residing at the Red Boar under a false name?”

“He knew that from last night. He was there in the ring having paid his penny entrance to stand in the crowd before the stage. Keehan did not see him, but I did. In fact, as I was coming offstage, Master Penhallow accosted me to confirm whether his eyes had played him false or not. I had to confess that they had been true. He went away in high dudgeon. He was in no better spirits when I saw him later at the Red Boar.”

“You saw Master Penhallow at the Red Boar? At what time was this?”

Master Cavendish considered for a moment. “I confess to having indulged in an excess of cheap wine. I scarcely recall. It was late, or rather, it was early this morning. He was coming in as I was going out.”

The elderly white-haired man came forward, clicking his tongue in agitation. “Sirrah! Can you desist with your questioning? We have a play to rehearse and-”

Master Drew held up his hand to silence him. “Cease your concern, good master. I shall leave you to your best efforts. One thing I have to tell you. You must find a new player for the part of King Hal this evening. Master Keehan is permanently indisposed.”

“Confound him!” cried the elderly man. “What stupidity has he indulged in now?”

Master Drew smiled grimly. “The final stupidity. He has gotten himself murdered, sir.”

Arriving back at the Red Boar Inn, he found Master Pentecost Penhallow moodily cleaning pewter pots. He started as he saw the dour look on the constable’s face.

“You lied to me, Master Penhallow,” Master Drew began without preamble. “You knew well that Will Keeling was no gentleman, nor had private mean. You knew that he was a penniless player named Keehan:”

Pentecost Penhallow froze for a moment, and then his shoulders slumped in resignation. “I knew,” he admitted. “But I only knew from last night.”

“Are you a frequent playgoer then, Master Penhallow?”

The innkeeper shook his head. “I never go to playhouses.”

“Yet you paid a penny and went to the Globe last night. Pray, what took you there?”

“To see if I could identify this man Keeling… or whatever his name was.”

“Who told you that he was a player there?”

“Two days ago, one of my customers espied him entering the inn and said, ‘That’s one of the King’s Players at the Globe.’ When I said, nay, he be a gentleman, the man laid a wager of two pence with me. So I went, and there I saw Master Keeling in cavorting pretense upon the stage. God rot his soul!”

“So you realized that he was in debt to you and little wherewithal to honor that debt?”

“Indeed, I did.”

“So when you returned home in the early hours of this morning, you went to his room and had it out with him?”

When Penhallow hesitated, Master Drew went remorsefully on.

“You took a knife and stabbed him in rage at how he had led you and your family on. I gather he gave faked jewels to your daughter and promised marriage. Your rage did wipe all sense from your mind. It was you who killed the man you knew as Will Keeling.”

“I did…,” began Master Penhallow.

“Na! Na, tasyk!” cried a female voice. It was the young woman the constable had seen on the landing that morning. Penhallows daughter, Tamsyn.

“Cosel, cosel, caradow,” Penhallow murmured. He turned to Master Drew with a sigh. “This Keeling was an evil man, Constable. You must appreciate that. He used people as if they meant nothing to him. Yet every cock is proud on his own dung heap. He crowed at his vice when I challenged him. He boasted of it. His debt to me is but nothing to the debt that he owed my daughter, seducing her with his glib tongue and winning ways. All was but his fantasy, and he ruined her. No man’s death was so richly deserved.”

The young girl came forward and took her fathers arm. “Gafeugh dhym, tasyk,” she whispered.

Penhallow patted her hand as if pacifying her. “Taw dhym, taw dhym, caradow,” he murmured.

Master Drew shook his head sadly as he gazed from father to daughter and back to father. Then he said, “You are a good man, Master Penhallow. I doubted it for a while, being imbued with my prejudice against your race.”

Penhallow eyed him nervously. “Good Master Constable, I understand not-”

“Alas, the hand that plunged the dagger into Master Keehan was not your own. Speak English a little to me, Tamsyn, and tell me when you learnt the truth about your false lover?”

The dark-haired girl raised her eyes defiantly to him.

“Gorteugh un pols!” cried Penhallow to his daughter, but she shook her head.

She spoke slowly and with her soft accent. “I overheard what was said to my father the other night; that Will… that Will was but a penniless player. I took the jewels which he had given to me and went to the Dutchman by the Blackpriars House.”

Master Drew knew of the Dutchman. He was a jeweler who often bought and sold stolen goods but had, so far, avoided conviction for his offenses.

“He laughed when I asked their worth,” went on the girl, “and said they were even bad as faked jewels and not worth a brass farthing.”

“You waited until Will Keehan came in this morning. But he came in with Hal Cavendish.”

“He was in an excess of alcohol. He was arguing with his friend. Then Master Cavendish departed, and I went into his room and told him what I knew.” Her voice was quiet, unemotional. But her face was pale, and it was clear to Master Drew that she had difficulty controlling her emotions. “He laughed-laughed! Called me a Cornish peasant who had been fortunate to be debauched by him. There were no jewels, no estate, and no prospect of marriage. He was laughing at me when-”