Page 74 of The Lady Plays with Fire

“No, sir. The property manager—I’ll fetch him.” Fanshawe walked away as Graham dropped onto one knee, trying to peer through the keyhole.

It would be as well if he didn’t watch the scene between Briggs and Perpetua, when they spoke directly to one another through their work, coming ever closer though still meant to be in separate rooms in different parts of the city. It was the scene he had acted out with Julia not so very long ago, the scene that had made him realize that it was useless to deny his feelings for her. He’d made few changes to it, since it had obviously worked so well to communicate the forbidden spark between writer and critic.

He glanced over one shoulder to judge the progress of both the scene and Fanshawe. Onstage, the actors grew ever more intimate. He felt a familiar surge of jealousy as Sawyer’s hand rose, almost touching Julia’s upturned face. Beyond them, the audience seemed to hold its breath.

He both couldn’t bear to watch and didn’t want to tear his eyes away. Damn it! Fanshawe was taking his own sweet time. What had got trapped inside the wardrobe? An animal, perhaps? He had seen cats hanging around the alley behind the theater, looking for mice. One might have sneaked its way inside the building, he supposed, and fancied that the open wardrobe looked like an inviting spot for a nap.

But no matter how alarmed such a creature might have been to awake and find itself locked in, Graham doubted that three or four those scrawny strays together would be capable of making the heavy wardrobe shudder. Perhaps one of the urchins who hung about had thought to play a prank and found himself stuck instead?

At last, Fanshawe returned bearing a ring of keys that would have done the chatelaine of the castle proud. It would take an eternity to sort through them. “Sorry, sir.”

Graham snatched them from the man’s grasp and began to search for one that looked like it might fit the wardrobe lock. Too big. Too small. Fanshawe was no help; his attention was, at long last, all on the play. Finally, Graham fitted the proper key into the keyhole.

“Oh, brava, Miss Addison,” murmured Fanshawe as the scene drew toward its conclusion and the doors to the wardrobe sprang open.

Mrs. Cole rolled out and onto the floor.

She was bound at wrist and ankle with rope, her mouth stuffed with a dirty rag. Terror flared in her eyes as she stared up at Graham.

“My God! Who did this?” he exclaimed as he pulled free the gag.

She tried to speak, but no sound came from her parched tongue. Fanshawe, who now crouched beside Graham though his gaze was still locked on the stage, shrugged helplessly. A stagehand reached into his pocket and handed over a flask. Though its contents smelled strong enough to peel paint, Graham tipped it to Mrs. Cole’s lips, and she drank greedily and gratefully.

“I don’t—ahh!” she gasped as Graham fumbled with the knots at her wrists, revealing angry abrasions. “I don’t know. I never saw. I was in my dressing room, looking over those new lines for the final act, when someone came in. The screen hid my view of the door. He must’ve . . . ooh.” As soon as her hands were free, she reached up to prod a tender spot on the back of her head.

“He struck you,” Graham said. “And then tied you up. But who—?”

Applause broke, drowning out his words as the scene playing out behind them ended. The curtain swept down again, and for a moment, all was dim. Sawyer hurried over to them.

“What’s happened?” he said, shrugging out of his coat and accepting another from the dresser, this one more flamboyant, suited to the style of a successful poet—a success he owed in no small measure to Perpetua’s reviews.

“Mrs. Cole was attacked in her dressing room, then bound and gagged and locked in here,” Graham explained. “Clearly, someone didn’t want her to take the stage tonight.”

“But it makes no sense,” she insisted, sitting up and rubbing her rope-burned ankles. “I’d just got the pages you sent, that dramatic confrontation scene, and I—”

“Pages I sent?” Graham echoed, absently winding the rope into a coil as he crouched beside her.

“Well, I assumed they came from you, my lord. You’ve delivered all his other changes, and these had a note pinned to them signed R.B.”

“R.B.?” Sawyer pulled a face. “I say, that’s strange. I didn’t get any—”

Graham leaped to his feet without hearing him. “Fanshawe!” he shouted, heedless of the fact that his voice would carry beyond the curtain. He realized now why the paper on which the threatening letter had been written felt so familiar. And the words the actor had spoken moments earlier had finally penetrated his brain. “Did I hear you call her Miss Addison?” He spun, searching for him.

His realization had come a moment too late.

Fanshawe stood with his back to the curtain, a knife in one hand, the other elbow wrapped around Julia’s throat. She clawed fruitlessly at his forearm as he dragged her away from the others, toward the center of the stage. Just as Graham lunged toward them, the curtain rose.

The audience gasped in unison, then nervous giggles and uncertain whispers began to erupt around the theater.

“Isn’t that fellow meant to be dead?”

“Perhaps it’s a ghost story.”

“But that’s Lord Dunstane! Is he taking on a role too?”

And from above, the tremulous voice of Mrs. Hayes. “J-Julia?”

Fanshawe laughed. “This is working out even better than I planned, my lord. I thought that if I got rid of Mrs. Cole, then the show would be canceled.” He continued to retreat from Graham, dragging Julia with him across the stage, until Perpetua’s writing desk was at his back. A gleeful, mad smile stretched across his face. “It was beyond my wildest dreams to think that Miss Addison here might step into the part and make things even worse.”