A Question of Holmes (Charlotte Holmes #4)(34)

So would the next girl, and the next.

That was the tragedy of it: so many roles in Hamlet, and only two written for women. If Quigley and Larkin had any sense, they’d be reimagining some of the male roles for their talented female cast—there wasn’t any reason, say, that Hamlet’s schoolfriends Rosencrantz and Guildenstern couldn’t be played by girls. There wasn’t any reason that the title role couldn’t be, for that matter. But I wasn’t the director.

I wasn’t fantasy-casting the show, either. The notes I was taking—and I was taking copious notes—had a different aim altogether. I was here, primarily, to solve a mystery. When sleuthing, I refused on principle to theorize in advance of the facts.

But that meant, of course, that I needed . . . facts.

Florence was confident, easy in her manners: this meant nothing. It would take confidence to orchestrate a series of “accidents” under everyone’s noses. The next two girls, Keiko and Beatrice, had been at Oxford the year before. (Keiko did an excellently understated Ophelia, all subtle, discordant worry.) The first boy to audition, Asher, hadn’t been, and I noted how short he was, how he licked his lips before he began to speak. His eyes kept fluttering over to Theo and Rupert and me, up in the back corner, which meant everything and also nothing. (Theo was, again, very attractive.) A pair of twins got up and asked shaky permission to perform a scene together, rather than a monologue; I noted their nervousness and was writing new?, when Rupert murmured, “That’s a brave move on Mateo’s part.”

“Braver than he and Elio were last year,” Theo said; again the note of approval. He’d been appreciatively nodding through all the monologues we’d heard, cheering loudly after they’d stepped down. “Last year,” he told me, “they split the part of a manservant. Getting their feet wet. Good sense of humor on Teo, and Elio’s great. Brought snacks to rehearsal all the time last year. Good guys.”

Quigley and Larkin consulted; Teo and Elio were allowed to perform together. They were passable actors, but barely. I wrote snacks in my notebook. I noted Theo’s hand on the armrest between us, his eyes drifting down to the notebook in my lap, like a lion lazily regarding his prey.

I did not like sitting next to him. I didn’t like it at all.

I should mention that, as usual, I was writing in my own shorthand, one I had developed as a child; it borrowed something from calligraphy, something from number substitution. Any notes I was making would have looked like scribbled abbreviations to a pair of prying eyes. And Theo’s were.

Rupert leaned over. “I like your doodles.”

“Nervous hands,” I said with an apologetic smile. “‘Doodles’ is a generous description.”

Theo had been so long-limbed and casual, so utterly fixed on the stage, that I was surprised when his name was called next. He jogged down the aisle to a flurry of high fives; he was well liked here, despite his seeming tendency to isolate himself from everyone but Rupert and Anwen. Trauma could do that, I knew.

So could guilt.

And perhaps that’s what he drew on for his monologue, that snarl inside him, the wanting to shove it all into a container that could fit it. “I’m doing a monologue from the Scottish play, as the main . . . Scottish character,” he said, and there was a titter through the audience.

“Macbeth,” Rupert said, too loudly, and was shushed. “He’s doing Macbeth,” he said to me in a whisper, because perhaps I hadn’t heard him when he was louder.

“It’s bad luck, isn’t it? To even say the name.”

He looked like he wanted to clap a hand over his mouth. “He’s really pushing it,” he said. “So many of us are already on edge—I knew he was planning to find a monologue outside of Hamlet, but—”

“‘Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,’” Theo was saying, and I waved Rupert quiet. Not that I would have needed to. The room itself went quiet, and telescoped in, and in, until all I was watching was Theo’s face. The quick knit of his brow. The back of his hand, quickly, across the forehead, and then his feet, pacing—or no, beginning to pace, but not, and all the while the language spun out of him like he was making straw into gold.

“‘A tale told by an idiot,’” he said, “‘full of sound and fury, / signifying nothing,’” and there was humor creeping in the depths of his desperate voice, and it was that that sold it.

I realized, after he’d finished speaking, after the silence gave way to applause and Theo was trotting gaily up the stage, that my pen was still poised over my page.

“Theo,” Rupert said, extending a hand to Theo as he walked down our row. They shook. Rupert reached his free hand to grasp Theo’s arm. “You know you’re a marvel, don’t you?”

He grinned. “Never a marvel til it’s proven,” he said, and I liked him, then, and I wanted to be far away.

Below us, Quigley and Larkin were shuffling papers. Larkin announced a break; we’d begin again in five.

“You’re very good,” I told Theo, still processing.

“Ah,” he said, kicking back in his seat. “There it is. Your real voice. It’s hoarser than what I’d imagined.”

The tension inside me kicked into high gear. Had I had a gun, it would have been out and trained on his forehead.