Miss Tonks Turns to Crime

by M C Beaton

  And so, during the dancing after the wedding breakfast, when Cassandra went upstairs to change out of her wedding dress, Amanda followed her.

  Six months later, Lord and Lady Eston sat down to a late breakfast in their country home. Cassandra stared at her husband for a few moments and then said in a thin voice, “I wish you would not eat boiled eggs.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because you tap, tap, tap at the shell with your spoon and it irritates me. Now I come to think of it, there are many things about you that irritate me.”

  “The feeling is mutual,” he said, glaring at her. “Do you have to crumble your toast in that fidgety way?”

  What Cassandra was really saying was, “Why did you dance twice with pretty little Freda Hamilton at the ball last night?” And what he was in fact replying was, “You were a bit too much taken with the charms of that tall guardsman for my liking.” But neither of them had yet learned the hard lesson that married couples usually fight over anything but the thing that is really bothering them.

  “I’ll eat my toast any way I like,” said Cassandra, thinking, he doesn’t love me anymore.

  “Then leave me to have my breakfast in peace. Eat the way you like, and mind your own damned business.”

  Lord Eston ducked under the table as the coffee-pot went sailing over his head.

  Then he rose, walked to the end of the table and jerked his red-haired wife to her feet and shook her and she retaliated by kicking him hard on the shins.

  Then she slapped him hard.

  Both stood staring at each other in shocked silence.

  “I … I am sorry,” whispered Cassandra.

  “Prove it.” She kissed the end of his nose.

  “More.” She kissed his mouth.

  He swung her up into his arms and headed for the door.

  “Where are we going?” laughed Cassandra.

  “Where do you think?”

  Half an hour later, Cassandra wriggled her naked body into a more comfortable position under his and said with a giggle, “I never told you, but your precious Amanda warned me against you.”

  “What? What did she say?”

  “She hinted you had dark and passionate lusts.”

  “And what did you say?”

  “Good!”

  “Minx, kiss me again!”

  Sir Philip had sold the necklace, but not the diamond tiara. Now funds were desperately needed again. He could hardly believe they had all got through so much money. He went to his favourite jeweller and completed the deal to their mutual satisfaction. No need for Miss Tonks to dither on about paying her sister back. Lord Eston had bought his mother-in-law a new diamond tiara and necklace.

  In the shadows outside the shop, Bonnard watched him. He had been watching the Poor Relation Hotel for months, plotting revenge, hoping for revenge. He felt sure it was they who had incited the mob against him. Now he was nearly destitute, and hunger fueled his rage. He now knew Sir Philip by sight. This was the first time Sir Philip had ventured away from the genteel streets of the West End and into an area where it might be easy to attack him.

  Peering in the shop, Bonnard had seen the diamonds and seen the tiara. Greed was added to his anger. He waited until Sir Philip emerged and followed him until a crazy old building hanging over the street blotted out the sun.

  He ran forward and brought his cudgel down hard on Sir Philip’s head.

  “Hey!” shouted a voice and he could hear the rattle of the watch sounding from the end of the street. He stooped over Sir Philip’s crumpled body and seized the money from his pocket. He threw down the cudgel and ran for his life, fleeing through the twisting, smelly streets where starved, white faces stared at him curiously from rat-infested buildings.

  Miss Tonks was never to forget that awful day when an unconscious Sir Philip was borne into the Poor Relation on a door. The watch had found his address in a notebook in his pocket. Sir Philip looked as small as a child. Colonel Sandhurst had him carried to a vacant guest bedroom and sent for the physician while Mrs. Budley, Miss Tonks, and Lady Fortescue sat beside the bed, bathing Sir Philip’s forehead and praying for his life.

  For days the old man seemed to hang between life and death. Miss Tonks could not be moved from the bedside. She had a truckle-bed set up in Sir Philip’s room, where she snatched a little sleep between looking after her patient.

  And then, quite suddenly, he rallied. At first, he was weak and feeble and spoke little above a whisper. Then he began to suggest that champagne was what was needed to restore him. Then he began to tease Miss Tonks unmercifully about “having slept with him.” And finally he became his irascible, nasty old self.

  That was when they discovered that what they had feared was true: that he had been robbed of the money they so desperately needed.

  “Did you see who struck you down?” asked Lady Fortescue.

  “I’ve told you and told you,” snapped Sir Philip, “I don’t know. Now what are we to do?”

  “I did my best,” said Miss Tonks. “It’s not my fault you lost the stupid money.”

  “Nor mine neither, you withered old hag,” said Sir Philip.

  “Really, sir,” complained the colonel. “I swear you owe your life to Miss Tonks. Never had a man a more devoted nurse.”

  “Sorry,” mumbled Sir Philip. “But, demme, I ask if it is worth going on with all this. I mean, we always seem to be embroiled in frights and troubles. What about Eston? He’s worth a bob or too.”

  “Lord Eston knew he was paying us in a way when he bought Honoria that set of diamonds,” said Miss Tonks.

  “Well, I’m tired,” said Sir Philip. “I can’t do any more.”

  “We are all tired,” said Miss Tonks. “We could sell the hotel—it is a thriving business—and have plenty to lead a quiet life, perhaps in the country.”

  “With pigs round the door?” Sir Philip sneered. “I am not yet ready to rot in some country slum.”

  “If we had one more year,” said Lady Fortescue, “and budget this time, budget carefully. We have been spending money like water. We had enough out of that necklace to set all of us up for life. But I do not want to give in. Someone had better go and steal something.”

  “Not I,” said Miss Tonks. “Not again.”

  “Tell you what,” said the colonel, “we’ll draw straws.”

  Reluctantly the others agreed.

  Let it not be me, prayed Miss Tonks. I did not tell the others, but Cassandra offered me a home and I refused. If only I had taken her offer!

  I don’t mind drawing the short straw, thought Sir Philip. I’ll just fake a relapse and wait until they send someone else.

  Not me, thought the colonel nervously. It’s all right for Sir Philip. I’m not cut out for a life of crime. I’m beginning to hate this hotel. I want to be a gentleman again. But only if Lady Fortescue comes with me.

  I’m old and tired, mused Lady Fortescue, but if it’s me, then I’ll need to go ahead with it. I should be planning my funeral. Not living from hand to mouth. But the hotel was her pride and joy and she did not really want to leave it.

  Mrs. Budley sat silent, wide eyes watching as Sir Philip went to get the straws. She had a comfortable feeling she would be safe. It was the others who were always involved in dangers and alarms.

  Sir Philip brought the straws in. One by one they picked one out. Miss Tonks looked down at the long straw in her hands and thanked God for deliverance. The colonel smiled at his long straw and laid it carefully on the table beside Lady Fortescue’s equally long straw. Let that rascal, Sir Philip, cope. But Sir Philip had a long straw as well.

  So that left …

  Mrs. Budley sat with her head bowed, twisting the short straw this way and that in her trembling fingers.

  One by one the others rose and left the room. It was, thought Mrs. Budley, like being a shamed army officer being left alone by his comrades in a room with a loaded revolver.

  She sat for a long time by herself and then she ros
e and went downstairs. She would not talk about it, would not refer to it, and then perhaps the others would forget.

  Mr. Boyle thought he would surely go to heaven when he died, for he was spending his time in hell now. Somehow Mr. Davenport’s man of business had persuaded him that he and Mrs. Boyle should not subject the rest of their children to the rigours of a sea voyage and then had gone about finding schools for Amanda’s two brothers and three sisters.

  The shock of finding there actually was a Heatherington plantation had not left him. The fact that the overseer, Jamie Macdonald, a ferociously jolly Scotchman, seemed determined to oversee him added to his misery. Jamie was always there at six in the morning with his great braying laugh, suggesting they get to work before the heat of the day became too intense. What was worse was that Mr. Davenport’s man of business had had the folly to free the slaves and make them paid servants, and so he could not take his temper out on them any more than he could on an English servant, in fact less, because that document he had so gleefully signed, promising everything, had a clause in the small print saying that all servants were to be treated with courtesy.

  He wrote long and bitter letters to Mr. Davenport, but Mr. Glennon was the one who always replied, reminding him of his contract.

  Mrs. Boyle surprisingly adapted quite quickly to the heat and to the local society. It was all right for her, he thought bitterly. All she had to do with her time was to drive out in the carriage, making calls.

  And then, after the first year, a year during which he had dreamt of nothing but taking revenge on his son-inlaw, the plantation began to pay, began to flourish. He discounted the fact that it had anything to do with the hard-working Jamie and slowly began to grow proud of it. Soon he was awake and ready when Jamie arrived for him. He was praised by the other plantation owners on his success. Anti-slavery campaigners made a pilgrimage to see him, hailing him as enlightened, and he would brag about how he had freed the slaves himself.

  Mr. Davenport had been bracing himself for his father-inlaw’s return at the end of three years and was amazed when Mr. Boyle finally wrote to him saying that he liked the life and climate of Jamaica and preferred to stay.