Miss Tonks Turns to Crime

by M C Beaton

  “I am dining here with the Boyles this evening,” he said. “I shall see you then. Perhaps you would both care to join us?”

  “We cannot do that,” said Miss Tonks. “Such an adventure. We are going to have a dead cat put in with the mutton roast. Such a horrible specimen, too. Do show his lordship the cat, Cassandra.”

  “I have already seen the cat,” said Lord Eston, “and I think it is all a mad, bad, and dangerous idea. You will draw Bonnard’s attention to yourselves. Good day, ladies.”

  “Do you know,” said Miss Tonks after he had closed the door behind him, “I really do not think his engagement suits him. He is becoming quite old and pompous.”

  To Lord Eston’s dismay, Mr. Davenport was also a guest at the dinner table that evening. It transpired he had offered to buy the Jamaican plantation. Lord Eston, who thought Davenport had an infernal cheek in the way he was courting Amanda, decided to let him be gulled by Boyle. He deserved it. He had made inquiries about this Davenport and found to his surprise that the young man was extremely rich, having inherited several estates and coal-mines from his father.

  Lord Eston glanced around the dining-room. Cassandra and Miss Tonks were there. Miss Tonks still sported that dreadful blond wig and her cheeks still bulged with wax-pads. He wondered how she managed to eat. Then he remembered that it was only recently that the Dutch-doll look had been in fashion and quite a number of women had worn wax-pads to plump out their cheeks and yet had managed to appear to eat quite comfortably.

  Cassandra still looked paler than usual, and he assumed his kiss had upset her and came more than ever determined to explain himself, although he did not yet know what kind of explanation he could give.

  But there was another reason for Cassandra’s pallor. She and Miss Tonks had gone out that afternoon with the dead cat and had given it to Sir Philip, who had said he had everything arranged. On their return, Cassandra became sure their rooms had been searched. She was very precise about laying out her toilet-things and she knew they had been moved. The investigation of Bonnard was not very funny anymore. Cassandra wanted a strong shoulder to lean on, but Lord Eston’s strong shoulders were both at another table where he was dining with his pretty fiancée.

  “Have you an interest in sugar plantations?” Lord Eston was asking Mr. Davenport. “None at all,” said the young man in a vague, light voice.

  Lord Eston had decided to leave the matter of the sugar plantation alone, but his conscience was beginning to nag him.

  “Then how will you run it?”

  “I won’t,” said Mr. Davenport. He suddenly smiled at Amanda, who smiled back and then raised her fan to cover her blushes. “Mr. Boyle will.”

  “Here!” Mr. Boyle looked alarmed. “I’m only arranging the sale.”

  “Yes, but you told me you knew all about the business,” said Mr. Davenport patiently, “and I don’t know anything, so I’ve decided to send you out there to handle it all.”

  “I can’t go. My daughter’s getting married.”

  “After the wedding.”

  Lord Eston thought he could practically see the wheels and cogs of Mr. Boyle’s busy brain revolving behind his eyes.

  “Very well, then,” he said. “You put up the money first and I’ll secure the lands and property for you.”

  “I hoped you would say that. I will give you the money when you leave, and the same sum again to act as my agent. You will remain in Jamaica, with Mrs. Boyle, of course, for the period of three years, and you will therefore be able to send me frequent bulletins.”

  Mr. Boyle sat deep in thought. It was an enormous sum this young man was offering. Vast. More money than he had tricked out of anyone in the whole of his life. He could take the money and go. Stick it out for a year and then write and say that the whole venture had collapsed due to flood, hurricane, and famine, and that he himself was ruined. Then he and Mrs. Boyle could return and demand that this young man recompense them for their time and trouble and hardship. Brilliant, he thought, half closing his eyes.

  “Yes, all right, young man,” he said, opening his eyes to their fullest. Mr. Boyle then glanced at Lord Eston, who was looking edgy and not his usual urbane self. How tiresome he had turned out to be, and not any little bit as gullible as he had imagined. Now Bonnard had told him only that afternoon, when Amanda had gone out driving with Davenport, that Aubrey Davenport was reckoned to be one of the richest men in England. Eston had a title, but he had shown a nasty shrewd streak when it came to parting with money. When Amanda had introduced Davenport that afternoon, Mr. Boyle had promptly suggested the plantation deal and had been delighted when Davenport had appeared to take the bait.

  What with planning with Bonnard the downfall of the Poor Relation, Mr. Boyle had not had any time to urge his wife into being sweet to her dying sister, Mrs. Sinclair. He began to feel overworked and ill done by.

  At the door to the dining-room stood Bonnard, resplendent in evening dress. He snapped his fingers and the joint was wheeled in in its covered dish.

  Lord Eston saw Cassandra grow tense.

  With a flourish, Bonnard removed the silver cover. And there, in all its glory, was a beautifully cooked, elegantly dressed leg of mutton.

  “No cat,” murmured Cassandra.

  “Dear me,” said Miss Tonks. “It is the first time, I think, that I have ever known Sir Philip to fail.” Lord Eston himself relaxed and began to flirt with Amanda. But to his annoyance she kept throwing him scared little looks and then glancing sideways out of the corner of her eyes to see if Mr. Davenport had noticed.

  Miss Tonks did not like to tell Cassandra that she was actually glad Sir Philip’s plan had failed. She settled down to enjoy her dinner, her enjoyment sharpened by the recent memory of hungry days.

  There were some distinguished guests in the dining-room that evening. There was old Lady Rumbelow with her daughter, Mrs. Trust, and her granddaughter, Fanny.

  “I wonder when my sister will get in touch with you,” said Miss Tonks to Cassandra.

  “Mama already has.”

  “How so? When?”

  “She sent a letter to the Poor Relation and a page brought it round.”

  “Mercy! One of the pages from the Poor Relation! My dear, what if the boy was recognized?”

  “He was in plain livery and one small page looks much like another.”

  “So what did Honoria say?”

  “She said she would give me a month to realize the depths to which I had sunk and then she and Papa would fetch me and take me to that seminary. Mama says by that time I should be begging her to be taken away.”

  “Foolish woman.” Miss Tonks shook her head and they finished their mutton in silence.

  After the plates had been cleared away, Bonnard stood proudly in the middle of the room and raised his arms.

  “My lord, ladies and gentlemen,” he announced. “I have engaged the services of the royal confectioner to create a delicacy for you. See!”

  He pointed triumphantly to the door.

  A small table on wheels moved slowly into the centre of the room, pushed by two waiters. On it stood a sugar lion, a magnificent beast with snarling jaws and one paw raised. Beside him stood a palm tree with a toffee trunk and green spun-sugar leaves.

  Everyone clapped. It was a stupendous creation.

  Another table with plates was brought up next to it. A waiter handed Bonnard a long silver knife. He turned and bowed low before old Lady Rumbelow and held the knife out like a ceremonial sword.

  “Will your ladyship do my humble hotel the honour of making the first cut?”

  “Do it yourself, man,” said Lady Rumbelow.

  “Let me!” cried Fanny Trust.

  Amanda Boyle rose and went over to the sugar lion. “You are not resident here,” she said to Fanny. “I am. I should have the honour of cutting the lion.”

  “Ladies, ladies,” pleaded Bonnard.

  But Lady Rumbelow settled the matter. “Sit down again, Fanny, and stop making a c
ake of yourself.” Fanny flounced back into her seat.

  With a triumphant look all round, Amanda seized the long thin knife and slashed down on the lion’s back.

  She stood and stared.

  Sticky dark-red blood was oozing down over the white sugar, tufts of mangy fur seemed to sprout suddenly from the lion’s back.

  Lord Eston went over and picked up a heavy silver spoon and brought it smartly down on the lion’s head. Pieces of spun sugar flew about, a cloud of sugar dust rose to the chandelier.

  And there, revealed to all, was the dead and mangy head of a cat.

  Amanda began to scream. Fanny Trust, not to be outdone in sensibility, began to scream as well.

  Lord Eston looked at Cassandra.

  Cassandra had a feeling that he might betray her, that he might think the poor relations had gone too far.

  She rose to her feet and addressed Miss Tonks in a loud voice, “Come, let us quit this squalid hotel. Mr. Bonnard, we leave in the morning.” And with Miss Tonks scurrying behind her, she made a magnificent exit.

  Chapter Seven

  Envy, hatred, and malice, and all

  uncharitableness.

  —THE BOOK OF COMMON PRAYER

  “SO YOU’VE come back to us.” Sir Philip squinted in the candle-light at Cassandra and Miss Tonks. “You could have done more.”

  “I doubt it,” said Cassandra. “Someone had been searching our rooms.” It was the evening following the cat-dinner. “The story is in the newspapers this morning. How did you persuade the royal confectioner to make such a disgusting object?”

  “Disgusting be demned. That was a work of art. Despard spent all day on it. Sent a scruffy man round to the kitchen door to imply he had stolen it from the kitchens of his master and would let it go for a crown. Bonnard snapped it up, like the greedy fool he is.”

  “I think you went too far,” ventured Miss Tonks bravely. “I felt quite ill.”

  “Oh, my, my, my,” jeered Sir Philip. “What nicety! What sensibility! And yet I suppose you two ladies drove into London under the bodies rotting on the gibbets without a second look.”

  Horrible man, thought Cassandra, yet knowing Sir Philip spoke the truth.

  “I have found out the identity of that highwayman,” said Cassandra.

  Mrs. Budley, who had been sitting a little apart, stitching at the hem of a handkerchief, looked up and blushed.

  “It was Lord Eston!”

  All, with the exception of Miss Tonks, looked in amazement at Cassandra.

  “Eston?” barked the colonel. “What’s he got to do with it?”

  In a halting voice, Miss Tonks told them the truth. Sir Philip began to dance about the room. “Oh, wondrous.” he cried. “How prime. If by any chance we’re caught out, it will be up to Eston to bail us out.”

  “You should have told the truth in the first place, Miss Tonks,” said Lady Fortescue.

  “But I was brave. It was my idea to hold up the coach,” gasped Miss Tonks. “You’re always jeering and laughing at me, Sir Philip, and it’s past bearing.”

  “Here now.” Sir Philip stopped in mid-pirouette and knelt down in front of Miss Tonks and took her hand in his. “I’m a waspish old fellow and you’re such a sheep, you ask for insults. But you were brave and, demme, now I look at you, you’ve changed into a fashionable lady of the ton. Dear me, Miss Tonks, we’ll need to put a guard on you, or we’ll be beating the fellows off with clubs.”

  “This calls for champagne,” said the colonel. “Tell John to bring up a bottle of the best, Betty.”

  They were like a family, thought Cassandra, when they were all sitting around, drinking champagne. Aloud, she said, “So what happens now?”

  “I think we can rest on our laurels,” said Lady Fortescue. “Tupple’s is trounced. Ours is now undisputedly the finest hotel in London. We are placing an advertisement in the newspapers to the effect that we are closing for the month of February. We shall have the best beds put in and the old ones sold off. They all have old-fashioned brocade hangings, so insanitary, and linen is all the crack now, and mahogany posts.”

  “Won’t … won’t that cost a great deal of money?” asked Miss Tonks, who still had hopes of sending her sister the money for the jewels.

  “Thanks to you, or Lord Eston, we do have a great deal of money,” said Lady Fortescue. Miss Tonks twitched uneasily. When Harriet James had been with them, she had kept the books, and kept a check on the money. She had shopped at the cheapest markets early in the morning for produce. For a confessed republican, Despard had paradoxically extravagant ways and preferred to spend money on the best ingredients and have them delivered.

  Mrs. Budley, delighted now that she could feel at ease with her friend again, suggested she take Miss Tonks round the hotel to show her the improvements that had already been made. Miss Tonks trailed after her, noticing all the new crystal and fine bone china in the dining-room, the new Turkey red carpet on the stairs, and was glad they could not go into the bedrooms to see what had been done there, because the sight of so much profligate expenditure was making her decidedly uneasy. Her worry increased later that evening when Lady Fortescue took her aside and gave her a large sum of money to buy new clothes. Sir Philip and the colonel were already sporting new coats of the finest tailoring and Lady Fortescue was not in her customary black but in a scarlet-and-white merino gown.

  As she lay in bed that night next to Mrs. Budley, Miss Tonks said, “Eliza, I cannot help thinking that the money for the sale of the diamonds is not going to last very long. With the war going on, prices of everything are dreadful. And we are burning beeswax candles, not tallow. Whoeverheard of an hotel with beeswax candles? We could have shared out that money and perhaps … I have not suggested this before … perhaps you and I, Eliza, could take a small and modest lodging somewhere.”

  But there is a difference between forty, Miss Tonks, and thirty, Mrs. Budley, and Mrs. Budley still dreamt of marrying again.

  “Everything will be all right,” she said sleepily. “We have survived this far.” Miss Tonks sighed. “And there’s Cassandra. Too fine a girl to be locked up in that dreadful seminary. I had hoped …”

  “Hoped what?”

  “Lord Eston seemed quite taken with her. But men are so stupid, so incalculable. Why did he get engaged to an empty-headed little nobody like Amanda Boyle?”

  “Men like empty-headed nobodies, Letitia.” Mrs. Budley giggled. “There is hope for me yet!”

  Lord Eston, while the poor relations slept, was being entertained by the Boyles at Tupple’s. He had taken them to his box at the opera and to the ball afterwards. The fact that Mr. Boyle had seen fit to ask Aubrey Davenport as well had not pleased him.

  Their desultory conversation was interrupted by a knock at the door and then Bonnard walked in. “A word with you in private, Mr. Boyle,” he said.

  Mr. Boyle went out with him and was away about half an hour, finally returning in a high state of rage. Bonnard had accused him of being a parasite and had told him that either he packed his bags and left, or paid his bill.

  Not wanting to let either Lord Eston or Mr. Davenport know he had been living free, Mr. Boyle started by ranting against Bonnard and saying he would walk out but that they had nowhere to go. Then he turned to Lord Eston and said, “I have just remembered. You were kind enough to offer us the hospitality of your town house. We are delighted to accept.” But Lord Eston thought immediately of all his fine books and art treasures. He thought of returning home one night and finding his home stripped and the lying Mr. Boyle blaming it on some mythical burglars.

  “I regret my house is being decorated at the moment,” he said.

  “That’s all right,” said Mr. Boyle cheerfully. “Smell of paint never bothered us.”

  “Not only the decorators but the builders as well,” said Lord Eston firmly.

  “If I may be of service.” Mr. Davenport looked around. “You are welcome to my modest home. My aunt is in residence, and with the pre
sence of Mrs. Boyle, all would be respectable.”

  “That is vewy good of you,” lisped Amanda. Why did she have to say “vewy”? thought Lord Eston.

  He and Mr. Davenport left together. “It is time we talked,” said Lord Eston.

  “By all means.” Mr. Davenport fell into step beside him. “I will have my man follow your carriage.”

  At Lord Eston’s house, he led Mr. Davenport into the library and offered him wine and then settled down to get rid of what was annoying him.

  “Mr. Davenport, you seem blissfully unaware of the fact that it is I who is to marry Miss Boyle and not you.”

  “You must forgive me,” said the young man, looking not in the slightest put out. “I worship from afar.”

  “Not far enough.”

  “Alas, what else could I do? The Boyles had to have somewhere to stay and I could not bear the sight of beauty in distress. But you claim the prize, Lord Eston. All I can hope for is an invitation to your wedding. I beg your forgiveness. I did not mean to upset you by my behaviour. But may I point out, my lord, that for a man in love—and it must be love, for the Boyles are not wealthy—you often do not appear to approve of your fiancée. She was talking to her mother during the opera and you told her sharply to be quiet.”

  “But I am an oddity. I go to the opera to hear the music.”

  “How strange.”

  Lord Eston eyed him narrowly. Aubrey Davenport was dressed like a fop, had the manners of a fop, and appeared to have the intelligence of a potato. Still …

  “The reason I did not invite the Boyles to stay here is because my future father-in-law may prove to be a trifle light-fingered. Pray, be on your guard.”

  “After the episode of the cat, I felt sure the Boyles would wish to leave the hotel and I have already put all my valuables in storage.” Mr. Davenport gave Lord Eston a limpid gaze.

  “So you know about Boyle! Why on earth did you agree to buy that plantation, which I doubt even exists?”

  Mr. Davenport lowered his pale eyelashes. “I did it to please Miss Boyle,” he murmured.