Beatrice Bests the Burglars by M. Louisa Locke

Author:M. Louisa Locke [Locke, M. Louisa]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: M. Louisa Locke

Jerking awake, Beatrice’s heart pounded, and for a moment the room, glowing with a bright heat, felt so strange that she wondered if she were still dreaming. Had she been awakened by some more of those infernal firecrackers?

As she sat up and looked around, she decided that daylight wasn’t particularly kind to the old chest of drawers and wardrobe across the room, showing up every scratch. Since she seldom spent time in her bedroom during the day, she’d never noticed this before, or noticed how faded the bed quilt had become from decades of washing. Not that Kathleen didn’t make sure the room stayed spotlessly clean, and Annie had bought her a cheerful, red carpet for the floor last Christmas and had the Miss Moffets sew up curtains that matched it perfectly. No, it was more that candle-light softened the edges of everything, hid the effects of age.

This probably explained why each morning the mirror over her washstand reflected back a face that, to her mind, hadn’t changed much since she was a young woman. Maybe the face was a little rounder and there were a few more wrinkles around the eyes, but it wasn’t the face of the old woman she saw when she looked in the kitchen mirror in the daylight.

A noise from outside got her attention. She glanced at the clock on the table beside her bed and saw it was three-thirty. Mercy! I’ve slept for nearly two hours. No wonder I feel out of sorts.

She heard the noise again. Seemed to be a man’s voice, quiet-like, but definitely coming from the side of the house. Maybe Annie and the baby were back already. The plan was for Mr. Nate to drop them and Tilly off in the alley behind the house and go back to the park so he could bring the others home later. This would give Annie time to get Abigail down for a nap, maybe take one herself, before everyone came home.

But Mr. Nate wouldn’t have gotten down from the carriage and left the horses. So, who had she heard? Could be Mr. Chapman or Mr. Harvey had come back early as well.

She pushed herself off the bed and went quickly over to the washstand to rinse her face, sticky with the heat. As she poured tepid water into the washbowl, she tried to figure whether she had time for a bit of a sponge-off so she could put on a clean dress before going on downstairs. Then she heard voices.

“Hisst…George, see anyone about?”

“No, and I looked in at all the windows. Don’t look like anyone’s at home. You ready to do this, Jimmy?”

When she realized that she was hearing two men, neither of them men she knew, Beatrice hastily dried her face and tip-toed to the window, being careful to stand where it would be hard for someone on the ground to see her. She first spied a wide-shouldered man wearing a derby who stood near the front parlor’s side window.

Then she

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