Death of a Chimney Sweep - M. C. Beaton [53]
She took it into the kitchen and attacked the hasps with a hammer until she had broken them and opened the case. It was stuffed full of banknotes. With trembling fingers, she lifted them all out onto the kitchen table and began to count them. The notes amounted to nearly 780,000 pounds.
Milly stared at the money. She thought of her late bullying husband who had made her life a misery and then she thought of Tam’s perfidy. Suddenly as cold as ice, she packed up the money. Then she went upstairs and packed two suitcases with her clothes. She went outside and covered up the hole where the attaché case had reposed and covered the raw earth with clods of grass and weeds. She returned to the house, took off her engagement ring, and left it on the kitchen table.
She then went out, locking the door behind her. She drove to Inverness airport where she bought herself a ticket to London.
Once in London, she booked into the Waldorf Hotel in Aldwych, then went to a travel agent and reserved a cabin on a cruise of the Caribbean on a liner due to leave Southampton on the following day. She had not used the money in the suitcase… yet. That would do for spending money on board.
Tam was lying in his bed in his flat in Strathbane, nursing one of the worst hangovers he could ever remember having. He had been careful not to drink too much in Milly’s company but he had run into some colleagues the night before and set out on a drinking spree.
His doorbell rang. With a groan, he struggled out of bed and went to open the door. A fellow reporter stood there.
“Where have you been?” he demanded. “Harcourt’s going apeshit. I heard him phone you at that widow woman’s and give you a rocket.”
“But I wasnae there,” exclaimed Tam, who suddenly felt as if the bottom had dropped out of his stomach. “Did you hear what he said?”
“Oh, jist ranted on about he knew you were romancing the Davenport woman for a story and getting engaged to her was maybe going a bit far because she could sue you for breach o’ promise. Something like that.”
Tam swore and clutched his aching head. “It’s nothing like that,” he howled. “I’ve got to see her.”
“You’d better see Harcourt first if you want to keep your job.”
It was evening before Tam got to Drim. He found the door locked and let himself in with the key Milly had given him. He went into the kitchen. Milly’s engagement ring sparkled up at him from the table. He sat down heavily. Harcourt had told him he had thought he was talking to Tam because Tam had always answered the phone.
It’ll be all right, thought Tam desperately. I’ll wait until she comes home and explain everything.
He waited and waited all the long night but Milly did not return.
In a villa outside Rio de Janeiro a week later, the four wanted men sat on the terrace of a rented villa just outside the city with their four wives. They had not wanted to bring their wives but Prosser said it would be dangerous to leave them behind in case one of them opened her big, silly mouth.
“The new passports should be ready today,” said Prosser.
“But we’ve already got good forgeries,” protested Ferdinand Castle.
“Better be on the safe side,” said Prosser.
Bromley shifted uneasily in his rattan chair. He wished he had given himself over to the police. The whole thing was a nightmare. Why had he let Prosser talk him into something so idiotic as trying to set Davenport’s house on fire? Milly left the door open during the day, and he had hidden in one of the attics until nightfall. Why had he let Prosser dominate him and frighten him? If he turned Queen’s evidence, then he might get a considerably reduced sentence. Maybe in one of those open prisons. He was tired of his nagging wife and frightened of Prosser.
It was Prosser’s psychopathic vanity that had led them to exile