Tuesday February 25, 2025

Beatrice Bests the Burglars, Scene 6

Welcome, I’m Mary Louisa Locke, the author of the USA Today best-selling Victorian San Francisco Mystery series and the Caelestis Science Fiction series. In this daily newsletter, I reflect on my life as an indie author trying to age gracefully. Occasionally, I will also publish some of my shorter fiction in this newsletter to read for free.

Daily Diary, Day 1637:

For the month of February, I am offering, for free, the fifth short story in my Victorian San Francisco mystery series, Beatrice Bests the Burglars. Today is scene 6, but if you would like to read the short post I did on why I wrote this short story, click HERE, or if you would like to read the Historical Tidbit on San Francisco boardinghouses in this period, click HERE.

Brief check-in: Yesterday I did a once-over to check the taxes, actually got in two, 15 minute walks, and one 5 min spell on the bike, and best of all, went back to working on the plot of the short story about Wong. Working on the two main new characters. So, all in all, a very good day, which I hope to duplicate today. But now for the next-to-last scene in the short story!

Beatrice Bests the Burglars
by M. Louisa Locke
Copyright 2019

Scene 6:

Taking one more glance out the window at the street and still not seeing anyone, Beatrice went quickly back down to the back steps, locking the doors to the Moffets’ rooms, then Mrs. Hewitt’s room, as she went. There wasn’t anything in Jamie and Ian’s room worth taking, and she had a brief thought that maybe if the burglars did look into that room, she could push them in and lock the door behind them.

But there are two of them, and how likely is it I’d be able to overpower even one grown adult man?

Besides, she didn’t think the men would come up to the attic, not if they found the silver in the dining room and discovered a way into the Steins’ rooms.

It’ll be just terrible if they steal Mrs. Stein’s jewelry. Her children will insist they leave the boardinghouse and move to a hotel where it’d be safer.

Beatrice went a few steps down the stairs to see if she could hear anything more. A faint pounding coming up from the kitchen, accompanied by swearing, suggested the young man, Jimmy, was finding it difficult to break the lock on the pantry or larder door.

She couldn’t hear anything from the man on the first floor, and her skin crawled at the thought the big man might be standing two floors below, in the stairwell, listening…

A loud bang and more swearing came from down in the kitchen, and Beatrice backed hastily back up the stairs as she heard the big man yell, “Jimmy, stop that infernal racket. What have you found?”

“Not a goldarned thing, George. The good stuff must be up in the dining room. Have you found anything worth taking?”

“I’ve found two desks, going to try to pry open the locks. Might be some cash lying around. Come on up, dining room’s on your left. Get the sideboard open. Bound to be something there. Then we’ll head upstairs.”

Maybe if she shouted down the stairs now, like she should’ve done when she first saw them outside her window, they would turn tail. Her husband often told her that most thieves were cowards and would run if confronted. But then, he’d been shot and killed by a thief he’d confronted, so that thought wasn’t such a comfort.

What if they do run, right down the back stairs into the kitchen, just as Annie and the baby get home?

Unbidden, she saw the image of her mistress being pushed aside, the baby falling, and one of the men hurting little Tilly as she tried to stop them.

A moment later, Beatrice was back in her room, kneeling down to pull out an oblong wooden box from the bottom of her wardrobe. Taking the box, she put it on the top of her chest of drawers, pushing her hairbrush and comb out of the way. Using the smallest key on her ring, she unlocked the box and opened the lid. A revolver lay there, nestled in cotton, its long barrel and polished wooden stock gleaming dully.

Her husband had given this gun to her soon after they married. He worried about all the nights he had to leave her alone while he was on duty. He worried about the angry men he’d caught and sent to prison, men who’d threatened to take revenge on his family once they got out. So, he’d gotten her the revolver.

She knew it was loaded, having cleaned and reloaded it herself in April, as she did every year on the anniversary of her husband’s death. He’d taught her how to disassemble and clean the army-issue Colt, then load each of the six cylinders with fresh powder and balls, leaving out the oil that he said would damage the powder over time. Then, she would carefully put in the caps and lower the half-cocked hammer, returning the gun to its box until the next year.

She was never sure why she did this. Somehow, it made her feel closer to Peter. Maybe it was the memories of how they’d pack a picnic basket, rent a carriage and go outside of town, where they would practice target shooting together. Maybe it was the memories of Sunday evenings, when the two of them would sit at the kitchen table, cleaning and reloading their guns together, while they talked companionably about the coming week.

But looking at the revolver today, all she could think of was that no god-forsaken thief was going to hurt another person she loved!

Taking the gun out of its cotton cocoon, she marched down the hall to the back stairs. Pausing, she heard the shout of triumph that told her Jimmy had found the silver in the dining room sideboard. This meant the next place they would come was to search the second-floor bedrooms. She needed to stop them before that happened.

Beatrice stood at the top of the back stairs, hesitating for what seemed forever, trying to figure out what to do next. A clanking noise, she assumed from the silverware, soup tureens, and other unbreakable but valuable objects being dumped into a bag, proved that at least one of the men, probably Jimmy, was still in the dining room. But she couldn’t tell if the other man, George, was there as well. He could still be working on the desks in Annie’s office or have already used the front stairs to get to the bedrooms.

Then with dread, she heard Annie and Tilly’s voices, accompanied by a baby’s cries. Exactly as she’d feared, they were home and would be coming in the kitchen door any moment.

Without a second thought, she ran down and round two flights of the narrow stairs until she got to the first-floor landing. She stopped there, thinking that no matter what happened, she could make sure neither man came down these back stairs into the kitchen. Also, from this position, once she heard Annie in the kitchen, she could yell for her to leave and get help.

There was a door between the landing and the hallway on this floor––the traditional green, baize-covered door that helped mask cooking smells. Normally it was closed, but evidently one of the men had propped it open with the heavy metal doorstop that Kathleen or Tilly used when they were going back and forth to the dining room, their arms filled with trays. This explained why she’d been able to hear the man who’d been shouting down to Jimmy so clearly.

As she looked down the hall towards the front door, Jimmy, the young man with the cap, came out of the formal parlor on her left, carrying a bulging sack in one hand and holding one of the silver candlesticks that sat on the upright piano in his other hand. He said, looking towards the open door of the small parlor, “George, look what all I got!”

The bigger man came out of the small parlor, his hands empty. He pushed his derby back on his head and said with plain disgust, “The one desk I got open, nothing in it but a bunch of papers. Time to check out the bedrooms upstairs and see what jewelry we can get…Where the hell did she come from, Jimmy?”

Beatrice watched as the young man turned towards her, his eyes widening in surprise. She raised the revolver, automatically cocking the hammer and resting her elbow in her left hand to steady the gun the way Peter had trained her to do, saying, “Drop the bag on the floor, Jimmy, and both of you run right out that front door. I swear, this gun’s got six bullets, with one in the chamber, and if you both don’t leave, I will shoot.”

George laughed and said, “Jimmy, never you mind grandma. I’ll take care of her.” Then he strode down the hall towards her.

And Beatrice pulled the trigger.

To be continued…

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