Hugh got to his feet and peered at the nigh-dead pot plant in the corner. “I’m sure you did…until he got too close to the truth.” He placed the mug on the desk. “For Lady T was no abbreviation but simply a play on words.” A grimace twisted his lips. “The Tea Lady.”
Mrs Benson merely flapped her hands. “Sure yer not ill, lad? Yer lookin’ a bit peaky to me.”
“Of course.” Hugh swayed. “Because you put arsenic in my tea, did you not? And now you’ll concoct some tale about my being sick. See me to a hackney? Is that what you did with Ross? Will the driver be your son? The leader of the Ravens, a Lieutenant John Robert Benson.”
Mrs Benson shrugged those broad shoulders and stared to the ceiling before heaving a sigh. “Yer always were a clever lad. Aye, John’s my boy and has called me Lady Tea since he were a cub. Thought it were funny.” Her gaze dawdled back down. “And dear Mister Thornton were a clever one too. He were close, I could feel it in m’bones, sticking his nose where it ought not to be, so I dished him my special tea after some meetin’ and off he toddled. My boy picked him off the streets puking his guts not a half hour later, told Mister Thornton he’d take him to a quack.”
Sheer fury pulsed within Hugh, nape clammy with abhorrence. That such a good man, an honourable man and father, had been slain with such cold forethought. That Ross haddied alone, in pain, with Benson looking on. “But he let him die,” Hugh rasped. “And then you set the scene in his study.”
Mrs Benson smiled. “It were a magnificent plan.”
“You stole maps, documents, read private letters. I talked with the other clerks who said Thomas has been getting increasingly frustrated as documents were going missing from this desk.”
“His Nibs is a weak old codger,” she muttered. “Always leaving his desk unattended and no one noticed me. But it don’t matter now as you’ll be meeting Mister Grim soon. I even doubled the dose. And don’t think to be calling out or my boy will visit yer young ward. Thornton’s little girl, ain’t it?”
“You wretch–”
“Look, yer already lurching in them fine boots o’ yers. So aye, I’ll just say yer’ve got the pukes and see yer to a hackney. But it’ll be John again and this time he’ll just dump yer in the river. When they find yer, bloated and half nibbled by fish, no one will know what happened.”
Hugh frowned and placed a steadying hand to the desk. “My one question, before I meet Mr Grim, is how your son knew I was an infiltrator?”
She laughed, a girlish incongruous shriek. “I were there, dearie. In the Whitby tavern by the river, havin’ a sip o’ bub in the corner the second time yer attended a Ravens’ meetin’. I always inspect the new recruits and what a shock I had when yer blond mop strolled through the door in all that clobber.” Her lips flattened to a slit. “Be glad to get rid of yer.”
“Well, I’m loath to disappoint you, Mrs Benson, but I fed your tea to that pot plant and re-filled it from my hipflask.”
She floundered, stumbled back against the wall before a scuffle and shouts carried from the corridor.
The door burst open and Lieutenant John Robert Benson, scowling and with his hands roped, was thrust into the room bytwo thickset Home Office soldiers with Sir Edmund following, fists clenched and face taut.
Amelia marched in as the soldiers nodded and left, her lips curving in a triumphant grin. “We got him, Hugh. He was waiting outside in an old hackney.”
“Don’t say a bloody word, Ma.”
“Too late,” Hugh drawled, and he strode to Mrs Benson, who stood her ground, face scrunched to a sneer.
“You also tried to kill me when I was last here, did you not? Knew I’d soon discover your family connection, but I poured your tea into the plant. So your son sent Darnell to shoot me instead. You were getting desperate.”
“Bloody traitor, yer deserved it,” shouted Benson, bound wrists straining. “I’ll slit–”
“No, you won’t,” boomed Sir Edmund, eyes afire and lips a twisted snarl. Hugh had never witnessed him thus, but for the first time, he could see the vehemence of that young swain who’d saved his wife from an asylum. “And as for you, Mrs Benson…”
She folded her arms and pressed her lips together.
Amelia stepped forward. “She’s been selling the information to whomever she could, Sir Edmund. Riffling through documents for her son and his revolutionists. Leaking officers’ names and locatio–”
A crash and Benson swivelled to charge at Amelia.
Hugh yelled, wiped sweat from his eyes as the whoreson rammed his head into her chest.
She tumbled to the floor as Benson spun for the door.
Vision red, Hugh hurtled, grabbed the whoreson’s collar, swung him around.
A knee sought his groin but he punched a fist to Benson’s jaw, another to his gut. With a growl, he shoved the thrashing man against the wall and pulled back another fist.
To finish it.
For Ross.
