Dead as a Scone (25 page)

“A lot worse than before I drank the ipecac—a form of torture that has been abandoned in England.”

Cory laughed. “The trouble with plant poisons is that they can sneak up on you. Did you ever hear the story of the man who jumped off the Eiffel Tower? Halfway down he said, ‘So far so good.’ Some plant poisons are like that. You feel fine for a while—then blammo!” He added, “Emesis is still a recommended treatment here in the States.”

“Emesis?”

“Throwing up. Particularly for the kind of poison you ingested.”

Flick interrupted. “You guys talk. I’m going back to the laboratory to get something else for Nigel.”

“I can’t wait,” Nigel said under his breath as he maneuvered himself upright into a sitting position on the sofa. Then he spoke more loudly into the telephone, “Cory, what exactly did I drink?”

“From Flick’s description, I’m pretty sure that the tea she brewed was laced with
Nerium oleander
leaves. Brits call the plant ‘rose bay’; we call it ‘oleander’ on this side of the pond.”

“A tall shrub with long, slender leaves and pink or white flowers.”

“That’s the one. Oleander is an evergreen that’s quite common throughout Europe and the United States. Most owners don’t realize that every part of the plant is poisonous—leaves, twigs, seeds, sap, the works.”

“Poison as in sick or poison as in dead?”

“The latter. Oleander poisoning is a popular method of suicide in Sri Lanka.” His voice grew somber. “How much tea did you drink?”

“A couple of sips at the most. It tasted foul.”

“Oleandrin is very bitter,” Cory said. “That’s the primary cardiac glycoside that makes oleander deadly. A sufficient dose will cause cardiac arrhythmia and eventually death.”

“Thank you for sharing.”

To Nigel’s annoyance, Cory took the mild sarcasm as an invitation to continue his lecture. “Oleandrin is very powerful; a little goes a long way. Purportedly, the water in a vase used to hold a spray of oleander blooms will turn into a lethal solution. The most unusual oleandrin victims I’ve heard about were a group of campers who got sick when they used oleander twigs to hold hot dogs over an open fire.”

Nigel shook his head reproachfully, even though Cory couldn’t see his gesture. American boffins were just like British boffins. Give them a chance to talk about science and off they went, gleefully forgetting whom they were talking to.
He
was the one who swallowed the blasted stuff; he was the one who had been poisoned. “Very encouraging,” he said glumly. “How much longer do I have?”

“Don’t sweat it, Nigel. Although a single oleander leaf contains enough oleandrin to poison a child, it takes a lot more to kill a healthy adult like you.”

Nigel looked up as he heard Flick’s footsteps. She came into the room carrying a drinking glass filled with something black.

“Crikey!” he said. “Now you want me to drink motor oil.”

Flick handed the glass to Nigel. “This is activated charcoal mixed with water.”

Cory’s voice boomed out of the speaker, “Highly recommended, Nigel. Activated charcoal slurry is used routinely for gastrointestinal decontamination. It will sop up any poison still left in your system.”

Nigel gazed into the glass. He could say no, but Cory seemed to know what he was talking about. And Flick, hovering next to the sofa, looked as if she might pour the potion down his throat if he refused.

“Do I have to drink it now?” Nigel winced at his own whininess.

“Bottoms up,” Flick said. “Charcoal is odorless and tasteless.”

“And utterly unappetizing.” Nigel took a deep breath. “When I get my hands on the person who poisoned your tea…” He shut his eyes and glugged down the charcoal.

“That wasn’t so bad, was it?” Flick asked hopefully.

“A tad like knocking back the contents of a well-used ashtray,” Nigel spoke to the telephone. “What happens now, Professor?”

“You lead a long and happy life,” Cory replied. “I doubt that you consumed enough oleandrin to do real harm, and the charcoal should take care of the little that made its way past your stomach.”

Nigel realized, with agreeable surprise, that the activated charcoal had promptly removed the miserable taste from his mouth. Moreover, it seemed hard at work settling his innards. He suddenly felt hungry. While Flick said her good-byes to Cory Unger, Nigel went to the candy dish she kept on her credenza and helped himself to a handful of gummy bears.

When she rang off, Nigel said, “I really do feel much better. Thank you for the charcoal—and even the ipecac.”

Flick sat down on the sofa and gave a grudging nod. Nigel noted that her expression had changed. Instead of anxious, she now looked sorrowful.

“Knees up, Mother Adams!” he said cheerfully. “I am perfectly okay. You heard the professor. No real damage done. Anyway, what happened is not your fault. You didn’t try to kill me. You shouldn’t blame yourself because we have a deranged, but considerate, poisoner loose in the museum.”

Flick glanced at him. “Considerate? In what way?”

“Sabotaging your private stash of tea was akin to poisoning Elspeth’s personal jam pot. As you observed yesterday, there was little chance that anyone else would sample the goods.” He allowed a flicker of amusement to cross his face. “Of course, even the most carefully planned nefarious schemes sometimes go awry.”

Flick heaved a sigh. “I think the poisoned tea may have been more of a warning rather than an actual attempt to kill me.”

“A warning? The poison was real, was it not?”

“Absolutely real—that’s what got me thinking. The ‘deranged poisoner,’ to use your apt description, knows that most poisons are bitter. And so, he—or she—used lingonberry preserves to camouflage the barbiturates that killed Elspeth. But the poisoner didn’t do anything to mask the taste of the oleandrin.”

Nigel pondered for a moment. “I take your point. Unsweetened tea makes a poor disguise for oleander leaves.”

She nodded. “Especially when drunk by a fairly experienced tea taster. I was bound to realize that the Assam was tainted the instant I tasted the brewed tea. What’s more, the bright green specks of leaf are easy to spot. I should have seen them when I scooped the dry tea out of the canister.”

“Then why do it? Why poison your tea?”

Flick hugged her arms around herself. “To frighten me, I think. To encourage me to leave the museum. It would simplify the poisoner’s life if I simply up and quit. Another body in the boardroom might raise suspicions.” She half-smiled.

“Not even the Kent police would ignore two related deaths so close together in time.”

Nigel pondered again. Flick was probably right. He, an inexperienced tea drinker, had eventually realized that something was amiss with the Assam. She would have diagnosed the added “flavor” instantly. And the notion of the poisoner trying to frighten Flick away made sense, too. It would probably seem an easy task to accomplish after the impromptu trustee meeting. A threat in the form of oleander leaves might well convince Flick that she was far out on a limb all by herself, that it was time to leave the museum.

“I say again,” he said, “you shouldn’t blame yourself. It’s time to shed your unhappy face.”

Flick looked away from Nigel. “There’s a chance that I might have prevented what happened to you if I had told the police—and the trustees—everything I know. I held back a piece of important information. Something that might have changed people’s minds. Something that might have sent the poisoner fleeing for places unknown.”

“I see.” Nigel looked away from Flick. Her admission had had the curious effect of making him wonder exactly the same thing. Had his decision to suppress the words Elspeth spoke in his office emboldened the murderer? The time was ripe to share his uncertain knowledge with Flick.

I will. As soon as she shares her secret with me.

Flick sighed deeply again. “Most people at the museum thought of Elspeth Hawker as a dotty old lady—an eccentric dilettante who had fun pretending to be an expert on the Hawker antiquities. The other day, Dorothy McAndrews described Elspeth’s knowledge as a mile wide but only an inch deep.” Temper flared on Flick’s face. “That isn’t true. Elspeth had a better eye than the professional antiquers who often wander through our galleries. She discovered an ongoing campaign of theft at the museum.”

“You explained all that to the Kent police and to the trustees.”

She nodded. “But I chose not to tell them that Elspeth had thoroughly documented her discoveries—and her suspicions
—
in a notebook she carefully hid in the Hawker Suite.” Flick’s expression became rueful. “I found the notebook. I used it to identify nineteen antiquities in the Hawker collection that have been replaced by excellent forgeries.”

“Blimey!” Nigel said. Without thinking, he added, “An exceedingly clever thief, just like Elspeth thought.”

Flick began to say something, then hesitated. “Who told you that about Elspeth? It’s not something I ever said.”

“We were talking about the good woman’s notebook,” Nigel said quickly. “Where is it?”

Flick gestured toward her credenza. “Sitting in the bottom of my electric teakettle.”

Nigel laughed. “An excellent hiding place. Your tea has an amazing ability to defend itself.”

“That’s the second joke you’ve made today that isn’t funny, Nigel.”

“Actually, Flick, I find it quite funny.”

Flick removed Elspeth’s little black notebook from its protective plastic bag and handed it to Nigel.

“Elspeth wrote in a kind of code,” she said. “But it’s quite intuitive.”

Flick was sitting behind her desk, Nigel in the visitor’s chair alongside it. She practiced reading upside down while he skimmed the notebook’s pages and asked occasional questions.

“I assume that
Mos.
means mosaic,” he said, “and
Mkgs.
means markings, and
Ptn.
means pattern.”

“Correct.”

“Then what is
Pat.?”

“Patina. The slight color change as wood and varnish get older.”

“Of course. How foolish of me.
T.W.
must mean Tunbridge Wells?”

“Not quite,” she said.
“T.W.
is Elspeth’s abbreviation for Tunbridge Ware.” She touched the open page. “Most important of all, a big red
F
means fake or forgery. There are fifteen
Fs
in the book.”

“How did she identify the objects as fakes?”

“Through a simple process of comparison. Look at page three.” Flick paused while Nigel turned pages. “I’ve gotten to know that piece of Tunbridge Ware by heart. It’s one of the tea caddies I showed you when we toured the museum the other day—part of the ‘All the Teas in China’ set of eighteen.”

Nigel’s eyebrows rose slightly as he studied the cryptic abbreviations. “Okay,
T.W.
stands for Tunbridge Ware. Hunan must be the tea-growing region in China the caddy memorializes. And
R.R.
is short for…
what?”

“Robert Russell, one of the great makers of Tunbridge Ware.”

“The words seem to make sense, but what do the odd numbers mean? I can’t imagine what this notation signifies.” Nigel pointed to the page on which Elspeth had written “Pat. 40% to 70%.”

“The percentages are the keys to Elspeth’s observations,” Flick said. “She noted that the Hunan caddy’s patina mysteriously deepened. It used to have a light patina, a level she called 40 percent. But the object on display now has a somewhat richer patina. Elspeth awarded it a grade of 70 percent.”

“Very clever—if she had a good eye for old wood.”

“She identified other points of comparison, too.”

“Such as this one,” Nigel responded, pointing to a line that read,
“Mos. Constsy.
100% to 80%.”

“It took me a day to figure out that one. Elspeth was an amateur in one sense—she invented her own descriptive language. I believe that
Mos. Constsy.
refers to the visible consistency among the various mosaics on the caddy. The originals were masterpieces; a single craftsman used perfectly matched woods to make the mosaics. They depicted different images but were identical otherwise—sort of like different photographs taken with the same camera and same film by one photographer.”