Dead as a Scone (26 page)

“Thus the consistency of the mosaics is 100 percent.”

“But not anymore. Elspeth detected minute variations among the mosaics on the Hunan caddy. She rated the Hunan caddy’s consistency at only 80 percent.”

“Again, the question must be asked, Did she have that good an eye?”

“For the specific details she cared about—
yes!
These were pieces she loved, objects she looked at again and again. Elspeth didn’t use the language of a professional appraiser, and she may not have appreciated the most important features of each antiquity, but she was certainly able to notice minor differences in color, patina, or texture when they unexpectedly appeared. Those are the kinds of variations she recorded in her black book. It’s not much different than a mother jotting down the little changes she notices in a child.”

“I suppose that makes sense.” He turned several pages, then pushed the book aside. “You say the forgeries are really good?”

“I’ve identified every item Elspeth identified as a sham. The entire ‘All the Teas in China’ collection—eighteen tea caddies
—
has been replaced with counterfeit Tunbridge Ware boxes. They are excellent fakes. I suspect they would fool most appraisers. But not Elspeth. The Hunan tea caddy makes a good illustration. When I examined the piece carefully, I realized that different woods had been used to depict the sky in several adjacent mosaics. They were close in grain and color, but not identical. Such a thing would not have been done when the set was created in the late 1860s. It’s clearly a reproduction.”

“What is the nineteenth forgery—a Tunbridge Ware sugar bowl?”

“No. The last item breaks the pattern. It’s a miniature Japanese tea chest. It looks authentic from a distance, but when you get close, it isn’t.”

Nigel nodded sagely. “Now I understand the question you asked Jeremy Strain: Was Elspeth concerned about the authenticity of the Hawker antiquities when she visited him at the Hawker Foundation?”

“Don’t remind me. The twit bit my head off.” Flick switched to a stuffy English accent. “One surely knows the difference between ownership and authenticity.”

“Well done, old chap.” Nigel grinned his approval.

Flick leaned back in her chair. “You know, I still wonder what Elspeth had in mind when she waylaid Jeremy Strain. Desmond Hawker assembled the family’s collection of antiquities in the nineteenth century. Any questions about how he acquired specific items must have been resolved more than a hundred years ago.”

“Perhaps Elspeth really was a dotty old darling? Everyone associated with this museum seems a scone short of a tea party. Even our local antiquities thief.” His expression grew serious. “Look, I’m certainly not an art expert, so maybe this is a nonsensical question. Why would anyone go to the trouble of faking wooden boxes?”

“Because they are exceptionally valuable wooden boxes. The full set is worth at least a half million pounds.”

“But think of the vast expense involved in making those brilliant forgeries. One would have to replicate skills that disappeared more than a hundred years ago. From a business perspective, a simple matter of pounds and pence, it seems a poor investment. I can understand faking Rembrandts or Van Goghs—they generate astronomical profits—but not Tunbridge Ware tea caddies.”

“Nonetheless, one of the trustees did just that.” Flick slid the black notebook back in front of Nigel. “Look at the very last page.”

He picked up the book and lifted the back cover. “Good heavens! Is this what I think it is?”

“Elspeth compiled a list of thievery suspects.”

Nigel whistled softly. “Seven trustees plus Conan Davies. I’m delighted not to see my name on offer. Or yours.”

“The thefts began before you or I arrived at the museum.” Flick waited for Nigel to set down the notebook. “Notice that she drew lines through two names.”

“Vicar de Rudd and Simon Clowes. She seems to have eliminated them as suspects.”

“So have I. The vicar didn’t have an opportunity to poison Elspeth, and the doctor had access to much more convenient means to kill her.”

“Who am I to disagree?” Nigel said. “That leaves a total of six. Archibald Meicklejohn, megabanker; Marjorie Halifax, political powerhouse; Dorothy McAndrews, queen of antiques; Matthew Eaton, landscaper extraordinaire; Iona Saxby, superlawyer; and Conan Davies, security wizard.” He made a grimace. “One of them, with malice aforethought, poisoned Elspeth’s lingonberry preserves, doctored your Assam tea, and stole a half million pounds’ worth of antiquities.”

“Any thoughts as to which one?”

Nigel gave a slight shrug. “Well, I cannot envision Conan nicking antique wooden boxes.”

“Me neither. I keep him on the list for only one reason: He has an essential resource that the others don’t. Conan knows the code to disable the museum’s security system, and his thumbprint will turn off the motion detectors. He probably also knows how to erase the electronic logs that keep track of who enters or leaves after hours.”

Nigel sat up straight. “I forgot about our alarm system.”

“Same here,” Flick said briskly, “until that merry MI5 man got me thinking. Somehow the trustee in question has managed to bypass it repeatedly.”

“We really do have an
exceedingly
clever thief.”

Flick fixed a frosty gaze on Nigel. She had thought the phrase odd when he spoke it earlier. Now he had said the same thing again in an even more ominous tone.

Nigel peered back at her. His mouth pulled into an awkward grin as he went on. “Those are not my words, by the way. I have a confession to make. Two hours before she died, Elspeth Hawker told me that we have an exceedingly clever thief in our midst.”

Flick had been expecting some sort of surprise from Nigel, but not a bombshell that would take her breath away. Her mind filled with a muddle of unpleasant memories and unanswered questions that were swiftly overwhelmed by the compelling feeling that she had been betrayed. When she saw him shrink back in his chair, Flick realized she was glaring venomously at Nigel.

“Feel free to shout at me,” he said. “Shouting will make you feel better.”

“You bet I’ll shout at you! Why didn’t you say anything on the day Elspeth died? If someone is murdered a short time after they reveal a crime to you, don’t you think that’s a trifle suspicious?”

Nigel tried to say something, but Flick cut him off. “I know the answer, you ninny! You believed the doctor, not me.”

“Of course, I believed Sir Simon,” Nigel said calmly. “The man’s credentials are impeccable. I also
wanted
to believe him. It seemed inconceivable that one of our trustees could be a murderer. I made a mistake. I apologize.”

“Okay—forget about the day Elspeth died. Why didn’t you back me up when the police interviewed me or when the trustees put me through the wringer?”

“I admit that I might have intervened—but to what effect? Would the police or the trustees have believed my late-breaking story?”

Flick gritted her teeth. She silently counted to ten before she said evenly, “Nigel, two accounts that support each other are far more convincing than one unsupported narrative.” She added in a much louder voice, “Everybody knows that!”

Nigel seemed cowed, in no mood to argue. He merely clasped his hands together and allowed her to guide their conversation.

“Tell me what Elspeth said to you,” she said. “Start from the beginning.”

“That would be shortly before noon on the day of the fateful trustees’ meeting. Elspeth came into my office. She announced her intention to speak after the formal agenda was over. She also requested that I say nothing to the other trustees.”

“Why not?”

“The very question I asked Elspeth. She hemmed and hawed awhile, but then told me that she had discovered an exceedingly clever thief at work in the museum. She planned to reveal the details at the meeting. I suppose she wanted to keep the element of surprise.”

Nigel seemed to hesitate.

“Keep going,” Flick said with determination.

He sighed. “The rest of what she told me doesn’t make any sense, although I have rehearsed it in my mind again and again. I asked her straight out: Is one of our trustees a criminal? Instead of answering, she sailed off on a weird tangent. She said she led a life of luxury and was surprised that people paid for evil with evil. Then she spouted a verse from the Bible I had never heard before. Something about justice being done to a criminal.” He glanced unhappily at Flick. “End of a not-very-exciting story.”

Flick looked out her window at a large flock of small black birds that swerved back and forth above the car park. Perhaps they were taking a vote on whether to fly south for the winter. Flick needed a moment to think, to decide which parts of Nigel’s “story” she could believe. Her uncle the detective often said that senior executives make lousy witnesses because they never pay attention to the little details. Nigel Owen provided a fine example. Elspeth Hawker took her Christianity seriously. She often spoke verses from Proverbs or Psalms to Flick during their jaunts through the museum. But whenever Elspeth quoted the Bible, it was to illuminate a specific point, to convey a particular concept. Relevant verses came naturally to her because daily Bible reading had been a habit most of her life.

We need to know the verse she “spouted” to Nigel.

Flick looked back at Nigel. The melancholy expression on his face seemed real enough.

“Am I forgiven?” he asked. “Before you answer, let me remind you that a mere twenty minutes ago you were begging my forgiveness for placing me at death’s door with a cup of dodgy tea.”

Flick managed not to laugh but couldn’t help smiling. It was difficult to stay angry at Nigel Owen. He smiled back.

“Truce?” he asked.

“Truce,” she said. “We have no choice but to forgive each other and work together. If we don’t find out who murdered Elspeth Hawker, no one else will.”

“I thought you might say that.”

“Do you agree with me?”

“In theory—although I am a festival of opposing emotions.”

“On the one hand…,” Flick offered.

“On the one hand, to coin a phrase—once poisoned, twice shy. If we move forward, we will put ourselves at risk, yet what can we really hope to accomplish? Our evidence is patchy and incomplete. We have your interpretation of Elspeth’s death, a desktop covered with contaminated tea leaves, and a notebook full of questionable observations made by an old lady. Elspeth’s notebook is tangible evidence, but what does it really signify? The Tunbridge Ware tea caddies have been on display for forty years. Even if an acknowledged expert declares them forgeries, we have no way of proving when the originals were actually replaced. You—and I—may accept Elspeth’s opinions as valid. I doubt the rest of the world will.”

“What about your other hand?” Flick asked.

“On the other hand, I am outraged that one of our overachieving trustees will likely get away with murder, not to mention a major antiquities theft, not to mention triggering a financial crisis at this museum, not to mention causing me to drink a bottle of ipecac.”

Flick stared at Nigel. “Tell me that your ‘other hand’ wins.”

“Hands down!”

“That’s not
funny,
either.”

Flick took advantage of the sudden lull in the conversation to rewrap Elspeth’s black book and return it to the electric kettle.

When she had finished, Nigel said, “I’m hungry. In fact, I am starving. How about you?”

“Now that you mention it—”

“Don’t laugh, but I am in the mood for a pizza.”

Cha-Cha suddenly barked across the room.

“Pizza for three,” Flick said.

“There’s a pizzeria near the bottom of High Street, not far from the Pantiles. It is warm enough today that they might be serving alfresco. They make a brilliant
everything
pizza.”

“I’ll bring another bottle of ipecac.”

“With a steaming cup of coffee, I should think,” Nigel said, adding just a hint of a smirk. “I’ve had my fill of tea for a while.”

Flick smirked back.
We’ll see about that, Nigel.

She was careful not to say it out loud.

Twelve

N
igel stood on the steps outside the ornate front door of the Royal Tunbridge Wells Tea Museum and studied the stretch of Eridge Road that ran northeastward to the Pantiles. He pictured Flick Adams and Cha-Cha hurrying past the redbrick office building on Linden Park Road, striving to keep on schedule. If she had told him the truth the night before, then she should appear at the Neville Terrace roundabout within the next minute or so.

Let’s see if she really is a slave to punctuality.

Flick had “confessed,” if that was the right word, her addiction to being on time as they munched their way through a jumbo everything pizza that was nearly as large as the tiny table for two on the sidewalk in front of the pizzeria. Flick had gawked in mock horror as Nigel sprinkled a blizzard of hot pepper flakes on his first slice.