Dead as a Scone (31 page)

Flick hastily examined the document, then asked Nathalie, “What did the Hawkers object to in the book?”

“As Elspeth often said, Oxley proved too creative for his own good. He invented relationships among events where none existed.”

Nigel found himself baffled by Nathalie Stubbings’s curious answer. Apparently, so did Flick, who took a deep breath, then asked, “What do you suppose Elspeth meant by ‘relationships among events’?”

“The best example is in the last chapter of Oxley’s manuscript,” Nathalie said. “Oxley concluded that the big fire at Lion’s Peak in 1925, the one that nearly killed Elspeth, was an act of revenge against the Hawker family. He assumed that the man who died after he set the fire was a descendant of Neville Brackenbury—and that he wanted to destroy the fruits of Desmond’s thievery.”

“Criminy!” Nigel said. “The tea trade is one tough business.”

Flick tossed the manuscript into his lap. “Stop talking and read the last chapter.”

“Yes, ma’am!”

Nigel began to turn pages.

It had been another of Flick’s snap decisions — a simple tactic to cover as much ground as possible. Nigel would review the manuscript while she continued to speak to Nathalie Stubbings.

If only I can guide the bouncing ball in Nathalie’s brain.

Flick fought to keep the annoyance she felt off her face. The elderly woman’s thoughts caromed erratically from topic to topic. She clearly possessed a wealth of information that might prove useful—but her mind seemed to wander as she talked.

Nathalie had poured herself another cup of tea. As she sipped, she gazed off into the distance. Flick glanced in the same direction and discovered that Nathalie was staring at a picture frame across the small room. The old sepia-toned photo was of a girl in her teens.

“Is that also a photograph of Elspeth?” Flick asked.

Nathalie smiled. “She was fourteen at the time. It was taken at the seaside at Brighton on a Sunday afternoon in July 1934. I was probably on the same stretch of English Channel coastline on the same day at the same time.”

Flick moved closer to the photograph. It showed a pretty teenager wearing a high-necked, long-sleeved white dress and off-white stockings. Elspeth stood near the water, grinning joyfully, holding her shoes in her hand. She had a large bow in her blond hair, which was cut short in the sort of bob that had been the fashion during the 1930s.

“She was lovely,” Flick said. “Elspeth must have turned heads a few years later. Do you know why she never married?”

Natalie became pensive. “I often have wondered that very thing. The Elspeth I knew certainly seemed the kind of woman to make a success of home and family. Women a few years older than Elspeth were forced to become spinsters because a whole generation of young men died in the Great War of 1914–1918. Perhaps she also was swept up in the shortage of eligible men—although it is hard for me to imagine that a wealthy, attractive young woman would find it difficult to attract a suitable match.”

Flick looked over at Nigel, who appeared wholly absorbed by the manuscript. His head jiggled slightly as his eyes flashed down the page. She thought of something he had said the day before.

“Nathalie, what sort of relationship did Elspeth have with Vicar de Rudd? Were they good friends?”

Nathalie hesitated, plainly uncomfortable at the questions. Flick regretted that she had not asked them more obliquely.

“I hardly know how to answer you. When I lived in Tunbridge Wells, they were quite fond of each other. I suppose they drifted apart during the past year. Elspeth was quite circumspect when I saw her last. She mentioned something about the vicar chastising her for foolishly stirring up the past. She seemed…
exasperated
rather than angry when she spoke of him.”

Flick imagined Elspeth approaching Vicar de Rudd and timidly seeking his advice about the “old rumors.” Could the whispers about Desmond Hawker have been true? Might there be church records, old letters, diocesan documents—anything
—
that would help her find out, one way or another? The vicar didn’t know how much importance she placed on learning the truth. And so, he urged her to let sleeping dogs lie. Or offered an equally banal cliché about leaving the past alone.

I’d get exasperated at de Rudd, too.

Nigel abruptly snapped the manuscript shut. “I can understand why the Hawker family decided not to publish this book,” he said. “It is a miracle that one of them didn’t shoot Philip Oxley when he presented his finished manuscript. He clearly had learned enough to cast doubt on the legend of Desmond Hawker.”

Nathalie frowned. “Do you think it is true?”

Nigel sighed. “ ’Fraid so. The chapter I read has a definite ring of truth. The manuscript also seems very well written by an author who knows how to begin a chapter with a fitting epigraph. ‘The evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones.’ ”

Flick didn’t try to restrain the rush of righteous anger she felt. “I don’t care about miscellaneous quotations from Shakespeare!” she nearly shouted. “What did you read in the stupid chapter?”

Nigel laughed, but the amusement on his face drained away quickly as Flick stared him down. “An incredible story, actually,” he said. “Oxley is somewhat sketchy on the details, but he asserts that Desmond Hawker betrayed Neville Brackenbury and was, in fact, responsible for his partner’s personal bankruptcy in 1876. Rather than help save his friend, Desmond used the occasion to drive Brackenbury out of their partnership.”

“In short,” Flick said, “Oxley assumed that the old rumors were true.”

Nigel nodded. “Time passed. Desmond Hawker thrived as a solo tea merchant, while Neville Brackenbury faltered and failed. He died in 1883, still in debt, leaving his wife and children destitute. They apparently migrated to Canada, where one might assume the story would end.”

“However, it did not,” she volunteered.

“Fast-forward to a Sunday morning in May 1925. Sir Basil Hawker; his wife, Gwyneth; and their two young children, Edmund and Elspeth, are at Lion’s Peak asleep in their beds. You will recall that Gwyneth was Sir Basil’s second wife. His first wife, Sarah, died almost thirty years earlier giving birth to Mary Hawker, who married Harry Evans in 1920.”

“Is that significant?”

“Not in the least. What really matters is that at approximately six o’clock in the morning, a fast-moving fire began on the ground floor, toward the rear of the house, and rapidly engulfed one-third of the original structure—including the bedrooms. By a near miracle, three members of the family escaped without injury. Elspeth Hawker, age five, pulled loose from her mother, ran back into the house in a futile attempt to rescue a caged songbird, and was burned—badly enough, it seems, to require a series of five surgeries over the next two years.”

“Oh my, poor Elspeth.”

“Enter the fire brigade. Because Decimus Burton had built Lion’s Peak well, the firemen brought the blaze under control before it destroyed the house. When the gutted wing cooled enough to be examined, the authorities found an empty petrol can.”

“An arson fire?” Flick asked.

“Yes. They also found the body of a man, presumably the arsonist. He obviously had miscalculated how quickly the fire would spread. He was too badly burned to be identified, and in any event, forensic identification was in its infancy in 1925.”

“Case closed.”

“Not so fast,” Nigel said wryly. “The arsonist apparently wanted the reason for the fire to be known throughout Tunbridge Wells. On the Monday morning after the fire, an anonymous letter arrived at the
Kent and Sussex Courier
. It had been posted on Saturday. The letter itself was quite short. ‘The person responsible for the destruction of Lion’s Peak offers a lesser-known verse from scripture about thievery in response to a verse known to many in Tunbridge Wells.’ Neatly copied below was a verse from...” Nigel began to thumb through the pages.

“The book of Zechariah,” Nathalie said. “Specifically, chapter five. The writer of the letter used the King James Version.

Let me read you the passage in a modern translation.” She reached for a black, leather-bound Bible on a small table near her chair. She opened it and began to read.

“I looked again—and there before me was a flying scroll! He asked me, ‘What do you see?’ I answered, ‘I see a flying scroll, thirty feet long and fifteen feet wide.’ And he said to me, ‘This is the curse that is going out over the whole land; for according to what it says on one side, every thief will be banished, and according to what it says on the other, everyone who swears falsely will be banished. The Lord Almighty declares, ‘I will send it out, and it will enter the house of the thief and the house of him who swears falsely by my name. It will remain in his house and destroy it, both its timbers and its stones.’ ”

Nathalie let the Bible drop into her lap. “Please continue with the story, Nigel. You tell it better than Philip Oxley did.”

“There’s more?” Flick asked.

“A minor media flurry in Tunbridge Wells,” he said. “The editor of the
Courier
knew a good revenge story when he saw one. He also liked catchy headlines. For the next week or so, locals read and talked about ‘the Flying Scroll Vendetta.’ ”

“Did the newspaper propose a reason for revenge?” Flick asked.

“Successive front pages floated several theories—from malevolent tea exporters in China to a lunatic cabal of Desmond’s former competitors. The story petered out when the police lost interest in identifying the dead arsonist.”

“And he never has been identified.”

“Never,” Nigel said grimly, “although Philip Oxley makes a fairly strong case for the arsonist being a long-lost relative of Neville Brackenbury.”

Nathalie chimed in again. “That is a possibility only if one believes that the commodore treated Neville badly. As you noted, the only evidence that Oxley could find to support his theory were vague reports of century-old rumors.”

Nigel gave a seemingly reluctant nod. “I grant you that the direct evidence is sketchy, but Oxley cites many rumors of Desmond’s wrongdoing. One begins to think that the presence of smoke indicates fire.”

Flick turned to Nathalie. “What did Elspeth think when she reread the manuscript?”

“She left more confused than when she arrived. I urged her to take the manuscript with her, but she felt she had exhausted its possibilities.”

Flick looked at the document resting in Nigel’s upturned hands. “Nathalie, may I borrow the manuscript for a few days?”

A shadow of doubt crept across the woman’s face. “I suppose so, although I would prefer that you don’t make a copy for the museum library. I know Elspeth would disapprove.”

Flick held up her right hand. “I promise!”

“Well, then, keep it as long as you like. The only reason I ever open the manuscript is to look at the photographs.”

Flick paused a moment, not sure what photographs Nathalie meant. Nigel came to her rescue by opening the manuscript to the middle pages. He showed her the two photos of Desmond Hawker.

“The great man himself,” Flick said. “Middle-aged and beyond.”

“Much more than that,” Nathalie said. “These are before-and-after photographs. Before he became a changed man. And after. See how he gained peace—the ‘peace that surpasses understanding.’ ”

Flick examined the photos with her curator’s eye. The men they depicted were clearly different. The second Desmond looked honorable; the first man looked like a wealthy scoundrel. Was it a mere quirk of photography—or something more?

Nathalie continued. “The first Desmond is worldly and sinful. The second is salt and light.” Nathalie peered first at Flick, then at Nigel. “I hope you understand. It is the Christian’s responsibility to be the salt of the earth and the light of the world—to do right and show the way by example.”

Flick noticed out of the corner of her eye that Nigel was tapping his wristwatch. He had told her he wanted to be on the road back to Tunbridge Wells no later than two thirty in the afternoon. It had just turned three.

Exchanging good-byes with Nathalie took another ten minutes. She urged them to visit again; both Flick and Nigel promised they would. She found a treat for Cha-Cha, and she insisted on walking with them to the door. “Give my regards to Tunbridge Wells,” she said. “I miss my little city.”