The Final Crumpet (3 page)

She smiled. “Not to mention the bothersome detail that our tea garden, which was completely excavated when the museum was built, is inaccessible to the outside world.”

“Ergo…”

“Therefore,
someone who had access to the museum buried the body.”

“Someone who had
after-hours
access.”

“I agree,” she said. “It couldn’t have been a visitor. It had to be a member of the staff.”

“And why would a member of the staff find himself with the embarrassing need to dispose of a corpse?”

“Probably because he or she committed murder.”

“Aha!’’ Nigel shook his head dejectedly. “In less than two weeks, I am supposed to sign the paperwork for a thirty-two-million-pound loan to purchase the Hawker collection. The very last thing the museum needs right now is
another
well-publicized scandal casting one of us as a murderer. Imagine the tasteless reports on TV. Picture the lurid tabloid headlines. I can see our beautifully orchestrated financing deal going south.” He flung his hands into the air.
“Ka-blooey!”

Flick understood Nigel’s concerns. “I’ve also been pondering the effects of nationwide publicity,” she said.

“I hope your ruminations are more cheerful than mine.”

“For starters, the murderer is not a recent ‘one of us.’ He can’t be. A buried body needs time to decompose and leave a clean skeleton.”

“Spare me the details. You enjoy forensics—I don’t.” After his grimace faded, he asked, “How much time?”

“At least a decade in the kind of soil we have. But because the body was wrapped in plastic, I’d say much longer.”

“The museum building was completed in 1964, the garden early in 1965. Could the body have been buried that long ago?”

Flick moved behind the desk and sat on Nigel’s lap. “Yep!”

She pecked his cheek.

“An old grave. An old body. An ancient murder…”

“A murderer who probably died years ago.” She kissed his cheek.

“The police will investigate…”

“Certainly. And reporters will write speculative stories about the corpse in our garden. And if the remains are ever identified, TV news readers will be photographed standing in front of the museum.” She kissed Nigel’s ear. “But we won’t have a scandal.”

“No fat, juicy scandal?”

“Not even a skinny, dry one.” She nuzzled his neck.

“I feel better now.”

“Thank goodness! You’re challenging when you’re gloomy. I’ve almost run out of feminine wiles.”

Flick heard a vigorous rap on the door but couldn’t react quickly enough. She was still sitting on Nigel’s lap when the door swung open.

“My stars!” Conan said. “You two do get up to the strangest things. In any event, the police have arrived.” He added, “A pair of old friends, in fact. Detective Inspector Marc Pennyman and Detective Constable Sally Kerr.”

“I refuse to believe it!” Nigel said with a mock scowl.

“Make reservations and get money,” Flick said, merrily. “You now owe me dinner.”

Nigel reached for his telephone again. Flick moved to the corner window that overlooked the tea garden and felt the usual ripple of jealousy. Her office—a mirror image of Nigel’s on the other side of the top floor—delivered a magnificent view of the public car park. Flick recognized Pennyman immediately: trim, late thirties, almost bald. He was peering into the trench. Kerr stood next to him: angular, late twenties, closely cropped ash-blond hair.

“When does he want to see us?” Flick asked Conan.

“I asked. He said there’s no need to disturb you now. He’ll meet with you after the crime-scene examiners finish their work. He also wants to interview Jim Sizer.”

“How is the plod’s disposition?” Nigel said.

“Jaunty, I’d say. He looked at the remains and made a joke about this being an unusually cold case. He seems excited—like the proverbial lad in the sweet shop. Nothing like an unexplained skeleton to start one’s day.”

“See!” Nigel said brightly to Flick. “You’re overreacting to the good DI Pennyman. He has undoubtedly forgiven all your past sins.”

Flick bit her tongue. The cheerful Nigel was back—in full bloom. Now it was her turn to be dismal.

The morning passed with Nigel working on a planning document, while Flick watched the team of three crime-scene examiners attack the trench from all sides with their cameras, scraping tools, and evidence collection kits. Had the tea garden been a public location, the police would have erected a canvas screen around the “crime scene.” The twelve-foot-high brick wall surrounding the garden made the screen unnecessary, leaving Flick with a bird’s-eye view of the proceedings. She retrieved a pair of binoculars from the curators’ laboratory and observed the examiners’ painstaking efforts.

That might have been me at work.

Flick mused about the seven different courses in forensic chemistry and forensic toxicology she had taken back at the University of Michigan, when she thought seriously of becoming a scientific detective. Down below, one of the examiners begin lifting bones out of the plastic tarpaulin. Flick turned away. That was the part of the job she found difficult to handle. Her professor had been right when he blamed her squeamishness on a too-lively imagination. To be a successful crime-scene examiner, you had to mentally disconnect yourself from the painful fact that you were handling parts of a real person who had been alive before becoming a victim.

You’re happier as a tea-tasting food chemist.

“Speaking of food,” she murmured, “it’s almost lunchtime.”

“I heard that!” Nigel said from his desk. “If I have to buy you dinner, it seems only fair that you pay for lunch. When are we leaving?”

“I would have said immediately, but…” Flick adjusted her binoculars to full power. “Something’s happening in the garden. A small crowd just formed around the trench. The skeleton and the tarp are gone, but I can see one crime-scene examiner crouched down in the hole Jim dug. Pennyman, Kerr, and the other examiners are watching her work. So are Conan Davies, Jim Sizer, and a couple of people I don’t know.”

“Keep it to yourself if the police just discovered another skeleton.”

Flick wished that DC Kerr in particular would stand still. Her side-to-side jockeying repeatedly blocked the view. Kerr abruptly zigged to the right, giving Flick a clear look into the trench. The crime-scene examiner was brushing dirt off a small, boxlike object.

“Boxlike, my foot!” Flick spun around. “Nigel, they found a box buried in the trench, obviously below the skeleton.”

“What sort of box?”

“All I can tell from up here is that it looks rusty. Let’s go to lunch via the crime scene.”

Flick, with Nigel close behind, raced down the three flights of stairs to the ground floor and jogged through the World of Tea Map Room and the Duchess of Bedford Tearoom. She slowed to a walk in the greenhouse and tiptoed into the tea garden. She moved silently behind DI Pennyman, who was supporting a small pistol in midair with a ballpoint pen passed through the weapon’s trigger guard.

“I’ve never seen a handgun like this before. Does anyone have an idea what it is?”

“I do, Inspector,” Conan said. “I believe it’s a Makarov automatic—the Soviet service pistol during the Cold War.”

“A
Bolshie
pistol? What else is in the bloomin’ box?”

Flick risked a quick glance around Pennyman and needed every smidgen of self-control she possessed to remain silent. The “bloomin’ box” in question, sitting on the edge of the trench, had hundreds of brothers in the museum’s basement archives. It was an antiquities storage box, made of thick steel with a heavy rubber seal under its lid, designed to provide safe, long-term protection for valuable objects not on display in the museum’s galleries. The crime-scene examiner was carefully probing around inside. Jim Sizer had also recognized the box; he was gawking at it with Frisbee-sized eyes.

Flick moved back behind Pennyman’s muscular frame. It seemed safer to listen than watch.

“I can see one brass cartridge case,” the examiner said, “which makes one wonder if you are holding the weapon that killed the victim. The splintered rib I found is consistent with a gunshot wound.”

“No need to evaluate the evidence, Whitson,” Pennyman said. “Your job today is to collect it.”

“Yes, sir. The other items in the box are all of a personal nature. Eyeglasses. Wristwatch. Handkerchief. House keys. Cigarette lighter. Box of cigarettes. Fountain pen. Memo pad. And a rather elegant leather wallet—hang on. Yes, I can open it with no trouble. No credit cards. Several old English banknotes—the sort that were replaced years ago. And—hang on—a driving license that expired in 1968.
Crikey!”

“What do you find worthy of such an exclamation, Whitson?”

“Uhh…” She went on, “Uhh…”

“We’re waiting, Whitson.”

“Sir, this driving license belongs to Etienne Makepeace.”

Flick saw Pennyman’s spine stiffen as if he’d been shocked by a stun gun. Someone said, “Wicked!” Jim Sizer said, “Streuth!” Conan Davies said, “Unbelievable!”

“Ladies and gentlemen…” Pennyman’s voice sounded throaty. “This is now a secure investigation. All requests for information will be filtered through me.”

“It may be too late, sir,” Kerr said. “There was a reporter here from the
Kent and Sussex Courier.”
She pointed at a heavyset man running at full speed out of the tea garden.

“You
let
a reporter look around?”

“A body buried in a garden is, well…
not…
I mean, he has reported on several routine criminal investigations and has always been perfectly well behaved. So when he arrived and asked to see the crime scene, I thought…”

Pennyman made an unhappy gesture. “This was supposed to be a routine case. A quiet case. An
easy
case.” He pulled a mobile phone out of his jacket pocket. “I’ll be back after I share our good news with the chief constable.”

Flick waited for the DI to take refuge in a far corner of the tea garden; then she asked Nigel, “Who is Etienne Makepeace?”

Once again, his face looked ashen. “A well-known Brit who disappeared decades ago. Think of Judge Crater, Jimmy Hoffa, and Amelia Earhart—all wrapped in one. Makepeace vanished without a trace, in…”

Conan took over. “In 1966. I was only five years old, but I still remember the fuss in Scotland. Thousands of policemen across the United Kingdom searched for him.”

“What was his claim to fame?” Flick asked. “He was a BBC radio personality,” Nigel said.

“And also an author and philanthropist,” Conan added. Jim chimed in. “Don’t forget that Mr. Makepeace was also known as ‘The Tea Sage.’ He visited the tea museum several times.”

“This
museum!” Nigel howled.

“Oh yes, sir. I heard him lecture in the Grand Hall on two occasions. Very knowledgeable he was about tea.” Jim chortled. “Imagine me digging up his bloomin’ body.” He leaned close to Flick. “And imagine the coppers finding an antiquities box full of Mr. Makepeace’s clobber.”

Flick met Nigel’s eyes. She knew exactly what he was thinking.

Imagine the tasteless reports on TV Picture the lurid tabloid headlines.
He had been right; she had been abysmally wrong.

A mobile phone rang. “It’s mine,” Conan said.

He listened for a moment, then said to Nigel, “I didn’t think it would happen so quickly, but an outside-broadcast van just pulled into the staff car park.”

Nigel translated for Flick. “A mobile TV production studio. The first of the TV news teams has arrived.” He added with a smile, “The reappearance of Etienne Makepeace seems to be a topic of some interest to the media.”

Flick nodded vaguely, waiting for Nigel to say I told you so, and wondering what could be worse than a “juicy scandal.”

“We’ll soon find out,” she said to no one in particular.

Two

“G
ood heavens—Stuart has torn the place apart,” Nigel muttered when he saw the carnage in the Duchess of Bedford Tearoom. Stuart Battlebridge’s crew had stacked the sixteen square tea tables against one wall of the museum’s ground floor restaurant and arranged the sixty-four dining chairs “theatre style” in eight even rows in front of a podium that stood atop a newly installed raised platform. They had also brought in an ugly bank of floodlights that seemed bright enough to illuminate the Royal Tunbridge Wells Common.

I’ll skin the man alive.

Nigel’s twinge of annoyance quickly changed to a pang of remorse when he remembered that he had personally authorized the transformation. Somehow Stuart had managed to snooker him into hosting a news conference in the museum’s ground floor restaurant.

You fell for his stirring sales pitch—that’s how!

“The Duchess of Bedford is an ideal venue in which to meet the press,” Stuart had said, with the delight of an explorer setting foot on an unexplored continent. “Your tearoom is friendly, accommodating, and visually exciting, yet indisputably your turf.” He had done a slow pirouette, then pointed to the glass wall that gave diners a view of the museum’s greenhouse. “We shall locate the podium
there.”