Dead as a Scone Read online

  Flick sat down in the visitor’s chair next to Nigel’s desk. The photo was an expensively done portrait of a distinguished man of perhaps fifty-five. He had salt-and-pepper hair, piercing eyes, beaky nose, square chin, and a no-nonsense expression.

  “A nicely chiseled face,” she said. “Who is he?”

  “Jeremy Strain, the managing director. When he took charge of the foundation two years ago, he appeared on one of the BBC current affairs shows. He explained that henceforth the function of his foundation would be to do measurable good in the world and not to teach the Tunbridge Wells gentry how to brew a cup of English Breakfast tea.”

  “He said that?”

  “Indeed! He also said that this museum never would have been built had he been managing director forty years ago.”

  “Oh my.”

  “How would you like to ask him for some ready money?”

  “It might be tough—but if I were you, I’d definitely give it a go.”

  “Excellent! My teleconference with Strain begins in about ten minutes. You can be me. You do the asking.”

  Flick scrambled to her feet, feeling exceedingly foolish. “Forgive me. I didn’t mean to imply that you couldn’t—”

  “Sit back down,” Nigel said. “I am utterly serious. I groveled before Strain on two other occasions, to no avail. Perhaps we should try a new groveler?”

  “Not a good idea!” She could hear the near panic in her own voice. “I don’t know anything about British foundations. Even more important, I’m not very good at asking for money in person.” Flick let herself sigh. “The truth is, when it comes to face-to-face fund-raising, I’m as useful as a chocolate teapot.”

  The look on Nigel’s face began to alternate between skeptical and surprised. He seemed unsure how to respond to Flick’s confession. She broke the silence. “I know it sounds silly, but I couldn’t sell Girl Scout cookies when I was a kid. And I’ve never been able to ask for a raise.”

  “Hmmm.”

  “However, I have no problem groveling on paper. I can write fabulous grant proposals.”

  “I see,” he said, although it was obvious to Flick that he didn’t.

  “And I’ll be happy to provide you with moral support.” She dropped into the chair again. “As long as you do all the talking.”

  Nigel nodded slowly. “All right. I’ll explain to Strain that I asked you to sit in—as my technical advisor.”

  “Perfect! Tell me what I need to know about the Hawker Foundation.”

  Nigel shrugged. “There isn’t much to know. Desmond Hawker established it in 1902. He apparently got the idea from John Nobel, who bequeathed his dynamite money in 1900 to fund the Nobel Foundation. The difference was that Desmond created his charitable trust while he was still alive. He defined the purpose of the Hawker Foundation to ‘promote the betterment of humanity by supporting advancements in education, healthcare, and religion.’ ” He hesitated. “Past grants to our museum presumably fell under ‘education.’ ”

  “What do you mean presumably? Museums educate people. We certainly do.”

  “Jeremy Strain doesn’t see it that way. He thinks ‘advancement’ is another word for pure research and development that has broad application. Hang on!” Nigel reached into a desk drawer. He brought out a file folder. “Gordon & Battlebridge, our public relations agency, subscribes to a clipping service. The firm sends me every magazine and newspaper article they come across that mentions Strain. I will read from a short piece that ran in The Economist last spring. I quote, ‘When asked about his philosophy for guiding the venerable Hawker Foundation, Jeremy Strain said, “I run a charitable trust, not a betting shop. Our grants are investments, not gambles. I expect the projects we support to bear fruit that benefits the world at large.” ’ ”

  Nigel switched clippings. “Here is the Strain quotation I like best: ‘I want the organizations we support to believe that prying money from the Hawker Foundation is akin to squeezing water from a rock. If they succeed, they should believe that a miracle has taken place.’ ”

  “I can understand how he feels,” Flick said. “I might even agree that his goals are laudable. But why did he take a potshot at the museum on the BBC?”

  Nigel flipped through the stack of clips. “Another reporter asked much the same question. Here is Strain’s answer:

  I have nothing against the Royal Tunbridge Wells Tea Museum as an institution. It has a large following and apparently serves a useful function. However, the Hawker Foundation spent a considerable sum of money to establish the museum for one reason only: the extraordinary persuasive powers of Mary Hawker Evans. The foundation made a great error, in my opinion, when it elected Mrs. Evans, the granddaughter of Desmond Hawker, to its board. She arrived with an agenda: to build an edifice honoring her illustrious ancestor. She eventually succeeded by unmercifully lobbying, browbeating, and bullying the other board members. We are an independent trust entirely divorced from the Hawker family. Mrs. Evans apparently forgot that critical fact.

  “Gosh. He’s grousing about something that happened more than forty years ago, long before he took charge of the foundation.”

  “When it comes to money, Strain seems to have a strong sense of history.” Nigel closed the folder and dropped it atop the other clutter on his desk.

  “What’s with all this paper?” Flick asked.

  “You see before you everything in our files pertaining to our relationship with the Hawker Foundation. I had hoped to find something that might improve my sales pitch. No joy!” He shook his head dolefully. “We asked for and received occasional grants under Strain’s predecessors, all of them to enhance our facilities. The last one was three years ago to pay for our upgraded security system. I find no precedent for a grant to acquire antiquities. All our funding to do that came from the Hawker family.”

  Flick took another look at Jeremy Strain’s picture. Definitely a hard-nosed manager. She had known foundation executives like him before in the United States. Tough administrators who enjoyed saying no to requests for funding. And yet, they often lavished money on their own pet projects. Did Strain have a favorite kind of investment, an area of research that would unlock the financial floodgates at the Hawker Foundation?

  “Well, well,” Nigel said excitedly. “More moral support has arrived.”

  Flick glimpsed a white-fringed tail out of the corner of her eye. She looked sideways in time to see Cha-Cha jump up on Nigel’s sofa and smile at him. The dog didn’t appear to notice that Flick was in the room, too.

  Nigel went on, “He seems to understand that he will spend this evening with me.”

  Flick grunted. Cha-Cha did have the disquieting knack

  of switching allegiance between its two caregivers without a second thought.

  Shiba Inus are supposed to be loyal. Didn’t you read the owner’s guide?

  “By the way,” Nigel asked, “how are the cats doing?”

  “Swimmingly. Lapsang and Souchong have taken over the curators’ wing.”

  Although I still haven’t figured out which is which.

  Nigel’s telephone rang. He held up two fingers in a “V for Victory” sign—the sort Winston Churchill used to make—then picked up the receiver.

  “Nigel Owen here.” He listened a moment, then said, “Good afternoon, Jeremy. If you don’t mind, I shall place you on speakerphone. I have Dr. Felicity Adams, our new chief curator, here with me in my office.”

  Nigel pressed a button on his telephone.

  “Hello, Dr. Adams,” Jeremy said. “You must be the clever American food chemist I have heard so much about.”

  Flick loved Strain’s voice. It was smooth and elegant, with the sort of cultured British accent that signaled a privileged upbringing and the best of English schools. But his comment stiffened her spine. Why did so many people in England refer to her as an “American”? And how had Strain been able to make it sound like an insult? For a mad split second, she wanted to respond, “And you must be the tight
fisted limey jerk I have heard so much about.”

  She drove the lovely, nasty thought out of her mind. “That’s me!” she said cheerfully. “But please call me Felicity or Flick.”

  “Felicity it is. Flick is too close to the French slang for policeman.”

  He laughed. Nigel joined in. She managed a halfhearted snigger.

  That’s pronounced fleek, you bozos, not Flick.

  Nigel quickly got down to business. “Jeremy, the email I sent you last week summed up our situation. The foundation has been generous to us in the past. We ask you to be generous again in this period of transition. We want to apply for a grant to help us purchase our antiquities on display.”

  “This is going to be a short conversation, Nigel. Even if the foundation were willing to provide funds for such an insipid purpose—which we most definitely are not—the present circumstances of your collection would argue strongly against such an investment.”

  “I don’t grasp what you mean, Jeremy.”

  “I have been given to understand that there are doubts as to who owns the collection.”

  “What doubts? The Hawker family has always owned the antiquities.”

  Jeremy said nothing for several seconds. “Approximately nine months ago, Elspeth Hawker visited me and expressed concerns about the ownership of the collection. I had assumed that she also shared them with you.”

  Flick exchanged glances with Nigel. He looked as confused as she suddenly felt. She had read Elspeth’s little black notebook cover to cover and deciphered every abbreviation. Elspeth had been troubled by forgeries, not issues of ownership.

  “Excuse me, Jeremy,” Flick said. “Might Elspeth have been talking about the authenticity of some items?”

  “One surely knows the difference between ownership and authenticity.” Strain provided an audible sniff. “Elspeth wanted any information we might have in our old files about the provenance of the collection. I asked her why. After a few hems and haws, she told me a vague family legend about Desmond Hawker. Please don’t ask me to repeat any of it; I took no interest in the details. The gist, however, was that Desmond may have acquired the antiquities under less-than-honorable circumstances.”

  “I have never heard of such a legend,” Nigel said. “Moreover, the items have been on display for the past forty years. If anyone had challenged the Hawkers’ right to them, certainly we would have learned by now.”

  “One can, of course, suppose that Elspeth suffered from senile dementia—although she seemed largely sane to me. Nonetheless, if it were my money, I’d not spend a farthing on a single teapot without convincing proof that the Hawkers own the entire collection.”

  “Point well taken,” Nigel said. “I will ask for a full provenance.”

  Strain made a soft harrumph. “Then I presume we have nothing more to talk about today.”

  An idea seemed to emerge full-blown in Flick’s mind. Almost without thinking, she said, “Jeremy, can I ask you for some advice?”

  “Advice?” Jeremy sounded puzzled. “Surely not with museum curating.”

  “A related topic. Nigel and I are planning to increase the research work we do at the museum.”

  Nigel mouthed, “Research? What kind of research?”

  Jeremy said, “Research? What kind of research?”

  “As you probably know,” Flick said, “the museum has long supported tea-related scholarly studies. For example, a group of Oxford and Cambridge academics are holding a research conference here on Monday.”

  “Oxford and Cambridge? The universities?”

  “Yes. But we want to expand the actual research we do in tea-related food chemistry, agriculture, and processing. We have a plan to grow our nonmuseum activities in the years ahead. Perhaps some of the institutions you support can provide us with useful tips about choosing projects that make the most sense for our staff and capabilities.”

  “Is there…much call for tea-related research?”

  “Quite a lot. Tea is the second most popular drink in the world. Water is the first.”

  “I see. Well, let me think about how we might be able to help you. Certainly I can provide information, but we don’t want to rule out other kinds of support, do we?”

  Nigel thanked Jeremy for his time, hung up the phone, and said to Flick, “Have I just witnessed a miracle? I could almost hear the wheels turning in Jeremy’s head, trying to figure out the best way to invest in your nonexistent research projects.”

  “We need to generate additional revenues. Doing research is a definite candidate.”

  “What happened to your chronic incapability to ask for money?”

  “It’s still in full bloom.” Flick smiled. “I never actually talked about money with Strain. You will have to do that, when the time comes.”

  “Too true! You said nothing about money. But you did tell him a shameless fib. Our so-called research conference on Monday consists of twenty-odd lecturers in English literature who will gather in one of our seminar rooms to talk about”—Nigel managed to find a sheet of paper underneath the mass on his desk—“to talk about ‘the Societal Metaphors and Allegories Inherent in the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party.’ ”

  “The organizers teach at Oxford and Cambridge, don’t they?”

  “Yes, but you made their meeting sound like a conclave of the Royal Academy.”

  Flick began to laugh along with Nigel but quickly fell silent.

  Nigel peered at her. “Why the sudden change in mood?” he said. “I’m only yanking your chain. Jeremy deserves to be led astray.”

  “It’s not you,” she said. “I started to remember what he said about the ownership of our antiquities. Could Elspeth be right?”

  “I don’t see how. My best guess is that he didn’t pay attention to her and misunderstood what she said.”

  Flick nodded in agreement, despite the niggle boring into the back of her mind. Elspeth—you visited Jeremy Strain because you felt you had to. I think you discovered another serious problem at the Royal Tunbridge Wells Tea Museum.

  Eight

  Cha-Cha strained against his lead, yanking Nigel toward Eridge Road and the museum. The compact dog could exert a pull all out of proportion to the size of his body. He seemed even more powerful when dragging Nigel through the Common.

  Nigel often walked to and from the museum because most evenings he left his BMW in the museum’s car park. His flat had street permit parking, which meant that Nigel paid an annual fee for the right to search for a typically nonexistent parking space on Lime Hill Road. The fastest route on foot from his flat was an easy two-kilometer jaunt through Tunbridge Wells. That Friday morning, he had intentionally taken the slightly longer scenic route through the Common—to give Cha-Cha a bracing walk.

  It was a glorious October morning, cool but sunny. The trees were beginning to lose their leaves, allowing patches of early-autumn sunlight to filter through the treetops and illuminate the pathways. All in all, the sort of morning one could ignore, at least for a half hour, the nasty responsibilities piling up at one’s office.

  How much longer could he delay the inevitable? Tempus clearly fugit. Bleasdale the solicitor had been remarkably patient, but he would expect the museum’s answer soon. But that required the trustees to reach their decision first. And that could not occur until Nigel and Felicity Adams made their recommendation.

  The ball is definitely in our court.

  The path exited the Common across from the back side of the Pantiles. From there one could see the roof of the Royal Tunbridge Wells Tea Museum perhaps four hundred yards away on Eridge Road.

  Nigel checked his watch as he waited for a break in traffic so that he could cross London Road. It had just reached nine o’clock. Flick definitely would be in her office. Pity that she had such a short commute to the museum. A brisk walk every morning might make her less impulsive. When she acted thoughtfully rather than going off half-cocked, she could be a valuable colleague.

  Yesterday is a perfect example.
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br />   Flick had been wholly supportive during their meeting with Augustus Hoskins, and she had done a first-class job of handling Jeremy Strain. She had even looked into Strain’s odd comments about the provenance of the Hawker collection. Flick had visited her basement archives and found three newspaper articles written when the museum was established. All confirmed that the Hawker antiquities had been in the family since the late nineteenth century.

  So much for Dame Elspeth’s alleged ownership concerns.

  Nigel walked along Eridge Road feeling genuine regret that his commute was nearly over. Cha-Cha seemed to feel the same way, because he had stopped pulling on his lead. Nigel decided to use the museum’s rear service entrance, next to the private car park. He climbed the steps alongside the truck-loading bay, walked through the greenhouse, and then into the Duchess of Bedford Tearoom. Cha-Cha had proved well enough behaved during the past week to be allowed the run of the museum during off-hours. Nigel unhooked the lead and watched the dog trot off through the thicket of wrought-iron table legs. Cha-Cha liked to start each day with a visit to his old friend Earl, who seemed splendidly at home in his corner of the tearoom. Earl still lived in his boxy, chromed wire cage, but soon that would change. Flick had ordered an impressive wrought-iron cage that stood almost seven feet tall.

  Nigel heard a gentle clatter of crockery behind him. He looked around as Giselle Logan, the tearoom’s hostess, exited the kitchen pushing a tea trolley laden with cups, saucers, a pot of tea, a carafe of coffee, and a plate of biscuits.

  “Ah, Nigel,” she said, “you’ve arrived…at last.”

  His heart thumped. Giselle was a willowy brunette, twenty-five, with a degree in hospitality management, a luscious voice, and an exotic Eurasian beauty that Nigel found mesmerizing. He had no doubt that she would climb the ranks of her profession to oversee a major restaurant chain or hotel. He felt equally confident that she intended to stay married to her husband, a local dentist.

  Giselle answered his unasked question. “This is for the meeting going on in your office. Dr. Adams requested tea for six. She also has been trying to find you.”