Dead as a Scone Read online

  The new chief curator had been appointed the previous summer. The trustees had debated for nearly a year before they finally chose Felicity Adams from among a field of ten candidates. Nigel had been present for their final discussion; the choice had not been unanimous. Matthew Eaton had been reluctant to appoint an American to “a distinctly British position”; Dorothy McAndrews wanted a “museum person” rather than a “tea person”; and Iona Saxby had worried that “Dr. Adams, age thirty-six, was a tad too young to be taken seriously by her much older peers at other museums.”

  In the end, Flick’s credentials had carried the day. She held a doctorate in food chemistry from the prestigious University of Michigan, had been a senior tea taster at a leading tea purveyor, and had written three successful books for laypeople about tea—including the unexpectedly popular How to Host an English Tea. She possessed, Nigel thought, all of the characteristics a successful chief curator required: arrogance, self-importance, dreariness, and a fanatic love of tea.

  Time to take charge of the meeting.

  “Thank you for sharing your expertise, Dr. Adams,” he said. “It’s really quite amazing how much there is to know about tea.”

  The soft-spoken Rev. de Rudd murmured a barely audible “Hear! Hear!” The drum-throated Archibald Meicklejohn roared, “Entirely amazing! And I am sure we all agree—fascinating!” The ever-political Marjorie Halifax added, “I concur! Fascinating is the only possible word!”

  Nigel knew, of course, that Flick Adams understood his understated sarcasm. She smiled warmly and said, “Thanks, everyone. It’s a pleasure to talk to people who are thoroughly knowledgeable about tea.” She stared directly at him. “Many laypeople are so ignorant.”

  “Yes, well, let’s move on,” Nigel said.

  “Move on?” Archibald Meicklejohn spoke up. “Our meeting ended with Dr. Adams’s brilliant presentation.”

  “Not quite,” Nigel said. “We have one more item of new business. Dame Elspeth wants to discuss a matter of considerable importance.”

  “No one told me!” Archibald said, somewhat testily. “As chair of the trustees, I am certainly entitled to know of changes to our agenda.”

  “Dame Elspeth visited my office before the meeting.” Nigel added a little white lie: “It seemed too late to notify you. I apologize for not doing so.”

  Nigel looked across the table and saw that Dame Elspeth was still asleep, though no longer snoring. There was something unnatural about the pallor of her skin. And—was it possible?—she had slipped farther down in her chair.

  Before Nigel could make sense of his four observations, Iona Saxby, who was seated alongside the elderly woman, let loose a robust shriek: “Good heavens! Dame Elspeth is ill!” Regrettably, the startled attorney also gave the Dame’s swivel chair an accidental shove. The shriek and the shove worked together in perfect unison; as every eye in the room turned toward the oldest trustee, she slid off the slick leather upholstery and fell to the floor with a lifeless thump.

  Dr. Clowes moved to her side in an instant, but Nigel had not the slightest doubt that Dame Elspeth Hawker was dead.

  And neither, apparently, did the six trustees who stayed anchored in their seats. Nigel watched their frozen smiles, their eyes darting to and fro nervously, occasionally joining beams with his.

  After several seconds of mental wheel-spinning, Nigel’s good sense kicked in and he reached for his cell phone. “I’ll call for an ambulance.”

  “There is no need for haste,” the doctor said, rising. “Dame Elspeth is quite dead. She seems to have slipped away several minutes ago.”

  Nigel snapped the cell phone shut.

  “However,” Flick Adams said, “there is every need to call the police.”

  It was only then that Nigel noticed Flick had switched the lights back on and was standing directly over Dame Elspeth.

  “Why the police?” he asked her.

  “Elspeth Hawker has been poisoned. Look at her.”

  Dr. Clowes stiffened. “I have looked at Dame Elspeth! What possible line of thinking leads you to suggest—”

  Flick didn’t wait for Dr. Clowes to finish. “Check out the color of her face,” she said. “Look at her eyes. Feel how cold her skin is. She has the classic symptoms of sudden death from a barbiturate overdose.”

  Nigel heard a definite crack in Flick’s voice. She was clearly upset and fighting to control herself.

  Dr. Clowes harrumphed loudly. “One cannot make such a determination after death without a battery of tests. In any case, may I remind you, Doctor Adams, that you are not a medical doctor!”

  “True—but I probably know more about forensic toxicology than you do. There are definite indications that can’t be ignored.”

  Somewhere in the back of his intellect, Nigel vaguely grasped that a noisy argument between Sir Simon Clowes and Felicity Adams had begun. He didn’t hear their verbal thrusts and parries, however, because the spasm of alarm that abruptly gripped the front of his intellect overpowered his senses. He worked frantically to connect the logical dots that swarmed like gnats in his brain:

  Dame Elspeth was dead. That much was certain. Flick Adams might be right about an overdose of barbiturates. If so, that would indeed mean Elspeth had been murdered.

  Why was she murdered? Possibly to silence her before she could announce to the other trustees the identity of the “exceedingly clever thief ” she had discovered.

  If so, the thief might well assume that Dame Elspeth shared her concerns with Nigel Owen when she asked him to modify the meeting’s agenda.

  Dame Elspeth’s final question echoed through his mind: “What is the harm in that?”

  The blinking harm, you foolish old woman, is that I may now be in significant danger, too.

  Nigel poured through his memory again. Had Elspeth said anything else that might point to the person she had in mind? Not a word!

  A woman’s voice shouted, “Nonsense!”

  A man’s voice bellowed, “Poppycock!”

  With a start, Nigel realized that the noisy argument in front of him had become explosive. He looked up in time to see—and hear—Sir Simon Clowes roar, “I will not allow another utterance of your inane twaddle! Dame Elspeth’s heart failed. There is no doubt in my mind that my diagnosis is correct. Not a whit of misgiving. Not a trice. Not a smidgen.”

  Nigel felt his own heart leap for joy. A heart attack meant no poison. And no poisoner. And no danger to himself. Of course, there was still the matter of Dame Elspeth’s suspicions to deal with…

  Or was there?

  The old woman’s fuzzy meanderings in his office hardly made sense. She had refused to flesh out her vague claim with specifics. He would be foolish to repeat her words to anyone. Far better to forget them lest they cast a pall on Dame Elspeth’s memory.

  Nigel rapped the table with his knuckles. “Excuse me,” he said. “I urge us all to listen to Sir Simon’s wise counsel. I also intend to send out for coffee. Would anyone else like a cup?”

  Two

  Felicity Katherine Adams—Flick to her friends—yanked three more tissues from the box on her desk, blew her nose for what seemed the umpteenth time, and wondered when it would finally stop dripping.

  Blast them all—their closed minds and calloused hearts.

  She crumpled the tissues into a tight ball and decided that if ever there was a proper occasion for unabated sniveling, this was it. How could she not cry after losing a wonderful friend and smashing into a stone wall of obstinate stupidity? No one else in the boardroom recognized the obvious facts. Not one of them would pay attention to simple truth.

  Starting today, they have new names: the fool, the oaf, and the six toadies.

  The chief curator’s office filled the southwest corner on the top floor of the Royal Tunbridge Wells Tea Museum and provided an uninspiring view of the public and private car parks. Flick moved to the window behind her desk and stared at the ambulance parked directly below. The boxy white Renault van seemed to
glow in the white floodlights that illuminated the area behind the museum. It reminded Flick of the bread truck that made predawn deliveries on her street in York, Pennsylvania, during her childhood.

  The fool—Sir Simon Clowes—stood next to the ambulance’s still-open rear door, signing paperwork for the ambulance technician, who seemed to savor the physician’s every word. The technician was a tall, athletic woman in her late twenties wearing a yellow jumpsuit. Her deferential body language signaled that she knew of Dr. Clowes and his impeccable reputation. She hadn’t even bothered to check for signs of life in the boardroom before hefting poor Elspeth onto the gurney. The doctor’s golden judgment had been sufficient to convince her.

  Flick felt a twinge of guilt. Perhaps she should have chosen more tactful words during her argument with Sir Simon. Calling one of England’s leading cardiologists a “feebleminded quack” might have been an overreaction. She peered at her hazy reflection in the window glass and watched herself shrug. What other label fit a doctor who ignored all the classic symptoms of barbiturate poisoning, then refused to listen to reason—again and again?

  He was dead wrong! I’ve forgotten more forensic toxicology than he ever learned.

  That’s what made the situation really galling. A physician of Sir Simon’s age had studied little, if any, forensic chemistry or forensic toxicology; whereas Flick had taken every class she could find on these subjects and had seriously considered switching her major to one of the forensic sciences. In the end, though, simple squeamishness drove her career choice: Flick loved the intellectual challenge of being a scientific detective but hated the grim reality of handling bits and pieces of a corpse. Her favorite forensic toxicology professor decided that the problem was Flick’s spirited imagination. “You simply can’t put enough emotional distance between you and dead crime victims,” he had said. The less gory work of food chemistry won her over.

  Flick looked down at the car park again. The oaf—Nigel Owen—stood near the front of the ambulance, talking to the driver. He had been less than useless when the lights came on in the boardroom, frozen in place like a statue, staring wide-eyed, pasty-faced, and slack-jawed while Flick fought her losing battle with Simon Clowes. Nigel might have chimed in, perhaps suggesting a second opinion or at the very least agreeing to call the police. But no! The oaf had sided with one of the trustees against his chief curator—a miserable, disloyal thing even for a standin museum director to do.

  How can a tea museum be managed successfully by a man who hates tea?

  Soon after she met Nigel, Flick decided that he had been hired as acting director chiefly because he looked the part. Tall, lanky, ruddy-faced, with a shock of reddish-blond hair—the typical hail-fellow-well-met wing commander character she’d seen encouraging his men in old World War II movies.

  In fact, Nigel’s adventurous Battle of Britain image vanished the moment he opened his mouth. The man had the mind, heart, and imagination of a bean counter. He consistently showed himself more concerned about finances and policy than about the quality of the experience visitors enjoyed at the museum.

  “We have met the real Nigel Owen,” Flick muttered. “A stuffy, pretentious pain in the rump who expects to have everything his own way. And he usually gets it, because the trustees follow his every lead. Like now, for example.”

  The six other surviving trustees—the six toadies—were gathered a few paces behind Nigel, chatting quietly. They had agreed instantly when he urged them to “listen to Sir Simon’s wise counsel.” How could Flick have expected otherwise? The trustees were easily swayed by cachet and reputation. Nigel held an MBA degree from the prestigious INSEAD in Fontainebleau, France. Consequently, the toadies apparently assumed he must be an intelligent, efficient, practical manager. Therefore, they acted with complete reliance on his judgment—even when he made rotten suggestions, like this afternoon.

  Well, to be perfectly fair, they always do what you ask, too.

  Flick resolved to find a new epithet. “Toadies” seemed too negative a description of the museum’s trustees. They were basically good people who had been exceptionally supportive during her brief tenure as chief curator. No, she shouldn’t blame them for being led astray by Sir Simon Clowes. After all, most people expect a licensed physician to know what he’s talking about. Especially one who’s been knighted by the Queen.

  A noise from the car park caught Flick’s attention. The ambulance technician had slammed the van’s rear door shut. She shuddered at the finality of the ugly thump. Dame Elspeth Hawker had begun her final journey. There would be no further medical scrutiny, no postmortem examination of her body, no toxicology tests, all because Dr. Clowes claimed—no, insisted!—that an old woman had suffered a “massive coronary failure.”

  The law is on his side. There’s no way I can undo what he’s done.

  Once again, Flick felt the chaotic combination of grief, anger, and powerlessness that had compelled her to take refuge in her office an hour earlier. Thank goodness for a full box of tissues. She didn’t cope well with situational stone walls. But then, none of the Adamses did. A doggedness to succeed threaded Flick’s family tree like steel rods through reinforced concrete.

  John and Pauline Adams, her parents, owned and stubbornly operated the White Rose of York, an eighteenth-century English inn in York, Pennsylvania, complete with an authentic pub. The White Rose had remained true to its founders’ dream despite a fire, three recessions, and two takeover attempts by large hotel chains.

  Her uncle, now a homicide detective in the York Police Department, had managed to foil an armed robbery after he’d been badly wounded. The bullet fragment still lodged in his back fifteen years later testified to his tenacity.

  Flick’s older brother was an entrepreneur who launched a successful publishing empire on a shoestring budget. Her cousins included a female astronaut and a color-blind artist.

  In short: Count on an Adams not to take no for an answer. It was the personality trait she was most proud of—a quality that helped her earn her PhD at the tender age of twenty-four.

  The ambulance’s diesel engine rumbled to life. Flick could not be positive from so far away, but it looked like Sir Simon had a smile on his face as he watched the ambulance negotiate the museum’s private driveway that circled around the rear of the building and served the loading dock and the employees’ car park.

  “What’s going through that devious mind of yours?” she said softly.

  Flick wished she could ask him a point-blank question: Why would a competent doctor choose to sweep the facts of Elspeth’s poisoning under the museum’s Bokhara rug? Surely he must know that the unexplained drop in Elspeth’s body temperature while she sat in a warm room was an absolute giveaway. Her body had lost heat before she died because the barbiturates coursing through her bloodstream triggered hypothermia.

  Sir Simon’s vehement rebuff to Flick’s straightforward observation of this fact made no sense at all…or did it?

  Flick moved her head to get a better view of Sir Simon. He was shaking Nigel’s hand—and this time there definitely was a smile on his face. “Maybe he thinks that Dame Elspeth killed herself,” she murmured. “That would explain everything. He lied to protect the family from a scandal in the British tabloids.”

  Could Elspeth have intentionally taken an overdose?

  “Impossible!” Flick shouted at her reflection.

  Suicide was unthinkable. Everyone around Dame Elspeth could see how excited she was to be alive. Her growing interest in the museum, her enthusiasm at trustee meetings, and her newfound happiness spoke volumes about the state of her mind.

  For seventy years, Elspeth had lived under the larger-than-life shadow cast by her older half sister, Mary Hawker Evans. Mary had been the undisputed leader of the family—a calculating matriarch who ruled her children and her timid sibling like a tsarina. Elspeth had never married or pursued a career, being content to lead a reclusive life confined mostly to her own house and garden. But fourteen year
s ago, when Mary died, the real Elspeth emerged like a butterfly from a chrysalis.

  When Elspeth became the sole owner of the finest antiquities on display, her interest in the Royal Tunbridge Wells Tea Museum blossomed. She explored every corner of the museum, becoming reacquainted with her grandfather’s many treasures—more than three thousand cataloged items in all—including an unparalleled collection of tea-related paintings, maps, and photographs; unique models of clipper ships; cases full of ships’ logs and captains’ correspondence; the famed “All the Teas of China” Tunbridge Ware tea caddy collection; thousands of pieces of rare chinaware and porcelain; a king’s ransom of silver tea sets and Russian samovars; a salon full of tea-processing machinery; and detailed records from Desmond Hawker’s two tea-importing businesses.

  Elspeth grew to be one of the hardest working trustees. She had led the search committee that recruited Flick Adams as chief curator and then spent many hours helping Flick understand the museum’s considerable holdings. Together they had explored the basement archives, perused the thousands of books in the Desmond Hawker Library, and become fast friends…

  Flick quickly blew her nose before she could begin to cry again.

  Don’t try to do two things at once! Grieve for Elspeth later, after the rest of them understand what really happened in the boardroom.

  It was ridiculous to imagine Elspeth Hawker taking her own life. And almost as absurd to claim she suddenly—and silently—succumbed to heart failure. No, the truth was plain as a Scottish scone. Elspeth had been murdered, even though no one besides Flick accepted the possibility.

  Correction!

  One other individual at the museum knew the truth. The person who had fed Elspeth a lethal dose of barbiturates during the tea break.

  Flick looked again at her reflection and asked, “How many people were in the building when Elspeth was poisoned?”