Dead as a Scone (17 page)

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.

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.”

Nigel searched his mind. Had he bollixed up his schedule for the day? Had he stupidly forgotten a meeting with five other people?

Giselle steered the tea trolley toward the service elevator.

Nigel made for the stairs—the fastest way to his office—and climbed them two at a time.

Flick was waiting for him in the third-floor lobby area.

“What’s going on?” he asked breathlessly.

“James Bond wants to see you.”

“Who?”

“A Brit spy. He showed up this morning and said he was from”—she looked at a slip of paper—“Em-Eye-Five.”

“MI5!
That’s Britain’s Security Service. Criminy! What does an MI5 spook want with me?”

“With
us.
His name is Nicholas Mitchell. He flashed his ID card to Margo McKendrick at the Welcome Centre kiosk. She couldn’t find you, so she called me down to chat with him. He asked to see”—Flick began to count on her fingers
—
“the head of the museum, the person in charge of security, the person responsible for the exhibits on display, and the people who show visitors around the museum.” She added, “He does look a lot like James Bond.”

“You’ve got the organizations mixed up. The fictional James Bond works for MI6, our Secret Intelligence Service. MI5 is our domestic security agency, a lot like your Federal Bureau of Investigation. MI5 does counterintelligence work inside Britain.”

“The
spook,
as you call him, didn’t explain the difference. Anyway, he’s in your office discussing the pros and cons of the museum’s burglar alarm with Conan Davies and our two docents.”

Nigel peered around his doorframe. Conan Davies, perched against a windowsill, his long legs stretched out in front of him, was holding forth about biometric access control devices. The man listening attentively to Conan looked like many of the other young English civil servants Nigel had met over the years. Medium height. Cheerful face. Uncontrolled shock of ash-blond hair. Gray-pinstriped three-piece suit. Blue shirt. Maroon-striped school tie. Nigel guessed his age to be thirty.

Mirabelle Hubbard and Trevor Dangerfield, the museum’s two docents, sat together on his sofa looking like an old married couple. In some ways they were closer: The pair had worked together at the museum since it opened in 1962. Mirabelle was a rosy-cheeked widow in her midseventies, with elaborately coiffed gray hair. She had been Nathanial Swithin’s secretary throughout his long stint as director. Trevor, closer to eighty, still resembled the tall, wiry, former Royal Marines sergeant who had been hired as the museum’s first security guard.

Nigel took a deep breath and strode into the office. Flick moved around him and performed the introductions. “Agent Nicholas Mitchell, may I present Nigel Owen, the acting director of the museum.” She turned to Nigel. “Agent Mitchell has requested that we call him Nicholas.”

Nigel shook Nicholas’s hand.

He doesn’t look anything like James Bond. He’s much too short.

Giselle rolled the tea trolley into the office and vanished discreetly. Nigel sat down behind his desk, Nicholas and Flick each took a visitor’s chair, Conan returned to his windowsill. Mirabelle moved to the cart and began to pour.

“First, let me thank you for seeing me without an appointment,” Nicholas said. “I suspect you are curious as to why an agent from MI5 has come to see you.”

Nigel smiled. “The question did cross my mind.”

“I am part of a task force that is investigating the smuggling of missing artifacts from the Iraqi National Museum in Baghdad.”

“I read of that program,” Conan said. “It’s a joint effort with the Yanks.”

Nicholas nodded. “As you know, the museum was looted about the time that Baghdad fell in April 2003. Thousands of artifacts from the Sumerian, Babylonian, Assyrian, and Islamic cultures disappeared.”

“I thought that the Americans retrieved most of the artifacts,” Nigel said.

“Most but not all. Regrettably, hundreds of worthwhile pieces are still missing, including a few irreplaceable masterpieces. We believe these items were smuggled out of Iraq to Asia and Europe. It’s probable that some have made their way to England.”

Mirabelle gave Nicholas and Flick cups of tea and Nigel a cup of coffee. She had placed two biscuits on each saucer.

“Retrieving antiques seems more like a job for Scotland Yard than MI5,” Conan said to Nicholas.

“We’re involved because it is likely that the moneys earned by selling the antiquities will be used to finance terrorism.”

Conan grunted, apparently satisfied by the answer.

Nicholas pushed a thick document bound with green plastic covers across Nigel’s desk. “Here is a catalog of the still-missing items. I brought this copy for you and your staff.”

Nigel flipped through a few of the pages, looking at photographs and descriptions of an engraved stone slab, a pitcher-like vessel made of clay, a small carved marble head of a man, a small statue of a bearded man praying, a carved stone bowl inlaid with shell mosaics, a burial helmet made of gold, and a golden dagger—also for ceremonial use. All were more than four thousand years old.

He slid the catalog to Flick. She browsed for a moment and then said, “With respect, Nicholas, including us on your list of museums doesn’t make much sense. Unless the Baghdad museum had Ishtar’s teapot on display, we are not likely to acquire any purloined artifacts. Our mission as a museum does not extend into Babylonian daggers and Sumerian statues.”

“Neither does our acquisitions budget,” Nigel said. “I can assure you that our funds to buy antiquities are fully committed.” He exchanged a half smile with Flick. “These objects must cost the earth.”

“Millions upon millions,” Nicholas said. “However, a reputable museum would never buy any of these items. And not even a dubious institution would put them on display. They are too well known”—he spoke to Flick—“too hot, as you Americans might say. However…” Nicholas opened the catalog to the photograph of the dagger. “If you are a wealthy but unscrupulous collector and someone offers you a natty golden dagger that looks like this one, how would you verify that it is real? After all, you don’t want to spend millions on a fake stolen relic.”

“I see where you are going with this,” Conan said. “Everyone knows that museums are careful when they purchase antiquities. We often call in experts to authenticate an artifact.”

“Precisely. Our unscrupulous dagger collector might well get it into his head to visit his local museum and chat up the docents.” Nicholas switched to a put-on London accent. ‘I was wondering, Mirabelle, if you might know the name of the chap who told the museum that the solid-gold teaspoon on display was worth all the lolly you paid for it.’ ”

Nigel gestured with a biscuit. “I can imagine that question being asked at the Victoria and Albert, but we are a small, specialized museum.”

Mirabelle jumped in. “Oh sir, it happens a lot.”

“It does?”

“I wish I had a bob for every harebrained question I hear,” Trevor agreed. “It’s all because of that barmy antiques show on the telly. Half the ladies in Tunbridge Wells think they have an attic full of valuables. Some visitors even bring their jumble with them, expecting that our curators do on-the-spot valuations.”

“How do you respond when asked?” Nicholas said.

“I usually point them to Mrs. McAndrews’s antique shop in the High Street. She is one of our trustees; I might as well send the appraising business her way.”

“Well, from now on please ask what kind of antique they want valued. If the explanation sounds at all suspicious—or if someone describes a piece that Abraham or Sarah might have purchased in ancient Ur—please call me at once.”

Nicholas handed out business cards.

Nigel stood up. “Thank you for bringing the problem to our attention. We certainly will cooperate in every way we can.”

“I appreciate that, Nigel,” Nicholas said, giving a quick grin. “However, I’m not quite finished.”

Nigel sat down. “Carry on then.”

“As you doubtless know, several museums in Europe have been exploited to store stolen antiquities.”

Nigel did not know, but he had no intentions of adding to his embarrassment by making a public admission of ignorance. He replied with an ambiguous nod.

Nicholas continued. “Any museum that has storerooms or an archive is potentially vulnerable.”

“We have both,” Conan admitted.

“For the scheme to work, the thief must have a confederate working inside the museum, ideally one of the curators. The partner in crime simply creates a false accession record and places the stolen artifact in the museum’s vault.”

“Why go to the trouble of doing that?” Mirabelle asked.

“Where better to store a stolen artifact than inside a museum? You have an elaborate security system, proper storage conditions, and none of the legal requirements of a bank’s safe-deposit box.”

“I’m afraid you’ve lost me,” Mirabelle said. “At the end of the day, what has the thief accomplished?”

“The best way to answer your question is with a hypothetical example. Imagine that a shifty individual in Tunbridge Wells did manage to acquire Ishtar’s teapot.”

Mirabelle began to laugh. “Sorry, sir, but I can’t picture a stony idol pouring tea.”

Nigel glanced at Nicholas. The MI5 agent seemed perfectly content to play along with Mirabelle’s joke.

“I do understand,” Nicholas said. “How about King Tut’s teacup?”

“That might work,” Mirabelle said. “Ask Trevor. He’s an old Egyptian hand.”

“Well, now…” Trevor stroked his chin. “I believe that Tutankhamen reigned in the fourteenth century BC.”

“Which would make him even older than you.”

Trevor threw a crumpled napkin at Mirabelle. “There is a painting in the Grand Hall that shows tea being discovered in China about fourteen hundred years before King Tut lived. So it is possible, one could even say probable, that caravans carried tea from China to Egypt.” He smiled at Nicholas. “Press on with your example.”

“Good!” Nicholas lifted his teacup to eye level. “If I had stolen King Tut’s teacup, I would be consumed with worry. What if my house burned down? Or what if one of my bent friends wanted to steal it from me?”

“Now I understand,” Mirabelle said. “You want to hide it in the museum.”