Dead as a Scone (27 page)

“I don’t believe it,” she had said. “Nigel Owen simply does not look like the sort of man who would enjoy red pepper. A splash of malt vinegar, perhaps, or a blob of Marmite, but nothing spicy enough to leave your tongue limp.”

“Yum!” he said after he had finished half the slice. “That should give the activated charcoal something to think about.”

“Once again you amaze me.”

“Good! Now it’s your turn. Tell me something peculiar about you that I don’t know.”

Flick took a bite of pizza and thought about it. “Well, one of my odder quirks is that I hate to be late for anything. I get to the airport at least two hours before every flight. I arrive at work at eight thirty sharp every morning. And when I’m invited to dinner, I usually show up five minutes early.”

“Blimey, how many hostesses have you found in the shower?”

“I know it’s silly, but I can’t help it. It’s my nature to be punctual.”

Nigel nodded. “Which is why I find you at your seat in the boardroom, waiting for meetings to begin.”

“And you always will.”

After their alfresco supper, Nigel had strolled with Flick back to her apartment on the Pantiles’s Lower Walk. She had taken Cha-Cha’s lead, expressed regret yet again that her tea had nearly poisoned him, and agreed that first thing Monday morning she would give him a close-up tour of the sham Tunbridge Ware tea caddies.

“First thing in the morning” for Nigel was nine fifteen, occasionally nine thirty. But on that Monday, he had awakened outlandishly early and arrived at the museum at an unprecedented eight fifteen.

If eating peppers amazes her, this should knock her off her pins.

Nigel hoped that she would smile when she saw him that morning. There was something remarkably pleasing about Flick’s smile. And something delightful in the way her warm brown eyes seemed to glow more brightly. It would also be grand if she wore the same perfume she had on Sunday. He almost could remember the spicy scent of flowers as they walked side by side through the Pantiles.

Well, I’ll be… There she is.

Nigel glanced at his watch. Flick had reached the roundabout at precisely 8:25. She was walking in her usual hurried stride, with Cha-Cha trotting alongside, his tail at a happy angle. Nigel scooted around the western corner of the museum before she could spot him. He ducked into the side entrance that the staffers used in the morning and waited patiently out of sight against the wall.

He pushed open the steel and glass door an instant before Flick reached for the handle.

“Eight thirty and all is well!” he said. “One can set one’s clock by Felicity Adams.”

Now, that’s a pretty smile.

“Where did you come from?” she asked.

Her eyes are definitely gleaming.

“You are not the only early riser in Tunbridge Wells,” he said dryly.

“And people say that the age of miracles is over.”

Nigel stood aside to let Flick by. As she passed, he noticed that her heels were higher than usual, that her hair looked extra shiny, and that even a ubiquitous trench coat did a remarkable job of flattering her figure.

Flick let Cha-Cha off his lead. The Shiba Inu made a quick circle around Nigel, presumably to say hello, then took off for the Duchess of Bedford Tearoom. She handed Nigel the rewound lead and said, “I almost hate to give up Cha-Cha for the night. I like his company.”

He watched her slip out of the trench coat. Instead of her usual skirt and blouse, she wore a stylish dress in a soft fabric that seemed to honor every curve of her body. Perhaps she intended to participate in the “Mad Hatter” research conference that afternoon.

The clatter of dog nails on marble tiles soon gave way to a friendly cacophony of squawks and yips in the distance.

“What a racket,” Nigel said.

“Do you suppose they actually
like
each other?”

“I don’t see why not. They lived together at Lion’s Peak for several years.” Nigel slipped the lead into his jacket pocket. “When I was a child, my cat Henry befriended a rabbit who lived in the woods behind our house. They were great pals.”

“You had a cat named Henry?”

“A fine name for a fine cat.” Nigel sniffed. “Anyway—every afternoon, a rather large brown and gray rabbit would appear at the hedge at the back of our garden. Henry would join the rabbit, and the pair went off for an hour or two.”

“What was the rabbit’s name?”

“Henry never told me.”

“What did they do in the woods?”

“Commiserate about the sad decline of the English countryside, I should think.”

They exchanged good mornings with the security guard sitting in the Welcome Centre kiosk in the middle of the ground floor, then climbed the stairs. As they neared the third floor, Flick asked, “What sort of cat was Henry?”

“Big, friendly, marmalade colored. Why do you ask?”

“Because no self-respecting American cat I know would make friends with a rabbit.”

Nigel grinned. “Ah. Is that because Americans like to split hares?”

Flick groaned. “That’s painful!”

“You can wreak revenge on me with a long, boring lecture about counterfeit Tunbridge Ware.”

“You bet!” she said. “Give me ten minutes to read my email and meet me in the Tea Antiquities Gallery.”

Nigel went to his office. He checked his email; nothing required his immediate response. Next, he played back the two voice messages stored in his telephone. The first was from Alain Rousseau’s wife: The chef was on the mend, but wouldn’t be back cooking before Thursday at the earliest. The second message was from Barrington Bleasdale: He would very much appreciate a “progress report” from the acting director.

Nigel shuddered as he put down the telephone. He had forgotten about the Hawker heirs and their pudgy solicitor. They would have to be told about the thefts before the collection was appraised.
How will they react,
he mused,
to finding themselves a half million pounds poorer?

Definitely not well.

He walked downstairs to the first floor and found Flick waiting for him in the Tea Antiquities Gallery. She was kneeling on one knee, using a large magnifying lens to inspect a teak tea table inlaid with a map of India.

“Has Sherlock unearthed another fake?” he asked as he came up behind her.

“Completely real.” She rose to her feet. “Although not especially valuable. Its sole claim to fame is that it was given to Desmond Hawker by an Indian maharaja as a token of his esteem.” She gestured with the magnifying lens toward the far corner of the gallery. “There’s our chief problem.”

They moved to the octopus-like display rack that held the eighteen shoebox-sized tea caddies. Overhead, a sign proclaimed,
ALL THE TEAS IN CHINA.

“Which one is the Hunan caddy?” he asked.

“The box in the middle of the display.” Flick carefully lifted the Hunan caddy from the rack and set it down on the floor. She handed the magnifier to Nigel and said, “You look; I’ll talk.”

Nigel sat on the floor and examined the different mosaics on the top and sides of the box while Flick held forth on the thousands of individual pieces of wood in the mosaics. “In the nineteenth century,” she said, “Tunbridge Ware makers routinely used 160 different woods to achieve the many different colors you can see in their mosaics.”

Nigel thought the images fairly interesting. The mosaic on the top of the caddy was a landscape, presumably of Hunan, China. On one side, a scene of women picking tea leaves; on the other, a group of men drinking tea.

“Do you know how the original mosaics were made?” she asked.

“I haven’t a clue.”

“Thin strips of wood of different colors were glued together into a block. Then a slice of the block was cut to make a single ‘line’ of the mosaic. Many other blocks were required to complete the mosaic, each precisely assembled from different woods. It took enormous skill to plan the correct sequence of wood strips so that the finished mosaics would depict an image.” She grimaced. “I don’t know what technique was used to create these forgeries. Possibly some sort of computer-controlled machine.”

Flick showed Nigel the minor variations in color, patina, or texture that Elspeth had identified. He found it difficult to concentrate on such trifling details. Flick, crouched on her knees next to him, was indeed wearing the same perfume as she had worn yesterday.

Think about the Tunbridge Ware.

“This box looks authentic to me,” he said.

“I agree. It’s a superb forgery.” She added, “Although, take everything I say with a grain of salt. I’m not really an expert on Tunbridge Ware.”

“You could have fooled me.”

“I learned everything I know from Elspeth,” she said with another smile.

Nigel’s heart thumped. The combination of his proximity to Flick, her smile, and that incredible perfume was doing bizarre things to his composure. He jumped to his feet and said hoarsely, “How would one go about copying an authentic piece of Tunbridge Ware to make an imitation? The curators surely would have noticed if the original tea caddy had been missing for a while.”

“A counterfeiter usually takes high-resolution photographs from many different angles, both inside and outside the object to be copied. The photos would be very much like the pictures we take in case we have to restore a damaged antiquity. A set of forty photographs probably would capture all the detail on a box of this size.” Flick picked up the fake Hunan caddy and returned it to the display rack. “But to do that much picture taking, the thief would have to disable the museum’s alarm system for the better part of an hour.”

Nigel grunted. “We keep coming back to the security system. How did the thief get around it?”

They pondered in silence until Nigel said, “Where is the nineteenth fake?”

“Standing near the entrance to the gallery.” Flick pointed at a squat cabinet with glass-paneled doors and several drawers. The piece sat atop a three-foot-high display pedestal that elevated its doors to the typical visitor’s eye level.

Nigel moved to the object and read its descriptive sign aloud. “Miniature Japanese
tansu
tea chest. Circa 1890. Made of cedar wood with turned cypress knobs. Twenty-four inches wide by thirty-five inches high by eleven inches deep. Collected by Desmond Hawker and donated by Mary Hawker Evans in 1968.” He studied the chest a moment, then continued. “Interesting—but not the prettiest piece in the room.”

“I agree, although Elspeth regarded the original as one of her favorites.”

“Are we sure this is a fake? It looks real to me.”

“Elspeth identified the mysterious disappearance of tool marks on the turned knobs and also changes in patina inside the cabinet.”

Nigel peered through the glass-paneled doors and wondered if Elspeth could have been mistaken. To his admittedly unpracticed eye, the interior appeared wholly authentic. “How much was the original worth?”

“Eight thousand pounds at most. Frankly, I’m bewildered that a savvy antiquities thief would want to steal the original. There are many more valuable pieces in the gallery.”

Nigel grunted again. “Counterfeiting this chest makes even less business sense than the tea caddies. The cost of replicating the original must have consumed all of the potential profits
—
maybe more.”

He handed the magnifying lens to Flick. “I know I’m not the best of students. Thank you for being patient with me.”

“Do you have time this morning to return the favor?”

“Absolutely. Would you like a scintillating lecture on the importance of operating profit as percentage of total annual turnover?”

Flick sniggered. The gallery abruptly seemed brighter to Nigel. He felt oddly self-conscious to be the object of her amusement.

“No, silly,” she said. “What I had in mind is your help in searching the Hawker Suite. Maybe Elspeth hid something else of importance.”

“I never asked you—where did you find the black notebook?”

“Taped to the underside of the old wooden side chair.” Flick sighed. “I hope I didn’t miss anything significant when I packed up her papers and belongings.”

“I wouldn’t think you did. Elspeth went to the trouble of hiding the notebook. She left her routine clobber—the possessions you retrieved from her desk and credenza—out in the open.”

They climbed the stairs to the second floor.

Nigel went into the Hawker Suite first. The office was dark and smelled musty. He pulled back the draperies and opened a window. Flick stood in the doorway, slowly scanning the room, apparently engrossed by what she saw.

“A penny for your thoughts,” he said.

“I’m trying to think like an eighty-four-year-old woman,” she replied. “Where would she look for a hiding place?”

“It must have taken some effort to affix the notebook under the chair, but I can’t envision Dame Elspeth crawling around on all fours. She was much more likely to do what you did, stash her secrets in a teakettle.”