Dead as a Scone (41 page)

Nigel merely shrugged, but Conan gawked at her as if she had lost her mind.

Oh dear. Time to move on.

Flick pointed to the last photograph on the wall. “Nigel, do you have any scary thoughts about Iona Saxby?”

She gasped audibly. It was not what she had meant to say. Nigel’s eyes went wide and he began to laugh. Flick started giggling; she felt herself begin to blush.

Conan abruptly surprised them both by saying, “I can give you a scary thought about Iona Saxby.” He had spoken in such an ominous tone that Nigel instantly stopped laughing.

Flick looked at the chief of security. “Please—”

“Iona Saxby is a very wealthy woman. If she chose to try, she might be able to bribe one of my security guards. If that happened, Iona would be able to get into the museum any time the guard was willing to accompany her. He would have the codes to disarm the perimeter alarm and a proper finger image to disable the motion detectors. Working together, the pair could carry the largest antiquity in the building and move it right to the loading dock.”

“The power of money,” Nigel said softly.

Conan nodded. “Money is the one variable that must be feared by anyone running a security operation. The most honest of people can be bent if the price is high enough.”

“But you don’t think that has happened—right?”

Conan’s expression loosened. “No. I trust my staff. But that doesn’t stop me from also doing periodic checks to find out if anyone is unexpectedly rolling in cash.” He added, “It’s a part of my security audit program.”

Conan evidently saw the puzzled look on Flick’s face. He spoke before she could frame a question. “Have you ever been to a magic show?”

“Sure.”

“Well, one of the principles that a stage magician applies is to show his audience what they expect to see. That’s a way to fool people. Seeing what one expects to see is a problem in security, too. Consequently, once each year I ask an independent security expert to review our operations. A new pair of eyes can recognize things that don’t look right, that shouldn’t be there.”

Flick stared at Nigel, who was staring at her just as intently.

An image popped into Flick’s mind. She felt sure that Nigel had also conjured up the same image.

“The pantry!” she screamed.

“It has to be!” he replied.

“What about the pantry?” Conan said.

“Follow us!” they shouted at the same time.

Flick stayed three steps ahead of Nigel. She charged down two flights of stairs, past a dozen bewildered visitors, lurched through the World of Tea Map Room, and flew past four people waiting to be seated in the Duchess of Bedford Tearoom. She made a sharp right turn into the kitchen and came face-to-face with Alain Rousseau, a tall, portly man with a well-trimmed beard and a short temper for trespassers in his bailiwick.

“Mademoiselle Adams,” he said, then jumped in surprise as Nigel and Conan skidded to a halt behind her.

“Carry on, Alain!” Flick said. She raced down the steps into the pantry, turned right, and lunged for the wardrobe-sized gap in the shelving against the wall. She flung aprons, towels, and Alain’s coat behind her.

“That was my face you just whapped,” Nigel said. She ignored him and also the steady stream of pithy French spoken by Alain Rousseau from the pantry door.

She dropped to her knees and inspected the wall in the gap. “Does anyone have a flashlight?” She tossed her head in frustration at the differences in English spoken on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean. “I mean a torch.”

“Try this one.” Conan reached over her shoulder and offered a small, high-intensity pencil torch.

Flick used the bright beam to illuminate the paneling on the wall.

“I can see a very fine seam,” she said. “I think there’s a door here.” She looked up at Conan. “What’s on the other side?”

“A small storage room. It’s part of the greenhouse.” He added, “You both wait here. I will go to the other side.”

“This would explain everything,” Nigel said. “A door through this wall bypasses our perimeter security system.” He ran his finger along the almost invisible seam. “I guess we do have a secret passage after all. Right into Matthew Eaton’s private storeroom.”

Flick heard metal rattling and glass clinking behind the paneling. She guessed that Conan was shifted gardening chemicals, tools, and whatever else stood close to the wall. There was silence for several seconds, then a gentle wood-against-wood squeak. A square section of the wall—some four feet on each side—seemed to disappear in front of her eyes.

“It’s a pop-out panel that fits perfectly in place,” Conan said. “Beautiful workmanship. Almost impossible to see on the pantry side and hard to find on the greenhouse side.”

“What do we do now?” Nigel asked.

“We call the police,” Flick answered. “Have them arrest Matthew Eaton.”

“On what basis?” Conan said. “Eaton will deny he knows anything about the panel. We have no evidence that he stole anything or poisoned anyone. Without proof, without a confession, there’s no case against him.”

Nigel suddenly sneezed.

“Bless you,” Flick said.

“Thanks. I must be allergic to something on the other side of the wall.” He found a handkerchief in his pocket and blew his nose. “I’ve just had an idea. A rather nasty idea—but I think Mr. Eaton deserves what’s on offer.”

“I hope it involves lots of oleander,” Flick said.

“In a way, it does.”

She couldn’t imagine why Nigel was once again wearing his little-boy smile.

Eighteen

A
m I the only person ready to leap out of his skin? Nigel Owen asked himself as he watched the before-meeting chatter in the boardroom. A few feet to his left, Flick Adams was jawing merrily with Dorothy McAndrews about alternative methods of brewing tea. And across the room, Conan Davies had engaged Vicar de Rudd in a calm discussion about the fortés and failings of local golf courses.

How can they be so blasé about what is going to happen?

Nigel understood why his day had inched along. Because other people had done most of the work required to implement his idea, he had been left with too much free time on his plate. He had used it unproductively—to second-guess their preparations and worry about what might go wrong.

On three different occasions that morning, Nigel had checked the storeroom in the greenhouse to make certain that Conan had properly reinstalled the access panel and its camouflage of gardening chemicals and tools. Would Matthew Eaton notice anything out of place if he arrived early for the trustees’ meeting and decided to visit his storeroom? Had he arranged the cans and bottles in a specific way? Would any variation instantly signal that his secret passage had been discovered? Nigel finally decided that all he could do was hope for the best.

The best came to pass. Matthew arrived at quarter of four and happily spent the fifteen minutes before the meeting talking football with Archibald Meicklejohn.

He hasn’t a clue that we found the panel,
Nigel realized with much relief.

At four on the dot, Archibald took his seat at the head of the polished mahogany table. Nigel and the meeting’s other participants followed the chairman’s lead and found their seats. Long-standing tradition required that the senior management of the Royal Tunbridge Wells Tea Museum—acting director, chair of the trustees, and chief curator—be arrayed at one end of the conference table. And so Nigel sat at the corner of the table, to Archibald’s left, while Flick took the opposite corner, to Archibald’s right.

Flick offered an encouraging wink from across the table. It straightaway caused Nigel to remember the encouraging hug she had delivered before the meeting began. And then there had been the kiss after dinner the previous evening…

Keep your mind on the plan.

In theory, there were no seating customs for the other trustees. In practice, Marjorie Halifax always sat at the other end of the long table, facing Archibald. She did so today. The other participants selected their chairs on a first-come, first-served basis.

One seat near the middle of the table remained empty until five minutes after four, when Iona Saxby rushed through the door in a hat that, Nigel estimated, had a brim as wide as a full-sized Mexican sombrero. She sat down next to Dorothy McAndrews, who, fearing brim-whip or possible blinding, scooted her chair closer to Sir Simon Clowes.

“Scusi,”
Iona said to Nigel in badly accented Italian. “I am
tardi
because my train was a
locale.”

“Non importa,”
Nigel replied. Iona must be getting ready for one of her periodic fortnights in Italy.

“Grazie!”
The happy look on her face went far beyond mere gratitude for his forgiveness of her minor transgression.

Blimey! She remembered my promise to have dinner with her.

“Well, now that we all are here,” Archibald said, “we can begin. Nigel, this is your meeting—please take the lead.”

Nigel put Iona out of his mind and drew a deep breath. “I want to thank the trustees for attending this special meeting of the trustees of the Royal Tunbridge Wells Tea Museum. As you see, we have several guests with us today.

“First, I am delighted to welcome Mrs. Harriet Hawker Peckham and Mr. Alfred Hawker, the soon-to-be-confirmed new owners of the Hawker antiquities. The gentleman sitting to the right of Mrs. Peckham is Mr. Barrington Bleasdale, the Hawkers’ solicitor.”

The Hawker heirs acknowledged their introduction with lackadaisical waves and feeble smiles, but Bleasdale bestowed a Cheshire cat grin on everyone at the table. Nigel instantly recognized the euphoric look of a man who expected to be much wealthier by the end of the day.

Don’t count your chickens quite yet
...

Nigel finished the introductions. “All of the trustees know the gentleman on my left. Conan Davies is our chief of security. I asked him to join us today should we require his expertise on security matters pertaining to the collection. And sitting next to Conan is Mr. Marc Pennyman. I prevailed upon him to travel up from Maidstone to help me with any… unusual legal issues that might emerge today.”

Nigel saw Barrington Bleasdale offer a confused frown; he clearly knew that Marc Pennyman was a policeman.
This is definitely not the time to explain.
Nigel paused for more smiles, nods, and waves, then said, “Vicar, please open us in prayer.”

The vicar began with an invocation that asked, once again, for additional wisdom and discernment. Nigel listened carefully and offered his own silent postscript.
The group gathered in this room today has need of a boatload of discernment.

The first item on the agenda—the part of Nigel’s plan designed to lull the trustees into believing that this special meeting was largely routine—was a longish slide presentation delivered by Flick. He asked her to project photos of the eighty most important Hawker antiquities and give a thirty-second description of each, ostensibly to bring everyone up to speed with the content of the collection. As before, her detailed knowledge captured the interest of the trustees. Even Nigel found himself paying attention. Her twenty-third photo was “Yunnan,” one of the tea caddies from “All the Teas in China.” He cast a sideways glance at Matthew Eaton. It was hard to read Eaton’s expression in the near dark, but Nigel sensed a certain smugness around the man’s mouth, a tinge of self-satisfaction.

We’ll have that off your face in another hour.

Flick talked on, and Nigel had to fight back a yawn. Once again, the darkened boardroom became as warm as a tropical rain forest, with the drawn drapes blocking the windows and the heating system working passionately even though the outside temperature had reached sixty degrees Fahrenheit.

Flick finished speaking and received her accustomed accolades. Only Marjorie Halifax, who still seemed peeved at Flick, was subdued in her praise. Nigel surveyed the conference table as Conan turned on lights and opened drapes.

Everyone is still alive!

Nigel cleared his throat. “By way of apologizing for the skimpy repast I served at our last meeting—and to compensate you for attending yet another unplanned trustee meeting—I have asked Alain Rousseau to provide the mother of all tea breaks this afternoon.” Nigel nodded at Conan, who opened the door and helped Giselle wheel in two tea trolleys laden to overflowing with serving dishes, ceramic crocks, and silver tureens. “Quarter of five strikes me as an excellent time to enjoy our tea. Bon appétit!”

Nigel felt great satisfaction as he watched the trustees, the Hawker heirs, and Solicitor Bleasdale attack the tea trolleys from all sides. He recalled an image—perhaps from an old Jacques Cousteau movie—of a dozen sharks savaging a school of fish, each predator determined to get more than his or her fair share.

“I love prawns!” Dorothy squealed, as she shoveled savory prawns on her plate.

“Have as many as you want, Dr. McAndrews,” Giselle said. “I brought more than enough for everyone to have a double helping.”