Dead as a Scone (5 page)

Flick waved good night to Conan Davies, who stood patiently like a sentinel near the doors, waiting for an opportunity to lock up and set the alarm system. Conan, a large man of few words, returned a wink.

The night air felt chilly. Flick tightened the belt on her Burberry and tried to ignore the cars speeding by on Eridge Road. Marjorie and the others didn’t seem to notice, but Flick found them alarmingly close—even with tall, solid Matthew Eaton walking next to her on the sidewalk. Happily, she knew the Pantiles and the Swan were only a five-minute walk away.

When Flick had first visited England at the age of eleven, some twenty-five years ago, the country’s narrow lanes, high hedgerows, and twisty curves had enchanted her. Back then, the English favored small cars, appropriate to the width of their roads. But now, like Americans, they drove full-sized sport-utility vehicles and minivans. These big vehicles seemed to overflow the still-narrow roads and overpower the woefully inadequate in-town car parks. She marveled that local drivers managed to whiz past each other without colliding and then park their big Mercedes SUVs and Range Rovers in “stalls” that were laid out decades ago for tiny Austins and Morris Minors.

Matthew Eaton gently tapped her arm. “If I may ask a possibly impertinent question, Dr. Adams… how did a woman born and raised in faraway Pennsylvania acquire two
veddy, veddy
English monikers?”

“Both of my parents are determined Anglophiles,” she said. “My mother chose
Felicity
and my father immediately added the appropriate English nickname,
Flick.”

“Well done!”

“I agree. I’ve always thought that Flick Adams has an interesting ring to it.”

Somewhere in the distance a siren warbled. Flick immediately thought about Elspeth Hawker.
If I were a real detective investigating her murder, what questions would I ask my suspects?

Flick caught her breath. “Good heavens!” she muttered softly. “I have to treat them all like secret suspects. I hope I can manage that.”

“Did you say something?” Matthew asked.

“No! I didn’t!” she answered, much louder than she meant to.

It’s time to start lying to my friends and superiors.

Flick looked up at Matthew’s bewildered face and smiled.

Three

“W
hat makes my job especially difficult, you see, is that Dame Elspeth Hawker offers no obvious media handles.”

The earnest public relations practitioner paused to let his gloomy pronouncement sink in. Nigel Owen duly jotted the words “no media handles” on his yellow pad. He even added an underline to emphasize the severity of the problem, although he had no idea what kind of handles Elspeth might have possessed or why her lack of the media variety would cause such despair.

Nigel set down his pen and nodded in agreement. It simply wouldn’t do to display his ignorance of communications jargon in front of Archibald Meicklejohn. It had been Nigel, after all, who suggested that they get assistance crafting the statement about Elspeth’s death. “This sort of writing needs a deft professional touch,” he had said to Archibald. In fact, Nigel saw no reason to invest hours of his own time learning enough about the Hawker clan to write Elspeth’s obituary. Six months from now, the Hawkers would be a fading memory.

The corpulent, fiftyish PR man heaved a melancholy sigh and went on. “Elspeth seems to have spent her long life growing tea roses and taking the odd trip to Bath. No occupation. No husband or children. No hobbies. No observable idiosyncrasies.
Nothing!
Not a single media handle I can see.”

Nigel thought about asking for clarification, but as he weighed the pros and cons, Archibald beat him to the punch. “Stuart, what pray tell is a
media handle?
And how might Elspeth Hawker be so equipped?”

Nigel relaxed.
Good! The spotlight is on Stuart, where it belongs.

Stuart Battlebridge was a principal in the firm of Gordon & Battlebridge, the agency that provided public relations support for the Royal Tunbridge Wells Tea Museum. Nigel admired the brochures and news releases that G&B developed, but he thought the firm worked a tad too hard to stay on the cutting edge of societal trends. To wit: The only beverages on offer were bottled waters and decaffeinated soft drinks. The photos on the walls showcased endangered species. The staff wore business casual clothing every day; Stuart’s khaki slacks and wool Aran sweater presented a decided contrast to Nigel’s and Archibald’s three-piece suits. And Stuart’s office, where the three of them now chatted, featured an eclectic hodgepodge of furniture that supposedly connoted creativity. Nigel sat on a plain wooden rocker, Archibald in a leather upholstered club chair, and Stuart on the edge of his glass and metal desk.

Nigel leaned back in his chair as Stuart prefaced his explanation with a toothy smile. “We want our public relations efforts for the museum to pay dividends,” Stuart said. “Recall what happened fourteen years ago when we announced the demise of Mary Hawker Evans. She was such a fascinating character that our news release read like a novel. It generated no less than seven major feature articles.”

Archibald pressed his inquiry: “And a
handle
is?”

“An idea that a reporter can pick up and run with. For example, Mary Hawker Evans was an accomplished yachts-woman who once sailed to India using nineteenth-century tea-route charts that are now on display in the museum’s map room. The details we provided the press grew into a story about the museum’s superb map collection.”

Archibald abruptly grunted an acknowledgment, then said, “In other words, Elspeth led a boring life of no possible interest to reporters.”

Stuart shrugged. “One doesn’t make bread without flour or feature articles without media handles.”

The mention of bread made Nigel realize that he felt peckish. At the trustees’ meeting, he had nibbled the edges of a scone—but that had been hours earlier. He glanced out the window. The offices of Gordon & Battlebridge were on Monson Road, a short street in Tunbridge Wells’s town centre known for its varied shops and businesses. A few doors away was a bakery that did lovely French pastries and brewed an excellent cup of coffee. Perhaps he could persuade Stuart to send out for a snack.

Regrettably, Nigel waited a moment too long to ask.

“Aren’t you forgetting something?” Archibald said. “The Hawkers are one of England’s great mercantile families. Certainly there are historical details that will intrigue the press.”

Stuart let loose another sigh. “I know the Hawker saga by heart. Stop me if I accidentally say something that strikes you as interesting:

“The Hawker dynasty was created by Commodore Desmond Hawker, the founder of the Hawker & Son Tea Merchants.” Stuart’s droning delivery reminded Nigel of a soporific history teacher he hadn’t thought of for twenty-five years. “One is advised not to look too closely at the business methods Desmond used to grow his fortune. Rumors abound of aggressive tactics and close-to-the-edge practices. Some say the man was a scoundrel. As we all know, back in the nineteenth century,
scoundrel
was often synonymous with
successful
.

“Desmond was born in 1810, during the heart of the Napoleonic War, and lived to the ripe old age of ninety-four. The Hawkers tend to be hale and hearty folk, with several octogenarians and nonagenarians in the fold. Mary Hawker Evans made it to an even ninety years.

“Desmond married late in life. His one son, Basil Hawker—born in 1865, died in 1950—is best described as a superb businessman but a bland, unimaginative individual.”

Nigel noted that Stuart looked his way when he said “bland, unimaginative individual.”
The ungrateful rotter was willing to bite the hand that fed him.

Stuart droned on: “Sir Basil cleverly sold off the Hawker business assets to other companies at a significant profit before the Great Depression. He invested wisely and consolidated the family’s fortune. So, by 1930, the Hawker family was out of the tea business and enjoying a mostly quiet life of genteel leisure in Lion’s Peak, the oversized manor house that Desmond had built circa 1875. It can be found on the road to Pembury, some two miles northeast of where we sit.”

Stuart pointed to the window behind Nigel to indicate the general direction before he continued. “As an aside, the commodore lured Decimus Burton out of retirement to design Lion’s Peak. Legend has it that Decimus thought Desmond a nouveaux riches lout, which explains why most students of architecture feel that the house is one of Burton’s lesser accomplishments to be seen in Tunbridge Wells. Lion’s Peak, however, made up in durability for what it lacked in aesthetic appeal. A serious fire, apparently set by a local lunatic, destroyed almost a third of the house in 1924 or 1925. Sir Basil was able to quickly rebuild and restore the old monstrosity.”

Stuart shifted his position on the edge of the desk, presumably to a more comfortable one. “Returning to Sir Basil Hawker’s personal life,” he said. “Well, he had two wives during his eighty-five years. Sarah, wife number one, died while giving birth to Mary Hawker, way back in 1897. Gwyneth, his second wife, produced two children: Edmund and Elspeth, in 1918 and 1920, respectively. Gwyneth, incidentally, was killed by a V1 Buzz Bomb explosion during World War II.

“Mary Hawker married Rupert Evans in 1921, was widowed in 1947, and took charge of the family when Sir Basil died in 1950. She encouraged the establishment of the Royal Tunbridge Wells Tea Museum.

“Meanwhile, Edmund Hawker—Mary’s half brother
—
lived his life as a bon-vivant wastrel and died at the mere age of seventy in 1988. However, he did manage to marry and father the next generation of Hawkers: Harriet and Alfred.

“Elspeth Hawker chose a different path. She lived most of her life in self-imposed solitude. That changed when Mary Hawker Evans died in 1990. Elspeth surprised all and sundry by taking on the mantle of family leadership. She was by all accounts a benevolent despot, with few interests outside the museum.” Stuart added, “And today she died.”

Nigel didn’t respond. He looked at Archibald in time to see the banker shake his head and say, “I see your point—dull as dishwater.”

The room fell silent, giving Nigel a chance to brood over Archibald’s conclusion.
If Stuart doesn’t write the silly obit, you’ll get stuck with the job.

“Hold on a moment,” Nigel said. “I’ve had a thought. Elspeth Hawker wasn’t a sailor, so perhaps we can try a different tack. She spent the golden years of her life studying the museum’s collection of antiquities. One of our docents told me that Elspeth knew more about our dusty old clobber than our professional curators did.”

Stuart sprang to his feet. “I like it! The self-taught amateur who outpaces her professional colleagues. That has definite possibilities.” He moved to a whiteboard affixed to the wall behind his desk, picked up a red marker, and wrote in bold letters,
AMATEUR OUTDOES THE EXPERTS!

“What else did she do?” Stuart asked Nigel excitedly.

Nigel stared at his hands.
What else did Elspeth do?
He couldn’t think of a single thing, other than she claimed to have discovered “an exceedingly clever thief.”

You can’t talk about that.

Happily, the muse of epitaphs provided Stuart Battlebridge with an answer to his own question. “I know!” He spun back to his whiteboard. “We can say that Elspeth died while working to improve the museum she esteemed above all else.” He wrote,
DIED IN HARNESS!

“Isn’t that a bit… well, grisly?” Archibald asked.

“Not at all!” Stuart answered over his shoulder. “I presume that they carried Elspeth out feet first? If so, she fulfilled the requirements of the hackneyed old cliché.”

“Possibly,” Archibald admitted. “But let’s not exceed the bounds of good taste.”

Nigel listened in amazement as Stuart, oblivious to interruption, continued on a roll: “English reporters love tales of captains going down with their ships. We will point out that Elspeth went down
at
her museum.” He wrote
A LIFE OF GREAT PERSONAL SACRIFICE!
on the board and simultaneously asked, “Does anyone remember what she ate and drank before her death?”

“Indeed I do!” Nigel said, joining in the spirit of the moment. “As usual, Elspeth ate raisin scones with her favorite Danish lingonberry preserves and clotted cream. She drank several cups of estate Darjeeling.”

“Magnificent!” Stuart roared. “Dame Elspeth Hawker died sipping tea and munching scones while standing at the helm of the Royal Tunbridge Wells Tea Museum.”

“I beg your pardon!” Archibald tried to get Stuart’s attention. Nigel bit back a smile as Archibald added somewhat testily, “As the chair of the trustees, I stand at the helm of the museum.”

Stuart refused to be corrected—or slowed down. He wrote with extravagant strokes:
FALLEN MUSEUM LEADER EXPIRES AFTER ENJOYING HER LAST AFTERNOON TEA!
“Of course,” he said, “we must employ poetic license. A wholesome Scottish marmalade has more editorial appeal than some obscure Danish jelly. And a hearty workingman’s cuppa, perhaps brewed with an extra measure of PG Tips, seems more appropriate for Dame Elspeth than a tarted-up Darjeeling.”