Dead as a Scone

by Ron Benrey

  “I moved to Elspeth’s side when Sir Simon did. Her pupils looked dilated and her face had a bluish tint. Most telling of all, despite the boardroom being unusually warm that afternoon, her skin felt icy cold. Those are obvious symptoms of barbiturate poisoning. A likely candidate is secobarbital sodium, a fast-acting drug. A sufficient overdose can kill in less than two hours. I believe that Elspeth was poisoned during our tea break.”

  Dorothy raised a hand. “But we all ate the same food.”

  “Not quite. Elspeth had her personal pot of lingonberry preserves, which she alone consumed. Alain Rousseau’s preserves are sweet enough to camouflage the bitter taste of a barbiturate.”

  “Why?” Matthew asked. “Why would anyone want to kill Dame Elspeth?”

  “To silence her. Elspeth uncovered a systematic scheme to exchange bona fide antiquities in the Hawker collection with forgeries.”

  Iona’s disembodied shout filled the room. “How do you know that?”

  Flick hesitated. “She communicated her discoveries to me.”

  “What discoveries?” Dorothy snapped. “Elspeth wasn’t qualified to determine the authenticity of anything.”

  “Possibly true. But she knew the Hawker antiquities well enough to recognize when an old familiar friend had been replaced with an imposter.”

  Flick couldn’t be sure, but had she just glimpsed a look of recognition on Nigel’s face? It seemed the expression of someone who just had an Aha! moment.

  Dorothy resumed her attack. “That is pure speculation! Give me a list of these so-called forgeries. I will have them examined.”

  Archibald boomed over the speakerphone, “Not necessary, Dorothy. The entire Hawker collection will be appraised during the coming months. In fact, the valuation will prove—or disprove—the conclusions Dr. Adams has reached.”

  Flick said nothing. She had located the last of the nineteen items that had earned a big red F from Elspeth. Every one was a clever forgery that looked authentic and might not be detected by a team of appraisers working at high speed to value a large collection for probate.

  Archibald went on. “I think we can safely defer any additional discussion about Dr. Adams’s conduct until then.”

  Flick saw Marjorie roll her eyes. She’s disappointed. She acts like she expected the trustees to fire me.

  Silence reigned until Nigel filled the vacuum. “Since we seem to have completed our revised agenda, perhaps we also can accomplish the original purpose of this informal meeting. Dr. Adams and I expect to present a proposal for acquiring the Hawker collection from the estate. With the trustees’ concurrence, I will express our interest to the Hawkers’ solicitor, tell him we are working out the specifics of our offer, and invite him to schedule the appraisal as soon as practical.”

  Flick cast another glance at Marjorie. She was smiling. “Exactly what I had hoped to hear you say,” she said.

  “I agree,” Archibald said. “However, when you talk to Bleasdale, impress upon him the need to sharpen his pencil. If we will purchase the whole collection, we expect the best possible price.”

  “And tell him that we want a say in choosing the firm that does the appraisals,” Dorothy said. “There are some bad eggs out there. I know who they are.”

  Flick let herself relax. The trustees had turned their attention away from her and toward the details of acquiring the Hawker antiquities. Nigel, too, seemed more at ease as he dutifully scribbled their suggestions on a yellow pad. Consequently, only Flick noticed Giselle Logan slip into the boardroom and crook her finger. The panicked look on Giselle’s face brought Flick to her feet. She moved alongside Giselle.

  Not another disaster!

  “We have a predicament, Dr. Adams,” Giselle said softly. “Alain Rousseau went home ill. His wife believes he has the flu and will be out of commission for several days. We won’t have fresh-baked scones and other tea cakes for the academic conference on Monday.”

  “I thought we have a substitute chef on call.”

  “We do. But he can’t arrive early enough on Monday morning to do all the extra baking. I’ll have to find a bakery in Tunbridge Wells that does proper scones.”

  “Rats!” Flick whispered. “I promised the conferees a deluxe cream tea, with all the trimmings fresh from the oven. A genuine Mad Hatter’s Tea Party.”

  Flick was still brooding when Archibald said, “I believe we have done enough business for a Saturday afternoon.” A few minutes later, she and Nigel were alone once more in the boardroom.

  “You look like you lost a pound and found a penny,” he said.

  “This has been a truly rotten day. And now I have to worry about scones.” She told Nigel about Alain Rousseau.

  “Not a problem,” Nigel said. “I’ll take care of it.” He added, “Do you realize that you are gawking at me?”

  “I’ve hardly begun to gawk. How do you plan to ‘take care of it’?”

  “Leave it to me. The ‘scone king’ shall tend to the feeding of the ravenous academics.”

  “You sound as mad as the Mad Hatter.”

  He stood up and moved to the door. “Aren’t you going home?”

  She shook her head. “No. I feel like moping some more.”

  As the door closed behind him, Flick suddenly remembered that she hadn’t thanked Nigel for doing battle with Marjorie Halifax.

  “Even more important,” she murmured, “I didn’t ask him why he stuck his own neck out for me.”

  Ten

  Nigel turned the key in the lock. Once he opened the museum’s side door, he would have sixty seconds to reach the alarm system panel hidden in the Welcome Centre kiosk and enter his personal access code.

  “Get ready, Cha-Cha.” Nigel wrapped the dog’s lead twice around his hand. “Run!”

  Nigel yanked his key free, zipped across the threshold, slammed the door behind him, raced through the fifty-foot-long hallway, passed the History of Tea Colonnade on his right and the gift shop on his left, skidded around the back side of the kiosk, tugged open the control panel door, and punched buttons on the keypad: 9-0-7-9-7-3.

  The red lamp on the panel flashed yellow.

  “We made it, Cha-Cha. Now we have another whole minute to disable the motion detectors.”

  Nigel pressed his thumb against a rectangular glass plate. He heard a soft beep as a tiny TV camera behind the glass imaged his thumbprint. The yellow lamp turned to green. A female voice sounded from a small speaker: “Security system disarmed by Nigel Owen. Sunday. Ten twenty-six.”

  Yes indeed, madam. Nigel Owen single-handedly vanquished our wizard alarm.

  Nigel contemplated the now-benign control panel with annoyance. He had never triggered the museum’s security alarm by accident. He had never even come close to exhausting the two sixty-second grace periods. Yet this morning he felt curiously intimidated by the complex system with its hundreds of sensors. A false alarm would send the Kent police racing to the front door of the Royal Tunbridge Wells Tea Museum, and he had no desire to increase his aggravation by meeting a new copper.

  Nigel felt annoyed enough, thank you very much, that he was about to spend most of his only real day off that week doing someone else’s job. He also knew of no one to blame but himself. Neither Giselle nor Flick had asked him to solve the scone problem.

  You volunteered all by your lonesome.

  Why had he offered to help? Probably because vague pangs of remorse kept reminding him that he had intentionally ignored two opportunities to do right by Flick Adams. He might have eased Flick’s sequential scoldings—first by DI Pennyman and then by the trustees—if he had repeated what Elspeth said on the day she died. As Iona Saxby had pointedly reminded him, Flick was part of his staff. He owed her a reasonable portion of loyalty and support.

  Had he been held back by simple fear—the notion that he might put himself in danger if one of the trustees was really a murderer? Or had it been the concern that the more influential trustees would begin to think of him as a “loose cannon�
�� along with Flick?

  In either case, yesterday he had not seen his finest hour.

  Nigel unclipped Cha-Cha’s lead. “You’re now free to roam about the museum while I check that the side door is locked.” But the dog didn’t seem in a mood to wander. He trotted alongside as Nigel—pondering the ingredients of scones and tea cakes—ambled back down the hallway.

  Cha-Cha unexpectedly yipped twice. Startled, Nigel looked up. Flick Adams stood in the doorway, a key in her hand, a bemused grin on her face.

  “Thank goodness I don’t have to make a forty-yard dash to the kiosk,” she said.

  “I didn’t expect to meet anyone else here today.” He shut the side door securely and turned the deadbolt. “Especially you. You seemed well and truly knackered yesterday afternoon.”

  “I felt kinda guilty dumping the scone problem into your lap. The least I can do is to help you order what’s necessary.”

  “Order? I don’t follow you.”

  “You said that you would get the baked goods we need for the conference from the Scone King bakery.”

  Nigel laughed. “No, I said that the ‘scone king’ will feed the visiting academics.” He paused for effect. “I am the scone king. I intend to do the baking myself.”

  “You?”

  “Don’t look so astonished. One has to support oneself at university. I worked as a journeyman baker in a baker’s shop for three years and even entertained the idea of becoming a pastry chef.” Nigel added, “If you really want to help today, join me in the kitchen. How are you at baking?”

  “Great in theory. I wrote my master’s thesis on the chemistry of yeast in flour-based carbohydrate matrices.”

  Nigel needed a moment to decipher Flick’s technical jargon. “In simpler terms, that would be how yeast makes bread dough rise.”

  “Exactly. However, my practice needs work. I’m famous in Pennsylvania for my lumpy, misshapen bread.”

  “A scullery maid will be of greater use to me this afternoon than an assistant baker. I am sure you have all the skills required to lift, carry, stir, and wash.”

  “Why, how kind of you to say so, sir.” She feigned a coy giggle. “Your word is my command.”

  Nigel led the way through the World of Tea Map Room and into the Duchess of Bedford Tearoom. They made for the door to the kitchen, on the right side of the tearoom, toward the rear. Earl Grey heard their footsteps and began to chirp; Cha-Cha responded with a delighted yip.

  “I’ll meet you in the kitchen,” Nigel said to Flick. “A brief pet stop seems in order.” He crossed the tearoom and removed the tablecloth from Earl’s cage. The bird peered at him, then stretched out a leg.

  “Get me a hot cuppa!” it squawked.

  “What say a piece of apple instead? Will that do?”

  Earl answered with a piercing wolf whistle. Cha-Cha yipped again.

  “I take that as a yes,” Nigel said.

  He joined Flick in the kitchen, where she had turned on the lights. The polished black-and-white floor tiles and the shiny stainless-steel commercial appliances gleamed beneath several banks of overhead fluorescent lamps.

  “As your first assignment,” he said, “see if you can locate Alain Rousseau’s recipe collection. Then we’ll decide what sort of goodies to prepare.”

  “The stack of notebooks on Alain’s desk looks promising.” She began to read aloud the labels on the spines. “English Breakfasts…Lunches…Picnics…Appetizers… Entrees…Desserts…here we go” —she tugged a book free from the stack—“English Afternoon and High Teas.”

  To Nigel’s astonishment, Flick began to frown as she flipped through the pages.

  “What can be distressing about a book full of recipes?” he asked.

  “It made me think of an argument I had with the owner of a tea shop in Pennsylvania, one of those pretentious places that spells shop s-h-o-p-p-e. We went at it hammer and tongs for a while.”

  “Heaven forefend! I can’t imagine you disagreeing with anyone.”

  Flick stuck her tongue out at Nigel. “Our fight was over her menu. She described ‘high tea’ as an elegant afternoon repast enjoyed by the English social elite.”

  “Not so. High tea is a workingman’s evening meal.”

  “She knew that. But many Americans assume that ‘high’ is short for ‘high class.’ The owner said, ‘It’s not my job to educate guests that high tea is really a supperlike meal served on a high kitchen table rather than on a low tea table.’ ” Flick heaved a sigh. “She didn’t want to argue with paying customers.”

  “How shocking. The triumph of business expediency over the truth.” Nigel shifted gears. “Speaking of paying customers—how many academics will descend on us tomorrow?”

  “Twenty-two in all. They ordered our complete English cream tea. Four kinds of tea—one Chinese black, one Indian black, one oolong, one green—plus scones, savories, sandwiches, and cakes.” Flick handed the notebook to Nigel. “I phoned Giselle this morning. The replacement chef will brew the tea, provide the savories—probably sausage rolls and a nice Welsh rarebit—and assemble the usual variety of tea sandwiches. Giselle assured me there are ample supplies of Alain’s preserves in the pantry and gallons of clotted cream in the fridge. You are responsible for the scones and the cakes.”

  “I still am bewildered by what these learned men and women will chat about while eating my scones. The societal something concerning the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party.”

  “The societal metaphors and allegories inherent in the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party.”

  “How did you speak those words without retching?” Nigel rolled his eyes. “Tomorrow’s conference may represent the worst example of pompous twaddle I have heard all year.”

  Flick laughed. “Professors of literature care about such things.”

  “I repeat—pompous twaddle!”

  “Aren’t you being a tad judgmental? After all, Lewis Carroll is widely recognized as one of England’s great writers—a man who apparently satirized nineteenth-century England when he wrote Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Besides, remember our chat with Jeremy Strain the other day. We want to encourage academics to use our facilities.”

  “Bah humbug! It pains me to serve my delightful scones at such a gathering. However”—he gave an exaggerated sigh—“I propose that we offer two kinds: plain and cinnamon raisin.”

  Nigel opened Alain’s notebook but glanced obliquely at Flick. He had had an amusing idea. “You like to dazzle innocent bystanders with facts about food. Let me ask you a question a food chemist probably can’t answer. Do you know where the name scone comes from?”

  Flick cleared her throat. “There are several theories. Given the apparent Scottish origin of the scone, some hold the name memorializes the Abbey of Scone, where the kings of Scotland were crowned as they sat on the so-called stone of destiny. Others argue that scone comes from schoonbrot, Dutch for beautiful bread, and still others that it derives from sgonn, a Gaelic word that means shapeless blob.

  “But whether pronounced ‘scone’ or ‘scon’—as in northern England and Scotland—the product is technically a quick bread, a bread made without yeast.”

  Nigel found it difficult to scowl at Flick’s wry grin. “You can be a world-class wally, Mizz Adams.”

  “What’s a wally?”

  “A prat.”

  “What’s a prat?”

  “Look in the mirror.” He let himself smile. “Enough small talk. We have to decide what else I bake for tomorrow. Do you recall if the Mad Hatter served a particular kind of cake to Alice?”

  “No cake at all. Alice ate a slice of bread and butter.”

  “We can do better than that.” Nigel leafed through the notebook. Alain had neatly glued a typed recipe card in the middle of each page. Each recipe was sized to serve forty-eight people. There would be leftovers of everything Nigel baked, which certainly would please Alain’s temporary replacement. “I propose,” he eventually said, “that we make lemon curd tarts and chocolate pou
nd cake.”

  “Sounds yummy. Can we also bake a batch of fairy cakes?”

  “If you insist.”

  “With raspberry fondant icing?”

  “Is there any other sort?”

  “The scullery maid would like to ask the journeyman baker a practical question.”

  “I feel egalitarian today. Ask what you will.”

  “If we bake scones and cakes this afternoon, won’t they be stale by tomorrow?”

  “The pound cake, tarts, and fairy cakes will stay fresh overnight in the refrigerator. However, scones are best when served hot from the oven. We will do a classic baker’s fiddle with them.”

  Nigel countered Flick’s mystified expression with what he hoped was a shrewd smirk.

  “We will prebake the scones today, up to the point when they take on a bit of color. Then we freeze them. The substitute chef can pop them back in the oven tomorrow, a half hour before tea is served. I guarantee they will taste wholly fresh baked.” Nigel lobbed the notebook atop the vast marble-topped preparation table that stood in the middle of the kitchen. “Help me collect the ingredients.”

  The door to the pantry was next to a big commercial refrigerator. In traditional English fashion, the pantry had been set four feet into the ground so that it stayed cool during the summer but never froze during the winter. This had been possible because the tearoom and greenhouse were extensions to the museum proper and not built above a full basement like the main building. Flick stood in the open doorway while Nigel—a few steps below—passed up sacks, boxes, bottles, cans, jars, jugs, and the occasional tube.

  “That’s the lot,” he finally said.

  “When did you make a list of ingredients?”

  “I have it all in my head.”

  “Show-off!”

  “If your hands are free, join me down here.”

  “Is there something especially heavy you want me to lift?”