by Ron Benrey
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 al
so 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.”
“Her electric kettle went back with the rest of her things—and yes, I did take the top off and look inside.” She frowned. “I never thought about looking behind the drawers in her desk. She might have taped something to the desk frame.”
Nigel strode to the desk and removed the empty drawers one at a time. “Nothing taped to the drawers themselves,” he said, “and nothing inside the frame.”
“You don’t suppose there’s a secret compartment behind the built-in bookcase?”
Nigel laughed. “That is another cliché that Americans impose on Brits. You imagine that we have sliding panels and hidden passages in every building. However”—Nigel dutifully pounded the walls behind the empty shelves—“it sounds solid to me.”
“I’m running out of ideas.”
“I have one,” Nigel said. “Let’s look under the Oriental rug.”
Nigel stood at one corner of the red, black, and gold carpet, Flick at the adjacent corner.
“One, two, three—lift!” he said. They rolled back the edge of the rug.
“Phew! A lot of dust, but no papers.” Flick shook her head. “The other corners are pinned under furniture. No way Elspeth could have lifted them.”
Flick dropped onto the small sofa in the suite. “I guess I found everything of Elspeth’s the other day,” she said.
Nigel moved toward her. “Now there is an easy-to-get-to hiding place we haven’t searched. Under the sofa cushions.”
Flick made a face. “Much too obvious. However…” She stood up and lifted the cushions. “Hey, there is something under here.” She held up a flat black object that Nigel didn’t recognize.
“It’s a sleep mask,” Flick said. “The sort of thing they hand out on airplanes at night.”
“Why would Elspeth stash a sleep mask under a cush…?” Nigel didn’t need to finish his question. “Of course! Elspeth spent the occasional night in this office.” He looked around the room. “There are no motion detectors on the ceiling, the suite has a private loo, she owned an electric kettle, and she had Cha-Cha to keep her company. Everything one needs for a cozy night at the museum.”
“I agree it’s possible. But what would be her purpose?”
“Don’t ask me. You were her confidante.” He gave an annoyed wave. “Perhaps she was trying to catch our exceedingly clever thief.”
Nigel heard Flick gasp. He looked at her and felt a tremor of recognition pass between them. His offhand remark made perfect sense.
“You’re right,” Flick said in a breathy voice scarcely louder than a whisper. “In fact, she probably saw the thief at work. That’s how she jumped from six suspects to one certainty. She came to the trustees’ meeting ready to name the thief.”
Nigel nodded. “I think you are bang on. She had a face full of determination when she stepped into my office.”
Flick moved next to Nigel and stared into his eyes. “What did Elspeth say to you? I’m especially interested in the Bible verse she spoke. She knew her Bible backward and forward; she quoted the right verse for the occasion.” She gripped his arm. “Nigel, it’s important. Try to remember. The verse is one of the last things she said before she died.”
“I told you yesterday,” he said. “It was about justice being done to a criminal.”
Flick seemed lost in thought. She scowled at him. “What kind of criminal? Elspeth used Bible verses in proper context. Could she have quoted a verse about a thief?”
“I suppose so. Does that make a difference?”
“A humongous difference!” Flick sounded positively merry. “Elspeth never used the computer in this office, but we will.”
Nigel watched in silence while Flick sat down at the desk and turned on the computer that occupied one corner. “There are several sites on the Internet that let you search the Bible,” she said. “All I have to do is find one.”
He quietly shifted a visitor’s chair so he could also see the monitor screen as Flick typed enthusiastically on the keyboard. After several unsuccessful tries, she said, “Bingo! Just what we’re looking for. Now to enter T-H-I-E-F…”
Flick turned the monitor directly toward Nigel. “There are only twenty-three verses; start reading.”
“Crikey!” he said. “It’s the third one on the list. ‘When a thief is caught he must pay back double.’ ” Nigel let himself grin. “I remember now. Elspeth spoke those words and then said, ‘That rule is from the Bible.’ But then she said that the rule shouldn’t apply to a museum and she wanted to explain that to the other trustees.”
Flick hesitated. “Gosh. That doesn’t make much sense.”
“Imagine how I felt listening to her illogical one-sided conversation. I couldn’t fathom where she was going or why.”
“Maybe the entire verse will give us more context.”
Nigel peered at the screen and read aloud, “Exodus 22:7. ‘If a man gives his neighbor silver or goods for safekeeping and they are stolen from the neighbor’s house, the thief, if he is caught, must pay back double.’ ” He shrugged. “Still clear as mud.”
“I have an idea. It’s a long shot, but maybe it’s worth a try. If Elspeth believed the verse important, maybe she discussed it with her pastor. Elspeth faithfully attended St. Stephen’s.”
Nigel barely managed not to roll his eyes. “Are you suggesting that we ask Vicar De Rudd?”
“Yes. He’s a pleasant enough fellow, he’s not on our list of suspects, and St. Stephen’s Church is just on the other side of Tunbridge Wells.”
Nigel barely managed not to groan. Visiting a long-winded vicar was low on his list of favorite things to do. “I suppose so,” he said. “When?”
“I don’t want t
o leave our academic conferees until the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party is well underway. Giselle Logan can handle any crises at that point.” She reflected a moment. “I’ll meet you at, say, four thirty, in the car park.”
“It’s a date.”
Nigel felt himself blush. He covered his awkward choice of words by quickly adding, “I shall call Vicar de Rudd and tell him we are coming.”
“Wonderful!” Flick said. “See you later.” Her smile had become brighter and more gracious than before.
How did she manage to do that?
Flick retied her trench coat’s belt more tightly around her waist. Sunday afternoon had been gloriously warm and sunny; Monday afternoon finished bleak, damp, and chilly. “Welcome to England,” she murmured as she let the museum’s side door swing shut behind her.
She heard a roar to her left. Nigel’s white BMW careened around the building and screeched to a stop. He jumped out, sprinted to the passenger door, and yanked the handle. “Allow me.”
Flick climbed in and secured her seat belt. Nigel shut the door gently and dashed back around to the driver’s seat.
“Thank you, Nigel,” she said, hoping that her voice didn’t carry too much surprise. Nigel was in fine fettle today—an agreeable extension of the unexpectedly good mood he had displayed the evening before at the pizzeria. Nigel had been a remarkably good sport, considering that she had accidentally poisoned him.
If Nigel was acting a bit silly today, so was she. There had been no reason for her to dress up this morning, even wearing her going-out shoes, other than the curious feeling that she should wear something special. Nigel probably didn’t notice. After all, he dressed up every day in well-tailored suits that made him look distinguished and—she couldn’t think of a better description—hail-fellow-well-met.
Nigel slid the gearshift into first, released the clutch, and made a U-turn in the car park. “How did the ‘Mad Hatter’ conference go?” he asked.
“Swimmingly! Your scones and tarts earned rave reviews at the tea party.”
“Did our conferees successfully advance the state of societal metaphors?”
Flick chuckled. “I listened to one of the presentations. It examined why so many social activities in England begin with the serving of tea.”