Dead as a Scone

by Ron Benrey

  “Wow! There must be big bucks in British cardiology,” she said breathlessly. “That is one mean house. Kind of a storybook cottage on steroids. How many million pounds do you suppose it’s worth?” She began to sing the vintage American song “You Gotta Have Heart.”

  Nigel chuckled at Flick’s choice of words and music. Both seemed right on the mark. The large redbrick house was lit inside and outside to welcome the Cloweses’ anticipated dinner guests. It was chiefly Queen Anne style, with a host of the usual quaint details, including white stucco on the ground floor bricks, intricate gables (Nigel counted at least four roof peaks), tile facings, a forest of chimneys, and windows broken into dozens of small panes.

  Nigel checked his watch. Ten before six. “The Jag is Sir Simon’s car,” he said. “He made it home early.”

  They walked together to the front door. Nigel rang the bell. He heard the deep bark of a large dog somewhere inside. “Hope he’s friendly,” Flick said, voicing his thoughts.

  A shadowed form approached the frosted glass-paneled front door. The door swung open and Sir Simon beckoned them inside.

  “Welcome to you both,” he said courteously but unenthusiastically. “We can talk in my study.”

  Nigel followed Flick inside into a well-appointed foyer with stone flooring, an ornate central lighting fixture, and a tall grandfather clock. Nigel heard the clink of dishes somewhere in the distance. The smell of food cooking reminded him that he was hungry.

  A large, friendly golden retriever approached Nigel at a good clip, its toenails skittering on the stones. Sir Simon let the dog sniff Nigel and Flick—and accept a few head pats—before saying, “Elsie, go to the kitchen. Kitchen!” Elsie studied her master’s face for a few seconds, decided he was serious, then trotted back the way she had come.

  Sir Simon led them into a large front room that overlooked the driveway. Nigel thought the furnishings decidedly masculine: dark wood paneling, tall bookcases, a stuffed water buffalo head on one wall. Dr. Clowes gestured to a pair of leather-upholstered armchairs near a large stone fireplace that must have been responsible for the slightly smoky smell lingering in the air. Nigel let Flick choose her chair, then he sat down in its mate. Sir Simon turned a high-backed wooden chair around to face the twin armchairs.

  “Now, what is so important that it could not wait until tomorrow?” he asked Nigel.

  Flick spoke before Nigel could answer. “Not what. Who. We’ve come to talk about Elspeth Hawker.”

  Nigel winced at Flick’s blunt tone; he had planned to begin with a more tactful opening statement. But Flick’s lack of diplomacy seemed to have one useful effect: It startled Simon Clowes into quiet submission.

  “Yes?” he said guardedly, his eyes suddenly wary. “What about Dame Elspeth?”

  “Nigel and I learned this afternoon,” Flick said, “about a near-catastrophic fire at Lion’s Peak that injured Elspeth Hawker. She was five years old at the time.”

  Nigel saw Sir Simon stiffen at the word “fire.”

  “During the next two years,” Flick continued, “Elspeth had five different operations—skin grafts of some sort, I presume.”

  Flick paused. Sir Simon said nothing. Flick went on. “We also saw a photo of Elspeth taken nine years after the fire. The setting is the seaside in Brighton on a sunny day. Elspeth has on a long-sleeved dress and stockings—a rather odd outfit for a day at the beach, especially since other young women in the background are wearing one-piece swimsuits, or bathing costumes, as the Brits say.”

  Sir Simon glared at Flick. “Does your fashion chronicle have a point?”

  “A sad point. I believe that the fire at Lion’s Peak left Elspeth with disfiguring scars. At least, she considered her scars disfiguring. And so she wore concealing clothing all her life, she never married, and she lived in self-imposed exile at Lion’s Peak until she became a trustee of the Royal Tunbridge Wells Tea Museum. The scars were so distressing to Elspeth that her personal physician helped her to maintain her secret, even after she died a suspicious death.”

  Sir Simon seemed to shrink in his chair. His head dipped; his shoulders sagged. He gazed awhile at the antique Persian Kerman rug on his floor, then finally said, “You are a very clever woman, Dr. Adams.” He sighed. “You have managed to deduce half of Elspeth’s secret. She was cruelly burned in the fire. And she did obsess about her large, livid scars. As you surmise, her arms and legs suffered the worst damage. But there was nothing suspicious about her death.”

  “Dame Elspeth died of an overdose of barbiturates.”

  “Probably,” he said, with a half nod. “Undoubtedly self-administered. I saw no need to burden the family or the museum with that painful truth.”

  Flick slid forward in her chair. “I don’t believe Elspeth committed suicide. I considered the possibility—it made no sense to me.”

  “Of course, it didn’t. You don’t have all the facts.” Sir Simon peered earnestly at Flick. “I know that you became Elspeth’s friend, because she told me so. But her friendship with you did not alter her deeply secretive nature. I doubt she told you that she was dying.”

  Flick frowned, then gave a slight shake of her head.

  “Elspeth’s heart was failing,” Sir Simon continued. “She knew there was a significant risk of a debilitating stroke from the medications she was taking. She greatly feared that possibility and also the absolute certainty that she would grow increasingly feeble as her illness progressed. On two separate occasions Elspeth asked me to prescribe a lethal dose of medication she could use ‘if the need arose,’ as she put it. Naturally, I refused. She evidently acquired the drugs elsewhere.”

  The clock in the hallway began to chime the hour. Sir Simon glanced at his watch, then rose from his chair. “I promised you ten minutes.”

  Nigel had listened patiently, waiting for the appropriate time to speak up. He cleared his throat and said, “I am afraid, Sir Simon, that you don’t have all the facts, either. Two hours before Dame Elspeth died, she visited me and shared her intentions to reveal a systematic theft of antiquities to the trustees.”

  “Theft?” The doctor stared at Nigel in puzzlement. “From the museum?”

  “Nineteen authentic antiquities worth approximately one half million pounds have been replaced by forgeries—apparently by one of the trustees.” He added, “You, by the way, are not under suspicion.”

  The doctor’s eyes widened. He sat down again slowly. “Marjorie Halifax told me that the story Dr. Adams told to the police was untrue…” He let his words trail off.

  “My story was quite true,” Flick said.

  Nigel held his breath, silently urging Flick not to gloat. Blessedly, she did nothing other than send a stealthy smile his way.

  “There is more, Sir Simon,” Nigel said. “Sometime after the impromptu trustee meeting that you were unable to attend, a tea canister in Felicity’s office was contaminated with oleander leaves.”

  “Good heavens,” he said hollowly. He frowned. “I have not heard of anyone being poisoned.”

  “We haven’t told anyone other than you…yet.”

  Sir Simon turned to Flick. “What proof do you have of these allegations?”

  Flick seemed to have anticipated the question. She counted off her four answers on her fingers. “We have persuasive evidence that Elspeth discovered the scheme to steal antiquities. We have the nineteen sham antiquities themselves. We have the tainted tea. And we have Nigel’s observation of Elspeth’s state of mind before the trustees’ meeting—a woman about to reveal a crime is not likely to commit suicide before she gets the chance to speak.”

  The doctor stared at his hands, seemingly lost in thought. Slowly, the confusion on his face gave way to agonized resolve. He shook his head resolutely. “Not enough!” he said. “I need more. Present me with convincing evidence that one of my fellow trustees poisoned Elspeth and I will withdraw my original finding on cause of death. I will go to the Kent police immediately and recommend the exhumation of Elspet
h’s body for a postmortem examination.”

  “Thank you, Sir Simon,” Flick said as she stood, in a voice without emotion. “The evidence that will convince you exists. We’ll find it.”

  He looked up at her and responded with a vague wave. “Please show yourselves out. I need time to think before my guests arrive.”

  Nigel followed Flick to his car. Neither spoke until Nigel steered the BMW across Bishops Down and turned southeast on Major York’s Road.

  “I hope we can keep the promise you made,” he said.

  “The knot on the bag is beginning to untangle, Nigel. A few more tugs and the rest of the truth will spill out.” She added in a somewhat sheepish tone, “Can you break free again tomorrow to go on another trek?”

  “Sorry, but I am up to my hips in museum work. I have to talk the trustees into yet another special meeting. On Friday afternoon, they shall gather with Bleasdale and the Hawker heirs to finalize the acquisition of the Hawker collection.”

  Flick sighed. “Rats!”

  “What do you have planned?”

  “I am going to track down Philip Oxley this evening and make an appointment to see him in Oxford. Remember those sketchy details you mentioned? I’m hoping that he knows more about the relationship between Desmond Hawker and Neville Brackenbury than he wrote in his manuscript.”

  “You are welcome to borrow the BMW.”

  “No way! I haven’t driven a car with a manual transmission in five years. I’m not going to start off with a hundred-mile trip halfway across England. I’ll take the train.”

  Nigel laughed. “I thank you and so does my clutch.”

  “But you can do me a big favor,” she said.

  “Name it.”

  “Keep Cha-Cha for a second night. I don’t want to leave him alone in my apartment all day.”

  The Shiba Inu gave a little yip at the sound of his name.

  “With pleasure,” Nigel said.

  To his surprise, he really meant it.

  Flick stood among the crowd of commuters at the Central Railway Station in Tunbridge Wells who were traveling to their jobs in London and wondered if she had lost any of her “visiting American” look during the past three months.

  No one seemed to be gawking at her, even though she was doing more than her share of gazing at different parts of the elaborate redbrick station that had been built in 1912.

  Perhaps the sheer excitement of taking a real train journey showed on her face. Flick could count on two hands the number of train trips she had made in the United States. As she waited for the 06:57 to London, she totaled her various day trips from Baltimore to New York and one long round-trip from Baltimore to central Florida when she was a kid. Eight, possibly nine in all.

  Flick had been surprised to learn that one couldn’t travel directly from Tunbridge Wells to Oxford on England’s celebrated rail network. The trip involved two different railroads—Tunbridge Wells to London on South Eastern Trains, then London to Oxford on Thames Trains—and was made even more interesting by the need to take a tube ride on the London Underground. The Tunbridge Wells train arrived in London Bridge Station; the Oxford train departed from Paddington Station.

  She used the journey to read—and reread—the relevant chapters of Philip Oxley’s manuscript. The evening before, she had found Oxley’s telephone number on her first try at directory inquiry and reached him at home with her first call. Professor Oxley was delighted to talk with the chief curator of the Royal Tunbridge Wells Tea Museum. Flick had to pull the telephone away from her when he bellowed, “I am thunderstruck to learn that a copy of Transformation in the Tea Trade still exists and utterly bowled over that another scholar wants to talk about it.” He immediately agreed to see Flick at ten thirty on Wednesday morning in his office at the History Faculty Building on Broad Street.

  The 08:48 from London Paddington pulled into Oxford Railway Station two minutes late at 9:52. Oxley had predicted “a fifteen-to-twenty-minute walk from the station to Broad Street.” The morning was crisp and Flick was in high spirits; she reached her ornate destination in less than thirteen minutes. Her guidebook explained that the History Faculty Building had been completed in 1896 as the Indian Institute, a place to foster and facilitate Indian studies and to showcase the languages, literature, and industries of India. “Well, that explains why the decorative carvings are Hindu gods and tiger heads,” Flick muttered to herself, “and why the weather vane on top of the building is an elephant.”

  Dr. Philip Oxley—short, dark, plump, intense, in his midforties—welcomed Flick into a typically small professorial office that, also typically, seemed overwhelmed by books. He had set out tea and digestive biscuits on his desk.

  “You know all about tea, right?” he said after he poured two cuppas. “What do you know about these things?” He held up the green box of biscuits and said, “I’ve always wondered where the dreadful name come from.”

  Flick laughed. “Back in the States we call them whole wheat cookies. However, one of our exhibits at the museum presents a simple, plausible explanation of ‘digestive biscuit.’ ”

  “Good. You talk whilst I munch away.”

  “Early in the nineteenth century, so the story goes, the need was seen to increase the amount of fiber in the everyday British diet to aid…uh…digestion. Someone invented a high-fiber biscuit made of whole wheat flour and other grains.”

  “Do you mean that this cookie is the precursor to the bran loaf?”

  Another laugh. “An apt description.”

  “You have convinced me to visit your museum. I’ve heard of it, of course, but I have never made the trip south.” Oxley leaned back in his chair and interlaced his fingers over his generous stomach. “Now, you told me you were conducting a research project about the relationship between Desmond Hawker and Neville Brackenbury.”

  It was a statement, but also an invitation for Flick to explain her evening phone call requesting an immediate appointment. Flick took a sip of tea and used the moment to collect her thoughts. Describing her search for more information as a “research project” hardly stretched the truth. She didn’t want to lie to Oxley, but neither did she want to share the real reasons for her interest in Desmond and Neville.

  “In many ways,” Flick began, “the tea museum is a memorial to Desmond Hawker. However, I feel it’s a mistake to sugarcoat his life in our exhibits. We owe our visitors the whole truth about Desmond, including his warts and shortcomings. His conduct probably wasn’t any worse or better than those of his peers. He was ruthless in business, which many considered a virtue in the nineteenth century.” She hesitated. This part of her “explanation” required a little white lie. “I’m in rather a hurry because we are planning our budget for next year. I need to decide quickly about any new exhibits.”

  Oxley’s face filled with amusement. “I take it, Dr. Adams, that the recent death of Dame Elspeth Hawker has changed the rules at the museum. Let me assure you that the Hawkers I met—Mary and Elspeth—had no interest in airing Desmond’s dirty linens.” Oxley let his amusement break into a full smile. “The truth is, I accepted Mary Hawker Evans’s commission to write a detailed history of the commodore’s accomplishments for one reason only—I was a struggling postdoctoral fellow with a pregnant wife. I needed the Hawkers’ money, and I fully understood that the Hawkers would not want the whole sordid story told. Alas, I naively assumed that the details of the vendetta—which fascinated me—wouldn’t upset them.”

  “I’d love to hear the whole story, sordid or not.”

  Oxley gave a slight grunt. “If memory serves—the truth is, I looked at my old notes last night—the saga begins in 1860, when Desmond Hawker, age forty, a moderately successful businessman, joined forces with Neville Brackenbury and launched Brackenbury and Hawker, Tea Merchants. The business succeeded, and both men became tolerably wealthy by nineteenth-century standards.

  “In 1876, Neville Brackenbury abruptly left the partnership. The firm was renamed Hawker & Sons. With
Desmond alone at the helm, the company prospered beyond his wildest dreams. He became one of the richest men in England. And then he got religion.

  “It took me a month of research to figure out how Desmond Hawker had prompted Neville Brackenbury to leave the partnership. Fortunately, the records are out there—many created by Desmond. He seemed to become genuinely regretful, as he grew older; he was remarkably open about his wrongdoing near the end of his life. I found much of his story captured in a ten-year correspondence he had with a lecturer in history at Balliol College, here in Oxford, toward the end of the nineteenth century.”

  Oxley reached for another digestive biscuit and said, “I prefer the chocolate-covered kind, but any port in a storm.” He poured himself a fresh cup of tea.

  “You Americans wax poetic about your Great Depression of the 1930s,” he continued. “Well, England suffered through our Long Depression from 1873 to 1896. I’ll save you the trouble of doing the arithmetic; our Long Depression lasted twenty-three years. Stocks plummeted. People lost fortunes. And, as it happens, Neville Brackenbury was forced into personal bankruptcy in 1876.”

  “I see.”

  “No. I am not sure that you do. To become a bankrupt in Victorian England was considered a huge disgrace. Only a few years before Neville Brackenbury declared bankruptcy, similarly stricken people were sent to debtor’s prison. Those awful places weren’t abandoned until 1869. Much of Victorian literature deals with the tragedy of bankruptcy or the threat of it. At an earlier time in England, being declared a bankrupt was tantamount to a death sentence. Bankrupts were hanged.”

  Flick asked the obvious question. “Did the Brackenbury and Hawker partnership fall into dire straits?”

  “Not quite. The disaster really started in another company—of all things, a firm in the midlands that made low-cost ceramic products, including teapots and teacups for the masses. It was called the Mansfield Manufactory, Ltd. Desmond and Neville both invested heavily in the company; Neville in particular overextended himself.”