The Final Crumpet, page 8
part #2 of A Royal Tunbridge Wells Mystery Series
“Your suit is perfectly safe, Detective Inspector,” she said.
“Cha-Cha doesn’t appear to be shedding this week.” Pennyman grunted, then said, “I’ve ordered a double-shot espresso—what would you like? I doubt they make a good cuppa here.”
“A simple cup of coffee would be lovely.”
Flick was bursting with curiosity as Pennyman signaled the waiter and placed the order. When they were alone, she said, “What brings us here this afternoon?”
“I shan’t attempt to mislead you, Dr. Adams, or otherwise take undue advantage of your willingness to cooperate with me.” He paused to look around the Pantiles. Flick guessed he wanted to make certain that no one else was listening. “By any chance, have you and your colleagues considered the possibility of establishing a permanent exhibit about Etienne Makepeace?”
Flick caught her breath. Of all the questions Pennyman might have asked, she least expected this one. For some unfathomable reason, the entire world had become interested in her curatorial plans! Why would a Kent Police detective give a rip about a Makepeace exhibit at a small museum? And why would he go out of his way to arrange an unofficial inquiry?
“We’ve made no definite decisions yet,” she said, “but I am leaning toward a modest exhibit about Makepeace’s place in the history of tea in England. Now—please tell me why you care one way or the other.”
“I made the assumption that to build a Makepeace exhibit from scratch, you would gather every bit of information you can learn about the man. I’d like to work with you and pool our knowledge.”
Flick gave a little whistle. “Wow—I never expected to hear you say something like that.”
Pennyman returned an awkward grin. “This is an unusual situation. Despite his public fame, we know very little about the private life of Etienne Makepeace. I’m hoping that your efforts will secure useful information that we don’t have. Consequently, I propose a quid pro quo.”
“Really?”
Pennyman nodded. “Yes, really.” He paused while the waiter delivered Flick’s coffee, then went on, “Although I can’t disclose the particulars of an ongoing murder investigation, I can provide you with lesser-known, presumably public, background information on Etienne Makepeace. It should save you considerable time and effort—possibly help you complete your investigation more quickly.”
“And in exchange, I share anything interesting that I discover about him?”
“Precisely.”
Flick didn’t dither. How could she lose? Pennyman’s offer was an answer to a prayer she should have spoken aloud. She had planned to ask Stuart Battlebridge for his dossier on Etienne Makepeace as the starting point of her research. Now she would have an even more authoritative package of facts prepared by the fabled Kent Constabulary.
“It’s a deal!” She offered her hand. Pennyman reached across the small table and shook it, then slid a hefty manila envelope in front of Flick.
“You’ll find Makepeace’s file inside,” he said, “along with three of my business cards. I can usually be reached at any hour of the day.” He rose to his feet. “Have fun—and enjoy your coffee.” He turned to leave, then paused. “I hesitate to give you advice, but we’ve found that a Web page is a good starting point for gathering information.”
Flick smiled. “A Web page is the first item on my list of things to do.”
She dove into the envelope. The biographical information matched the data in Stuart’s briefing, but it was more complete. Stuart said that Etienne had earned a degree in history at Cambridge—these documents explained that his focus was first-century Rome. She recalled that Etienne had been a naval intelligence officer—she now learned that he had risen to the rank of lieutenant commander. Both briefings described his success as a “Tea Sage”—the police had gone to the trouble of cataloging the different books and articles that Makepeace had written.
But…neither briefing explains how Etienne Makepeace became England’s Tea Sage.
Flick sat up in her chair. Where were the details of Etienne’s tea education? Etienne was famous for his exhaustive knowledge of tea—how did he come by it? Nothing in the file suggested that he had ever been taught how to brew a good cuppa, much less the subtleties of different tea varieties. Neither Stuart nor the police seemed to care where his vast expertise came from.
“That’s something I need to figure out,” she said to her now-empty coffee cup. “But how? How do you investigate someone who died forty years earlier?”
You don’t know—so why not ask an expert? Uncle Ted, for example.
It was approaching 10:00 a.m. in York, Pennsylvania—she pictured him in his office, sitting at his messy desk. She dialed the number on her mobile phone and listened to her uncle’s telephone ringing more than three thousand miles away.
“Homicide. Detective Adams.”
“Hi, Uncle Ted, it’s Flick.”
“Flick? Where are you?”
“In England, the island nation where I now reside permanently.”
“Don’t rub it in. Your mother complains to me about your new country once each week.”
“Mother loves England; she’s an Anglophile. That’s where I get it from.”
“Your mother—and your father, too—love things that are English. That’s why they operate a replica eighteenth-century English inn, complete with an authentic pub, called the White Rose of York. They are also dyed-in-the-wool Pennsylvanians who will never leave the Commonwealth.”
Flick ignored the implied gibe. “Well, I’m fine, and you sound fine, too.”
“Did you make an intercontinental telephone call to tell me that?”
“Actually, I want to pick your brain about a corpse.”
“Another body?”
“Relax—this corpse died way back in the sixties. His name is Etienne Makepeace.”
“Uh-huh. The famous missing Brit they dug up in your museum’s garden.”
“You’ve heard about him?” Flick squeaked. “How?”
“Oh…I came across a mention or two about Makepeace on CNN, FoxNews, NBC, ABC, CBS, BBC, and in Time magazine, Newsweek, the New York Times, the York Daily Record, the York Dispatch…”
“Okay, okay—I get the point. He made major news in America like he did in Britain.”
“Well—duh!”
“Don’t make a fuss—I didn’t think the matter through.”
“I’ve been wondering when you would get around to calling me.” He chuckled softly, then became serious. “I take it that Makepeace was murdered.”
“Shot once with a vintage Russian pistol, then buried under our tea bushes.”
“Sounds like an inside job. The museum must have had a deadly docent on its staff during the sixties.”
“Probably—but I’m not interested in the murder itself.”
“On behalf of homicide investigators everywhere, I say thank you.”
“However…”
“With you, there is always a ‘however.’ ”
“I’m gathering information to create an exhibit about Makepeace at the museum.”
“Complete with a pretend skeleton, I’ll bet.”
“Complete with the story of how Etienne Makepeace became England’s Tea Sage—assuming I can find out how he managed the feat. There are troubling gaps in his biographical materials. I don’t know how to fill them. Do you have any suggestions?”
“Hmm…”
“What?”
“I’m thinking.”
“About?’’
“About how people are likely to share information with a museum—if you ask for it. Have you asked the general public to help?”
“Not yet,” Flick said, astonished that two cops an ocean apart both imagined that a modest tea museum could be a fact magnet.
“Start by setting up a Web page.”
“Way ahead of you.”
“Your next step is to create a telephone hotline.”
“How would I get people to call it?”
“Don’t you know any friendly reporters?”
“Funny you should ask. I was interviewed this morning by a BBC TV reporter.”
“There you go! Ask him to mention your hotline when he airs his story. That should shake loose a few interesting tidbits.”
“Tidbits aren’t enough. I need big chunks of real information. I have a major exhibit to feed.”
“Well, if I were trying to gather lots of details about a famous man who disappeared forty years ago, I’d try to locate the law firm who worked with his heirs.”
“Why? All but one of Makepeace’s heirs are dead, too.”
“Famous people tend to be wealthy, and wealthy people tend to have relatives who are eager to get their hands on the money. I assume that Makepeace’s kin eventually had him declared legally dead so they could collect under the terms of his will. I think English law and American law are pretty much the same—seven years after a person goes missing, a court can declare him dead. Remember the number one rule: Follow the money.”
“I still don’t get where you’re going with this.”
“Lawyers ask questions about people and write things down. Maybe there’s an old file gathering dust in a law office that contains more of the information you’re looking for?”
“I suppose it’s possible…”
“Talk about ungrateful! Need I remind you that you called me without any warning? You try to come up with fabulous ideas on the fly. Repeat after me: ‘Uncle Ted, I owe you big-time.’ ”
Flick snickered. “I owe you big-time.”
“I’ll say you do—so pay be back by telling me about your love life. Your mother reports that you have a boyfriend in England.”
Flick hemmed, hawed, made excuses, and managed to end the conversation with only a cursory description of Nigel and a solemn oath to call back when she had more time to talk. She slipped the mobile phone into her purse and spoke to Cha-Cha, “I feel energized, and I’m having second thoughts about Uncle Ted’s ideas. What do you say we walk back to the museum and talk to a woman about a Web site?”
Flick walked fast enough to make Cha-Cha trot along the sidewalk after her. She wanted to catch Hannah Kerrigan, the museum’s new information technology guru, while she was still at her computer. Hannah worked odd hours—and often left early—so that she could take advanced computer courses at the Canterbury Christ Church University College. Flick had hired her a month earlier to enlarge and enhance the museum’s Web site: www.teamuseum.org.
Hannah was a petite woman in her early twenties, with flaming red hair, large brown eyes, and a pixyish grin that made one forget she could “speak” six different computer programming languages. Flick found her in her cubicle in the Conservation Laboratory, fiddling happily with an under-construction Web page on her computer. Hannah might have been able to fiddle more productively had not Lapsang and Souchong decided to pay her a visit. The big blue cats sprawled side by side across her keyboard, covering most of the top of her workstation.
Cha-Cha eyed the felines suspiciously but sat silently at Flick’s feet. She suspected that the three of them—raised together as puppy and kittens—had reached some sort of mutual accommodation. The cats probably discovered that a Shiba was a much more capable dog than his compact size suggested. Cha-Cha probably recognized that taking on a full-grown British Shorthair was not a clever idea—even for a feisty Shiba Inu.
“Wonder of wonders! Back from your walk, are you? Cha-Cha is available.”
Flick twirled around. There stood Nigel, sporting a remarkably contrite expression.
“The Japanese tour group,” he said. “Downstairs. Still time to show them Cha-Cha. Only if you don’t object.”
Flick needed several moments to interpret his fragmented request. When she finally understood, she handed him the dog lead. “I suspect that Cha-Cha will have the most fun. Our visitors will have met countless Shibas, but he hasn’t met many Japanese.”
“Well said! Truly astute. Will leave now. Must chat later. Many things.”
Flick noticed Nigel’s eyes dart between her face and Hannah’s.
He wants to apologize but not in front of Hannah.
Flick, not quite ready to let Nigel off the hook, replied with a curt nod. It was enough for Nigel—he tendered a remarkably silly smile and backed out of the laboratory, tugging Cha-Cha along the tiled floor.
“What’s that about then?” Hannah asked. She craned her neck to watch Nigel leave.
“Never you mind.”
“Pity. I’m always in the mood to hear a good love story.”
“I bring you something even better—a brief parole from your chores as our Webmistress.”
“Super! I’m having all sorts of difficulty with the JavaScript applet code for this new page.”
“I have no idea what you just said, but you seem the perfect person to help me establish a telephone hotline.” The obvious delight on Hannah’s face increased with every word of explanation that Flick provided.
“I know just the way to do it,” Hannah said. “I’ll transform one of our old computers into a telephone answering system and set up different categories.” She began to speak in an almost mechanical tone. “If you know anything about Etienne Makepeace’s childhood, please press 1.”
“That’s exactly what we need, but focus the information categories on tea. I want to know how Makepeace acquired his knowledge. Did he go to school? Did he have a mentor? Was he an autodidact?”
“An auto—what?”
“A self-taught expert.” Flick tried to perch on the edge of the workstation. Lapsang, or was it Souchong, anticipated her move and stretched to fill even more of the surface. “The next part of your assignment is to locate an especially obscure fact related to the life and death of Etienne Makepeace.” She added, “I presume that your Internet research skills are brilliant?”
“Totally!”
“Good—because I need to know if Makepeace was declared legally dead by an English court, and if so, the name of the solicitor who acted for the Makepeace family. The earliest it could have happened was in 1973.”
“Wow!” Hannah said. “That’s ancient history, but I’ll see what I can find out.”
“In exchange, I’ll de-kitty your keyboard.” Flick scooped up the pair of cats, unceremoniously plopped them on the floor, and watched them saunter off to the other side of the laboratory. She sat down on the workstation.
“Lapsang and Souchong don’t bother me,” Hannah said. “They keep me company because I don’t pet them or make a fuss over them.”
“Sounds like cat thinking,” Flick said. “One of these days, we have to figure out which is Lapsang and which is Souchong.”
Hannah seemed bewildered. “You mean you don’t know?”
“We can guess, but the only person who could tell us for sure is dead. The cats arrived at the museum without collars or identification tags. The only clue we have is a handful of snapshots that the breeder took when the cats were kittens. They were included with the paperwork Elspeth Hawker originally gave to the museum.” Flick shrugged. “Now that the cats are grown up, their baby pictures are worthless.”
“Perhaps not.” Hannah leaned toward Flick as if she had a secret to share. “What if I take new digital photos of Lapsang and Souchong in roughly the same poses as the kitten shots? Then I could use Photoshop to compare the old images with the new. I might be able to recognize minor features that haven’t changed—a fleck of color in an eye, the shape of an ear, maybe markings on a nose.”
Flick threw back her head. “I love the idea! In fact, I’m furious that I didn’t think of it first. It’s certainly worth a try.”
Hannah began to count on her fingers. “First, I’ll program the computer. Second, I’ll search the Internet. Third, I’ll photograph the cats. Fourth, I’ll compare the old and new photos.”
“And fifth, you add a simple page to our current Web site that announces we’ll pay ten pounds for an interesting anecdote about Etienne Makepeace that involves tea. Acceptable anecdotes will have a minimum of two hundred fifty words.”
Hannah peered up at Flick. “Do I have a deadline?” Flick joked, “How about tomorrow at noon?”
“A piece of cake! I don’t have classes this evening, and I get in early on Tuesdays. I’ll probably be done by eleven in the morning.
My goodness! She’s serious.
Flick wanted to laugh but managed to mumble, “Um…thank you. I appreciate your dedication. I see us working together on many projects in the months ahead.”
Hannah peered up at Flick with brown eyes that now seemed years older and far more calculating. “In that case, tell me what’s going on with you and Mr. Owen. Did you cut him loose? Can anyone have a go at him?”
Flick heard herself gasp—and immediately felt foolish that she had overreacted. Why should a silly question from an occasionally harebrained computer techie have the power to startle her?
Because you don’t want to cut Nigel loose.
Flick slid to her feet, surprised at the depth of the fondness she suddenly felt for Nigel. “I will let you know if and when anyone can have a go at Nigel. Until then—”
Hannah didn’t wait for Flick to finish. “Don’t get your knickers in a twist,” she said with an embarrassed smile. “You can’t blame a girl for asking.”
Five
Nigel dried his face with a paper towel and glared at himself in the lavatory mirror. “Now you know what a blithering idiot sounds like. You haven’t behaved so ineptly since you were fifteen. What on earth made you act the fool?”
He crumpled the towel into a wad and realized that his question had an obvious answer. There was no mystery here. Anyone could recognize that he was caught on the horns of a ludicrous dilemma. One part of him wanted to apologize to Flick—and seek her forgiveness. The other part believed that she should apologize to him—and refused to let a repentant word pass his lips.
Falling in love certainly led to surprising complications.
