“We can’t rule it out.”
“No, but let’s not complicate things any more than necessary for the moment. It’s just as likely she never left the Island, or even this neighborhood.” Once they were past the park, new developments of flats lined the river, each one of slightly different character and architectural style.
“This looks an odd place for a business.” Gemma touched his shoulder as she leaned across to look out his window.
“This was one of the first areas to be heavily redeveloped. Most of the old riverside warehouses have been razed in the last few years to make way for upmarket flats.”
“You’ve been grilling Janice again.”
“Might be more accurate to say she’s been instructing me, whether I like it or not. Hammond’s is one of the last
of the old warehouses on this stretch of the river. Look, this must be it.”
He parked the car at the curb and got out, studying the building. It was four-storied, brown-bricked, a square bastion of Victorian industrial prowess, but its grimness was relieved by an arch of orange brick set in above each of its many windows, and another over the main door. A pediment rose above the flat roof, giving the facade an incongruously playful air, and beneath that had been set in plaster
Hammond’s Fine Teas, 1879
.
Joining him, Gemma tried the glossy, dark blue front door. “Locked. But at least it’s a bit cooler this side if we have to wait.”
Kincaid examined the school across the street. Although the main complex ran to uninspired postmodern, a separate structure at the front proclaimed its Victorian origins with the same triangular embellishments and orange trim as the warehouse. “Not much hope of finding a good witness for Friday evening here. Let’s have a look round the back of the warehouse,” Kincaid said as he turned towards the river. There were no windows along the side at ground level.
The building was flush with the waterline in the back, so that the bricked pedestrian walkway that ran along the river was forced to detour round the front. “Dead end,” he reported, exasperated. “The place is a bloody fortress.”
“People stole things from warehouses in the old days, too.” The tide was out; Gemma wrinkled her nose at the dank smell rising from the exposed mud.
“True, but there must be ground access round the far side. They needed loading bays for wagons even in the days when they brought goods in from the water.
“The river probably smelled worse then, too,” Kincaid added, leaning over the walkway railing for a look at the rubbish revealed by the receding water. “And people probably just left a different sort of litter. Not very encouraging, is it?” He gazed at the three dark smokestacks of
the power station across the river, then at the gleam of the Naval College further round the curve. “Sometimes I wonder if we’ve made any progress at all.” Pointing across the river towards the college, he added, “Look at what Christopher Wren accomplished.”
“I’ll vote for plumbing, thank you,” said Gemma, and he realized it was the first time he’d seen her smile all afternoon. The bridge of her nose had turned pink from the sun and the faint dusting of freckles across her cheeks had darkened.
“You all right?” he asked, brushing her cheek with his fingertip.
“Just hot.” She pushed a tendril of damp hair from her brow and looked away.
“I thought—”
A car door slammed nearby. “That came from round the front,” said Gemma, listening. “Someone’s here.” She retraced their steps towards the front of the warehouse and he followed, wondering just what he had meant to say.
A
SLENDER, FAIR WOMAN IN JEANS
and a yellow tee shirt stood before the door of the warehouse, keys dangling from her hand.
Kincaid called out and she whirled round, looking startled.
“Sorry,” Kincaid said as they reached her. “Didn’t mean to frighten you. We’re with Scotland Yard.” He showed her his warrant card and introduced Gemma, then asked, “Are you Teresa Robbins?”
“An Inspector Coppin rang me.…”
“She’s the local officer on the case. We’d like to ask you a few questions, if you don’t mind.” Kincaid smiled, hoping to put her at ease.
“But I don’t see how I can possibly help you.” Teresa’s thin face was pleasant, if unremarkable, and bore signs of makeup hastily applied to cover the ravages of weeping.
“You can start by looking round very carefully as we go
in. I want you to tell us if you see anything at all out of the ordinary.”
“But why—”
“Could Miss Hammond have come here on Friday night to finish up some work?” Gemma suggested.
Teresa put her keys in the lock. “I suppose it’s possible.” She pulled open the large door and stepped back, but Kincaid motioned her to go first.
It took a moment for Kincaid’s eyes to adjust to the dim interior, which was streaked by sunlight slanting in from the high south and west windows. Then Teresa flipped a switch by the door and electric light chased the shadows from the corners.
The room was large, comprising the first two floors of the building. To the right was an industrial lift serving the upper floors; to the left were offices reached by a catwalk that looked down on the main floor. Halfway along the left-hand wall Kincaid saw the loading bays which he guessed must give access to lorries.
But these features he took in gradually, for first to draw his eyes were the chests. Ceiling-high stacks of square, steel-bound, silver-edged wooden chests filled the room. All bore exotic-looking stamps, in red or black ink, and those nearest him read,
Produce of India, Darjeeling
, followed by a series of numbers. The air in the warehouse was earthy and sharp with the unmistakable smell of tea.
Teresa had stepped a few feet into the room, looking carefully round her. “Everything looks just the way I left it on Friday.”
“When did you last see Miss Hammond?” Kincaid asked.
“Annabelle left about half past five, I think. I was finishing up the accounts and just said ‘Cheerio.’ You know how it is. I didn’t think I wouldn’t see her—” Teresa swallowed hard.
“You worked late?” Gemma gave her a sympathetic smile.
“I usually do. Especially on Friday, so as to be caught up for the week.”
“You said you did the accounts—you do the bookkeeping for the business?” Kincaid asked, wondering if Annabelle Hammond would have confided in her employee. But then she had been engaged to an employee, after all, and he supposed you couldn’t get more democratic than that.
“I’m the chief financial officer.” Teresa smiled shyly. “That sounds a bit glorified for what I actually do. I handle the accounts and the financial planning, but it’s a small business, and we all tend to have a hand in everything.”
“I understand that Annabelle and Reginald Mortimer were engaged. Did that make working together awkward for them? Or for you?”
“Awkward?” Teresa stared at Kincaid.
“Surely they had some conflict over things at work?”
“Sometimes men can be a bit sensitive about their authority,” Gemma added with a glance at Kincaid. “You know the sort of thing.”
Teresa shook her head vehemently. “Not Reg and Annabelle. They agreed about things, they wanted the same things for the company. And Reg … Reg worshiped Annabelle.”
Kincaid thought he detected a hint of wistfulness in Teresa’s voice. Had it been difficult for her, always on the outside, looking in? “When was the wedding to be?” he asked.
“The wedding?” Again Teresa gave them a surprised look, as if the question hadn’t occurred to her. “They’d not set a date. Not an official one, anyway.”
“And how long had they been engaged?”
Teresa frowned. “Coming up on two years, I think.”
“Not much reason to delay a wedding these days—both of them independent, with their families’ approval—”
“But they couldn’t have just an ordinary wedding. They had social obligations, and I doubt Annabelle wanted to spare the time from work just now to plan the sort of
affair expected of them.” Teresa put forth this theory with great seriousness, as if determined to convince herself.
“Were you and Annabelle close?” asked Gemma. “Would she have confided in you if she’d got cold feet?”
“I … I don’t know.” Teresa lifted her chin defiantly. “Look, I don’t understand why you’re asking all these questions. Jo said that Annabelle was killed in the park, attacked by some pervert. What can that possibly have to do with us, or Hammond’s?”
“Annabelle was
found
in the park. We don’t know that she was killed there,” said Kincaid. “Can you tell us why she might have been wandering round the Mudchute alone, after dark? In her party clothes and high heels?”
“No, that’s daft. But …” Shadows from the slowly revolving ceiling fans flickered across Teresa’s face, and Kincaid saw the irises of her pale blue eyes dilate like speading ink. “You can’t think here.…” She folded her arms beneath her breasts and looked round as if seeing the warehouse for the first time.
“Did Annabelle tell you what she meant to do on Friday evening?” Kincaid asked.
“They were going to her sister’s. She and Reg. The party had been planned for weeks.”
“And she didn’t contact you later in the evening?”
“Why should she have rung me?” Teresa sounded baffled.
“What if she were worried about something?”
“Annabelle wasn’t the sort to worry,” Teresa replied sharply. “And she wasn’t in the habit of ringing me in the evenings, or of coming back here.”
“Would there have been anyone here on Friday night? Do you run a night shift?”
“We don’t
make
the tea, Superintendent. We blend and package it, and our production and shipping staff work five-day weeks. The equipment’s upstairs, if you’d like to see, but
this
is the heart of the business.” She gestured at the large table in the room’s center, and Kincaid sensed her relief at treading familiar ground.
One side of the table’s length held ranks of worn, tin tea caddies and plain foil bags; the other a neat row of rectangular, white porcelain dishes filled with mounds of loose tea, and another row of identical, white porcelain bowls. Gemma touched a finger to the tea in the last dish. “It smells good. What is all this?”
“The tasting table.” Teresa glanced at them and Kincaid thought they must have looked blank, for she frowned and continued, “We don’t sell just any tea. First it must be blended, and Hammond’s has been famous for its blends for a hundred and twenty-five years. We buy the tea at auction—mainly from India and Sri Lanka, but since the late seventies China has opened up to us again, and some tea is exported from Africa and even South America.”
“Sri Lanka—that used to be Ceylon?” Gemma moved round the table studying the tin caddies. “Some of these say Ceylon.”
“Teas from Sri Lanka are known as Ceylon teas in the trade. But in Sri Lanka alone there are over two thousand different tea gardens—those are the estates on which tea is grown—and each estate has a number of different pluckings, or harvests, a year, depending on its altitude. And the tea from each of those pluckings can vary in taste and quality.” Teresa lifted her hands, palms up, in a gesture that indicated the complications of the task.
Kincaid had never thought beyond a vague vision of India or China when he plopped a tea bag in his morning cup. “It’s exponential, then?” he asked.
“Theoretically, yes—in reality, no.” Teresa tucked a strand of straight blonde hair behind her ear and rubbed at the sweat beading her forehead. Although it was cooler in the warehouse than outside, it still felt like a tropical hothouse. “We’ve a history of dealing with certain gardens, and we tend to look for their produce. Annabelle … Annabelle visited some of the gardens in Ceylon and in India after university, but she wanted to go to China for
their honeymoon.…” Teresa’s eyes filled with tears. Sniffing, she tugged a tissue from the pocket of her jeans and blew her nose. “Sorry. I just can’t … Some of our buyers didn’t take Annabelle seriously at first. It’s traditionally a male-dominated business, and I suppose they thought she was dabbling until she found something better to do.
“But the truth of it was that she
loved
tea. She’d been fascinated by every step in the process of manufacturing tea since she was a child, and she wanted to experience it firsthand.”
“And for that she had to go to China or India?” asked Kincaid.
“Yes. All tea is processed right after picking, on the estate where it’s grown. It has to be withered and rolled and dried within hours, or it loses its freshness. And the degree of fermentation must be perfect—if it’s overfermented the tea will taste flat; if it’s underfermented it can go moldy once it’s packed for shipping. The tasting and blending we do here is only the very last stage.” Her gesture took in the chests and the tasting table and the smooth boards of the old warehouse floor, polished from long use to a satiny sheen.
“Was Annabelle in charge of the tasting?”
“No, that’s Mac—Mr. MacDougal. Tea merchants have professional tasters, and Mac’s one of the best in the business. But Annabelle’s … Annabelle
was
very good, and some of the blends she and Mac created have increased our market share considerably. I simply don’t know how we’ll manage without her.” Teresa’s voice threatened to break and she pressed her lips together in an effort at control. She turned away and led them to racks of shelving against the far wall. “This new design is only part of Annabelle’s vision.”
Kincaid saw that the shelves held round tins bearing the familiar Hammond’s logo. The tins were an unusual shape, tall and thin, and of a striking cobalt blue and russet design,
with the logo embossed in gold. He remembered seeing them in some of the more expensive gourmet shops, and at Harrods.
“They’re lovely,” said Gemma, turning a tin so that she could see the design all the way round.
“She chose the colors to please William—her father—after his favorite tea service. She—” Teresa closed her eyes. Shaking her head, she whispered, “I’m sorry.”
“Come sit down.” Gently, Gemma took her by the elbow and led her to the brightly cushioned grouping of rattan chairs positioned near the tasting table. “Let me get you some water.”