The Final Crumpet (9 page)

The Tea Processing Exhibit:

“This month, we’re highlighting the manufacture of Chinese gunpowder tea. It’s made by rolling green tea leaves into tiny pellets that resemble coarse gunpowder. And—yes, this is actual tea-processing equipment, the sort you can find in use at smaller producers throughout Asia, today.”

Flick noticed that Harry looked at his watch. “How are we doing for time?” she asked.

“I allowed an hour for the interview—we have about twenty minutes left, and I want to leave time for a direct question or two.”

“We can safely bypass the two galleries on the next floor,” she said. “Our Tea in the Americas Room is more popular with visitors from across the pond than with locals, and the exhibits in our Tea and Health Gallery, though important, aren’t especially camera-friendly.”

And there’s no point in even telling Harry about the Hawker family suite.

The museum had long provided an office for the use of the Hawker family, the institution’s original benefactors. But now that the surviving Hawker heirs had no interest in the museum, the large suite could be transformed into a gallery. One of these days, she and Nigel would have to decide how to use the valuable space.

“The museum’s top floor,” she said, “houses our administrative offices and is off-limits to most visitors. Our offices are routine, but two locations are worth your time.” Flick continued speaking as she led Harry and Paco up two flights of stairs. “The Hawker Memorial Library contains some three thousand books about the different aspects of tea. How tea is grown, how tea is processed, how tea is marketed, how tea is consumed—it’s really quite amazing how many different aspects of tea one can write about. And our Conservation Laboratory has all the scientific equipment we need to study, restore, and protect the many different antiquities in our collection.”

“I’ll bet there’s lots to photograph in your lab,” Paco said.

“There certainly is—are either of you allergic to cats?”

“Cats?” Harry said. “What function do the cats perform in your laboratory?”

“If Lapsang and Souchong serve any function at all,” Flick said with a shake of her head, “it’s purely decorative.” She pointed the way to the Conservation Laboratory.

As usual, the two cats had taken up residence on the bottom shelves of two laboratory workstations at opposite ends of the Conservation Laboratory. One slept beneath an elaborate optical microscope, the other below a deceptively simple-looking electronic instrument called a gas chromatograph that was, Flick knew, capable of performing many kinds of sophisticated chemical analyses.

While Paco shot footage of the laboratory equipment, Harry made a beeline for the first of the cats. “This seems to be an exceedingly happy British Shorthair. Would this be Lapsang or Souchong?”

As she always did, Flick said, “Lapsang is the larger of the two,” hoping she was right. In fact, she didn’t have a clue which cat was which.

One day, I must properly identify them.

Harry seemed satisfied. He knelt down, scratched “Lapsang’s” tummy, and finished his interview with Flick “Lab equipment makes great scenery. Why don’t you sit on the high stool in front of that colorful machine? Paco can shoot you from several angles while you talk”

Flick took her position in front of the chromatograph. “Fire when ready.”

“Dr. Adams—have you given any thought to creating an exhibit about Etienne Makepeace?”

She tried not to look surprised. The question was virtually identical to one asked at the news conference by the reporter from the
Kent and Sussex Courier.

Stuart said to give the same answers to the BBC.

Flick tried to remember exactly what Nigel had said.

Something about there being no connection between the history of tea and Etienne Makepeace. Perhaps she could come up with a paraphrase…

Good heavens! Nigel was wrong. And so was I.

Flick abruptly realized that they had both made a serious mistake. Keeping Etienne Makepeace out of a British tea museum would be like excluding Amelia Earhart from an American aviation museum. Equally important, millions of Brits were fascinated by his disappearance and reappearance. A good exhibit about Makepeace might draw significant numbers of new visitors to the museum.

It’s a no-brainer! We need a Makepeace Gallery.

She took a deep breath and began. “What I’ve learned about Etienne Makepeace convinces me that he was a fascinating man—a man worthy to have his story told at the Royal Tunbridge Wells Tea Museum.”

These words finished springing from her lips as the door to the Conservation Laboratory opened and Nigel stepped inside. She went on, “The focus of our museum is the history of tea. Makepeace played a small, but exciting, role in that history. His story seems worth telling via an appropriate exhibit.”

Harry nodded. “I’m delighted to hear you say that, Dr. Adams. I’m sure that you and your staff will do Etienne Makepeace’s memory proud. Have you given any thought to where in the museum you might place your new exhibit?”

Smack in the middle of the Hawker family suite,
Flick thought. She glanced at Nigel standing in the back of the laboratory. The expression on his face had gone from happy, to bewildered, to surprised, to angry. Without saying a word, he turned and left.

Oh dear—-he doesn’t understand what happened

“One more question, Dr. Adams,” Harry said. “When do you expect a Makepeace exhibit to be up and running?”

Flick worked to keep an even expression on her face despite her growing uneasiness about Nigel. She wanted to finish this interview quickly and calm him down.

“That’s difficult to say. A museum can be an unpredictable environment.”

Especially when Nigel Owen’s feelings are hurt.

Four

It makes no sense at all.

Nigel retrieved a yellow pad and slammed his desk drawer shut. Why, without any warning, would Flick do an about-face on so important a subject? She had stood next to him at the news conference and endorsed his unambiguous rejection of an Etienne Makepeace exhibit. She had reaffirmed her support during their debriefing with Stuart Battlebridge. And yet, less than two hours later, she told a BBC reporter that the museum needs a Makepeace exhibit.

What could she have been thinking? And more to the point, how do I convince her to cross back to the prudent side of the road?

Nigel chose a pen and began to scrawl a list on his pad:

Reasons Why We Shouldn’t Create a Makepeace Exhibit

1. Talk of an exhibit will keep reporters poking round the museum—and disturbing our daily operations—long beyond the natural demise of the story.

2. It seems likely that a former museum employee murdered Makepeace; if so, an exhibit would be in poor taste, might open an undreamed-of can of worms, and could possibly start a scandal. In the worst case, an exhibit might impact our ability to repay the enormous loan we’ve arranged to purchase the Hawker collection.

3. While it is true that the chief curator is responsible for the museum’s exhibits, a major new exhibit will require significant funding and thus the board of trustees’ approval. The very last thing we want to do now is propose a new exhibit to the board. We need their attention focused on acquiring the Hawker collection.

4. We have almost no information about Etienne Makepeace’s next of kin. For all we know, the establishment of an exhibit might prompt whatever family he has left to sue the museum.

5. The chief curator reports to the managing director; if she wants to propose a new exhibit, she should have spoken to me before announcing it to the press!

Nigel scratched a line through the last item. He decided there was no need to get snippy with Flick—she undoubtedly forgot about the realities of our situation when faced with the reporter’s question.

I will simply remind her of the big picture.

He stood, walked to the window that overlooked the tea garden, and stared awhile at the small patch of grass in the center of the garden that held a green bronze sundial and a matching bronze bench. The sun had finally broken through the early morning clouds, making the odd-shaped piece of turf look warm and summery. It would become a grand vantage point for taking pictures of Makepeace’s grave. Nigel felt a tremor pulse through his body as he imagined hundreds, perhaps thousands, of nosy gawkers arriving to see the place where Makepeace had been buried, undoubtedly hoping that the police had left bits and pieces of the body behind. Creating a formal display would merely encourage a host of overcurious louts to show up.

Not only is a Makepeace exhibit a terrible idea—we should probably pave over the whole ruddy garden.

Alas, that would be impossible. The museum’s visitors from abroad particularly liked the tea garden. Consider the group of fifteen Japanese tourists who arrived at midmorning in a motor coach. They had made a side trip from London to visit the museum and were receiving special treatment—including a narrated tour of the galleries led by Mirabelle Hubbard, the senior docent. At noon, they dined in the Duchess of Bedford Tearoom on a gourmet lunch prepared by Alain Rousseau, the museum’s renowned chef. After completing their tour, they would enjoy a typical English afternoon tea, complete with scones, fairy cakes, and savories. That’s when Nigel would personally greet the group. Perhaps he would bring Cha-Cha along with him. The Japanese visitors would probably enjoy meeting an expatriate from their homeland.

“Get’ em in—and keep’ em coming back,” he murmured. Flick had coined the museum’s new mantra. An increasing flow of fee-paying visitors was essential to repay the new loan. “The Royal Tunbridge Wells Tea Museum is open for business.”

A vigorous rapping on his doorframe seized his attention.

He turned, and Flick smiled at him. “We have to talk,” she said brightly. “I wanted to clarify what you heard me say, and I think we should issue a follow-up statement to the media.”

Nigel grunted and gestured toward the sofa. At least Flick realized that she overstepped her authority—a good job, too, because he wasn’t in the mood for a fight this afternoon. He took a moment to gather his thoughts. “I suppose the thing to do is to notify the BBC that we want to correct our response to their questions.”

A puzzled look flickered across Flick’s face. “My notion exactly, but I don’t recall that the BBC sent a reporter to our news conference. We clearly made a mistake when we rejected the idea of an Etienne Makepeace exhibit. I think we should send out a supplemental news release correcting what you said.”

“You think what?” Nigel rose halfway out of his chair. “Have you lost your blooming mind? We have to correct what
you
told the BBC reporter.” As soon as the words were spoken, he regretted shouting at Flick. Nonetheless, he matched glower for glower as she glared at him.

“You’re surely not sticking with the silly statement you made this morning?” she said. “Don’t you realize you were completely wrong? Etienne Makepeace, his disappearance, and his reappearance are all important aspects of the history of tea in England. Of course the man deserves an exhibit. If we reject Makepeace, we might as well ignore Thomas Lipton…or Desmond Hawker.”

Nigel settled back into his chair with a clank. “You’ve changed your tune rather quickly, don’t you think? What happened to I -can’t-imagine-why-we’d-want-an-exhibit about the man?”

“Your feeble attempt at imitating an American accent stinks.”

“High praise, indeed!”

“However, to answer your question—I realize that we both shot from the hip at the news conference. I am wise enough to admit that I blundered.”

Nigel shook his head. “A Makepeace exhibit is an abysmal idea. The board won’t approve it, and neither will I.”

Nigel noted that Flick’s eyes were shining brightly as she said, “Spoken like a true pompous prig! However, as Stuart attempted to remind you, I have the charter to create a new exhibit when I decide what is appropriate.”

“I admit that you are nominally in charge. In theory, the chief curator plans new exhibits.” Nigel fluttered his fingers at her. “I give you permission to dream up new exhibits to your heart’s content. Keep in mind, however, that I have control of the museum’s checkbook. You can’t move beyond planning unless I give you the money to spend, and I will never—repeat, never—agree to fund an exhibit about Etienne Makepeace.”

Nigel saw Flick’s complexion redden as he spoke.
Too bloody bad if she’s angry; I’m getting angry, too.

She leveled a wagging finger at him. “You don’t have the authority to censor my exhibits.”

“I have complete authority to act for the good of the museum.” He lifted his yellow pad. “Here are the reasons we shan’t be establishing a shrine to Etienne Makepeace.”