Dead as a Scone (2 page)

He glanced at the printed meeting schedule on his desktop. There was no significant business to discuss, no burning issues. The museum was chugging along uneventfully, thanks in large measure to his fine management skills. The “high spot” today would be a lecture by Dr. Felicity Adams, the museum’s new chief curator, about the different approaches to professional tea tasting in different tea-growing regions of the world. I can’t wait, Nigel thought grimly. He gave a tiny shudder.

“Consider it done, Dame Elspeth,” Nigel said grandly. “Only you and I know that you will speak the final words this afternoon.”

Nigel fought to stay awake by cataloging the various inducements to sleep that weighed down his eyelids.

For starters, the trustees of the Royal Tunbridge Wells Tea Museum had enjoyed a lavish afternoon “cream tea” at three thirty—a high-carbohydrate festival of assorted scones, clotted cream, and ten different kinds of jams, preserves, and conserves.

Immediately thereafter, Felicity Adams had begun a sleep-inducing lecture on the art and science of tasting tea. Flick Adams, as she preferred to be called, had spoken in her monotonous American voice for more than sixty minutes so far, and there was no telling how much longer her mind-numbing oration might drag on.

To numb one’s mind even further, the museum’s boardroom was overheated. The outside temperature on that sunny Wednesday afternoon in mid-October had risen to a pleasant fifteen degrees Celsius—almost sixty degrees Fahrenheit—but the museum’s archaic central heating plant obliviously continued to pump torrents of hot water through the radiators. Alas, it was impossible to open a window because someone had shut the drapes, presumably to make Flick’s tedious images of tea-tasting rooms in Asia, Europe, and Africa easier to see on the screen.

Who cares about the proper way to “cup” a Darjeeling?

Nigel swallowed a yawn and looked around the conference table. To his astonishment, the museum’s eight trustees appeared spellbound by Flick’s presentation. Their rapt expressions looked sincere; their total attention to her words struck him as authentic. They actually seemed interested in the trivial fact that a tea taster tastes tea that is five times stronger than the brew most people drink.

Well, seven of the eight seem interested.

Diagonally across the immaculately polished mahogany table from Nigel, Dame Elspeth Hawker had dozed off. She sat slumped in her chair, snoring delicately, her head resting comfortably against the leather wing. Nigel smiled at the sight of the snoozing octogenarian.
She’s earned the right not to listen. If I were eighty-four years old—and filthy rich, to boot—I’d be fast asleep, too. Especially if I had eaten three raisin scones slathered with Danish lingonberry preserves and topped with dollops of thick cream.

A delightful notion took shape in Nigel’s mind. Perhaps he could use the dozing Grande Dame as an excuse to have the kitchen brew a decent pot of strong coffee. After all, one of his chief responsibilities as acting director of the museum was to orchestrate successful monthly meetings of the trustees. Dame Elspeth needed to be fully awake and alert when Flick finally sat down—and so did her seven colleagues.

Nigel surveyed the seven other trustees again and felt modestly virtuous that he had kept his word to Elspeth. None of them knew that Elspeth would close the meeting with the tale of an “exceedingly clever thief.” Strong coffee all around might be just the ticket.

Nigel let the delicious idea percolate awhile. Even the lowliest coffee would be preferable to the three kinds of estate-grown tea—one from China, one from India, one from Ceylon—that he had served to the trustees from elegant Coalport teapots. Tradition demanded that the director play “mother” at trustee meetings, but his heart had not been in it. A hot
cuppa
at “teatime” was pleasant enough, Nigel agreed, but certainly not in the same league as a steaming mug of freshly brewed coffee.

How had tea managed to become the so-called national drink of Great Britain, anyway?
The great irony was that tea was first offered in the coffeehouses of England during the middle of the seventeenth century. Even today, Brits consumed colossal quantities of coffee—except, of course, at the Royal Tunbridge Wells Tea Museum.

Feeling genuine regret, Nigel decided that his scheme to switch beverage was doomed to failure. “The trustees are bloody tea aficionados,” he muttered under his breath. “The merest hint of coffee will put the lot of them off their feed.” With the exception of Dame Elspeth, the eight men and women who presided over the Royal Tunbridge Wells Tea Museum were quite similar: fiftyish, give or take a few years, superbly successful in their careers, and—this last trait puzzled Nigel endlessly—gaga about tea. How could highly educated people be so
passionate
about shriveled leaves soaked in boiling water?

Nigel concealed a sigh.
Ah, well—some mysteries have no explanations.
Besides, it made little difference whether or not he understood the trustees’ motivations. The simple fact was if they loved tea, Nigel would pretend that he loved tea just as much.

For the past six months, Nigel had gone the extra mile to please the trustees. His yearlong stint as acting director was half-finished, and Nigel counted on one of the eight to pave the way for his next position—preferably a permanent rather than temporary post.

Nine months ago, Nigel Owen had been declared redundant when a behemoth Dutch conglomerate purchased the London-based insurance company he had worked at for ten years. Senior management jobs were tight—even for someone with his sterling education, broad experience, and still relatively tender age of thirty-eight. He had been fortunate to land the acting directorship at the museum. What he needed now was an influential person to offer a helping hand. And say what he might about their loopy affection for tea, the museum’s trustees included some exceedingly influential people.

Nigel’s tidy mind had meticulously organized them in order of their likely ability to advance his career: The unmistakable leader in career clout was Archibald Meicklejohn, the chair of the trustees. A trim, balding, always impeccably dressed banker from the City, London’s financial centre, he sat on several corporate boards of directors, hobnobbed with the prime minister, and owned the rather spectacular Bentley that currently reposed in the museum’s staff car park. Nigel liked to imagine Archibald calling one evening to ask, “What salary and perks would you require to join my staff as my personal financial advisor?”

Next in line was Sir Simon Clowes, a distinguished cardiologist whose large hands, craggy face, and thick graying hair made him look more like a veteran mountain climber than a successful doctor with offices in London and Tunbridge Wells. Sir Simon was well situated to tout Nigel’s skills to the executives of healthcare organizations. Nigel could easily picture himself as an administrator at a major hospital or possibly a financial manager at an international pharmaceutical firm. Sir Simon could start the ball rolling with a simple email to one of his cronies.

Nigel’s most exotic fantasy involved Iona Saxby, an Oxford-based solicitor who looked as if she had been drawn by Leonardo DaVinci: statuesque, stylish, with a magnificently enigmatic face that could camouflage her every emotion. What would happen, Nigel mused, should Iona invite him to become business director of her high-powered law firm? He would accept the offer—after suitably playing hard to get, of course—and spend the rest of his career as a shadowy power broker, a puller of legal strings, feared and respected throughout the realm.

The other trustees were less easy to sort out.

The Reverend William de Rudd, vicar of St. Stephen’s Church in Tunbridge Wells, was reportedly a school chum of the current archbishop of Canterbury. The ever jovial, decidedly rotund clergyman reputedly had prominent friends across England, but not in circles of interest to Nigel Owen.

Matthew Eaton was a renowned landscape architect headquartered up the road in East Grinstead. A large man, he made himself look even bulkier by invariably wearing Harris Tweed suits and sport coats. His clients included Her Majesty the Queen, and it was widely assumed that “Sir Matthew” would show up on the nation’s Honours list next year. Well and good for him—but how could a glorified gardener give Nigel a leg up?

A similar question might be asked about Dorothy McAndrews—a PhD art historian turned antiques dealer, who owned a string of fifteen antique shops scattered throughout Kent and Sussex. Easily the most glamorous of the trustees, with a classic Celtic combination of red hair, greenish eyes, and fair, porcelain-like skin, she appeared regularly on the telly, on the BBC show that traveled around Britain appraising antiques. However, her ability to help Nigel land a better job seemed rather thin.

Marjorie Halifax was the politician among the trustees. She served as a councilwoman on the Tunbridge Wells Borough Council and was widely considered an expert on Kentish tourism. Marjorie was one of those women who, though short, seemed tall. Her loud voice and extravagant gestures more than made up for her petite stature. Marjorie had scads of influence locally—but Nigel’s daydreams extended beyond the precincts of Tunbridge Wells. Or should he say
Royal
Tunbridge Wells? Nigel never felt certain—and apparently neither did the locals. In 1909, King Edward VII had bestowed the right to add the somewhat pretentious prefix “Royal” to Tunbridge Wells—but many residents chose not to do so. Royal or not, Nigel thought the small city too tame, too bucolic, and longed to return to London.

Finally, there was Dame Elspeth herself, granddaughter of Commodore Desmond Hawker.
The
Desmond Hawker
—
the fabled, somewhat notorious, nineteenth-century tea merchant who used much of the huge fortune he amassed to endow the great foundation that bore his name. It had been Dame Elspeth’s half sister—Mary Hawker Evans—who, some forty years earlier, wheedled and coaxed the Hawker Foundation to establish a tea museum to house the family’s many tea-related antiquities, celebrate the importance of tea in Great Britain, and, “While we’re at it, honor Commodore Desmond’s memory. And wouldn’t it be lovely to locate the museum in Commodore Desmond’s favorite English town: Royal Tunbridge Wells, on the border of Kent and Sussex?”

The Royal Tunbridge Wells Tea Museum Charitable Trust had been duly created on 1 March 1964. Soon thereafter, the trust erected an impressive, four-story Georgian-style building on Eridge Road, opposite the Tunbridge Wells Common, a short walk from the Pantiles, the charming colonnaded walkway one sees in all the tourist brochures about Royal Tunbridge Wells. With its five major galleries—tea blending and tasting rooms; meeting facilities; tea parlor; and garden, complete with a greenhouse holding the largest collection of tea plants in England—the museum met every requirement on Mary Hawker Evans’s wish list.

Several letters to the editor of the
Kent and Sussex Courier
called the vast building a white elephant, questioned the wisdom of honoring a man of checkered reputation, and expressed caustic doubt that sensible vacationers would choose to visit the Royal Tunbridge Wells Tea Museum. But visit they did—in droves. Tea lovers from Tennessee, Taiwan, and Tasmania made pilgrimages of thousands of miles to see the clipper ship models in the Tea at Sea Gallery, the famed collection of gimcracks and crockery in the Tea Antiquities Gallery, and the huge diorama in the History of Tea Colonnade. The museum quickly became one of the most popular attractions in the south of England and, surprisingly to everyone involved, a source of considerable academic scholarship about tea.

Tea economists, tea historians, tea chemists, and tea geographers from around the world discovered that Desmond Hawker and his descendants had assembled a truly world-class collection of tea-related documents, memorabilia, and relics. As they also flocked to Royal Tunbridge Wells, they dramatically changed the character of the museum’s workforce. The Hawker Foundation had assumed that the museum’s curator would be little more than a watchman who tended the various exhibits. But today, the Royal Tunbridge Wells Tea Museum had a staff of four professional curators—experts in document restoration, wood preservation, art history, and cartography—led by a chief curator, the long-winded Felicity Adams, PhD.

A dissonance of different laughs, followed by a burst of robust applause as the lights came on in the room, brought Nigel back to the present. Wonder of wonders! Flick had held her lecture to only an hour and ten minutes. She must have ended with a joke about tea tasting, if such a thing were even possible.