Dead as a Scone (34 page)

“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.”

Flick watched a sly grin form on Oxley’s face. She realized that he was about to tell the juicy part of his story.

“Desmond was unquestionably the smarter businessman of the two,” Oxley said. “He decided to protect his investment by bribing one of Mansfield’s bookkeepers. As a result, he received a wealth of insider information. He realized a full year before it actually happened that Mansfield was doomed to go under. And so Desmond sold his shares in the Mansfield Manufactory for a hefty profit, long before the company’s financial ill health became publicly known. But—”

Flick couldn’t help interrupting. “But he neglected to warn his partner.”

“Exactly! Desmond stood by as Neville lost nearly everything when Mansfield collapsed. He then proceeded to make his desperate friend an offer that Neville couldn’t refuse. Desmond bought out Neville’s half of the partnership for pennies on the pound.”

Flick nodded glumly. That was the sort of behavior she had expected from Desmond Hawker in his early years of his company. A genuine robber baron saw nothing wrong with crushing friends along with foes. All that counted was his personal gain, his individual success. He made no concessions to such squishy concepts as morality or ethics—or even friendship.

“That’s appalling,” she said. “Truly despicable.”

“I agree. But Desmond’s maliciousness doesn’t stop there. Neville had built a superb collection of
objets d’art
related to tea. Paintings, ship models, maps, a bit of everything. The collection had considerable value. Brackenbury could have sold the items and paid off a large part of his debts, but Desmond never gave him the chance. He asserted that the collection was part of the partnership’s assets. I assume that Desmond threatened to assert his rights to the objects by bringing an action in court and that Neville didn’t have the money to pay the cost of an effective legal defense. In any case, Neville felt compelled to sell the collection to Desmond at a fraction of its worth.” He added, “In his later years, Desmond considered this a fraudulent transaction, akin to actually stealing the objects from Neville.”

With great effort, Flick kept her expression from revealing the colossal shock she felt. “You must be aware,” she said evenly, “that the Hawker collection represents the lion’s share of the antiquities on display in my museum.”

“Of course.” He offered a wry smile. “If my book had ever been published, I would have asked permission to include photographs from the museum’s catalog of antiquities. One item in particular upset Neville Brackenbury above all others. He had commissioned a set of elegant tea caddies, decorated with wooden mosaics, that was destined to become an anniversary present for his wife, Lucinda. Desmond swept them up with everything else.”

Flick gasped.
The All the Teas in China” Tunbridge Ware tea caddies.
She covered her abrupt distress with a cough.

“Have some more tea,” Oxley said. “These digestive biscuits are dry as desert sand.”

Flick took two long sips, then said, “The picture you painted of Desmond Hawker makes him look irredeemably evil. And yet your book talks about his transformation into a fervent man of faith.” She recalled her discussion with Nigel as they drove to Tunbridge Wells. “Do you think Desmond really changed his stripes?”

Oxley spread his hands on his desk. “Something happened to Desmond Hawker. I can’t say what was in his mind and heart, but he really did act a different person as he grew older. He died believing that God had forgiven his many sins.”

“That seems remarkably generous of God, given the heartlessness of Desmond’s transgressions.”

Oxley laughed. “I made that very point to a minister when I was doing research. He said, ‘Indeed, that is what God’s grace is all about.’ ” The professor’s face became somber. “Unfortunately, there were members of Neville Brackenbury’s family who chose not to forgive Desmond Hawker.”

“The fire at Lion’s Peak,” Flick said with a sigh. “ ‘The Flying Scroll Vendetta.’ ”

“I have no proof,” Oxley said, “but I feel that vengeance is the best explanation of what happened in 1925. It is a matter of public record that Neville died in 1883, although I never was able to track down the cause of his death. My theory is that he committed suicide, creating a pool of hatred that festered for fifty years among his survivors. Again, it is public record that Neville had two sons, twins, in fact. The best evidence I have suggests that Lucinda and the boys left England after Neville died in 1883 and immigrated to Canada. I believe that one of the sons was responsible for the arson at Lion’s Peak and accidentally died during the fire.”

Flick watched Oxley’s face as he spoke. She didn’t see any sign of doubt, any hint of hesitation. He clearly believed everything he had alleged. She decided that his hypothesis made good sense to her, too. Then she saw him glance furtively at the digital clock atop his desk.

Time to leave.

Flick stood, brushed a few digestive biscuit crumbs from her skirt, and said, “I won’t make any promises, but I will try to get the Hawker family’s permission to place a copy of your book in our library, where it will be available to scholars.”

Oxley stood, too. “I think of my manuscript as an incomplete work in progress—many loose strings remain to be tied up. But feel free to use my research in your new exhibit.” He extended his hand. “Oh, please do let me know if you discover anything new about Desmond Hawker and family. I would like very much to learn how the Hawker saga ends.”

“Badly!” she murmured under her breath.

Philip Oxley had mused about a pool of hatred that festered for fifty years and exploded in violence in 1925. But the murder of Elspeth Hawker—and the thefts of the Tunbridge Ware tea caddies—happened in the twenty-first century.

Could hatred continue to boil and bubble for more than 120 years?

Flick shivered as she considered the possibility.

Fifteen

N
igel’s phone rang at 3:40 in the afternoon. He knew without looking at the caller-ID panel that it was Flick’s cell phone, and that she had just stepped off the 14:45 from London Charing Cross. He snatched up the receiver.

“Welcome back to Tunbridge Wells,” he said. “How was your day in Oxford?”

“Productive,” she said. The brief sound of her voice made Nigel realize how much he had missed seeing her today. But he also felt a stab of unease. He could hear something ominous in her tone. Anger? Disappointment?

He waited patiently without speaking for her to find the right words.

Flick began with a low moan. “The truth is, I learned too much about Desmond Hawker today. I feel like stripping his name off every exhibit in the museum. He was a bona fide, unreconstructed…”

Nigel drew in his breath, surprised at Flick’s choice of epithet. It was a ripe four-word expletive that he had never heard her use before. She started to say something else, when an announcement on a loudspeaker at Central Railway Station drowned out her voice.

“Hang on a sec!” she shouted. “I’m almost at the Mount Pleasant Road exit.”

Nigel imagined Flick walking through the old station, the cell phone pressed to her ear. She probably had worn one of her trim business suits to visit the professor of history, perhaps the blue one that accentuated her abundant curves and made her look nothing like the usual museum curator.

Flick’s voice returned. “I’m outside the station, approaching Vale Street. How did your day go?”

“I am over the moon with delight!” He tried to incorporate the right touch of sarcasm. “There is nothing I relish more than humbling myself before our charming trustees. I needed every minute of the morning to wheedle and whinge, but I finally convinced them all to show up at three o’clock on Friday afternoon. I swore on my mother’s head that this would be our last meeting for at least a month.”

Silence.

“Flick, are you there?”

“You may want to cancel the meeting,” she said gravely.

“What?”

“Or at least postpone it a few days.”

“Impossible!”
Nigel struggled to regain a scintilla of self-control. “Why can’t we hold a trustees’ meeting on Friday?”

He heard Flick sigh. “Philip Oxley filled in many of the missing pieces. I am beginning to understand Elspeth’s concerns about the provenance of our antiquities. She may have been right to worry.”

“Worry about what? As you pointed out to me, the Hawker family assembled the collection more than a hundred years ago.”

“I don’t know a thing about property law in the United Kingdom, but I think we have a problem—or rather that the Hawkers do.” She added, “I should be at the museum in twenty minutes. I’ll tell you the whole, miserable story.”

“I can’t wait.”

“Put a kettle on. It’s Wednesday, the Duchess of Bedford Tearoom is closed, and I am dying for a cuppa.”

Nigel rang off and told himself not to speculate about the dimensions of their “problem.” Soon enough, Flick would be there with the facts. Ownership of antiquities was fertile ground for conflict at museums throughout the world—why should the Royal Tunbridge Wells Tea Museum be exempt? The “Elgin Marbles” on display at the British Museum were the most notable examples: fifty-six sculpted friezes removed from the Parthenon in Athens in 1799 by Lord Elgin, the British ambassador to the Ottoman Empire. The modern nation of Greece demanded their return. And scores of famous art museums were embroiled in fights over treasures that the Nazis stole from lawful owners before and during World War II.

He took a yellow pad and began to make a list of resources that might be useful as Flick and he reviewed the provenance of the Hawker antiquities:

The binder full of computer-generated inventory logs that Flick had consulted when she showed him the objects on loan from the Hawker family.

A photographic catalog published by the museum that pictured the most important items in its collection.

The original loan agreements between Mary Hawker Evans and the museum.

Scholarly books about the Hawker antiquities written by art historians. Nigel had seen two in the bookcase in Flick’s office.

Miscellany.

He underlined the last entry. Nigel’s files were chock-full of magazines, white papers, and other publications written for museum directors. He would ask Polly Reid to look for anything relevant.

Nigel’s phone rang again.

“I’m approaching the bottom of High Street,” Flick said. “I wanted to make sure you’ve put a kettle on.”

“Indeed I have,” he fibbed. “By the way, let’s meet in the boardroom. I am gathering every piece of information we have on the Hawker collection. We will need a big table to spread it all out.”