The Final Crumpet (40 page)

“Tomorrow will be the fourth Wednesday since he began bothering me. I am quite concerned that he will attempt to follow me around the museum and accost me should he find me alone. I ask that you give your immediate attention to this matter.

“Yours faithfully, Mrs. Mirabelle Hubbard.” Nigel let the letter fall onto the table.

“Did Mr. Swithin solve the problem for you on Wednesday, 14 September?”

“No, sir.” Mirabelle averted her eyes. “He never came in to work that day. We heard later that he went to London for a meeting at the Hawker Foundation.”

“Were your fears realized? Did Etienne Makepeace accost you?”

Mirabelle nodded. “Late in the afternoon, sir. I was in the tearoom when Mr. Makepeace appeared out of nowhere. I made a mistake; instead of running toward the museum, I fled into the greenhouse.”

“I best take over now, sir,” Trevor said. “There’s no reason to make Mirabelle talk about…what happened.”

“An excellent idea, Trevor. Carry on.”

“I was in the Welcome Centre kiosk when I heard a scream from the greenhouse. It took me perhaps ten seconds to get there. When I arrived, I saw that Mr. Makepeace had cornered Mirabelle and had shoved her down on one of the potting benches. He kept saying, ‘Why are you fussing? All I want is a bit of crumpet.’

“I pulled him away from Mirabelle and poked him in the solar plexus—rather hard. As you would expect, he fell to his knees. He puffed and wheezed and struggled to catch his breath for the better part of a minute. He would have recovered more quickly, but the whole time on his knees, he kept cursing me for all he was worth.

“Well, sir, I thought the worst was over, but then he took a small, black pistol out of his pocket and pointed it at me. I knew what to do, of course. My Royal Marines training took over, almost without my thinking about it. I brought my left arm sideways in a parrying blow and knocked the gun out of his hand. I watched it skitter along the concrete floor and come to rest underneath one of the workbenches.

“Well, Mr. Makepeace was a good fighter, too. When he observed that I had taken my eyes off him, he gave me a push that sent me reeling. He immediately leaped for the pistol; I saw his fingers brush against it. I knew that I had to stop him before he could aim the gun at me. I had no doubt that he intended to shoot.

“I struggled to my feet and tackled him as hard as I could. The gun was now between us—he gripping it in his right hand, my left hand pushing it back toward him. The gun suddenly went off, and he dropped like a stone.” Trevor gave a smile of relief. “That’s the whole story. The God’s honest truth.”

The tea garden went silent. All Nigel could hear was a gentle rush of breeze through the leaves of the evergreen tea trees arrayed behind him. Bertie was the first to speak.

“I’m sorry I doubted you, Kolya. It’s clear to me now that the KGB did not eliminate Etienne Makepeace.”

“And I you, Bertie. I plan to rethink my views of MI6.”

Pennyman made a face. “If you gentlemen are through reliving the Cold War, I have a relevant question or two.” He stared hard at Bertie, then at Kolya. “As I understand the situation back in 1966—and I’m largely dependent on Dr. Adams for my knowledge—Etienne Makepeace worked…
simultaneously
for both the British and Soviet governments. However, it seems that his primary allegiance was toward the Soviet intelligence establishment. Is that a factual summary?”

“Unfortunately so,” Bertie said.

Kolya made a soft grunt that Nigel took as a polite, nonboasting yes.

Pennyman went on. “The small, black pistol that we found buried beneath Makepeace’s remains is a Markarov automatic of Soviet manufacture. We have yet to establish as an unquestionable fact that it is the very same small, black pistol described by Mr. Dangerfield—but let’s make the logical assumption that Makepeace was walking the streets of Tunbridge Wells in 1966 in possession of a loaded Soviet firearm.” He stared again at Kolya. “Why would you give a man like Etienne Makepeace a lethal weapon?”

Kolya held up his hands, palms open, in a gesture of conciliation. “Naturally, it was not my decision. Early in 1966, Makepeace attended a training session in Eastern Europe for intelligence officers. He returned with the pistol. He was proud of the weapon and seemed to enjoy having it with him. I advised him that carrying an illegal handgun in Great Britain added a foolish, incalculable risk to everything he did, but alas he didn’t believe me.”

Pennyman shook his head heavily, then turned to Trevor. “The events you just described, Mr. Dangerfield, might well represent a case of justifiable homicide under British law.” He glanced at Flick. “What you Americans label self-defense.” Then back to Trevor: “You apparently came to Mrs. Hubbard’s aid valiantly, at considerable risk to yourself. Why didn’t you call the Kent Constabulary immediately and report what happened?”

“That was my doing, sir,” Mirabelle said. “Mr. Makepeace was famous—England’s Tea Sage—and he had a good name. I felt that no one would have believed that he attacked me. I was good-looking back then, and like the other ladies at the museum, I wore a miniskirt. Everyone would have said that I led him on. I insisted that we not call the police.”

Trevor added, “I buried his pistol with him—inside a protective box I took from the museum’s archives—with the idea it might help us prove our innocence, should we ever be charged with a crime.” He sat up tall in his chair. “On that subject, sir, will we be charged with a crime?”

“You ought to be. You inconvenienced tens of thousands of people. Your decision to bury Makepeace set in motion a nationwide search that lasted months and created a mystery that endured for forty-odd years.” He let air flutter though his lips. “However, finish your story. Etienne Makepeace is lying in front of you. What did you do next?”

“Well, sir…” Nigel noticed that Trevor looked skyward and his eyes lost focus. He seemed to be pushing himself deeper into the distant past. “The very first thing I did was to ascertain that he was dead. There was no doubt about that at all. Next, we verified that we were alone in the museum. I remember feeling worried that someone nearby might have heard the shot and called the police—but no police ever knocked on the door.

“Mirabelle and I talked for quite a while about what to do, and then we decided to bury him in the tea garden. We had all the tools we needed in the greenhouse, of course, and I found an extra tarpaulin in the storeroom next to the greenhouse to wrap around the body. We didn’t have a coffin, but Mirabelle came up with the idea of covering him with roofing tiles. There were several stacks out back that the construction company hadn’t carted away after they finished the building.”

Mirabelle chimed in. “That was another mistake I made. If I’d been less concerned about giving the man a proper burial, those two Assam tea trees would have been half as tall as the museum by now.”

Nigel bit back a smile.
And the world would still be searching for Etienne Makepeace.

Trevor went on. “It was easy to clean up the blood in the greenhouse—we rinsed the floor with a hose. Actually, our biggest challenge was Mirabelle’s husband. She wanted to help me, but he expected her home after work. We came up with a clever solution. Mirabelle went home, and then I called with an ‘emergency request’ to come back. She was able to spend two hours helping me dig the grave.

“It took me most of the night to restore the ground around the tea trees. I had to risk leaving the lights on while I worked. Very frightening, it was. But no one came by.”

Pennyman nodded. “One last question. It’s surprising to me that no one realized that Etienne Makepeace went missing on September 14. Did you do anything to cover up his disappearance?”

“No. We were lucky. He’d told several people that he intended to take the train back to London early that evening. We didn’t say anything. No one ever asked us about him.”

“Do you have anything to add, Mrs. Hubbard?”

Mirabelle sighed. “No. You have the whole story.”

Flick reached across the table and patted Mirabelle’s hand. “Did you ever figure out what Makepeace meant when he called you a ‘crumpet’?”

“Oh, ma’am…” Mirabelle began to blush.

Nigel couldn’t help laughing. He noted that the other men around the table were also chuckling or sniggering. He decided to explain. “ ‘A bit of crumpet’ is a term that Brits often use to describe female objects of their desire. For example, when I look at you, I am tempted to say, “Felicity Adams is the thinking man’s bit of crumpet.”

Once again, the other men at the table—even DI Pennyman—reacted with bursts of, “Hear! Hear!” and “Indeed!” and “Well said, Nigel!”

“I get the idea,” Flick said, as she threw a crumpled piece of paper at him.

Mirabelle, though, seemed lost in thought. She finally said, “Mr. Makepeace kept saying, ‘All I want is a bit of crumpet.’ ” She sniffed. “I guess I was his final crumpet.”

Flick looked at the seven other people sitting around the table and decided that the most interesting person in sight was DI Pennyman. His face seemed unusually animated; his eyes darted back and forth, his fingers drummed on the tabletop. What, Flick wondered, would he decide to do?

Surprisingly, he abruptly leaned back in his chair and said, “Does anyone have any advice for me?”

Kolya answered immediately. “Let sleeping dogs lie. Hugh Doyle killed Etienne Makepeace.”

Flick smiled at the expatriate Russian.
At least he’s consistent in his use of clichés.

“You think so?” Pennyman said.

“For many years,” Kolya said, “I worked in a bureaucracy not unlike the Kent Police. I can state with some certainty that your superiors will not be pleased if you take Hugh Doyle away from them.”

Pennyman nodded. “He really is a classic villain.”

“Without doubt—a smuggler, a hijacker, an extortionist, and a murderer. An evildoer
worthy
of Etienne Makepeace.”

“Was Doyle really an extortionist? We didn’t know that.”

“The police will have more evidence by…
say
Wednesday.”

“Doyle did threaten Etienne Makepeace.”

“Noisily. In public.”

“And he did flee to Scotland.”

“Why would a thug like Doyle go into hiding up there unless it was to escape prosecution?”

Pennyman laughed. “An excellent point.”

“All in all,” Kolya said, “Hugh Doyle is easily understood. An evil man who overreacted when his good wife succumbed to the obvious charms of England’s Tea Sage. The 1960s, after all, were a
flexible
time in England. Infidelity and adultery were common—one can forgive Etienne for sinning in that manner. And one can feel sorry that he ran afoul of Hugh Doyle.”

“On the other hand, Trevor Dangerfield and Mirabelle Hubbard have confessed to—to…
something,”
Pennyman said.

“Indeed, they have.” Kolya gestured with his index finger. “Two elderly people with questionable memories have told a bizarre tale. But have they provided a scrap of proof of their outrageous claims?
No!
It’s their feeble word against a significant quantity of documentary evidence that two public-spirited citizens have delivered to the authorities.”

“Another excellent point.” Pennyman turned to Trevor.

“Mr. Dangerfield, exactly how old are you?”

“I turned seventy-nine last month, sir.”

“Amazing. You look much younger. How’s your memory?”

Trevor began to grin. “Well, now that you and Mr. Melnikov mention it, I don’t suppose it’s all that good. In the Royal Marines, I spent a good deal of time near weapons that made lots of noise.”

“What about Mrs. Hubbard?”

“She’s only seventy-four but has been known to have her senior moments.”

Pennyman nodded. “Thank you, Mrs. Hubbard and Mr. Dangerfield, for your most interesting input. You’ve definitely assisted my inquiries. I will, of course, take everything you’ve told me under advisement, but I would note that the present course of our investigation seems to be propelling us in a significantly different direction.”

“Praise God” said Mirabelle.

“Praise God, indeed,” murmured Flick.