by Ron Benrey
“The paintings are probably worth millions,” she said.
“I agree,” he answered as he scribbled.
She pirouetted in place. “I can’t have forgotten anything else. The two other rooms on this floor are classrooms we use for seminars.”
“To the staircase!”
Flick trod down the steps behind Nigel, dreading the coming few minutes. “Better sharpen your pencil,” she said. “The first floor overflows with Hawker property.”
The lobby on the first floor was part of the Tea at Sea Gallery, the museum’s second most popular exhibit. Only the History of Tea Colonnade on the ground floor drew more visitors. The seven guests in the gallery were wearing the bright blue headsets that enabled them to listen to the room’s audio tour guide system.
“Everything here is on loan from the Hawkers,” Flick said. “The forty models of tea clipper ships. The binnacles and compasses. The ships’ logs. The antique charts. The ships’ wheels. The figureheads. The photographs and paintings. The chronometers and navigation tools. The nautical relics. Everything.” She opened the binder and flipped through a sheaf of pages. “There must be six hundred cataloged items.”
“Each of the clipper ship models will fetch a pretty penny,” Nigel said. “I’ll guess ten thousand quid apiece. That’s four hundred thousand, right there. I’ll be generous and estimate two and a half million for everything in the room.” He glanced at Flick. “What do you think?”
She shrugged.
“Is that a ‘too high’ shrug or a ‘too low’ shrug?” he asked.
“Your numbers are beginning to make me feel queasy.”
“Then I withdraw my question. Press on!”
Flick peeked into the gallery at the front of the first floor that held the Hawker collection of tea-related antiquities. As she anticipated, there were five guests widely scattered around the room, looking at individual objects on display. Guests seemed to choose favorite items and linger around them.
Nigel came up behind her and said, “Every time I pass this gallery, I am reminded of an antique store. It offers the same kind of cluttered ambience. A happy jumble of porcelain, silver, and wood.”
“I see it as more of a treasure trove. Each antiquity is a gem. Unique. Irreplaceable. Priceless.”
“Priceless in a symbolic sense,” Nigel said with a soft laugh. “Appraisers always manage to come up with fair-market prices.”
Flick nodded glumly. “And there are scads of wealthy collectors around who can pay them—although it would be tragic to hide these objects in private collections.” She gestured inconspicuously. “That woman in the green sweater and brown slacks is standing next to the earliest surviving examples of Yixing, purple-clay teapots. They were fired in China, in the thirteenth century, during the Sung Dynasty.” She gestured again. “The man wearing blue jeans is looking at a gold and silver eighteenth-century samovar that belonged to the royal family of Russia. Again, the earliest surviving example. And the woman in gray is browsing through our collection of Japanese tea ceremony utensils. We have some of the finest Edo-period porcelains in Europe. They date back to the early sixteenth century.”
“I need a guesstimate of value,” Nigel said. “How about a few million?”
Flick chuckled.
“What is so funny?” Nigel said.
“Which do you suppose is my favorite tea antiquity?”
“I have no idea, though I doubt it’s the tsar’s tea machine.”
“I used to covet the portable silver tea service that Napoleon toted around on his campaigns.” She pointed to a small mahogany trunk, propped open at an angle to show its intricate shelves, fittings, and utensils. “But then Elspeth turned me on to ‘All the Teas in China,’ the matched collection of Tunbridge Ware tea caddies, back in the corner.”
“The pretty wooden boxes?”
“Eighteen oversized tea caddies covered with mosaics depicting different tea-growing regions in China. Each caddy is one of a kind, with a distinctive profile, but all eighteen are perfectly matched in color. They represent the pinnacle of Tunbridge Ware artistry—made in 1867 and 1868 by the great Robert Russell himself. Elspeth guessed the set would fetch a half million pounds at auction.”
“Blimey! That much lolly for antique kitchen canisters?”
“Yep. And many of the items on display in this gallery are worth far more.”
“Ten million pounds for the lot?” Nigel said hopefully.
“Several tens of millions is more like it.” Flick rubbed her eyes. “I have a rip-roaring headache.”
“Only one more level to go,” Nigel said. “I presume that we own everything else on this floor—the contents of the Tea Blending Room, the Tea Tasting Room, and the Tea Processing Salon.”
“Down to the last tasting cup.”
This time Flick was first to the stairway. The sooner they completed the impromptu inventory, the sooner this miserable day would be over. She skipped down the steps, almost colliding with two museum guests on their way up. Nigel caught up with her in The World of Tea Map Room. They moved to an out-of-the-way corner, in the shadow of a ten-foot-high map of the Indian subcontinent.
Flick perused the register, did a quick mental calculation, and said, “All the antique maps belong to the Hawkers. And most of the paintings and lithographs.”
“I’ll put down another half million,” Nigel said.
“Sure. Why not?” What difference does it make? We’ll never raise enough money to buy it all.
“That leaves the Commodore Hawker Room and the History of Tea Colonnade,” Nigel said.
Flick looked up. “Nothing in the Commodore Hawker Room is on the block. Mary Hawker Evans donated her grandfather’s office furniture when she died, along with his company documents and private papers. Most of the latter are stored in the basement archives.”
“Excellent!” Nigel jotted on his pad.
“However, about half of the colonnade antiquities belong to the Hawkers. Many of them are unique, too. A broadsheet advertising the first English teahouse. Royal menus for afternoon teas. Centuries-old tea chests.” Flick hesitated. “You know what? This is a silly exercise in futility.”
Nigel gazed at his notes. Flick tugged at the pad.
“Don’t waste your time adding up the total,” she said. “We’ll never assemble the funds to buy our exhibits back. No museum our size has access to those kinds of resources.”
“Sad but true. However, as I look at this list, I can see a bit of a bright side.”
“Which is?”
“The museum’s academic efforts will survive the loss. We own most of Desmond Hawker’s letters, papers, and memorabilia. These are the materials that support your various tea-related studies.”
“In other words, shut our doors as a museum and become some kind of tea research institute.”
“Temporarily, perhaps,” Nigel said with a shrug of his shoulders. “A determined fund-raising campaign will enable the museum to eventually replace much of the crockery, silver, and woodenware.”
“We’ll keep a basement full of old papers and lose our finest antiquities. Is that your idea of a fair trade?”
“I admit it’s not a perfect solution, but one must make the best of one’s circumstances.”
“Wow! Didn’t you forget to say, ‘Stiff upper lip, old chap’?”
“There’s no need to be snippy.”
“Here!” Flick lobbed the register of on-loan items to Nigel. She thrust out her jaw and threw back her shoulders, hoping that her demeanor would further signal her displeasure. “You’ll need this on Monday, when you and the Hawkers’ lawyer plan the destruction of my museum.”
He caught the binder against his chest and said softly, “Flick, I’m only trying to help.”
“The way you can help is by figuring out a way to save our collections. We need good ideas, not dumb solutions. You have a reputation for being smart. Prove it!”
Flick watched Nigel’s face go pale. He walked awa
y, shaking his head.
Why did you do that?
“You’re mad at the Hawkers and the British tax system,” she murmured, “but you took it out on poor Nigel. Stupid! Stupid! Stupid!”
Five
At 1:35 on Monday afternoon, Nigel said, “Thank you, Iona. I appreciate your wise advice,” and hung up his telephone. He lifted the business card that lay on his desk—“B. Bleasdale, Solicitor”—and ran his fingernail over the raised lettering.
“Iona says you’re a clever boots,” he said to the card. “Near the top of your class, not a lawyer to be trifled with. She also told me that the B stands for Barrington, a forename you detest.” Nigel pronounced the lawyer’s full name slowly, enunciating the five syllables separately. “Bar–ring–ton Bleas–dale. Poor blighter. Your mother must have been a fan of Jane Austen. No wonder you grew into an overachiever at law.”
Nigel had spent the morning arranging an emergency meeting of the board of trustees for Wednesday afternoon to deal with the collections crisis. The trustees were none too eager to gather again at the museum so soon after Elspeth’s funeral, but all eventually agreed. And then he called Iona Saxby back to talk about the legal options available to the museum.
Iona had listened patiently to his summation of the facts, then said, “You don’t need me to tell you how often this happens in England, Nigel. A wealthy person dies, inheritance taxes must be paid, and family treasures travel to the auction block.”
“I’m sure that Elspeth would have wanted the antiquities kept on display.”
“If so, she had every opportunity to write a proper will that bequeathed them to the museum or at the very least to do some shrewd tax planning. Failing that, we have no alternative but to disgorge the antiquities upon the family’s demand. Harriet and Alfred will be empowered to decide which of the estate’s assets to sell. According to their solicitor, they already have reached a decision.”
“Is there nothing the law can do?”
“This is a matter where common sense is more important than law. Every child understands the principle that a borrowed item must be returned upon the request of the rightful owner. The Hawker family lent their property to the museum in good faith for purposes of exhibition, and they now ask for it back. The fact that one generation of Hawkers did the lending and another generation the asking back is essentially immaterial. I wish I had something more to offer you, Nigel, but the crux of the issue is clear-cut: Harriet Hawker Peckham and Alfred Hawker own the antiquities and we do not.”
Nigel replied with a forlorn grunt. “Now you sound like Solicitor Bleasdale.”
“Frankly, I am astonished that Bleasdale saw a need to become personally involved in this matter. Reclaiming lent property is the sort of trivial chore I pass to my paralegal. One doesn’t send a three-star chef to fry up a plate of fish and chips.”
Iona’s out-of-the-blue culinary metaphor left Nigel feeling hungry. He had worked through lunch, and Bleasdale wasn’t due for another fifteen minutes. That left ample time to zip down to the Duchess of Bedford Tearoom for a sandwich and a cup of coffee. Pity they didn’t do fish and chips.
Nigel had risen halfway out of his chair when his telephone rang. The caller-ID panel proclaimed “WELCOME CENTRE KIOSK.”
Rats! The eager beaver lawyer had come early.
Nigel immediately began to formulate a plan B. He would send down for refreshments for both Bleasdale and himself. He snatched up the receiver.
“Owen here.”
“It’s me, sir. I’m at the welcome desk.”
Nigel easily recognized Conan Davies’s gravelly voice. But why would the museum’s chief of security stand duty at the Welcome Centre kiosk? And what were those odd sounds he could hear in the background?
Davies continued. “There’s a gentleman here to see you. A Mr. Bleasdale.”
Nigel thought he heard a dog bark, but he must have been mistaken. Only guide dogs and working dogs accompanying handicapped guests could enter the museum—and they almost never barked.
“Send Mr. Bleasdale right up,” Nigel said.
The noises in the background became even louder. Nigel distinguished chirping, a squeak, and what might have been mewing.
“It would be better for you to come down here, sir. We have an issue with the animals.”
Animals? “Did you say animals, Conan?”
“A small dog, sir. And a big bird. And two stout cats.”
“None of the above is allowed in the museum, Conan. You know that—you wrote our rule book.”
“We need you down here, sir.” Nigel heard a sense of urgency in Conan’s words, coupled with a plea for help.
“Oh, very well. I’m on my way.”
The last flight of steps offered Nigel an all-inclusive view of the Welcome Centre kiosk, but what he saw made no sense at all.
Margo McKendrick, the museum’s unflappable greeter, a petite woman of sixty, stood outside her kiosk staring with furrowed brow at the three objects sitting on her normally pristine marble countertop: two medium-sized plastic airline pet containers and one oversized birdcage that measured at least four feet tall. Inside the cage perched a large gray bird that Nigel recognized as a member of the parrot family. It had a charcoal colored beak and red tail.
Conan Davies, wearing an equally displeased expression, held a dog lead in his right hand. The small dog attached to the other end resembled a fox: perhaps fifteen inches tall, compactly built, with a thick reddish coat and patches of white on its neck, legs, and puffy cheeks. It had small pointed ears, triangular eyes, a rather impudent arched tail held high, and a smile on its face.
That dog is definitely grinning at me, Nigel thought. Why not? Solicitor Bleasdale is grinning at me, too.
“Good afternoon, Mr. Owen,” Bleasdale said. “Because we were scheduled to meet today, I chose to kill two birds with one stone, although”—he tipped his head toward the parrot—“that comes across as a clumsy metaphor given the circumstances. I have brought Dame Elspeth’s pets to the museum. The Hawker heirs thought you would want them immediately.”
“Me want her pets? Why would they—or you—think that?”
Nigel watched the contentment on Bleasdale’s countenance turn to puzzlement that morphed into concern and finally became resignation.
“Oh dear!” the solicitor said. “My clients assumed, incorrectly it appears, that the acting director of this museum would have full knowledge of the contractual arrangements made between the institution and Dame Elspeth Hawker.”
The small dog made a yodel-like bark that trailed off into a high-pitched lamenting whimper. Had it recognized the name of its late owner? Nigel wondered.
“What contractual arrangements?” he asked.
“I have never acted for Dame Elspeth, but I can repeat what my clients told me. Approximately one year ago, Dame Elspeth became concerned that her cherished pets might outlive her, as they in fact have done. And so she made an agreement with your predecessor. The museum agreed to take charge of the animals upon her death and maintain them until their natural demise. The Hawker heirs understand that Dame Elspeth agreed to a generous stipend as consideration for the museum’s commitment. They feel that the time is ripe for you to keep your end of the bargain.”
Nigel peered into one of the pet crates. Two enormous orange eyes peered back at him. He turned to Conan Davies and said, “Does any of this sound familiar?”
The big man nodded. “I’m afraid it does, sir. As I recall, Nathanial Swithin, the former director, did make such an agreement. Dame Elspeth felt—well, not to put too fine a point on it—reluctant to have the younger Hawkers take charge of her pets should she no longer be able to care for them.”
Nigel looked down. The foxy face was studying him with rapt attention. “What sort of dog is that?” he asked.
“A Shiba Inu,” Bleasdale said, “an ancient Japanese breed known for its intelligence, inquisitiveness, love of human interaction, infrequent barking, robust independent streak
, and a compelling instinct to chase and kill small animals. Because of the latter, Harriet Hawker Peckham recommends that you never take the dog outdoors without its lead.” He added, “His name is Cha-Cha.”
Nigel’s curiosity overpowered his reluctance to continue this inane conversation. “Why would Elspeth name a Japanese dog after a Latin dance?”
“Begging your pardon, sir,” Margo said. “Cha is the name for tea in much of the world, including Japan. It strikes me that Dame Elspeth chose a tea-related name for her dog.”
“And for her other pets as well,” Bleasdale said amiably. “The cats—both female British Shorthairs—are named Lapsang and Souchong. And the bird, an African Grey parrot, is named Earl.”
“Very clever, indeed,” Conan said. “Earl the grey. Get it, sir? Earl grey. Like the tea.”
Nigel smiled. He relished good puns, but this wasn’t the time to admit it. “Despite their witty names, Mr. Bleasdale, the museum can’t accept these animals. What would we do with them?”
“I suggest daily feeding and watering for the lot,” Bleasdale said, “plus in the case of the dog, occasional walks—perhaps on the Common, across the road.”
“You understood perfectly well what I meant. This is a museum, not a kennel.”
“To the contrary, Mr. Owen. Your predecessor entered into a binding contract that Elspeth Hawker’s heirs intend to enforce. I am certain that you have a signed memorandum of contract somewhere in your files, but I will save you the trouble of looking. Alfred Hawker located a copy of the document among Dame Elspeth’s papers. I brought it with me.” He tapped his breast pocket. “The Royal Tunbridge Wells Tea Museum is now the official caregiver to these orphaned creatures.”
