“It’s breathtaking! I can’t believe that it’s mine or will be after December 25.”
“Nonsense! Start wearing it now. Where is it?”
“I went directly to the bank and put it in my lock-box, but I can’t wait for you to see it!”
“How was the appointment with Old Compo?”
“All business. No hand-kissing or compliments. I declined a cup of tea and kept looking at my watch. They showed me the ring, and I handed over the cash.”
“Did they count it?”
“The assistant took it into the other room. I’m sure she counted it.”
Qwilleran said, “Both you and I must avoid any slip of the tongue that would reveal my presence at the tea.”
West Middle Hummock was an exclusive enclave of country estates, and the landscape was a panorama of woods and meadows, winding roads bordered with wildflowers, and rustic bridges over gurgling streams.
“Isn’t it lovely?” Polly murmured.
“Would you like to live here?”
“No, but I like to visit once in a while, Carol is preparing dinner; it’s her cook’s night off.”
The Lanspeaks lived in an unpretentious farmhouse furnished with country antiques that looked like museum quality. When their children were young, they had kept a family cow, riding horses, and a few chickens and ducks. Now Carol and Larry were alone except for the couple who took care of the housekeeping and grounds and they concentrated on running the department store and participating in the theatre club, historical society, genealogy club, and gourmet group.
Larry met them on the front steps, saying, “The visiting firemen will be a little late, so we’ll start the Happy Hour without them. Old Campo doesn’t drink, anyway.”
Uh-huh, Qwilleran thought.
Carol came out of the kitchen, where she was preparing her famous breast of duck with prosciutto and mushroom duxelles.
Qwilleran asked, “Has this year’s Delacamp expedition been a success so far?”
“He never discusses that aspect of his visit,” Carol said, “but I know that Mrs, Woodinghurst sold her famous brooch yesterday, and he’s agreed to take Maggie Sprenkle’s torsade.”
They talked in chummy fashion about the Tuesday Tea, and Qwilleran entertained them with an account of his discomforts and boredom as a security guard. Then the honored guests arrived, and the mood became formal. What happened next is best described in Qwilleran’s own words, which he recorded in his personal journaclass="underline"
This guy Delacamp has been coming up here for more than twenty years and is not on first-name terms with anyone even Carol and Larry. His niece was introduced as Ms. North. “Pamela,” she said shyly, keeping her eyes cast down. Could this be the chick who pestered Lenny Inchpot at the reception desk in the late hours? She was wearing her tailored suit, and her uncle wore a blazer obviously tailored to flatter his expanding girth.
He said to me, “Haven’t we met in the last few days? At the country club perhaps?” I professed regret at not having had the pleasure, but I began to wonder if my disguise had been less effective than Carol insisted.
Quickly she said, “Mr. Qwilleran writes a column for the newspaper, and his picture appears at the head of it. That’s the answer.”
Unconvinced, Old Campo continued to throw glances in my direction all evening. He asked for a cup of tea when Larry was ready to serve a second round of drinks, leading me to challenge him. “As a journalist and a confirmed coffee-drinker, may I ask why you prefer tea?”
“Tea is the thinking man’s coffee,” he began. “For five thousand years in China it has been known as a revitalizing beverage, increasing concentration and alertness. Later, the Japanese promoted harmony and tranquillity with the tea ceremony. Dutch and Portuguese traders introduced tea to England and Russia. Caravans of two or three hundred camels used to bring chests of tea to the Russian border. Clipper ships raced each other from China to London.”
His niece was yawning. She spoke only when spoken to but paid deferential attention to Old Campo. At one point she whispered to him, and he said, “Now I know where I’ve seen you! In my suite there’s a portrait of Mark Twain. You could be brothers!”
During Carol’s excellent dinner he discussed the three thousand kinds of tea in the world, and then the seven grades of tea. The latter sounded like a comic routine, and I was glad I had my miniature tape recorder in my pocket when he recited them: Pekoe, orange pekoe, flowery orange pekoe, golden flowery orange pekoe, tippy golden flowery orange pekoe, finest tippy golden flowery orange pekoe, and special finest tippy golden flowery orange pekoe.
The after-dinner tea was Darjeeling, “the champagne of teas,” we were told, “Grown in India in the Himalayan foothills. Sometimes on a forty-five-degree slope.”
The special guests left shortly after that, and the rest of us had some good strong coffee while we re-capped the evening and had a few laughs.
At one point Polly excused herself and returned with a look of wonderment. “Carol! You’ve done over the powder room! It’s spectacular!”
Naturally. Nosy Me had to investigate. They had made one entire wall into a lighted niche with glass shelves for a collection of French perfume bottles.
“Larry gives me perfume on every anniversary,” she said, “and I save the bottles: Shalimar, Champs Elysees, L’Heure Bleue all the Guerlain classics. The bottles are works of art. Every time we go to Paris I haunt the antique shops and flea markets for vintage bottles. Some are priced as high as five thousand francs and more if they’re Baccarat.”
Little did Polly know I had special-ordered a bottle of L’Heure Bleue for her.
As Qwilleran and Polly drove back to Indian Village, she said, “Mr. Delacamp is visiting Maggie tomorrow morning to buy her pearl-and-diamond torsade. I’d love to know what he offers for it. I won’t ask, of course, and Maggie won’t tell.”
“And even if she does, she isn’t bound to tell the truth. You know the old rule; ‘Ask me no questions, and I’ll till you no lies’. Who said that? Shakespeare?”
“Oliver Goldsmith,” she corrected him. “And he said ‘fibs’ not ‘lies.’ It was a line in ‘She Stoops to Conquer’.”
“With a friend like you, Polly, who needs an encyclopedia?”
“Thank you, dear. That’s the nicest thing you ever said! Did you know that ‘fib’ has been a euphemism for ‘lie’ as far back as the eighteenth century? It’s derived from ‘fibble-fabble’. I hope I’m not boring you.”
“Not at all, This is a lot more interesting than tea.”
Conversation stopped as they passed the site of the Old Glory mine and turned to look at the old shafthouse, a spectral presence in the moonlight. Then she said, “I hear the historical society and the county commissioners are squabbling about the new historical markers to put them outside the fence, inside the fence, or on the fence. What’s your opinion, Qwill?”
“Inside the fence. They’re bronze and susceptible to theft.”
“Down Below, perhaps, but not up here.”
“There are vacationers from Down Below who might like to take home a bronze souvenir. I still say it’s safest to post it inside the fence.”
A quarter mile rolled by, and he said, “Tomorrow afternoon I visit Maggie to tape her great-grandmother’s story.”
“Take an oxygen inhaler,” she advised. “Her apartment is suffocatingly Victorian. But you’ll like her late husband’s collection of books.”
“Eddington Smith sold me a fine old copy of ‘Oedipus Rex’ this week. Handsome binding but poor translation.”
“In Canada this summer I saw a wonderful production of the play, complete with grotesque masks and exaggerated buskins.”