Free The Final Crumpet by Ron Benrey, Janet Benrey Page A

hurt.

Four
    It makes no sense at all.
    Nigel retrieved a yellow pad and slammed his desk drawer shut. Why, without any warning, would Flick do an about-face on so important a subject? She had stood next to him at the news conference and endorsed his unambiguous rejection of an Etienne Makepeace exhibit. She had reaffirmed her support during their debriefing with Stuart Battlebridge. And yet, less than two hours later, she told a BBC reporter that the museum needs a Makepeace exhibit.
    What could she have been thinking? And more to the point, how do I convince her to cross back to the prudent side of the road?
    Nigel chose a pen and began to scrawl a list on his pad:
     
Reasons Why We Shouldn’t Create a Makepeace Exhibit
1. Talk of an exhibit will keep reporters poking round the museum—and disturbing our daily operations—long beyond the natural demise of the story.
2. It seems likely that a former museum employee murdered Makepeace; if so, an exhibit would be in poor taste, might open an undreamed-of can of worms, and could possibly start a scandal. In the worst case, an exhibit might impact our ability to repay the enormous loan we’ve arranged to purchase the Hawker collection.
3. While it is true that the chief curator is responsible for the museum’s exhibits, a major new exhibit will require significant funding and thus the board of trustees’ approval. The very last thing we want to do now is propose a new exhibit to the board. We need their attention focused on acquiring the Hawker collection.
4. We have almost no information about Etienne Makepeace’s next of kin. For all we know, the establishment of an exhibit might prompt whatever family he has left to sue the museum.
5. The chief curator reports to the managing director; if she wants to propose a new exhibit, she should have spoken to me before announcing it to the press!
    Nigel scratched a line through the last item. He decided there was no need to get snippy with Flick—she undoubtedly forgot about the realities of our situation when faced with the reporter’s question.
    I will simply remind her of the big picture.
    He stood, walked to the window that overlooked the tea garden, and stared awhile at the small patch of grass in the center of the garden that held a green bronze sundial and a matching bronze bench. The sun had finally broken through the early morning clouds, making the odd-shaped piece of turf look warm and summery. It would become a grand vantage point for taking pictures of Makepeace’s grave. Nigel felt a tremor pulse through his body as he imagined hundreds, perhaps thousands, of nosy gawkers arriving to see the place where Makepeace had been buried, undoubtedly hoping that the police had left bits and pieces of the body behind. Creating a formal display would merely encourage a host of overcurious louts to show up.
    Not only is a Makepeace exhibit a terrible idea—we should probably pave over the whole ruddy garden.
    Alas, that would be impossible. The museum’s visitors from abroad particularly liked the tea garden. Consider the group of fifteen Japanese tourists who arrived at midmorning in a motor coach. They had made a side trip from London to visit the museum and were receiving special treatment—including a narrated tour of the galleries led by Mirabelle Hubbard, the senior docent. At noon, they dined in the Duchess of Bedford Tearoom on a gourmet lunch prepared by Alain Rousseau, the museum’s renowned chef. After completing their tour, they would enjoy a typical English afternoon tea, complete with scones, fairy cakes, and savories. That’s when Nigel would personally greet the group. Perhaps he would bring Cha-Cha along with him. The Japanese visitors would probably enjoy meeting an expatriate from their homeland.
    “Get’ em in—and keep’ em coming back,” he murmured. Flick had coined the museum’s new mantra. An increasing flow of fee-paying visitors was essential to repay the new loan. “The Royal