Page 17 of The Spy Who Loved Tea

It wasn’t just a threat to ruin Mrs. Gable’s business. It was a frame waiting to be sprung. If someone died of poisoning in Lark’s End—if Pym himself turned up dead, for instance—the evidence would point straight to Martha Gable’s kitchen.

The perfect scapegoat for whatever OmniCorp’s “alternative methods” might require.

“He gave me until noon tomorrow,” Mrs. Gable was saying. “If I don’t sign, he’ll... Thomas, I don’t know what to do. I can’t fight these people. They have lawyers and money and documents I can’t even understand.”

“We should go to the police.”

“And tell them what? That I’m being blackmailed over a decades old property fraud committed by my dead grandfather?” Mrs. Gable laughed bitterly. “Constable Oakes can barely handle parking violations. This is... this is something else entirely.”

She opened the basket. Inside, along with a Victoria sponge that was clearly meant to provide cover for this meeting, was a sheaf of papers.

“These are the contracts Pym wants me to sign.” She thrust them at the Vicar. “I can’t understand half of it. Legal jargon. But it signs over the mineral rights to something called OmniCorp. Not just the bakery—all the land underneath it, going down... I don’t even know how far.”

“Mineral rights?” The Vicar frowned, leafing through the papers. “What could they possibly want with the minerals under Lark’s End?”

Vera knew the answer. Lithium. High purity. Worth more than the entire village.

But Mrs. Gable and the Vicar clearly didn’t.

“I don’t care what they want,” Mrs. Gable said. “I just want them to leave me alone. Maybe I should just sign. Give them what they want. Then it would all be over.”

“Martha, no.” The Vicar gripped her hands. “If you sign under duress, you’re rewarding criminal behavior. And there’s no guarantee they’ll stop. These people killed Major Barnaby—I’m sure of it, whatever the constable says. If you sign, you become a loose end. A witness.”

Mrs. Gable’s face went white. “You think they’d...”

“I don’t know what they’d do. But I know that signing won’t make you safe. It will make you complicit.”

They stood in silence for a long moment. Mrs. Gable’s tears had stopped, replaced by something harder—the look of a woman who had been pushed too far and was starting to push back.

“What do we do, then?” she asked quietly.

“We need help. Someone who knows how to deal with people like this.” The Vicar hesitated. “I’ve been thinking... Mrs. Calloway. There’s something about her. The way she handled herself at the fête, when the Major collapsed. The questions she asked. I think she might be more than she seems.”

Vera felt a small flicker of alarm. If the Vicar was noticing her, others might be too.

“The knitting woman?” Mrs. Gable sounded doubtful. “She’s about a hundred years old, Thomas.”

“Age doesn’t preclude capability. And I’d rather trust a sharp old woman than a useless young constable.”

Vera permitted herself a small smile behind the oak tree.

But before she could decide whether to reveal herself, she saw something that froze the smile on her face.

Movement. On the far side of the clearing, deeper in the fern line.

Another figure. Watching.

He was dressed in dark clothing—not the tactical gear of the night before, but casual clothes that would blend into any village street. Dark trousers. A navy jacket. A flat cap pulled low over his face.

But Vera recognized the stillness. The absolute economy of movement. The way he held himself like a coiled spring, ready to explode into action at a moment’s notice.

The grey-eyed doctor. Julian. Whatever his real name was.

He was surveilling Mrs. Gable and the Vicar. Documenting the meeting. Probably photographing them for OmniCorp’s files.

As Vera watched, he raised something to his face. A phone? A camera? She couldn’t tell at this distance, even with magnification.

Snap. The faint sound of a shutter.