Page 2 of The Spy Who Loved Tea

Interesting, Vera thought. Very interesting indeed.

As she neared the flower tent, the argument grew louder.

“—tell you for the last time, Pym, you little weasel!” Major Barnaby’s face was the colour of a ripe plum. He was a large man who seemed to allow his moustache to do most of his emoting for him. Currently, it was bristling with rage. “You can tell your bosses that I’m not selling! Not for a million pounds! Not for the Crown Jewels!”

He took another angry bite of shortbread, still gesturing with the half-eaten biscuit.

“Please, Major,” the man in the suit hissed. He reached out a hand, not to strike, but to placate. “You don’t understand the timeline. They’re assuming⁠—”

“I don’t care what they assume!” Barnaby took a step back, his heel catching on the wooden edging of the flower display. He stumbled, righting himself with a heavy grunt. He raised a hand to his chest, the biscuit crumbling forgotten in his fist. “I... I won’t...”

Vera stopped ten feet away, concealed partially by a display of prizewinning marigolds. She saw the change instantly. The anger draining from Barnaby’s face, replaced by a sudden, vacant state of confusion.

The man with the medical bag was already moving. He had been drifting closer throughout the argument, Vera realized—positioning himself. And now, as Barnaby swayed on his feet, the stranger was there, at his elbow, a hand reaching toward the Major’s collar as if to steady him.

The touch lasted less than a second. A physician’s instinct, one might think. A helpful bystander checking for pulse or fever.

Vera didn’t think that at all.

“Major?” the suit asked. His voice wasn’t worried; it was cold. Calculative.

Barnaby’s mouth opened, but no sound came out. He swayed like a felled oak, then tipped forward.

He didn’t crumple. He crashed. He landed face-first into his own display of ‘Midnight Star’ petunias, crushing the delicate purple blooms under his tweed bulk. Crumbs from Mrs. Gable’s shortbread scattered across the ruined flowers like confetti.

The crowd gasped. A scream—likely Mrs. Gable—pierced the humid afternoon air.

“He’s collapsed! The Major’s collapsed!”

Vera didn’t break into a run. That would break cover. Instead, she tottered forward, crying out in a wavering, elderly soprano, “Oh! Oh, dear! Someone help him!”

She reached the body first—or nearly first. The man with the medical bag was already kneeling beside the Major, his movements swift and professional. Too swift. He had been barely fifteen feet away when Barnaby fell. A remarkable coincidence, if one believed in coincidences.

Vera did not.

The man in the suit—Pym—was backing away, wiping his hands on his trousers as if he’d touched something filthy.

“Heart,” Pym muttered to the gathering crowd. “He just... his heart gave out. I saw it.”

Vera knelt in the mud, ignoring the ruin of her support hose. She placed two fingers against the Major’s neck, making a show of trembling concern while she conducted a far more clinical assessment.

No pulse. But the skin wasn’t clammy yet; it was hot. Feverishly hot.

“Stand back, please,” the man with the medical bag said, his voice carrying the calm authority of someone accustomed to being obeyed. “I’m a doctor. Give him air.”

He made a show of checking the vitals. His fingers pressed against Barnaby’s wrist with practiced efficiency. But Vera was watching his eyes, not his hands.

They were flat and grey, the color of wet slate. They didn’t blink enough. A snake’s eyes, she thought. Cold-blooded.

“It’s a massive coronary,” the doctor announced. “I’m afraid he’s gone.”

Vera leaned in close, pretending to hover over the Major in grief. She wasn’t hovering. She was parting the collar of his shirt with a trembling hand that trembled not at all.

There.

Just above the collarbone. A tiny, red pinpoint. A bug bite? No. It was too precise. And surrounding it, a faint, localized blanching of the skin—the tell-tale sign of a rapid-acting vasoconstrictor.

She leaned closer, sniffing the air theatrically while feigning a sob. “Oh, poor Major Barnaby! He smelled so... so lovely...”