Page 20 of The Spy Who Loved Tea

The tin was open. A half-eaten biscuit lay on the saucer beside the teacup, a single bite mark visible in the golden surface.

Vera didn’t scream. She didn’t gasp. She stepped inside and closed the door behind her with a soft click, careful not to touch the handle with her bare fingers.

She approached the body.

Pym’s face was frozen in an expression of mild surprise—the look of a man who had been expecting something unpleasant but not this unpleasant. No signs of a struggle. No defensive wounds. He had been sitting in his chair, drinking his tea, eating his biscuit, and then he had simply... stopped.

Vera leaned close, examining without touching. No pinprick on the neck this time—Julian had varied his method. The poison had been in the food, not injected. Easier to disguise. Easier to blame on someone else.

She sniffed the air above the teacup. Nothing obvious. But some poisons were odorless, tasteless—the kind that dissolved into hot liquid and left no trace except the corpse.

She looked at the biscuit tin.

Mrs. Gable’s Famous Lavender Shortbread.

The same tin that sat in the bakery window. The same biscuits that half the village bought every week. The same recipe that Martha Gable’s grandmother had perfected sixty years ago.

The frame was elegant in its simplicity. Julian had killed Pym with poisoned biscuits—biscuits that came from Mrs. Gable’s shop, biscuits that could be traced directly back to her kitchen. When the police tested Pym’s body, they would find the toxin. When they searched Mrs. Gable’s bakery, they would find the same substance planted in her flour stores or her sugar bins.

And Martha Gable, who had been publicly pressured by Pym, who had motive and means and opportunity, would be convicted of a murder she didn’t commit. Would they re-examine the Major’s body and be able to blame that on her, too?

Clever, Vera thought grimly. Vicious, but clever.

She surveyed the room with professional detachment. Pym’s laptop was gone. His phone was gone. The briefcase she had seen him carrying at the fête was nowhere in evidence. Julian had sanitized the room of anything incriminating—anything that might point toward OmniCorp or the Viper Protocol.

All that remained was the body and the biscuits.

Vera’s mind raced through her options.

She could take the tin. Remove the evidence. Without the biscuits, the frame would collapse—or at least become harder to prove.

But if she took the tin, Julian would know his plan had failed. He would know that someone had been in this room, someone who understood what was happening. And his next move might be direct action against Mrs. Gable—not a frame-up, but an “accident.” A gas leak. A fall down the stairs. A fire in the night.

Mrs. Gable was safer in police custody than she was in her own home.

Prison is the safest safe house, her old handler used to say. Not many can reach you behind bars.

It was a cold calculation. Let an innocent woman be arrested for murder, trust that the truth would come out before trial, and use the time to gather evidence against the real killers.

Vera had made worse choices in her career. But this one sat heavy in her chest.

“I’m sorry, Martha,” she whispered to the empty room. “I’ll get you out. But first I need to catch the snake who did this.”

She pulled her cardigan sleeve over her hand and wiped the door handle—inside and out—erasing any trace of her presence. Then she slipped out of Room 4 and pulled the door almost-closed behind her, leaving it exactly as she had found it.

The hallway was still empty. The stairs were still unguarded.

She had almost reached the lobby when she heard it.

Sirens.

Distant at first, but approaching fast. Coming up the main road toward the village centre.

Someone had already called the police.

Vera’s instincts flared. Julian. He had killed Pym, planted the evidence, and tipped off the authorities—all in one smooth operation. The police would arrive, find the body, find the biscuits, and the frame would snap shut around Mrs. Gable before anyone could stop it.

She couldn’t be found here. Not now. Not with a dead body upstairs and suspicion falling on everyone connected to the case.