Page 12 of The Spy Who Loved Tea

Vera sat at the kitchen table with the ledger spread before her. The cryptic entries seemed to mock her in the grey morning light.

G. — 14 / Zn(?) Li ✓ HP

What did it mean? What had Barnaby discovered that was worth killing for?

Watson finished his bath and jumped onto the table, padding across the ledger with wet paws before settling himself directly on top of the most important page. He fixed Vera with his pale green stare—a look that said, quite clearly, I have faced danger and emerged victorious. You may now worship me.

“You hid under the bed,” Vera reminded him.

Watson began to purr, utterly shameless.

By seven o’clock, she had formed a plan. Pym was staying at the Jolly Miller. Pym was scared. Scared men made phone calls—to handlers, to superiors, to anyone who might tell them what to do next.

And Vera intended to listen.

The Jolly Miller Bed & Breakfast was, according to its faded sign, “A Charming Rustic Retreat.” Vera knew it as the place with the thinnest walls in the county and a landlady, Mrs. Pringle, who charged extra for towels and could be distracted by almost anything on television.

It was also where Arthur Pym was hiding from his problems.

Vera arrived at half past eight, clutching a plate of biscuits covered in cling film. She had baked them herself that morning—a batch of respectable shortbread that contained nothing more sinister than butter and sugar. The plate was a prop, but the biscuits were real. One should always commit fully to a cover story.

Mrs. Pringle was exactly where Vera had expected to find her: wedged into an armchair behind the reception desk, eyes fixed on a rerun of some antiques program. A man in tweed was examining a vase with the intensity of a bomb disposal expert.

“Good morning, Mrs. Pringle,” Vera called out in her most quavering voice. “I’ve brought a little welcome gift for your guest. The young man in the suit? I felt so terrible about the unpleasantness at the fête yesterday. I thought some homemade biscuits might cheer him up.”

Mrs. Pringle barely glanced away from the screen. “Room four. Up the stairs, second on the left. Mind the loose board on the landing.”

“Thank you, dear. I’ll just pop up and leave them outside his door. I wouldn’t want to disturb him.”

“Mm-hmm.” Mrs. Pringle had already returned to the vase, which was apparently worth more than Vera’s cottage.

Vera climbed the stairs slowly, letting her footsteps creak on each step. An old woman bringing biscuits. Nothing to see here. Nothing to remember.

She reached the landing and paused outside Room 4. The door was closed, but she could hear a voice inside—muffled, agitated. Pym was on the phone.

Vera set the plate of biscuits on the hallway table and adjusted her hearing aid.

To the naked eye, it was a standard-issue beige device, the kind that whistled if you got too close to a microwave. In reality, it was a modified piece of kit she’d liberated from a signals station in East Berlin, 1987. It could isolate a whisper through a concrete wall, filter out ambient noise, and record up to six hours of audio on a chip the size of a fingernail.

She turned the dial behind her ear.

Static. The hum of the old radiator. The creak of floorboards as Pym paced.

Then, his voice, sharp and clear:

“—telling you, it’s out of control. He dropped right in front of me. People saw. People are asking questions.”

Vera leaned closer to the wall, feigning interest in a watercolor of Bourton-on-the-Water.

A pause. Pym was listening to someone on the other end. Then:

“I didn’t panic. I strategically withdrew. There’s a difference.” His voice cracked. “You didn’t tell me you were sending someone. You didn’t tell me there would be—that he would⁠—”

Another pause, longer this time. When Pym spoke again, his voice had dropped to something close to a whimper.

“A cleaner. You sent a cleaner. To a village fête. Do you have any idea how⁠—”

He was cut off. Vera could hear the tinny buzz of the voice on the other end, though she couldn’t make out the words. But Pym’s reaction told her everything.