Page 16 of The Spy Who Loved Tea

A figure emerged from the trees. It wasn’t Pym. It wasn’t a sleek corporate assassin.

It was Reverend Thomas.

Vera blinked. Well. I didn’t see that coming.

The Vicar rushed forward and took Mrs. Gable’s hands—but not the way a clergyman takes the hands of a parishioner offering comfort. He pulled her close, one hand sliding to the small of her back, the other cupping her face with a tenderness that spoke of long practice.

“My dear Martha.” He kissed her forehead, then her cheek, lingering. “I was worried you wouldn’t come. With all the police about...”

“Oh, Thomas!” Mrs. Gable melted against him, her face pressed into the hollow of his neck, her fingers clutching the lapels of his jacket. “I couldn’t stay away. I needed to see you. It’s all falling apart.”

Ah, Vera thought, watching the way their bodies fit together with the ease of long familiarity. So that’s how it is.

A village vicar and the widowed baker. It was practically a cliché—but clichés became clichés because they happened so often. The loneliness of the cloth, the warmth of a woman who smelled of fresh bread and vanilla. Vera had seen stranger pairings in her time.

The Vicar stroked Mrs. Gable’s hair, murmuring something too soft for Vera to catch. Then he pulled back, holding her at arm’s length, his thumbs tracing circles on her shoulders.

“Tell me what’s happened. What did Pym say to you?”

“It’s dreadful!” Mrs. Gable’s voice cracked. “That awful man came to the shop this morning. He said... he said he knows.”

“Knows about us?” The Vicar’s face tightened with alarm.

“Yes—but that’s not the worst of it.” Mrs. Gable clutched his hands. “He has photographs, Thomas. Of us. At the folly. At my cottage. He must have been following us for weeks.”

Photographs. Vera filed that away. So Pym—or someone working with him—had been building a dossier on the villagers. Documenting their secrets. Preparing leverage.

“He said he’d send them to the Bishop,” Mrs. Gable continued, her voice rising toward hysteria. “He’d tell the whole village. He’d ruin you, Thomas. Your position, your reputation—everything you’ve worked for.”

“Let him.” The Vicar’s jaw set with surprising steel. “I don’t care about the Bishop. I care about you.”

“Don’t say that.” Mrs. Gable pressed her palm against his chest, over his heart. “I won’t let you throw away everything for me. You’ve given thirty years to this parish. These people love you.”

“And I love you.” He covered her hand with his own. “Martha, I’ve been hiding for too long. Sneaking around like a criminal, pretending I don’t count the hours until I can see you again. If Pym wants to expose us, perhaps it’s time we stopped being ashamed.”

Mrs. Gable’s eyes filled with fresh tears—but something else too, something fierce. “You dear, foolish man.”

“But there’s more,” she said, pulling away reluctantly, pacing in a tight circle. “He knows about the bakery. About the deed. About what my grandfather did during the war.”

Vera leaned forward slightly, her interest sharpening.

“He has documents,” Mrs. Gable continued, her voice thick with tears. “He showed me copies. The original deed to the bakery—my grandfather obtained it fraudulently in 1943. The Hirsch family owned it before the war. They were... they were taken away. And my grandfather, he... he just moved in. Changed the paperwork. Pretended it had always been ours.”

The Vicar’s face had gone pale. “Martha...”

“I didn’t know.” Mrs. Gable’s voice rose to something close to a wail. “I swear I didn’t know until Pym showed me the papers. My grandmother never said anything. I thought we’d owned that building for generations. And now he says if I don’t sign over the property, he’ll expose everything. He’ll tell the papers. He’ll contact the Hirsch family’s descendants. He says I’ll lose everything—the bakery, my reputation, everything my family built.”

“It wasn’t your fault,” the Vicar said firmly. “You didn’t know. You were a child—you weren’t even born when⁠—”

“It doesn’t matter!” Mrs. Gable clutched his hands. “The shame of it. The scandal. And Thomas, he said... he said worse things would happen if I didn’t cooperate.”

“Worse things?”

“He talked about accidents.” Mrs. Gable’s voice dropped to a whisper. “Kitchen accidents. Gas leaks. Food contamination. He said it would be such a tragedy if someone got sick from my baking. If the health inspector found... found something in my flour stores.”

Vera felt a cold weight settle in her stomach.

Rat poison in the flour. Barnaby had one of Mrs. Gable’s biscuits clutched in his hand when he died. So far, they were sticking to the heart failure story. The poison was likely injected through the needle hole Vera had seen, but the authorities could make it seem like it was in what he had eaten. No one would know enough to question that. No one but Vera.