Shadow of a Spout (A Teapot Collector Mystery, Band 2) - Softcover

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Amanda Cooper is a pseudonym for Victoria Hamilton, the national bestselling author of the Vintage Kitchen and Merry Muffin Mystery series.

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A Cup of Tea

by Anonymous

When the world is all at odds

And the mind is all at sea

Then cease the useless tedium

And brew a cup of tea.

There is magic in its fragrance,

There is solace in its taste;

And then laden moments vanish

Somehow into space.

And the world becomes a lovely thing!

There’s beauty as you’ll see;

All because you briefly stopped

To brew a cup of tea.

Chapter 1

The dark-paneled meeting room of the Stone and Scone Inn was full on the first afternoon of the annual August convention of the New York State division of the ITCS, the International Teapot Collectors Society. Rose Freemont should have been listening to the speaker, but instead she examined her treasure. It was a homely thing, the metal teapot, battered and beaten, like a raggedy old man who has been buffeted about by the elements and fallen on hard times. But like that raggedy old man, it had a past, a purpose, and meaning. She turned it over and over in her hands, examining the patina, caressing the dent on its round belly and hugging it to her. There was something about the size of it and the intricacy of the decoration that hinted at a noble history.

That was what had inspired her to bring it to the convention in Butterhill, New York. She wanted to know more about it, and hoped to find some answers. In the past Rose had to attend without Laverne Hodge, her best friend and sole employee at her business, Auntie Rose’s Victorian Tea House, because someone had to keep the place open. They alternated years going to the convention and never got to enjoy it together, as such good friends ought. But this summer she and Laverne were attending with some of the other Silver Spouts, her teapot-collecting group in Gracious Grove, a small town nestled in the Finger Lakes region of upstate New York. She could thank her sweet granddaughter, Sophie Rose Freemont Taylor, trained restaurateur, for this time with her friends.

Sophie was still feeling the sting of the failure of her New York garment district restaurant In Fashion, but helping her grandmother at Auntie Rose’s was proving to be just the elixir she needed. It had put the spring back in her youthful step, and in return she had brought a zest and vigor to the tearoom that was dragging it, as Laverne said, kicking and screaming into the twenty-first century. She had added items to the menu that were bringing in a new crowd without alienating the old crowd, an ideal situation for the tearoom.

Though some of her nonfood ideas were radical, like redecorating the entire chintz-and-roses tearoom—Rose cringed at the thought of the expense and work and business days lost—she liked her granddaughter’s enthusiasm. When Sophie first came back to Gracious Grove, Rose worried that the girl was too beaten down by defeat to care. But she was rebounding, and it was a revelation that having Sophie around was putting the spring back into her own octogenarian step.

She sighed as the voice, a background to her wandering thoughts, droned on. The lack of effective air-conditioning meant the room was getting stuffy, and she was far too old to go without air-conditioning for long on a hot August day. She nudged Laverne, sitting next to her. “Do you think she’s ever going to stop talking?” Rose whispered. The “she” who had monopolized the meeting so far was Zunia Pettigrew, president of the New York State division of the ITCS.

“Never,” Laverne snapped. “Loves the sound of her own voice too much.”

“So in short,” Zunia finally said, straightening to her whole five-foot height and completely missing the humor inherent in her words, “welcome to our annual convention.”

“That woman wouldn’t know short if she ran over it,” Laverne groused.

Laverne’s father, ninety-something Malcolm Hodge, who sat on the other side of his seventy-year-old daughter, snorted. “If she wants to know what short is, she could look in the mirror,” he murmured, in his dry-as-dust tone.

“I would like to introduce at this time Walter Sommer, our distinguished International Teapot Collectors Society president!” Zunia finished, and led a round of applause that was brief and scattered, as Walter stood, shook the creases out of his trousers and approached the dais.

Josh Sinclair, wide-eyed and at sixteen the youngest member of the Silver Spouts and likely the youngest member the ITCS had ever had, smirked at the exchange among his elders, but then pressed his lips together and sobered immediately. Rose smiled at his earnest demeanor. It was his first convention and required him to take a day away from his summer college courses, but how could his mother say no when he was a straight-A student? He not only kept up his grades but was in an accelerated course at high school, was the recording secretary of the Silver Spouts, and held down a part-time job editing digital content for the Gracious Grove newspaper.

He was one of those rare souls who knew from the age of five what he would become: a historian with a specialty in object conservation. He had already begun writing on the topic for the Gracious Grove Gazette, with a piece on the history of the Sinclair crest he found on a teapot left to him by his great-grandmother. Sophie had a lot in common with him in having an early determination to pursue a particular line of work. She had always known she wanted to be a chef. She called Josh an old soul in a new body and they had become somewhat unlikely friends.

As always deliberate and measured in his pace, Walter cleared his throat, examined his notes, collected them together into a neat pile, harrumphed and cleared his throat again. He then tapped the microphone, which squealed in dismay. The mic was hardly necessary, since the conference room of the Stone and Scone was a mere thirty feet long and twenty wide, more than adequate for the twenty-five or so attendees at the conference, but Walter liked to make a production out of his yearly appearance.

Walter Sommer, tall, slim and slightly stooped, had unusual green eyes and a thatch of white hair that lay obediently in a wave across his forehead. He was the president and one of the founding members of the ITCS, which had grown to include twenty-five regional or state divisional chapters that were in turn made up of local groups. Walter and his wife, Nora, another founding member, lived in Schenectady, and the New York State convention was considered by some as the “home turf” for the entire society. The only collectors club from the state that wasn’t there was the New York City society, Big Apple Teapots, whose membership was too big to stay comfortably at the Stone and Scone. They boycotted the convention every year, preferring to hold their own chapter convention in New York City. Walter would also attend that event, since he was originally from the city himself, along with Zunia, state division president, and her husband.

He began to talk, welcoming each and every attendee and setting out the plans for the weekend. There would be three seminars, two the next day and one Sunday morning, on the history of tea, silver hallmarks as they pertained to silver teapots, and the development of tea vessels, form versus function. Saturday evening Walter and Nora would guide a group through a local art museum where art depicting teapots was on display. Sunday afternoon the convention would draw to a close in time for folks to get back to their homes before dark. Informal group gatherings over dinner in the inn were optional, with some folks preferring other area restaurants.

After introductory remarks he launched into the meat of his talk. He blathered...